Journey's Weekly Homilies

February 2, 2003
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Homily by Tom Kinzie

Deut.18:15-20
I Cor.7:32-35
Mark l:21-28

You can read the Gospel of Mark in one setting and I highly suggest that you try it some time.  Many years ago I went to a performance by Sir Alec McCowen in which that actor performed the entire Gospel of Mark solo, by memory, in an stunning rendition that had me laughing and moved to tears by turns.

It is a gospel that fairly flies cross the page as if it were in a hurry to get to the main part, the passion of Jesus.  In just the first twenty-eight verses of Mark Jesus has been baptized, was driven into the wilderness, gave an inaugural sermon (and if we are to believe Mark, that sermon was a model of brevity at just fifteen words), called his disciples, taught in a synagogue, and performed his first healing there also, an exorcism of an unclean spirit.

Healings or exorcisms of unclean spirits and where those healings took place were important to Mark.  The synagogue was a kind of cultural and religious center; we would call it a place of established values.  Precisely in the midst or normalcy, then, Jesus heals.  And of all the times “unclean spirit” is mentioned in the NT about half of these are in Mark and almost all of them are in the first 9 chapters of Mark.  So, what is it that the excitable Mark is getting even more excited about?

Let me try to get at this a couple of ways.  The Buddhist Thich Nat Hanh has a famous aphorism.  “Often our happiness is the source of our smiles.  But sometimes, our smiles can be the source of our happiness.”  This is an important insight that, like much wisdom teaching, seems so obvious once it has been given to us.  It means, among other things, that there lies within us the power to choose and in choosing we are given the power to live—to live in a certain way that brings life, that brings happiness.  We can choose to live that way.  We can smile until the smile comes true.

But what if we cannot smile?  What if by force of habit, or by disposition from family origins that we have learned only too well, or because events in our personal lives or in the world seem so heavy, so bent toward violence that we cannot name the hope that we so desperately want?  What then when we cannot smile?

Let us put this in more explicitly Christian terms.  When I worked at St. Ignatius there was right across the hall from me a young director of religious education.  One day she received a phone call and I could tell from her end of the call that she was being asked questions about St. Ignatius, what that church stood for, what kinds of programs were available for children, and on and on the conversation went.  Her tone in response became more and more exasperated until finally she blurted out, “But we aren’t a Christian church.  We’re Catholics!”  A ha, I thought, that may be part of the problem.

So let us ask ourselves, as Christian Catholics, what is it we want on this journey of ours, a journey to an ever deepening sense of God’s presence in our lives, until that moment, and maybe not a moment in this life, our lives and God’s presence are wholly one?  Let me a hazard a guess.  Let me say that we want a world in which the dignity, the rights, the potential of every human being is honored and nourished.  Nothing less than this.  We want a world, and we ourselves want to live in such a way in the world, in which that sacred core of every person is guarded, nourished, celebrated—including that sacred core in ourselves.  This I take it is the message of Jesus, a call to a world in which all of that is true or that we are aiming for that so completely, with such grace, gentleness, power, hope that it can be said of us it has already become true.

That which keeps us from such a life – including those things in the world or national or local economic, political, and even religious arrangements – those things that end up hurting and diminishing life, those things that do not honor the sacred center of all folks – to the extent that, either by our silence or by our cooperation, we are not part of Jesus’ Kingdom of Life, we can be said to live under the power of an unclean spirit.  Such a spirit can run deep.  We are all wounded in one way or another.  But the spirit of Jesus, those values that call us to human wholeness and holiness, is a spirit that can exorcise the anti-values that do violence, that demean, that hurt, that are business as usual, that are the so-called normal.

I worked with someone who was called that “crazy Bosnian lady.”  She had such a gift of joy that whenever she came to our morning staff meetings all eyes turned to her, wondering what wonderful, zany, nonsensical, joyful thing she would say or do.  One day we were interviewing a refugee who seemed really beat up.  This person had gone with some crisis to one social agency, including our own, and all the doors had been closed to him.  Some of the doors had been slammed shut.  He was beat up.  This wonderful crazy Bosnian lady turned to me and said with real power in her voice, “This is not some piece of garbage you can throw away.  He’s a human being.”

