Getting to a teachable moment
Commentary
I spent part of a recent Sunday talking with a public school teacher who was quickly coming to the end of her rope. Talented, dedicated, one of the good people, she found herself with the class from hell and her life coming apart at the seams. We were well beyond being a non-anxious, fully individuated, differentiated presence. In short, we were at critical mess rather than critical mass. I have taught enough confirmation classes and have had experiences in the classroom in other forums to identify with the pain when you are in a non-teachable moment. On the other hand, in the church I currently serve, confirmation has become informative and fun -- even inspiring. There is nothing sweeter for me than to see the pondering, the movement, the growing in wisdom and stature that comes with a rich learning experience.
In the Hebrew Testament Lesson that Year B offers this Sunday, Isaiah ponders what it means to be given the tongue of a teacher. Paul pleads for the Philippians to have the same mind among them that was in Christ Jesus. In Mark's story of the passion there is a lesson to be had, which the Roman centurion gets, in the teachable moment we call the cross.
If you are in the education business in any sense when connections are made, hearts open and minds light up, you know you are in the presence of the miraculous. There can be so much that goes wrong and gets in the way. Rather than following in Isaiah's footsteps, the adversarial generational mood of the moment can hook people, causing the teacher to have a tongue that gives a lashing rather than the planned lesson. Crass cultural mindlessness can lead to folks being pretty far away from anything that looks like the mind of Christ. Context can cut out learning. Perhaps it is a Pilate moment: too much to prove, defend, or prosecute to have ears to listen to each other or eyes to see what is in front you.
One of the teaching tools that I use with our confirmation class is the movie Twelve Angry Men. It is the story of a trial in which one lone juror reverses the minds of the other eleven who are ready from the start to vote to convict the accused of murder. Made in 1954 and done in black and white we usually begin with moans, groans, and side comments about the quaint clothing styles, the incessant smoking, and the obvious fact that today there never would be a jury of twelve white men trying a Puerto Rican young man. That said, the students are soon captivated by how the one juror, the Christ figure, is able to lead the members of the jury through their fears, blind spots, self-doubts, emotional hang-ups, and closed-mindedness to a point where they doubt their original certainties.
The lone juror's relentless pursuit of meeting the others where they are, speaking what they are able to hear, risking rejection, and patiently waiting creates a powerful, teachable moment that turns things around. The jurors are saved from mindlessly acting on their prejudices, from a disastrous disconnect from their emotions, and a cowardly shamefulness that causes them to ignore what is right in front of them.
The saving moment comes from one who has the tongue of a teacher, the mind of one who puts himself in the place of others rather than puts them in their place, and who, in the selfless taking up of the cross of justice touches the hearts of others. The lessons for Passion Sunday affirm that this is what it takes if there will be a teachable moment.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The prophet begins with the experience of being given the tongue of a teacher. Do you remember the voice of your teachers? No doubt some sounded like nails on a blackboard in their shrillness and demands. There are teachers who find themselves with a voice hardened by the years of teaching. There are teachers who are battling to keep head and heart together; feeling that they are losing the fight to grade inflation, the surrounding culture, and a sea of societal expectations. Isaiah's description of the teacher has more truth to it than we care to admit: "I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting." It is not that these words readily conger up visions of flying spitballs in the midst of a blackboard jungle inhabited by smart-mouthed teenagers. It is the vulnerability of the teacher and the seeming inability of the teacher to make themselves understood that chills the soul.
As in our day, we might ask why anyone would undertake such a mission. What is at stake in enduring such exposure to endless demands, chronic self-doubt, and limited support? For Isaiah there is much more at stake than whether the next generation will be employable, or be able to make change without a calculator. Though Isaiah's people are living in Babylonian exile, tempted to pass into the surrounding culture, this is not the final word. Isaiah seeks to prepare his students not for the world that is, but for the age to come through God's activity. "So the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." God will act to free God's people and return them from exile.
