4 February 2024 Mark 1:29-39
What was Jesus doing when he prayed?
Clearly it was not the same thing we do. He wasn’t asking for anything. His divinity meant he didn’t need anything. He didn’t need forgiveness, certainly – he had no moral needs or defects. He didn’t need clarification, either of his own nature or the nature of the people he was dealing with. He had no intellectual questions, only answers. He did not need emotional support – His whole being was the perfection of relationships, a perfection of power, love, wisdom, knowledge and will between Father, Son and Holy Spirit: “In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19). All that was covered.
Jesus had no needs – that is what it means to be God. So, what was Jesus doing when he prayed?
That, of course, is a question we can never answer. You would have to be God to know that, and we aren’t. The only things we can know about the inner life of Jesus are the things he told us.
And he did tell us: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (Mark 1:38).
Fourteen times in the New Testament Jesus went off to desolate places to pray – fourteen times that we know about anyway. Fourteen times he had not a single need, not a single question, only the perfection of his own nature and will, and he used that time to think about us: “Let me proclaim the message there also. Let me tell them.”
Let me tell you.
We are always on his mind. That is what Jesus was doing when he prayed. That is what it means to be God.
Of all the things the disciples knew about Jesus, that was perhaps the characteristic that impressed, inspired and comforted them most. They were always on His mind. It is one of the reasons they wrote so much. There are approximately 5800 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the oldest going back to the early 2nd century. There are over 10,000 ancient Latin manuscripts, and about 9300 in other languages. To get a sense of how extraordinary that is, consider that there are only 67 manuscripts of Cicero that have survived, only ten of Caesar, and the only reason those manuscripts have survived is because Christian copyists (largely Benedictine monks) wrote them down.
Ironic that the only reason we have Cicero or Caesar, or any of the Greek and Roman literary tradition, is because of people who thought about, and wrote about Jesus most of all.
He was always on their minds.
The saints have written often about how big a problem distraction is. Anyone who is serious about prayer knows how easy it is for our focus to slip away from Jesus to our shopping list, or to-do list, or the many worries du jour. That is one of the reasons you can tell they are saints – distraction really bothers them. They want a prayer life where they can focus on Jesus, if only for a moment, the way he focuses on us: “If we could say just one perfect Our Father the Messiah would come,” one of them said.
They want Him on their minds.
Because we are always on His mind.
That is what Jesus was doing when he prayed.
That is what it means to be God.
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