Mark 1:21-45 (5) The New Exodus Begins

He’s begun gathering the Fellowship of the King (FoK). Now Jesus gives them a whirlwind tour of life as a New Exodus people. Mark packs this all into one day in the rest of ch.1. It moves from sabbath gathering in the synagogue to the close of sabbath to early the next morning. Jesus is the focus though the FoK is with him. Perhaps Mark wants to suggest the New Exodus work is sabbath work. And sabbath, as Jesus declares a bit later, was made for humanity and not vice versa (2:27-28) and the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath. New Exodus work is sabbath work!

Jesus teaches, exorcizes, heals, and preaches throughout this day. He finds a demon in the synagogue (of all places!), illness in a home, both in group session at evening, distraction at prayer, and accosted by a leper, harried by the crowds. A full and crazy day of New Exodus work!

An Exorcism in the Synagogue at Capernaum (1:21-28)

Jesus goes to church to start the day. He’s teaching and the people sense the difference between how he teaches and how the scribes teach. “Authority” is how they name this difference. And authority is demonstrated when a man “with an unclean spirit” is agitated by Jesus’ authoritative presence and teaching to reveal its presence. Forced by Jesus’ presence, it seems, the spirit acknowledges Jesus’ power over it and its compatriots (“us,” v.24) and knows his true identity, “the Holy One of God.” This is not a much used or messianic title as far as we can tell. It does signify a spiritual power superior to that of the demon. And hence is a clue as to what Mark means in the title by “Son of God.”

Jesus’ power to silence and cast out the demon wows the crowd (imagining it happening in worship at your church!) and raises the question of his authority again (v.27). Not unexpectedly, word of this event thrills the neighborhood and everyone knows who Jesus is (v.28).

Exorcists were not uncommon at the time in Jesus’ time and place (Mk.9:40). This ability in itself does not mean Jesus is divine. Rather it is a prerogative of his work as Messiah that he has power of this spirit world. 

Healing Peter’s Mother-in-Law (1:29-31)

This brief account shows Jesus’ healing power at work. We might see demons as affliction from without and illness affliction from within the human being. This has some important implications we will notice later on.

Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with a “fever” (no jokes, now, guys!). Jesus heals her. Again, the gift of healing was not restricted to Jesus. Other faith-healers roamed the land. Again, this healing is not a miraculous evidence of Jesus’ divinity. It is, however, a part of his New Exodus ministry as messiah.

If the exorcism demonstrated Jesus’ power over forces outside of and alien to humanity, healing shows his power over powers within human beings. But this story does even more. The resurrection language “lifted her up” and the notice that once healed, she “began to serve them” (v.31) suggests that that forgiveness and new life are intended here as well. Forgiveness and the practice of new life are one reality. To sunder them, as if one could have forgiveness without the practice of new life is a modern heresy. Raised from sin to serve God is a powerful part of New Exodus and this little story introduces us to it. When we reach 2:1-12, then, we are not surprised to find Jesus explicitly claiming the authority to forgive sins and act in essence as a one-man counter-temple movement!

In another surprising reversal of our usual expectations, it is a peasant woman here who is a paradigm of the healed person practicing servanthood. A true disciple! The word “serve” is found only twice more in Mark. In 10:45 Jesus uses it to describe himself, the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve and give his life for many. And at the end of the gospel (15:41) it is the women who after his crucifixion, are said to have “followed and served” him (Ched Myers, Say to this Mountain, 15)

These references define “to serve” as the discipleship to which Jesus calls his people both before (1:31) and after death (15:41) and the women as exemplary disciples (in contrast to the seemingly incorrigible male disciples.    

Summary (1:32-34)

“That evening,” when sabbath had ended and it was lawful, “The whole city gathered around the door” (1:33). Exaggeration, no doubt, but the impact Jesus’ New Exodus movement was building tremendous momentum. Probably too much for his comfort. He was surely aware that much of this attention was ephemeral and many of these “followers” would not last. Yet their numbers and the attention they generated risked bringing unwelcome attention to the movement before they were ready for it. And such attention does come. Soon. Too soon?

