Not one of us?

“Whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40)

Mark 9:38-48 (Year B: Trinity+17)

Encountering differences among those with whom we interact...

This passage welds together two stories: one about another exorcist whom the disciples thought was competing with Jesus; the other about the need for discipline and sacrifice in following Jesus. In a way both stories form two sides of the one coin.

In our lives we encounter many people who are different by reason of temperament, religion, politics, ethnic background or other characteristics. The world and human life would be boring otherwise. However, when it comes to religion we can be especially fussy about who we associate with and who we admit to the club. Moreover, religion – contrary to its root meaning in Latin – religare – to bind together – can and does become a source of animosity and division. One of the big surprises of the 21st century is that religion is back contrary to the predictions of many thinkers and sages. It is back with a vengeance and not always in ways that many of us would want or ever expected. Witness the rise of particular fundamentalisms across the globe. Witness the rise of a certain type of self-righteous, compassionless and doctrinaire Christianity that imposes its views on others and condemns and excludes those within the Christian family for allegedly unbiblical or non-orthodox (I believe the term is heterodox!).

Confronted with an exorcist who was doing the same works, so it seemed, as Jesus the disciples wondered what to do about the outsider. There are those who ‘do not follow us’ but seem to share many of our values or some of our ideas and goals. What should be our response? Without hesitation or qualification we should work with others for the common good on those issues and concerns that connect to us regardless of their religion or outlook. Clearly, there are some people and causes we should never work with no matter how incidental areas of commonality may arise. This goes without explanation and it does not need to be spelt out further.

The role of witness...

In the course of my work (my day job!) I encounter a wide range of persons who have no time for organised religion or things associated with religion. Yet, I collaborate and associate with many of these on projects of practical application especially in the area of research and knowledge. I sense that the shared values on social progress are sufficient reason to work with others towards shared goals. Christians need to come out of the closet not by preaching God at people on the street corner or at the coffee break but by being active, engaged, concerned and cooperative in efforts to tackle injustice and make for a better world. In this way a spark of the light that is within us will shine out and, perhaps, others might be drawn to ask ‘Why?’.  Every journey in faith starts with a simple question, a conversation and listening ear. What a privilege!

Climate change and environmental concerns are a good example...

Take the area of climate change and environment. The recent encyclical, Laudato Si, of Pope Francis has identified a major moral challenge which should unite movements, governments and peoples at global level. Yet, we find many Christians denying climate change – in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. For them, the fact that persons or movements they do not like are championing the cause of the environment is enough reason to be sceptical or negative. Moreover, there are powerful commercial and national interests at work to disrupt and oppose international agreement on carbon emissions. Here is an area where those ‘who are not against us are for us’.  Many are very concerned about the precious gift of life from the first stage of human life. If only the same concern were extended as passionately and as systemically to every stage of human life as we continue to thrash the planet and leave a world that will be scarcely habitable for future generations.

(‘Friends of all; enemies of none’ is associated with John Wesley who founded the Methodist movement.  As a current within the Christian family Methodism has discretely and effectively welcomed many and contributed much to social developments especially in the English-speaking world.)

In welcoming others of different persuasions and backgrounds we welcome Christ in our neighbour. Without realising it we can end up ‘entertaining angels’ (Hebrews 13:2). Every act of kindness no matter how small counts especially when the person next to us is passing through trials. The ‘cup of water’ we have to give is a genuine concern and a practical act of help.

But how can we do this if we are imprisoned by our doubts and our attachments to this or that idea, comfort or material possession? This is where radical discipleship comes in.  Someone edited Mark and added in, apparently, verses 44-46 which are thought not to be in the original text:

And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.

Perhaps, someone did actually cut their foot off!  The point is that whatever part of our thinking or behaviour leads us down paths that are destructive and harmful then we should not hesitate to cut these off.  Some of us of a certain vintage will remember the saying ‘occasions of sin’ in the catechism. Or, indeed, we might remember hearing talks at school or church about the perils of ‘keeping company’. Trust some people to bring sex into it!  The irony in much of this is that inappropriate and evil behaviour on the part of a few among those called to priesthood and the religious life went largely under the carpet while a lot of fuss was made about everything else in this domain.

The role of witness...

Returning to the main story, there is much to lead us astray including in appropriate behaviour and thinking that spoils many a committed relationship. However, we need to open our God-given eyes (assuming we can see at all) and use our hands and feet (assuming we have such faculties) to do good; to avoid evil and to live life to the full the way God intended it to be lived. This brings us back to where the story started – there are many in the world that we need to work with and not against.  Losing some of our own preciousness and insecurity is part of the radical call of Jesus found in the gospels and here in Mark.

