Posts Tagged ‘questions’

Holding on to Jesus

February 3, 2024

Epiphany 5 – 2024

Mark 1:29-39

Marian Free

In the name of God who will not be held or confined. Amen.

The gospel reading set for today raises far more questions than it answers. What looks like a relatively simple healing story, followed by a story of Jesus’ sense of mission is much, much more. You will remember that Jesus has spent time in the synagogue. There he was confronted by a man with an evil spirit.  When he cast out the demon he raised the ire of the leaders of the synagogue because they interpreted the exorcism as ‘work’, something that was forbidden on the Sabbath. 

In today’s reading Jesus leaves synagogue and goes to the home of Simon and Andrew.  On hearing that Peter’s mother-in-law has a fever, Jesus goes to her, lifts her up and the fever is gone. The mother-in-law immediately gets up and serves them. At sunset – when the Sabbath has ended – people (the whole city!) bring the sick and the possessed to be healed by Jesus. We are not told, but we presume that Jesus has some time to sleep, because he gets up before dawn to find somewhere quiet to pray.

The account seems straight forward, but if we look closer we are left wondering about a number of things.

  1. Why, in a patriarchal society, is Peter’s mother-in-law living in the home of Peter and Andrew? If she is a widow, her sons not her daughter would be responsible for her and yet she is here with Peter.  
  2. If Peter has a mother-in-law, then he has a wife who is never mentioned and is presumably left to run a household and care for children while her husband and sole source of support abandons his job and his family to go with Jesus. 

We learn nothing else about Peter’s family life.

  • Another puzzle is this – why does the author say that the woman (Peter’s mother-in-law) got up and served them? Is it to prove that she is completely made well or is something else happening here. Peter’s wife is the host, it would be her role to serve the guests. The woman’s actions make sense if we understand that in the ancient world healing was seen not just as a cure for the physical ill, but as a restoration of the person to the community.  Serving guests would have been a sign of the woman’s full re-integration into the family and the community. That is well and good but why, one might ask, does the author use the word ‘diakonos’ for serve? Diakonos – the word we use for deacon – is used by Mark only for Peter’s mother-in-law, angels, and Jesus. Is this a hint that women had formal liturgical roles in the Marcan community or played a significant role among the disciples?
  • Another Greek word is equally puzzling. Mark uses the word “katadiöxen” when speaking of the disciples looking for Jesus.  This word can be translated in a number of ways – “hunted” (as in our translation), “pursued”, “looked for”, or “searched for”. ‘Hunted’ gives us a sense of the disciples’ urgency. They have woken to find Jesus missing and are anxious to bring him back. By now, they have seen what Jesus can do, and they know that they want to be part of it. As his disciples, they would also have felt a sense of responsibility for all the people of their city who still seek Jesus’ healing power.
  • Lastly, and this is the question I’d like to focus on, is why, when the crowds are searching for Jesus does he insist on abandoning them and moving to another place?

The author gives us the answer. Jesus responds to the disciples: “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

“So that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

Jesus’ primary focus was never on the miraculous, but on the message. It was never about having crowds of adoring fans, but on challenging people to change their lives around. His mission was not to heal, but to proclaim the good news, to teach God’s inclusive, unconditional love and to draw the whole community into a relationship with God that was based not on their observance of the law, but on God’s love for them.  Jesus heals because he can. Jesus heals because he has compassion not because that is what he was sent to do. Jesus casts out demons because they stand between him and his message of love and inclusion. He casts out demons because they hold people in their thrall and keep them separated from the love of God – not because he wants to draw attention to himself. 

Jesus’ mission was never about building his ego as is made clear in the accounts of the wilderness temptations in Matthew and Luke. There, the devil tempts him to turn stones into bread, to jump from the Temple so that the angels can catch him. Jesus resists the temptation to do the showy and obvious – even though that might have been a much quicker way to gain an audience and to build a following. But it is not about him. It is not about what he can do, but about the message he has come to bring.

Jesus knows that some will follow him because of what he has to offer them. He knows too that they will not last the journey.

If we turn Jesus into a miracle worker, we see only the surface. If we want a hero who works magic then we will lose interest when the magic is not in evidence. If we want someone to make everything right, we will fall away when life gets hard.  So when the disciples seek him out and urge him to return, he turns his face away from the easy option. He will not stay and be made a local hero. He will do what he came to do and preach God’s kingdom.

Who is Jesus to you?  Would you like to own and contain him as your personal helper or are you willing to stand on your own two feet, take Jesus’ teaching as your standard and your comfort and let Jesus go so that his message might ring throughout the world?

