Cure of the man with a withered hand
1 Again Jesus entered the synagogue. A man who had a paralyzed hand was there
2 and some people watched Jesus: Would he heal the man on the sabbath? If he did they could accuse him.
3 Jesus said to the man with the para lyzed hand, “Stand here in the center.”
4 Then he asked them, “What does the Law allow us to do on the Sabbath? To do good or to do harm? To save life or to kill?” But they were silent.
5 Then Jesus looked around at them with anger and deep sadness because they had closed their minds. And he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was healed.
6 But as soon as the Phari sees left, they met with He rod’s supporters, looking for a way to destroy Jesus.
7 Jesus and his disciples withdrew to the lakeside and a large crowd from Galilee followed him. A great number of people also came from Judea,
8 Jeru salem, Idumea, Trans jordan and from the region of Tyre and Si don, for they had heard of all that he was doing.
9 Because of the crowd, Jesus told his disciples to have a boat ready for him, to prevent the people from crush ing him.
10 He healed so many that all who had diseases kept pressing towards him to touch him.
11 Even the people who had evil spirits, when ever they saw him, would fall down before him and cry out, “You are the Son of God.”
12 But he warned them sternly not to tell anyone who he was.
The twelve apostles
13 Then Jesus went up into the hill country and called those he want ed and they came to him.
14 So he appointed twelve to be with him; and he called them apostles. He wanted to send them out to preach,
15 and he gave them authority to drive out demons.
16 These are the Twelve: Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter;
17 James, son of Zebedee, and John his brother, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, which means “men of thunder”;
18 Andrew, Philip, Bar tholo mew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Al pheus, Thaddeus, Si mon the Cananean 19 and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
The sin against the Spirit
20 They went home. The crowd began to gather again and they couldn’t even have a meal.
21 Knowing what was happening his relatives came to take charge of him: “He is out of his mind,” they said.
22 Meanwhile, the teachers of the Law who had come from Jeru salem said, “He is in the power of Beelzebul: the chief of the demons helps him to drive out demons.”
23 Jesus called them to him and began teaching them by means of stories or parables, “How can Satan drive out Sa tan?
24 If a nation is divided by civil war, that nation cannot stand.
25 If a family divides itself into groups, that family will not survive.
26 In the same way, if Satan has risen against himself and is divided, he will not stand; he is finished.
27 No one can break into the house of the Strong one in order to plunder his goods, unless he first ties up the Strong one. Then indeed, he can plunder his house.
28 Truly, I say to you, every sin will be forgiven humankind, even insults to God, how ever numerous.
29 But who ever slanders the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven: he carries the guilt of his sin forever.”
30 This was their sin when they said, “He has an evil spirit in him.”
Jesus’ true family
31 Then his mother and his brothers came. As they stood outside, they sent someone to call him.
32 The crowd sitting around Jesus told him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside ask ing for you.”
33 He replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
34 And looking around at those who sat there he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.
35 Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.”
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Comments Mark, Chapter 3
• 3.1 HUMAN ADVANCEMENT AND THE SABBATH
Here, what Mark wants to emphasize is not the mi racle Jesus performs, but his attitude vis-à-vis the Sab bath. This miracle confirms what he has just said in 2:28.
The Pharisees considered it lawful to work on the Sabbath if it was a question of saving someone in danger of death. Jesus is about to enlarge this ruling: for him, not to do good is to do evil, not to cure is to kill.
Some ask if Jesus was interested in the material advancement (well-being) of peo ple or only in their spiritual progress. Actually, it is impossible to separate one from the other.
Jesus, apparently, did not speak of the economy nor the social order, but he did denounce our prejudices that prevent us from giving the world a true and just order.
People, then, have the capacity and the means to better their condition, but they use them poorly because they remain prisoners of principles or institutions that are considered sacred, and in order to preserve them they allow half the world to die.
• 13. THE TWELVE
It was on the mountain that Moses and Elijah met God: it was there that God gave them their mission (Ex 19; 1 K 19). It is on the mountain that Jesus calls those who will be in a special way associated with his own mission: they will be with him, they will proclaim the Word and drive out demons.
Mark tells us here what the Church is: a community assembled by Jesus close to him, where people hear the Word of God and are freed from the slavery of the demon.
On the one hand are the countless afflicted who seek relief, and on the other the group of the Twelve whom Jesus asks to be his co-builders in the kingdom of God.
What do we know of these twelve who would become Jesus’ messengers, the foun dations of the Church, the teachers of the faith? The nucleus of the group were fishermen and with them a tax collector, Matthew; a teach er of the Law, Bartholo mew; and some others of whom we only know that Jesus chose them from among the people.
He came in order to save all, but his work began with the poor. Jesus did not belong more to the poor than to the rich, but like all humans he had to locate himself within a specific environment and social class.