Born to servant leadership

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

Mark 9:30-37 (Year B: Trinity+16)

pic:http://cronkitehhh.jmc.asu.edu/blog/2013/10/consider-servant-leader

Whoever leads must be servant of all..

At the heart of this story is a tension between leadership and service. The disciples hanker after a type of leadership that means sitting in a position of honour and authority.  Not infrequently, people like positions of authority and honour.

States, companies, associations, churches and other human organisations create titles of honour, places of special honour, conditions of privilege and roles of authority in decision-making.  Many churches – up until recent times – had pews or seats specially reserved for Lord so-and-so or for the mayor or state dignitary (in the case of a Cathedral). This was quite apart from one-off reservations in cases of special celebrations including for example funerals. And the whole lay-out of medieval churches spoke of social hierarchy with the Lord Bishop sitting on a throne far too big for him and a sanctuary and choir reserved for those next to the bishop followed by a nave where, presumably, the great and good sat towards the top while the great unwashed knelt or stood (usually the latter in medieval times) towards the back. Even up until recent times, it was not uncommon for the men folk in many rural parishes in Ireland to congregate somewhere around the porch at the entrance to a church where, technically, they ‘heard’ mass! (Indeed, they may have heard it far more profoundly and effectively than many inside the building. We should never judge).

Such is life and such is church and what Jesus found the disciples up to in arguing about positions and greatness is not at all surprising if we know anything about modern-day ecclesiastical politics.

Conflicts start over little things hiding in front of positions..

Many a war and many a feud has started over what, at first sight, might have seemed a secondary and less important matter.  However, deep beneath the ‘position’ adopted by people are values, beliefs, needs and wants that shape and drive human behaviour. A lot of the time we are not even conscious of these drivers.  In this context, reactions of the disciples to Jesus’ talk of cross, suffering and rejection doesn’t fit with their preconceived ideas of a powerful messianic saviour. Moreover, it doesn’t fit with their agenda which is about promotion and the pleasure of leading.

The idea of servant leadership is about leaders who are appointed or who emerge to serve – if necessary to the point of giving their lives in loving service. Now, authority is necessary and with it some differentiation of roles and responsibilities. Inevitably there is hierarchy of responsible power. However, the prevailing ethos and practice among the authorities of Jesus’ time – just as today – is characterised by values of dominance, control, an imbalanced power-over-others, self-assertion over others and the value of wanting the limelight that goes with such positions. Rare is the leader who doesn’t want to lead or be in authority but is compelled or drawn to respond to a call to service in a world crying out for servant leadership.

Competition for kudos in the game of honour drives many to behaviour that distorts the very idea of vocation to leadership. Instead, the focus is on titles, procedures, control and how many dollars or Euros is in the budget over which one has jurisdiction. Such competition may start early on facebook or later through linkedin or twitter! Success and fame go with the number of ‘followers’ or ‘friends’.  But, being ‘friends’ with Jesus and others through him and being ‘followers’ of the master who lived and died to serve all is about relationships and signals a whole different scene.

A practical lesson in greatness..

Mark’s passage moves quickly to an illustration of what wisdom and leadership really involve. He takes a child and declares that anyone who welcomes a child welcomes the gospel. Matthew (18:4) goes further and declares that:

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Putting children in the centre to illustrate a point about leadership would not have fit with prevailing culture. Notions of children’s right were unheard of. A contemporary illustration of these gospel narratives is in the practice adopted in the community of Taizé in France where the Prior (the first in the community) takes the last seat in the central section of the make-shift wooden church of the resurrection. Accompanying him is a child or children who process to the service of prayer at the beginning. These telling symbols and gestures are important because much of the way we have ‘done church’ over the centuries seems at odds with the values of the gospel as outlined here in Mark as well as in the other three gospels.

Losing to win

“For those who want to save their life will lose it”.(Mark8:35)

Mark 8:27-35 (Year B: Trinity+15)

A gospel for losers..

At the core of this passage is a question followed by a series of answers followed by a warning and an invitation. ‘Who do you say that I am’ can have two meanings:

1. The question that fascinates thinkers, seekers, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians ….
2. The question about what the person of Jesus – the real flesh and blood person of 2,000 years ago and the Messiah declared, crucified, risen and present today through faith – means to me this morning as I board the train, walk into the building and grab a sandwich at midday.

Both questions are important but without the second question we are fooling ourselves ….

Mark doesn’t waste words. He might have been a journalist were he writing today….short, one liner, the Point….. He quotes Jesus: ‘for those who want to save their life will lose it’. The flip side is that ‘those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,will save it.’. What does this losing mean? 

