Sunday 5 B (not used)
Our first reading today was from the book of Job:
…..months of delusion I have assigned to me
nothing for my own but nights of grief
Lying in my bed I wonder ‘When will it be day?’
Risen I think, how slowly evening comes
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls……
Job sounds really depressed.
Next,
a very graphic verse is omitted
that speaks of Job’s serious physical condition.
And then there is more:
for the depression derives from a hopelessness,
….my days have passed, and vanished,
leaving no hope behind.
….my life is but a breath,
….my eyes will never again see joy.
Though it was written 2500 years ago,
it would be easy to make all this sound thoroughly contemporary.
The author is familiar with a persistent human experience.
The Gospel shows Jesus’ gentle concern for Simon’s mother-in-law:
he took her by the hand and helped her up
returning her to normal family life.
And then, when the sabbath was over,
crowds of people,
impressed by Jesus at the synagogue that morning
(which we heard about in last week’s gospel)
turn up with the sick and the afflicted,
and Jesus cures them.
Now, the liturgical conjunction of these readings:
– Job’s profound misery and Jesus’ healing work –
might leave the impression
that the difficulties ascribed to Job
just need to be taken to Jesus to make them better.
The truth is more profound than that.
The book of Job is a theological meditation in poetry:
made up of speeches by Job
and speeches by figures representing conventional religious wisdom.
What is its overarching subject?
The voices arguing with Job, all,
in one way or another,
say his problems are his own fault –
that he is not facing up to the fact
that things are going wrong for him
because he has offended God –
and if he put this right,
everything else would get better.
Their basic religious stance is:
if your life is going disastrously
it is because you have been bad;
if you are good you will prosper.
Job, whose words seem to be directed as much towards God
as to his adversaries, says:
I am innocent.
I have not offended you God.
I don’t deserve this. Why is this happening?
One of the book's big topics is innocent suffering.
It is a full-on, unflinching, scrutiny of the fact
that bad things happen to people
through no fault of their own,
and that this makes them feel bad.
Ours is not a prosperity gospel.
We do not say, if you are truly following Jesus
you will be protected from serious illness
you will never feel depressed
everything will work out fine for you,
and those you love.
We cannot not say to those
sunk in human misery
to those who feel Job’s words
in today’s reading are their own –
you must have missed the point about Jesus
otherwise you wouldn’t be in such a state.
If we did, we would be siding with Job’s adversaries.
So where does the key lie:
for we do believe that Jesus makes a difference to lives.
Mark does give some insight here.
Last week, we heard that Jesus teaching in the synagogue
made a deep impression.
This week, after dealing with the crowd that want healing
and after a short night’s sleep
he goes off on his own to pray.
When disturbed, because another crowd is looking for him,
Jesus says:
Let us go elsewhere, to the neighbouring country,
so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.
It is Jesus’ preaching, his message, that is the key.
That preaching, that message, was much more than words.
It was a life lived – Word made flesh.
Mark’s gospel emphasises that
Jesus preaches the Kingdom of God,
in and through his very being.
It is in the encounter with the person of Jesus
that we encounter God’s very presence in our world.
In Jesus, God shares fully in the human condition,
in all its limitations, messiness, sorrow and misery.
Our faith, our hope, is in that person
Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, Word made flesh,
who draws our frail humanity,
illness, depression and all,
into the life of God.