Mark’s first chapter sets Jesus up as a teacher who stood far apart from any others. He taught with a degree of authority they had not heard before. His teaching was fresh and new. People were challenged in ways they had not been in the past.

But the same chapter focuses our attention on something even more dramatic than fresh and new teaching. Alongside Jesus teaching, He did great miracles: healing diseases that had no cure in their society and even greater: casting possessive spirits out of people by the tens or even hundreds. We can’t even imagine what that would look like today…crowds rushing to meet a teacher who would call cancer out of people, family members falling in front of a sage in distress over their son or daughter, mother or father who had become so different in mental illness that they seemed controlled by another being.

It is a mistake to approach Jesus as simply a wise teacher.

Do I approach Him today in the same way? Am I expecting to learn something new, but not to be transformed or to call His healing into the life of someone around me who needs it?