Christ's New Community (Part 1) | Gospel of Mark

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I see the Scriptures portraying the fallen soul as a wilderness, a solitary, wild, uncultivated place where we labor to bear fruit, where thorns and thistles easily grow. In contrast to the ordered garden of life God cultivated which represents the healthy, flourishing, protected, saved soul, the wilderness was the place the fallen Adam was driven into to labor. Jesus was 'immediately' driven by the Spirit into the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan. His well ordered soul was like a walled cultivated garden of life with a river of life in the midst of the wilderness, resisting the temptations of satan which Adam failed to do. God drove Moses and the children of Israel out into the wilderness from the cultivated land of Goshen. They could have 'immediately' entered the Promised Land with cultivated fields and gardens had they had faith. Lacking faith, they wandered the wilderness. Christ can lead us out of our inner wilderness into the inner promised land if we have faith in him. He is the soul's Moses. He can cultivate our souls, turning them from wildernesses into gardens if we allow him to plant his Tree of Life in the 'midst' (tavek or X or ➕) or heart. I also see in the Scriptures that the soul is portrayed as water, whether waters below like seas and rivers, or waters above like the air, wind, breath, clouds, or rain. Some things in the soul can be concretely grasped like the earth or land is solid or firm. Some things can be more easily captured, like land animals are more easily held than slippery fish or birds in flight. Water can be held in the cup of the hand only so long. Air can't be held at all except for a time in the chest when holding the breath. There are concrete/graspable, watery/slippery, and airy/ungraspable things in the soul, some concrete, others abstract, and still others unimaginable. Some can't be grasped any more than fire can be held in the hand. There you have it, the four elements of the ancient world of fire, wind, water, and earth or energy, gas, liquid, and solid. These elements are represented in the creation story as light, waters above, waters below, and earth, all of which were separated from one another to fill and bring order to the formless void into what we know as the cosmos. The word cosmos means ordered. The soul was ordered by God to have concrete, watery, airy, and fiery elements to it as well. The creation story is the story of the soul. An ordered wilderness is a cultivated field or garden. Ordered water is rain falling from the heavens, watering the fields or gardens, gathering into rivers, flowing to the seas, and evaporating into the heavens. As it says in Isaiah 55, God's word will not return to him void without accomplishing its purpose or telos. This cycle need not be vain in the soul as it says in Ecclesiastes. Chaotic water is like the stormy waves on the Sea of Galilee stirred by the winds which Christ calmed. We have difficulty grasping the waters or thoughts tossing and turning, and the emotions blowing in our souls, but Christ doesn't. The winds and the waves obey him. Our thoughts and emotions can come to do the same, obey and become well ordered. We have enough trouble cultivating the solid lands of our souls, that which we consciously can control. Yet even here Christ can cultivate (didactically twach) our souls. He can break our fallow hard ground with his plow or cutting words and deeds. He can sow his seeds of wheat into the depths of our souls. He can send the seeds of rain from heaven to water. Can we at least do the weeding? He can even help us with the labor. The Sea of Galilee is like a field of water with crops of fish beneath. As his disciples labored against the wind and waves with their oars, he walked on the waters to them, and when he got into their boat (heart), the sea calmed and they 'immediately' reached dry land. When they labored all night and harvested no fish, he told them to cast their nets to the right. As the Word filled and brought order to the cosmos, so the Word incarnate does for the soul. Without him, the soul is a formless void. With him it is a promised land of milk and honey. Or it can be like a well watered cultivated garden with the Tree of Life, or a calm living sea teaming with life, or a renewed spirit or fresh breath soaring with the birds of the air, or a born again heart enlightened by the fire of his Holy Spirit (again, the four elements). He has the ability. Faith in him provides the facility for his ability to work on and in and through the soul. He told those he healed that their faith saved them. We know he had the ability they lacked to heal (sózó) and save (sózó) their own souls. Their faith provided the facility for his ability to work. Those in Nazareth who lacked faith in him didn't see him perform many great works except for a few healings because they lacked faith in him. A small mustard seed size of faith can move him with compassion and his mountain size ability. You mentioned two types of healing he did. The healing of those with ailments and healing of those with demons. The heart is ill. The heart can become ill due to the harm or hurt it suffers from an indifferent world or at the hands of evil people. This is the illness of sorrow, humiliation, dejection, deprecation, a broken spirit. But the heart can be considered ill in another more serious sense as in generating ill will or evil itself. Those ill in the former sense don't necessarily return evil for the evil they received. Though they struggle, they don't let there hearts become ill willed by the ill or evil they received. None the less, their hearts need healing. Those with ill hearts in the latter sense have ill wills. Their hearts generate more of the ills they have. Evil comes from their hearts. They are morally ill besides spiritually ill or broken. They are demon possessed. Sadly, we tend to have a mixture of both, don't t we? Fortunately Christ, whose own heart is meek and humble, loving and compassionate, just and gracious, faithful and true, can heal both types of ill hearts, the sick and the evil possessed. He is the spiritual cardiologist or good physician. He has the cardiognosis. Wouldn't it be good and big hearted of us if we could maintain a healthy heart with good will even when those with evil hearts of ill will inflict our hearts with sorrows. Imagine not returning evil for evil, not even generating evil imaginations in the heart for the concrete evil done. 1 Peter 3:9. Christ managed this. 1 Peter 2 21-24. His heart was blessed, poor in spirit, meek, gentle, and light and easy even though he bore difficult yokes and heavy burdens. A sorrowful heart inflicted by indifference, ill will, or injustice need not turn ill, dejected, depressed, hard, and ill willed itself. Though it hungers and thirsts for justice, it can instead become poor in spirit, meek, pure in heart, blessed. Yet in my own watery, tempestuous, tossing and turning soul this lesson hasn't become solid ground or concrete, remaining difficult to grasp and hold in hand like a slippery fish without the Fisherman's net. In other words, if not the aid himself, he gives us aids to grasp the difficult to grasp. Christ's is the seed, Christ's is the crop, Into the storehouse of God may we be brought. Christ's is the sea, Christ's is the fish, Into the nets of God may we be caught. -Ag Críost an Síol