Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (3: 7-12) in which large crowds followed Jesus everywhere when they heard about all he was doing.

Fr Paul says we hear today that Jesus withdraws to the lakeside where the great crowd gathers, which Matthew will use as the audience for his great gathering of Jesus’ teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. Mark, however, only gives us only a summary of Jesus’ wonderful works of mercy and healing. The importance of these works was that they showed the coming of God’s Kingship in the power of God wonderfully at work in Jesus.

We, the witnesses, are gradually discovering who and what Jesus is. This is expressed not by the people but by the unclean spirits, whose testimony is more forceful than any human witness. Don’t forget that the first human being to hail Jesus as ‘son of God’ is the centurion at the Cross.

The unclean spirits, like the unclean spirit in Mark 1:24, are forced to admit that God is at work in Jesus. It is perhaps possible to understand Mark as meaning no more than this. But the full Christian revelation of the Gospels leaves no doubt that Jesus was seen as himself divine.

Fr Paul notes today’s Gospel Lesson: All of us – even Jesus – need a way to escape from time to time in order to recharge the batteries so that we can do more.