Thursday Theology: On the Mess and on Mark: A Little of Each

Co-missioners,

We have two items for you this week. The first is another response to our invitation of July 25 to send in thoughts about “the mess we are in.” The second is a quick reflection on the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday.

Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community

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I. From Dr. Roz Norman—

On the topic of “the mess we’re in,” Dr. Rosalyn (Roz) Norman sent in reflections rooted in her perspective as an “older adult female of color from a low-income background,” whose own grandparents “came to St. Louis, barely escaping the Jim Crow South.” Her reflections are also rooted in her own extensive experiences and education in tools for community service, and in her familiarity with the Crossings six-step method.

In a recorded message, she notes that “the mess that we’re in is more than a comingling of religion and state, but it’s also an attack on ‘God is love.’ And so the problem—if we want to look at the Crossings methodology—the problem here is that there is hate; and then we look at the solution: God is love.”

She goes on to ask, “How do we go from the hate that has become the forefront of what Americans are now perceived of as having to be about when it comes to…someone like a former President Donald Trump, and now his running mate, J. D. Vance? It’s frightening. … This kind of mess we’re in, it will take a true spiritual intervention by God Almighty.” And she asks, “How do those of us who are supposed to be for-real followers of Jesus Christ not only profess our belief but live our belief that God is love?”

The bottom line, she notes, s that “sometimes, direct confrontation is needed to right what’s wrong. Let’s not mince words when it comes to revealing ‘the truth’ in ‘the mess we are in,’ especially when it’s rooted in hate-mongering. It’s been said, ‘Individually, we are one drop. Together we are an ocean.’ More inspiringly stated: ‘God is love.’ – 1 John 4:8 NIV.”

—summarized by Carol Braun

II. An Observation on St. Mark

From Jerome Burce—

I filled some empty hours of a long road trip last week by listening to a recording of Mark’s Gospel in the King James Version. I found it so engrossing that I listened again. I can’t recommend the experience strongly enough. Part of this has to do with the sheer pleasure of encountering King James English all over again. People my age heard nothing else in church when we were children. I endured it at the time. Not so last week, when I enjoyed it immensely, especially in those moments when the older language made something pop out as it hadn’t before. Take, for example, the report of the healed leper at the end of chapter one, how, on being told to say nothing of what Jesus has done for him, opts instead “to publish it much,” and, on top of that, “to blaze abroad the matter.” In the NRSV’s lamer English, the fellow doesn’t blaze abroad, he merely spreads the word. No wonder I’ve missed this detail in the past. Now it’s one I won’t forget.

Even better is when the KJV helps you catch an NRSV mistake. Here a prime example is Mark 4:3, where Jesus launches his teaching with an imperative. “Listen!” Thus NRSV, that is, though incorrectly. It turns out that 4:3 begins with not one but two imperatives. “Listen!”, yes, but also “Look!”. In KJV English, “Behold!” Idou in New Testament Greek, a word that recent translators feel strangely free to ignore as if it were nothing more than a hiccup of sorts that conveys nothing in particular. Not so in Mark’s usage—or rather, especiallynot in Mark’s usage, and extra-especially not at the beginning of Chapter Four, where hearing and seeing will be equally underscored as issues that Jesus is here to contend with. (See verses 10-12.)

In fact, I think the entire gospel begs to be read as an unfolding reflection on the enormous challenges involved in getting people—earnest, well-meaning, “discipled” people in particular—to hear what God want them to hear and to see what God wants them to see. What’s more, as I’ve argued in the past, the feature of features that turns Mark into genuine Gospel as in Seriously-Good-News-For-Us-Today is its witness to Jesus’ absolute refusal to give up on the project of opening ears and eyes like ours. Which of us is not a Peter who talks a good line only to fall flat on their face before five minutes have passed? Of that we’ll hear next week.

This week the focus is on Jesus attending directly to ears that do not hear (7:31-37). It’s one of a matched pair of healing episodes, the other involving eyes that do not see (8:22-26). A close reading of them both will show Jesus having to work very hard to get done what he aims to get done. The point would seem to be that it’s no easy thing to get the incorrigible likes of us hearing and seeing as God would have us do. One of the takeaways from this coming Sunday’s pairing of healing episodes is that it’s easier for Jesus to get a demon out of little girl—this he does from a distance—than it is to get ears working the way they’re supposed to. For that it takes some spit and a sigh of exertion welling up from the inner depths of the Son of God.

In today’s first offering, Roz Norman argues that solving the problem of “the mess we’re in” will require “a true spiritual intervention by God Almighty.” I couldn’t agree more, and for reasons I hope to expand on in a future post. For now I dare simply to suggest that the intervention is already underway. Christ is busy even now with the project of unstopping ears so that his baptized people in particular will listen to him, and through him to each other. Isn’t that one way of describing what the Eucharist is about? As the bread and wine are passed this coming Sunday, might we catch the sound of our Lord’s profound groaning? “Ephphatha to them all. Grant it, gracious Father!” And on our way back to the pews, will we recall the earlier sounds of absolution that were uttered over the people we’re looking at now?

Again God grant—such hearing, such sight.

JB