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What would you do if a filthy stranger came up to you shouting. Would you run away? Would you yell back? Would you be disgusted? Join me, Rev Darcy (she/hers), a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, as we learn what Jesus did in just such a situation as we journey together through the Gospel of Mark. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:
Jesus and his followers went into Capernaum. Immediately on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and started teaching. The people were amazed by his teaching, for he was teaching them with authority, not like the legal experts. 23 Suddenly, there in the synagogue, a person with an evil spirit screamed, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the holy one from God.” “Silence!” Jesus said, speaking harshly to the demon. “Come out of him!” The unclean spirit shook him and screamed, then it came out. Everyone was shaken and questioned among themselves, “What’s this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands unclean spirits and they obey him!” Right away the news about him spread throughout the entire region of Galilee. After leaving the synagogue, Jesus, James, and John went home with Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick with a fever, and they told Jesus about her at once. He went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she served them. That evening, at sunset, people brought to Jesus those who were sick or demon-possessed. The whole town gathered near the door. He healed many who were sick with all kinds of diseases, and he threw out many demons. But he didn’t let the demons speak, because they recognized him. Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. Simon and those with him tracked him down. When they found him, they told him, “Everyone’s looking for you!” He replied, “Let’s head in the other direction, to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there too. That’s why I’ve come.” He traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and throwing out demons. A man with a skin disease approached Jesus, fell to his knees, and begged, “If you want, you can make me clean.” Incensed, Jesus reached out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do want to. Be clean.” Instantly, the skin disease left him, and he was clean. Sternly, Jesus sent him away, saying, “Don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, go and show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifice for your cleansing that Moses commanded. This will be a testimony to them.” Instead, he went out and started talking freely and spreading the news so that Jesus wasn’t able to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, but people came to him from everywhere. (Mark 1:21-45, CEB)
Welcome back to another episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven where we journey through the Bible together taking note of all the Biblical drama without engaging in spiritual trauma. Last week, we saw Jesus’ ministry start with a sermon and the calling of his disciples. This week see Jesus provide free healthcare to a lot of people.
Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.
Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)
Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).
Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).
The World Behind the Text
To better understand the cultural context, I want to introduce you to four different types of people we meet in this sacred word or who are referenced in it. The first are scribes. Scribes made up a minority of Jewish society able to read and write in Hebrew and were well-versed in the law because they copied the Torah as a means of preserving it. Thus, they were considered “experts in the law.” Now, let’s talk about rabbis. Jesus is widely recognized as a rabbi, but the word rabbi, or teacher, had a different connotation then than it does now. At the time of Jesus, the Jewish clergy were the priestly class. They served in the Temple where all of the religious rites of Judaism took place. Rabbis were Jewish men who were considered to be wise teachers well-versed in the law.
Sermon Notes: Only Jewish men were given a formal education in the Torah, and every Jewish boy attended a school to learn the Torah.
After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish religious rites as they were known then ended, and rabbis, overtime, became the Jewish professional clergy who taught the Torah and helped create new Jewish religious rites that didn’t involve the Temple rites mandated by the Torah.
Sermon Notes: While you may have heard it said that Rabbis weren’t really itinerate, and that Jesus was unique because he was an itinerate Rabbi, that’s not entirely true. Oxford English Dictionary defines itinerate as” “(especially of a church minister or a judge) travel from place to place to perform one's professional duty.” Rabbis were not fixed to synagogues, but they also weren’t circuit riders so it was a characteristic of rabbis that they traveled around. However, there were plenty of famous rabbis, contemporary to Jesus, who taught publicly who did travel and teach in different places. So Jesus wasn’t really unique in that way.
Now let’s talk about marginalized members of society. They are represented here by Simon’s mother-in-law, a woman, and by a score of sickly or demon-possessed people. Remember, there are two different cultural audiences to this Gospel story. The first are Jews and the second are Greco-Romans. While both cultures had a lot of differences, there were some things they had in common. While Jewish social ethics teach the equality of people and created a society were people were equal, in practice this wasn’t always the case.
Sermon Note: The nation God envisioned through Moses in the Torah was one where the people were governed through their relationship with God. The grumbling for a king was answered with the curse of having a king who would lord his authority over them. This, according to the priests who wrote the “historical books” of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the cause of the inequality of persons that is actually contrary to the Torah.
