disclosing new worlds

2 Samuel 5: 1-5; 9-10 NRSV text
Psalm 48 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 12: 2-10 NRSV text
Mark 6: 1-13 NRSV text

We’re at a key moment in Mark’s discipleship narrative. Mark doesn’t just have Jesus issue a single “call” at the outset of his ministry; there are three stages to it, and represent both the development of the disciples’ relationship to Jesus and a response to events as they unfold. This is the second of the three moments – the involvement of the disciples in Jesus’ mission. The Jesus story is the story of the beginning of it all – “the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. Disciples are not only followers: they are the ones who receive the Good News as Good News! And if that seems a rather obvious point, just look at the first pericope in today’s gospel reading: Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth. This is Jesus’ home town. The hard fact of the matter is that Jesus’ message of the kingdom – the Good News of liberation from the chains of the Strong Man – doesn’t meet with universal enthusiasm! This is no mere narrative device of Mark’s. The opposition was real. Jesus was crucified. Mark, more starkly than any other of the evangelists, portrays Jesus’ mission ultimately as a failure. Jesus dies in bewildered despair – not only is he abandoned by the disciples, but also by the God whom he calls “Abba Father”.

Rejected at Nazareth
Today’s gospel passage, then, comes at a key point: the close of the initial “campaign” based around the Galilee and including a foray into Gentile territory. Having left the Galilee, Jesus returns to his home town. It’s clearly the first time that he’s gone back since he began his ministry. Now, in the synagogue, he’s in front of the “home crowd”. He teaches on the Sabbath and, as elsewhere, “many who heard him were astounded” (6:2). This is not an English World Cup performance: Jesus does not disappoint – he amazes! His teaching is as powerful as elsewhere. All the things they have heard about him are confirmed. His wisdom is astonishing. And that means that any initial scepticism they must have been feeling about the reports circulating so widely has to be revised.

But look at the reaction in vv 2-3: they’re hardly positive! They come as accusation: “Where did he get all this? Where has he acquired this wisdom from so suddenly? And how on earth can he do these incredible things with his hands?” There’s a wonderful irony, isn’t there, in this last one. They know Jesus as an artisan. He’s “the carpenter”! His hands make things out of wood – they don’t heal and deliver! The point is, they know him – or they think they do. That’s why they rush to “place” him: he’s the son of Mary, brother to James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and he’s got sisters (who of course aren’t important enough to be named!). In other words, they’re saying, “Hey, this guy’s not a mystery! He’s not even particularly special!”

They move to contain Jesus – to control him. Calling him “the son of Mary” is a calculated insult. It reflects the question mark that clearly hung over Jesus’ parentage. It resurrects all those old rumours: “That Jesus? Well, he’s not Joseph’s son, is he? Wonder who his father is?” Now of course, Mark is probably smiling to himself as he writes – we know who his father is, because Mark told us at the outset! But the main point here is that their astonishment is not awe, but outrage: “They took offence at him” (v3b). Jesus’ pronouncement in v4 is not so much a rhetorical move to gain the advantage in an argument as it is a statement of his own realisation of what is happening in his ministry: the Good News will not be universally accepted. Jesus is marking his own rejection. His mission means that he will be rejected by his own hometown, his own kin, and his own family. It is part of the cost he has to bear, and in 10:28-30, will tell the disciples that following him is equally costly. It will take “leaving house, brothers, sisters, father, mother and fields for the sake of the Good News”.

There is another point we should note here: Jesus is unable to perform any “deed of power” there. Except, that is, to lay hands (those hands again!) on a few sick people and heal them! I love that! Most of us would reckon that was pretty powerful, and that we were doing a mite better than average if we could lay hands on a few sick people and heal them! But that’s because we generally manage to get the whole issue of miracles wrong. Mark isn’t trying to tell us that Jesus was some sort of super-magician. We are like the Pharisees in 8:11-12, who ask for a “sign”. “Show me a miracle that can be proven and we’ll believe!” is the idea behind our thinking. Yet Mark is absolutely clear here: miracles don’t “prove” anything! If you were around Jesus, miracles were clearly ten-a-penny – so much so that healing a few sick people is hardly worth a mention! The problem in Nazareth is that they do not “believe” (v6).

What would they not “believe”? That Jesus could perform miracles? Clearly not, because they’ve already admitted that all the reports of miraculous goings-on were obviously true! They didn’t “believe” in Jesus and they didn’t “believe” in his message, of which the miracles were a sign. They didn’t believe in Jesus in the sense that they wouldn’t let him be the Son of God. That isn’t a doctrinal statement in this context! Mark is not suggesting that there are a set of doctrinal boxes to tick here in order to let Jesus’ power loose. He’s pointing us to their refusal to let Jesus be something other than what they’d like him to be – the hometown boy whom they knew, could explain and who represented neither a threat nor a challenge. They were offended at his strangeness – because it sounded like criticism and made them feel that they were being made fools of.

