The manifestations of God's power on earth: nothing external
(Mk 8:11-13)
Jesus comes up against unbelief. It comes from various blinders and parties taken, or (especially in the disciples) arises from carelessness.
The Lord turns away from those who test him and those who reject what is God-given, claiming to fix how he should act.
The Son of Man respects each person who follows him, but makes it clear that decisions and even before that, lack of acute perception prevent the encounter and redemption of life.
In this perspective, believers do not live to "prove". Christ himself does not wait for us in subliminal and miraculous manifestations, but on the shore of an earthly spirituality.
Value does not need applause (a double-edged sword) - the mask of the artificial proposal, and inauthentic life.
Humanising correspondence does not grow with the multiplication of dizzying signals.
God does not coerce the unconvinced, nor does He overpower them with trials; thus He gains a heritage of Love in growth.
His authentic Church, without clamour or persuasive stance - seemingly insignificant - is all gathered in intimate unity with its Firstborn: native, portentous and regenerative power - solid and real.
The Pharisees sought overt solutions full of impression, but they could know them far better within their own souls and lives.
Incarnation: there are no other valid signs than the occurrences and new relationships - with oneself and others - which bring forth the very and unheard-of Person of the Risen One (the one without wrappings).
The Eternal is no longer the pure transcendence of the Jews, nor the summit of wisdom of the ancient world.
The sign of the Most High is the story of Jesus (alive in us). It opens the exciting road that leads to the Father.
We trust in Christ, so no spiritual drugs that delude us of happiness.
This is the meaning of the new Creation: in the surrender to the Spirit - but all concrete (not mannered) and proceeding dragging the alternative reality.
His Person is a unique signal, which dissolves the many ersatz religion of fears, fetters, established roles.
Tares that would like to imprison him in 'ally' doer of seductive and immediately resolving miracles.
Some into a simple temple purifier or a white mill character - and so are we, if we allow ourselves to be manipulated.
The 'Pharisees' Jesus addresses are those back in his communities (cf. vv.10-11) who wanted to frame the Messiah in the pattern of normal expectations to which they had always been accustomed.
Already they were fed up with it....
In these 'veterans' there was no sign of conversion to the idea of the Son of God as a Servant, trusting in dreams without prestige.
In them? No trace of a new idea - no change of pace that would mark the demise of the blatant, dehumanising - and also sacred - society of the outside.
The popular leaders sometimes miss the significance of the only living Sign: Jesus the Food of Life.
Because of them, not the distant ones, the Lord "groans in the spirit" (v.12 Greek text) - even today, saddened by so much blindness.
Life is indeed precluded to those who cannot shift their gaze.
Immediately after Mk 8:15 he refers to the danger of the dominant ideology that made the leaders themselves lose their objective perception of events.
A 'leaven' that was coarse but rooted in the painful experience of the people - that stimulated puffery even in the disciples, contaminating them.
To the first of the class it might have seemed that Jesus was a leader like Moses, for he had just fed the starving people in the desert (vv.1-9).
But the rejection is stark: Mark makes it sharp by emphasising both the Master's sense of suffering and his radical, peremptory denial.
To save the needy people there is no other way but to start from within.
Then proceeding towards a fullness of being that permeates, approves us, and allows us to break our lives in favour of our brothers.
There is no escape. Only communion with the hidden source of one's own eminent Self and respectful and active dialogue with others saves one from a closed group mentality.
In this way, no club is allowed - claiming monopolistic exclusivity over God and souls (Mk 9:38-40) with an explicit claim to discipline the multitudes.
The community of the Risen One abhors the competitive conception of religious life itself, if it is a sacred reflection of the imperial world and of a society that cramps and embitter the existence of the little ones.
It would be a sick life in the pursuit of even apparent prestige.
Conversely, in fraternal realities the first "will be last of all and servant of all" (Mk 9:35).
Therefore, it is imperative to avoid a pyramid mentality and discard mentality creeping into the faithful.
