TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (2024)
Readings:
Genesis 3:9-15
Psalms 130:1-8
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35
“Some 315,000 years ago,” Sr. Mary McGlone tells us in her weekly commentary for NCR, “people in Africa evolved, developing abilities that distinguished them from other creatures. These skills included an extraordinary ability to adapt, learn collectively and use symbolic language.” Further, a modern commentary on the Jewish Torah, “suggests that the first couple’s (Adam and Eve) happy fault (eating the apple) described an evolutionary leap from innocent indifference to the ability to distinguish and choose between right and wrong. Humans became capable of self-giving love, incredible progress, mistakes and intentional evil. Once started, there was no turning back. When they stepped into the precarious world of free choice, Eve and Adam (Homo sapiens) exited the garden of blissful ignorance forever. Their new consciousness changed everything. Our species could not but continue to adapt and change, and to think critically.” How well we have done on that last statement remains to be seen.
The advances humankind has made in the last 2,500 years, were meant to make us better people, but even a cursory understanding of world history shows that that has not always been the case. Change and advances in evolution come with risks and challenges. Once Adam and Eve exited the Garden of Eden and entered the world of free choice, not only could they better themselves and their world, but they could also make bad choices, as the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis so clearly shows. Indeed, 2,000 years ago, the story of Jesus also demonstrates that all the choices made by men and women were not necessarily good choices, regardless of how well they fit with God’s predetermined plan of salvation.
Today’s first reading from Genesis recounts the familiar “happy fault” of Eve and Adam, the moment when selfishness and disobedience took over, making it necessary for God to eventually work out a plan to clear away the path to eternity and make it available for all peoples. That plan would involve His only Son, and we see glimpses of that plan throughout the gospels, including our gospel today from Mark. The rest of Genesis gives us a sense of how much God gave to the mythical first man and woman. They were perfectly cared for in the Garden; they suffered no needs. There are three different traditions represented in Genesis, and the Yahwist tradition, where our first reading comes from, is very anthropomorphic. Thus we see God walking around the Garden in a very ordinary way, calling out to Adam as we would call out to a friend. Humankind is born naked, and being naked before God posed no problem for Adam until he ate the fruit of the tree of good and evil; it was then that being naked became an embarrassment. It was then, also, that blame and shame became a part of Adam and Eve’s life. Their wrongdoing was someone else’s fault (sounds like a politician) as we see them pointing a finger at one another. From the very beginning of human life, humans were not satisfied not being God, and their punishment, “enmity” with the origin of evil, would be passed down from generation to generation.
Had there been no sin in Eden, God’s Son’s taking on human flesh might have had an easier existence. Our gospel from Mark shows that humankind, even when faced with perfect goodness and overflowing love, could choose something other than that, just as Adam and Eve could choose something other than the perfection of Eden. The gospel tells us that Jesus was followed by “crowds,” but many in those crowds, even the “relatives” of Jesus, were more interested in proving that this preacher from Nazareth was “out of his mind.” Indeed, they suggested Jesus was possessed by a “demon,” which would suggest that His own casting out of demons would make no sense, for “if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand.”
At first blush, when Jesus’ “mother and his brothers arrive,” Jesus might appear to be insensitive. Jesus clearly wanted His disciples to know that faith in Him was not inherited or passed on from one person to another. True faith in Jesus and His mission involves “doing the will of God.” To the extent that the disciples “do the will of God,” to that extent are they “brother and sister and mother” to Jesus. “Doing the will of God” is meant to be viewed as the opposite of what Adam and Eve did in the garden.
Thus, too, is our faith in Jesus measured. Each and every Sunday we profess our faith in Jesus, and most Sundays we place ourselves in church as though the place itself could make us holy. However, it is only in doingthe will of God that we become brothers and sisters of Christ. When given a choice, we choose what is right and just. We choose truth over falsehood, we choose generosity over greediness, we choose life over death, we choose peace over war, we choose charity over hatred, and when we have the chance to do good for the disenfranchised, the ostracized, the poor, and those ignored, we do good! Following Jesus, claiming to be His brother or sister, always involves the actual doing of what is good.
parishionersforjustice.com 