josephholubsermons
July 26, 2009 -
Pentecost 8
Mark 6:32-46
Christ The Tiger
There's a wonderful old Hindu fable that is one of
my favorites.*
It's a story about a little motherless
tiger cub who was adopted, raised and reared by a community of
goats. The little tiger cub was taught to speak the goats'
language; taught to emulate the goats' ways; taught to imitate
the goats' habits; taught to live a goat's life; even taught to
eat the goats' food. In every way the tiger cub was taught to
think and believe that he really was a goat and not a tiger at all!
One day down by the river, a mature adult tiger
came wandering along, and all the goats scattered
out of fear, except for this one little
tiger cub! For
reasons he could not explain, the cub did not flee but stayed.
The
mature tiger asked the cub just what he meant by this silly masquerade,
but all the tiger cub could do was to
bleat nervously, like a goat, and continue
to nibble away at the lush grass along the riverbank.
The mature tiger then took the cub down to the
river by a little pool of clear backwater where he forced the cub to
look at their two reflections in the water, side by side, and then
hopefully draw his own
proper conclusion to his true identity.
But
this also failed, and the little cub went back to nibbling on the lush
grass. Totally frustrated, the mature tiger finally offered the cub his
very first piece of
raw meat.
At
first the cub recoiled and winced at the strong and unfamiliar odor and
taste of it. But,
drawn to it, he took a little bite, and then another, and another, and
as he ate more and more, the raw meat began to warm his blood and heat
his passion; and slowly but surely the
truth
became clear to him.
Finally
lashing
his tail, the tiger cub for the
very first time
raised his head high, and the forest
reverberated at the sound of his
magnificent roar!
I like that story because it's a story about us.
It's a story about us when we settle for
less than we were intended to be.
It's a story about unfulfilled potential;
unrealized possibility; and mistaken identity.
It wasn't until the tiger cub encountered
the adult tiger that he came to see and understand who he was meant to
be; how he was meant to live; his role in the world.
It
wasn't until he looked into the face of the one who was fully
tiger that he truly saw his own for the first time.
As I immerse myself in the gospels, and this year
the gospel of Mark, I am convinced that people experienced something
like that in Jesus.
One of the things that comes through in
Mark's gospel is that people were attracted to Jesus and rather
intensely so.
In just the first six chapters of Mark,
that we have been making our way through these last couple of months, we
see the crowds following Jesus, pursuing Jesus,
pressing in upon Jesus, and even when Jesus tried to withdraw for
solitude or private time with his disciples, the crowds continued
their relentless and unyielding pursuit. It seems to me that people
experienced something in Jesus that caused them to be drawn to him like
a magnet.
It was probably a combination of things:
·
Jesus was a healer,
and the crowds came to him in droves with their sick and infirmed.
·
Jesus was a wisdom teacher
who articulated a way of living, a way of life, and an identity that
touched a hungry and needy place in their
lives; a place that he nourished and empowered; so they came.
·
Jesus was a social prophet;
that is a God-intoxicated voice of religious protest against the
economic and political injustices of the time of which they were
victims; so they came with their longing for a better way of life.
·
Jesus embodied the grace and compassion of God;
he was advancing a new paradigm of community life, belonging and
self-worth in his remarkably inclusive meal practices of eating with
outcasts, the marginalized and the ritually unclean, subverting
the distinct dehumanizing social boundaries of his day.
To use the analogy of the fable, when people
experienced Jesus and looked into his face they got a glimpse of
what a human life and community life was intended to be.
They saw possibilities for their
lives they had not seen so clearly ever before.
They caught a vision of an identity
rooted in God that was radically different from the way their
conventional religion had segregated, marginalized and minimized so many
- including many of them.
Today's gospel from Mark 6, is the familiar story
of the feeding of the 5000.
Many biblical scholars hold the view that
these gospel stories are the voice of Mark and his community;
functioning in the gospel as metaphorical narratives describing what
Jesus meant to them and how Jesus impacted their community life.
There are numerous things I could focus upon in
this story, but I will focus on one thing, one aspect of the
story that knocks me over.
Notice what Jesus said to the disciples,
"You give them something to
eat."
At first, the disciples were perplexed and
confused.
Whatever did Jesus mean?
We don't have the resources for all these
thousands of people?
At that point, Jesus became assertive, but
he didn't leave the disciples out.
In fact, their participation was
encouraged, crucial and needed.
Jesus made them partners in the feeding.
