September 7 th

Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time Mk 7/31-37

One of major themes of St. Mark's Gospel is that Jesus was not primarily a wonder worker, the did not perform the outrageous and spectacular miracles attributed to many of the legendary wonder workers of the ancient world. Those who demanded from Jesus the sort of spectacular signs that were attributed to the prophets in the past would be disappointed. Moreover the legends about spectacular miracles which probably circulated in the years when the New Testament was taking shape were to dismissed. Jesus indeed did work signs, but these were less to prove who he was and more to emphasize the
presence of God's new kingdom among humankind. Jesus's miracles were low key, common place. He made mud with his spittle to heal the deaf man, a down-to-earth (literally) kind of miracle. It was the good news that he preached which was important to Jesus. The signs were not his main purpose. Moreover his signs were devoted to healing, to diminishing human suffering. What counts in trying to understand the miracles of Jesus is not how "supernatural" they were but rather how they changed people's lives.

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Once upon a time there was a little boy who when he watched TV heard nothing else that anyone said to him. So absorbed did he become in the words and actions of such worthies as Barney and Big Bird and Kermit that he simply did not hear a word that his parents or his brothers and sisters said to him. He was not being rude or disobedient. Rather he was so fascinated the muppets and my Barney and by their human friends, all of whose names he knew, that he was deaf to the rest of the world. He tuned everything else out. The only way others could get his attention was to turn the TV off. He was upset when they did this, though because he was a good little boy he did not go into a tantrum. Barney is the real world, his mother said, and I'm in the world of make believe. Finally she discovered that there was one magic word that made him listen. Well, two magic words. What were they? ICE CREAM!