I remember the outrage among South African white Christians when blacks suggested that Jesus might actually be on the side of the poor and the oppressed in their struggle against Apartheid. This couldn’t possibly be! They knew Jesus! They had him tied up neatly in a box so that he couldn’t jump out and challenge them. Therefore the notion that the gospel could have something to say about freedom and justice could only be communist-inspired treason masquerading as theology. These good, God-fearing people who attended Church twice on Sundays shut themselves off from the liberative power of God and became part of that from which South Africa needed liberation. The point is that we who think we know Jesus best ought to be specially vigilant that we have not “cut him down to (our) size” and domesticated his message and power.

The good citizens of Nazareth did not “believe” in Jesus’ message of the kingdom. They were so busy taking offence that they were deafened to the Good News that Jesus proclaimed. The point is that they were wilfully deaf. They heard Jesus clearly (hence the astonishment), but heard all too clearly the way in which the Good News of the kingdom demanded change. A new community that was radically inclusive threatened the social order. It disturbed the class hierarchy in which everyone knew their place and could be “located” (as they immediately tried to do with Jesus). And they were having none of it!

Nazareth represents the opposition that Jesus has begun to provoke. At present, it is the exception rather than the rule. But the resistance is unmistakeable, and will gather force as Mark’s narrative proceeds. Rejection will have the last, final say in the cross. The pericope begins with the crowds being astounded at Jesus’ teaching, and ends with Jesus being equally amazed at their unbelief.

The mission of the Twelve
The resistance means that Jesus has to regroup and rethink his strategy. His response is to gather the fledgling messianic community even more closely around him.

This is, as I mentioned, the second stage of Jesus’ call. Jesus appoints the Twelve in 3:14, “to be with him, to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons”. To date (the first stage), the disciples have been with Jesus and learned from him. Now, in 6:7, he sends them out to proclaim the message, cast out demons and heal the sick. The third stage will be a result of the increasing opposition: the call to take up the cross.

It is interesting to note that Jesus “gives his disciples authority over the unclean spirits” and appears to have taught them how to cure the sick. Modern western culture has had little truck with the miraculous, regarding it as primitive superstition. One feature of postmodernity has been a revival of interest in the miraculous and a willingness to take these things with far more seriousness. We are a far more spiritual generation than our immediate forebears, far more aware of the interconnectedness of health and spiritual life. This manifests in a renewed emphasis on holistic approaches to health, both in alternative therapies and in conventional medicine. Similarly, there has been a quiet but importance renewal of interest in the ancient ministries of exorcism, as well as willingness among biblical scholars to take the miraculous in Jesus’ ministry with far more seriousness, rather than dismiss it as myth. I note this because it seems to me that we ought to be open to exploring these ministries as a regular part of Church life.

The apostles (as they now are) proclaim “that all should repent”. In doing so, they echo Mark’s summary statement of Jesus in 1:14: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent, and believe in the Good News!” Repentance is the proper response to the gospel of the kingdom, and is clearly what the people of Nazareth fail to do. But what does “repent” mean? At the outset of the story, the Baptist calls on people to repent and be baptised. This is the classic prophetic call to repentance: “Mend your ways! Turn or burn!” In a covenantal framework, it effectively means “Get back into line!”

Jesus’ call is different: “Repent and believe in the Good News!” The Good News is the drawing near of the kingdom of God in Jesus. But the kingdom comes not as judgement so much as promise: “Here is the possibility of a new world! Repent – leave behind the old ways and ties; the old shackles that bind you to death and despair. Become part of the new world!” It’s a call not to grovel but to reach out and embrace God’s gift – a gift which is entirely gracious. It’s not about “getting back into line” but rather a call to become something new. It’s a summons to God’s new future, rather than a recall to a more blameless past. It’s sign isn’t baptism, but healing and liberation.

I find this a welcome and challenging emphasis in light of so much “worthless worm” theology that churches excel in. Jesus’ call is life-giving and freeing, while so much Christian preaching seems to bind people in shackles of guilt and unworthiness – particularly in our own Reformed tradition. That, at least, is the popular perception, and if it’s wrong, it’s because we haven’t communicated the Good News! Here is a message of repentance that is positive. It necessarily means changing and leaving old ways behind – but for positive reasons, rather than beating people over the head with how bad they are. We seem far more scared of being seen to be “soft on sin” than “strong on Life”! Jesus was astoundingly different – and wise!

“It started out so nice” (2 Samuel 5: 1-5; 9-10/Pslam 48)
“It started out so nice” is the title of a song by Rodriguez, which I heard as a teenager and haven’t been able to find since (if you know where to get it, please let me know!). What struck me listening to it was a Dylanesque sarcasm and irony about a relationship that had begun so well and had gone so horribly wrong. That is the dynamic in the gospel passage today and is echoed in the story of David uniting the tribes of Israel and conquering Jerusalem.

David’s kingdom was good news, full of promise. It begins with a momentous event: the uniting of the tribes. They recognise David as a man anointed by Yahweh. He is the “shepherd of Israel” and so they make him the “ruler of Israel”. After seven and a half years as king, ruling from Hebron, David marches against Jerusalem and takes it against the odds. At the time of its capture, Jerusalem was a “stronghold” – a tiny, fortified village. Under David, the city spreads (2 Samuel 5:9) as David’s own fame spreads. The stronghold taken in war becomes the city of Peace.

Davidic kingship and the city of Jerusalem will become part of a covenant (chapter 7). David the shepherd king and Jerusalem the city of God will become symbols of Yahweh’s salvation and grace. This is what is celebrated in Psalm 48. Jerusalem will become the symbolic and theological centre of the world – the place where Yahweh’s presence and salvation will shine like a light and eventually draw all nations in homage to Yahweh. Then the peace will spread throughout the world under the messianic king, the son of David. Yet David’s reign will end in tears, and later Jerusalem will be destroyed and its people taken into exile. Exile is the second great pole (the first is Exodus) around which Judaism will develop and the people’s understanding of who Yahweh is will be hammered out. Its New Testament counterpart is, if you like, incarnation and crucifixion. What starts out so well ends in tragedy – because of resistance. Human opposition will bring Yahweh’s purposes for Life to a halt in the barren wastes of desolation and exile. It will take “resurrection” in the form of the return from exile to give birth to a new, transformed faith and understanding of Israel’s God.

The persistence of opposition (2 Corinthians 12: 2-10)
The bible does not allow us to retreat into some sort of naïve optimism. The hard fact of human sinfulness – determined opposition to the most gracious and wonderful actions of God to save us – is powerful, intractable and often appears to have the final word. Paul discovered that at firsthand in the Corinthians! This chapter is Paul’s “boast” – a boast begun at 11:16.

Like Jesus in today’s gospel passage, Paul is realistic about opposition. Like Jesus, he regroups and works out a strategy to deal with it. Just as Jesus does not waste his time trying to fight battles he can’t win (at Nazareth, and in telling the disciples to “shake the dust off their feet” when villages respond as Nazareth did), so Paul measures the opposition and acts strategically. Paul defends his ministry against ridicule and denigration. Other “super-apostles” have accused him of being inferior. He is less eloquent, they say; less effective, and less spiritual.

There are two ways of reading Paul’s defence, and it all seems to boil down to how charitably you view him! For many, his is the response of outraged dignity and a piqued ego. Certainly, for all Paul’s protestations of weakness and foolishness, we need to recognise a skilled rhetorician employing powerful arguments that drip with rhetorical irony! Yet that is to do him an injustice. There is a winsome humility in his obvious embarrassment at being forced to lay out his “spiritual credentials”. This is evident in his use of the third person (“I know a person in Christ …”) to talk about himself, and in his honest confession of the “thorn in the flesh” that troubled him so, but kept him humble! Most significantly, though, is the way in which he uses christological and theological arguments (as we have seen previously) to talk about what really counts in these matters. And, in his constant reiteration of his “compassion” for the Corinthians, we ought to understand him as a man who is “boasting”, not because he wants to for his own sake, but because he knows that God has called him and he needs to be allowed space to be who he is in order to exercise his ministry faithfully.

How do we deal with opposition? It can be incredibly powerful and destructive. Of course, the constant temptation is to see honest criticism as the sort of “opposition” that simply affirms that we are right and all opinions to the contrary as sinful resistance to God! Yet here in the passages, this week, we are reminded – and encouraged – to recognise that effective, faithful mission will breed opposition, misunderstanding and incredibly destructive responses. Human resistance to God – sin – is deeply, deeply part of what has become “human nature”. Yet here is the Good News: the God whom we meet in Jesus is infinitely compassionate and determined to save. This is the God of resurrection. And, to use Paul’s phrase, “wherever sin abounds, God’s grace abounds even more!” Hallelujah!

Amen.

2 Samuel 1:1; 17-27 NRSV text
Psalm 130 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 8: 7-15 NRSV text
Mark 5: 21-43 NRSV text

Two daughters, two healings … and class war! This week’s gospel passage recounts something more than just a story of two healings. You will recall from last week’s post that Mark marks(!) the importance of the incidents he recounts by using geography as a narrative device. The lectionary has omitted his time on “Gentile” side of the Lake (the Gerasene demoniac), and we rejoin the gospel this week with Jesus crossing back again to the “Jewish” side. It’s a shame that the lectionary does this, because we lose Mark’s clear narrative intention to portray Jesus’ ministry as a series of liberative “campaigns” (see my essays on the pages, reading mark’s gospel and preaching the healing narratives in mark’s gospel). It is important to remember that Mark’s interest in Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms is christological. The point is not simply that Jesus is a remarkable man who does remarkable things: the point is that they are intimately tied to his mission of the kingdom, which is about the defeat of the “Strong Man”. The miracles and exorcisms do more than startle people, and make people well: they create a new community by subverting the old norms and standards that consign the sick and demonised to the margins of society. In today’s account, Mark presents Jesus as constructing a new social order. The healings of the woman and Jairus’ daughter are an attack on the social order of his day.

Linked stories across the social barriers
Here and in 7:24-37, Mark presents two double healings. The links in today’s passage are intimately close and absolutely deliberate. Mark tells the story of Jesus healing two women – Jairus’ daughter and the unknown woman with the unstoppable bleeding – from opposite ends of the social scale. There are two links.

12 years: The woman who touches Jesus has been bleeding for 12 years. Jairus’ daughter is 12 years of age. Although this is inserted in parenthesis in 4:42, it is no afterthought, but an absolutely deliberate dramatic irony. Here are two women – one whose life as a woman has apparently finished, and another whose life as a women is just starting. The woman has been bleeding for the lifetime of Jairus’ daughter. All the time the girl has been growing, she has had her life ebbing away. Two lives that should never meet. The woman is one of “the crowd” – one of the poor and socially outcast. She is doubly ostracised because of her menstrual bleeding. She has become one of the “untoucables”. Jairus’ daughter comes from wealth and privilege. Yet they are destined to meet in Jesus! Here is a sign of the new community: the barriers between rich and poor, between those at the social centre and those on the periphery, are united in Christ. Ironically, the woman is restored to life at the very moment at which the girl dies! Do you see how socially loaded this story is? For one woman, the social ostracism of the past 12 years is ending; for the other, the wealth, privilege of the past 12 years is also ending.

Daughter: Jairus’ daughter is the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Her birth and her father’s position is the passport to wealth and social standing. When she dies, she is mourned. The woman, by contrast, is unnamed, unknown and uncared for. She has experienced the past 12 years as a living death, with no-one to mourn her. She is shunned. She is a nobody. Her condition means that she is no longer counted as a “daughter of Israel”. And yet, at the conclusion of the story, Jesus declares her to be a “Daughter”! In the new messianic community, this nameless outcast is a cherished daughter! She is given a position by Jesus even above that of the disciples! So this is the story of the healing of two “daughters” – the bringing back of both to life!

Jewish class relationships
We need to be sensitised to the scandal of what happens in this episode in order to understand Mark’s point that Jesus is radically subverting the social order of his day. The issue that is raised powerfully for Mark’s readers (but for which we have to work rather hard to “get”) is that of honour and shame.

“Honour” refers to a person’s standing in Jewish society. It is about how a stratified, hierarchical and patriarchal society works. Honour brings with it status and entitlement. Jairus approaches Jesus with his request because he is entitled to do so! His standing allows him that. He falls at Jesus’ feet not from a sense of unworthiness – or even desperation – but because that is what he is required to do by the social custom of his day. He approaches Jesus as an equal. His kneeling is an acknowledgement that he needs a favour from Jesus – but a favour from an equal.

The woman, however, has no such entitlement. She may not approach Jesus. Hence she touches him anonymously. Significantly, she only touches the hem of his cloak. Touch had enormous social and religious significance, and Mark hammers the point home. The woman touches Jesus’ cloak (5:27). Jesus stops in his tracks and asks, “Who touched my clothes?” (5:30) The disciples repeat his question, “Who touched me?” (5:31) Jesus takes the girl by the hand (touches her) in v41. At play here are the burning social (as well as religious) questions about who may touch whom. And the point is, the woman has been relegated by society to a position of shame (at the outset of the story) where she is literally “untouchable”.

It is significant that in Jewish society, men patrolled the boundaries of honour and shame, but women marked those boundaries of shame (cf Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology [1981]). The female role was negatively to mark the boundaries of shame. In this story, the bleeding woman personifies shame and lack of entitlement.

We ought also to note that Mark alone observes that she had suffered at the hands of quacks, having spent all she had in the fruitless search for help. In fact, she had not only received none, but had been made worse by their so-called “treatments” (5:26)! Mark emphasises the interlinking between social exclusion, vulnerability to exploitation, and poverty.

In Jesus’ time, honour could be conferred upon someone by a person of status. The person’s lowly status, or “shame”, prevented them from approaching or talking to someone higher up the scale. Like Jairus, the woman bows at Jesus’ feet – because she is not entitled to have approached or touched him! And what does Jesus do? Instead of “patrolling the boundaries” and rejecting the woman, he “raises her up” in every sense of that word – by pronouncing her healed and by calling her “Daughter”. He does that publicly – not only as man of authority and “honour”, but as the Son of God! He has declared her to be so – and so it will be.

