Posts Tagged ‘Son of David’

Seeing only what we want to see

October 24, 2015

Pentecost 22

Mark 10:46-52

Marian Free

In the name of God who opens the eyes of those who are willing to see. Amen.

It is true that many of us, indeed from time to time – all of us – see only what we want to see. This is true in relation to so many things – individual and corporate. Parents sometimes are unable to see their children’s shortcomings. Spouses are often able to turn a blind eye to their partners’ misdemeanors – adultery, corruption, and even criminal behaviour. Whole populations want to believe that their governments will not mislead them and will do what it best for the nation as a whole – even in the face of information to the contrary. The gullible and not so gullible find themselves wanting to own products that advertisers tell them are absolutely essential to our well-being or our life-style – this despite the fact we know full well that we are being manipulated.

Sometimes this sort of blindness is so firmly entrenched that nothing short of a major catastrophe can shake us into opening our eyes to reality. Conversely, sometimes reality is so disturbing and hurtful, that blindness – however unreal – is preferable to seeing and accepting the truth.

In fact, on occasions the truth makes us so uncomfortable that we seek to silence or even to destroy those who expose it. John the Baptist lost his head because he dared to name Herod’s adultery for what it was. Those who saw through Hitler were sent to death camps. Nelson Mandela and others who identified the evils apartheid were jailed for decades. Journalist Steve Biko was tortured and killed by a government that needed to silence opposition.

The truth can be dangerous. It can be so disturbing and confronting that many prefer to ignore it finding it simpler remain in ignorance. There are many who would rather not acknowledge that governments can and do act immorally and dishonestly. They close their eyes to the truth and dismiss the critics by labeling them troublemakers or dissidents.

By and large we prefer the status quo. We don’t like our comfortable lives or strongly held ideals challenged or confronted. It is easier not to rock the boat, sometimes in the face of very strong evidence that the boat is corrupt or dangerously compromised.

One of the themes running through Mark’s gospel is that of a refusal or a failure to see. Members of the religious establishment suffer from a form of blindness that leads them to dismiss this unknown, uncomfortable person from Galilee. They do not like this man who challenges what they do and what they represent. It is impossible for them to conceive that such an unlikely person might be the one promised by God and because they do not understand him, they try to silence Jesus by plotting to kill him. Even the disciples are blinded to the reality of who and what Jesus is. They simply cannot accept that Jesus will be rejected, will suffer and will die. They can only envisage a future in which Jesus will triumph. When Jesus predicts his suffering and humiliation, his disciples retreat to what they think they know. They try to silence Jesus by rebuking him or by changing the subject to something that makes them feel more comfortable.

Neither group is able to see beyond their expectations or prejudices. Neither the disciples nor the authorities can accept the apparent contradiction – either that the Christ should suffer, or that such an ordinary person could be the one sent by God.

There are however, some who are able to recognise Jesus for who he is – the demons and those who are on the outside. The demons are able to identify Jesus because he challenges their authority. He presents a threat. Jesus is able to reduce their power to nothing which enables them to discern that he is a representative of good and therefore of God. On the other hand those who are on the outside of Jewish society have no preconceptions that might blind them to Jesus’ true nature. Such people have no idea how a Christ or Son of God should behave or should present himself. This allows them to see Jesus for who he is and not for who they think he should be. So it is that at the moment of Jesus’ death, when it appears that he has utterly failed, when all his followers have deserted him, when he has been publicly humiliated and shamed, it the centurion – a Roman, a gentile, an outsider who declares: “Truly this man was God’s Son” (15:39).

Bartimaeus is another outsider who, despite his blindness, instinctively knows who Jesus is. Sitting by the road he calls out not once, but twice: “Son of David, have mercy!” The crowds react by trying to silence him. What he is saying is reckless and dangerous – to identify Jesus as the Son of David is to invite trouble, to threaten tenuous peace that exists between the Hebrews and the Romans. At the same time it is disturbing that someone such as Bartimaeus identifies Jesus as the Son of David, despite the fact that Jesus bears no resemblance to a King like David.

Bartimaeus is undeterred. He speaks what he knows and is rewarded by Jesus’ response. Even though he is blind, his openness and clear-sightedness enables him to see what others cannot see.

It is easy to make the mistake of believing that we see clearly, that we know all there is to know about God. We can convince ourselves that what we have learnt in the past is sufficient for the present and for the future and we can allow our faith to be reduced to well-worn formulas, easily remembered doctrines and simple to follow rules. We can find it tempting to silence or ignore the voices that challenge our world-view or suggest that we may be wrong.

If Jesus showed us anything, it was this – that faith can and will take us out of our comfort zone, and in directions that we cannot imagine. Jesus’ own experience show us that he journey of faith can be perilous and dangerous, it can expose us to ridicule and misunderstanding and it can force us to see the world around us in new and different ways. Jesus didn’t promise us that following him would be easy, instead he told us that it would lead to the cross.

