Isaiah 40:27-31 (NRSV Updated Edition)
and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint
and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted,
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
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"[...] God is outside the system. ... This God is the creator “of the ends of the earth.” [Is. 40:28] Not only that, but God “gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless” (Is. 40: 29). Far from creating servants, God serves the creatures God has made and God serves most especially the powerless, like a rabble of slaves in Egypt and an exiled people in Babylon. ...
"This vision of God as one who serves is embodied in Jesus as presented by Mark. Coming from outside the human system of violence, Jesus exorcises those who are possessed by their violent culture. Jesus serves Peter’s mother-in-law by healing her of a fever, thus allowing her to imitate Jesus by serving him, the disciples, and her family. Meanwhile, Jesus goes on to serve the many people who come to be healed of sickness and violence. ...
"Both Isaiah and Mark are showing us that creation is not a one-shot deal. Creation is a continuous process. God renews the strength of those who wait on God so that we can “mount up with wings like eagles.” Jesus uses the same creative power to heal sicknesses and drive away the violence that possesses us.
"The question then is: Will we allow Jesus to bring us out of the exile into which violent human culture has captured us so that we can return to the world God created from the beginning—outside the System—or will we prefer to stay in exile?"
- Andrew Marr, from blog post "Above the Circle of the Earth" (https://andrewmarrosb.blog/2015/02/08/above-the-circle-of-the-earth/)
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"I'd like to bring out and emphasize something which I've mentioned before but which is going to be increasingly important. Mark's gospel presupposes always a spiral reading, and I mean that in [the following] sense. At face value, we are having an account of what happened in Jesus's public life at the very beginning of his ministry before people knew who he was, and a number of significant elements are being shown which were memories of people from the time when they didn't understand who he was, and yet every single one of these is being told by people who knew who he was because they had lived through to the end of the story. So in fact, they always describe these initial moments as if they were, in fact, the things that happened after Jesus had fulfilled his mission.
"So you get this double vision, if you like, that every single passage of Mark, it's something that happened initially and yet it's also something that happened after Jesus's death and resurrection. And we're expected always to notice these two things happening together: the Holy One of God was misrecognized by the unclean spirit [in last week's reading, Mark 1:24], but that's in fact who he was, and what he was doing after his resurrection is being shown lived out here. Which is why at the very end of the Gospel the angel tells the lost and muddled disciples to go back to Galilee where he would show them everything and that's exactly what we're doing here: we're part of the going back to Galilee of the disciples after the resurrection seeing what he's doing so that we know what to do. That's how Mark's Gospel works."
...
"Just in case there's any doubt about this, here we have the resurrection scene suddenly in Galilee: “In the morning while it was still very dark he got up” - 'anastasis' - he “resurrected.” So remember, this is the equivalent of the end, of when the Sabbath comes to an end, the first morning [of the resurrection], when in the Gospel this was the time when Mary Magdalene came to the tomb, but he's up already, he's got up. “.. and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed.“ And Mark is no fool: with what verb does he pray? Well, with exactly the same verb as he prayed in Gethsemane in Mark's Gospel. In other words, all of the later events are being concentrated here.
"“And Simon and his companions hunted for him.“ Where have they taken, where has he gone? The same response that the disciples had after the resurrection. “When they found him they said to him everyone is searching for you.“ So the question is: where is he, where is he to be found? Remember [after the resurrection (Mark 16:7)] they have been told by the angel to go back to Galilee. “And he answered: let us go on to the neighboring towns.“ - let's go on, in other words, this is the continuation - “so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.“ What did he come out to do? He came to make repentance possible because the kingdom of heaven had drawn near and what we get is him announcing that at the very beginning of his ministry and the disciples coming back and understanding that that is exactly what it is now their job to do with him: pronouncing his name now. That's what he came out to do ...
"“And he went through Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” In other words, the Holy One of God is making the full holiness of the synagogue and thus the temple alive but also healing the profane - that world where demons, people are bound down by spirits that dehumanize, so both the holiness of God and the humanizing bringing into being of Creation is going on at the same time. What do we do when we preach the Gospel? We go back to Galilee, and watch and learn and pray to be taken into the same Spirit, so that we may discover what is really holy, and we may bring each other to life."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi548DJahSo)
[Source of link to Andrew Marr blog, and for discussion and reflections on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/epiphany5b/]
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