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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

July 17, 2023

Invitatory

Lord, open our lips.

And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Reading: Mark 1:35-39

In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

If you’ve read the short text from Mark, did you end up wondering what “the message” actually was?

It’s easy to get distracted by other elements within this narrative. I can imagine preachers using this text as a prompt for talking about the virtue of prayer: see… Jesus did it. And I can imagine them, too, using it as proof of Jesus’ fame. Granted, he never reached Taylor Swift levels of driven fandom; nonetheless, people scrambled after him.

What’s most important about this passage, however, is that which is most notably missing. Jesus stated that his fundamental purpose was to “proclaim the message.” But neither he nor Mark provide us any clue about what, then, he had to say. Isn’t this odd? Earlier in the chapter, Mark stated that Jesus was preaching the “Gospel of God.” And here, too, no description of that “Gospel” is given. We’re simply left to wonder.

But it’s this absence of definition that’s the point. For the terms “Gospel” and “the message” are left, then, for us as readers to define as we imagine them.

It may not have occurred to you when you read the text that something was missing. We’re very practiced in thinking that we already know what any given Biblical story is about. You may have assumed that “the message” was about love, or forgiveness, or hope, or healing, or salvation – whatever it is that you may expect from God as being most godly. And, repeatedly, across the whole sweep of Mark’s gospel, those who encountered Jesus did the same thing. They defined “the message” by their own understanding, as if to say, “This is what God is supposed to do.”

The drama of Mark’s gospel, however, is Jesus’ continual dispelling of each and all of the things that others believed must constitute “the message”: every speculation, surmise, assumption, demand, insistence, and wish. Over and over, these are all set aside. Jesus patiently allows us to see that when it comes to God, most of the time we’ve got it all wrong. By means of this repetition Mark’s gospel performs a kind of therapy, methodically showing us how, in fact, we substitute for God “the messages” that we heartily believe God must support as much as we do.

Maybe these were the demons that Jesus was “casting out”: our own projections that ultimately hide God from us. For at the end of Mark’s gospel, there is no “message” that remains. There is only the figure, the person, of Jesus. All along, the “message” got in the way. And, all along, the only thing Jesus wanted his followers to see… is God, in him.  

Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name,

thy kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

         as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

         but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,

         forever and ever. Amen.