We can listen to the witness of those early disciples who were prepared to face opposition, expulsion and marginalisation if they were lucky (?) enough to avoid torture and death. And the witness of disciples over the  centuries was not different. In today’s world we are reminded regularly of the plight of followers of Jesus – and millions of others – in various parts of their world who literally have their heads cut off for being ‘Nazarenes’.  Choice about following Jesus and living by his values might seem like a private and cosy matter for those of living in fortress Europe and living in the wealthier and freer part of the globe when it comes to all things we take for granted. But, for many millions choosing to stand by their beliefs and stay where they are serving in the communities and families where they have been planted can carry an awful price.

To lose everything can apply not just to material possessions but also to your very own dignity, standing and respect.  Ultimately, the stigma of being a prisoner, a refugee or an ‘alien’ is the ultimate degradation and loss.

The way of thinking revealed by Jesus in this passage of Mark is challenging. It was challenging for Peter who would not hear of the cross and the way of much suffering. Yet, it is Peter – again – who speaks up and takes the lead where others drew back and waited. The impetuous, reckless, sometimes faithless Peter who sticks his neck out only to have it pushed back – in this case by attracting the undiplomatic expression ‘get behind me Satan’ (verse 33). I have sympathy for Peter. At least he tried and tried again and got up each time …. even when he betrayed Jesus for a time.

And what of us?..

This road – that Jesus must follow – will be the same road that his disciples will follow. And what of us?

Losing something we didn’t want in the first place is one thing. Losing something precious, good and prized is another matter. Sometimes, we are called to ‘lose our lives’ for the sake of the gospel and its values. In the chapters that follow in Mark the announcement of the coming passion is repeated – much to the consternation and lack of understanding on those hearing.

Often it is not that we reject the cross but, rather, this particular cross which is not ideal or savoury!  It may be that we want to choose our own cross our way not in ways that take us by surprise and come like the wind ‘from the North-West’ (‘an ghaoth aniar aduaidh’ as the saying goes in Irish Gaelic). If only we could get to choose our own cross life would be easier to anticipate, plan and regulate! One thing is certain – in the life of discipleship as well as every other life – suffering is unavoidable. We can see it as part of the journey towards the full light of resurrection or we can stay in the dark cursing it and wishing it were otherwise. But, none of this takes from the point that suffering is suffering anytime and anywhere. It does not help those suffering to hear others make light of it or over-spiritualise it. Our task as disciples of Jesus who walked this road before us is to bear with the sufferings that come our way and work to alleviate the suffering in others around us.

Not quite what we expected..

We await some good in our lives. When it comes it is not what we had expected. It is like that in this story. People expected a Messiah who would be a mighty king, a popular or not so popular prophet and so on. Nobody expected a suffering servant who would die a disgraceful death on a dumping ground outside the capital city.

This road before me..

The mood of Mark 8 is captured, for me, in that haunting poem written by the well known Irish poet, mystic and political rebel, Pádraic Pearse. While not a supporter of his politically I am always deeply touched by his depth of insight, feeling and courage. (There is more than a hint of the suffering servant Isaiah in this poem).

Ideal (by Pádraic Pearse and translated by Thomas McDonagh)

Naked I saw thee,

O beauty of beauty!

And I blinded my eyes

For fear I should flinch.

I heard thy music,

O sweetness of sweetness!

And I shut my ears

For fear I should fail.

I kissed thy lips

O sweetness of sweetness!

And I hardened my heart

For fear of my ruin.

And I blinded my eyes

And my heart I shut

I hardened my heart

And my love I quenched

I turned my back

On the dream I had shaped

And to this road before me

My face I turned

I set my face

To the road here before me

To the work that I see

To the death that I shall meet

Or, in the original it is as follows:

Fornocht do chonacthú,
a áillenaháille,
is do dhallasmoshúil
areagla go stánfainn.

Do chualas do cheol,
a bhinnenabinne,
is do dhúnasmochluas
areagla go gclisfinn.

Do bhlaiseas do bhéal
a mhilsenamilse,
is do chruasmochroí
areaglamomhillte.

Do dhallasmoshúil,
is mochluas do dhúnas;
do chruasmochroí,
is momhian do mhúchas.

Do thugasmochúl
ar an aisling do chumas,
‘s ar an ród so romham
m’aghaidh do thugas.

Do thugasmoghnúis
ar an ród so romham,
ar an ngníomh do-chim,
‘s ar an mbás do gheobhad.

Open to new possibilities

“Be opened”. (Mark 7:34)

Mark 7:31-37 (Year B: Trinity+14)

A raw request..

