Casual Reflections on the Gospel of Mark, Chapter Two
Where we left off:
Act One: Galilee and War; We're fresh off of the first chapter where The King began His secret mission through a secret arrival with the aid of His herald, John the Baptist. The Warrior King disguised Himself as a lowly Herald as well, and began to wage war against The Enemy its forms of Disease, Disabilities, and Demons.
Chapter two opens with a plot twist. Mark placed verses 1-12 very strategically. Because we're fresh off of the miraculous healings of chapter one, when we see the paralytic being lowered by his friends immediately we internally shout, "Yes! Jesus is going to heal this man!" But this is where Jesus begins to challenge our assumptions and catches us off guard. Rather than immediately heal the man of his physical ailments, The King opted instead to perform spiritual surgery by telling the man, "Your sins are forgiven."
Mark presents us with a mind-blowing reality: The King isn't just a miracle worker...He isnt' just a warrior...He's a Forgiving Priest speaking with Yahweh's own authority!
Jesus continues to show this Loving Forgiveness by calling the socially "worst" sinners to Follow Him, to be His chosen, His friends. In a grand reversal of everything we think we know, He amasses a large crowd of the poor (the socially poor, the financially poor, the spiritually poor, the morally poor, etc) and calls them His own. When the Old Order saw this, they asked Him, "Why?"
"Because," replies the King of Love, "I've come to restore My Relationship with my lost children, not to coddle the ones who think they have it all together."
Here, we begin to see an old myth dispelled. Yahweh is not too Holy to be around sin and sinners. The Yahweh revealed in Jesus shows that God does not have an allergy to sin. Instead, He pulls close to those of us who sin the greatest and whispers Love and Grace in our ears.
In further defiance of the Old, and in order to bring in the New, He hosts a party with His new friends and feasts to His Life in a new guise: the Groom. Thus, The King's honor-feud with the Old Order begins.
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