3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins
In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all, Amen. Grace to you, and peace, and welcome to Holy Family on this Third Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you are here this morning. In the reading for today from the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus asks the crowd “Who are my mother and my brothers”? This is among a variation on a theme of texts in which Jesus asks questions such as “Who do you say that I am?” and, “Who are my brothers and sisters?” They are questions that have significance for each of us, too. I love these similar gospel readings for a number of reasons. For one, they often show Jesus in a paradoxical light; he is alone, praying, yet with the disciples around him; he is accused of being “out of his mind,” yet he is clear, non-anxious, and resolute; he is curious about what others are saying, yet he shows an awareness of his journey as part of something much larger than can be encompassed by the events and opinions swirling around him—in short, he is being an effective leader. He wonders what others call him, even as he knows that in terms of his earthly fate, it does not matter. Indeed, this awareness of his fate—that he would undergo great suffering—suggests an awareness of the larger divine narrative and his role in it, and is directly tied to the passion narrative. Paradoxes often contain important truths, however, and this is no exception.
I’m also drawn to these passages because of the questions themselves. Ever notice how we respond to simple, honest, straightforward questions? They have a certain power because they generally reveal something about both the one asking the question, and the one of whom an answer is expected. One reason Jesus asks these questions is so the disciples can learn something about themselves, and so we can we learn about ourselves, and about our relationship with God. Isn’t this the beauty of questions, whether in the scientific method, or psychotherapy, or a good mystery novel? In fact, this was in part the source of Sigmund Freud’s genius. He discovered that paying attention to the ways in which his patients answered the question “Who do you say that I am” was the most powerful clinical tool at his disposal. They often made him out to be someone he was not; someone from the past, in relation to whom healing was needed, or someone they wished he might be; perhaps someone with whom they were angry, or in relation to whom they had experienced some pain. Sometimes they were actually projecting aspects of themselves onto him. Working through this “transference” as Freud called it, is the heart of the therapeutic journey. And the more clear his patients became about who Freud really was, a caring, wise, somewhat strange Viennese psychiatrist who smoked smelly cigars and was just trying to do the best he could, the more they came to accurately know themselves, and this is where the healing began…for it is ultimately self-knowledge in the context of relationships that heals. We inevitably discover possibilities in relationships, and our lives, where previously we had seen none, and we learn something about who we are, too.
We are all creatures of narrative and naming, and good writers know this too. This is how meaning is found…in our stories of naming, and relationship, just like today’s Gospel. In one of my favorite of Cs Lewis’ books, he has a character say, “When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years…till that can be dug out of us… till we have faces…how can God meet us face to face.” This is what Jesus wants from the disciples and from us: he wants to be in relationship, he wants us to have “faces” and in order to do this, we have to come to terms both with who we are, and who he is. This is an ongoing, daily, life-long task. In response to the first question in today’s Gospel reading….who are my sisters and brother… several possibilities are explored. Our human family, for any of its virtues, is ultimately just too small, too closely circumscribed. As a priest and therapist, I spend much of my time helping people understand their family stories, and how they were shaped by them. When someone steps up and answers Jesus’ call to follow him, the church washes that person in baptismal water, and it is as if the person gets a new name—a new identity that takes precedence over even that person’s family name. The chief act of Christian worship isn’t some mysterious, dark, esoteric rite. It’s a family meal with everyone around the table, the Sunday dinner that we call Holy Communion; family as God intended family to be.
In a world of grandparents without grandchildren close by, and single-parent families, and grandchildren growing up without grandparents, and marriages often under stress, we need a bigger family than the one we were born into. As John the Baptizer said, “God is going to have a family, even if God has to raise a people out of the rocks in this river. To become a Christian, to have your life taken over by Jesus, is to be joined into a family, a people convened by “water and the Spirit,”[ix] a family bigger and better than your biological family, a worldwide, barrier-breaking family that goes by the name, “Body of Christ.”