“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”
Note what happens. Jairus comes and asks Jesus for a favour – and Jesus agrees. There is a social contract here. Jesus is duty bound by convention to drop everything and do what he has agreed to do. This man (Jairus) is his equal. As Jairus has prostrated himself, Jesus is bound to do what he has said he will. His priorities are established for him.

Mark’s first readers would be as shocked as the disciples are, therefore, when Jesus allows his journey to Jairus’ house to be interrupted – and by an unclean woman from among the “great unwashed” to boot! We need to try and sense the disciples’ unease and embarrassment. When Jesus stops, try and see them casting worried glances at Jairus. Jesus is causing a scene. He is embarrassing everyone. He is (literally) on a life-and-death mission for an important person – voluntarily! And now he’s stopping. Their response is to try and hurry him on – to cover the incredible social gaffe that Jesus is committing.

The point here is that Jesus allows himself to be interrupted. He is on a mission of healing to the great and the good, but in the end, the healing comes first to the least! This is to anticipate the central theme of the second half of the gospel (cf 10:31, 43) about the first/last and the least/greatest.

The scandal of Jesus’ action is heightened by the announcement that he is now to late to do what he had contracted to do. Jairus’ daughter is dead. Jesus could not have put his foot more firmly in it if he’d tried.

But Jesus has every intention of putting his foot in it! That’s precisely what he’s doing. This is an enactment of the new, radically inclusive messianic community. This is the kingdom taking shape. The old social system of honour and shame and the religious purity system is dead. That’s part of the symbolism of Jairus’ daughter. She represents wealth and privilege – honour and entitlement. There is symbolic value to her age – 12 – which is not merely about becoming a woman. Her age symbolises the tribes of Israel. She is declared “dead”, excluded from life forever. By raising her, Jesus is in effect saying that if Judaism wishes to “be saved and live” (5:23), it must embrace the faith of the kingdom: a new social order with equal status for all. This alone will liberate the lowly outcast and snatch the “noble” from death – a point that Ched Myers makes tellingly.

Here, then, is a narrative of healing which has much wider significance. This is Jesus, engaged in the construction of a new social order which does not mediate exclusion and death. It is life-giving and affirming. And it is Good News for a society structured on a class system of honour and shame – which is why it is to the least first.

Finance and Forgiveness (2 Corinthians 8: 7-15/2 Samuel 1:1; 17-27
It is interesting to see how uneasy good Christian people get when one starts talking about changing the social order. That sounds uncomfortably (and inappropriately) “political” for many. “It’s okay to talk theology – as though theology belongs to some private, internal realm of spirituality – but don’t get too concrete in its application! That’s where you’re straying into the realms of personal choice and opinion” (seems to be the thrust of the objection).

Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians displays no such coyness when he talks about money. This is a wonderful passage to use to preach about stewardship. Paul sees nothing incongruous about fundraising. He is clearly conscious of treading on all sorts of social conventions and sensitivities about money, but does so for theological reasons! His theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ – the “richness” of his grace (8:9ff) – follows logically and naturally into what he assumes ought to be a generosity of spirit, manifested in generous giving. The unity in Christ that believers share means that, for him, we have a duty of care for one another that transcends social, cultural and geographical boundaries. The Corinthian Church had not only an abundance of spiritual gifts, but material gifts too (8:14). And if Jesus became poor for our sakes so that we might become rich (8:29), we who are rich ought to have a similar attitude towards those who are poor!

The interplay of gifts/donations, grace/generosity and riches/provision is not Paul playing on words as a manipulative series of puns. For him, theology makes a difference. How we live together and what we do with our money has everything to do with God and God’s saving actions in Jesus. Unlike many of us in the Church, Paul refuses to switch into another mode of discourse entirely when it comes to money. He is intensely realistic about it. Our version of “financial realism” is to move from theology and spirituality into “hard-headed” economics. Yet for Paul, this amounts to little more than an unchristian heard-heartedness. There is an “economy of grace” that is as economically relevant as Jesus’ politics of grace is politically and socially relevant! We cannot believe what we do about God in Jesus without it affecting our giving and caring. Generosity flows from compassion. It is the fruit of the Spirit – love in action.

Similarly, David, in the “Song of the Bow”, makes forgiveness a reality rather than simply a theological concept. David, who has every reason to hate and condemn Saul, mourns both him and his son, Jonathan in identical terms. David is known as “a man after God’s own heart”, and here we see something of what that means. Like God in regard to us, David refuses to judge Saul according to the way he (Saul) has treated him (David). The Song is Saul’s epitaph. It is the “official” version that David orders to be taught to the people of Judah (2 Samuel 1:17). Saul, like Jonathan, is “beloved and lovely” (v23); the “glory of Israel” (v19). His death is to be mourned, not celebrated.

Forgiveness allows a person to be celebrated. It allows their strengths and triumphs to be acknowledged. It allows the good to stand, and to stand as the last word about them. Of course, it’s easy to be cynical, and to say that it is partisan – “hagiography” rather than biography. But then, all such judgements are equally partisan. If we remember someone for their faults, we equally elide the sum of all they are. The important thing here is that David is only too well aware of Saul’s dark side. In a sense, he makes a deliberate choice about how he will treat Saul’s memory and think of him. It is a gracious choice.

