FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2024)

FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2024)

Readings:

Job 7:1-4, 6-7

Psalm 147:1-6

1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23

Mark 1:29-39

Who doesn’t like to gripe?  Now, those of you who raised your hands, I know, for a fact, that you are lying.  Everyone at times likes to gripe- ask your wives or your husbands – and there seems to be so much that provides fodder for our griping.  Politics, wages, Church practices, poverty, neighborhood antics, bishops, relatives – virtually everyone has something to gripe about.  Our first reading presents to us one of the world’s most famous gripers, Job, whose words could easily be echoed by many of us who feel depressed and oppressed.  “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?  Are not his days those of hirelings?  He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages.  So I have been assigned months of misery (nearly eight years to be precise), and troubled nights have been allotted to me….  Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.”  Job was not fun to be around!

It’s not as though Job had no reason to complain.  Readers will recall that Job is caught up in the malaise generated by a conversation that God is having with the devil.  Proud of Job’s faithfulness, God brags about him to the devil.  The devil insists that is because of God’s love and favor for Job, and the devil boldly challenges God, at Job’s expense, saying ‘make life a little rough for him and he will forget you ever existed.’  Our first reading lament is after Job has lost cattle, lost family, and has endured personal illness.  The Book of Job has a contribution to make to the endless discussion of “why good people suffer,” but it hardly settles the issue.  Indeed, Job has three so-called friends who falteringly give him useless advice and little comfort.  In the end, Job virtually triumphs and does not curse God for all of his troubles.

For us on this fifth Sunday in Ordinary time, our first reading reminds us that we live in a world where there is much to gripe about, and suffering afflicts the good and the bad.  Hence, Jesus’ desire to show that the “time of fulfillment” has arrived by quickly getting to the task of casting out demons and healing the sick.  Such hardships are the result of Adam & Eve’s inability to obey and be faithful.  Post Eden, Adam and Eve must have done their share of ‘griping,’ for they knew what life was like before original sin, and surely they too, must have seen life as a drudgery.  The time of Jesus was meant to be a time when we could catch a glimpse of Eden.  Jesus is the new Adam, totally faithful and obedient, and His obedience gave Him power over unclean spirits, sickness, and even death.

Thus Jesus wastes no time in demonstrating that He was ushering in a new age.  Already in Mark’s first chapter Jesus, while in the Synagogue, has cast out a demon, and “on leaving the synagogue,” Jesus enters the house of His newly chosen disciples and finds Simon’s “mother-in-law sick with a fever.” Jesus reached out and “helped her up” (the same words to describe Jesus’ ‘rising up’ from the grave).  It might appear to be a bit chauvinistic and self-serving to see her cured of her illness and, the gospel tells us, she immediately “waited on them.”  But Jesus does cure illness forever – He restores men and women to their proper order.  Waiting on Jesus and the disciples was no doubt something Simon’s mother-in-law wanted to do, and word of her healing spread rapidly in the village, for the “whole town was gathered at the door,” and Jesus “drove out many demons,” and He “cured the sick of various illnesses.”  What better way to show the waiting world that Jesus was ushering in a new era.

Life can be a “drudgery,” as Job says, but the liturgy recounts why we maintain a sense of hope, even in the most dire of circumstances.  Our God who created and loves us, and who enables Jesus at the start of His public ministry in Mark, gives people through Jesus’ miracles an example of what can be hoped for.  Imagine, if you will, what it must be like to wake up every day in Gaza, or in any unpredictable war torn land, Ukraine or Sudan, in the entire world.  How do the vast number of Christians in Gaza or Ukraine continue to hope in a God who is just and merciful, “slow to anger and abounding in love?”  The pages of Scripture are meant to convince us that God is in charge.  The God who walked in the Garden with Adam and Eve, the God who called  Abraham to be the father of many nations, the God who enabled Moses to lead the people out of Egypt and into the promised land, the God who inspired prophets to provide guidance and direction, the God who sent His Son into our world that he might show us the way home and win for us our salvation on the Cross – that same God is at work in our world today.  No matter how much there is to gripe about (and griping is not an impediment for holiness), we are meant to never lose hope, for the God who loves all that He has created will one day grasp our hand, as He did Simon’s mother-in-law, and raise us up to take us to a place where there is no weeping, no despair, and no “drudgery.”