If we silence the voices that disturb or challenge us, we risk the spiritual blindness that led Jesus’ contemporaries to misunderstand, to reject and destroy him and we lose the opportunity to grow and develop and to come to a fuller understanding of ourselves, of others and ultimately of God.

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Locking God out, letting God in

October 25, 2014

Pentecost 20
Matthew 22:34-46
Marian Free

In the name of God whose foolishness is wiser than our wisdom. Amen.

When I was young I, like many of my contemporaries, had an autograph book. We’d take the book to social occasions and ask people to sign it. If we were lucky they would not only sign the book but write a short rhyme or a riddle. I had completely forgotten about riddles. These days I only seem to come across them in fairy tales. For example, a King offers his daughter’s hand to the first person to solve a riddle or a princess will only marry the Prince who asks her a riddle that she cannot answer and so on.

In my autograph book were such riddles as:
“If your B empty, put :
if your B full, stop putting : ”
It was a play on both punctuation signs and letters and if you don’t remember it, you will need to see it written. I found this one on the Internet, but I would have had to become a member of the site to find the answer – so I’m relying on you to help me out. It goes: “What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time and the beginning of every ending?”

In today’s gospel Jesus poses something like a riddle. When he asks the Pharisees whose son the Messiah is they reply (as expected) David’s son. Jesus then challenges them using part of Psalm 110: “If David thus calls him (the Messiah) Lord, how can he be his Son?” The Pharisees are stumped. How can the Messiah (whom they expect to be the son of David) also be the son of God? It does not seem possible.

With the advantage of distance (and with the knowledge that Jesus is both God and human), we might realise that the question is really a matter of semantics. Jesus is using a portion of Psalm 110 to insinuate that David is calling the Messiah “Lord” (or God) and questioning whether David would call his own son God. If he does, then the Messiah must be both human and divine – something the Pharisees would find impossible to comprehend. As a result, they are unable to respond to Jesus’ question.

Jesus is playing with words. The word lord in English as well as in Greek can refer both to God and to someone in authority. This is quite different from the Hebrew in which Yahweh is the word that we translate as Lord. In Hebrew then, the relevant part of Psalm 110 reads, “Yahweh said to my lord.” This makes it clear that the second “lord” is a human being and therefore could reasonably refer to David’s son. In both Greek and English, the sentence reads, “The Lord said to my lord”. Jesus implies that this means that God (“the Lord”) is speaking to another divine being (“my Lord”) who by definition cannot possibly be the human David’s son. It was expected that someone of David’s line would again sit on the throne of Israel. That person would be a human being, a true descendant of David – not God. Jesus is using the Psalm as if the word lord in Greek means God in both places and is challenging the Pharisees to explain how the Messiah can be both a son of David AND a Son of God, both human and divine. Such an idea is completely novel to them and they have no answer.

Over the last few weeks we have observed Jesus in debate with different groups of church leaders. In turn, they have attempted to discredit Jesus by asking him questions that they expect will either confound him or expose him to ridicule or even risk. They have asked him no less than four questions designed to show him up – two general and two about the correct interpretation of scripture – the question of John the Baptist’s authority, the question about paying taxes to Caesar, the question about the resurrection and the question about the greatest commandment. On each occasion Jesus has proven himself more than adequate to the task, answering both wisely and cautiously. The church leaders have not been able to embarrass him or to catch him out – just the opposite. Their failure has given Jesus an opportunity to demonstrate that not only is he a good debater, but that his knowledge and understanding of scripture is at least comparable to that of the church leaders.

Now Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees by asking a trick question of his own. The end result of this series of questions is that instead of Jesus’ being made to look foolish, it is the Pharisees’ inability to interpret scripture that exposes their lack of understanding. Jesus has proven himself more than their equal as an authoritative interpreter of scripture. They don’t dare continue their line of attack.

It is foolish to think that we can outsmart God, use scripture to our advantage, or twist the bible to make it say what we want it say. It is a waste of time to become obsessed with parts of scripture at the cost of the whole, to focus on individual details rather than seeing the full picture, to worry about little things rather than be captivated by complete message. The religious leaders of Jesus’ time had become fixated on one particular view of the world and of their faith and in so doing had closed themselves to other possibilities. They expected a Saviour, but they expected that Saviour to behave in a particular way and so were completely unprepared for a Saviour such as Jesus turned out to be. They thought that they were able to read and interpret scripture, but their reliance on their own interpretation meant that their minds were closed to God’s revelation in Jesus.

The Pharisees were not necessarily bad, but they were locked into a way of thinking that prevented them from seeing Jesus for who he was. Let us this not be our mistake. May we always remain open to God’s continuing revelation so that we can see and rejoice in the new things that God is doing in and around us. God forbid that we should ever believe that we know all that there is to know or worse still that we think we know just how and when God will act for that would be to close our minds to possibilities and to shut God out rather than to let God in.

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