Today's readings: Deuteronomy 18, 15-20; 1 Corinthians 7, 32-35; Mark 1, 21-28.
Today's Gospel reading from Mark reports that the people who heard Jesus were amazed because, unlike their teachers of the Law, he taught with authority. This may be saying a lot about our situation today whereby the way we teach seems to lack authority and credibility. We easily attribute this to the general scenario where hierarchies are in crisis and authority is no longer taken for granted. But there is more to it than that. Authority is not a given, it needs to be earned.
The Gospel reading refers us back to the reading from Deuteronomy when the Jews were at a loss in the face of pagan practices and, in spite of already having the Law as guide, God promised to send his prophets.
Now, in Capernaum and on a Sabbath, Jesus is challenging their power structures based mainly on the letter of the Law. If our teaching is not accompanied by tangible signs and gestures, it will lack authority because it will continue to be repetition of a dead letter, failing to heal where healing is needed. This was the difference between the teaching of Jesus and that of the scribes.
In Mark's first chapter, Jesus inaugurates his ministry by confronting an unclean spirit. The man with an evil spirit shows clear signs of schizophrenia: he knows who Jesus is but is reluctant to let him in. Our age suffers the same form of schizophrenia. Many acknowledge today's ills as being mainly spiritual but we remain adamant to resolve everything mechanically, unwilling to admit that our world needs spiritual healing.
Our culture has been indoctrinated that believing in God or searching for spiritual healing diminishes our humanity and destroys our reasoning. "Are you here to destroy us?", shouted the man with the evil spirit. But Jesus' first concern is not our sin but our suffering.
In Deuteronomy, God decides to send his prophets because those were times of spiritual void in Judaism. We know that institutions are needed. But at times they no longer serve to link God and his people, but instead hinder God's true voice from reaching the people. So God raises prophets. It has always been, and will continue to be like that.
When authority is bound to positions of power, it loses weight on people's consciences. And every time, God provides fresher sources of authority for the people to look up to. A prophet, writes Elie Wiesel, "is someone who is searching - someone who is being sought. Someone who listens - and who is listened to. Someone who sees people as they are, and as they ought to be."
The prophet need not be a saint. There have been unbelieving prophets in Israel's and the world's history. Yet they were God's prophets because He has no boundaries. Our God is dangerous because He so easily crosses official lines to the extent of destabilising our structures. Again, words of the man with the evil spirit, "Are you here to destroy us?", come to mind. The power of Jesus destroys all that alienates us to rebuild our integral humanness.
The destruction which Jesus can provoke in us is, at the end of the day, our liberation. His presence and word provoked the destruction of the temple and of the religious power structures of the scribes, empowering even further those whom these very structures enslaved.