Travel with me
back in time …
back to a time before layers of ecclesiastical sediment piled up so
thickly
that it has become difficult to find Jesus beneath the deposits of the
centuries.
Travel with me back to a time before the build up of layers of creeds
and councils
and canon, before the build up of layers of synods and sacraments, of
encyclicals
and ecclesiologies. Come with me to a time before there was a doctrine
of the
Trinity or any number of theories about the atonement.
Come with me to
the first
century in Palestine
… to the home of Mark the Evangelist. Mark is preparing to author the
first story
of Jesus, the first biography, the first Gospel.
As Mark sits
before a blank
parchment, hand poised to write his story of Jesus, he decides to begin
in the
middle. He gives his story of Jesus no prelude. There are no stars or
magi.
There is no virgin, no babe leaping in the womb, no angels visiting, no
shepherds abiding, no crowded inn, no threat to the newborn babe, no
twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple teaching the elders.
In Mark’s
story, Jesus walks
on stage fully grown. Wordlessly he walks on stage by walking into the
waters
of the Jordon to be baptized. Wordlessly, he emerges from his baptism.
Still
dripping from the Jordan,
wordlessly he is driven into the wilderness where he fasts and is
tempted.
Jesus emerges
from the desert
and enters a synagogue. It is in the synagogue that Jesus first finds
his voice
… sort of. Mark reports that those who hear Jesus are astonished
at his teaching. But Mark fails to report one single
word of what Jesus says!
In fact,
throughout his
entire Gospel, Mark ascribes precious few words to Jesus. There is no
Sermon on
the Mount. There are no Beatitudes. No Lord’s Prayer. There are no long
discourses
as in John’s gospel. There are few parables.
Mark sees Jesus
as a kind of
mime.
Mime is the art
of silence
and the art of gesture. Mime is poetry in motion. Mime uses stylized
gestures
to help make the invisible visible. The actions of a mime are
suggestive, not
prescriptive. They are invitational and interactive. They provoke our
attention
and our imagination. The beauty and genius of mime is that it
communicates
across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Mark wants us
to see what he
sees. He wants us to see how visual Jesus is! “Look!”
says Mark pointing. “Watch and see the way Jesus is
miming his
way through Palestine!”
He is lifting
bread and breaking
it. He is laying hands upon the sick. He is walking into forbidden
territories.
He is calling a tax collector from his tax collecting booth. He is
eating with
sinners. He is plucking heads of grain from a grain field on the
Sabbath. He is
walking on water. He is teaching from a boat. He is riding on a colt.
He is
overthrowing the tables of money changers.
Jesus says
precious little throughout
Mark’s gospel. When he is arrested and questioned by Pilate: silence.
When he
is hanging on the cross and being taunted: silence.
Mark
then ends his story of
Jesus with silence: with the deafening silence of an empty tomb.
The
silence of Jesus is
provocative and it is invitational. For those who can embrace it, this
silence animates
and arouses. It is life-giving and challenging. It stirs us into life.
And,
Mark presents Jesus as
one who is in constant motion: He is in the river! He is in the desert!
He is
climbing a mountain … ambling through a village … at the seashore …
teaching
from a boat … entering Gentile territory … in a garden … in a home … on
a
hillside … in the city … in the temple!
In all this moving about Jesus
engages in boundary-crossing. He is entering the country of the
Geresenes. Now
he is in the territory of the Samaritans. Now he is conversing with a
Syrophonecian.
Now he is mixed up with tax collectors, now with lepers, now with
women, now with
children, now with sinners.
Look,
says, Mark, pointing: Look
and see what Jesus does with his body. Watch what he does with other
people’s
bodies. Keep an eye out for those to whom he speaks, those whom he
touches, and
for where he goes.
A woman in the
crowd touches
the hem of his garment. Did you see what transpired? Power left him and
entered
her!
Mark presents
Jesus as a mime
whose gestures are more important than his words.
Mark want us to
experience Jesus
as evocative, provocative and invitational. Jesus, says Mark, is poetry
in
motion … a poem our eyes follow because we are dazzled by the bright
truth of
him.