As a matter of fact, in many ways the teachers whose voices still speak in my life had in their own way understood and preached the message of the prophet. As much as they prepared me for the world that was, they prepared me for the world to come. They radiated out a sense that I would be overcome by a joy that would lead me home. It could happen in a novel, a piece of music, a painting, in a moment of surpassing curiosity staring at the night sky. It might come in a moment when beyond all that divides I could discover all that unites people who share the human story. It might come in pushing hard to run six miles in under an hour at the age of 56. Or it could come in suddenly discovering that I could understand something of what Einstein was getting at. The amazing thing is that those who set their face "like a flint" on such a message and did not turn back turned out to be right. The marvelous thing about the commitment to such a message was that it affirmed me as a person. I was worthy of such experiences. I best be ready, lest I miss the opportunity.
The meaning of such experiences is that there is a God who is trying to lead us out of exile. Those who stick with this message will not be put to shame. They will be vindicated. I found myself in my educational experience most likely to listen to this voice when it came from the lips of those who were able to point in their own way to times and places in their lives when they too had made this discovery.
Philippians 2:5-11
Of course, we have to deal here with one of the most classic formulations of the Christian community's understanding of Christ. Approaching this text I do feel like I am back in school. The voices are saying, "Whatever you do, do not mess this one up!" This is important stuff here. After all, there are those that say this may be the earliest recorded expression of the faith community's understanding of Jesus. Paul writes from prison to the first church established on European soil. This is a job for commentaries and super study. With thirty years in ministry will my skills be up to it or have they atrophied? My home pastor, of sainted memory, studied with Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a classmate. I can't let him down. I hear a strange version of Professor Kingsfield from the movie, Paper Chase, the story of the rigors of Harvard Law School, "Here is a dime, call your mother, and tell her that you are not going to be a college professor or perhaps even a pastor." The recurring nightmare where I don't graduate from high school is occurring. I have a doctorate, for crying out loud, why am I afraid?
Having read the above you now have ample evidence of what it means to not have in you the mind which was in Christ Jesus. It just may be the mind of a country pastor who is a bit frightened that, as James Fowler has written, "It is unclear not only whether our children will have faith but whether our faith will have children." I find the general level of biblical illiteracy a bit nerve-racking as I ponder how we can implement the notion of having the mind of Jesus among teenagers. I find myself seriously calling into question my adequacy for the task.
While the commentaries intimidate, the text invites me to consider that my own life experience may actually make these words come alive. "But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself...." So far so good, for in the face of this text I feel all too human. Perhaps that is the choice that I have not considered all along. Swept up in the culture I find it all too easy to pursue the super human rather than the fully human. I find it all too easy to evaluate myself in terms of my ability to be everywhere rather than fully there. I measure myself too often in terms of being able to fix things rather than be genuinely present even when I cannot fix things. I long to control people more than connect with them.
If I understand this text correctly, it seems that God surrenders the powers that I aspire to in order to save the world. Jesus chose specificity. He came in a specific place and among a particular people. He experienced the difficulty with trying to be two places at the same time -- and it led to saving the world. He experienced the rich, young man who chose not to follow, yet he looked upon this man with love -- and it helped to save the world. His encounters with the ambiguous responses shows one who connects but will not control -- and it leads to the saving of the world.
I consider myself as one that is more than reasonably educated and master of my intellectual house. Yet, as I read this text it becomes clear that I am asked to give up something in order to hand on anything of the gospel.
In my congregational tradition, one is called as a pastor to a local congregation to be both pastor and teacher. Whatever the role as pastor, I know that a teacher is called to give up something in order to educate in the literal sense of "to lead out." Being a teacher involves entering into the world of the student and allowing some of one's preconceived notions to be challenged and to die. Being a teacher is like playing a perpetual away game on somebody else's home turf in order that they may feel at home. This passage reads to me less like theological certainty than practical reality.
Mark 15:1-39 (40-47)
We know where Mark is headed. He has telegraphed it right from the start. The lesson to be taught here is that Jesus is the Son of God. The heavens open at the baptism and the celestial voice proclaims it. Jesus' identity is once again proclaimed from out of the cloud surrounding the Transfiguration. Through conspicuous sparseness Mark is telling us where he is headed. Mark's teaching technique builds a sense of suspense as we move toward the events of Holy Week. According to Mark, Jesus' teaching maintains the suspense. When he was alone with the disciples "... he said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that "they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven." ' " It all feels a bit like the television series Columbo. It maintained the suspense not by keeping "who done it" a secret but by following how Columbo would figure out who done it. By the time the reader of Mark gets to Holy Week, we know that Jesus is God's Son and that it will remain a secret. Much to the frustration of the religiously learned pondering the parables does not solve the mystery of Jesus' full identity.
