There is a great contrast between the way God is present in our first reading and today’s Gospel. One way to see this contrast immediately is by comparing the length of these readings.
In our reading from 1 Kings, we read that account of the dedication of the First Temple, Solomon’s Temple. There is a parallel account in 2 Chronicles that runs to three chapters.1 After the Temple was dedicated God manifested His presence there through a dark cloud. This cloud was so thick and dark that Temple service could not be conducted.
In our Gospel, while the people “immediately recognized” Jesus, it isn’t clear that they recognized Him as the Only Begotten Son of the Father, that is, as “true God from true God” in the flesh. Rather, they recognized the guy who had been going around Galilee healing the sick and performing other signs and wonders, like miraculously feeding five thousand people who followed Him and the disciples as they attempted to make a retreat after a busy time of ministry.2
It was while making their way back, while Jesus stayed behind to pray, that the Lord came to His disciples walking on the water.3 Arriving back on the western shore of Lake Gennesaret (a different name for the same body of water also known as the Sea of Galilee), they landed in Gennesaret, which, along with Capernaum (Jesus’s base of operations during the early part of the Galilean ministry), is located on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Geography plays an important role in Saint Mark's Gospel.
Gennesaret is a fertile plain about three miles long and one mile wide. It is delineated by the hills of Galilee on the west and the Sea of Galilee on the east. Gennesaret is not, therefore, a Gentile territory but a Jewish one. And so, it makes sense that this Nazarene who had been going around healing the sick and performing miracles would be recognized there.
During the dedication of the Temple, God is not the dark cloud. He is not incense. He is not the ark of the covenant. God is not the tablets inside the ark. Rather, God’s presence is mediated through these holy things.
While this relatively non-descript Galilean peasant is God in the flesh, He is not recognized as such. He is recognized as a healer, as someone who might give sight to the blind, open the ears of the deaf, make the lame walk, etc.
Despite this, there doesn’t seem to be any talk among these Galileans that perhaps this is Messiah. One doesn’t have to be a New Testament scholar to notice that Jesus’ divinity wasn’t intuitively obvious to the casual or even to the engaged observer most of the time. There was no golden halo or shimmering glow as we see in so many artistic depictions of the events of His ministry.
It doesn’t matter who people say Jesus is. What matters is who you believe or maybe even know Him to be, based on your experience. A few chapters further on in Mark’s Gospel, as Jesus was making His way with His disciples to another region of Galilee- Caesarea Philippi- He asks those closest to Him who people are saying that He is. After listening to the various answers, spoken by Peter, the Lord asks him the most important question in the world: “But who do you say that I am?”4
And so, who do you say Jesus is? Is He merely someone you turn to in dire need, someone who can and just might, in His goodness, do what you ask of Him? Do you follow Jesus for what you think He will for you? In other words, is your relationship with the Lord transactional? Keep in mind the reward for following Jesus is Jesus. He most often shows up in unexpected ways and in unexpected circumstances.
Bread and wine are very ordinary things. It isn’t intuitively obvious that these consecrated, transubstantiated elements become are Christ’s body and blood. Nonetheless, He gives Himself to you wholly in Holy Communion. All He asks is for you to give yourself wholly to Him.
1 See 2 Chronicles 5-7.↩
2 See Mark 6:34-44.↩
3 See Mark 6:45-52.↩
4 See Mark 8:27-30.↩
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