Category: The Gospel of Mark

✨ Chapter 2: The Miracles and the Margins

Mark 1:21–45 — “The Healer Who Breaks Rules”

A Franciscan Clarean Commentary by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

---

📖 Scripture

“They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”
— Mark 1:22

---

🕍 1. Authority Without Domination

From the very start, Jesus’ authority in Mark is different — it’s not about power over, but love within.
Modern scholars like Elizabeth Malbon point out that Mark’s Jesus is performative theology — he doesn’t argue doctrines; he embodies truth.

The scribes explain. Jesus liberates.
His authority doesn’t come from position, pedigree, or permission — it flows from presence.

Franciscan Clareans recognize this instantly.
True authority is the radiance of compassion. It doesn’t need titles, it needs integrity.
Francis had no office, Clare no sanction — yet both carried a gravity born of holiness, not hierarchy.

Mark’s Jesus shows us: the Kingdom doesn’t require credentials. Just love that moves.

---

👹 2. The Exorcism: Liberation, Not Spectacle

“A man with an unclean spirit cried out… and Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’” — Mark 1:23–25

Modern readers can get hung up on demons.
But Mark’s world saw unclean spirits as the embodiment of everything that enslaves: fear, injustice, despair, systems that crush the human soul.

The first miracle in Mark isn’t a healing — it’s a liberation.
Jesus doesn’t perform a show; he restores a person’s wholeness.
This is liberation theology before it had a name.

Franciscan Clareans can read this as Jesus confronting empire’s demons: greed, domination, shame.
He silences those voices still whispering in our age — the ones that say, you’re not enough, you don’t belong, you can’t change.

The Gospel begins with an exorcism because the Kingdom begins when the lies lose their power.

---

🌅 3. The Healing of Simon’s Mother-in-Law: Service as Resurrection

“He took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”
— Mark 1:31

Notice how gentle this miracle is.
No thunder, no trumpet, no drama — just touch.
Mark uses the Greek word egeiren — “he lifted her up,” the same word used later for resurrection.

Jesus doesn’t just heal her; he raises her up.
Her response? Not worship, not words — service.

For Franciscan Clareans, this is holiness distilled: resurrection leads to hospitality.
Healing isn’t a private gift; it’s a call to love others.

Every fever that leaves us should free us to serve.
That’s the Franciscan rhythm — grace received, grace given, endlessly circling like breath.

---

🌆 4. The Solitary Prayer: Sacred Recharging

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” — Mark 1:35

Even Jesus needed silence.
In the middle of miracles and crowds, he slips away to reconnect with the Source.

Modern biblical scholars read this as an intentional rhythm in Mark: action — contemplation — action.
Francis and Clare lived this too — ora et labora, prayer and work, breath and body, silence and song.

Franciscan Clareans learn from this: activism without contemplation burns out; contemplation without compassion dries up.
We need both — the stillness that grounds our service and the service that gives meaning to our stillness.

---

💙 5. The Leper and the Touch of God

“Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean.’” — Mark 1:41

This moment is one of the most scandalous in all of Scripture.
Touching a leper made you unclean under Jewish purity law. Jesus does it deliberately.

Modern scholars like Amy-Jill Levine remind us: this isn’t Jesus rejecting Judaism — it’s him revealing God’s heart within it. He’s showing that compassion fulfills the Law more perfectly than fear ever could.

When he touches the untouchable, he doesn’t catch impurity — he transmits holiness.
That’s divine contagion.
That’s Francis kissing the leper outside Assisi.
That’s Clare feeding her sisters with her own hands during famine.

Franciscan Clareans call this the sacrament of touch — the holiness of human contact, the theology of tenderness.
In a world terrified of contamination, we bring the healing of presence.

---

🌈 6. Reflection: Miracles as Method

Mark 1 closes with the world buzzing — everyone looking for Jesus, miracles everywhere. But he keeps retreating to prayer, refusing to build a cult of personality.

Modern biblical scholarship notes this rhythm — Jesus moves from center to margin, from crowd to solitude, from fame to hiddenness.

That’s our Franciscan Clarean way too.
We don’t chase spotlight miracles; we practice quiet ones:

A kind word that saves a life.

A meal shared with the lonely.

A prayer whispered for someone who’d forgotten they’re loved.

