One Shining Moment

Gospel: Mark 5: 21-43

After being driven out of the Gerasene district, Jesus goes to the opposite shore of the lake and encounters a very different reception.  Crowds are waiting for him in the hopes he would heal the daughter of a synagogue official.  Despite this hope, the crowd vacillates between hope and despair throughout the story.  They eventually think the girl to have died and have given up all hope of a remedy.

How often have we been in the position of this little girl? Our faith life appears dead, lifeless - but the good news is that we are only asleep like her.  Where there is life there is hope.  Jesus comes into our life through loved ones and others who care for us, and we are brought back to life.  Our spirit and our faith are reanimated by this moment and this encounter with the Lord.  

Now, we are no longer at the whim of the crowd.  As in the story Jesus has dismissed the crowd and its considerations from our lives.  Our life is now defined by this moment and this encounter we have had with the Lord Jesus.  We go about our regular life among the living, humble witnesses to the mercy God has shown to us. 

The Real Demons

Gospel: Mark 5: 1-20

We human beings are so captivated by this story of the demons and the swine that we will overlook who the real demons are in today's Gospel reading.  Consider the people of Gerasene: their entire economy is dependent on a profession that is unclean in Judaism - the raising of swine.  The man in their town who is possessed represents the entire town in the grip of a sinful economy of their own making.  

That the town is more concerned with their swine than the man's welfare represents the fact that this town is in the grip of a legion of demons.  The fact that they expel Jesus from their district indicates that they will return to their unjust economic system as soon as they are able, and they would prefer that the healed man follow Jesus rather than remain in their midst.

But Jesus orders the man - he orders us - to remain in the midst of these unjust systems in order to remind them of the mercy of God that has been extended to the world.  We are to stand as reminders to the world of the dignity of the human person, that the human person is prior to economics, that economic systems are to justly promote the flourishing of every human being.  Will we work to create a new economic order based on justice, or will we expel Jesus from our midst as the Gerasenes did? 

Be-Attitudes

Gospel: Matthew 5: 1-12

There is a vast difference between the commandments of Sinai and the Beatitudes of Jesus.  The commandments are laws of negative avoidance: don't do these things.  On paper they should be relatively easy to follow, though we do in fact find many of these prohibited activities to be quite popular in our world.  It begs the question as to whether a tactic of avoidance is best in overcoming our tendency to such actions.

By contrast the Beatitudes of Jesus  challenge us to positive actions that are not easy on the surface of things: to be merciful to others in a cruel world; to be peacemakers in a world of competition and strife; to be pure of heart in a world of degradation and lies; to suffer persecution for justice in an unjust world.  Jesus invites us to accept God's mercy in our repentance, and then to extend that mercy to others in our lives.  

However, this great challenge of the Beatitudes comes with it an additional blessing: a life of positive action - of mercy, peacemaking, purity of heart, and suffering persecution - is a far more effective tonic to the sins forbidden by the commandments than mere avoidance.  The Beatitudes call us to a life of positive interaction with the world, not avoidance or colonization of the like-minded.  The Beatitudes call us to a transformation of the world through mercy and peace.