SUMMARY
JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God's saving act for humanity. begins his teaching and healing ministry with a demonstration of his authority.
ANALYSIS
Controversies over the observance of the SabbathSabbath is a weekly day of rest, the seventh day, observed on Saturday in Judaism and on Sunday in Christianity. In the book of Genesis, God rested on the seventh day; in the Gospel accounts Jesus and his disciples are criticized by some for not... play a central role in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Mark, and the first mention of the Sabbath occurs after Jesus arrives with his newly called disciples (Mark 1:16-20) in the town of Capernaum, a fishing village on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The story at first seems benign; Jesus goes into a synagogueA synagogue is a Jewish house of worship. Jesus often taught in synagogues where he sometimes ran afoul of Jewish leaders. In the book of Acts, Paul and others attend synagogues and teach in them. and teaches, an action that we might expect from someone who calls disciples. Mark wants his readers to know, however, that Jesus is no ordinary teacher. Jesus teaches with “authority,” (1:22) something that the usual teachers, the scribes, lack. Jesus’ authority makes him a lightning rod for conflict.
On that first Sabbath in Capernaum, the conflict came in the form of the demonic. One of the ironies of Mark’s Gospel is that Jesus’ true identity is often confessed by the mouth of demons. While the crowd is impressed with Jesus’ authority, the uncleanIn Hebrew law many regulations warned against impurity. Unclean things were numerous and included leprosy, menstruating women, dead bodies, shell fish, and pigs. spirit knows his true identity, calling out that he is “the HolyHoly is a term that originally meant set apart for the worship or service of God. While the term may refer to people, objects, time, or places, holiness in Judaism and Christianity primarily denotes the realm of the divine One of God” (1:25). The unclean spirit also knows Jesus’ mission, a mission that Jesus begins to put into action when he rebukes the spirit and casts it out of the man. The irony continues in the crowd’s failure to understand what has just happened. Unlike the unclean spirit, they can’t quite understand what is going on. Instead of proclaiming Jesus as the Holy One of God, after watching Jesus exorcize the demonA demon is an evil spirit often depicted in human or animal form. Sometimes frightening, sometimes alluring, the unclean spirit represents destructive power., they ask each other “What is this?” They cannot see the truth.