And that, surely, is what grace is: a deliberate choice. God could say all sorts of things about us. God could focus on the negative things – and be absolutely right! But God does not do that. Compassion and grace are at the heart of God. That is what Jesus teaches so clearly in the parable of the Prodigal. God refuses to give up on us. It is his compassion and capacity for forgiveness that makes David great. And here, at the beginning of his reign, he chooses forgiveness as the heart of his kingdom. Saul will be loved and mourned. Forgiveness will be at the heart of human relating. Of course, it doesn’t all work out as David intends! David’s story is, in many aspects, absolutely tragic. He is a deeply flawed character and those flaws will manifest themselves in all their disastrously destructive power. Yet the text today invites us to pause for a moment, and to recognise what is being done here. David intends his kingdom to be shaped by forgiveness and love – by grace. It is very imperfectly realised, yet points towards the kingdom that David’s greater Son will inaugurate: a kingdom in which the first shall be last and the last first, because it is God’s kingdom, and God is a God of grace.

Amen.

1 Samuel 17: (1a; 4-11; 19-23) 32-49 NRSV text
Psalm 133 NRSV text
2 Corinthians 6: 1-13 NRSV text
Mark 4: 35-41 NRSV text

“Who on earth is this guy?” That’s how the gospel passage ends (4:41), with Jesus’ closest friends – the ones who should have known him best – discovering more and more how little they know and understand him. What makes this all the more intriguing is the conclusion of the parables section from last week, where Jesus apparently leaves the crowds to figure things out, but “explained everything in private to his disciples” (4:34). On the one hand, there’s a dynamic of the disciples being drawn closer and closer to Jesus – of getting to know him better and better. And yet Mark immediately goes on in the very next paragraph to tell us a story that leaves the disciples puzzled! Now we’re into dramatic narrative irony here, of course. We, the readers, understand what the disciples cannot see. And that’s certainly one of Mark’s major emphases at this transition point in his gospel: we are watching an increasing distance opening up between Jesus and the disciples, caused by the disciples’ inability and failure to grasp what Jesus is about.

But there’s something important here beyond mere narrative device. They are discovering something in Jesus that is true in human relating: getting to know someone is not a “flat”, linear process. It is not about getting to know “facts” or “mere information” about them, but being drawn into the mystery of their otherness. Think of getting to know someone whom you have met and befriended. There’s an initial period in which who the other person is seems to unfold – startlingly and thrillingly. They “make sense” to us. This is a period of relating during which we find ourselves instinctively “understanding” the other person. It’s the time in a relationship when we’re constantly making connections – finding out all the things we share and have in common. The friendship is a celebration of precisely the amount we have in common with one another.

But then things appear to begin to change. The other person does things that shock or surprise us. We’re jolted. We didn’t expect it, and we don’t like it. This person who seems so “like me” has just done something that I wouldn’t dream of doing! It appears to run counter to everything I’ve known until now. This is about being confronted with their individuality – their otherness and difference. We’re suddenly aware of the fact that we do not “control” them. They’re unpredictable. There are other things that make them “tick”. Some of them we will admire, or share. Others we will come to like and adopt for ourselves. Others will be neutral. Some we will simply dislike and resist. And when we discover that some of those last things are not open for negotiation, we have decisions to make about the future of the friendship.

That’s when friendships change. They have to. They move into a different phase. They will either deepen, becoming relationships of mutual engagement and negotiation, or they may well fall apart in disillusionment: “I found I didn’t know her/him after all!” That is precisely what we see happening in this week’s story about Saul and David. It had started so well! We see Saul, the king, meeting an astonishing young man who volunteers to go out and fight Goliath, when everyone else is too afraid. The young boy, David, does more than answer the taunts of the Philistines (and vindicate Yahweh): as a result of his victory, “all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Samuel 17: 46). In the context of the story, what is vital is that Israel learns about her own God – Israel, who has been cowed into faithless, terrified and helpless submission.

In the context of this text’s place in this week’s lectionary readings, I want to draw out a related but slightly different emphasis. Saul responds to David’s slaying of Goliath along with the rest of Israel. There is excitement and admiration. He wants to get to know David better. In 1 Samuel 18:2, Saul makes David part of his own household. He, like his son Jonathan, responds to David at “soul level”. It is when he hears what people are saying about David’s victory that things change. He is suddenly aware of a whole new dimension of David – in this case, David’s charisma and ability to arouse love and admiration. He cannot “control” David. Here is a dimension of David that he did not immediately recognise – David’s power to threaten him. This is the crucial point is a developing friendship: it was much bigger and more multidimensional than Saul had first thought or imagined. And we see the results in vv9ff.

