Pentecost 26 B: Beyond Spectacle
Dear Partner in Preacher,
Most often, when I read Gospel passages that fall in or at least near the apocalyptic genre, I feel a significant burden to explain. To explain a bit about what the apocalyptic genre is like and why authors, including the Evangelists, found it useful. To explain the complex layering of the passages – pointing to both the narrative “face value” story as well as the likely historical context that the author was trying to address. To explain how we can hear passages that described “the end” nearly two thousand years ago when we simultaneously still have preachers proclaiming the end today and yet seem not much closer to it now than during Jesus’ day.
Explanations are fine, even helpful. But, for whatever reason, I have no desire to offer much by way of explanation this week. Instead, how about a simple comparison. We and the disciples… we’re not all that different.
“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.” Since Jesus entered Jerusalem to much fanfare back in chapter 11 (and a few days earlier, narratively), it’s been pretty much one confrontation after another with the religious authorities. Herodians, Pharisees, and scribes – aligning themselves in various and surprising combinations – trying to trap and discredit him, even at times plotting his death. And Jesus, meanwhile, denouncing his opponents, sometimes via parables, sometimes quite openly. In short, the tension is building…and building…and building.
And yet after the last of Jesus’ denunciations of the scribe and his notice of a poor widow who easily exceeds their righteousness, all his disciples can imagine in response is a touristy “gee whiz” of an exclamation about Jerusalem’s main attraction: “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.”
Now, it’s possible that this line is simply a narrative foil for Jesus to make a prediction which Mark’s readers will already have experienced, namely the destruction of the Temple and the ensuing chaos, confusion, violence, and loss Mark’s community experienced. That, in turn, gives added meaning and relevance to Jesus’ comments about all that is to come which, once again, Mark’s readers are already experiencing, all of which opens them up to hearing Jesus’ words of warning and comfort addressed directly to them (which they are). Maybe. Possibly. Even probably. (I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t do much explaining, but….)
Nevertheless… I still don’t think we’re all that different. Maybe not large stones, but what about large homes, or large cars, or large vacations, or large resumes, or large Christmas presents, or…. Tensions in our communities, polarization across the country, discord in our family, decline in our congregations… and all too often all our culture has to offer is spectacle. Indeed, in a 24/7 world of streaming, even rampaging, information, where there are more news/entertainment/information channels than we could have imaged even 10 years ago, and thus where there is a constant and ongoing competition for our attention, we live in, nurture, and are trapped within a culture of the outrageous.
So maybe not large stones. Maybe for some not even large homes. Maybe it’s a large list of FB Friends, or a large Twitter following. Maybe it’s a large number of news outlets we check relentlessly, barely able to put our phones down at night for fear of missing out. Maybe it’s…
And that’s the point. It’s always something. Some kind of spectacle that distracts us from what matters, from what’s urgent. In the story immediately preceding this one – the story we read together last week – Jesus draws attention to someone no one there was likely to notice: a widow, making an incredibly insignificant monetary donation that was incredibly spiritually and morally significant because it was everything she had. Jesus, as many of you pointed out in the comments last week, is about to do the same. He is about to be just one more person crushed by the empire, to offer all he had in a gesture that had to seem ridiculously inconsequential, and yet would change – indeed, save – the world that barely noticed. And yet as he approaches his moment of sacrifice, as tensions increase and the plot thickens, all his disciples can manage is an embarrassingly feeble, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings.”
Oh, he gets their attention for a minute or two with his pronouncement of doom, prompting them to ask, “Tell us, when will this be?!” But before long they will again misunderstand all he says and does, ultimately denying, betraying, and deserting him, preferring the spectacle to the sacrifice.
And I’m just not sure we’re all that different. Indeed, I’d wager we’re depressingly similar.
And while there is precious good news to welcome, let alone celebrate, in this analysis, perhaps it heightens the good news of not just this passage but the whole story, the larger Gospel, and indeed the whole of Scripture: Jesus goes ahead and makes his offering anyway. Whether his disciples – then or now – notice, or are grateful, or understand, or appreciate, let alone deserve it, Jesus continues his lonely walk to the cross. He dies. He is raised again. And the world that barely notices will never be the same again. Disciples that deserted him are recommissioned. Criminals who jeered him are pardoned. Authorities that crucified him are forgiven. Whether or not they notice or care.
Yet what a difference it makes to notice! To know that we are beloved of God. To perceive the lengths and depths to which God will go to prove God’s love for us. To recognize the worth and value we hold in God’s eyes. To appreciate, finally, that God loves us – all of us – and to have the numbness induced by living in a world of outrageous spectacle pierce by genuine regard, compassion, and sacrificial love. And, through all this, to be saved, to be freed to see others as beloved of God, to risk caring for them, to reach beyond our isolation to touch and to be touched by love.
Which is why, I think, we come to church, Dear Partner. So that once a week we can realize and be honest about our limited attention span, our penchant for spectacle and preference for the outrageous, and then to realize a second thing, a more important thing: that God loves us anyway and just the way we are. That God has not given up on us. That even as we marvel at things that just don’t matter and miss the ordinary and extraordinary sacrifices around us, yet God still comes… to us… always in love… always to save.
So maybe the opportunity this week, Dear Partner, is to eschew explanation and instead just witness: witness what’s going on in this story, witness what’s going on in our lives, witness how God continues to come to us, seeking us out that we may hear and know that we – all of us – are worthy of, and indeed have already received, God’s love.
Thanks for your witness. At times, it may not seem like much and you may wonder how your words compare with all the other words of the day, but then again those very words will likely make all the difference in the world to those who hear them. Blessings on your proclamation.
Yours in Christ,
David
Dear David;
I love your searching commentary on scripture and relevance to today. I am so pleased you have returned to “…in the meantime.” Where are you working these days, and how might we contribute to your blog. Shalom; Bernie Hess
Thanks, David, for you good insights. I think of the show “American Pickers”– when folks, who have been collecting “large stones” for years and years, begin to realize that there might be other things in life that might be more ultimate. Facing their own mortality, and the realization that they cannot take those “large stones” with them, might be opening up the opportunity for this realization– but it does seem like a significant insight that inspires me as I face my own “large stones.” In the nursing home where I work, I walk with folks who are being stripped, layer by layer, of their house and home, savings built up for many years, driving privileges which were a sign of independence, occupations which were a source of identity, good physical health which were signs of self-sufficiency, etc. Thanks, David, for helping us open the opportunity to still hear good news beyond all of those losses. I remind our folks that they may actually be in a better position, because of their tremendous losses and suffering, to see and teach the rest of us about what is really important– so maybe I need to listen carefully. Out of the birth pangs can come birth. Thanks again!