Mark’s Gospel teaches that the miracle isn’t in the spectacle.
It’s in the touch, the silence, the compassion that doesn’t need credit.

---

🌿 Closing Prayer

Christ of the margins,
who heals with hands and not hierarchies,
who silences demons and awakens dignity,
teach us to touch the world with gentleness.
May we see holiness in the unclean,
beauty in the broken,
and your face in every forgotten one.
Amen.

🌿 The Gospel of Mark

A Franciscan Clarean Commentary — by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

---

💫 The Wild Beginning

Mark’s Gospel doesn’t start with cozy Christmas nostalgia. There’s no manger, no angels cooing over a baby. It starts in the wilderness — with a wild prophet, wearing camel hair, shouting about repentance.

That’s classic Franciscan energy right there: God showing up in the margins, barefoot and untamed. The wilderness is where illusions fall away and simplicity becomes holy clarity. Mark’s Jesus bursts onto the scene not from a palace or temple, but from the desert. The message: God begins again on the edge of everything.

---

🔥 The Urgency of Love

Modern scholars call Mark’s writing “immediate.” Everything happens right now.
From a Franciscan Clarean lens, this isn’t anxiety — it’s holy immediacy.
The Gospel of Mark is breathless because love is urgent. The world is suffering, and compassion can’t wait until we’ve got our theology perfectly sorted.

Francis and Clare understood that same pulse: mend what’s broken today. Feed the hungry now. Reconcile before the sun sets. Mark’s “immediately” is a heartbeat of divine action.

---

💔 The Suffering Christ

Mark’s Jesus bleeds early and often. He’s misunderstood, exhausted, betrayed, and finally screams in forsaken agony on the cross. Scholars see this as Mark’s theology of the Suffering Messiah — God revealed in pain, not power.

We, too, know that mystery.
The Franciscan Clarean path doesn’t chase prestige; it sits with the broken. It whispers that holiness often looks like vulnerability, like compassion that costs something.
Mark’s Gospel turns empire’s logic upside down: greatness is service; glory is love poured out.

---

🕊️ The Disciples and the Dance of Misunderstanding

Let’s be honest — the disciples in Mark are a bit of a mess. They misunderstand nearly everything. They argue about greatness right after Jesus predicts his death.

But Mark isn’t mocking them; he’s revealing us.
Discipleship isn’t a test of IQ — it’s a willingness to keep walking, keep trying, keep saying yes even when you don’t get it.

That’s the way of Clare: simple, stubborn faith that keeps loving even in the dark.
That’s the way of Francis: joyfully failing forward in the company of Christ.

---

🪞 The Messianic Secret

Jesus tells people to keep quiet about his miracles. Why?
Modern scholars call this the Messianic Secret. Mark’s Jesus refuses to be turned into a political slogan or celebrity. He wants hearts transformed, not crowds manipulated.

For Franciscan Clareans, that’s spiritual humility in action — the quiet revolution of love without ego.
Holiness doesn’t need to shout. It just is.

---

🌍 The Politics of Compassion

Mark’s story unfolds under Rome’s shadow. Power, greed, and violence define the world Jesus walks through. When he heals, eats with sinners, or touches lepers, he’s not just being “nice.” He’s resisting empire with compassion.

Modern liberation and narrative scholars like Ched Myers and Amy-Jill Levine help us see that Mark’s Jesus is confronting systems — unbinding the “strong man” of domination.

Francis and Clare did the same in their own century: they defied empire and Church wealth by living voluntary poverty and unarmed love. The Gospel of Mark is their manual for holy rebellion — the art of sacred disobedience.

---

✝️ The Silence at the Tomb

The earliest ending — Mark 16:8 — leaves us hanging:

“They fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered… and said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

That’s the punchline of the Gospel. No resurrection appearances. No tidy closure. Just silence and fear — and an invitation.

Mark ends with a cliffhanger because the story isn’t finished.
It’s our turn to proclaim resurrection — through mercy, through courage, through joy.

Franciscan Clareans pick up that unfinished sentence every day.
Our life is the continuation of the Gospel.
Our compassion is its new chapter.

---

🌈 Reflection

Mark’s Gospel is not a book about belief — it’s a summons to transformation.
It’s wild, fast, apocalyptic, and full of holy surprise.
In a world obsessed with control and comfort, Mark calls us to holy poverty, fearless love, and radical hope.