01302021 – Mark 1. 21-28 Epiphany IV
NO ONE can silence gossip, NOT EVEN Jesus.
People LOVE to talk. We love to talk ABOUT OTHERS. We love to “STIR THE POT,” as it were. We love talking BEHIND the BACKS of “others.” Often times, saying things, we would never-ever-say-to-THEIR-FACE. AINT WE SOMETHIN”?
“Two faced” is what “THEY SAY.”
I really DO have fun.
I begin with a SERIOUS STUDY of the Gospel of Mark (my favorite gospel) and a WELL-KNOWN TEXT…and I end up… “relishing” a tangent on Gossip.
It IS fun, I tell you!
We ALL gossip to a greater or lesser extent or to degrees.
Sometimes we just listen to gossip and take it all in. And of course, we would or could NEVER SHARE IT or even acknowledge it.
At “other times” we CAN’T WAIT to share it and to “pass it on…” to EVERYONE or ANYONE that will hear us out.
Did you realize that gossiping is a part of “social bonding?”
We only SHARE gossip with people we want to BOND with. We SEEK each other out. We KNOW who will APPRECIATE our gossip and WHO will not. People of a “LIKE-MIND.” People who will be RECEPTIVE, and OPEN. People like US. Gossipers have to stick together!”
The word “gossip” assumed the meaning of a person, “mostly A WOMAN,” (sorry ladies, don’t HATE) one who DELIGHTS in idle talk, or idle chatter, a newsmonger, or a tattler.
Remember early on Easter morning – how the women returning from the EMPTY TOMB were not believed? I checked it out.
It is in Luke’s gospel…the 24th chapter “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them as “idle tale” and they DID NOT BELIEVE THEM.
In the early 19th century, the term was extended from “THE TALKER” to “THE CONVERSATION” of such persons. The actual conversation became known as being “GOSSIP.”
Then I actually found out that the verb “to gossip,” meaning “to BE A gossip”, first appeared in writings of William Shakespeare.
“DISHING,” “tattling,” a “mass-medium” or “rumor,” a sharing of the personal or private affairs of “others.”
Jesus taught with AUTHORITY and the crowd was AMAZED.
Others did not teach like this. The Scribes definitely DID NOT. (And they were supposedly LEARNED MEN.) Where does such AUTHORITY come from…?
It is AMAZING.
And this is JESUS, from GALILEE. A Galilean, just like us! One of us!
Isn’t this the guy – from NAZARETH in Galilee, a “working class stiff,” an “unskilled laborer,” “a hand?” Someone who worked with his hands…a “common laborer,” “a common workman,” “a simple roustabout.”
And, as EVERYONE KNOWS…nothing GOOD can come out of NAZARETH, right?
The crowd was astounded. Stunned. They did not know WHAT to think or WHAT to say.
JUST THEN…an unclean spirit also provoked by the teachings of Jesus began to “ACT OUT.”
The people were afraid. The demons were afraid. THIS was something NEW. Something DIFFERENT. A STRANGE teaching… Everyone was STUNNED at his words and his AUTHORITY. And the demons called him OUT.
I want you to KNOW that in Mark, “this UNCLEAN SPIRIT” is “the first” to KNOW who Jesus IS, “The HOLY ONE OF GOD.” (And to publicly acknowledge him as such.)
The fact that Jesus can silence the spirit is proof of his authority and power.
And AS A RESULT, “rumors, news, talk, opinion, buzz, dish, gossip and scuttlebutt” of and about Jesus spreads all over Galilee.
Because SOMETIMES people JUST HAVE TO talk!
Amen.