Fifth Sunday after Epiphany; 4 February 2024; Epiphany 5B (RCL); Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39.
The first actual healing (not exorcism) in Mark’s Gospel is the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. It is four sentences long. Mark relates it almost as a throw-away — no theological reflection on the episode; just, oh, by the way. We may cringe at the ending, that she immediately began to serve them, but I think Mark is making the point that she was re-integrated into her proper place and honor within the community of Simon’s household. We never even learn her name.
But Mark leaps immediately to city gathered around the door of the house, with Jesus healing many who were sick with various diseases, and casting out many demons, though not permitting the demons to speak, because they knew who he was. Mark is engaging in a weird paradox here; portraying Jesus as a man of power, with power over demons, and yet using what some scholars have called “the Messianic secret” as a narrative device. Ultimately, Jesus’ power will be exercised in his passion, rather than in the fame that would accompany other wonder-workers (Jesus eschews such fame).
The demon-possessed would have been those for whom all social options had been foreclosed. The classic example in Mark’s Gospel is the Garasene demoniac, living among the tombs, engaged in self-harm, unable to be restrained. And yet, he was possessed by a demon named Legion, a unit of the Roman army. Galileans raising pigs speaks of the shattering of local customs by the occupying forces, and the man with the Legion stands in for all those socially dislocated by Roman occupation.
Mark’s portrayal of Jesus as a man of power is meant to suggest as its shadow the ineffectiveness of other social structures (like the synagogue) at reintegrating such persons back into socially tenable positions. The messianic secret is meant to suggest that Jesus does this by suffering, rather than by direct confrontation (and overcoming) of the sources of the dislocation. Just like Simon’s mother-in-law, Jesus heals the demoniacs by reintegrating them into humble, local structures of social meaning, not by overthrowing the Roman Empire. Once local structures have been restored, there is no reason not to move on to the next village. The kingdom arrives locally.
The trouble with our liturgical readings of the Pauline corpus is that we cut it up into little snippets, and lose the context. This little snippet is part of Paul’s defense of his own freedom. At the end of chapter 8, he has just said that to guard the conscience of the weak, he will never eat meat. In the first verse of chapter 9, he asks, “Am I not free?!” with some element of sarcasm. His Corinthian opponents have accused him of not being powerful, and not accepting payment for his teaching, indicating in their minds that he himself doesn’t think much of what he teaches.
He replies that he would rather not take advantage of his rights as an apostle if it means putting any obstacle in the way the gospel (thereby shaming the “strong” Corinthians for their own misuse of their “right” to eat meat sacrificed to idols). No, Paul says, an obligation is laid on me, one he cannot shirk. If he must become weak in order to make the Gospel come alive for the “weak,” so be it. If he must think and argue and interpret scripture like a Jew to make the Gospel come alive for Jews, so be it. If he must think and reason and argue like a Gentile philosopher to make the Gospel come alive for Gentiles, so be it. And under no circumstances does he have any ground for boasting (unlike the “strong” Corinthians who boast in their knowledge). By lifting this little bit out of the context of Paul’s longer argument, we miss his sustained critique of the “strong.”
The Isaiah and the psalm speak of God’s power to bring back the exiles (in this case, of the Northern Kingdom — referred to as Jacob and Israel)