Actions speak louder than words. Yet, words are powerful agents. In this gospel passage we hear the word Ephphatha meaning Be opened in the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus.  Very occasionally the gospel writers report the actual word – in Aramaic – spoken by Jesus to give extra effect and depth to what is being recounted. It is like a story in which we imitate the accent or mannerism of the person about whom we are talking. In this case Jesus said Ephphatha ‘with a deep sigh’. With a deep sigh from the cross Jesus would say Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani – ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46).  In this way a simple and powerful question or request to the Father by Jesus is given extra flavour by repeating it in the original techni-colour.

In anguish a person who was ‘deaf’ and ‘could hardly talk’ was brought to Jesus by strangers in a strange land known as the ten cities (Decapolis). It follows another miracle in alien territory involving a gentile Syrophoenician woman who prevailed on Jesus to cure her daughter (mothers can be persuasive). As happens again and again in the gospels Jesus walks straight into a situation of acute human distress and need. By now he has acquired some reputation as a healer and dispenser of wisdom. So, when desperate, as the strangers were, they plead with Jesus for help (they ‘begged’ him). The pattern is familiar to us as we read and think about the gospels. It is composed of five steps:

• A situation of human distress and need.
• Pleading sometimes accompanied by a primitive trust or faith.
• A vigorous and swift response by Jesus often accompanied by a discrete but effective physical outward sign.
• Healing or rescue often signalled by a miraculous event.
•  A response by these looking on but especially by those healed, rescued or nourished – puzzlement, fear, joy, praise, scandal as the case may be.

Transposed to today..

Applied today in our little world where do we find such stories at work?

1. In this story, we find ourselves in the company of Jesus who is travelling through ‘foreign territory’. It would be like someone from (Catholic/nationalist) Falls Road walking through the (Protestant/loyalist) Shankill Road in Belfast, Ireland, or vice versa. Let’s say someone doing such a thing would not delay and would probably keep their mouth shut!
2.  Enter someone who is deaf and mainly dumb – the ultimate loneliness of someone who cannot hear or communicate. What to do? The story of Helen Keller captured in a film many years ago tells the story of a young girl who was deaf and dumb but, against all the odds and with the heroic help of an Anne Sullivan learned to communicate. Helen Keller became a famous writer and speaker having learned how to communicate somehow with others. She learned to read people’s lips by use of her hands. Using braille she learned to read extensively (she wrote and published 12 books in her lifetime). Acts of faith, perseverance, kindness and determination meant that Helen Keller blossomed and flourished and provided inspiration to millions as well as practical help in developing services for people with disabilities. How many other Helen Kellers might there be today in our world even given a chance?
3.  Jesus is captivated by compassion. He is compassion walking on two feet who brings life and healing so that ‘the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor (Matthew 11:5). Jesus acts swiftly to take the man aside ‘away from the crowd’ and he uses spittle, touch and prayer from the depth of his heart to perform a healing (while this might not have passed 21^st century Health Authority protocols we should be aware that, apparently, spittle was believed to have medicinal value in primitive societies).
4.  In this story the miracle is deeply personal to the one healed. Sight and hearing and speech are restored in one go. Life would never be the same again for the one healed. Who was this man? What was his name? Was he even Jewish?  Where was he when Jesus was crucified? Did he become a disciple afterwards?
5.  Many are the reactions of those who have witnessed the power of a loving God in their lives and that of others. But, some will always remain hostile, sceptical or indifferent.  The important lesson, here, is that Jesus kept moving onwards (Jerusalem was to be his ultimate destination). Many were ‘overwhelmed’ by what Jesus had done. They commented that ‘he has done everything well’ (verse 37).

In many respects this was a low-key miracle. Sure enough it was an extraordinary and miraculous healing of someone who had been blind and deaf for most (all?) of his life. However, the man was only one person. For everyone healed there were at least another hundred or two in the Decapolis who were not.  And, Jesus insisted on keeping the whole matter private and undisclosed possibly to avoid premature reactions and misunderstanding about who he was and why had come. Jesus preached, healed and loved one person at a time and one moment at a time. What he did he did well (verse 37) but he did not usher in a perfect world or outcome. Rather, in keeping with his humanity and divinity he did what was required of love –  person by person and moment by moment.  In other words, we could say that he loved perfectly in an imperfect world that remains imperfect. Such is God-in-humanity.

And inspiring out actions and thoughts..

In a poem attributed to Waldo Emerson there is an application of this to those in search of healing such as the strangers in the Decapolis:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty and to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.

However, the attribution is said to be properly to a Bessie A. Stanley:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;

Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;

Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;

Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;

Who has left the world better than he found it,

Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;

Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;

Whose life was an inspiration;

Whose memory a benediction.

And so it was for Helen Keller and her helper and associate Anne Sullivan.

Some questions today..

Are we in need of healing spiritually because we think we hear and see but we don’t?

How do we respond to situations of acute human distress in the immediate world around us?

Where do we see the discrete healing power of God at work? 