Being a son of an artisan, he grew up among simple, humble people. In addition, Jesus made an important decision when he was eighteen or twenty years old. He chose to remain a manual worker rather than to enter a school for teachers of the Law. These religious schools were open to all.
Jesus could have begun his preaching as a qualified teacher and would certainly have found his helpers among the sincere teachers of the Law, priests or Pharisees. But no, he preferred to educate himself through the worker’s life with no other religious instruction than the teachings of the synagogue, with no other book than the book of life. Because of this, when the time came, he found his apostles among the common people, young men who were simple but reliable people.
• 20. He is in the power of Beelzebul (v. 22). More than the healings, the exorcisms un settled the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law. They, the religious authorities, traveled from Jerusalem to see this Jesus for themselves. The Jews of Jesus’ time were obsessed with the belief that illness was a form of possession. Jesus does not concern himself with distinguishing between illness and possession. Actually, the Devil is behind all human misery. Beelzebul, the name of an ancient idol, was a Jewish term for the Devil.
No one can break into the house of the Strong one. That Strong one is the Devil and his house is the possessed person. “To plunder the house” is to take away the Devil’s power over his victim.
Every sin will be forgiven humankind, even insults to God, however numerous and Matthew adds: “And the one who speaks against the Son of Man will be forgiven” (Mt 12:32).
Whereas the Old Testament punished blasphemous words with death in order to save God’s honor and avoid his anger towards the community, the God whom Jesus knows is aware of how far human stupidity can go and does not feel offended by so many ridiculous or blasphemous words habitually used in our society: he does not defend himself as do the important people of this world.
Jesus allows himself to be criticized by those who do not understand him. Many Pharisees of good faith did not understand Jesus and were scandalized by him. This was excusable, but it is a different thing to call evil that which is clearly good.
To slander (or: to blaspheme) the Holy Spirit (v. 29) is to attribute to a bad spirit a work that is manifestly good. Those who systematically attribute bad intentions to good work done by others, by the Church, by other parties, sin against the Holy Spirit. The one who recognizes the truth but not God is better off than the one who says he believes in God but does not recognize the truth.
About the exorcisms, Jesus concludes: “The kingdom of God has come.” In reality the victory over Satan is daily reinforced. Our prayer, the insistent prayer of Christian communities, the witness of life and courageous action of Christians are effective in repulsing the diabolical presence of money, the exploitation of others, drugs or the frenzy for sex.
• 31. See Mk 3:20.
Jesus lost his relatives but found his true brothers and sisters. When we commit ourselves to God’s work, we discover new brothers and sisters and a mother, Mary, of whom the Gospel says, “Happy are you for having believed that God’s promises would be fulfilled.” Jesus does not say, “He is my father,” for the Father is one and he is in Heaven.
THE BROTHERS OF JESUS
The Church never doubted that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus was her only son, as he is the only son of the Father (see commentary on Lk 1:26). Why then does it speak of Jesus’ brothers and sisters?
First, in Hebrew, any relative is called “brother” or “sister.” In the Bible we find more than five hundred examples where the word “brother” signifies a fairly close relationship.
To avoid confusion the Jews used some clearer forms. If the Gospel really meant brothers – sons of Mary – on mentioning them together with her, it should have said, “Your mother and the sons of your mother are here.” This was the only acceptable way of expressing it at that time.
Some people say: “If the word ‘brother’ often denotes distant cousins, it may also mean brothers in the strict sense of the word.” Let us look more closely to see who are the “brothers” of Jesus. They are mentioned at the time Jesus visits Nazareth: James and Joset (Matthew says Joseph), Jude and Simon.
Among the women at the foot of the cross, Mark mentions a certain “mother of James the less and of Joset.” If it were Mary, mother of Jesus, it would be very strange that precisely at this hour she is spoken of as the mother of James and Joset rather than as mother of the condemned. It would also be strange that she is mentioned only after Mary of Magdala. John says that this Mary, wife of Cleophas, was the “sister,” which means probably a close relative, of Mary (Jn 19:25).
We must then admit that James and Joset are the sons of this “other Mary” (Mt 28:1) who was part of the group of women who came from Galilee with Jesus (Lk 23:55). They are at the most first cousins of Jesus, while Simon and Jude were more distant cousins. James and Joset would not be mentioned before Simon and Jude if they were more distant relatives of Jesus.
Also, in the first Christian community, when the Gospels were written, there was a very influential group composed of Jesus’ relatives and townmates of Nazareth. These were called “brothers of the Lord” and one of them, James, became bishop of the Jerusalem community. Little is said of this group other than that they were late in believing in Jesus even though he had lived with them for several years (Mk 3:21; Jn 7:3-5). In referring to them, the Gospel gives them the name the Christian community had given them, “brothers of the Lord” or “so and so, brother of Je sus.”