A recording of today’s gospel and blog can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Mark 6:53-56) presents one simple scene of
the gospel that might be easily overlooked, but which is full of meaning for
ourselves and the power of Jesus. Jesus and His disciples were moored at Gennesaret,
and the people were following them in their droves. As soon as word got around
that Jesus was near at hand, people started flocking towards Him in search of
healing for themselves and their friends and relatives. Laying out the sick in
the public places, they made it possible for them to touch Jesus as He walked
by, and many were thus cured, merely by being within reach of the Saviour.
It would be easy to read this gospel as a story of the
fickleness of the people. The healing and the cures come so easily to them, one
might be permitted to wonder if the enthusiasm of the crowd was like the
enthusiasm of followers after a travelling circus. Were there souls here
present who would one day call for the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem? How
could they appreciate such immense gifts when they were as abundant or as
common as flowers in spring? And as many as touched the fringe of His
garment were made well. Easy come, easy go, isn’t it?
And, nevertheless, the miracles worked are not automatic,
but rather the work of God’s superabundance. Blessed was the land of
Gennesaret, for in that moment, there had rarely been such a fountain of grace
or divine gifts known to men. He will have mercy on whom He has mercy. As
the presence of evil makes men question whether there is a God, so His
gift-giving fills the mind with the conviction that all will be well– as every
human heart not utterly lost to demonic cynicism senses that it should be.
Yet, for all that, if we only read this gospel from the perspective
of the enthusiastic crowds, we have in a way read it backwards. The action of
this gospel does not begin with their enthusiasm, but rather with the coming of
Jesus. The crowds were not seeking Him before He had begun to seek them. It is
not their enthusiasm which gives this scene its deepest colour. Rather, it is
the dogged determination of the Divine Shepherd who comes now in search of the
lost sheep.
Note also how these sheep approach Him. On recognising Him,
they ran about to seize the moment. They implored His gifts. They practically
barricaded the roads with the bodies of the sick. The heart of the Shepherd
that went in search of His people was met with fervent welcome, a sense of
obligation, and a readiness to importune Him until He had mercy on them, like
the woman in the parable who troubles the judge until she gets judgement from
him (Luke 18: 1-8). Heart speaks unto heart, as the motto of St John Henry
Newman says. Here the heart of the people spoke, because among them they sensed
the presence of the Divine Heart. No one ever spoke as this man does,
say the temple guards to the Pharisees who wanted Jesus arrested.
Where are we in this gospel scene? Where do we stand
in relation to this Divine Visitor in whose hands an abundance of grace is held
for our benefit? Do we run after Him? Do we importune Him? Do we mobilise our
neighbours as much as we can to make them aware of the blessings that He has
for them? Most of all, are we prepared to join the sick and lame in the streets
in the hope of receiving from His abundance? Next to the mystery of our own
waywardness – our weakness before the three enemies outlined in the gospel last
Friday – comes the mystery of our failure to recognise and confess our
neediness daily, not to say hourly, not to say in every minute of every day.
And yet, if only we could seize the moment, we might just
find that it is in that passing second, that passing moment of grace, that the
fringe of His garment is closest to us. Jesus may be hard to recognise from
such a supine angle. But we should not doubt that He is there for us, just
beyond our inner chaos, just beyond the buffeting tumult of worldly passions,
or the seductive traps that the devil lays beneath our feet. There He is for
us, passing in the crowd, close to us in our woundedness, driven on by His goodness,
busy among the throng, but ever ready to come to our aid, if we will but reach
out our feeble hand and seek to touch the fringe of His garment. All He wants is
for us to say a determined, decided, and persistent “yes” to the solution He
brings to the diseases that hold us back from embracing Him as we are called to
do.
The only question that remains now is whether we really want to be cured.
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