February 03, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
But all we need to do in order to recover the vigor of Christianity, is listen to the Gospel stories as they were told, and soon the forced harmonization and highly developed theological images of Jesus come unglued.
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Good morning.
Turn on your imagination
if you haven’t already.
I want us to roam around inside
that little story from Mark.
It was only a paragraph but
like most of Mark’s stories, it
opens up into a ballroom
in which we can dance with our imaginations.
So sit back,
spread out,
close your eyes if it helps,
and travel with me as I narrate
an expanded and imaginative version
of Mark’s little story
that we just heard.
“JESUS WAS SUNBURNED AND SKINNY FROM HIS RETREAT IN THE DESERT WHEN WE FIRST MET. IT WAS IMMEDIATELY AFTER HIS RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS, ARRIVING HOME EXHAUSTED TO HIS HOUSE AND SHOP IN CAPERNAUM-BY-THE-LAKE. IN FACT, HE WASN’T YET FULLY RECOVERED WHEN I FIRST SAW HIM, THAT SPRING SABBATH IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, WHEN SHADOWS DRAW STRAIGHT LINES AGAINST THE WALL.
I WAS SHOCKED TO SEE PETER IN THE SYNAGOGUE. EVERYONE WAS SURPRISED, AND WARY. PETER IS A HUGE MAN, UNMISTAKABLE AT ANY DISTANCE BY THOSE WHO KNOW HIM, AND UNAVOIDABLE BY THOSE WHO WISH THEY DIDN’T.
UP CLOSE IT IS HIS HANDS THAT ARE MOST CAPTIVATING – AWESOME, EVEN FRIGHTENING. THE HEART OF EACH HAND IS THE SIZE OF A MAN’S FACE, WITH LONG MUSCULAR FINGERS CAPABLE OF SQUASHING A SKULL AS IF MERELY A MELLON.
WHEN PETER SPEAKS IT IS WITH HIS HANDS. THEY WAVE AND POUND AND POINT AND CLENCH AS HE TALKS. IN THOSE MOVEMENTS HIS WORDS ARE ALMOST LOST, OR SUPERFLUOUS BECAUSE THE
ELOQUENT GESTURES STEAL ATTENTION FROM HIS RASPY VOICE AND COARSE, STACCATO WORDS.
HIS FOREHANDS AND KNUCKLES ARE MATTED WITH PATCHES OF SANDY RED HAIR, HIS CUTICLES THICK SEMI-CIRCLES OF DEAD SKIN SURROUNDING FLAT OVAL NAILS, SPLIT AND CRACKED AND YELLOWED.
EACH PALM SEEMS TO BE ONE RAISED CALLUS, NEVER WITHOUT A FRESH CUT OR HARDENED SCAR. HE OFTEN COMPLAINS THAT SINCE MEETING JESUS, HIS HANDS HAVE BECOME SOFT AND USELESS – LIKE
THOSE OF A RABBI.
PETER’S BODY IS ENORMOUS TOO. HIS LEGS ARE FURY, STOUT, AND STRONG LIKE ROMAN COLUMNS. HIS CHEST PROTRUDES FROM HIS SHOULDERS LIKE THAT OF A HORSE. HIS HEAD IS SET LIKE A BOULDER ON A STUBBY NECK BETWEEN TWO ROUNDED BLOCKS OF MUSCLE. HIS ARMS ARE ODDLY SHORT, BARELY REACHING HIS WAIST AND BOWED AS IF HE HAD BEEN CARRYING WATERMELONS SINCE BIRTH.
PETER AT SYNAGOGUE WAS AN OMEN. IT WAS LIKE SEEING BIRDS FLOCK IN FORMATION AND KNOWING THE SEASON IS SOON TO CHANGE; SOMETHING WAS ABOUT TO BE HAPPEN AND ALL OF US COULD FEEL IT.
JESUS WAS STILL A STRANGER TO US THAT DAY WHEN HE BEGAN TO READ FROM THE PROPHETS. HE ENTERED WITH PETER AND HIS PARTNER ZEBEDEE, AND ZEBEDEE’S TWO BOYS. NEITHER SABBATH NOR THE SYNAGOGUE, SET EYES ON THESE FISHERMEN UNLESS SOMETHING WAS STRANGE OR AMISS, SO WHEN THE STRANGER ENTERED WITH THEM, AND TOOK IT UPON HIMSELF TO READ FROM TORAH, THERE WAS AN TENSION IN THE STILLNESS.
