Mark 3:7-19
“Notice what you notice.” Sorry folks, but I’m really loving the geography! Recent readings have had Jesus and His followers in Capernaum and none of our readings have moved them on to another location, so we can imagine that they are still in Capernaum – which is a seaside city at the very top of the Sea of Galilee. Today’s reading has a horde of people pressing in on Jesus, such that He finds it necessary to preach with His back to the sea and with a boat ready to rescue Him from the crowd should it become an unruly situation (vv. 7, 9). Just because of my infatuation with geography, I am so much more enmeshed in the story – I can be in that crowd pressing in on Jesus or with His disciples ready to rescue Him and take Him out to sea. What a feeling! GLORY!
But beyond that little bit of micro-geography, look at the bigger picture, at where the crowds are coming from. Galilee and “beyond the Jordan” are probably nearby, but Jerusalem and other locations, as we already know, are in Judea, some 60-100 miles distant. Tyre and Sidon are northwest of Capernaum, maybe 30-40 miles “as the crow flies”. Idumea is a region even further south of Judea, just below Hebron (one of David’s host cities when he was on the run), so that distance could be well over 100 miles! What a fame He is getting!
But it seems like a fame that He does not want: And he strictly ordered them not to make him known (v. 12). What He does want from the crowd and from us today is not our fascination with His healings but our faithfulness to His teachings. He loves us more for that “still small Spirit” within us than for all the glory and praise we could ever get from those around us. Let’s not press in on Jesus for our needs, but humbly seek Him for His love.
Slava Bohu!