Third Sunday Before Lent

Our Gospel reading this morning follows on from the Gospel we would have had if we hadn’t celebrated Candlemas.  Then we would have heard that Jesus went into the synagogue in Capernaum and taught, and while he was there a man with an unclean spirit recognised Jesus, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God’. Jesus drove out the unclean spirit and restored the man to good health and sound mind. According to Mark, this was the first time in his ministry, Jesus had healed someone.

What I love about Mark’s Gospel is that he rushes Jesus onto the stage and shows the Son of God in action.  No flowery introductions about Jesus’ lineage for the benefit of Jewish Christians.  No shepherds, magi, no birth narrative, straight into Jesus’ ministry. There is no doubt in Mark’s mind that Jesus is the divine Son of God, so he begins with ‘The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’, and proceeds to give us a biography of Jesus’ life. We know from other writings that Mark was in a unique position to tell the story of Jesus, his mother’s house was the centre of the early Christian church in Jerusalem, he was a nephew of Barnabas, and most important of all, Mark wrote down what Peter told him about Jesus.

William Barclay the great Scottish theologian and Biblical commentator said that Mark’s Gospel is the nearest thing we have to a biography of Jesus, related in the simplest and most dramatic way. In the healing of the man with an unclean spirit we see Jesus has the authority and the power to cast out demons and now we see he has the power to heal bodily illness.  In terms of Mark’s first century audience, both episodes demonstrate the universal reach and scope of God’s activity embodied in and through Jesus. Today, you and I would probably call psychiatrists, doctors, and specialists if we are suffering from mental, emotional, psychological or physical symptoms. 

In the world of the New Testament writers, such symptoms were understood as the manifestations of cosmic spiritual disorders, they really believed in demons and devils who could possess a human body, and many people who professed to be God’s prophets claimed to be able to drive them out of a person. That’s why we hear that after Jesus drove out the unclean spirit, the congregation in the synagogue that Sabbath day were amazed, and said, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority!  He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him’. We can only imagine it, all the men of Capernaum in the synagogue that Sabbath morning when Jesus arrives, begins to teach them about God, a teaching not about how to obey the Jewish laws, but about God’s love for everyone, and then to really cast out an unclean spirit.  They witnessed the most extraordinary events, they had never seen anything like it, no wonder that evening they brought all the sick and the possessed to Simon Peter’s house to be healed.  No wonder the whole city was gathered around the door.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, who was leader of the Russian Church in Britain until his death a few years ago, gave great thought to Jesus’ healing powers.  He suggested in the miraculous healing of God, through the actions of Christ, its not just about being restored to physical health – as important as that may be to someone who is suffering – its about wholeness, becoming a human being in perfect harmony with God, our neighbour and with the whole created world: what promoters of alternative medicine call the holistic approach to healing, something perhaps we have neglected because science promised us all the answers to our needs. Science even promised us that there was no need for God, that creation was all just a big bang, but gradually people are seeing through that for what it is.  London Buses, ‘There’s probably no God so enjoy life’.

In our modern age for most of us, healing means going to the doctor’s or hospital to mend a broken leg, being prescribed medicine to cure our ailments, and we expect that treatment to work, that’s what our advances in modern science has done for us. But what Metropolitan Anthony is talking about is being made whole through the healing power of God, through our Saviour, Christ; achieving that inner peace that only God can give us.  Reaching the state when we are at peace with God and creation, which is not a physical thing but a spiritual one.

As a Priest, I have seen people at the hospice who are never going to physically recover, indeed are waiting to die, and yet they have been healed through being at peace with God.  Being made whole in the sight of God. What we see in the healing miracles in the Gospels, is the power of faith.  Faith shown by those who are healed by God, through Christ; faith in the belief that God could heal them.  We have so many examples of this in the Bible. ‘Your faith has made you well’, Jesus told the woman with the haemorrhage.  ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’, he told the paralytic man lowered through the roof of the house by his friends because they couldn’t get close enough to Jesus because of the crowds flocking to be healed. He got up and walked because he believed Jesus could heal him. 

And what is wonderful is that often the sick person doesn’t have to say anything, because Jesus knows they need healing, and the strength of their faith, just as he knows, we need healing and the strength of our faith.  They just surrender to His healing powers. Their faith in Christ is a lesson for us.

Of course everyone would like to be healed if they are sick, but not everyone is prepared to accept wholeness, because wholeness comes with a price.  Wholeness means accepting a life in the image of Christ; to be among the poor, the widow, the orphan, those who are unemployed, those who are homeless, to be Christ like in how we accept and help those in need.  To accept all people as our brothers and sisters as Jesus did. Perhaps that’s what Mark meant when he says, ‘And he cured many who were sick’.  Those that believed Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah, and had faith that he had the power from God to heal them.  Those who thought Jesus was just another itinerant preacher roaming the countryside, promising a cure for everything, and at that time there were many doing just that, they lacked the faith to be healed.

Metropolitan Anthony suggests we should ask ourselves this one question, ‘Can we honestly say, I believe Lord – help my lack of belief.  Help me to believe that wholeness and harmony in my life is possible’.  And if we can honestly say YES to that question, we must turn to God and say, ‘I believe Lord; open my heart to wholeness.  I may not achieve it at once, but I will struggle for it, give all my life for it’. After all the activity of healing the sick the previous night, we hear that Jesus went to a deserted place to pray.  We see this so often in the Gospels don’t we, Jesus goes to a deserted, quiet place to pray, to be alone with God, His heavenly Father. The image we probably have is of Jesus going someone deserted and quiet for a peaceful time, a time to collect thoughts, the sort of thing some of us do when life is hectic.  The sort of thing many people come into the church during the week to do. Perhaps it was a time for soul searching, a time of turmoil, a time of decision, a time to focus on the mission God called Him to do.

Jesus needed a time in that deserted, quiet place to pray for the strength to follow the course God had laid out for Him.  In His humanity, Jesus must have feared the road to the Cross, which had now started in Capernaum, feared the inevitable pain and humiliation that would end on Good Friday. How often have we ourselves struggled with what you might call a ‘dark night of the soul’, when we wrestle with our concerns, our fears about our life and faith.  When we wrestle with those problems and concerns that we all face at some time in our lives,  When life seems very dark and we can't see the morning when we hope things will be a little more clear and we can have a better understanding of our problems, our concerns. Jesus in His humanity, wrestled with what God wanted Him to do, just as we wrestle with our life situations. All of us, if we are honest with ourselves feel that same kind of pain at some time in our lives.  We want so much to know what is going to happen to us, or our loved ones.  We want so much to control our lives, and find it very difficult to accept that God points us in the direction He has planned for us.  We plead to God for answers, and often it seems there is silence, as if God has abandoned us.  So it can be extremely comforting for us to know that Jesus went through those times also. 

Remember that final night when Jesus goes to Gethsemane to pray, ‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want’. What I believe this passage from Mark is clearly telling us is that having faith, believing and trusting in God, through our Saviour and Redeemer, and following the path that God has laid down for us, with all its struggles, concerns and worries, are all part of our life journey.  But the Good News is that we do not journey alone, God is with us every step of the way.

When Moses appointed Joshua to succeed him and lead the Jewish people into the Promised Land, he told him ‘It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed’.

If we believe that, truly believe that, then everything is our lives will be well, and we will be healed and made whole.