Jesus Prays (1:35-39)

Jesus needed not to lose his head and get caught up in all this hoopla. I mean, his movement’s growing by leaps and bounds! How to handle all this attention? He’ll have a megachurch before you know it. God is surely blessing him! We fool ourselves and deny his humanity if we don’t believe he could be so tempted.

Jesus arises quite early and absents himself to pray. In the “wilderness” (vv.3,12), the place of his tempting by Satan and victory over him. Perhaps he instinctively returned to this place of peril and promise, sensing he had reached another of those crossroad moments in his ministry.

Everybody wants a piece of him, as we have seen. But he needs to keep his eye on the ball, “what I came out to do” (v.38). So he prays. And recovers his equilibrium and focus. He  turns his back on the clamoring crowd, the free publicity, the megachurch, and all that and gathered his FoK to move on to another place. For that, that had been reaffirmed for him in prayer with the Father, as the thing he was sent here to do. And so he did.

Pretty good model for his disciples, I think. And us too.

A Leper Healed (1:40-45)

A leper, “the” outcast” of the ancient world, drawn by Jesus fame, dares to come near begging him for healing. Though most translation have Jesus “filled with compassion” or “pity” a variant reading has “anger” instead of pity, as in the CEB: “Incensed, Jesus reached out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I do want to. Be clean.’” A principle of textual criticism says that the more difficult reading between variants is often to be preferred. Anger is the more difficult reading here and more likely the original reading. Cranfield writes: “It is easy to see why an original (anger) should have been altered to (compassion), but not why an original (compassion) should have been changed to (anger). Moreover, neither Mt. nor Lk. has (compassion) here, which would be surprising if it was original in Mk” (91).

Why would Jesus be angry here? Surely it is not at the leper, even though his approach to Jesus was forbidden by law. Nor at this interruption of his work. Most likely he is angry at the devastation Satan has wrought in his world and in the body of the poor man standing in front of him.

Jesus’ compassion is indicated by his willingness to heal. When he reached out and touched the leper Jesus should have become ritually unclean. But in the New Exodus all that is turned inside out and upside down and instead of Jesus contracting uncleanness the leper is healed (see the wonderful chapter of New Exodus promises in Isaiah 35)!

Jesus tries to prevent the word of another act of power getting out and attracting that much more attention. He warns the healed man to say nothing and instead go to the temple and offer the prescribed sacrifices for his cleansing “as a testimony to them” (v.44). But what does “to them” mean? Does Jesus mean to try and prove himself to the temple leadership as a genuine contender for being the Messiah? Possible, but unlikely. The two other times this phrase occurs in Mark (6:11; 13:9) the sense is bearing witness “against” them. This suggests Jesus intends this man’s witness to his healing as condemnation of the priestly establishment for not believing in him. Mark 2:1-3:6 bears eloquent witness to their hostility to Jesus.

The healed man disobeys Jesus and blabs his head off to everyone he sees about what Jesus did for him. Jesus now has to restrict his movements even more.

Summary

This “day” of New Exodus ministry has shown Jesus exhibiting the nature and scope of God’s New Exodus as well as demonstrating his authority as messiah to enact it. He has healed and exorcized the illnesses and demons that torment humanity from inside and without, organic and social alike. The scope of is from the personal (a fever) to the religious (the possessed man in the synagogue) and the social/political/economic (the healed leper who is restored to communal life, possibilities, and responsibilities).

Jesus New Exodus works tweak all these aspects of life, overturning long-held perspectives and policies that ordered Jewish life for many a century. He crosses taboo and purity lines, lifts up women as “ideal” disciples, rewrites the shape of a community acceptable to God, and lives a life thoroughly rooted in relationship to God.