Readings of the day: Genesis 6:5-8, 7:1-5, 10; Psalm 29:1a, 2, 3ac-4, 3b, 9c-10; Mark 8:14-21
How easy is it for us to become distracted by small external details, especially when hearing or reading Scripture, such that we have difficulty grasping “the heart of the matter,” so to speak, of a Biblical text? Or how good are we at resisting these kinds of distractions by external details?
I confess that I am vulnerable to distraction by external details (mea culpa!). Readings like those we hear today are a challenge to me, for this reason. I can empathize with Jesus’ disciples, whom Mark often presents as bumbling and distracted, including in the Gospel reading we hear today. Jesus rebukes his disciples harshly: “Are your hearts hardened… Do you not yet understand”? I admit that my first reaction to Jesus’ rebuke here in Mark’s Gospel is that I am not sure I would have understood Jesus’ point about “the yeast of the Pharisees and… of Herod,” and why he is so harsh with his disciples, simply from the scant context Mark gives us, any more than his disciples did. What did Jesus’ disciples do that was so wrong?
In the Book of Genesis, we again encounter a harsh God, who goes so far as to be “sorry that he made human beings on the earth.” All I can think when I hear that is, “Ouch! Would God ever be sorry that he made us”? But this, too, risks too much focus on surface details: Would God be “sorry” or regretful of his own actions, like creation? Would a loving God really ever will to destroy all living things on earth, no matter how wicked we had become? Would God ever change his mind, from seeing that his creation was “very good” to, in the space of ten generations from Adam to Noah, wanting to destroy it?
The flood narrative in Genesis, like Jesus’ irritable encounter with his disciples in Mark’s Gospel, invites us to reflect more deeply than on these surface details, however attractive or troubling they may be. In both Mark and Genesis, the hearts of God and of God’s people are not in the same place; God and the people, be they Jesus’ disciples or the people of Noah’s generation, with the exception of Noah and his household, clearly do not have the same will; the same priorities. Genesis describes “every inclination of” the hearts of the people as “evil.” Mark describes Jesus’ disciples’ hearts as “hardened.”
How exactly the people’s hearts are inclined toward evil or “hardened” is perhaps forever a mystery; a detail. But we know that it is still possible, in the midst of hearts that are “hardened” or inclined toward evil, to set our hearts to pleasing God; to doing the will of God. Noah did it, as Genesis says: He “found favour in the sight of the LORD.” And, if we read today’s Gospel in the context of all of Mark, we see that, no matter how bumbling and distracted Jesus’ disciples almost always seem to be in Mark, Jesus never gives up on them. In fact, he willingly gives himself up to death for them, and us.
I find this especially consoling, as an (often) distractible disciple of Jesus: That I, and we, know something of the deepest, most heartfelt and ultimate will of God. Our God wills from the heart to save us, and has sent his Son for this purpose. And, somehow, our task is only to discern and cooperate with this ultimate will for us from the heart of our God.
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