THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
The fascination with fortunetellers and psychic readers is not new. That interest escalates in times of uncertainty. People do not want the experience of being in a dark room, hearing sounds, wondering what’s out there. Someone please turn on the lights. Someone please tell us what’s coming. As understandable as anxiety is, the role of the prophet in Scripture is misunderstood if we think he is a seer who tells people with specificity what tomorrow holds.
The prophet in Sacred Scriptures is one who speaks what God wants the people to hear. The prophetic onus is tremendous. No wonder some of the major prophets protested their unworthiness when they were summoned to the task. No wonder some of them fled in terror from the thought. Fidelity to the vocation will not mean that the speaker will be heard, the message heeded. Hear Jeremiah’s anguished cries as he sinks into the mud of the cistern where he has been cast because of his unpopular message. Witness Jonah fume in the whale’s belly.
Yet prophecy is something faith communities need in order to be reminded lest the way be lost. Or, once lost, to help them find the way back. Taken as a whole, what is the prophetic message? Through the Prophet, God says: Let me be your God. You be my people. People will know and marvel at our relationship unlike that between any other people and their gods when they see you following my ways.
Ah, as Shakespeare says, there just might lay the rub. Every prophetic message is a call to conversion, to a change of life. No one ever said that conversion would be easy. It always involves dying and rising, dying to one way of life and rising to another. Or, at least, going deeper into the faith-life being lived.
There are two ways to hear today’s first reading. It is assumed by those in Moses’ audience that hearing God directly would be too intense, just as would be the experience of looking on the face of God. No one can see the face of God and live. The Israelites did not argue that point. At the same time there is the desire to know the mind of God. The Lord said to Moses: I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin and will put my words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I command him. There will be others like Moses who will speak to the people on God’s behalf. That is another way of saying that God’s presence among the people will be evidenced by the veracity of the message. So many times, succinctly put, that message will be: Remain faithful. Come back to me with all your heart. At other times there will be prophetic warnings of the implications of infidelity. Their strength will be sapped. Destruction and bondage could follow if they do not give up the ways of pagans. But even then the prophecy will remind the people that God is faithful and one day will bring them back and restore their city. And there will always be forgiveness.
Some hear in the promise to raise up for them a prophet the messianic promise. Christians believe that promise is fulfilled in Jesus. Mark says it quite clearly at the outset of his gospel: Here begins the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the one in whose mouth God puts his word. This is the one who shall tell the people all that God commands him.
And so it is that at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus observes Sabbath and enters the synagogue. He teaches, gives for the first time in the gospel prophetic utterance. Two words describe the moment. Authority. Astonished. The first describes the manner with which Jesus taught. There was the professorial about him, a depth of understanding conveyed so that those who heard could also understand. The second, astonished, describes the people’s reaction. Astonished. Amazed. Both words are used interchangeably in the gospels and convey the picture of people standing with mouths agape in reaction to what they hear or see. Neither describes belief. In other places in the gospel two quite distinct groups will follow after Jesus. Disciples – those who have made their decision about Jesus and crowds, those who may well be astonished but who are unable to commit.
All the more important that we witness the reaction of the unclean spirit Jesus casts out of the possessed man in the synagogue. What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth, the spirit cries out. Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God! The evil spirit recognizes the authority and from where it comes. That is beyond what the crowd has perceived. And Jesus commands silence. It will not be Evil’s witness that will convince the people who Jesus is, but the words he speaks and the works he does. Quiet! Come out of him!
And so the gospel concludes with people marveling about what they have seen, the astonishing authority with which Jesus acts and a new teaching. But to what does it all point? What does it mean? The people of the synagogue, the witnesses will tell others the story and help spread his reputation. It will take the rest of the story, the rest of the journey with Jesus for the mystery to be revealed and for faith to begin. Because even those who call themselves disciples early on will have to let go of what they thought they understood, let go of their assumptions about the promised Messiah, and watch him die. And then?
Sincerely,
Didymus
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