Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel

A Sexagesimal exhortation

“And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him.” – Mark 1:34

Have you ever wondered who were the first to know Jesus? To see who and what He truly was?

A few weeks have passed now since Epiphany, but since the modern church abolished the pre-Lent period, every Sunday right until the last before Ash Wednesday bears that feast day’s name. So, we may be forgiven if the first answer that comes to mind includes the Blessed Virgin Mary, Magi or shepherds. But this is too anthropocentric an answer. It forgets those who dwell where Jesus came from and those in the Lenten wilderness to which we will soon turn.

The first to know who Jesus was were not people at all. They were spirits: angels and demons. It was angels who forewarned the prophets, who proclaimed Him to Mary and to Joseph, who rejoiced before the shepherds at His birth.

This was all before the Epiphany was complete. Thanks to an innovation to the calendar in 1955, the Western Church today tends to separate the events of the visit of the Magi, the Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of Our Lord into discrete episodes. Yet the ancient church saw these events as spiritually continuous, despite their distance from one another in time, and celebrated them in the single Feast, as is retained to this day in the Eastern Church and the Anglican 1662 rite. The Epiphany is the manifestation in glory (Jn 2:11) of God in Christ which culminates in His Baptism, and the voice of the Father revealing definitively as the Beloved Son.

But after that climactic theophany, all three of the synoptic gospels mark a sudden change. After He emerges from the waters of the Jordan, Ss Matthew and Luke report Him being “led” by the Spirit into the desert. St Mark puts it more starkly, emphasising the sudden fiery force that moved Him: “immediately,” the Evangelist writes, “the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness” (Mk 1:12). And we know whom He met there: not humans, but the chief of the fallen angels, and then the good angels who “ministered unto Him.” And to be sure, even Satan knew quite clearly who He was.

From this moment, the glory fades from view. St John is imprisoned, the prophets’ work of old complete. What they revealed has come to pass. Now it is again concealed. The pillar of fire must turn to cloud in the fullness of the day. In Christ, God walks among the nations hidden in plain sight.

Only when He is disguised does Jesus begin His ministry. Undercover, He calls His first disciples, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John (Mk 1 16-19). Even they do not yet know who He is. But the devils do: and that is why He silences them. The first to truly recognise Him after His return from the desert is the unclean spirit which afflicted a man in a synagogue in Capernaum (Mk 1:23f.): “I know thee who thou art,” it rasps through human lips: “the Holy One of God!”

“Hold thy peace,” Our Lord retorts, which is a quaint way of saying “shut up” – the Greek idiom translates more literally as “put a muzzle on it!” The point is, that He does not want the demons to reveal who He is: a point which Mark reiterates at 1:34. He “suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him,” and He did not yet wish to be known.

His fame spread nonetheless (Mk 1:28). So, positively, what did Our Lord wish to make known at this time? St Mark gives the answer straightforwardly at 1:14:

“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

There it is. Christ’s first mission was to preach the good news that the time of God’s rule, which is what is meant by the Kingdom of God, is here; that subjection to God’s rule demands repentance; and by way of proof, that people may believe this good news, he “healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils” (Mk 1:34, again).

Note the order of priority here. Jesus’ primary mission at this time was not to relieve people of their physical or even spiritual sickness. There is a danger that with our fixation on health we may overprioritise this aspect. Were that the case, He could have done as the Devil urged, and given everyone bread and health ad infinitum with a mere command. But He does not. Our Lord’s command over those particular demons and localised instances of illness offers no solution to the teen atheist’s favourite condundrum, the problem of evil: if anything, belief that Jesus arbitrarily spared some people of their ailments and left the rest of us to perish would rather confound it. That is not the point the exorcisms, which rather served to spread the rumour that the power of God over death and demons was abroad. Enough to give hope; not enough to inspire complacency or worse, to compel obedience. If the devils let out His secret, nobody would have any choice but to obey Him. But Jesus was in the business of making friends, not of enthralling slaves. One might recall Gandalf’s refusal to wield the Ring of Power.   

So let’s not lose sight of Our Lord’s priority: preaching the gospel. Not perhaps the usual modus operandi for making friends, but that was His stated purpose: “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth” (Mk 1:38). That is why Our Lord came, and came hidden. Not just to heal, not just to serve and so remove from us all agency and any need for service, but to call us - with words - to active service in the Kingdom. We see that even with the healing of Peter Simon’s mother-in-law, in Mk 1:30-31: Jesus “took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them.” The subjects of the Kingdom are not healed merely for their own sake, but lifted up for service, ministry in the Kingdom.

As the great Canadian preacher Fr Robert Crouse used to say, where the Gospel reading of any given Sunday tends to show what Christ has done for us, the Epistle shows how He does this in us. The passage from St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians which accompanies this Sunday’s Gospel is no exception. Our Lord concealed the fullness of His glory and went out preaching the Gospel. So St Paul goes out and preaches the Gospel, not for money or personal glory, but as “servant unto all” and “all things to all men … for the gospel’s sake” (1 Cor 9:19, 22f.). When St Paul preached, it was Christ at work in Him. We fool ourselves if we think the same need not apply to us.

“Repent ye,” exhorts Our Lord. Well, among the many things we modern Christians need to repent of is our reticence to preach the Gospel. It is less embarrassing and less risky to engage in works of charity and mercy than to proclaim the truth in words which might cause offence. To know Christ is not enough: even the demons knew Him, and trembled. We must profess Him, too, in our deeds, of course, for works of love are not to be despised – but in words, also. Thus we may become with St Paul “partakers” of the Kingdom which we proclaim.

To do this, we must follow the example Our Lord gave us, for amid His preaching:

“rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mk 1:35).

Prayer in solitude and darkness comes before the glorious breaking of the day as Winter before Spring, and Crucifixion before Resurrection. The retreat to prayer beneath the veil is a vital part of our Christian life, and never more so than during the impending Lent. But the hiding is itself the means to revelation, profound preparatio evangelica: not at first by blinding light, but through words of truth which, however softly they may be spoken, quickly spread.

But we must work to spread those words. For as the Apostle warns (1 Cor 9:16), “yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”