If anything, the mystery only deepens as one considers Jesus' actions and teachings. "They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, 'What is this? A new teaching -- with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.' "
Certainly, one would think that in the face of such obtuse behavior that Rome should be able to sort things out. That is what Rome does for a living and why it has developed a massive intelligence network. Standing right in front of him, Pilate can still not get who Jesus is. Mark has spun his narrative over fifteen chapters and we find ourselves back at the same place as those who were unable to puzzle out Jesus in Capernaum. "But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed." Pilate comes up with a question that he thinks will be a closer, "Are you the king of the Jews?" The only thing to do is turn it over to the people when all else has failed. The Gentile who gets it is the Roman centurion. He has seen what Pilate could not and the rest of the world had not: the actual execution. Three things stand out, Jesus refused the myrrh, he cannot save himself, he cries out at the absence of God. The teachers who I have known that are most likely to have opened up a future, exposed themselves to the pain that comes with loving students, being moved by their students lives, and open to their own growth in public contexts. The people whose authority I have accepted and who are most likely to cast out my demons are those who do not pull rank, deny their own pain or cover their needs with myrrh. Jesus is not able to save himself. Those who open something in me are those who do not save themselves from pain, embarrassment, tough choices, and places were they have to shake off the dust and move on. He cried out at the absence of God. No answers here, no rationalizations, the cry of pain at the mystery of life. The demonic is often given chase not by reason but the readiness to cry out that life is a mystery that we share. Who has not experienced the absence of God and our inability to fill the hole? Facing the hole opens us to the possibility that we will be made whole by something larger than us. As they say in the cancer business, "First you cry."
It is the irony of Mark that such human activity points to the divine identity of Jesus. Is it any wonder that Pilate as Rome's representative does not get it when Jesus is standing right in front of him?
Application
The Isaiah text tells us that the prophet has been given the tongue of a teacher. However, it seems that something more is required. The teacher sets about the task by setting his face as a flint as he prepares to endure insult and spitting. Four things come together to make a teachable moment: message, messenger, medium, and the moment or context. The story of Holy Week is that we come to understand how Jesus is the Son of God. The early church concluded that the activity of God was made known in a prototypical way in the life of this first-century Jew. The church reached this conclusion precisely because this life emptied itself of the usual attributes of God and took on human form in a way that revealed what being fully human means. For Mark, this is Jesus' source of power that enables him to authoritatively cast out the demonic. As with the excellent teachers that I have known, I am left amazed, but I am given significant understanding.
For Mark, the new understanding of God's activity and Jesus as God did not come easily. Neither healing, casting out the demonic, nor imperial inquisition is sufficient in and of itself to be an occasion when we get to the depth of understanding that Mark believes is necessary. Such understanding comes to one standing at the foot of the cross whom you would least expect to make significant testimony about the meaning of Jesus' life. This is a source of hope for all who have the tongue of a teacher. Standing at the foot of where life can get crossed up, shorted out by crossed wires, where people inappropriately cross over the line, where general crossness erupts; Jesus takes on significant meaning in a teachable moment.
An Alternative Application
Mark 15:1-39 (40-47). Why did the crowd go for Barabbas? There is scant evidence that there ever was such a custom as alluded to in the gospels. There is much evidence that neither Rome nor Pilate would be such generous souls that they would readily release a known political rebel in exchange for yet another religious leader with a seeming messiah complex. Neither calculation of the moment nor of the personalities involved suggests that we would head this way.
Yet, the gospels do us a favor by giving us this story, because when I am placed in the context of the crowd I find much evidence of who I am. I shout for quick answers. Jesus helps us come to terms with the unanswerable and the reality "of that day or hour nobody knows." I want solutions to problems. Jesus leads me to cherish the mystery that people are. I like to believe that most of what bedevils human experience can be handled by human inventiveness. I don't want to admit that I often meet failure in life because the most dangerous demons can only be cast out by a relationship with God that we call prayer.