What is our response to healing when we see and experience it at first hand?

Do the stories of the gospel come alive for us now? 

Upside down and outside-in

“Listen to me, all of you, and understand”. (Mark 7:14)

Mark 7:1-23 (Year B: Trinity+13)

Controversies are never far from us..

More controversy. Why is that religion, like politics, generates controversy? In this week’s passage from Mark (following last Sunday’s dispute over hard teachings of Jesus in John 6) Jesus does not mince his words where the traditions of the elders of his time were concerned.  Even today, some folk attach a lot of importance to appearance, ritual and customs as the doorposts on which religion hangs.  These things offer comfort and come from the wells of ‘tradition’. (In Jesus’ time some of these traditions were oral but authoritative and not necessarily practiced at the time by all Jews).  More than that, adherence to particular customs helps distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them’. If the others drive on the right hand side of the road and use metric measures, well, we do it differently around here. Anyway, it is up to them to change. The habits of a lifetime and the traditions of the ancestors shape deep ravines in our minds and memories. ‘It was always like that here’ and ‘that’s the way it is done here’.

Today, we underestimate the extent of ‘unwritten rules’ in many organisations, families and situations. Let’s call it culture. And culture is important. But, we do not need to be slaves to culture because culture evolves in and out of the experience of human communities.

With sex on the brain..

Notions of what is right and what is pure continue to influence religious debate in our day. Purity may concern notions of what are appropriate and what is not appropriate expressions of sexuality, for example. It may also concern various practices and ways of behaviour beyond sex which continues to preoccupy religious people. In Old Testament times, the notion of purity was very often tied up with not worshiping idols or not partaking in the sacrifices or rituals of others as well as abstaining from various foods as well as keeping away from impure things like persons afflicted with leprosy or dead bodies, etc. (sorry to disappoint but the ancient Hebrews had more than sex on their minds!).

Sometimes, a martian arriving on earth might be forgiven for thinking that the main concern of religious persons – many Christians certainly being no exception – is sex.  In the recent decades more controversies, splits, expulsions, silencings, dissenting publications, resolutions, instructions have been generated by sex and things to do with sex.  At least, nowadays, Christians no longer kill each other over faith and good works. Rather, they squabble over sex, instead. Now, the areas of sexuality, intimacy, commitment, marriage and family are vital parts of human living and it would be altogether astonishing if the bible had nothing to say about these matters and how lives can be formed to bring glory to God and well-being to his people (the two being entirely mutually reinforcing). However, there is more to living and right living than these important areas.  

If one thing is astonishing it is how comparatively little is said or done in the churches nowadays – compared to the tantalising preoccupation with sex – about the great social injustices of our day – environmental destruction, poverty, racism, wars, oppression, denial of fundamental rights (the most recent Encyclical by Pope Francis entitled Laudato Si which discusses the environment goes some of the way to rebalance matters). Of course, churches and Christians are often to the fore in speaking about these wider social and ecological matters and seeking change as well as being to the fore in directly tackling these problems. However, I suggest that there is still an imbalance when it comes to public discourse.

In the gospels we hear about the Pharisees, the scribes and the doctors of the law snooping around and watching to observe and catch out the disciples of Jesus in some infringement of their religious codes. Their focus was on purity, exclusion and censor.  Religion, for them, was about staying on the right side of God by adhering to the traditions, regulations and understandings of the elders. Jesus, in one salvo, dispels their claims and criticisms of the disciples (and himself) by invoking the solid tradition of the prophets and Isaiah in particular who abhorred a religion of formalism and external compliance but lacked the core of compassion, decency and honesty.

It is worth recalling what the passage of Isaiah quoted by Jesus says:

The Lord said: Because these people draw near with their mouths and honour me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.

Isaiah 29:13

Pretty damning then; pretty damning now? What do you think?

In the upside-down and outside-in world of false religion God is placed at the service of human ideology and notions. This ideology becomes god in a way that mocks the very idea of the living God-who-is-love.  Outer compliance becomes the test of faith and fidelity while the inner heart is ‘full of dead men’s bones’. Later in the gospel of Matthew Jesus tells us (Matt 23:27):

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.

The things that defile us come from within and Jesus gives a non-exhaustive list of examples (v21-22):

…..fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly…..

