THE GOSPEL OF TOMORROW

They set out to seize him

23 JANUARY (Mk 3,20-21)
We know from Scripture that King David was judged “out of himself”, “man of little account”, because he showed all his joy, dancing before the ark of the Lord that was brought in Jerusalem. The man really is a nothing, one “beside himself”, before God. There is no dignity to be protected before God. He is everything and we are nothing.

David again assembled all the picked men of Israel, thirty thousand in number. Then David and all the people who were with him set out for Baala of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which bears the name of the Lord of hosts enthroned above the cherubim. The ark of God was placed on a new cart and taken away from the house of Abinadab on the hill. Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab, guided the cart, with Ahio walking before it, while David and all the Israelites made merry before the Lord with all their strength, with singing and with citharas, harps, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals. When they came to the threshing floor of Nodan, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and steadied it, for the oxen were making it tip. But the Lord was angry with Uzzah; God struck him on that spot, and he died there before God. David was disturbed because the Lord had vented his anger on Uzzah. (The place has been called Perez-uzzah down to the present day.) David feared the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” So David would not have the ark of the Lord brought to him in the City of David, but diverted it to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and his whole house.

When it was reported to King David that the Lord had blessed the family of Obed-edom and all that belonged to him, David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom into the City of David amid festivities. As soon as the bearers of the ark of the Lord had advanced six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatling. Then David, girt with a linen apron, came dancing before the Lord with abandon, as he and all the Israelites were bringing up the ark of the Lord with shouts of joy and to the sound of the horn.

As the ark of the Lord was entering the City of David, Saul’s daughter Michal looked down through the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart. The ark of the Lord was brought in and set in its place within the tent David had pitched for it. Then David offered holocausts and peace offerings before the Lord. When he finished making these offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts. He then distributed among all the people, to each man and each woman in the entire multitude of Israel, a loaf of bread, a cut of roast meat, and a raisin cake. With this, all the people left for their homes. When David returned to bless his own family, Saul’s daughter Michal came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has honoured himself today, exposing himself to the view of the slave girls of his followers, as a commoner might do!” But David replied to Michal: “I was dancing before the Lord. As the Lord lives, who preferred me to your father and his whole family when he appointed me commander of the Lord’s people, Israel, not only will I make merry before the Lord, but I will demean myself even more. I will be lowly in your esteem, but in the esteem of the slave girls you spoke of I will be honoured.” And so Saul’s daughter Michal was childless to the day of her death (Cf. 2 Sam 6,1-23).

Jesus we know that He is also destroyed, annihilated; he has sunk into the depths of our humanity to save it from his inside, from his heart and from his soul. We know that he has taken the form of a servant and not that of a glorious king. But we ignore what he was doing special, so special as to suggest to his disciples that Jesus “was beside himself.” This should not worry us too much. For us crazy is anyone has a behavior different than ours. It is enough that one does not think like us, to be declared “out of himself”, “mad”, “incompetent”, “unsuitable” and a thousand other thoughts that serve to express the difference from us.

He came home. Again (the) crowd gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat. When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

But also God, our God, is declared “crazy” when he does not act according to our expectations, our desires and our needs. When something happens not according to our will, we accuse him quickly of irrationality, unreasonableness and foolishness.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us a right view of faith.