Today's Gospel reading has brought to my attention the very significant differences in the way each of the four Evangelists begin the story of Jesus' ministry. They all place the baptism of Jesus and the call of the disciples at the beginning of the story, but St. Matthew focuses on the teaching of Jesus, giving three chapters to the Sermon on the Mount. St. Luke describes Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah on the Sabbath and the preaching that Isaiah's prophecy of salvation is now coming true. St John describes the wedding in Cana, and the miracle of the water turned to wine. Each of these accounts is positive and inspiring in its own way. In contrast, St. Mark begins with a healing, not of a withered arm, but of a man with an unclean spirit. There is an atmosphere of surprise and skepticism among the people of Capernaum. This beginning is not nearly as positive as the others and already hints at the opposition Jesus will meet.

In order to understand this story, we need to remind ourselves of the most important religious value in the religion and culture of 1st century Judaism. It was the distinction between clean and unclean, pure and impure, holy and unholy. This distinction applied to places, to people, and to food. When we read about it, we often make the mistake of thinking these words refer to the moral distinction between right and wrong. In fact they have little or nothing to do with morality. They have nothing to do with physical dirt or germs either. Holiness was about the separation of places, people and things so that they will be part of ritual without loss of purity. Places and people that are separate must be protected from contact with all that is not separate - all that is secular let us say - so that there is no mixing or "contamination" of what is separate. Think of Moses finding the burning bush and being told to take off his shoes, because the shoes were unholy, secular, or unclean.

We can actually make a diagram of how this worked with people and places. Think of a series of concentric circles, from a small bull's-eye outward. At the center is the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem - a place that only the high Priest can enter, and only once a year. The next circle would be the room in the Temple with the lamp stand and the altar of incense. The third circle would be the courtyard of the temple where animal sacrifices were offered; then the court of the women; then the city of Jerusalem; and then the territory of Judea. Beyond Judaea, it was questionable whether there were many holy places, because the Gentiles surrounded Judaea. There were Greeks and Romans establishing cities in Galilee and across the Jordan in Decapolis, so those places as a whole were not separate. Likewise, there were degrees of holiness for people: obviously the Priests and Levites who served in the Temple were the holiest, and after them, the scribes, rabbis and Pharisees who carefully observed the law. Both the Holy Places and those holy people would be made unholy by contact with women and Gentiles. This means that a Jewish man living in Jerusalem or Judaea would be permanently or temporarily unclean; if one of his ancestors was not Jewish, if he engaged in a prohibited occupation, such as being a butcher or a merchant, if he had an open wound or sore, if he was crippled, if he had failed to offer the appointed sacrifices, if he had touched his wife at certain times of the month, or if he had eaten a meal with Gentiles. This business of being 'holier than thou' was a daily reality.

All of this gives us a different perspective on the healing of the man with the unclean spirit. Here was Jesus going to the Synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath, and serving as a teacher, or rabbi. Among the congregation was a man with an 'unclean spirit', who disrupted the service by shouting accusations at Jesus. Both the witnesses to that event and St. Mark in writing about it, assumed the man possesses by a demon. But what do we think? Isn't the whole idea of demon possession a way of labeling behavior that is unacceptable, both socially and religiously? Perhaps this man was distressed because he had lost his farm; perhaps an injury made it difficult for him to work. He may have been arrested and tortured by the Romans, and be suffering from post-traumatic stress.

What is interesting about this healing is that Jesus, who had taught with such authority, cast out the unclean spirit, and restored the man to a state of cleanliness or holiness. In the light of the other things we know about his teaching and his ministry, I propose that there are two levels of meaning here. The first level concerns this healing and all other healings Jesus did, in which he personally crossed the line dividing holiness from what is unholy, in order to restore people to wholeness. Jesus cared about all the people who were sick; the blind and the deaf, the ones with skin diseases ad the ones with a flow of blood, the ones with mental illness and the ones with injured limbs. He did not reject them as everyone else did. He did not treat them as unclean, or unimportant, or unworthy. By his healing and his exorcisms, he brought them back to life, to a position within the community and often to their families.

The second level has to do with the Synagogue and the Temple, holy places where the system of holiness was taught and sustained. The story St. Mark is telling is focused much more on the actions of Jesus, than the teachings of Jesus. Within that story, the question of the authority of Jesus comes up in many places. In today's Gospel the people are astounded both by the authority with which Jesus taught, and by the authority with which he cast out the unclean spirit. Almost at the end of Jesus' ministry there is another event which St. Mark may have treated a parallel story: the cleansing of the temple in chapter 11. Remember that Jesus was angry with the money changers in the temple: apparently because they did not give a fair exchange value for the Roman coins.

What if Jesus' anger was primarily directed at the system of holiness, which imposed such heavy burdens upon the people? What if God sent Jesus with the authority to reject separateness as a criteria for being close to God? Then we would see the healing in Capernaum as the cleansing of the Synagogue, which culminated many months later in the cleansing of the Temple. Then we would see that Jesus was teaching, and acting out, a new criteria for being close to God, namely compassion. The whole idea of keeping people away from Holy places because they were unclean was thrown out by Jesus. In fact, the whole idea of needing a holy place at all was diminished, by the table fellowship he created, and by his promise that where two or three are gathered in his name, he would be in the midst of them. In other words, he completely changed the context in which people could be close to God, and the criteria by which such closeness could be established.

This last week, we celebrated two events which were the direct outcome of Jesus' rejection of separateness. The first event was the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25th. We do not know exactly when Paul was converted - it could have been six or eight years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Remember that Paul was a Pharisee who was persecuting the followers of Jesus because they had rejected the system of holiness and appeared to be blasphemers. On the road to Damascus, Jesus spoke to Paul, and called him to be an apostle to the Gentiles. To the Gentiles - those unclean people who must be kept away from the Temple, the Synagogue, and all observant Jews. Paul was a Jew who had never met Jesus, and who was trying to sustain the old system - yet Jesus healed him as well and sent him out to bring many others to holiness and salvation.

The second event actually occurred on the same day, January 25th, 1944. On that day the Anglican Bishop of Hong Kong, R. O. Hall , ordained the Rev. Florence Li Tim Oi to the priesthood. Li-Tim had been ordained a deacon in 1941, and sent to Macao. In 1943, the Japanese captured Hong Kong and it was no longer possible for priests to travel to Macao. Bishop Hall felt that the congregation in Macao needed to receive the sacrament, and so he did two things. First he authorized Li Tim, as a deacon, to celebrate the Eucharist on an emergency basis, and second he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury asking permission to ordain her to the priesthood. Due to the war, the Archbishop's answering letter, telling Bishop Hall not to proceed, did not arrive until after the ordination. It was necessary for both the Bishop and Li-Tim to travel, at great personal risk, to a third location for the ordination. In order to get to Xing Xing, Li Tim walked part of the way, and also traveled by bicycle, boat and sedan chair, crossing two mountain ranges. Li Tim Oi was the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the whole Anglican Communion, breaking down another important barrier to the ability to be close to God.

Today as we remember the courageous choices of Bishop Hall, and Li Tim Oi, as we celebrate Chinese New Year, and as we reflect on the healing power of Jesus, we recognize that holiness is a state or a process, of being in communion with God, which makes us whole. And we recognize that Jesus specifically invited everyone to come close when he said, "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32).