Really Jesus?

An imaginary dialogue with a troubling text.

Mark 6:1-13

First, Jesus, you're rejected. Then you send your disciples to do the same work. Thanks a lot, they'd say. We would. Is this what we are to look forward to as followers of the Way?

Your homecoming really does argue against all those songs and images handed down to us: Come home. “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling ... you who are weary come home.” Home to a reception like you got? Another home altogether might work perhaps – I guess that's how it's mostly be dealt with – home in another world. But here in the Bible, you are not talking about another world, a totally separate place. You're talking about God's kingdom for real here where we are.

You seem to have been surprised by the home town scepticism – amazed at their unbelief. I guess you were still learning as you go. Not so much learning to be God's son (Mark's key point, we realise): you knew how to do that, to show us who God is and what God is like. But you were discovering for the first time how people react to God's way being put into action.

Because, no, it was not your failure that the healings didn't happen among the home people. Healing, you have taught us, is a relationship. We experience that with good nursing and good friends. Healing that helps make well in the physical sense and that bigger sense of healing – restoring meaning regardless of how the body is and will be.

God's power, what God is like and how God-power works, that's the really hard thing to catch on to; and therefore what it's like to be home with God. Not the expected security and slotting into the family dynamics in whatever role we each might have (e.g. the hero, the rescuer, the scapegoat, the loner, the doer, the clown, or the saint). I can feel for your family. In conventional (non-Kingdom) terms, you were not playing your part. And you were embarrassing them with your free spirit, your God-centredness, rather than family-centredness which normal people expect.

When you went to other communities, you were welcomed as a visiting expert. They are easy to cope with. But a local, someone dependent on the local community, and still a local in terms of his human genealogy: hard to see as worth listening to. We're inclined to get stuck with our own preconceptions about who or what can bring knowledge and really life-changing options. Not the person next to me surely.

And on top of that regular blindness to “prophets among us”, you were falling foul with the powers-that-be, the powers we depend on for living an ordinary life. You don't help us at all to get on better in life, to access the power the world works with. And we can't imagine doing anything, improving anything, without the standard requirements of money and influence etc etc.

Would I be among those you then sent out into the local community to do exactly as you had been doing? Will I say yes?

The Great Reversal. That's what they call your mission in this first half of Mark's gospel. I must remember it: the Great Reversal. This is the Kingdom Way. Upside down values, and understanding that's upside down to the world's way. I need to remind myself that the world's way is in fact bankrupt. Bankrupt and dealing death more than giving life.

If I do as you ask and go out among our own community here, travelling light, not protecting myself from rejection, I sense that I'll learn what you learnt: that God's kind of healing – God's loving – depends on the other in a relationship. It works through simply living compassionately in interaction with others. Slow living it's been called. Local, vulnerable living.

Your ancestor David was a pretty good king. He was a shepherd but then as a king he got mixed up with the powers-that-be and was as much the wolf as the shepherd. The power of armies and taxes. Weapons of destruction. You, son of David, got it right – at last. The power of relationship, and the most powerful “weapon” of all – conversation.

Jesus, you know that God speaks through God's creation and the language used is love. You're doing it. So, yes, you're calling us to speak that way too.  

Questions of Healing

We've crossed the lake with Jesus – a stormy crossing you'll recall. On the other side – foreign territory – a total outcast is healed, a crazy man living among the tombs. Jesus breaks through boundaries of all types, including when he gets back across the lake onto home territory again...

Mark 5:21:43

This is a text with two distinct narratives. But could you have one story without the other? If you'd just had Jairus and his daughter then Jesus would have got on with that healing more quickly and likely avoided the drama of the father hearing his girl was dead. But isn't that part of the power of the narrative? Assumptions, limitations and interruptions.

Mark's primary task in his whole gospel book is to answer the question: who is Jesus? Establish his identity, namely, show us that he is the son of God. That is, show us who God is, how God acts, and what God is like.

About the interruption to the mission with Jairus: God's power of healing love works with interruptions all the time. No boundaries, no fixed procedure, no-one needs to be side-lined for more important things.

These are two stories that belong together: woman and woman-child healed; an aging woman's healing interrupting the healing of a girl on the cusp of child-bearing (she was born in fact the same year that the woman's trauma began).

Two people who risk: the father risks reputation – Jesus is already a target of his synagogue colleagues; what's more, as a father it is risky to love so much a child (and a girl at that) when 60% of children die before their teens. The woman risks extreme censure for touching Jesus in her untouchable state; what's more, she dares to hope against hopelessness. Now that's the riskiest thing of all surely.

One person despairs so much that he crosses boundaries of emotion and honour and gets first hand experience of what God's power of love can do. His despair pushes him to a point of openness to faith.

The other person dares to hope and is healed by the faith revealed to be already part of her being. Her hope is the spring of her faith.