The poignancy of what she said moved to a deeper place a few weeks later.  She herself was a refugee and she had experienced terrible things during the war there.  And her co-workers began to notice that she was no longer ebullient and buoyant.  She wasn’t laughing and talking in that hyped up way of hers.  She gradually was taken over by pain and fear, and depression.  For every time she worked with a refugee her own terrible war experiences were rubbed raw.  And finally the pain became so intense she could not work with us anymore.

There is poignancy in this isn’t there?  The one who called so clearly to the human was herself wounded in a deep way.  The whole of the Gospel of Mark can be read that way.  The one who exorcises the inhuman, the one who liberates the spirit and frees the spirit for life is the one who will be wounded for us all.  This passion of Jesus is a love so deep that when we open ourselves to it, when we allow ourselves to be open to that love at the deepest level, at that spirit place, we will be healed.  This passion of Jesus is a liberation so profound that when we even allow the beliefs and values of our culture to be encountered by this passion, those values will either be deepened or  transformed.

And so we pray: Come Jesus, in this moment, in this dangerous place and time, wherever, whenever we are not human with each other or with ourselves, come and heal us with your love.

Lent could be called, "Catechumenate for Dummies".  It is a brief instruction into faith and then immersion into living water on Easter Sunday.  Living water, unlike stagnant rainwater came from underground springs.  It was water from God because it flowed and moved.  When we drink of this water we move and change, renewed each day.  And today we would be asked, "How have you changed because of your encounter with God through Jesus?"

The Samaritan woman was changed in three ways.  I actually  have four fingers, but I can only think of three ways she is changed.  She is changed in three ways:  In her beliefs, in her relationships, and in the way she lives her life.

The Samaritan woman ‘moves by stages’ in her beliefs.  She begins by knowing and being known only in terms of the obvious barriers between her and Jesus, barriers no one would have approached.  He is, to her, a Jew and a man.  Both true, but not true enough.  She then addresses him as sir—‘lord’ (with a small ‘l’) in Greek.  She then acknowledges him as a prophet, and then as the Messiah of the Jews.  Finally through her witness he will be acclaimed as "the savior of the world".  "Savior of the world".  A title rarely used in the Gospels.  It shows intimate knowledge of Jesus, a knowledge that eludes his closest followers until after the resurrection.

And so through Lent our beliefs are challenged so that we move, stage by stage to a more encompassing knowledge of who God is.  By Easter we will be ready to embrace a God of Spirit and truth who can be plainly seen in every place and every face along our journey.

The Samaritan woman changes in her relationships, with Jesus and with others.  Initially she regards Jesus suspiciously, as a stranger and an alien.  Gradually, by stages, she converses with him as brother, an intimate.

This changes her relationships with the townspeople.  Initially she was an outcast, fetching her burden only at noon, apart from other women who had obviously shunned her.  But she becomes a gadfly in her community, regaling them with stories they can’t ignore.  She is sometimes called "the first evangelist" because she brings an entire nation to recognize in Jesus a God who sustains all people.

And the Samaritan woman changes her behavior.  Initially she carried her burden in private.  Through her questioning she moves from fear and submission to open dialogue.   As a free woman she proclaims the Good News that God is available to all people and can be recognized anywhere.

We continue our catechumenate today, our journey of testing and questioning.  We ask if God is real and we are asked if we are really changed people.

When we move to deeper knowledge, that God is Spirit and Truth yet real and immediate as water in the desert, we will not be the same.  Like the woman at the well we will question more freely, understand more deeply, and proclaim more boldly.  And we will serve only things which really sustain and renew us.

Living water awaits each of us, water which may fill and transform us.  May we lay down our burdens, drink deeply and be changed.