Most often in the midst of a crowd I shout, "Give me Barabbas." Give me the stuff that will make me look good as much as do good. Give something that will make me feel good as much as give me a feel for the kingdom of God. Give me the stuff that keeps me on top of things rather than get to the bottom of things.
I know that on Palm Sunday I should be joining in the parade of palms, however, when I join with this crowd I get to the truth of me. In my shouting for what I want, I wind up crucifying the best that is in me, that surrounds me, and that is for me.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 31:9-16
There are times when paranoia is a well-founded emotion. Sometimes people are out to get you. It's an unpleasant truth, but a truth, nonetheless. Certain pastors reading this can readily nod in agreement as they recall brushes with angry and often unwell parishioners who pour their life's venom out upon the clergy. Others have felt it when life simply goes wrong. An old friend, going through a series of life struggles, called it his "Job Profile."
Times like these occur in most peoples' lives, and they are horrid. And, it is scant comfort that, in reading this psalm, we find we are not alone. Listed here is everything from being a social outcast to the hatching of evil plots. There is whispering in the air ... "terror all around!" (v. 13).
To contemplate this "Job Profile" is to feel a shudder down the spine.
What do we do when we hit bottom like this? What do we do when the platitudes and self-help manuals fall uselessly to the floor and we are skewered with grief and failure? Some give up. They slip beneath the waters of despair and are seen again only as shells of their former selves. Some fight, and we all know that in fighting there is usually indiscriminate carnage. Some, a precious few, turn to God.
A missionary, who recently returned from a grueling two years working in AIDS ministry in Africa, made this comment upon return: "I now know without one shred of doubt that God loves me completely."
It's an odd, but true, thing. In times like these, many people actually find a deeper connection with God. Perhaps this is because other sources of support and succor are quickly exhausted in times of extended crisis, and we are left with nowhere else to turn. Or maybe it's because it is exactly in times of great testing that God's love and grace are most palpable. Whatever the reason one turns to God, it needs to be said that in the final analysis, it is God, and not despair or fighting, that will see us through our life crises.
Trusting in God doesn't guarantee success or victory. It doesn't protect us from suffering. Such trust doesn't even make the hurt go away, and it doesn't offer us longer life or fewer cavities. But it is in trusting God that we learn about a God who comes with us on every step of our journey. It is in surrendering our will and our control to God that we experience a healing God of accompaniment. For truly, our times are in God's hands, not ours, and our hope is in God's loving partnership as we journey together through the good times and the bad.
In the Hebrew Testament Lesson that Year B offers this Sunday, Isaiah ponders what it means to be given the tongue of a teacher. Paul pleads for the Philippians to have the same mind among them that was in Christ Jesus. In Mark's story of the passion there is a lesson to be had, which the Roman centurion gets, in the teachable moment we call the cross.
If you are in the education business in any sense when connections are made, hearts open and minds light up, you know you are in the presence of the miraculous. There can be so much that goes wrong and gets in the way. Rather than following in Isaiah's footsteps, the adversarial generational mood of the moment can hook people, causing the teacher to have a tongue that gives a lashing rather than the planned lesson. Crass cultural mindlessness can lead to folks being pretty far away from anything that looks like the mind of Christ. Context can cut out learning. Perhaps it is a Pilate moment: too much to prove, defend, or prosecute to have ears to listen to each other or eyes to see what is in front you.
One of the teaching tools that I use with our confirmation class is the movie Twelve Angry Men. It is the story of a trial in which one lone juror reverses the minds of the other eleven who are ready from the start to vote to convict the accused of murder. Made in 1954 and done in black and white we usually begin with moans, groans, and side comments about the quaint clothing styles, the incessant smoking, and the obvious fact that today there never would be a jury of twelve white men trying a Puerto Rican young man. That said, the students are soon captivated by how the one juror, the Christ figure, is able to lead the members of the jury through their fears, blind spots, self-doubts, emotional hang-ups, and closed-mindedness to a point where they doubt their original certainties.
The lone juror's relentless pursuit of meeting the others where they are, speaking what they are able to hear, risking rejection, and patiently waiting creates a powerful, teachable moment that turns things around. The jurors are saved from mindlessly acting on their prejudices, from a disastrous disconnect from their emotions, and a cowardly shamefulness that causes them to ignore what is right in front of them.