In short, what typically fills the Sunday tabloids and popular media! An advertisement for a coffee shop in this part of the world has a sign written from top to bottom of a front window: SEX. There is a much smaller sentence below the word saying ‘now that we have caught your attention come in and have a coffee’. It is sometimes curious to note that many read the scriptures looking for ‘sex’ and when they find it they make it into the one issue on which doctrinal orthodoxy and personal integrity count. Yes, indeed, how we behave in all our facets of our lives and our relationship to others is a vital part of what it means to be a human and a Christian.  But, what about the evils of ‘slander’, ‘murder’ and ‘theft’?  Take slander.  How often are people slandered in conversations – even ordinary every-day conversations. How often we join in especially when it comes to public figures whom we don’t even know or have never met face to face. To refer to someone as a ‘traitor’ or having betrayed a cause or a relationship carries a huge burden of responsibility on our part because we put ourselves in the seat of God. Thankfully God is not anywhere near the merciless judges that we can sometime be – confident in our own correctness and convinced about others on the basis of the most partial of evidence and oblivious to what it might be like to ‘walk in the shoes of another’.

And the criticism by Jesus is for us today...

Down through the ages the very mindset criticised by Jesus has been widespread in the various Christian churches. Under guise of correctness and doctrinal purity, some were hounded, persecuted, excluded, ridiculed, judged and put outside the camp of the saved. Much cruelty was, and is, practiced in the name of religion and, sadly, in the name of Christ.

Costly discipleship..

In a pithy saying attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was martyred for standing up against Nazism:

Only he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.

The difference between an outside-in mentality and an inside-out is that in the former we are governed by the externals while neglecting those sources of love and unity that lie dormant within the human heart – that place deep within us where reason, feeling and will meet. Like the disciples, we can misunderstand the message initially. The kingdom is not a rule by man-made decrees; nor is it a physical place or time. Rather, it is the continuing in-breaking of the holy spirit of God’s love and truth in our hearts and in our midst.  This has the power to change the way we see and evaluate things so that what we thought was sound religion is, at best, dubious, and what we thought was ‘selling out’ may very well be the thing God is calling his church to do now because the world needs to hear a new song that is fully in harmony with the goodness of creation at the beginning.

It would be all too easy to read this passage of Mark and, indeed, the entire gospels as a confrontation between Jesus, the Messiah, and the old Jewish religion complete with legalism and particularism.  The actual situation is more complex as Christianity emerged from within the Jewish faith. The problem today, as when these gospels were written, is not in the detail of the laws as much as in the order of importance beginning with the simple but overwhelming truth that God is love and on this very same love which requires us to love our neighbour hangs ‘all the law and the prophets’ (Matthew 22:40).

It is significant that Jesus picks the example of family obligation and duty towards parents to illustrate the way in which we can turn God’s compassion upside down. To deny what is necessary to help others especially those in need such as parents who, in Jesus’ time, would have relied particularly heavily on their children and immediate family for support in their declining years was a great injustice. Such attitudes of confused morals persisted in different ways and at different times in the course of Christian history.

For too many people, fear is the guiding force of their religious observance. It is a question of fear of punishment, fear of disgrace, fear of the road not taken and the risk not embraced.

And today we are challenged..

Many are those who imagine that they are safe because they participate more or less frequently in the sacramental life of the church and avoid serious misdemeanours. Still many are others who believe that they are entirely and irrevocably ‘saved’ since they surrendered their all at, say, 2am on Sunday 5^th August 1979.  Behind such situations lies a niggling case of unease. People feel the need to ‘do the right thing’ and remain on the right side of Great Unknown after death.  Mark 7 is for such well-meaning souls. The reality that confronts us in Mark 7 as in Matthew 15 is that it is the heart that counts. What is in the heart is what guides our thoughts and actions and their impact on others.  If our hearts are full of bad things as well as good things we are conflicted and our actions will reflect this. In this case, we are less than credible witnesses to the great light that Jesus shone on all of humanity and still does.

We would do well to listen again and understand (verse 14).

Treasuring words of eternal life

‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’. (John 6:68)

John 6:56-69 (Year B: Trinity+12)

                                     pic: paulawiseman.com

All of human life is there..

After five Sundays we come to the end of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St John.   To use a much clichéd term ‘all of human life is there’. Indeed. Hope, puzzlement, joy, wonder, betrayal, confusion, trust.  We can find ourselves in one of the crowd or one of the 12 closest disciples of Jesus or one of the bystanders. The words are challenging. It sounds very much like a meditation from an early Christian community already familiar with a primitive form of the Eucharist or Holy Communion. Whatever the exact circumstances in which this was written and what lies behind it we can trust that, somehow, as with the rest of the scripture it represents God speaking to us today – not by means of some direct transcript or video clip but through the mediation of memory, story and evolving understanding. We are in holy company listening to the living word and this word is at work in our hearts each time we seek to listen and to be open to the word of God.

The Bread of Heaven which Jesus gives is his body. But, this also includes his words because they are full of spirit and life (verse 63).  This can give a new meaning and freshness to the phrase ‘Give us today our daily bread’ in the prayer Our Father.  Our daily bread is the life-giving and spirit-filled word of God that we carry around with us in our heads and in our hearts. This word can shape and make us no matter what has happened before in our lives and what might turn up in the time that remains to us on this earth.

