30 Jan. Monday of Week Four
2 Samuel 15:13ff. As David has to flee Jerusalem during Absalom’s revolt, he is cursed by Shimei, and accepts it as the will of God.
Mark 5:1ff. Jesus cures the demoniac and then commissions the man to proclaim the good news to the ten cities.
Tested on our Pilgrimage
The Scriptures respect our human situation, yet they also make us realize that while on earth we are engaged in a struggle with evil and are expected to respond heroically. Not that every day of our existence is such a dramatic struggle. If it were, we would collapse under the tension and lose emotional control like the demoniac . Yet at key moments of our life that struggle between good and evil spirits does occur and to survive we must be heroic. At such times the Scriptures call us to homey virtues like patience and hope.
In the readings from Hebrews we are coming to the end of one of the most theological documents in the New Testament, composed by a disciple of Paul and John who was able to blend Paul’s insistence on faith with John’s concern for Jesus’ incarnation and earthly life and for the liturgy. The author of Hebrews portrays Jesus’ life as a long pilgrimage through human life, stepping into the footprints of every kind of human existence and even sharing our temptations and discouragement, leading eventually after the struggle against death on the cross into the Holy of Holies. Hebrews has been continually drawing on Old Testament passages, but mostly of a liturgical or highly doctrinal nature. Now, however, in 11 it summarizes the earthly pilgrimage of Jesus in another way, by a litany of Old Testament saints, all of whom struggle heroically to be faithful to the will of God in their life.
Women and men are canonized for their extraordinary fidelity to the Lord in very difficult circumstances. On closer examination, these saints are a motley assortment- some unnamed as the woman who received her dead son back to life (2 Kings 4:8-37), another the prostitute Rahab (Hebrews 11:31). No class is passed over, low or high station in life, male or female, individually or members of communities. Hebrews seems to be insisting that by following daily in the earthly footprints of Jesus, as he did in ours, we will be ready for the moment of great trial.
The most bitter trials King David had to endure came from within his own family, or as he said himself, from “my own son, who came forth from my loins.” The family history of David is long and complicated, sordid and pathetic at times, brilliant and successful at other times, and his troubles go back to his sins of adultery and homicide in the case of Bathsheba and Uriah. No matter how guilty David has been, we cannot help but admire his humility and compunction when confronted by the facts, hisloyal love even towards a son in revolt and seeking his life. When David advises restraint-that the clansman related to Saul should not be executed for cursing the king – and attributes the situation to God’s providence, no one can blame David as a super-spiritualist, out of touch and incapable of practical decision. David’s entire life would refute such an evaluation. Yet, he is declaring: Let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord has told me to. Perhaps the Lord will look on my affliction and make it up to me with benefits for the curses he is uttering this day. David is manifesting another form of heroic action.
The same tenderheartedness, often manifest in David is now visible in Jesus’ reaction to the demoniac. This man ran up to Jesus who had come by boat on the southeastern shore of the Lake of Galilee and was now walking inland. Jesus responds with exemplary patience and respect. When the unclean spirits ask to be sent into the herd of swine, Jesus “gave the word.” When the local inhabitants begged Jesus “to go away from their district,” he proceeded to get into the boat. When the man, now cured of his mental illness and strange ways, wants to follow Jesus, Jesus accepts his offer but sends him forth as a missionary-disciple “to proclaim throughout the Ten Cities what Jesus had done for him.” Jesus did not enter into the causes of the mental illness nor worry about the consequences of being associated with a former demoniac. Jesus saw a brother of good will and fervent enthusiasm. This type of action is also heroic.
It is clear how the heroic actions of God’s saints knit them ever more closely as a family, and this family includes ourselves, each of us with our gifts of hope and in-spiration. David respects bonds of family and the larger pattern of God’s providence. Jesus willingly receives the demoniac into the larger group of those who believe in him. Hebrews sums it more theoretically and theologically: The Old Testament heroes and heroines did not obtain what had been promised. God had made a better plan, a plan which included us. Without us, they were not to be made perfect.
Our acts of heroism are never intended to set us apart but to reunite us in an ever larger family. Even when we are at our best, like the Old Testament saints, we still need others to support and encourage us. Perhaps we can understand this final position of today’s texts by re-reading Paul’s hymn to charity: If I have faith great enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give everything I have to feed the poor and hand over my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.. There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13:2-3, 13).
2 Samuel 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13
A messenger came to David, saying, “The hearts of the Israelites have gone after Absalom.” Then David said to all his officials who were with him at Jerusalem, “Get up! Let us flee, or there will be no escape for us from Absalom. Hurry, or he will soon overtake us, and bring disaster down upon us, and attack the city with the edge of the sword.”
But David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went.
When King David came to Bahurim, a man of the family of the house of Saul came out whose name was Shimei son of Gera; he came out cursing. He threw stones at David and at all the servants of King David; now all the people and all the warriors were on his right and on his left. Shimei shouted while he cursed, “Out! Out! Murderer! Scoundrel! The Lord has avenged on all of you the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned; and the Lord has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, disaster has overtaken you; for you are a man of blood.”
Then Abishai son of Zeruiah said to the king, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head.” But the king said, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’” David said to Abishai and to all his servants, “My own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite! Let him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord has bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on my distress, and the Lord will repay me with good for this cursing of me today.” So David and his men went on the road, while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went, throwing stones and flinging dust at him. The king and all the people who were with him arrived weary at the Jordan; and there he refreshed himself.
Gospel: Mark 5:1-20
They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.