Jesus
took what they had, blessed it, and gave it back to the disciples, who
then proactively distributed it until everyone was filled; and then the
disciples gathered up the leftovers, presumably to be used later.
If we can, for even a moment, see this as a story
as an expression of what life was like in Mark's faith community; how
they experienced God; and how Jesus impacted their community life, we
can conclude that Mark's community had undergone a remarkable
transformation that was nothing short of miraculous.
The
story suggests that:
·
They no longer saw their resources as exclusively
their own.
When blessed by Jesus (when placed in the
hands of Jesus) their resources became public and were
redirected in a way that strengthened the entire community.
·
There was no obsession with personal righteousness
that can easily morph into self-righteousness, but rather it was
righteousness as defined by the biblical prophets – social justice –
everyone having enough.
·
There was not an afterlife mindset that focused on
what must be done to get into heaven, but their focus was very much a
this life mindset on what does God's realm look like right here,
right now, in this place, in this community.
·
They didn't approach social ills paternalistically
spouting out simplistic answers from afar, but made themselves
vulnerable to one another and saw themselves as a part of the
solution to the needs of the other.
·
They experienced God, in Jesus, not as a God in
the business of retributive justice, that is zapping sinners by
instilling guilt and fear, but a God who is into distributive justice,
who empowered them to work for the benefit of all - especially the last
and least among them.
"You give them something to eat,"
said Jesus.
The real miracle in this story is
the transforming impact it had on Mark's community and the impact it
can have on us, when we begin to transform our mindsets, value
systems, community life, and our world view in similar ways.
For me, critical and important questions are
presented by this story; questions with which I am called to wrestle; a
few of which are:
How do I see my stuff; my possessions; my
material wealth; my financial resources; as strictly my own and nobody's
business? How
do I see them when Jesus asks the very personal question,
"Joe,
you give
them something to eat?"
Do
I hang on tighter than ever, or am I willing to place my stuff in Jesus'
hands for a blessing?
And as my stuff passes through his hands,
can I accept that it is no longer my private and personal stuff, but
public stuff blessed by God to empower my neighbor.
Or how about my view of Jesus?
Is he merely a doctrine to believe in that
will carry me into an afterlife?
Or is Jesus God's invitation to
enter more deeply and profoundly and fully and humanely and
compassionately and lovingly into life right now?
For me, following Jesus is not about being
removed from life, but about a deeper entering into life and a more
profound experience of life right now.
Or what is the tone and tenor of my life; an
obsession with personal righteousness and piety that can easily become
self-righteousness; or is it righteousness in the sense Jesus embodied
it - righteousness as a passion for social justice?
For me, to be a follower of Jesus (a Christian if
you will) means to be one who has seen the tiger; one who has seen what
a human being was intended to be; not the soulful-eyed, sugar-sweet,
glowing Christ of terrible pictures and dashboard statues you can buy at
the bible store, but
Christ the tiger;
this explosion of a man; this explosion of Life itself; this explosion
of love and grace and compassion in our midst.
And Christ the tiger calls us from our
half-alive ways of living into a full participation of life.
He mentors us to see, engage and celebrate
everything: the sparrow that falls; the disciples shooing away the
children and then stopping everything to call the children back to
himself; the desperate woman touching the hem of his cloak in a crowd;
the sawed-off little crook Zacchaeus up in tree; the blind and unclean
that everyone ignored and walked passed; the pain in a grieving mother's
face; the deep-seeded hunger, physical and spiritual, in a great crowd
of people who followed him into the countryside.
I suppose there are numerous ways to respond to
Christ the Tiger.
One is to say,
"Woe is
me.
This is someone I am not.
This is a life I do not live and cannot
live.
I am goat.
I Iive in a world of goats.
I adjust myself to the world.
I
make the world standards my standards, the world's wisdom my wisdom."
And by so saying and thinking I can cast
myself into a state of perpetual guilt that I keep confessing but
never escape - and hence, nothing much changes - in me or the world.
Or I can open myself up to be inspired by
the tiger: to experience what Mark's faith community
experienced;
that in this man there is the power to turn goats into tigers; to give
life to the half alive; even the dead; that what he asks of us when he
says,
"Follow me" is
what he also has the power to give; and what he gives us is ourselves -
our fullest humanity - he affirms us for who we really are - brothers
and sisters to one another - all invited to gather at his inclusive
table for food and drink that can transform us into a community that
resembles him - living joyously in the mystery and wonder of it all!