The saving moment comes from one who has the tongue of a teacher, the mind of one who puts himself in the place of others rather than puts them in their place, and who, in the selfless taking up of the cross of justice touches the hearts of others. The lessons for Passion Sunday affirm that this is what it takes if there will be a teachable moment.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The prophet begins with the experience of being given the tongue of a teacher. Do you remember the voice of your teachers? No doubt some sounded like nails on a blackboard in their shrillness and demands. There are teachers who find themselves with a voice hardened by the years of teaching. There are teachers who are battling to keep head and heart together; feeling that they are losing the fight to grade inflation, the surrounding culture, and a sea of societal expectations. Isaiah's description of the teacher has more truth to it than we care to admit: "I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting." It is not that these words readily conger up visions of flying spitballs in the midst of a blackboard jungle inhabited by smart-mouthed teenagers. It is the vulnerability of the teacher and the seeming inability of the teacher to make themselves understood that chills the soul.
As in our day, we might ask why anyone would undertake such a mission. What is at stake in enduring such exposure to endless demands, chronic self-doubt, and limited support? For Isaiah there is much more at stake than whether the next generation will be employable, or be able to make change without a calculator. Though Isaiah's people are living in Babylonian exile, tempted to pass into the surrounding culture, this is not the final word. Isaiah seeks to prepare his students not for the world that is, but for the age to come through God's activity. "So the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." God will act to free God's people and return them from exile.
As a matter of fact, in many ways the teachers whose voices still speak in my life had in their own way understood and preached the message of the prophet. As much as they prepared me for the world that was, they prepared me for the world to come. They radiated out a sense that I would be overcome by a joy that would lead me home. It could happen in a novel, a piece of music, a painting, in a moment of surpassing curiosity staring at the night sky. It might come in a moment when beyond all that divides I could discover all that unites people who share the human story. It might come in pushing hard to run six miles in under an hour at the age of 56. Or it could come in suddenly discovering that I could understand something of what Einstein was getting at. The amazing thing is that those who set their face "like a flint" on such a message and did not turn back turned out to be right. The marvelous thing about the commitment to such a message was that it affirmed me as a person. I was worthy of such experiences. I best be ready, lest I miss the opportunity.
The meaning of such experiences is that there is a God who is trying to lead us out of exile. Those who stick with this message will not be put to shame. They will be vindicated. I found myself in my educational experience most likely to listen to this voice when it came from the lips of those who were able to point in their own way to times and places in their lives when they too had made this discovery.
Philippians 2:5-11
Of course, we have to deal here with one of the most classic formulations of the Christian community's understanding of Christ. Approaching this text I do feel like I am back in school. The voices are saying, "Whatever you do, do not mess this one up!" This is important stuff here. After all, there are those that say this may be the earliest recorded expression of the faith community's understanding of Jesus. Paul writes from prison to the first church established on European soil. This is a job for commentaries and super study. With thirty years in ministry will my skills be up to it or have they atrophied? My home pastor, of sainted memory, studied with Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a classmate. I can't let him down. I hear a strange version of Professor Kingsfield from the movie, Paper Chase, the story of the rigors of Harvard Law School, "Here is a dime, call your mother, and tell her that you are not going to be a college professor or perhaps even a pastor." The recurring nightmare where I don't graduate from high school is occurring. I have a doctorate, for crying out loud, why am I afraid?
Having read the above you now have ample evidence of what it means to not have in you the mind which was in Christ Jesus. It just may be the mind of a country pastor who is a bit frightened that, as James Fowler has written, "It is unclear not only whether our children will have faith but whether our faith will have children." I find the general level of biblical illiteracy a bit nerve-racking as I ponder how we can implement the notion of having the mind of Jesus among teenagers. I find myself seriously calling into question my adequacy for the task.
While the commentaries intimidate, the text invites me to consider that my own life experience may actually make these words come alive. "But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself...." So far so good, for in the face of this text I feel all too human. Perhaps that is the choice that I have not considered all along. Swept up in the culture I find it all too easy to pursue the super human rather than the fully human. I find it all too easy to evaluate myself in terms of my ability to be everywhere rather than fully there. I measure myself too often in terms of being able to fix things rather than be genuinely present even when I cannot fix things. I long to control people more than connect with them.
