Mark 9:30-37
Proper 20 (25) - Year B
I trust you know first-hand the connection between not understanding and fear. The two are a very powerful combination. In not understanding we become fearful to find out or even to have an epiphany for it will cause the whole constellation of behaviors we have constructed out of our misunderstanding to come crumbling down about us. In fear we prefer confusion to clarity for we can hide better and excuse ourselves better when things are muddy so our fear stirs up the bottom muck.
It is not surprising that the disciples did not understand Jesus' teaching about his betrayal and death, given the topic of their discussion (NISB note). It is not surprising that not understanding Jesus' own self-understanding, or their fear of understanding what Jesus was saying, led them to try to figure out who was going to carry on the teaching once Jesus was gone. Surely it would be one of them that would be the key to the next level of institutional success and who would protect their pension.
What! a child, a newcomer, will teach, will be called to a place of honor? How could this be? Doesn't Jesus understand the process of royal succession? Perhaps we can help him out by winnowing the weightiest pool of players.
If everyone votes for themselves as the greatest, everyone will get one vote. If everyone must vote for another (become last to someone else's first) then I'm more likely to get more affirmation of greatness. Remember John Nash's insight in the movie "A Beautiful Mind"? Christianity Today puts it this way, "the Nash equilibrium posits that there are circumstances in which we are better off if we settle for something other than that which we most desire. This may be counterintuitive, but the mathematical proof (which is available for a general audience in William Poundstone's excellent book, Prisoner's Dilemma) is quite elegant. Indeed, the implication of the Nash equilibrium is that sometimes the entire community is better off when we choose not to pursue that which we want most desperately."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/september2003.html
A gentleness born of wisdom beckons us closer and closer that, with its small hands, our large desires might be unbuttoned and left to drop as a marker of a holy place - a burden was dropped here.
Those places where many burdens drop become our cathedrals, temples, churches in wildwoods, thin places. They are rightly revered. But no more so than where a single burden was laid to rest. Even as disciples have argued as to who was the greatest, so we struggle within and between various spiritual traditions as to loci of holiness.
Wisdom gentles us to appreciate the smallest of new beginnings as equal with the largest of sacraments. This goes beyond issues of right and wrong to a center-spot welcoming. Whether forgiven much or little we honor each forgiveness, each release.
- - -
flames signify
a release
a solid lets go
a puff of gas
upon an airy eddy
adds to an unpredictable
rising up
wavering light
strong enough
to attract moths
and hold bears at bay
we add our bodies
to the kindling
of a funeral pyre
honoring a past
past its time
in anticipation
of a new phoenix
for its moment
strong enough
to call us back
and send us forth
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
I appreciate the advice that it is important to remember the horror of capital punishment, whether as slow and painful as a crucifixion or as fast and antiseptic as a lethal injection, for a solid year before talking about "cross-bearing" as a model for discipleship.
This advice comes from Richard Swanson in his Provoking the Gospel of Mark, who also asks: "Could the operative flow in the passage be something more like from rejection to welcome? If the flow is sketched that way, the middle term, in which the disciples embarrass themselves yet again, becomes a picture of people too inattentive to catch the tragedy of the first moment [crucifixion], and too full of themselves to catch the last [receiving people of low estate]."
To embrace that which is below one's station, is to embrace all of creation [want to play G*D - here's your chance]. We get all caught up with being sure we are not on the lowest rung of our current hierarchy and argue, argue, argue that we "are not" in the worst position. All the while not catching on that a welcome of one of the least is an invitation to both of us to move on up. The work is not to move up, but down. When this welcoming work is done we look around and by-golly we are even more blessed than we dared dream.
So is this strange process of proceeding by receding a design flaw in creation or a deep and beautiful blessing? [Note: this works in a milieu of achievement. If you are already settling for second-place because people are always telling you about your place - don't listen to this posting, unionize, rise up.]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html
And again we find ourselves in a normal state of affairs - going on from “there”. It is helpful to leave “there” for leaving “here” is always difficult. Our attachements here grow quickly and deep.
Even further, we find that we are not only leaving “there” but doing so on the sly.
Jesus needn’t have worried about being quite up-front about his view of the disaster headed his way - death and destruction which will turn from conflict to celebration. This is never something folks take to easily. Denial runs strong in our DNA - Don’t kNow Anything.
Not only is this such a foreign approach, to head directly for the crux of the matter, where the most heat is, it is beyond foreign — invisible and unable to be asked about.
Instead of wrestling with this meta-view, folks distracted themselves the way we often do, conversing about power, drawing straws for a favored position. Americans do the same every two, four, or six years with the distraction of voting rather than looking at what is coming down the pike. We may have missed the violence at the beginning of an Industrial Age, but we seem to be moving toward it at a rapid pace, here at the end of the Age. The environment has been raped and the poor also. Children have not been been welcomed to their future, only to a past empty of all but financial profit. The gulf between G*D and Mammon has grown exponentially.
May this time of transition be a “there” soon left as we decide to not argue among ourselves, but rise, throw off chains of death and enslavement and move forward to occupy community resources for the larger community.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/09/mark-930-37.html