Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time
I grew up “unchurched.” Although I was baptized in the Catholic Church (at Incarnation in Centerville) my parents didn’t take me to church. My father had no interest in church. My mother was raised Catholic in Harvey, IL (just south of Chicago) and for reasons I never understood (I wish I had asked her about that) seemed mad at the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, I liked reading the Bible. My grandmother, who was Methodist, bought me a redletter Bible. I don’t remember what translation it was (I probably never even took notice of the translation) but I remember that it had a green padded cover.
Not surprisingly, since I wasn’t going to church, I had zero idea how to read the Bible. Now, I am familiar with Luther’s notion of the priesthood of all believers according to which no one needs a priest to understand the Bible. You can just read it for yourself and know what it means. I’m not so sure. And that’s why I love commentaries! Can’t get enough of them!
But I read it. And I misunderstood it. I remember thinking that it would be so cool to be Jesus. A god. You would know everything. The whole history of the world from start to finish. You would know all that had happened before and all that was to come! You could perform miracles. You could heal the sick. You could preach amazing sermons, like the Sermon on the Mount. You could craft a prayer that people would recite for millennia. You could save the whole planet from its sins. Okay, you’d have to die on a cross for that. I didn’t tend to focus on the pain part. I was, after all, just a kid.
I obviously also didn’t pay much attention to passages like the one we have before us today from Mark. The word is out on Jesus. He is something else—the Messiah, perhaps. And people want to get close to him. Very close to him. And it’s a bit much, even for Jesus. He needs a boat. Maybe a little me-time.
One of the things I love about the reading from Mark today is how human Jesus is. I can imagine him saying something to himself like this: “Could I get a break? I have been healing you all and performing miracles and on and on. Could I get five minutes alone? No. Right. I am the Messiah. That doesn’t come with much down time.”
As a kid, I was utterly ignorant of Jesus. I read him like any upper middle class American kid would—like he’s a super hero. Lots of adults like to read him that way today—the Mel Gibson take on Jesus in The Passion of the Christ. But it turns out that he was deeply human. And sometimes he just needs a break, a boat, a few minutes without demons at his heals.
What a thing it was to be Jesus. What an incredible burden. Knowing you could heal anyone, how do you even sleep? Shouldn’t you be healing everyone all the time, 24/7?
But that’s it. Right? Jesus. The incarnation. God who became man. God who knows what it’s like to have limits. To need a break. That is a God who is so different from the one I imagined as a kid. That is a God I can relate to. Even follow. Amen.
-Sue Trollinger