Clinging to the Word

Let’s be practical.  What words make a difference to our lives and those of others? We speak and we listen every day. By some reckonings the average person speaks between 7,000 and 20,000 words a day (with a clear gender difference which may cast light on life expectancy differences!). That’s a lot of words in a lifetime – perhaps half a million or so in a long lifetime. How many of these words that remain to us will be T.H.I.N.K.?

True

Helpful

Inspiring

Necessary

Kind

In the flow of conversation, thinking and moving about, particular words have a strong resonance. And this is all the more obvious when words are put to music. Among some seniors memories of songs and their words can be the last remaining words when other memories fade.  Words are powerful and life-giving. It would not be incorrect to say that we live and move and have our being in words and, for us Christians, in Jesus Christ who is the living word of God and in which all life has its being.

God lives in us through his word.  Elsewhere, scripture tells us that we can live in God and God in us through belief in Jesus and through the practice of love (1 John 3:23-24). A mutual indwelling is possible like the vine and its branches (refer to the passage John 15:5 and No Lone Rangers for a previous blog on this site). Grafted on to the living vine we live, grow, flourish as we are joined to the whole living vine.

John 6 and later controversies

At the end of this important chapter we have encountered Jesus in his word and in his sacramental signs of living bread which is his body. This not an easy teaching to grasp or an easy one to explain and accept as witnessed by the tone of controversy in verses 60-69.  It might be all to convenient to turn this passage into a harbinger of reformation and post-reformation controversies many centuries later. We would be missing the point if we were to focus on a relatively modern controversy about how to explain the mystery of the Lord’s table. At the centre of this discourse is the unity of life, word and living bread. We do not know just how but we believe all the same.

To grasp the meaning of Jesus’ words requires more than academic erudition. It requires an open heart and mind and even a certain type of ‘spiritual intelligence’ or imagination. This is a gift and not everyone has it.  Along life’s path we have choices to make and we are free to walk away or stay. But staying involves its own challenges and pain because to stay faithful means renouncing other options and living with some measure of uncertainty, questioning and struggle.

At the risk of venturing into a disputed area where I am not fully competent there follows a brief ‘scientific’ detour in the next paragraph.

Applied to the case of the eucharist and, especially, some of the controversies that arose in the Christian family some 1,000 to 1,500 years later we need take a leaf from this discourse of John.  The irony is that St Thomas Acquinas borrowed terminology form Aristotelean Greek philosophy to correct certain ‘physical’ interpretations of the eucharist that were threatening at the time. The term used by Acquines was transubstantion (or transsubstantiatio in latin) – the idea that the elements of bread and wine undergo a change into the body and blood of Christ in such manner that we merely see, taste and touch bread and wine but in reality these are no longer bread and wine. Other explanations include ‘consubstantiation’ (Luther – although he didn’t quite use this term). And among the Eastern Catholics the term metousiosis is used (literally means a change in ousios or inner reality in the Greek term).

At this point it is no harm to remind ourselves that (a) Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic to his disciples and listeners while the stories about Jesus and what he said were written down in Greek many decades later, (b) fortunately or unfortunately Jesus did not speak in English – not even 16^th century English as found in the King James version of the Bible, (c) a doctrine about what happens to the physical content and structure of bread and wine is not outlined either in the Gospel of John or anywhere else in the New Testament, (d) to my knowledge the actual term and expression of transubstantiation is not used anywhere in the liturgies of the Roman Catholic or uniate Churches in full communion with Rome just as metousiosis as a term is not used in the Divine Liturgies in the East.

None of this is to deny the significance and usefulness of theological and personal intellectual inquiry about these matters. However, we risk missing the point of John 6 and the entire Gospel by going down the wrong track into mysteries that remain mysteries. The author of ‘In the Imitation of Christ’ probably got just about right some 600 year ago when he warns: ‘Beware of curious and vain examination of this most profound Sacrament, if you do not wish to be plunged into the depths of doubt’ (Book 4).  

And there lies the scandal and the offence among the hearers of Jesus in John 6:60-65 – to accept the challenging words of Jesus which link his spiritual food with his word, his life and that life that we are asked to share with the whole world.

We are broken people for a united world

‘… How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’. (John 6:53)

John 6:51-58 (Year B: Trinity+11)

Johannine shock therapy..