JESUS WAS STILL RECITING FROM TORAH WHEN STEPHEN THE PROSELYTE COLLAPSED IN A COLD FAINT. AS WE RUSHED TOWARD HIM, HE BEGAN TO WIGGLE AND WRITHE LIKE A SNAKE. ON CUE WE ALL JUMPED BACK, CLEARING AWAY A WIDE SWATH AS WE WATCHED HIM GROWL AND HISS AND SEETHE.
SALIVA FOAMED AROUND HIS BLOATED LIPS, AND DROOL DRIPPED LIKE TEARS FROM EACH CORNER OF HIS MOUTH. HIS EYES FLASHED WILDLY, ALL WHITE AND ROLLING BACKWARD INTO HIS SKULL. BREATHLESS, WE WAITED, FROZEN IN OUR FEAR THAT THE DEMON COULD LEAP FROM HIM TO US.
NO ONE NOTICED JESUS SET DOWN THE SCROLL AND WALK THROUGH OUR RANKS AS WE CIRCLED STEPHEN. JESUS KNELT DOWN OVER STEPHEN’S HEAD AND SHOULDERS, BENT DOWN AND WHISPERED INTO HIS EAR. ABRUPTLY THE WILD FLAILING LIMBS FELL LIMP. SILENCE. WE WERE WOODEN, HELD IN PLACE BY REPULSIVE ATTRACTION. WORDS PUSHED WITH BUBBLES THROUGH STEPHEN’S LIPS AND WITHOUT EVEN OPENING HIS EYES, HE MUTTERED, “THANK YOU, JESUS, THE DEMON IS GONE.”
ONLY THEN DID JESUS TOUCH HIM, GENTLY HE CUPPED HIS HAND OVER STEPHEN’S FOREHEAD AND STROKED HIS SKULL.
WE TURNED TO PETER AND THE ZEBEDEES, HARBORING DARK STIRINGS THAT LEAKED OUT AND LACED OUR QUESTIONS. IS HE A HEALER? A MAGICIAN? A SORCERER? AN EXORCIST? WHO AND WHAT HAVE YOU BROUGHT INTO OUR SYNAGOGUE, PETER?
AS WE PELTED PETER AND THE ZEBEDEE’S WITH QUESTIONS, JESUS QUIETLY RETURNED TO THE SCROLL AND CONTINUED READING FROM THE PROPHET AMOS. WHEN HE FINISHED READING, HE SET THE SCROLL DOWN AND TOLD US WHAT IT MEANT.
THEM THERE WAS A COMMOTION, A DIN OF VOICES REACHING HIGHER AND HIGHER. ANGER FLARED AND TORCHED THE ROOM. NO ONE WAS WATCHING JESUS AS WE FELL INTO CIRCLES OF DISCONTENT AND LOUDLY ARGUED OUR POINTS WITH ONE ANOTHER. THE MEHEM WAS SLICED BY PETER PUSHING HIS WAY THROUGH THE SYNAGOGUE LIKE A DORSEL FIN THROUGH WAVES. WITH PETER IN FRONT AND THE ZEBEDEES AT HIS SIDE, JESUS LEFT THE SYNAGOGUE WITH A FROTHY WAKE OF UPROAR BEHIND HIM.”
©R CAMERON MILLER
From an unpublished manuscript, “The Chair Maker, An Alternative Gospel”
I tell you that story, that way,
for two reasons.
First, because Mark is a storyteller whose
pithy little vignettes beg for more;
and second, because
there are secrets told just under its surface.
To the first point,
Mark’s stories beg for us to enter in and
imagine between the lines,
to take what we know or think or feel about Jesus
and imagine our way into the story.
It helps to know about the time and culture,
about the religion and context,
and to be well versed in Mark’s version first –
so that our imaginations are well funded
and not simply a projection
of what we want the story to say.
But then
we can take what we learn
and use it
with our imaginations
and encounter the story –
paint it, if you will,
as an artists conceives a scene.
So that is the first reason
I wanted to imagine the story together:
to invite us all to have a new, free,
and imaginative relationship with Scripture,
rather than to be stuck
like a mouse to a glue trap
on the literal words of the story.