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Doubt and authenticity

August 27, 2017

Pentecost 12 – 2017

Matthew 16:13-24

Marian Free

 In the name of God who respects our doubts and welcomes our questions. Amen.

Some time ago I met a man who was, I think, in his fifties. We were at a conference on spirituality in the workplace and after dinner we were discussing the opening paper. I mentioned that I was disappointed that the speaker used the platform to sideline the Christian faith (while at the same time using some of Christianity’s key concepts to make his point). My conversation partner (Jack) defended the speaker and in doing so shared something of his own story. He had, he said, attended an Anglican boarding school in country Queensland. At age fifteen Jack had asked a teacher to explain the virgin birth. The teacher’s reply was that the boy had to accept the virgin birth by faith. As Jack recounted the story, his eyes welled with tears. He had been a young person who was keen to understand and desperate to believe. The response of his teacher left him feeling that he been fobbed off, not taken seriously. Worse, Jack felt that questions were out-of-place and this led him to query the depth of his own faith – which, the teacher had implied, was in some way lacking.

Obviously this man had been a serious and thoughtful young man seeking for answers. A consequence of the teacher’s dismissive and unsatisfactory response was that my new friend abandoned his search for truth within the Christian faith and over, the course of his life had explored alternative ways to meet what was obviously a deep spiritual need. Some thirty years later, his tears clearly indicated his feeling of betrayal and the pain that he had experienced as a result of the dismissive reaction to his questioning and exploration.

I still can’t think of Jack’s story without a sense of grief – for Jack and for the church that has lost so many people because they have been made to feel that they do not belong. A common mistake from both within and outside religious traditions is to confuse faith with certainty. It is sometimes assumed that people who confess a particular faith adhere to if not rigid, certainly to reasonably fixed ideas. From this point of view doubt and or questioning can be interpreted as a lack of faith. Confusing faith with certainty and questioning with a lack of faith has served to exclude and alienate many who, with a little encouragement might have come to see that while there are sometimes no easy answers that asking questions can be the beginning of a deep and satisfying experience of the relationship with God.

The idea that faith and doubt are incompatible is incompatible with a great deal of scripture, the Old Testament is very clear that God doe not reject those who question God. In Genesis Abraham challenges God about God’s plan to destroy Sodom () and as we heard a couple of weeks ago, Jacob struggles with God all night. Moses is constantly questioning God’s response to Israel’s unfaithfulness and more than one of the prophets questions God’s wisdom. In the New Testament, in the gospels in particular, doubt and faith seem to go hand in hand (Matthew 28:17).

What is clear is that neither in the Old Testament or the New does God revile or reject those who dare to question, those who are not satisfied with simple or simplistic answers.

Two weeks ago when we looked at the story of Jesus (and Peter) walking on the water (August 13) we saw that, rather than demonstrating Peter’s faith, the story revealed Peter’s doubt, his unwillingness to believe unless he had absolute proof. We saw too that Peter’s language: “If it is you”, put him in the same category as Satan and Jesus’ opponents. According to today’s gospel, it is Peter who claims that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus calls Peter “the rock on which he will build his church” and gives to Peter the keys of the kingdom. However, within moments Jesus is accusing Peter of being Satan because, once again, Peter demonstrates that he simply does not understand the sort of Christ Jesus is to be.

Jesus calls Peter out, but he does not reject him nor does he hold him to account. Jesus accepts Peter as he is with his doubts, his questions and his need for absolute proof. If that is not an indication that doubt and questions are an acceptable part of the faith journey, I don’t know what is.

Faith and doubt are not so easily separated. Peter’s struggle to believe demonstrates that the two can be held in tension. Our questions and our struggles are often necessary to bring us to a deeper understanding of and a closer relationship with God. When we refuse to take things at face value we are led beyond the obvious and the superficial to find meaning in the things and issues that puzzle us. We are free to engage in the sort of exploration that is content with the journey itself and that understands that ultimately God will always elude us. As T.S. Eliot expresses the mystery: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Peter’s doubt does not exclude him from a relationship with Jesus, but rather demonstrates the sort of authenticity that reveals an openness and a trust that allows the relationship to grow and develop. Rather than isolate him from God, Peter’s freedom to be himself, to question and to challenge, eventually leads Peter to believe with such conviction that he will willingly give his life for what he believes.