Mark also
presents Jesus as a
kind of mirror. As Jesus walks through Palestine
healing and teaching and eating, it is as if he is holding up a mirror
everywhere he goes. Our
eyes are trained upon him – all eyes
are trained up him – yet we find that we are seeing ourselves more
clearly
Jesus upsets the tables in
the Temple
and
drives out the money changers… and we find ourselves asking: are our
houses of
prayer are all that God would want them to be?
He enters the
region of Tyre
and there strikes up a conversation
with a
Syrophonecian and we wonder: What would it be like to walk into the
heart of
Roxbury, say, or maybe the Hasidic district in NYC and there strike up
a conversation
with a stranger, with “the other.”
He chastises
the disciples
for trying to keep children from bothering him … and we wince,
remembering times
we have thought of children as a bother.
He sends out
the twelve, two
by two, with no provisions… and we shudder, imagining what it would
feel like
to be that exposed, that vulnerable, that trusting of God.
Jesus announces
that true
greatness means the last shall be first and the first last… and we shrink in acknowledgement of our own
acquiescence to the hierarchies of power
and privilege that are our daily bread.
Mark shows us a
Jesus who is
so free, we cannot help but see our own limits. He portrays a Jesus who
is so
authentic, we are cast back upon our own poor imitations of our true
selves.
Mark’s Jesus is
also
demanding. He asks difficult questions and provides few answers.
As he is
healing the
paralytic, he asks: “Which is easier: to say your sins are forgiven or
rise,
take up your mat and walk? And we cannot
help but wonder: What is the
difference between being healed and being whole?
He turns to his
disciples and
demands: Who do you say that I am? …
and we are forced to wrestle with that question for ourselves. Who do we say that he is?
His opponents
engage him
about paying taxes, and he asks: Whose image is on this coin? … and we
find
ourselves weighing our own allegiances to God and Caesar.
He is healing a
man born
blind, and asks the man: What do you see? The man responds, “I see
people, but
they look like trees walking.” And who among us is not reminded of our
own poor
sight… that we see but only partially … and that we ache to see with
the
clarity with which Jesus sees.
In the presence
of Jesus, Mark
finds himself looking in the mirror …looking critically at his own
traditions
and culture, at the meaningfulness of his life; at his assumptions; at
what
makes him afraid and what holds him back … at what he sees and at what
makes
him blind.
In Jesus, Mark
encounters someone
so free, so authentic, so provocative and life-giving, he cannot keep
it to
himself. He sits down in his home in Palestine and
writes. He
writes to us and for us so that we might see what he sees and so we can
experience
what he experiences.
And that is
this: a Jesus who
invites our passionate and subjective engagement with the source of
life, with the Author of the Universe, the
Creator
of the whirling stars; the One who paints buttercups yellow and poppies a shocking orange. He invites our
engagement with the One who raises the dead who forgives without end …
the One
who gives us life who calls us by name … the One who sends us a mime
and a
mirror and asks: “What do you see?”
In her poem,
“Tell all the
Truth but tell it slant”,
Emily Dickinson writes … The
truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind …
For those who
have eyes to
see: Jesus is God’s best poem. Jesus
is God’s slant wise, and dazzling truth.
__________________________________
Mark
8: 22-26
22: And they
came to
Beth-sa'ida. And some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him
to
touch him. 23: And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out
of the
village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him,
he asked
him, "Do you see anything?" 24: And he looked up and said, "I
see men; but they look like trees, walking." 25: Then again he laid his
hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and saw
everything
clearly. 26: And he sent him away to his home, saying, "Do not even
enter
the village."
“Tell
all the Truth but tell it slant”
by Emily Dickinson: Tell
all the Truth but tell it slant/ Success in Cirrcuit lies/ Too bright
for our
infirm Delight/ The Truth's superb surprise/ As Lightening to the
Children
eased/ With explanation kind/ The Truth must dazzle gradually/ Or every
man be
blind---