A spirit of competition that then inexorably ends up seeking refuge in hypocritical miraculism, a substitute for a life of Faith.
The Master does the same to educate the members of the Church who remain - some still do - affected by a sense of superiority towards the crowds and outsiders.
A feeling of chosen and privileged people (Lk 9:54-55) that was infiltrating even the primitive communities.
To those who do not want to open their eyes except to have their senses captured by phenomena all to be discerned - because despite the official creed they profess, they remain tied to an ideology of power - the Lord never reserves impressive confirmations coming "from heaven" (v.11) that would be the paradoxical validation.
The only sign is and will be his living Church: the 'victory' of the Risen One pulsating in all those who take him seriously.
Without fixed hierarchies - under the infallible guidance of the Call and the Word - the children know how to reinterpret, even in an unprecedented way.
Such is the prodigy, embodied in the thousand events (of history, of personal and community life); in the impossible recoveries, recoveries and revaluations.
The authentic Messiah bestows no cosmic display.
No festival that forces spectators to bow their heads in the presence of such shocking glory and dignity - as if he were a heavenly dictator.
And no shortcut lightning.
Over the centuries, the Churches have often fallen into this 'apologetic' temptation, all internal to devotions of arid impulse: to look for marvellous signs and flaunt them to silence opponents.
Stratagems for a trivial attempt to shut the mouths of those who ask not for experiences of parapsychology, but rather for testimonies with little withering and without trickery or contrivance: of concrete disalienation.
Not bad, this liberation activity of ours in favour of the last, and one that holds fast; not clinging to the idea of a ruffian with triumphalist or consolatory aspects.
We prefer the wave of Mystery.
We yearn to be guided by an unknown energy, which has a non-artificial goal in store - led by the eminent but intimate and hidden Friend (exclusive in us).
We will be one humanity in the Master, on the Right Path and belonging to us. Even on broken and incomplete paths, even of bewilderment.
In commentary on the Tao Tê Ching (i) Master Ho-shang Kung writes:
"The eternal Name wants to be like the infant that has not yet spoken, like the chick that has not yet hatched.
The bright pearl is inside the oyster, the beautiful gem is in the middle of the rock: however resplendent it may be on the inside, on the outside it is foolish and insipid'.
All of this is perhaps rated 'unconsciousness' and 'inconclusiveness'... but it bears what we are - expressing another way of seeing the world.
Within ourselves and within the Call of the Gospels we have a fresh power, approving the path different from the immediately normal and the glaringly obvious.
A Call that is enchantment, delight and splendour, because it activates us by questioning.
A Word that does not reason according to patterns.
A heartfelt plea, which is not impressed by exceptional things, by plays that suffocate the soul in search of meaning and authenticity.
Genuine Wonder, an indomitable impulse nested in the dimension of human fullness, and that does not give up: it wants to express itself in its transparency and become reality.
A kind of intimate Infante: it moves in a way that is judged 'abstruse', but puts things right, inside and out.
The free and life-giving testimony, attentive and always personally ingenious, will be innate and unprecedented, biting, inventive without shrewdness, unpredictable and not at all conformist.
It will unleash and unceasingly re-energise a convinced, singular, incisive experience of Faith - despite the fact that it may appear losing and unsuccessful, unhonourable and senseless.
Far more than miracles, the pleas of our essence and reality will make us recognise the call and action of God in people and in the fabric of history.
Invitations that can germinate other astonishments and prodigies of divine-human goodness, than paroxysmal visions seasoned with neurosis and empty sentimentality, or magic.
The only sign of salvation is Christ in us - without seams, or grand hysterical gestures.
The image and likeness of the new humanity; the manifestation of God's power on earth.
For authentic conversion: nothing external.
To internalise and live the message:
What is the nature of your search for evidence?
How does your Sign (making believe) differ from gimmicks, acts of force, or what others would have you spread?
