Brother Julian Mizelle, OHC
Proper 20, Year B - Sunday, September 30, 2012
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50
The Mysticism of Open Eyes
In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!
Oh no! Oh no was my first reaction when I read our Gospel text for today. Of all of the gospel passages that would fall to me to preach on this one would be my last choice. This is a text that has traditionally been interpreted to be a series of warnings about male sexual purity. Cutting off hands, feet and gouging out eyes has been viewed as a double-entendre in rabbinic literature to other male body parts. The New Oxford Annotated Study Bible states that this passage is all about men behaving badly, and the reference to causing a child to stumble is really about child sexual abuse. My “Oh no” reaction is not about not wanting to address these subjects but I believe there is a better venue to do so than the pulpit.
All of my Brothers would rightly tell me that we don’t have to preach on the Gospel and that there is a reading from the Epistles and a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures that I could preach on. But at the beginning of this year I made a commitment to dedicate the year to preaching on the Gospel texts. I wanted to dive more deeply into them. And I just can’t let my commitments go that easily. So I decided to give the passage a deeper look.
We begin with demons and an exorcist using the name of Jesus who was not part of the disciples in-group. Jesus offers a corrective to the wrong thinking of the disciples with the wisdom statement “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Then we hear about stumbling blocks, causing the little ones to fall, lopping off limbs and gouging out eyes to avoid the fires of hell. And then the most obscure part of the passage is its ending: being salted with fire, having salt within ourselves so we can live in peace.
I approach scripture with a fundamental belief that it is a living scripture and even though it was written thousands of years ago it is the thin place where God speaks to our hearts in the present moment. I understand the cultural anthropological references embedded in these verses, I understand that the society of the time was an honor/shame society, and I understand the historical context simply becomes lost in translation for our time. Yet the reason this is scripture is because it can always speak to our hearts and minds in fresh ways.
It is also good to remember when dealing with a difficult text, such as the one in front of us today, that the writer may not have been giving us a single narrative story. Our reading seems to start in the middle of something, and we seem to jump from one disjointed thought to another, ending with a metaphorical reference that holds little meaning for us. Our best conclusion in a situation like this is to know the author of the text may have been recording his memories as he recalled them. He may have never intended to give us a unified lesson. So as I prayed over this text my question became “where is God speaking to me (and to His church today) in this passage?” Am I to condone an exorcist who doesn’t follow Jesus in MY community. Am I prepared to lead one of Jesus’ “little ones?” Am I willing to cut off my hands and feet and gouge out my eyes to gain God’s kingdom? Do I have salt in myself and do I live at peace with all?
Each of these question quickened my heart. But they also left me flat and feeling as though I wasn’t really hearing with my spiritual ear, the ear of my heart. I finally said “God, I’m missing the point...show me!” And slowly a miracle occurred...my thinking shifted. Yes, I was definitely missing the point because when I read the text I was unable to read it from the point of view of the one who was suffering the most in the passage. There is a character in this text who is rather insignificant. Not only is the character unnamed, but we only know of their existence by deducting their presence by inference. You see the disciples were upset at some stranger who was casting out demons in Christ name because he was not one of them. But what about the person who was being set free from the demon? What about the person who is broken, the person who is wounded, and in need of being made whole. Why don’t we care about them? Why did I have to read this passage thirty times before I even realized that it was the suffering person who Jesus cared most about? Because my eyes needed to be opened to see this through the eyes of those who suffer.
When we read the Gospels with open eyes and an awake spirituality we are constantly confronted with an exhaustive portrait of Jesus of Nazareth as a figure who was consumed by the victims, by the hurting, by the disadvantaged, and by the wounded that he encountered throughout His public life. In fact, it is these very victims that speak with the real authority through these Gospel narratives. It is those who suffer who move the gospel narratives along in telling us the story of Jesus.
Now here’s the problem: Religion, for over two millennia, has worked to focus Jesus’ life on the “sins of the other” instead of the suffering of the other. But Jesus was not consumed with sins. That was not the focus of His life. The focus of his life were those who suffer. I believe it is actually easier for us to focus on sins than it is to focus on those who suffer. Focusing on the suffering of our neighbor and the suffering of the world demands us to do something about it. Opening our eyes to those who suffer calls us to a reorientation of our theology and our spirituality.
Didn’t the disciples understand that if someone was going about casting out demons in Jesus’ name that meant there was someone who was being made whole? There was someone who was being freed and being healed. This was the realization Jesus was pushing His disciples to when He said “whoever is not against us is for us.” As a wisdom teacher Jesus went right to the thoughts of his disciples. He knew this is where the shift must occur. Our thinking must be changed if our behavior is going to change. And once we begin to see through the eyes of the suffering it becomes no longer possible to practice our theology with our backs turned to those who suffer.
Simone Weil wrote in Waiting for God that “one of the principal truths of Christianity that goes unrecognized today is that looking is what saves us.” It has been called a mysticism of open eyes. It is this mysticism that gives us a proper Christian response to a suffering world. When we begin to see more, not less; when we become Samaritan’s who do not cross the road to avoid a wounded enemy; and when our prayer, our worship, our pilgrimages, and our spiritual disciplines bring us to act compassionately then we can say we are becoming more like Christ.
The most fundamental stories and parables of scripture, stories that are engraved into the psyche of all believers, are all pointing us to this mysticism of open eyes, to being awakened from our amnesia. It is the story of the Good Samaritan, it is the story of the Prodigal, it is the story of the Exodus, and it is the story of todays Gospel text: a story calling us to compassion--that primordial sensitivity to the suffering of others and a praxis of taking responsibility for it.
Shane Claiborne calls Jesus an “ordinary radical.” The Buddhist writer Sharon Salzburg says the “most rebellious act we can take is to stand in compassion with others.” And this is what I mean by the mysticism of open eyes, of learning to see more and not less.
Chopping off our hands would certainly cause us to suffer. But it wouldn’t bring us into the kingdom of God. To enter God’s kingdom we must practice the spiritual disciplines of kenosis, the stripping of self, and we must enter into a praxis of mercy. How? Begin by asking three heart-changing questions: what am I doing that crucifies others?, what am I doing to end their crucifixion?, and what should I do so those that suffer can rise from the dead? Our response to this challenge hinges on our capacity to turn toward those who suffer, it hinges on our ability to look with open eyes and see more, and it calls us to the work of removing all of the crucified bodies and taking them down from their crosses.
When we see through the eyes of those who suffer then we truly become salted with fire.
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