That’s the point the disciples have begun to reach in their relationship with Jesus. The question, “Who is this guy?” is not an appeal for information! It’s a baffled acknowledgement that they are in for a (boat!) ride that they hadn’t actually signed up for. They recognise something fundamental both about human relationships and about faith in Jesus: getting to know Jesus can be wonderful, exciting, high-octane, disturbing, offensive … the point is, you can’t get to know Jesus and stay the same! Being close to Jesus means having to make decisions; means changing. And in this particular journey of friendship with Jesus, it is Jesus who sets the terms. Jesus, like his counterpart, Aslan, in the Narnia chronicles, is not a tame lion!

Control, conflict and change in the Church (2 Corinthians 6: 1-13/Psalm 133)
Most instances of conflict in relationship arise from a defensive response to the “otherness” of other people. How do you handle the dimensions of other people in relationships that you do not like, or which threaten? The standard move is to try and find ways of controlling the other person. The classic move is to ascribe moral value to difference: those aspects of the other person that you dislike are “wrong”, rather than potentially enriching. That is what Saul does in 1 Samuel 18:8 – he assumes that David’s strengths are in fact greedy designs on Saul’s power and kingship. The following chapters of the book describe the escalating and deadly conflict between the king and the boy.

That is the sort of battle that Paul has been fighting with the Corinthian Church. His opponents have sought to portray him as unspiritual, ineffective, foolish, unworthy, unimportant, heretical and insane. It is a remarkably effective strategy! Differences of opinion are elevated to a struggle of good against evil, truth against falsehood, God against Satan. The point is that we lose sight of the humanity of one another in those sorts of conflicts. Human beings – people with feelings, fears, failings and strengths – are reduced to ciphers – symbols of some cosmic struggle. In so doing, the opportunities for growth, mutual enrichment and deeper knowledge that conflict affords (yes, conflict is essentially – and potentially – positive; it is a sign of life and passion) are lost. During Apartheid, the champions of the system demonised voices such as Tutu, Boesak, and Beyers Naude as Communist agitators. They didn’t need to be heard and taken seriously; what is important is that they were crushed. The Church has historically done that over conflicts of power (ie issues of control): one has only to look at the ways in which women were relegated to second-class human beings on a lower spiritual plane than men as an example. We are doing the same thing over the sexuality debate.

By the time Paul writes 2 Corinthians, the conflict has been significantly resolved – or is in the process of being so. The Corinthians are more open to Paul, who defends his very vulnerability, suffering and lack of credentials as a mirror of Christ. But the point to note here is that, in order to resolve the conflict, Paul repeatedly draws attention to their shared humanity and the things that they found so helpful in one another initially. He calls on them to “open their hearts wide” (6:13).

The epistle is a masterly lesson in conflict resolution within the Church. It’s a model we would do well to heed, because we don’t “do” conflict very well. We’re good at papering over the cracks. We like to think of ourselves as welcoming and friendly. That is not always the experience of people who come in “from the outside” – particularly people who haven’t already been socialised into “church”. Underlying much of our welcome is the desire – and supposition – that people join in order to become more and more “like us”. We want to clone people – not make disciples. “Otherness” is unsettling. How many times do we find the dynamic in today’s gospel reading and Old Testament reading repeated in church life: someone new comes along, and initially things are great! They seem to fit in well – take an increasingly active part, swell the ranks and are generally good news. But then, as time passes, they become troublesome – by which I mean, they want to do things differently. And if they can’t be “controlled”, we begin to ask ourselves, “Who is this person, anyway?”

We then make a virtue of absence of conflict, and a vice of questioning the status quo. “Tradition” becomes self-evidently right. We betray our lack of interest in growing – because these sorts of conflicts are, as I have said, signs of life and growth. They are opportunities for change and development, and signs of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Small wonder, then, that churches are increasingly becoming smaller and smaller enclaves of like-minded people! The “non-conformists” leave, because it is too uncomfortable. There is no space for them to bring new insights and new ways – their gift to the church. They find them unwelcome and unwanted. We talk about radical change in the Church, yet we want to control it. We pray for renewal, and quench the Spirit. True, we minimise conflict – but that is not the same thing as the “unity” the Psalmist speaks of in Psalm 133!

“Like-mindedness” is not unity. The unity of Psalm 133 presupposes significant differences of opinion. Unity happens when people are allowed to be different; when their differences and insights are valued and treasured. Then difference becomes life in startling, divine variety! It is like the “dew of Hermon” (Psalm 133:3) that waters the slopes and allows all sorts of life to flourish. It is a sign of Yahweh’s blessing of life.

That sort of unity is what Paul considers the single, knock-down argument for evidence of the presence of the Spirit. It isn’t the manifestation of the spiritual gifts that the Corinthians prized so highly, but the fact that Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians could live together and be part of the same Church without killing each other and without the community tearing itself apart at the seams. Unity is the sign of spiritual maturity. It is a gift of grace (as Paul reminds the Church in 2 Corinthians 6:1). It is the grace that doesn’t seek to silence the other by exercising control.

