NOTES for Mar 3:6-12

Sometimes, as can be seen in today's reading, the evangelist paints for us a picture of the Kingdom moving across the earth together with Jesus, who has brought this Kingdom into the world. And the world reacts to a new reality unexpectedly opened to it, reacting without always realizing what and Whom it is dealing with. But always, whatever turn events take, one can see how the evil in which the world lies runs from the breath of the Kingdom. Before us again is a description of mass healings, and we see how even the spirits of darkness bear witness to the One who gives them no rest. But He does not need such testimony.

Indeed, why would Jesus need the fame of a wonderworker, a popular hero followed by a surging crowd of people thirsting for healing or for liberation from the power of dark forces? On the other hand there are those who do not need healing, or at least think they do not: the Pharisees and Herod's people, who want only one thing, that this Man who gives them no rest should disappear, even if they have to kill Him for that to happen. And between them is a crowd of people who understand little or understand nothing at all, who follow Jesus without always understanding who He is, but having learned from their own experience that He can heal and free them from the power of dark forces. And all of them somehow, each in their own way, see the Kingdom.

The spirits of darkness see it clearly, and the sight is torment for them: they understand Who is before them and want only one thing, for Him to go away. The Pharisees, deeply religious people, and the local politicians who side with the existing authorities agree with one another in nothing except one thing: they have no use for the kind of Kingdom to which this Man bears witness.

They may not understand very well what it is like, but they understand very well that neither earthly power nor absolutized religiosity is compatible with it or will stand before it. And they want to kill the One who threatens their power and their religious values. As for the crowd following Jesus, also perhaps not understanding very well what the Kingdom is, they nevertheless know one thing: whatever it is, and whoever Jesus is, He can help them, and therefore His Kingdom must be a good thing. Whatever this Kingdom may be, let it only help them be healed, be rid of sickness or of the power of dark forces, and then... then it will become clear whether it is worth following this unusual Preacher any farther. Meanwhile Jesus is drawing near to Jerusalem, where everything must be decided. And set in its proper place.