Study of Mark Part 3: Healer or Teacher?

³⁵ Then Jesus got up early in the morning when it was still very dark, departed, and went out to a deserted place, and there he spent time in prayer. ³⁶ Simon and his companions searched for him. ³⁷ When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” ³⁸ He replied, “Let us go elsewhere, into the surrounding villages, so that I can preach there too. For that is what I came out here to do.” ³⁹ So he went into all of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

You have probably heard/seen/read a litany of sermons and studies on the importance of setting aside “quiet time” to be alone with God. Jesus does it here, and his time alone with God seems to be a way of recharging the Spirit in him and resting. So I won’t spend a lot of time talking about what has already been covered extensively. Quiet time = good. Instead, we need to keep this section of text within the construct of the overall narrative. Therefore, looking at what came before, Jesus spent a long, probably exhausting night healing people and driving out demons. He withdraws to recharge alone with God, the ultimate source of his power. Soon afterward Simon and the others find him and tell him that everyone is looking for him. Why are they looking for him? Jesus’ response informs us that it is not to hear him preach. If it were, he would have stayed at Capernaum. Most likely, they are coming to him so that he can spend another day healing and driving out demons. His response then is to leave and go to another town, where he can preach. Although we see Jesus show extreme compassion and heal people’s physical ailments, this is not the purpose or focus of his mission. Mark made this clear, even before Jesus appeared on the scene, but now Jesus himself declares it.

Another way to read these verses is that Jesus has already preached what he needed to preach to this town (in the synagogue and possibly while he was healing), so he wants to move to other places rather than stay where he is. But the text is silent about what, if anything, he did teach/preach. Even at the synagogue, Jesus’ teaching is not recorded, only the crowd’s reaction to him, which is quickly overshadowed by the unclean spirit encounter, so we do not know what was said. And the text says nothing about Jesus teaching anyone at Simon’s house, only that he healed and cast out demons. It seems more likely to me that Jesus was not able to preach what he wanted to preach because people were looking for him to heal. Thus he leaves and travels around for a while. He will return to Capernaum in the next chapter, though, and get his chance to preach to them then. It also might be ironic that Jesus can only find rest after the Sabbath is over.

Here we come across an interesting paradox in Mark. Jesus does not want to be seen as a healer-exorcist and yet he spends so much of the early text in the Gospel doing just that. Jesus starts the first day of his official ministry by teaching in the synagogue, and the authority that his teaching carries amazes people. But with the exorcism in the synagogue, and the subsequent night spent healing and casting out demons, Jesus’ teaching/preaching seems to have been all but forgotten by the crowds. We will continue to see this tension between what Jesus wants to give the crowds and what they want from him, as Jesus will begin blending small teachings and anecdotes into his healings and ultimately transition into more of a preaching/teaching ministry, though still an active one.

Mark even seems to acknowledge this tension a bit because although he records that Jesus taught and preached in the synagogues, nothing of his teaching or preaching is recorded. Aside from his statement declaring the Kingdom of God near, Jesus doesn’t get any significant lines of dialogue in which to teach or preach until the next chapter. While I am probably stretching here, it is almost as though Mark is not recording the specifics of anything Jesus taught because he wants to make the point that no one remembered anything he taught, they were so caught up in his ability to heal and exorcise. He obviously was preaching, though, because Mark makes a point to say that he was doing so in “all of Galilee.”