Tuesday of the First Week In Ordinary Time
The question the unclean man asks in today's gospel (Mark 1:21-28) is one I think many people might secretly ask themselves today: have you come to destroy us? People are often affected by Christian messages in a negative way and might well see Christianity as out to destroy them. For instance, people often complain about how stupid Christian teaching against premarital sex is because the common modern assumption is that sex is beautiful as long as two people are in love - marriage isn't necessary. "Have you come to destroy us and our love?" people might ask Jesus. Both Genesis and Jesus proclaim that marriage and sex are about being unified in one flesh, and being fruitful and having children (see Genesis 1-2 and Mark 2:2-10). For Jesus, it is the long-lasting unity of the couple that matters more than love, especially the fleeting kinds of love we tend to revere in romantic movies and valentines. While the teaching against premarital sex bothers many, isn't there also some truth in the teaching? Many are hurt by unattached casual sex because they thought sex signified something more serious than the other person thought; or because a one-night stand led to a pregnancy or an STD (or both) and so drastically change lives, but without a lifelong promise of fidelity to accompany the hard times.
"Have you come to destroy us?" People ask Jesus this question about other equally difficult teachings: the teachings about giving all you have to the poor, for instance, or about turning the other cheek even when someone is doing violence to us. Very little about what Jesus says is comfortable and might well make people think, Jesus has indeed come to destroy us.
Interestingly, Jesus' answer to the unclean man is not really an answer. He does not say, "Yes, I have come to destroy you" or "No, I have not come to destroy you" but instead casts out the demon that possesses the unclean man. In truth, Jesus has come to do both things. He has come to destroy what makes us ill, but in destroying what makes us ill, he has also come to make us better than we could ever imagine.
Often people who try out the hard things that Jesus asks them to do find themselves having to deal with pretty tough issues. God called a friend of mine to leave behind a Rhodes Scholarship to become a priest. That was a VERY difficult thing for him to do and it did feel quite a bit like his life was being destroyed as he left behind a free education at Oxford University to enter seminary. But he now counts his becoming a priest as a very great blessing. He could not have had this blessing in his life without going through that difficult period as well.
God knows that this is a difficult message. The road to Jesus' resurrection was not possible without the painful gritty death of the resurrection. But God tries always to remind us of this and of God's great love and care for us. Today's first reading (Hebrews 2:5-12) quotes the wonderful passage from Psalm 8 about how God made us just a little lower than the angels and with "glory and power". We can become amazing human beings through God's love if we let God make our lives as God would have them, not as we would have them.
Today, let us reflect on God's call on our lives and ask for strength and courage to go where God wants us to be.
- Jana M. Bennett