Gospel Reflection for Sunday July 21st 2024- 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Fr Brian Maher OMI

Gospel Reflection for Sunday July 21tst2024, 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time | Mark 6:30-34

Ask a teenager when he or she gets home from their first day in High School, “Well, how did your first day go?” and most parents would count themselves lucky to get a grunted “OK”. However, ask the same question to a young child of maybe six and a parent will be regaled with accounts of games played during recess, how nice (or not!) their new teacher was, how they made new friends, how ‘x’ had a fight with ‘y’ and the teacher made them say sorry in front of the whole class, and all of these stories told at the same time, almost in the same breath, details jumbled in the child’s enthusiasm to say everything that happened. When one is young, everything is new, fresh, and filled with wonder and interest.  

The beginning of this week’s Gospel reminded me of this scenario – not the teenage part, but the six-year-old part. For the first time, if you can remember last week’s Gospel, Jesus sent his twelve Apostles out in pairs to visit nearby towns and villages, preaching and healing.   
Now, they have returned, fired-up and enthused by their experiences. They “gather around Jesus…” and excitedly “reported to him all they had done and taught.”. Such was their joy and success that I can imagine them talking over each other, one memory leading to another in a bubbling stream of anecdotes.  
A bit like a parent, I can imagine Jesus listening to them with a smile on his face, delighting in their enthusiasm, thanking and congratulating them. For the six-year-old, after a short while, a wise parent would notice that they are overtired and might suggest (insist on!) a lie-down for a while to rest.  
Jesus, I think, noticed the very same over-tiredness in his Apostles and suggested to them the adult version of a lie-down: he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” They needed time to stop, take stock, unwind, and calmly reflect on all they had done, and like a wise parent, Jesus wanted to give them that.   

And so, as Mark tells it, they “set out in a boat by themselves to a solitary place…” and the rest, as they say, is history! They were seen leaving and followed, the crowd swelling with people from other towns along the way. When they got to shore, they were confronted by a large crowd already there. Such were the needs of the people that Jesus abandoned his plan to rest and “began teaching them many things.”  
I purposely say ‘as Mark tells it’ here because when the same story is told in the other Gospels, there are a few small but important differences.  
John links this story to a memory of Jesus taking his apostles’ up a mountain’ to rest and being followed and found. Matthew links the story to a different memory, the execution of his friend John the Baptist, and Jesus’ desire to get some time alone to pray and grieve. He is followed and found and begins teaching them.   
Luke’s Gospel has basically the same story as Mark’s but with one significant change: The crowd does not follow immediately and is not waiting on the shore when he lands. In Luke’s story, the crowd follows “after they hear where he has gone….” meaning there was a delay before they found him.  

Central to all of Mark’s Gospel is the theme of ‘urgency’ or ‘immediacy’. For Mark, “The Kingdom of God is very near.” It is being revealed in the person of Jesus, and there is no time to waste in preparing the world for its arrival.  
Again and again, Mark tells us that Jesus “did not even have time to eat” and that he had to snatch time to pray “early in the morning, long before dawn.” In this week’s Gospel, even when he did try to rest, he was forced to abandon it because of the crowds demanding his time.  

In many ways, Mark presents us with a world that is very similar to our own. While Mark’s world is rushing head-long towards the coming of God’s Kingdom, and there is no time to waste in preparing for it, our world is also rushing head-long towards….. what?  
Dishwashers, microwaves, air fryers, self-service checkouts, internet shopping or banking, the list goes on and on, were all created for one purpose – to give us more time for ourselves, to rest, share companionship and family, relax, and for those of us who believe in a personal God, pray.  

Isn’t it ironic, then, that despite our best efforts, our world seems to be spinning faster and faster, and our lives seem to get busier and busier? All of our wonderful technology, invented to help us do more in less time succeeds only in making us do less in more time! There is always something ‘new’ to buy, a faster computer with greater memory, the latest apps that will run our entire home without us having to lift a finger, technology that will switch off the internet at whatever time we choose while also sending our children a reminder that it is bedtime!   
All of this was created to give us more time, yet our streets and pavements are filled with people constantly in a hurry, working overtime, and needing supersonic planes and bullet trains to get them to their next appointments.  
But what, I ask myself, is the rush? What are we rushing towards?  