The second reason I wanted to imagine
the story together,
is because of something I want us to notice,
something I would like you to know…
about Jesus.
In Mark’s story, or in mine,
Jesus never touches the man
who has the seizure.
It was his teaching
that had authority and power, not his touch.
Now get this, please:
In Luke’s Gospel,
when Luke tells the same story,
he actually says it is Jesus’ touch
that has authority;
it is his touch that makes the man well.
In Mark’s Gospel
it is all about his teaching.
We need to understand
the Gospel writers
do not agree with each other
about Jesus.
They are in conflict.
They disagree with one another.
Make sure to take this in:
The four editors of the Gospels
do not agree with one another about Jesus.
Because they do not agree,
we should not create
a composite picture of Jesus
made up from all the various Gospels stories,
because when we do,
we obscure the differences
and, as Buechner says,
“…we come to accept the highly edited
version which we put forth in hope
that the world will find it more acceptable
than the real thing.”
You see, that is what the Church
has done over time;
it has tried to harmonize the conflicts.
Instead of accepting the vigorous disputes
by the Gospel writers themselves,
the Church created
theological and liturgical collages,
or coherent mosaics,
out of divergent ideas.
It was a natural thing to do
when, with a centralizing authority,
the imperial institution
sought a single uniform voice…
and a single uniform view,
and a single uniform doctrine,
all enforced by a general uniform conformity.
But realize please, for its first several centuries,
Christianity was a wild,
wide-open,
cantankerous religion
with impassioned debates
that amplified the disagreements in the Gospels
by many hundreds of decibels.
But when Christianity became absorbed
by the Roman Empire,
it took on an imperial model
and began walling itself in
with a rigid idea known as “orthodoxy” –
which literally translated,
means “right belief”.
But all we need to do
in order to recover the vigor of Christianity,
is listen to the Gospel stories as they were told,
and soon the forced harmonization
and highly developed theological images of Jesus
come unglued.
So instead of creating a composite
out of all four Gospels and
thus producing a distortion,
it is better for us to tell each story on its own,
amplifying the differences
and then wondering about
what those differences mean.
It is better to learn each story separately
and listen to each point of view,
and then make up our own minds.
You see,
we have great freedom as Christians,
so long as we are not concerned about conforming to orthodoxy.
If Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
can’t agree about who Jesus is,
then why should we have to?
Why should we feel compelled
to believe what a bunch of bishops
gathered at a table seventeen centuries ago believed about Jesus?
And the truth is,
all those bishops at Nicaea 1700 years ago
didn’t agree with one another either!
It took the power and authority
of an Emperor
to coerce uniformity.
But now,
I have actually gotten far away
from my second point
because this freedom to decide
is a little soapbox of mine.
Orthodoxy is fine and dandy
if that is what floats your boat,
but it is just one belief
and not THE belief
that all Christians must abide by.
Okay, enough of that.
What I really want to get at here
is Mark’s notion that it was Jesus’ teaching
that was powerful.
Isn’t that a fascinating idea?
There is something else hidden in here
that parallels Buechner’s musing
about secrets.
Mark has a secret.
New Testament scholars call it,
“The Messianic Secret.”
Sounds cool, doesn’t it?
Let me say up front,
no one knows for sure what the secret means,
but theories and divergent viewpoints abound.
In the Gospel of Mark,
and only in this Gospel,
Jesus is clearly known by the bad guys
and misunderstood by the good guys.
As in today’s story,
the demon knows that Jesus is
“the Holy One of God”
but Jesus’ buddies
don’t seem to have a clue.
And Jesus is always telling the demons
to shut up, already.
He performs an exorcism
and tells the recovered man not to tell anyone.
He chases away the evil spirits
so they don’t tell anyone.
He heals a leper
and tells him not to tell anyone.
Even the Roman authorities
and the soldiers that crucify him,
in Mark’s way of telling the story,
recognize Jesus as especially holy.
But all through Mark’s story,
his disciples and family and friends
seem to be confused
and unsure of who or what Jesus is.
There is no way for us to know
why Mark told his story in this way,
and very differently
from the other Gospel story-tellers.
But echoing Buechner’s point
about sharing secrets,
there is something powerful
and liberating
about full disclosure.
