Re:Verse passage – Mark 1:21-35 (day three)
“Immediately on the Sabbath [Jesus] entered the synagogue and began to teach.”
Jesus would have delivered the brief homily that members of the community or itinerant rabbis were encouraged to give after the reading of the scriptures. Brief indeed. Mark doesn’t present that sermon here, but the one that Luke records in chapter 4 of his gospel amounts to less than 130 words in English. “No one’s ever heard a bad short sermon,” goes the old saying. The congregation in Luke apparently disagreed; that sermon ended with the attempted murder of the preacher. Words have power. No one knew this better than Christ himself, through whom all things were made with a word. The words Jesus preached were met variously with anger, elation, fear, hope, puzzlement, and faith. At issue is not whether a person will respond to Christ’s words, but how.
