5th Sunday in Ordinary Time - The priority of the spiritual over the physical

 

Imagine, with you, that you are peter, james, john or Andrew in the Gospel today. Now mind you, this passage is very early on in the Gospel of Mark. You’ve known Jesus for less then a week. You may have heard something about him being called the Lamb of God by out preacher out in the desert, but you aren’t really sure what that means. He’s told you that he’s going to make you a fisher of men, but you don’t really know what THAT means. He’s indicated he needs a place to stay, so you’ve invited him to come to Capernaum, your home town, and just this morning, he did the most amazing thing you ever saw: he walked into the town synagogue, and a demon began hissing and cursing at him, and called him the Holy One of God. He then commanded the demon to be silent, and cast it out, amazing everyone present.

Leaving the synagogue you go to Peter’s house, and Jesus does something else you’ve never seen. He heals Peter’s sick bed-ridden mother-in-law. Then at sunset, his fame having spread throughout the region because of the exorcism, droves of sick people come to him, and he heals them too and drives out even more demons. Who is this person?

I bet it was quite difficult for Peter, James, Andrew, and John to sleep that first night: replaying the scenes of the preceding day, the anguished haunted faces of the demon possessed becoming serene, the deathly ill suddenly regaining health. Questions bouncing around in their head, possibilities for the future. What’s going on here? What does he want from us? Is there a limit to his ability to heal? What’s tomorrow going to bring?

You finally drift up to sleep, and upon waking, He’s gone. Where is he? Where’s the miracle man. Everyone goes out to look for him. He has a lot to answer for, and there will be, no doubt, more people demanding healing. 

And then he says something surprising: he says, let’s get out of here. No more healings today. Because that’s not why I’ve come. I’ve come to preach.

Your first thought might be “come from where?” He’s from Galilee, we’re in Galilee. He speaks with the accent of Galilean. Again, what is he talking about. And what does he mean? Where has he come from? And how is preaching more important than casting out demons and healing the sick? What could be more important than that?

If the first great question in the Gospel of Mark is “who is this person?” The second, is certainly, “how is preaching more important than healing the sick?” How is preaching a greater priority than curing people who are dying? If he has the power to do that, why doesn’t he do that?

Here the Lord intimates the priority of the spiritual over the physical. Preaching the truth of the Gospel is more important, it is the reason he has come. To “preach” in St. Mark’s original Greek is the Greek word “kérussó”—to preach, to proclaim, to herald, to announce, to establish through his Word—the kingdom of heaven. This is the priority: to preach and establish the kingdom of God for the conversion of those held sway by the kingdom of darkness. And in the end, that is everybody. To preach and invite all people of all places and all times to conversion—to faith and new spiritual life though him. 

All those healing miracles, while yes, they show us the love that God has for all the physically sick, they indicate God’s love for the spiritually sick, all of us. Moreover, all those physical healings symbolize on the physical level what Jesus has come to do on the spiritual level. The healing miracles—the healing of the mute, the blind, the deaf, and the leper—are physical analogues of what he’s come to do spiritually. He has come to heal the spiritually mute—those unable to speak the Word of God due to ignorance or fear; he’s come to heal the blind—those who do not see God at work in the world, and those who do not see the dignity of the human person; he has come to heal the spiritually deaf—those who turn a deaf ear to the truth of God and the call of the poor; and he has come to heal the spiritual leper—those who have contracted the deadly spiritual malady of sin that has separated us from God.

Why is there a priority of the spiritual over the physical? Because the spiritually dead will be separated from God for ever. While those who are reborn by grace, those alive in the spirit—they will remain united to God forever, even though they may experience physical death, they will live forever.

Hence the importance of maintaining and nourishing our spiritual lives. Repenting of sin and confessing our sins. Receiving the bread of life, the Eucharist. Engaging in prayer and good works and spreading the Gospel even when there is a physical price to pay for these things. For the spiritual takes priority over the physical.

In less than two weeks, we will begin again the holy and penitential season of Lent, the time of the Church year for identifying those habits, attitudes, behaviors, and attachments that keep us from living for Christ. We identify the physical pleasures and comforts that, however good, we fast from and abstain from, to remember that in this earthly life, I am not meant to live for the physical and the earthly, but to pursue the spiritual and the heavenly. 

I think it is so important for us to be immersed in the history of the apostles and saints and martyrs, because we encounter, in the holy ones, men and women, of every race and age, who have recognized the need to live for God. The apostles imprisonment and  torture to preach the Gospel, and counted it a joy to persecuted for the sake of the name of Jesus. The martyrs of the early Church, like St. Ignatius who when offered the opportunity to save his physical life by offering a tribute to a pagan god refused, as it would violate the first commandment? Would you die for the first commandment. What does it profit a man to preserve his earthly life, or gain the whole world, but lose his soul?

In the martyrs and the saints, the Lord takes very weak and very ordinary people and transforms them into heroes of our faith, again to show us, the importance, the priority of the spiritual over the physical. So much so that Paul, as we heard in the second reading today, counts all things as loss—woe to me, if I do not prioritize the preaching of the Gospel over all else…for if I don’t preach it, I don’t have a share in it. If I don’t preach it, I don’t have a share in it. That line should cause us to do some serious reflection on our priorities, no? If I don’t preach the Gospel, I don’t have share in it. Does my life, do my words, do my actions, does my lifestyle, speak of—does it preach—the Gospel of Christ? Does the way I act in public and private stem from and point to the Gospel?

Paul hints at the radical nature of Christianity. Radical, not meaning not crazy or irrationally zealous, like it’s sometimes used, but radical coming from the word radix which means, root. Christianity requires reorientation to God all the way down to the root of our human nature. Again, this is why Paul, imprisoned, sentenced to die, having spent his remaining days preaching the Gospel, so transformed by grace, is able to say, it is no longer me, but Christ, who lives in me. 

When faith is prioritized over all else, it shapes and changes and transforms all else, into the work of Christ—preaching and establishing the kingdom—just as he did 2000 years ago, he continues this work, through us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.