Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

Hav­ing con­sti­tuted his group of Twelve dis­ciples, Jesus now moves with them to every place he goes. Jesus goes about teach­ing. Teach­ing which con­sists mainly in announ­cing the sal­va­tion and the king­dom of God is in fact, the mis­sion of Jesus (cf. Mark 1:38). If the Jew­ish author­ity thought arrest­ing John would have hal­ted the spread­ing of the Gos­pel, they were mis­taken. On the con­trary, the arrest of John triggered a more intense and uni­fied pro­clam­a­tion of the Gos­pel. As soon as Jesus made his ingress into Caper­naum, Mark says on the Sab­bath, straight­away, he entered the Syn­agogue. Straight­away means imme­di­ately, at once, right away, without wast­ing time. It means Jesus went imme­di­ately and star­ted teach­ing which was his only reas­on for com­ing to Caper­naum – to teach people the right way to God. With the expres­sion Jesus went about doing good, Mark seems to have sum­mar­ized the vari­ous aspects of.….

The power of Jesus’ teaching

At his teach­ing, the people who assembled in the syn­agogue for wor­ship were amazed/astonished. Now, to be amazed or aston­ished is to be filled with an emo­tion­al impact of over­whelm­ing sur­prise. The people were sur­prised at Jesus’ teach­ing. That is, they were taken unaware and expressed their sud­den feel­ing of won­der see­ing the wis­dom that emerged from Jesus. Amazement or aston­ish­ment is an expres­sion of sur­prise. Mark went fur­ther and explained the reas­on for such sur­prise. Jesus taught the people with author­ity and not like a Scribe – an expert in the law. As stated above, teach­ing like an expert in law implies under­lin­ing and emphas­iz­ing the let­ters of the law. On the oth­er hand, teach­ing with author­ity means going dir­ectly to the spir­it of the law. As the saying.…

The mystery of teaching

The heal­ing of the man with an unclean spir­it is a dir­ect con­sequence of Jesus’ teach­ing. The pres­ence of this man in the syn­agogue has a lot to say about the kind of people that gath­er in the Churches dur­ing wor­ship. People with every kind of spir­it – good and bad. The author­ity of Jesus’ teach­ing must have threatened this unclean or impure spir­it. Hence, the reac­tion. It is amaz­ing that while people wondered who Jesus is, the impure spir­it recog­nised him as the “Holy One of God” (Greek: ho agios tou theou). As stated above, such was not an hon­est recog­ni­tion. Hence, Jesus rebuked the unclean spir­it say­ing “be silent, and come out of him! (Mark 1:25). In oth­er words.….

Conclusion

Like Jesus, Reli­gious lead­ers must teach people the best way to wor­ship and serve God, how to be faith­ful, how to please God, how to live a bet­ter and godly life, how to grow in spir­itu­al­ity, how to live and inter­act with oth­ers as chil­dren of God, and espe­cially, how to make heav­en. A soci­ety where people are meant that only pray­er resolves everything, and where people are meant to believe they are always attacked and per­se­cuted by demons and demon pos­sessed people, is doomed to per­ish. Such soci­ety can hardly pro­gress. Such is a cor­rupt and unfor­tu­nate soci­ety. This is where religious.…

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the 4^th Sunday of the Year (B) is found on vol. II pages 78–87. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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