Women ranked lower than men, and foreigners, often called “strangers” or “aliens” in the Bible, were even lower than women. People who were ill were considered “unclean” by Torah law, and interacting with them made that person unclean as well. There were a lot of complicated rituals that one had to complete in order to be made ritually clean again. Greco-Roman culture was also highly stratified, meaning there were varying levels of hierarchy, and one’s gender, social class, and citizenship status determined where you fell in that hierarchy. And illness was seen as a mark of disgrace…you were ill because you were a bad person. Hold onto these ideas.
The World of the Text
Now let’s look at some of the astounding word choices that Mark uses in this sacred word. The first phrase we will look at is found in verse 22. Mark says that the people were amazed at Jesus because he taught the law like someone “with authority” and not like the legal experts. Remember, the legal experts, or scribes, knew the law backward and forward. The word used here for authority, exousia, is most often used to describe the authority of a king or ruler. Mark is saying people heard Jesus speak as if he had ownership of the law and was not merely repeating it.
Sermon Note: In general, people who taught the Torah would recite it and then provide a commentary pulling from the rich interpretative tradition of Judaism. Based on other examples of Jesus’ teaching, he most likely said “you’ve heard it said…but I say” in such a manner that came across like a king giving directions to his subjects.
While Jesus is teaching we see a man with a demon or unclean spirit who was causing a disturbance. The word Mark uses here is akathartos which means impure, unclean, lewd, or foul. Interestingly this is the only place Mark uses this word in this chapter. Instead, Mark uses the word daimonizomai which means “to be possessed, afflicted, vexed, by a demon or evil spirit” according to Mounce’s Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament when referencing the other people Jesus heals of “demon possession or unclean spirits” in verses 32, 33, and 39. While I’m not going to conjecture on why Mark made these two different word choices or what the demon or unclean spirit was— whether actual demon, a euphemism for a severe mental illness, or just someone who was really unpleasant— I think it’s safe to say that these were people who were not in a great place and were shunned by their communities. These are people who are unhappy and miserable and its not their fault.
Sermon Note: There have been a lot of people who have made a career out of speculating or “proving” what the Bible means by demon possession, and I think it is really irresponsible to do so because it often stigmatizes mental illness. We don’t know what is meant here, and thinking too deeply about it is unproductive. Its a red herring in the search for faith. The point is that these are outcasts who Jesus welcomes and heals without stigmatizing or blaming them.
We also see Jesus heal Simon’s mother-in-law, who was suffering from a fever, and a man suffering from leprosy, and leprosy is a favorite Biblical unclean illness. I love the word the Common English Bible uses here to describe Jesus’ reaction to this man asking for help. They say that Jesus was “incensed” when the man begged Jesus to heal him. The word Mark uses is splanchnizomai which literally means “moved with compassion. I liked incensed, though, because I think it gets at what Jesus is feeling. He’s morally outraged that this person feels he needs to beg for healing. I think this word accurately captures the spirit of the text if not the letter of the text because what Jesus does each time some “unclean” person comes to him for help is astounding to his audience. Rather than ignoring or shunning or rebuking these people, Jesus heals them.
The World in Front of the Text
Phew! Well this was Jesus’ first two days on the job! And how do we think people assessed his work? Well the text tells us that word about him spread around Galilee to the point that people were seeking him out for help and he needed to take a break! Of course the traditional interpretation of these healing miracles is that “well Jesus is God, so obviously he healed people.” Okay, that is a plausible interpretation. But I think we can all agree is that the point Mark is trying to make here is that Jesus is practicing what he preached in verses 14 and 15. He is demonstrating what the Kin-dom of God looks like…a compassionate community where people’s dignity is respected and no one needing help is turned away. Remember, Mark spent a lot of time in the first part of chapter 1 contrasting Jesus with the Emperor, and the kingdom, or kin-dom, of God with Empire. So, in providing us with a picture of a day in the life of Jesus’ ministry, Mark is strengthening that comparison by showing what the kin-dom looks like. And people flock to Jesus because we all deep down are longing for community that respects our dignity and meets our basic needs. How much better would our world be if, like Jesus, we were incensed by the idea that people feel the need to beg us for help?
Last Things
Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will dive deep into scandal as Jesus’ ministry begins to ruffle feathers.
If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to join me on Zoom on Mondays at 7pm central time for guided meditation. This is open to both free and paid subscribers during the month of February, so subscribe to get that link at www.revdarcy.com/subscribe
Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.
This episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven was written and produced by Rev. Darcy Corbitt and is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.
All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).
Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.
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