This is a text between fear and faith: each of them fear, yet are able/driven to step out of fear into the place of faith. And for us who read it, it asks us to imagine what we might do.

This contrast of faith and fear means Mark is guiding us to think of faith's opposite not as being simply no faith. What's significant here is not absence or otherwise of faith, but getting through the fear. Getting beyond the fear to be able to do something – for daughter or for self. It can be despair that drives it. That's where Jairus is, desperate and in despair which triggers him to act and try to do something for his daughter's future. But it's even stronger place to be already when it is hope that drives it. That's where the woman is, desperate but holding on to hope. She already knows who Jesus is. She trusts him as agent of God's power to heal.

Both Jairus and this women reach out to where God is – presence, power, strength, wholeness, healing.

But at this point the story also stirs questions about faith and healing, and about prayers for healing. About miracles (and we'll talk some more about that later, if you like), about hope for healing and praying for healing against the odds.

Why isn't everyone we pray for healed, that is, made better? Even when they have faith?

GoTellbyVinceAmlin

Last November, my wife and I went to our 19-week ultrasound and found out that our baby was only measuring 15 weeks. After a series of tests, we were told we would lose her.

But through eight weeks of repeat scans, she held on. Then through five weeks of hospital bedrest. Finally, Nola was born, a scrappy one pound, one ounce.

She spent 12 weeks in the hospital. Her life is still full of challenges. But yesterday we celebrated four months with our daughter, who now tips the scale at five pounds.

I won't say that God saved Nola. There are too many other beloved children who don't make it. But I must say that God has saved me again and again through these long months. God has sent a legion of angels to my side…

…the anonymous person who left a fully-decorated Christmas tree on our porch, when we didn't have the energy to celebrate…

…the ten-year-old girl who prayed for Nola every day of her winter vacation…

…the church member who struggles with anxiety but sang "It is Well with My Soul" on my voicemail…

Vince Amlin connects this to a couple of verses from Psalm 107:

Give thanks, for God is good. God's love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those God redeemed from the hand of the foe… Psalm 107:1-2

He comments:

Psalm 107 charges us to share our good news. Those who wandered lost…those who sat in darkness...those whose ships were nearly sunk…tell your story!

And he ends his reflection with these words and prayer:

So many angels. So many stories to share. God is good. God's love endures forever. Give thanks, and go tell yours.

Prayer 

Yarn Spinner, write your story of love in me. Send me as an angel to those who are lost and sinking. And bless sweet Nola.

New Family New Culture

Mark 3:20-35

Some quotations on families:

"When your mother asks, 'Do you want a piece of advice?' it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway."  Erma Bombeck, 20th century 

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives."  Oscar Wilde, 19th century 

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Richard Bach, 20th century 

Why are Jesus' family troubled so?

At that time, family was the basic unit for effectively everything. The economic base: within your family you found your livelihood, e.g. as part of a fishing family; you worked within the family occupation or, if you couldn't work, they supported you as they were able; they were the safety net; the family gained – or struggled to gain – livelihood together, and without a family you had nothing.

Family was also the social base, within which the primary code was honour and shame: you had your place, and knew your place, within the order and authority of the family; the most important thing was never to do anything that brought shame to the family.

So you can see why Jesus was a problem and a worry to his family.

Now what's this talk about Satan? Jesus is labelled by the scribes as this deviant named Satan, labelling being their scheme to get rid of him. He was threatening the order and authority of the religious family.

Jesus responds with a question: “How can Satan cast out Satan?”

Let's reframe that in our kind of terms:

How can negativity cast out negativity?

How can force cast out force?

How can compulsion cast out compulsion?

How can violence cast out violence?

How can coercion cast out coercion?

How can manipulation cast out manipulation?

How can bullying cast out bullying?

There are plenty of contemporary alternatives for the word “Satan” and this is the question: how can you get rid of harm using harmful means?

Jesus tells a story of a raid on a house. It will only work if the power controlling the house is first put out of action. To deal with the powers that harm, you have to first – somehow – tie up those powers, put an end to their controlling influence. Hold onto that thought and we'll come back to what this can mean for us.

Before that we need to clarify what our equivalent of family would be, i.e. what Jesus would be talking about in our context. In part, it is our actual family, but that does not have the all encompassing social and economic role that was the case in Jesus' time. We can have a viable life apart of our family and, in fact, we see it as important that we have some level of independence.

The family equivalent for us now is our overarching culture. What Jesus would speak about is the system, the whole social, economic, political, technological, environmental system, in which we make our way as best we can; within that, we find our place or we struggle to survive. Within that, we adhere, or not to our jeopardy, to norms of a kind of honour and shame.

For example, it's somewhat shameful:

not to be in favour with those you mix with;

not to be concerned about providing for yourself;

to make choices that aren't concerned either with achieving more (e.g. more income) or pursuing pleasure and thrills;

(now you might think that's not so much you, but that is the dominant culture we now live in, and some of us don't really measure up, that's just a fact. Old-fashioned, a killjoy, a bit of an embarrassment to family members perhaps.)

