The Mission Transcends Mere Geography

Friday of the Fifth Week in Course 2025

Most modern Christians in North America, I believe, are unfamiliar with first-century geography, even of the Holy Land. I think if I use a midwestern U.S. parable, it might be easier to envision than what St. Mark records in his Gospel here. Let’s try it:

Jesus returned from Chicago and went through Milwaukee to Louisville on the Ohio River through the region of Ohio. Now if you know the Midwest, even a little bit, you realize that Milwaukee is north of Chicago, and that if you want to go to Louisville, you are wasting time by going through Ohio. It is possible that Mark needed to do some geographic fiddling because his narrative just recorded Jesus casting out a demon in what we know as Lebanon, and today He is healing a deaf-mute in the Decapolis area which stretched east of the Sea of Galilee. Much research time and ink has been used to answer this question.

But there is no need. There were Jewish communities in both Tyre and Sidon, the latter one being large. The area of the “Ten Cities,” the Decapolis, was quite large and the healing we just heard could have been lakeside in the northern part. But whatever the exact geography and timeline, we see here that the fame of Jesus was spreading far from Capernaum and His words and healing were affecting many thousands, preparing both Jew and Gentile for the spread of the Church after Pentecost .

Jesus heals the man with words of command and His Messianic touch, even using His own spittle as a sacramental sign, tongue to tongue for the liberation of the man’s speech. This gesture of touching the ears and mouth is used by the Church in baptism during the full rite, with a prayer that the ears may hear God’s word, and the tongue proclaim the power of Christ.

Genesis records how humans got into the mess of sin, deafness, all other physical ills and ultimately, death. The creation of man and woman was, in God’s loving plan, placing them as the progenitors of a family of millions of humans, made in the image and likeness of their Creator, and on a trajectory that would end up in union with the Trinity forever, full of grace and truth and joy. In the story we just heard, a jealous adversary, or Satan, uses a series of lies to convince the woman that God is not on her side, that there is a short-cut to divine status requiring her to disobey the Creator. But there is no short-cut, and this part of the story ends, not with Adam and Eve triumphant over God’s commandment. No, instead they are pretending to hide behind the flimsiest of garments and camouflage among the vegetation of the garden the all-seeing God had Himself planted.

Isn’t this scene very much like the aftermath of every sin you and I have ever committed. We get in our head a short-cut to happiness. All we have to do is lie, or steal, or disobey some reasonable rule, and we imagine pleasure without pain. But when the deed is done, often enough we have a lot of pain, remorse, guilt, with evaporating pleasure. That’s one reason we should pray daily “Thy will be done” and “lead us not into temptation,” and confess every sin to the Lord so we may experience His forgiveness.