“It is important to tell at least form time to time
the secret of who we truly and fully are,” Buechner writes,
“—even if we tell it only to ourselves – because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are
and little by little come to accept instead…
the highly edited version
which we put forth in hope that the world
will find it more acceptable than the real thing.”
There is a perfect parallel
between the Church as an institution, and us.
In fact, it is a truth about all institutions
as much as it is a truth about all people:
Telling the secret of who we truly
and fully are,
keeps us from falling into the
delusion that we are the composite
we have created
for the various parts of the outside
world to view.
People who enable us to do that
teach with authority,
have a very special authority.
Their authority is not grounded
in coercive power
or learnedness
or any kind of formal role,
it is an authority
we grant them
because they empower us
to be more fully who we are
when we are with them.
Surely you have had one or more
of those people in your life –
people who just draw you out
and with whom you want to be yourself;
and likely,
people who recognize it
when you are padding the truth
with descriptors of how you want to be seen.
I had a mentor like that
when I was a student intern
at a Boston Church.
He was an Episcopal priest
and college chaplain
as well as working at the Church.
He had been a baseball pitcher of some note
until he lost partial vision in one eye,
and then became a priest.
He also had a cleaning service on the side,
personally cleaning offices
on evenings and Saturdays,
in order to make enough money
to put his kids through school
and still be able to work as a priest.
In short,
he was down to earth
and as unpretentious as anyone I know.
He had a way of seeing
through my crap,
and I had even more crap in those days
than I do now.
He didn’t tear down my walls,
but frequently,
at the very moment I thought he
was on the outside of my façade looking in,
I would turn around
and there he would be.
He wasn’t specially trained for that,
it was just him.
The fact that he recognized me,
and the fact that he cared for me,
evoked in me
something that I was hesitant to grant anyone --
authority.
He spoke with authority to me,
because I gave it to him.
And because I gave it to him,
he was also someone I could be,
as Buechner says,
more fully and truly myself.
Who do you have in your life
to which you grant such authority?
Surly there is someone,
has been someone,
can be someone…
Now, imagine Jesus as that kind of someone.
I think that is what Mark is getting at
when he tells his story
the way he tells his story.
Jesus allows him to be
more fully and truly who he is.
Jesus’ authority
is not derived from some title,
such as Messiah or Christ;
although that is a mistake
the Church hierarchy made.
His authority
derives from his teaching.
His authority
derives from the freedom,
the liberation,
his teaching evokes within us.
When we fall into one of those teachings,
and we suddenly “get it”
the way it was intended to be understood,
we want
to come clean;
we want
to be recognized;
we want
to be fully known…truly known.
The kind of authority Mark is describing
is evoked in us
not extracted;
it rises up from within us
and we find ourselves wanting to give it away,
rather than the kind of authority
that tries to reach inside us
and take such authority
with claims and demands.
It is pretty interesting stuff
in these old stories of ours, isn’t it?
We may have missed it before,
but there is more going on in these stories
than we see when we are just
skimming off the surface.
When stuff like this starts floating up
it makes me want to know more
not less.
Once we stop worrying about
whether Jesus is God
or the nephew of God
or the great-grandson of God,
or whether he is sitting on the right hand of God
or was with God in the beginning,
we can begin to just listen
and hear the wisdom in his voice.
In that wisdom,
we can begin to get the feeling,
sometime a little creepy, that
maybe he knows us better than we like to think.
When we don’t have to agree
with Mark or Luke
or the Church’s Party Line,
we can bring ourselves fully to the story
and see
a more true reflection of ourselves in it.
In the end,
it isn’t even about Jesus,
it is about you and me
and who we grant the authority
to help us come clean
and be more fully and truly ourselves.
Every single one of us here,
is wrapped in a thick and heavy buffalo robe
of images and pretense,
and sometimes it just gets so stifling under there
that we need to take it off
and remember what we look like naked.
We don’t have to show anyone else –
we can start
by just coming clean with ourselves.
We just need the relief
of coming out from under it
from time to time.
We need people in our lives
to whom we grant the authority
to empower us
to be more fully and truly
who we are.
And…
we need
to give thanks for such people.
Sometimes,
we just need to stop
and give thanks for them.
So let’s do that as we pray. Amen.
