Mark 1:21-28, Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Are you afraid of God? Israel was. They were deathly afraid of God, afraid to hear his voice directly, afraid to see the “great fire” of his presence. They had had enough of these direct encounters and they somehow sensed that any more face-to-face meetings with the divinity would be fatal. Their fear of seeing and hearing God onsite, up close and personal, was not the fear of ghosts but a reverential kind of fear, the kind that evoked awe and humility. 

And so God promised to raise up a prophet from among them who would God’s voice instead. To this prophet they were to listen because it was through him that God would speak to them.

We better listen then to whoever speaks in the name of God. We better mute the other channels and voices when God speaks through this prophet because those who do not will be made to answer for their lack of reverence and attention.

And pay attention, phony prophets who presume to speak in God’s name, beware. God’s warning is clear: “if a prophet presumes to speak in my name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.”

Preaching you see can be deadly. (Would any of you like to take my place here at the lectern? 🙂) As priests and preachers ordained to speak in God’s name, we better listen if we want to live. Please pray for us.

Before I say anything further, a caveat: let it be known that my words today are mine alone and any semblance at all to God’s words is coincidence or serendipity or out of God’s graciousness.

Of course, if you charge people with hypocrisy, for pretending to speak for God, this presumes you can discern which words are bogus and which are God’s. How would you know God’s word apart from all the fake ones out there?

In the Gospel today, Jesus is in the synagogue, teaching. His words leave a deep impression. He astonishes the people because he comes across “them as one having authority and not as the scribes”.

We think of authority as coming from law or tradition or community. Scribes and scholars are supposed to be authoritative in their respective fields. Priests and presidents are given the formal right to preside and decide; by tradition, they have authority.

The people’s astonishment at Jesus in the synagogue impresses upon us that to speak with authority is to speak not from mere title or right alone. It is to speak as a prophet does, as someone whose words and life are from God. And credit it to the people’s faith and God’s grace that they somehow knew who had authority and who did not.

In our search for the one who speaks for God with authority, we need not look any further really. Jesus is the one anointed from among us who speaks in God’s name. To him we are to listen because his words and his works are from God. As revealed to us, however hard it is at times to fathom, he is more than just a prophet, a son of Mary. He is also God’s beloved Son, the very Word of God.

To hear God’s voice then, we need only listen and hang on to Jesus’ words, made known to us through his teaching and stories in the gospels.

When we are anxious, he tells us to look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. When pride or power gets the better of us, we remember how he blessed the poor in spirit and bequeathed to them the Kingdom of God. When we are weary and find life burdensome, he invites us again and again to come near him. When we need to know how much God loves us, we gaze at the cross and we take to heart his new commandment for us to love one another as he has loved us. 

The voice of God in that of Jesus is not deafening or frightful. To see the face of God in Jesus is not going to be fatal. In our Gospel today, “quiet” is Christ’s first word to our fears. Through Christ, God assures us that we need not be afraid of ghosts or death or demons taking over. We need not even fear God unless that fear is of the quiet and holy kind, the kind that draws us to mystery, awakening only reverence and awe and humility.

*Image from the Internet