And so the reading of John chapter 6 continues over five Sundays in the middle of ‘Mark’s year’.  A careful and prayerful reading of John 6 can open inexhaustible treasures. Every sentence and every word carries depth and mystery. But it has very practical implications for how we live today. Every now and again Johannine shock is used with references to being born again (John 3:3) or the offer of living water to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:7-15) or eating the flesh of the Son of Man.  This shocks and confounds the immediate listeners. And we are to be shocked as well. Lest we lose ourselves in a quiet, detached and care-free zone of contemplation we need to be shocked very now and then. 

In the 1986 film, Mission, set in South America in the 1750s the Jesuit priest, Fr. Gabriel, leads the people forward as he carries the monstrance with the blessed sacrament against a barrage of gun fire from a joint Portuguese-Spanish army. The brutal and violent laceration of the people and the monstrance is a powerful cinematic sign of Christ’s body ripped apart in the poor and the oppressed (after Fr. Gabriel is cut down a little child picks up the monstrance and leads the procession. Only a handful escape into the jungle). Witness, community, persecution, violence, death, scattering, remnant and new life.  Flesh, Bread, Life.

Shock therapy applied today..

One way to apply some shock therapy in modern times is to explore the Eucharistic theme of John 6 in the concrete social reality.  Bishop Frank Weston, an Anglican bishop from Zanzibar in the early decades of the 20^th century declared in the context of an Anglo-Catholic gathering in 1923:

The one thing England needs to learn is that Christ is in and amid matter, God in flesh, God in sacrament.

He went on to say the following:

But I say to you, and I say it with all the earnestness that I have, if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in His Blessed Sacrament, then, when you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the peoples of your cities and villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums … It is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.

Such a challenging insight was not novel. Saint Ignatius of Antioch writing in a letter to the Smyrnaeans, not long after the Gospel of John was written down declared: 

Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.

And writing two centuries later, Saint Basil the Great said:

The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.

(I am grateful for all of the above information to Rev Patrick Comerford and his very useful regular blog here).

In short, we do not have the luxury of a worshiping a God detached from the struggles and sufferings of the world around us. We move from sacrament to world and back again because the world is the theatre in which sacramental action happens through us and others. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers Movement wrote in 1935:

It is because we forget the humanity of Christ – present with us today in the Blessed Sacrament just as truly as when he walked with His apostles through the cornfields that Sunday long ago – that we have ignored the material claims of our fellow man during this capitalistic, industrialist era. We have allowed our brothers and sisters, our fellow members in the Mystical Body to be degraded, to endure slavery to a machine, to live in rat-infested holes. This ignoring of the material body of our humanity which Christ ennobled when He took flesh, gives rise to the aversion for religion evidenced by many…

Because Christianity is a ‘materialist’ religion..

Christianity is a materialist religion in the sense that God became material in human flesh and blood and thereby raised up all flesh to God. Moreover, we reach God together and not individually and sacraments are signs on the way pointing us upwards and forward as we touch, see and feel the presence of God. This is the heart of the message of John 6. The detour into chapter 6 of John’s Gospel in the middle of ‘Mark’s year’ has brought out, so far, a number of central Eucharistic themes of the entire story of Jesus (with two more Sundays to go in the company of John including this Sunday):

Abundance and welcome

Longing for you

Peace, bread, life

Back to the reality of bread..

 ‘I am the living bread’ declares Jesus. What does this mean to us today?  Bread is a basic part of our diet and has been down the centuries. With water, bread constitutes a normal element for restoring and fuelling our bodies.  In other words, bread gives and sustains life.  But our lives are sustained by more than mere bread. We live on the strength of love, affirmation, acceptance, challenge and positive relationship. ‘Not on bread alone’ does man live (Matthew 4:4).  However, if we enlarge our imaginations we can understand the words, the music, the conversation and the sights of everyday life as types of daily bread that nourishes our bodies and souls. In that sense the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, could speak of God’s Word as bread which can be consumed (Jeremiah 15:16). But, we need to eat in order to understand just as understanding precedes eating. Jesus had to bring the thousands forward from eating bread loaves and fish to eating the living word of God. We have to start somewhere and human hunger is an obvious starting place.

With ‘scandalous’ talk of flesh and blood..

But, Jesus did not just say I am giving you the living bread which is my flesh but he also says that he is giving you his blood. Not only is flesh scandalous to pious 1^st century years but blood is more than scandalous because it signifies the very life of one.  To share in the eucharist is to share in the life of God’s own family while drawing into that family the great unwashed, the confused, the unwelcome and the marginalised.

This is what it means – concretely – to live eucharistically –  in full communion with God as a loving parent and with all of his children who are our brothers and sisters in the family of faith that invites everyone in.

We, too, can be transformed into bread broken for a world that hungers. Here is a short prayer based on a reading of John that I composed some years ago:

In the beginning was the Word

And the World became flesh

And that flesh became bread;

Which has now become us

Broken for a united world

Returning to the source from which it came