Gospel Reflection for Sunday June 9th 2024 – 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time By Fr Brian Maher OMI
Gospel Reflection for Sunday June 9th 2024, 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time | Mark 3:20-35
After all the ‘heavy’ mysteries we have been reflecting upon in recent weeks (Eucharist, Blessed Trinity, Death and Resurrection, Pentecost, etc), it is a relief to return to the ‘simpler’ Jesus who travelled the roads of Israel, preaching, healing and offering forgiveness. During his life these mysteries were hinted at but it was only after his death and resurrection that they began to wonder who exactly they had met in the person of Jesus.
When we read the Gospels we are certainly being told of the life and words of Jesus, but always through the lens of the Resurrection. The Gospel writers have no interest in writing a biography of Jesus. Their only interest is in sharing with us the ‘Good News’ that Jesus, the man who was their friend, rose from the dead and, incredibly, is God. The stories, words and miracles of Jesus that the Gospel writers share with us are, understandably, those that best reflect the Jesus who is also God, risen from the dead.
This Sunday’s Gospel is interesting and important because it does not fit into this pattern. The Jesus we meet is not the charismatic, popular, storyteller and healer we might expect. Nor do we find him preaching to interested and adoring fans who hang on every word he says.
No! Jesus is presented to us as a tired, stressed man who escapes to his home hoping to be left alone to rest and recover. But even here there is no rest. He cannot even share a meal with his friends in peace. He is hassled and harried by men who have come all the way from Jerusalem just to undermine his message and encourage others to reject him. They go so far as to claim that he is in league with the Devil!
In a strange twist, we find that his mother and brothers are also looking for him, fearing that he “has lost his mind”. It seems that even his closest family have concerns about his message and want to ‘protect him from himself’ by taking charge of him and leading him away to safety. If this story was only in Mark’s Gospel we might dismiss it as some ‘made-up’ legend talked about in a particular area, but since we find the same story in Luke’s Gospel we must conclude that it records a real event in Jesus’ life.
The Jesus we meet in this Gospel is very far from the childhood pictures I saw in RE books, prayer books and in the Bible stories I was told by my parents and teachers. In every story I was told Jesus was calm, clean, well groomed and confident. People sat at his feet and listened attentively, in awe of his miracles and power. It is a pleasant, positive, flattering picture of Jesus which is attractive and appealing.
So when, as today, we come across a less than flattering picture of Jesus – a man who is hassled and harried, who is constantly attacked by those who reject his message and is even doubted by his own family – it is a good idea to ask why? Why would Mark and Luke want to include this story in their Gospels when there are so many more flattering stories to choose?
There is no doubt that Mark uses the incident to highlight an important aspect of Jesus’ message – that his mission is to everyone. In the Kingdom of God which is coming very soon all will be welcome and all will be equal. All who listen to Jesus’ message and believe it are his “brothers and sisters and mother”.
Right through Jesus’ life and ministry his message was one of inclusivity. The poor, the sick, prisoners, those rejected by society, even sinners, will be welcomed into the kingdom as warmly as brothers or sisters or mother.
There is no doubt that this idea was central to everything Jesus said and did, and therefore the incident recounted in the Gospel ideally exemplifies his overall message.
But, we have a lot more to learn from this Gospel than this.
Mark is content to let us encounter in Jesus a real and human person. He allows us to meet a man who is tired and stressed and in need of time to recover. Mark shows us a man whose message was not universally popular or accepted. He even allows us to meet a man whose own mother has doubts about the overall direction of his life.
We live in a world where appearance and impression are everything; a world where success is measured in gold and dollars; a world where the powerful create their own truth; a world where tolerance is viewed as weakness, where compromise is viewed as failure, and where gentleness is viewed as lack of ambition.
How wonderful it is, then, to meet a person who is allowed to be tired or misunderstood or rejected or not always popular. When St. Paul said, “When I am weak, then I am strong…” this is what he was saying. All of us have within us strength and weakness, courage and cowardice, confidence and doubt, assurance and fear. Only a truly strong, secure and content person can acknowledge the weakness, insecurity and fears which accompany them.
Mark does not need to create a ‘plaster-cast’ Jesus for us – a person who is always right, popular, loved and enthusiastic. He is happy to let the life of Jesus speak for itself. I, for one, am much happier meeting the Jesus of today’s Gospel rather than the ‘make-believe’ Jesus who is never tired, never rejected, never with doubts or fears. One is a person who can understand me, forgive me, and be a friend. The other is a person who will judge me according to a standard I can never reach, will never truly understand me and can never truly be a friend.
In many ways the ‘plaster-cast’ Jesus is the Jesus we present to children – and it is right that we do so.
By presenting to our children a pleasant, smiling, gentle, confident and calm image of Jesus we are using a model attractive to a child and therefore appropriate. Nor is this model of Jesus wrong. Jesus is all of these things.
But all children have a nasty habit of growing up. As they do so they encounter failure, weakness, fear and uncertainty in themselves and in others. It is all part of growing into a mature, balanced and healthy adult.
Unfortunately, we are often slow to let them see these same things in Jesus. “Jesus is God”, we say, “…he could never experience stress or tiredness or failure or have doubts or be afraid or… … …” and so our children carry into adulthood a child’s understanding of Jesus…… and they reach an age when they rightly reject it as unreal and ‘made-up’. The next logical step is for them to say, “If Jesus is unreal and make-believe then God and the whole Religion thing is also unreal and make-believe” and the find themselves having to reject all that is spiritual. What a pity that is!
I fully acknowledge the exaggeration and over-simplification of what I’ve said, but I am convinced that that basic thrust is true.
What Mark is doing, I think, in today’s Gospel is saying to us, “It is OK let Jesus be fully a human person (the Church says he was!!!), and it is OK to say that there were many who rejected his message and sought only to undermine him. It is OK for Jesus to be stressed and tired, needing to escape home to try to get some rest time. It is even OK to say that his own mother had doubts about what he was doing and feared “he was losing his mind”.
Was Jesus being rude and disrespectful in refusing to talk to his mother and brothers when they sent the message to him that they were there? It certainly looks that way to me and that I think is OK too. He surely guessed why she was there (“to take charge of him”) and thought, “Mum, leave me alone. I’m not a child any more. This is my life….”.
As for Mary herself. She was a Mother and she saw her son in danger so she did what all mothers do – she tried to protect him. I’m fairly certain she did not appreciate being ignored by her son, and I imagine she told him so the next time they met.
This is an important Gospel and, for me, a very freeing one. Mark presents us with a very real, very human Jesus and he lets us stay with that Jesus through tiredness, rejection, stress and doubt. In some ways Jesus’ mother and brothers rejected his message, thinking he had “lost his mind”!
Mark says to us that all of this is OK. It’s called being human and is all ‘very good’.
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
| Gospel | Mark 3:20-35 |
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