Deserted Places (Mark 8:1-10)

Today's Gospel is about the Feeding of the Four Thousand. It is a familiar story of the multiplication of seven loaves of bread and a few fish.

Going through this exercise of reading the mass readings for the day, I couldn't help but notice that this was the nth time in the Gospel of Mark that Jesus was in a deserted place. I've already written about deserted places here and here.

In fact the place where he was for the feeding of the four thousand was so deserted that there was hardly any food around and he was afraid that if he sent the crowd home, they might collapse.

All this talk of deserted places makes me wonder why Jesus kept going to deserted places. Maybe because he didn't want to bother anybody? So if people wanted to go see him, they had to go out of their way and get out of other people's way?

Maybe because he wanted to avoid the places where the powers-that-be were? So far, every time he has been in a non-deserted place, the authorities contested him, his teaching, his practices, and his miracles. And every time they did so, he moved on to the next place. Deserted places, on the other hand, are places where the powers-that-be probably wouldn't go.

I know there's a passage somewhere in the bible where he escaped from a place because they were going to crown him king. So maybe it's that too.

And of course, I have a theory that he went to deserted places to look for deserted people.

I'm pretty sure as the Gospel of Mark continues, there will be more talk of deserted places. Maybe all this suggests that if we're looking for God, we should go and look for him in a deserted place.

Treatment for Scaly Infections (Leviticus 13 and Mark 1: 40-45)

The First Reading and Gospel for today present a nice contrast of the attitude towards leprosy. 


The First Reading from Leviticus describes how lepers must be treated.


"The one who bears the sore of leprosy
shall keep his garments rent and his head bare,
and shall muffle his beard;
he shall cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!'
As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean,
since he is in fact unclean.
He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp."


In other words, the leper becomes socially excluded.


In the Gospel, Jesus heals a leper by touching him. Jesus' touch sets aside rules of social exclusion which deems anyone who touches an unclean person to be unclean. Jesus also tells the leper to present himself to the priests so that the leper may be formally re-introduced into the Jewish community.

I think Jesus' mission is truly catholic, i.e. universal. He seeks to integrate everyone into his community, especially those who have been excluded through man-made laws.