It's somewhat shameful not to want new and better things.

And it's definitely an embarrassment to try to live the Way of the Cross. We keep quiet about it.

It is really important that we recognise the powers in the midst of this. Call it Satan: Jesus would. A kind of power or controlling influence that means we think and act differently from what we know Jesus would. Subtlely taking over our thinking and choosing. Even if we're not to the extreme of popular culture that says, e.g. “Winning is not the most important thing: it is everything”, we are still under the sway of motivation and purpose that is totally not God's kingdom way. The world we live in simply makes Christian values of compassion, generosity, unconditional love, total non-violence (no war) impractical. We can't be completely to blame ourselves for that: it's the world we live in; it's the powers and the principals that are in charge.

We've under-estimated the grip this has on good people and we've made it harder to recognise by throwing out the baby with the bathwater as happened when Satan and the devil became no longer acceptable as a topic of discussion. We've said evil is not real; we can live good lives; it's up to us to just do it. But left to our own resources we remain under this powerful influence of society and its cultural norms, its economic rules, its social persuasiveness. To be more or less like everyone else is a huge pressure; to find our place to belong, to be successful or at least to get by.

Jesus offers an alternative culture. In the terms of his time, he offers a new family. For us he offers a new culture that is under instead the powerful influence of the Spirit: the culture of kingdom values. Put yourself in the midst of this and you tap into a totally different way to respond to the evils listed earlier – bullying, compulsion, negativity, violence...

Speaking of Jesus here in this passage in Mark's gospel, Mark Fry writes,

They wanted to restrain him and send him to the asylum. It was too hard to bear, too dissonant a voice. The cry of the living God was inviting people to shed the burden of self-concern, to let go with complete abandon, and to venture out into the wilds of God's kingdom armed with nothing but a passionate vision of life lived fully awake in love.”

They eventually did restrain Jesus, on a cross, and when he asked his Abba to forgive the men who were executing him, they were stunned. “He really is crazy,” they thought. But the experience of the crucified Jesus left them marked, and they would never be the same again. No one walks away from that vision unscathed. Even restrained on the cross Jesus was widening the circle of his mothers, sisters, and brothers.

The circle is open to each of us. Come, find your place in the family – the culture – of God's kingdom Way. Your place at the Table.

Learn to Weep

I'd like to share someone else's words as much as any of my own.

When I think about what's on our minds just now, the big things in the world and in our own country, I really haven't got the words. I don't know. I can't see easy pointers to where the Spirit of God, where the wisdom of God, could be guiding us.

I think of the importance of history and not mistakenly believing that we do things better now. The complexities that in retrospect we can see in conflicts of the past – the triggers of the First World War, the experience of Vietnam, the 1980s war in Afghanistan (just some examples), help us realise that today's context also is no black and white matter. Can today's world leaders learn from the past?

I also think about fear, and the way fear can take over and become the main factor in decision-making. It can make us forget what really matters.

Do I fear for our world, for the planet and for the peoples of the world? Do I fear for our country and its social fabric?

Yes, I do. But what am I to do with that fear and still stay true to our top purpose as people of faith: to “love one another as I have loved you.”¹

Here's what Mary Luti of the United Church of Christ in USA has written recently².

Learn to Weep

When Jesus saw her weeping, and those with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved… and Jesus began to weep.

John 11:33-35

A little girl asked him why God lets children suffer — asked Pope Francis, that is, in Manila last January. "Terrible things happen to children," she told him through tears. "It’s not their fault. Why does God permit it?"

It was an entirely unscripted question. So was his answer.

He didn’t correct her theology or otherwise attempt to pacify Glyzelle Palomar who, in front of a million people, had just told him that she scrounged food from garbage and slept outside on a cardboard mat.

Here’s what he did. He enfolded the sobbing child in his arms. Then he admonished everyone to pay close attention because he said, "She has just asked the one question with no answer." To her he said, "Only when we are able to weep about the things you have lived will we understand anything and be able to answer you." 

Then he taught the crowd, "The world needs to weep. The marginalized weep, the scorned weep, but we who are more or less without needs, we don't know how. We must learn. There are realities in this life you can see only with eyes cleansed and clarified by tears.... If you don't learn to weep, you're not a good Christian!" 

Whenever we’re asked the question with no answer, "Our answer must first be silence, and then a word born of tears."

Prayer 

Give us tears, O God, so that we may see; and seeing, join each other in suffering; and in joining, be moved to love in deed.

To Mary's thoughts I add just this:

Rangimarie Peace Shalom,

Robyn

Pope Francis hugs Glyzelle Palomar at a youth rally in Manila 18 January 2015

1Jesus, John 15:12

2http://www.ucc.org/daily_devotional_learn_to_weep