Proclaiming the Message...
The portion of the Gospel of Mark this weekend gives us an overview of the mission and ministry of Christ: "He went throughout Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons" (Mk 1:39).
When we read this, if we take an historical viewpoint, we conclude that it was significant what Jesus did, but I wish he would do it today also. But that is precisely the point! The risen Lord seeks to proclaim the message of the presence of God's Kingdom and to cast out demons in the human community through us and in the power of his Holy Spirit. We too are called to proclaim the message and to cast out demons in His name (see last week's bulletin re casting out demons).
Living
in the Kingdom of God means living in the present moment in the divine Presence,
in the present in the Presence. The risen Lord is the great "I am" or
the present one who will dwell within us if we keep His commandment to love one
another as He has loved us. "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in
my love.... I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and
that your joy may be complete" (Jn 15:9-11).
We have a great message to proclaim from the housetops in the culture of 21st century North America. We proclaim that each human being is created in the image and likeness of God and therefore of infinite worth, irreplacable, unique, and precious. We proclaim that the Lord loves each of us with a boundless love whatever our size, shape, education, or other human condition. We are beloved of God as I love to say when we discuss Baptism. We proclaim that people can live together in peace if they will learn the above as well as learn forgiveness and humble service.
Somewhere along the line of Christian history - probably in the Reformation, we learned that one has to believe rightly, that our conceptualizations of faith expressed in dogmas and creeds were more important than our brothers and sisters in our midst. With that emphasis, far too many of us don't believe "we know enough" to share the Gospel with others. But when we understand afresh that the Gospel message is one of shared life, we can feel more confident, particularly if we have experienced the love of Christ expressed to us in the midst of the Christian community.
"Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" Paul teaches us (Gal 6.2). "Love one another with mutual affection" (Rm 12:10). "Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law" (Rm 13:8). John adds: "This is the message we have received from the beginning, that we should love one another) 1 Jn 3:11).
True, we need to learn what it means to love another person, and that can be learned by experience, and we do not necessarily need to learn formulated dogmas before we proclaim the message of God's love for us to others.
To get a handle on what it means to love, review again Paul's Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, that marvelously poetic description of love: "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude....." (1 Cor 13:4-5).
When our own evil spirits are being cast out, when we have lived into the reality of loving one another, when we have experienced that God abides in us when we love, then we will feel compelled to be about Christ's mission and ministry, as Paul does in the passage we read this weekend.
Joseph+