A sense of curiosity and wonder is essential, too, for learning about ourselves, and one another, in the context of our life’s narrative. One wonders what the answers would be if Jesus asked these question today. For many, the crowds described by the disciples would feel right at home, what with their rather benign view of Jesus. Walter Brueggemann, a colleague of mine at Columbia Seminary, has said that the gospel today is “a truth widely held…but widely reduced. It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.” Moreover, Brueggemann suggests, the gospel is for many an old habit, neither valued nor questioned—not really fully alive. And more than that, our sometimes too technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, and takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes and forms. How often do we answer Jesus’ questions and keep the gospel alive in our daily lives? Perhaps these are questions we should seek to answer each day.
One of my roles at Columbia Seminary was as a faculty advisor to students. We had a remarkable diversity of students in those days, including physicians and business/persons, former attorneys, retirees, and students just out of college. One of my advisees was an engineer by training, who after 25 years with an aerospace corporation decided to go to seminary. He was accustomed to going by the book, following the engineering manual, and struggled at times with the fact that there was no extant manual for every act of pastoral care ministry. After his first hospital visit I found him outside my office, visibly shaken Once settled inside, he said “Bill, I want a book that will tell me exactly how to respond to what I saw in the hospital this morning,” “Jim,” I said, “there is no such book, and even if there were, I would burn it. You’ve got to find a way to be present, to show up, and listen to the story as it unfolds, and let your heart, and God, and the other person in the room, guide your actions.” The questions such as, ”Who are my sisters and brothers?” require that we respond in exactly this way, out of our Baptismal Covenant; you remember, the part where we promise to proclaim by word and example the “Good News of God in Christ” and respect the dignity of every human being.
“But who do you say that I am?” and “Who are my sisters and brothers?” Jesus asks, and these are the essential question, aren’t they? Because they require that we get to know ourselves and that we be creative, and have courage in relation to our images of Jesus. Sallie McFague, one of my seminary professors, taught us that the images we use for God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, very much inform how we respond to the question of who we say they are. I believe that what Jesus is doing in this passage is calling us to be in relationship. I am reminded of a wonderful story told by Garrison Keillor in which he recalls a game he played with his favorite aunt Lois. Keillor writes: “My favorite game was strangers,” he said…”pretending that we didn’t know each other. I’d get up and walk to the back of the bus and turn around and come back to the seat and say, ‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ And she said, “No, I don’t mind,” and I’d sit. And she’d say: “A very pleasant day isn’t it?”
We didn’t really speak this way in our family, but she and I were strangers, and so we could talk as we pleased.
“Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?”
“As a matter of fact, ma’am, I’m going to New York City. I’m in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died, and I’m going back to Broadway now on the evening plane. Then next week I go to Paris, France, where I currently reside on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps you’ve read about me?”
“No, I never heard of you in my life, but I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person.”
“Oh, she was pretty old. She was all right, I guess.”
“Are you very close to your family, then?”
“No, not really… I’m adopted, you see. My real parents were Broadway actors—they sent me out to the farm thinking I’d get more to eat, but I don’t think that people out here understand people like me.” She looked away from me. She looked out the window a long time. I’d hurt her feelings. Minutes passed. But I didn’t know her. Then I said, “Talk to me. Please.” She said, “Sir, if you bother me anymore I’ll have the driver throw you off this bus.”
“Say that you know me. Please”… “And when I couldn’t bear it one more second, she touched me and smiled, and I was able to be myself again.”
Who do you say that I am? Who is my family? Who is my mother, and my sisters and brothers? In asking, Jesus is saying…tell me that you know me. Please, say that you know me. He invites us into relationship, and in answering the question, we encounter the possibility of change, and growth, and transformation. And this requires that we die to our old selves- our “transferences” and projections and illusions– and each day take up this cross. For my former engineer student Jim this meant dying to his old engineer self. Change makes us vulnerable, but it is precisely our vulnerability that can be the occasion for growth in relation to God. Growth and life paradoxically require death; transformation requires vulnerability. Knowing God requires being fully alive, even as we die to our former selves. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like Easter…And so we pray in our ordination and Easter services:
Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen