Today’s gospel summarises the early activity of Jesus in Galilee. He went about the villages preaching the Kingdom of God and healing people – a sign that the Kingdom of God was already present among the people. He wanted to remind the people that a loving and compassionate God was truly present among them in their daily life and He wanted the people to respond to God’s love by loving and serving God in return. Today’s gospel tells us why He was such an effective preacher and why people enjoyed listening to Him. It was because he did not teach like the scribes and other teachers but He “taught with authority”.
Scripture scholars today tell us that 90 per cent of what Jesus taught, the scribes, pharisees, and rabbis at that time also taught. But it sounded new because it was taught with authority. He did not spend time quoting other teachers, as the scribes tended to do, but He spoke from personal experience. That is what gave Him all the authority He needed. He knew the Scriptures and what other teachers were saying, but He also knew the truth of what they were saying because of His personal experience with the Living God of Israel.
For the 20 years I was teaching at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago my office was next door to the office of Carrol Stuhlmueller, CP, one of the world’s outstanding scholars of the Old Testament. When he was offering his course on the Psalms we always had a hard time finding a room large enough to hold all the people who registered for his course. People would come from all over Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana to hear him lecture on the Psalms. Over the years we became good friends and I began to understand what made so many people want to come and listen to him. He was an outstanding scholar but what attracted the people was not only his love for the Psalms but he was someone who had in his own life experienced the loving, patient, and compassionate God described in the Psalms. He taught with the authority of personal experience. One of the things that I admired about Carrol was that although he was on Pontifical Commissions and was often invited to give retreats to bishops, he also would gladly speak to a student’s 5th grade class preparing for their First Communion. He loved talking about the loving and compassionate God he knew. This is what the hearers of Jesus must have sensed.
Another thing that gave Jesus authority was that people saw that God would be willing to work a miracle through Him by freeing a man in the synagogue from an evil spirit. How powerful a sign of God’s healing power can be was brought home to me when I was still a young priest studying in Grenoble. In my class at the University was a beautiful young girl from California. She was a Christian Scientist. She told me how she spent one hour each morning reading the Scriptures and one hour reading Mary Eddy Baker. I knew nothing about Christian Scientism and I asked her many questions. One of their beliefs is that the world of physical illness is not the real world; the real world is that of the spirit. I told her I didn’t want to question her faith but asked did she ever wonder if that is true. She then told me how at the age of 12 she fell from her bike and had a compound fracture in her arm – she could see the bone sticking out. She said that her mother wanted to rush her to the hospital “because she did not have a strong faith”. But she insisted that her father be called first. Her father came home from work, bandaged her arm, and stayed home all week to pray for her healing. She said her mother kept pestering him to let her take her to a doctor, so he relented. “When we arrived at the hospital”, she said “the doctor unwrapped my arm and then asked my mother why she brought me in. She said because she broke her arm. He said that he could not see any sign of a break, but he took an Xray just to satisfy her. He said there was no sign of a break”. Then she looked at me and smiled and said: “how can I doubt my faith?
I have tried to learn these two lessons for my life: I should not talk about a God-experience unless I myself have experienced it, and I should not be surprised if God works miracles because of my faith.