The stilling of the storm in the narrative structure of the gospel
All of this brings us full circle to the gospel story set for today. Mark 4:34 concludes the opening section of Jesus’ ministry. We are about to enter a new phase in the narrative, and it is marked by the lake crossing – Jesus saying “Let’s go across to the other side” (4:35). There is symbolic significance here in terms of the narrative. Mark makes symbolic use of place and movement, and here Jesus is crossing from the “Jewish” side of the lake to the “Gentile” side to begin a new phase in his ministry. On arrival, he will be confronted immediately by the Gerasene demoniac.

Mark, we must remember, presents Jesus as the one who binds the Strong Man (Satan). His ministry is a ministry of confrontation with the powers that threaten and imprison human beings. Mark’s Jesus is a Liberator. And here, at this moment of transition, Jesus confronts and defeats a storm at sea.

If that sounds a peculiar way of putting it, look at how Mark shapes the story. Sudden, violent storms are common on Galilee. But this is a lake, not the sea! By casting this as a sea voyage, Mark is quite deliberately evoking the biblical symbols of the sea as a place of chaos and danger. That’s the first point to note.

The second is that Mark casts the stilling of the storm in terms of an exorcism. Jesus “rebukes” the wind and the “sea”, literally saying to them, “Be muzzled!” “Rebuking” and “muzzling” are technical terms for an exorcism (cf the very first exorcism at Capernaum in 1:25). If we read this as a “nature miracle”, we are missing the point that Mark is trying so hard to make! The power of Jesus that is displayed here is not that of a “miracle worker” so much as an exorcist and liberator. The biblical tradition describes creation as disordered. Paul talks about it “groaning in bondage”. Its deadly power is assign of disorder: creation is meant to give life. Yet all of created reality is symbolically described as being under a “malign power”. It isn’t free. So one answer to the disciples’ question in 4:41 is, “This is the Liberator king of the universe!”

The disciples’ failure to “get” Jesus
Finally, we need to note that this transition piece in the gospel has a theological parallel to the change in the relationship between Jesus and his disciples that we were considering earlier. Mark has set us up in 4:34 to assume that Jesus will reveal himself in a special way to his disciples – and this is precisely what is happening in this incident! The trouble is, instead of the disciples going, “Ah! I see!” they are left puzzled, wondering who on earth (no pun intended!) Jesus is! Why?

This is part of the Messianic Secret motif in the gospel. Jesus is revealing himself as the Messiah – but not the sort of Messiah that the disciples are interested in having! Jesus’ messiahship entails suffering and death – and that is not on the disciples’ messianic agenda. What Mark signals here is the start of an increasing alienation between Jesus and the disciples, caused not by a diminishing of his affection for them but by their refusal to allow him to be who he really is. They want to write the messianic script – to “control” Jesus. As the gospel unfolds from this point onwards, their attempts to dissuade Jesus from his course of action will cause more and more friction. Increasingly, Mark marginalises the disciples from the significant action that happens around Jesus. They want to make Jesus in their own image of what a Messiah ought to be, and so Mark will develop the theme of the disciples’ blindness more fully. Ironically, more and more, it is the very group to whom Jesus wants to reveal himself that is least able to see and hear. Their relationship with Jesus has reached crunch point. Either they are going to walk with Jesus and learn to grow and change, or there will be a parting of the ways. They elect to stay – for now – but to resist Jesus and to seek to manipulate him. It won’t work. The final parting of the ways takes place in Gethsemane, when they will all flee. Restoration, understanding and appreciation lie on the other side of the cross.

Jesus refuses domestication! Discipleship is not a guarantee in and of itself that we “get” Jesus. Church history is littered with spectacular failures of the Church in this regard: Christendom, the Inquisition, the oppression of women, Apartheid, the Holocaust, the Religious Right. The Jesus who is on the side of the poor and the marginalised, who welcomes sinners and who comes to liberate humanity from all that threatens and destroys flourishing and life is a constant thorn in the side to a middle-class, respectable Church. Taking Jesus seriously is constantly to be amazed, affronted and challenged. It is to face up to the things about Jesus, his message and his mission that we dislike and wish fervently were different. We need to face up to our tendencies to control him; remake him in our own image; resist the changes he urges on us through the Spirit. How can we begin to do that? We can be honest: these are the things that make us afraid. Fear. Good, old-fashioned, paralysing terror. The future of the Church can look pretty bleak just at the moment. Like the disciples in the boat, we long to shake Jesus and say, “Wake up! How can you be asleep at a time like this! Don’t you care that we’re perishing?” If that’s how we feel, then let’s be honest about it – because only then will we hear the words of Jesus: “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” This is the One whom even the winds and seas obey!

Amen.