Memorial of St. Scholastica, Virgin
When asked what their favorite Gospel is many people respond “John,” because his Jesus soars, “leaping tall buildings at a single bound.” Others prefer Luke for his beautiful Christmas story and our favorite parables. Still some chose Matthew, first in order in our New Testaments, with the sermon on the mount and those magical magi from the east.
Make mine Mark.
Mark?!? Yep. His Jesus is brash, in-your-face, misunderstood, unsettling, and taboo breaker. This is a Christ who continuously challenged the status quo and stretched the limits of what was considered acceptable behavior. The Marcan Jesus is the closest of the four gospels to the itinerant teacher/healer from the Galilee.
Today, in typically clipped style, Jesus and his disciples do the unthinkable. They cross over the sea of Galilee to “the other side,” in this case Jewish/pagan Gennesaret. In the first century, superstitious Gennesaret was where Jews rubbed elbows on a daily basis with pagans who worshiped a gaggle of gods. Some of these “Jews” were known to flirt now and again with these gods. “Good” Jews avoided Gennesaret in order to remain “good.”
Still Jesus goes there. “To the other side” is a loaded statement. It is easy to miss Mark’s subtlety in a Gospel that is the least subtle of the four. Here the Kingdom of God movement reaches out to those deemed not only “less than” but outright “damned.” Here his mission is to seek and restore. All who touched Jesus were healed.
Here the native populace demonstrate a faith that eludes his own kin and closest disciples (recall that by the end of Mark EVERYONE — disciples and family alike — run away from him). Jesus did not inquire as to who were the pagans or whether someone was a Jew who sometimes was guilty of following pagan gods. They reached out to him and he healed them.
When must we, like Jesus, “cross over to the other side?” Who among us, like those in Gennesaret, needs to be healed and restored, those outside the approval of “respectable” society? Or must they qualify first? In the “other side” of this story, Jesus accepted all, no questions asked.
Dare we “cross over to the other side?”
—Timothy J. Cronin