25th SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME YEAR B

September 20, 2009

Mk 9, 30-37

TRANSPARENT INADEQUACY mini-series on discipleship, n.1

Today, in Mark’s gospel, we begin what I like to call a ‘mini-series’ within the overall story of Jesus. Mark is always advocating a self-emptying kind of discipleship. Beginning today, for the next five Sundays, he gives us a ‘catechesis’ about that kind of discipleship. He is going to teach us about manipulation, about fidelity, about money, about ambition, etc. But before he does that, today, he introduces the whole program with its keynote idea. It is the call from Jesus to become a ‘child’. BE A CHILD, BE A DISCIPLE is like a catechetical summary of the whole gospel.

It has been well noted that in the gospels Jesus is asked perhaps only two real questions. The first comes from a rich person. ‘What must I do to get eternal life?’ The second comes from a poor person. ‘What must I do to get a real life here?’ It is indeed true that Jesus seems to come through as frustrated by the first question, and approving of the second. At the same time, that approval is perhaps qualified. It is not a matter of what you do, it is a matter of how you are. That at least is the focus of Mark as he spells out the keynote of his catechesis – the idea of being a ‘child’.

I find it surprising in Mark. Mark’s gospel is very aggressive, very ‘adults only’. He pulls no punches. He constantly takes readers to a point where it is too hard to go on, too hard to believe. You get close to the real point of faith, but you don’t want to go on. Mark tends to leave you there suspended without help. Like the women, terrified, at the empty tomb. It is all so uncanny, so strong and violent that it brings to the surface all our resistances. We don’t want more: we don’t want to enter Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, or Jesus’ and Mark’s way of emptiness. That is why it is so seemingly out of character in Mark, to highlight the theme of the ‘child’. Sure, it is a beautiful and engaging symbol in our culture now. But does it fit Mark? I plan to take up five traits of this ‘child life’: I will look at one each week. Now, first of all, transparent inadequacy.

If you do some thinking, you can come to see that this idea fits Mark. In those times, ‘child’ was the equivalent of ‘poor person’. Mark is asking us to become poor. He may not have said ‘outside the church no salvation’, but he does often suggest that ‘outside the poor there is no salvation’. I don’t think he means giving help (or donations) to the poor. I don’t think he means praying for the poor. I don’t think he means trying to eliminate poverty so that there are no poor and everyone is relatively rich. What he means demands a lot of humility. He is asking us to join the poor as one of them. He knows that you can’t do that in reality without being ready to receive rather than give – being poor means you can’t ‘give’, you have nothing the well-to-do want or need. But I think he means even more. He means receiving from the poor, as one of them. Stop: if they are poor, do they have anything to ‘give’ even to someone who has ‘joined’ them as one of them? Yes, they do. It is a paradox, but it is the whole point. If you are poor, you own nothing, and you are owned by nothing and no-one. You are constrained by nothing, and no-one. It sounds beautiful, but it isn’t. If you are poor, your inadequacy is transparent to everyone. That’s why they call you ‘the poor’. That’s how they name you. And your inadequacy is never more transparent than when you are left alone, than when no one relates to you with any mutuality. You are not responded to. That’s poverty, and when everyone knows and goes along with that situation and ignores you, that’s transparent inadequacy. [I realize there’s also a pun here: they see through their (inadequate?) parents!]

And that’s what the poor have to offer and share with anyone who is mad enough to ‘join’ them as one of them. Yes, it is awkward, it is not what you were looking for, there is no way out, and you don’t like it. You are actually afraid of it. If you let that fear control your life, you won’t do it. [You’ll feel better about it if you subcontract that challenge to a few others and forget it yourself….] The whole gospel is the story of one man, Jesus, who went beyond all such fears and joined the exposed, helpless, transparent poor of the world to whom no man and no god was responding. Do you want a real life here? Only if you do what he did in your situation…

I am beginning to hint why Mark has highlighted the image of a ‘child’ to express this. I think he is not original. I think Jesus himself did so. He put his arms around a child and told the adults they had to become like a little child to get into the Kingdom of God. Why a child? A child is always poor. A child is always inadequate (can’t even speak – in-fans). A child’s ‘poverty’ is always transparent and manifest…and often not responded to. In the gospel story, there seems just to be this child, on her own, with no one there looking after the child… The child is a living cry for a mutuality that is often not available… It is not easy to be like this. So often the rhetoric we hear is that we ought to become the agent of our own life (no help needed, thank you). We ought to remake our world. There is an inner force inside us that tells us we are adequate. We wear a pair of glasses that makes us see the world as an arena where we can ‘do’ whatever we want. We can remake it. We can mobilize for innovation and propel ourselves into our tailor-made future (here and hereafter). Being a child is the opposite of that.

The ‘childhood’ of the inadequate who belong to one another is a very strange thing. They have no mutuality with those who don’t belong to them. But they do have a mutuality with those who have really joined them in poverty. They know they all ‘know’ the real name of the game. They can actually do things to keep one another going. They can even flourish a bit, and develop some skill, but only for the sake of sharing and helping one another. It is an experience of freedom, together. It is a transparent kind of belonging.

There is another mutuality they know, too. God is there, with them, among them. Not to hand down a help from heaven. God is not an answer to prayer. God is there because God has made a preferential option for this way of life, for those who haven’t got a prayer. God has joined them. God’s total inability to come through like a powerful creature has become transparent. God can and does share the transparent inadequacy of the truly poor. And among them, in real mutuality, God and the poor can reciprocate a ‘real presence’. God as one of them helps them. And they, as one with that sort of God, I think actually help God.

We probably would not believe this if it was some piece of theology. No worry, theology would be hard put to believe half of it. But then there is Jesus. God in Jesus has lived this way. It is tangible. When you touch the poor man Jesus you touch God. He is God among them. Not Emmanuel, not God with us (rich), but – God with them. And Jesus has asked disciples to live with and among the poor as he did. Some of them have done so. Every time one of them does, we are given tangible evidence that God in Jesus has not changed address, and still lives as one of the poor. We call them ‘street’ people, I think ‘child’ people would be a better way to say it. To be a child of God, look at how the Son of God lives…. And live like that.

Come back to that question asked of Jesus. ‘What must I do to have a real life here?’ No, forget ‘I’. It’s too rich. ‘How must we poor – in our transparent inadequacy – be together to give life a go together, and discover the mutuality we give one another, and the mutuality God-in-Jesus gives us all the time?’ This is the introduction, the keynote, to a whole catechesis in this part of Mark.