If I understand this text correctly, it seems that God surrenders the powers that I aspire to in order to save the world. Jesus chose specificity. He came in a specific place and among a particular people. He experienced the difficulty with trying to be two places at the same time -- and it led to saving the world. He experienced the rich, young man who chose not to follow, yet he looked upon this man with love -- and it helped to save the world. His encounters with the ambiguous responses shows one who connects but will not control -- and it leads to the saving of the world.
I consider myself as one that is more than reasonably educated and master of my intellectual house. Yet, as I read this text it becomes clear that I am asked to give up something in order to hand on anything of the gospel.
In my congregational tradition, one is called as a pastor to a local congregation to be both pastor and teacher. Whatever the role as pastor, I know that a teacher is called to give up something in order to educate in the literal sense of "to lead out." Being a teacher involves entering into the world of the student and allowing some of one's preconceived notions to be challenged and to die. Being a teacher is like playing a perpetual away game on somebody else's home turf in order that they may feel at home. This passage reads to me less like theological certainty than practical reality.
Mark 15:1-39 (40-47)
We know where Mark is headed. He has telegraphed it right from the start. The lesson to be taught here is that Jesus is the Son of God. The heavens open at the baptism and the celestial voice proclaims it. Jesus' identity is once again proclaimed from out of the cloud surrounding the Transfiguration. Through conspicuous sparseness Mark is telling us where he is headed. Mark's teaching technique builds a sense of suspense as we move toward the events of Holy Week. According to Mark, Jesus' teaching maintains the suspense. When he was alone with the disciples "... he said to them, 'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that "they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven." ' " It all feels a bit like the television series Columbo. It maintained the suspense not by keeping "who done it" a secret but by following how Columbo would figure out who done it. By the time the reader of Mark gets to Holy Week, we know that Jesus is God's Son and that it will remain a secret. Much to the frustration of the religiously learned pondering the parables does not solve the mystery of Jesus' full identity.
If anything, the mystery only deepens as one considers Jesus' actions and teachings. "They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, 'What is this? A new teaching -- with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.' "
Certainly, one would think that in the face of such obtuse behavior that Rome should be able to sort things out. That is what Rome does for a living and why it has developed a massive intelligence network. Standing right in front of him, Pilate can still not get who Jesus is. Mark has spun his narrative over fifteen chapters and we find ourselves back at the same place as those who were unable to puzzle out Jesus in Capernaum. "But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed." Pilate comes up with a question that he thinks will be a closer, "Are you the king of the Jews?" The only thing to do is turn it over to the people when all else has failed. The Gentile who gets it is the Roman centurion. He has seen what Pilate could not and the rest of the world had not: the actual execution. Three things stand out, Jesus refused the myrrh, he cannot save himself, he cries out at the absence of God. The teachers who I have known that are most likely to have opened up a future, exposed themselves to the pain that comes with loving students, being moved by their students lives, and open to their own growth in public contexts. The people whose authority I have accepted and who are most likely to cast out my demons are those who do not pull rank, deny their own pain or cover their needs with myrrh. Jesus is not able to save himself. Those who open something in me are those who do not save themselves from pain, embarrassment, tough choices, and places were they have to shake off the dust and move on. He cried out at the absence of God. No answers here, no rationalizations, the cry of pain at the mystery of life. The demonic is often given chase not by reason but the readiness to cry out that life is a mystery that we share. Who has not experienced the absence of God and our inability to fill the hole? Facing the hole opens us to the possibility that we will be made whole by something larger than us. As they say in the cancer business, "First you cry."
It is the irony of Mark that such human activity points to the divine identity of Jesus. Is it any wonder that Pilate as Rome's representative does not get it when Jesus is standing right in front of him?
Application
The Isaiah text tells us that the prophet has been given the tongue of a teacher. However, it seems that something more is required. The teacher sets about the task by setting his face as a flint as he prepares to endure insult and spitting. Four things come together to make a teachable moment: message, messenger, medium, and the moment or context. The story of Holy Week is that we come to understand how Jesus is the Son of God. The early church concluded that the activity of God was made known in a prototypical way in the life of this first-century Jew. The church reached this conclusion precisely because this life emptied itself of the usual attributes of God and took on human form in a way that revealed what being fully human means. For Mark, this is Jesus' source of power that enables him to authoritatively cast out the demonic. As with the excellent teachers that I have known, I am left amazed, but I am given significant understanding.
