Mark’s is a very spare
Gospel. It is almost completely repeated
in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They
add many other stories. There is no birth
story in Mark and the story of Jesus’ resurrection ends very quickly with the
women leaving the empty tomb in a great panic.
Mark’s was the first Gospel composed.
Before that, the stories of Jesus were told throughout the Christian
community. Finally, after a number of
years, Mark was the first one to write them down. It is a very short Gospel, making me wonder
if the author was possibly a bit worried about telling too much.
When Rosie and I were in England on
a long sabbatical back in 1991, we saw many, many large cathedrals that were
originally built to the Glory of God by Christians who employed many workers in
the process. Those jobs made a great
difference in the lives of the poorest people.
Today, many of those large churches are falling down and there is no
money to restore them. One of my
favorite places in England is a place in Yorkshire called Fountains Abbey. It is a ruin of a large church that was built
by monks in the twelfth century. It is a
haunting place. Walking though those elegant
stones put me in a mystical place that is hard to describe, except that I knew that
I was in the presence of God. That church
was also built by the poor and they benefitted from the work that they got in that
place. After Henry VIII destroyed the church
and the monks went elsewhere, the spirit of God remained among those stones, and
I felt that presence when I went there. That
is what Jesus was doing when he went through those towns and villages and healed
and proclaimed the Gospel of God. He was
taking care of those who had no other resource and who needed the touch of God to
enable their lives. That is what we are all
called to do as Christians. God bless us
as we do this incredibly important work.
The part of the story in the first chapter of Mark that
interests me is what Jesus tells his disciples about his mission. He wants to go to all of the little towns and
do the same thing that he did for Simon’s mother-in-law. He wants to heal and to cast out demons. This suggests to me that this is one of the
prime reasons that Jesus was here: to
correct some of the things that God saw as wrong with humanity. Taking care of the poor and the neglected is
one of the first things that Christianity set out to do from its
beginnings. This is in contrast to what
was going on in the communities under the thumb of Roman rule at the time. The power of the Emperor was absolute, and
the needs of the poorest of the poor had no interest to them. If you happened to be rich, you had all of
the advantages of the time.
Consider
the story of Lazarus and the rich man commonly called Dives. Dives stepped over Lazarus every day when he
walked out of his house. Poor Lazarus
had nothing, not even a drink of water.
Dogs came and licked his sores.
When the rich man died, he was cast into the depths of Hell and when
Lazarus died, he was taken to what the bible calls Abraham’s bosom. Dives called out to Father Abraham asking
that Lazarus be sent to bring him a drink of water. Abraham said that there was a great gulf
between them and that it couldn’t be crossed.
The rich man then asked that Lazarus be sent to tell his brothers about
this; but Abraham said that they had Moses and the Prophets to tell them and if
they didn’t believe them, then it wouldn’t matter even if someone rose from the
dead. That ended the story.
I’ve always been intrigued by what this story says about
the resurrection of Jesus. That it
wouldn’t matter if someone rose from the dead to tell them is a terrible
indictment of how we have responded to the resurrection. Taking care of the poor and those in terrible
need has been one of the first commandments that our Lord has given to us. Loving our neighbor as ourselves includes
taking care of those who have nothing.
We are not to judge, we are simply to provide loving care when it is
needed. Giving aid and care is primary
to our mission.
Isn’t it interesting that the rich man after his death,
when he was living in Hell, simply wanted Lazarus to provide for him a drink of
water? That is what Dives denied Lazarus
when he sat at his door. Care and healing
is what both of them wanted when they were in dire need. Lazarus had no ability to do anything for
himself. Finally, Dives lost that
ability also.
Christianity did very well for several hundred years
until finally Constantine recognized it as a valid religion, stopped much of the
persecution, and the cross started to march ahead of the Roman armies as they
fought and conquered. That is when we
began to lose our understanding of the Gospel and started to believe in
power. That’s when many people in the
church lost their way and began to neglect the poorest among us. Wonderfully, at about the same time in
history, the monastic movements began to emerge and take care of people. I see the hand of God entering the world
again then and nudging the church in the direction that it had been initially
created to go when it began to get out of bounds. Taking care of those who have nothing is
primary to our vocation as Christians.
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