At least Mark, in his Gospel, was clear about why we need to hurry: Because the Kingdom of God is coming, and it is a Kingdom not to be missed. It is a Kingdom of eternal peace, joy, forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, and love. Who, in their right mind, would not want to belong to a Kingdom like this?  
What about us in our ever-faster-spinning world, where we are promised more and more and seem to have less and less? What Kingdom are we hurrying towards? A Kingdom of power and wealth, of dominance and subjugation, of violence and fear, of greed and self-indulgence, or endless cravings and addictions?  
You see, we all know in our hearts that whether Tory or Labour, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, communist or capitalist, right or left, or any other false opposites we wish to invent, we are ultimately the same. Doesn’t so much of our present malaise and frustration with politics come from the realisation, whether we admit it or not, that human promises and Kingdoms will never satisfy or fulfil us? And don’t we also know that no matter how incredibly fast and complex our technology gets it will never bring us happiness? Even as we laud the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we fear what it will do to our world. Even as we see what climate change is presently doing to our planet and know the terrible suffering awaiting our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren if we don’t stop, short-term political game-playing allows us to ignore and rationalise it.   

When Mark was writing his Gospel, he was clear and his readers were clear that it was not a human Kingdom they were proclaiming. It was a Kingdom secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus. He survived hatred, injustices, terrible suffering, betrayal and rejection without compromising the promises he made or the message he proclaimed. The Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus is not human and transient but Divine and eternal. It has already overcome death. There is nothing else to harm it.  

Perhaps it is time to listen anew to what Mark is saying to us?  
Is it not time for us to take up Jesus’ invitation to set “…out by ourselves to a solitary place…”?   
Is it not time for us to stop, take stock, unwind and calmly reflect on what is really of value to us – the many Kingdoms of this world, built on fear, false promises, lies masquerading as truths and weakness posing as strength, or the Kingdom of God, built on the person of Jesus, risen from the dead, promising joy, peace, justice, forgiveness and happiness?  
And let us remind ourselves that the Kingdom of God, revealed in Jesus, is not pie in the sky; something to be achieved after we die. The Kingdom of God is for this world – why else would God bother to enter it?  
This is why we see Mark’s urgency in every word of his Gospel. It is why he tells us that people “…ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of him…” and why when Jesus saw the crowd, “… he had compassion on them…” and “…he began teaching them many things.”  
The need to proclaim the ‘Kingdom of God’ has never been more urgent that it is today. Mark’s Gospel, with its urgency and immediacy, is utterly relevant to us and our world. All we need do is look at the chaos and sadness all around us to see it.   
The thing is that we are the only ones who can make this Kingdom of God visible in our world. Mark was talking to the Christians of his day. He is also talking to us, the Christians of our day, and his message is just as urgent – maybe more urgent – today than it was when he wrote his Gospel.    

Preaching the Kingdom of God is a responsibility entrusted to us when we were baptised and confirmed. We can, if we wish, see it as a tedious, daunting responsibility to be undertaken with sorrowful faces and heavy sighs. But that would contradict the Kingdom we preach. The awesome truth is that we are invited to walk, with Jesus at our side, through the cities, towns, and villages of our world proclaiming, by the way we live, the Kingdom of God. How? Simple! By being a person who forgives; a person who is understanding and tolerant; a person who is gentle and patient; a person who works for peace in all situations; a person who searches for truth – real truth, which can be tested by experience and verified by facts; a person with a deep and unwavering joy which is based on the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead; a joy so deep that it can be tearful and sorrowful without being lost.   
When the Gospel today tells us that Jesus “…began teaching them many things”  these are the things he was teaching them.   
Is preaching the Kingdom of God a responsibility? Yes, but it also offers us an opportunity to walk with Jesus. What a privilege that is!   

For me, the hardest part of living the Gospel is remembering that our message is always one of joy, peace and forgiveness. If we preach anything else, or if hope is absent from our words, then we are, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel, leaving the people of our world “…, like sheep without a shepherd.”  
Even when it is difficult – and Jesus never promised us it would be easy – we must witness to life, to the Resurrection of Jesus, to a hope and joy that can never be taken away.  

If we allow ourselves to be brought by Jesus to the “quiet or solitary place” of our hearts this is what he will say to us. “Proclaim the Kingdom of God…proclaim the message of hope, joy, peace and forgiveness to a world which so badly longs to hear it.”  
The Kingdoms of this world, with their many false Kings and bad shepherds, can never offer what we offer. All we have to do is “…come away by ourselves to a solitary place…” and let Jesus assure us that it is true… and important… and possible… and very, very urgent.  

Many thanks,  
Brian. 

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie