20B, 2018

Lectionary reading are here and as a sing of technical skills, I accidentally highlighted a section, couldn't unhighlight it and ended up with random bits highlighted. Sigh.

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“They did not understand, and they were afraid to ask.”

This past week, I spent three days in Chicago, two of which were spent in the waters of lake Michigan learning to sea kayak.

The point of the sea kayaking was not necessarily the kaying itself, but rather the opportunity to explore what it means to lead in the ever shifting and changing environment of the church.

My notebook has a page full of sketches. Stick figures on land. Roughly elliptical kayaks off shore. Carefully labeled.

Land,

Float plan.

Safe harbor.

Crux.

Next safe harbor.

An arrow points the direction we intend to travel.

Other arrows the wind and the waves.

Before we even touched a boat much less entered the water…past the point when I had started to grow impatient.

I took notes…

“Make a plan.

Paddle the water.”

And, yet, more notes…

Communication is key, leave a float plan.

This is where we are going.

This is what we are paddling.

This is the fun we are going to have.

Do you want to come?

Then, the repeated refrain…

“Make a plan.

Then, paddle the water”. Paddle the water as it is--and not as you imagined it might be.  

And, with this, a two-day object lesson in leadership and the church began.

[Pause]

Many of us are familiar with the notion of an object lesson. Commonly associated with children’s sermons, an object lesson takes a physical object to demonstrate a theological concept or illustrate a biblical story.  The empty plastic egg, the tomb. The candy cane a shepherd’s staff.

We are embodied people and object lessons help us to explore teachings in a tangible way. It’s meant to offer theology we can explore with our senses when our reason proves insufficient.

Wait, what was that? I sense a moment of discomfort in this august space. Did the priest just say that our reason is insufficient?  Isn’t reason one of the three legs of the Anglican three legged stool? Won’t we fall over without our reason? Can’t we reason our way through everything? What is life without reason?

We are St. Clemites and WE are a reasonable people.

As I wrote those words I myself laughed. A bit uncomfortably, but I laughed.

I laughed, at my audacity in assuming that everything is mine to understand. That the world and our God can be understood with the intellect. That reason is all sufficient.

Reason is, well, reasonable. With reason comes a sense of control and agency in situations that are, in reality, beyond our control. Which brings me to the Gospel we heard proclaimed today,

“They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”

This line from the Gospel has really reverberated for me this week.

“They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”

The disciples did not understand the teachings of Jesus. They did not understand his teachings because Jesus’ teachings ran counter to their reason. Messianic expectation was rife throughout the 1^st century and Jesus’ disciples would have expected a triumphant leader, priestly, prophetic, king like. In the disciples experience, that’s how the world and those in power within it worked—and Jesus’ description of state execution did not jibe with what they had been taught was reasonable in their world.

Social relationships and the economic structure of first century Jerusalem was based in an economy of honor and shame. The more power, the more wealth, the more land, the more social conformity, the more honor. A messiah’s humiliating death upon a cross would have run counter to all messianic expectation. Is Jesus still the messiah if his crown of glory is a crown of thorns?

“They did not understand and they were afraid to ask.”

How often does this sentence describe our own state of being? When we don’t understand, how often are we afraid to ask? How often then, do we proceed to act out of that fear?

Which makes the next moment in this Gospel passage seem pretty reasonable …

“Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. “

Rather than stay in that place of discomfort that has emerged when they don’t understand, the disciples turn against each other. Each wanting to be the greatest—after all, they understand greatness!

What they don’t understand is the cross as a means of liberation. What they don’t understand is Jesus’ willingness to be humiliated. What they don’t understand is anyone being willing to sacrifice their honor in pursuit of the good.

And, when they can’t understand the teaching…an object lesson ensues.

The disciples are offered an opportunity to understand the teaching in a physical and tangible way.

In a physical and tangible child.

The object lesson in the Gospel today is the imago dei, as expressed through the lived experience of a first century child. Life in the first century household did not revolve around the children in it. Children were at the bottom of the social hierarchy until they reached a point in which they could actively contribute to the household and even then, their status was in relation to the patrilineal line. Biblical scholar John Pilch notes that it was, Thomas Aquinas who taught that “in a raging fire a husband was obliged to save his father first, then his mother, next his wife, and last of all his young child”. While this may sound horrific to our 21^st century ears, given the economics of the time and the social structure, the survival of the familial line was dependent upon the survival of the adult men of the household.  

So, to place a child at the center and declare that child to be the greatest amongst the gathered company of adult men…was a radical act that illustrated a theology of the cross in which the mighty are brought down and the humble are exalted.

The un-reasonable, incompressible shame of the cross and the glory of the resurrection is made sense of, not by reason, but by the re-centering of the conversation upon the person with the least power in the room.

This is quite the object lesson indeed!

I want to invite each of you to consider what object lessons have broken open your own understanding when reason proved insufficient.

What embodied experience allowed you to understand more deeply who you are and to whom you belong as a beloved child of God? Who or what has God put in front of you so that you might move from fear and into faith?

As you reflect upon these questions, consider the object lessons that surround you in the here and the now--Our worship, our stewardship, our voices in mingled prayer. The children in our midst and our elders. The garden, the hospitality, our laughter and our tears. Object lessons whose goal is to point us towards the one who, once humbled, became exalted.