I haven’t seen the television series The Chosen, and I admit to being biased against it for reasons that are probably not entirely fair. But I do understand from some trustworthy and astute parishioners that it’s worth watching. Based on what they’ve told me, at the very least, the show’s dramatic portrayal of Jesus’s life in ministry could encourage us to encounter the Gospel stories with more imagination.
Truth be told, it’s not always easy to do this. Maybe we think that we’re not allowed to use our creative intelligence with holy Scripture. Or maybe we feel as if we don’t have enough to work with in the text itself. And Mark’s Gospel, of all the Gospels, is pretty lean in its prose. It’s a rapid-fire succession of dramatic events, with little embellishment. Mark gets straight to the point.
But, if I were scripting today’s Gospel story for television, and if I needed a title for the episode, I would call it “The Hunted.” We’d want to draw the viewer in without delay, so the initial scene would feature Jesus with Simon, Andrew, Simon’s mother-in-law, James, and John in a tiny house eating a meal prepared by Simon’s newly-healed mother-in-law. They’re enjoying fellowship and conversation after this meal when, suddenly, the rumble of feet is heard outside. Voices get closer. And before long, people are knocking on the door and pressing against it. The door itself is bowing in.
Scores of eager people outside have come from all over the little village of Capernaum because they need something from Jesus. They’re desperate. Some desire healing for themselves or other family members. Others merely want to catch a glimpse of Jesus. But all of them want something from this man about whom they’ve heard so much. Jesus is the pursued. He’s the one who is hunted by the crowd.
In the next scene of our television episode, we see Jesus healing all these people who’ve hunted for him. The remains of the meal previously shared are left on the table inside the house. Jesus is outside, working once again. We see him silence the demons, who oddly enough, know who he is. But in a subsequent scene, the camera fades into a glimpse of Jesus sitting alone in a deserted place, praying. It’s a vivid contrast to the previous scenes, in which he was bombarded with requests from hordes of people. The melee has subsided into tranquility. Now, he has hunted for a lonely place to be with God, all by himself.
But this quiet loneliness will not last. Soon, Simon and some others seek him out. We’re told that they pursue him, but the verb is really stronger than that. The meaning is closer to that of a predator going after prey. They hunted for him. They zealously sought him out because everyone is searching for Jesus.
It's been debated whether this hunting for Jesus was perhaps misguided. People were always seeking Jesus out, and rarely did they understand his mission. They wanted his healing, teaching, and comfort, but when they learned how difficult discipleship was, they fell away and lost their nerve. So, some have interpreted the disciples’ hunting for Jesus as a negative intrusion on his desire for privacy.
But right now, I don’t want to get lost in the weeds on this nuance. I want to give Simon and the disciples the benefit of the doubt. Were they possibly misguided? Yes. Did they understand what following Jesus would really mean for them? Not yet. But there’s something in their hunting for Jesus that’s compelling to me. I’m moved by the fact that so many people wanted to be near and with Jesus. He’s the one who’s hunted, perhaps not so much as a predator goes after its prey but as a suffering person goes to any length to find the source of their healing.
And maybe I’m so drawn to this hunting of Jesus because it feels so removed from our own age. Jesus so often does not seem to be the hunted one these days. He’s the neglected one, the ignored one, the forsaken one, because many people simply think they don’t need him. And there are many who claim to love him in their own way, but they still seem to be looking for every excuse not to find him. I don’t understand it, and it breaks my heart. But you’re here today because you’re hunting for him, and so am I. Let’s linger for a while with this incredible image of Jesus being passionately pursued by the crowds.
The fact that crowds of people were hunting for Jesus is evidence that something was amiss in their world. We tend to think our own societal problems are worse than they’ve ever been in human history, but that’s simply a mark of modern arrogance. Jesus was born into a deeply troubled and disordered world. And if I directed an episode of The Chosen, I would make sure those problems were known: the injustice, the imperial oppression, the marginalizing, the stigmatizing, the poverty, the hunger. All of it would be shown in vivid detail because such a description explains why Jesus was sought out and pursued. The suffering masses were hunting for him because they wanted to be free, and they somehow sensed that this man for whom they were hunting would not only heal them and help them: he would give them glorious liberty.
It begs the question of why more people aren’t hunting for Jesus in our own day. If we really are so tired of the perpetual bad news and of seeing hearts broken, then why aren’t more people hunting for the one who will set us free? And do those of us who profess to be hunting for him truly believe that he can and will set us free? Or have we, too, given into the narrative of despair? Where are the masses of people at the doors of our churches, yearning to get in and meet the one who saves and makes us whole?
And yet, there’s one thing that would be hard for us to depict in today’s Gospel story if it were scripted for television. We have the benefit of living in the aftermath of the resurrection, and this changes everything. And on the other side of the empty tomb, there’s an astounding role reversal. The one who is hunted before the resurrection suddenly becomes the hunter after he’s raised from the dead. He’s the hunter in the best sense of the word. He takes all the desperateness out of the zealous pursuit and turns it into perfect love.
The risen Christ is the one who seeks us out in love. The one who prayed by himself in a lonely place and was sought out is now the one who’s not bound by time and space and who finds us in our own lonely places. The one once hunted is the Good Shepherd who goes after his sheep. He pursues us relentlessly, not to accuse or condemn us, but to love us back into wholeness and to bring us back to his heavenly Father in that unremitting love.
He seeks out all with an indefatigable passion: the lonely, the lost, the forsaken, the imprisoned, the sick, the stubborn, the angry, the cold-hearted. He searches for all of them with the same measure of compassion, ready to heal, love, forgive, and redeem. There’s no good way to depict this in visual form. It defies storytelling. It’s simply a truth that I wish more people could know and understand.
This pursuit by the risen Christ is an incontestable fact. He seeks us out, whether we’re looking for him or not, whether we’re knocking on the door of his house or running away from it. But there’s one catch to all this. We won’t be transformed by his gift of love unless we want to be found. We aren’t prey hunted by a predator, we’re beloved children sought after by the one who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves. But he never forces us into that love. We can only be embraced by his love if we stop running from it.
God has a mission for us, and it’s one that will run off the pages of any television script. It can’t be scripted because its reach is too vast. We’re being invited to take our love and knowledge of being pursued passionately by Christ into the world. We’re to go into the streets, alleys, and hidden corners of our communities and let the citizens of our anguished, lonely world know that they, too, are being pursued by one who wants to love them back into wholeness. And he’s the only one who will make us whole and set us free.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 4, 2024