 

 

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Foolish questions are better than no questions

January 14, 2017

2nd Sunday after Epiphany – 2017

John 1:29-42

Marian Free

 

In the name of God to whom we can speak as an intimate friend. Amen.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life

We’ve all seen the cartoons about the seeker who climbs up a steep mountain to receive guidance from a guru or wise person only to be met by a smart retort. “What is the meaning of life?” might be answered by “Google it.” or “If I knew do you think I’d be wasting mine by sitting up here alone?” or “The meaning of life is don’t ask don’t tell – and now we’ve both blown it.” or “I don’t know. The computers are down.”

A cartoonist could have a field day with this morning’s gospel. Two disciples follow Jesus on the road and when he asks what they seek, all they can come up with is: “Where are you staying?”

Our gospel reading covers two days. On the first day, John the Baptist sees Jesus and identifies him as “the Lamb of God”, the one about whom he spoke, the one who is both before him and greater than him, the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit – in fact the Son of God. On the following day John is standing with two of his disciples when Jesus passes by again. Presumably these two were not with him on the previous day because John again says: “Look, here he is the Lamb of God.” Without hesitation, John’s disciples abandon him and set off after Jesus.

Jesus appears to realise that he is being followed because he turns and asks the pair: “What are you seeking?” “What are you seeking?” This is exactly the sort of question that a wise person, a guru or the incarnate divine might ask someone who was chasing after him. What are the disciples looking for, why have they come after him, is there something missing in their lives, an emptiness that they need to fill? Why indeed have they left John the Baptist? “What are you seeking? It is a reasonable question. After all, these two have been until now been followers of John the Baptist. They know what John has been saying, so they are not approaching Jesus in complete ignorance. Of all John’s disciples only these two, Andrew and one other, see fit to find out more about Jesus. They must know what it is that they are seeking.

This story is so familiar to us that we may have never really noticed the disciples’ strange reply to Jesus’ question. The disciples seem to be dumb struck. They don’t respond to Jesus’ question by asking something meaningful or profound. They certainly don’t give the impression that they are seeking a word of wisdom or the answer to life’s problems from someone whom their own teacher has identified as being greater. They don’t even ask the question that the priests and the Levites have asked of John: “Are you the Messiah?” Instead they seem to blurt out what must be the first thing that comes into their mind: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Something that might explain why they have been following him.

“Where are you staying?” I wonder, “If you had the opportunity to ask anything at all of the Saviour of the world would this be the first question that came to mind?”

“Where are you staying?” Did John’s disciples have no game plan when they left John so abruptly? Was it a spur of the moment thing or had John’s teaching prepared them to follow someone else? Were they simply curious – wanting to observe for themselves this ‘Lamb of God’? That they are surprised or inarticulate when confronted by Jesus suggests that they had hoped simply to be observers – to see what Jesus might do and to hear what he might say so that they could decide for themselves whether he really was greater than John. In all probability they didn’t expect to be caught. They were just checking Jesus out, gathering all the information that they could before making the radical decision to leave John and follow Jesus.

An alternative view is that the disciples accepted what John had said, believed that Jesus was the one that John had been announcing and were in fact hoping to become disciples of Jesus but were overcome with awe or terror when Jesus turned to address them. After all, what does one say to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?

You and I don’t have any of these dilemmas. Thanks to the boldness of Andrew and the other disciple we know that an intimate relationship with Jesus is not only possible but is freely available. Thanks to the gospel records we know that even though the disciples themselves asked foolish questions they were not excluded from Jesus’ company. We know that there is no need for us to be coy or careful because we are assured that our relationship with Jesus is direct and personal. We do not need to be in awe of Jesus, nor do we need to self-conscious about our burning questions. In reality, we have the opposite problem from Andrew and his companion. Our problem is that it is easy to become over-familiar to be so confident and so comfortable in our relationship with Jesus that we begin to take it for granted. We can fall into the trap of treating Jesus as a comfortable friend, forgetting that he is, after all, the Saviour of the world, the Son of God. After all, we are already followers of Jesus, what more is there to do or to know?

How is your relationship with Jesus? Where are you with Jesus right now? When did you last think about following after him? What would you say if he turned right now and asked you: “What are you seeking?” Does your relationship with Jesus have the right balance between awe and familiarity?

Andrew and the other disciple took a risk. They knew that Jesus was something special and they weren’t sure what to say but they didn’t flinch when Jesus turned and they didn’t run away. When the journey got hard they stood by Jesus and when Jesus was no longer there, they carried on alone.

Foolish questions are better than no questions. Any relationship is better than no relationship. The right relationship with Jesus will see us through the hard times and if we work on that relationship the world will see Jesus through our lives and come to seek him for themselves.

 

 

 

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