For Mark, the new understanding of God's activity and Jesus as God did not come easily. Neither healing, casting out the demonic, nor imperial inquisition is sufficient in and of itself to be an occasion when we get to the depth of understanding that Mark believes is necessary. Such understanding comes to one standing at the foot of the cross whom you would least expect to make significant testimony about the meaning of Jesus' life. This is a source of hope for all who have the tongue of a teacher. Standing at the foot of where life can get crossed up, shorted out by crossed wires, where people inappropriately cross over the line, where general crossness erupts; Jesus takes on significant meaning in a teachable moment.
An Alternative Application
Mark 15:1-39 (40-47). Why did the crowd go for Barabbas? There is scant evidence that there ever was such a custom as alluded to in the gospels. There is much evidence that neither Rome nor Pilate would be such generous souls that they would readily release a known political rebel in exchange for yet another religious leader with a seeming messiah complex. Neither calculation of the moment nor of the personalities involved suggests that we would head this way.
Yet, the gospels do us a favor by giving us this story, because when I am placed in the context of the crowd I find much evidence of who I am. I shout for quick answers. Jesus helps us come to terms with the unanswerable and the reality "of that day or hour nobody knows." I want solutions to problems. Jesus leads me to cherish the mystery that people are. I like to believe that most of what bedevils human experience can be handled by human inventiveness. I don't want to admit that I often meet failure in life because the most dangerous demons can only be cast out by a relationship with God that we call prayer.
Most often in the midst of a crowd I shout, "Give me Barabbas." Give me the stuff that will make me look good as much as do good. Give something that will make me feel good as much as give me a feel for the kingdom of God. Give me the stuff that keeps me on top of things rather than get to the bottom of things.
I know that on Palm Sunday I should be joining in the parade of palms, however, when I join with this crowd I get to the truth of me. In my shouting for what I want, I wind up crucifying the best that is in me, that surrounds me, and that is for me.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 31:9-16
There are times when paranoia is a well-founded emotion. Sometimes people are out to get you. It's an unpleasant truth, but a truth, nonetheless. Certain pastors reading this can readily nod in agreement as they recall brushes with angry and often unwell parishioners who pour their life's venom out upon the clergy. Others have felt it when life simply goes wrong. An old friend, going through a series of life struggles, called it his "Job Profile."
Times like these occur in most peoples' lives, and they are horrid. And, it is scant comfort that, in reading this psalm, we find we are not alone. Listed here is everything from being a social outcast to the hatching of evil plots. There is whispering in the air ... "terror all around!" (v. 13).
To contemplate this "Job Profile" is to feel a shudder down the spine.
What do we do when we hit bottom like this? What do we do when the platitudes and self-help manuals fall uselessly to the floor and we are skewered with grief and failure? Some give up. They slip beneath the waters of despair and are seen again only as shells of their former selves. Some fight, and we all know that in fighting there is usually indiscriminate carnage. Some, a precious few, turn to God.
A missionary, who recently returned from a grueling two years working in AIDS ministry in Africa, made this comment upon return: "I now know without one shred of doubt that God loves me completely."
It's an odd, but true, thing. In times like these, many people actually find a deeper connection with God. Perhaps this is because other sources of support and succor are quickly exhausted in times of extended crisis, and we are left with nowhere else to turn. Or maybe it's because it is exactly in times of great testing that God's love and grace are most palpable. Whatever the reason one turns to God, it needs to be said that in the final analysis, it is God, and not despair or fighting, that will see us through our life crises.
Trusting in God doesn't guarantee success or victory. It doesn't protect us from suffering. Such trust doesn't even make the hurt go away, and it doesn't offer us longer life or fewer cavities. But it is in trusting God that we learn about a God who comes with us on every step of our journey. It is in surrendering our will and our control to God that we experience a healing God of accompaniment. For truly, our times are in God's hands, not ours, and our hope is in God's loving partnership as we journey together through the good times and the bad.
