Lectionary Reflections on Mark 1:29-39

Epipany 5: Sunday, February 5, 2012

There is an old and not terribly funny joke about a sea captain who was at the top of his profession. He had earned a reputation as one who could make excellent decisions in times of crisis. People did notice, though, that just before it was time to give his orders to the crew, he would go down to his stateroom, open his safe, and pull out a slip of paper and read it. Then he would stride on deck and make the right call.  Naturally, curiosity was high.  It was no surprise, that, when he died, one of the first things the crew did after his funeral service, was to gather in his stateroom and watch while the first mate opened the safe and pulled out the well worn slip of paper.  He read it aloud:

Port left, Starboard right.

In difficult times, the captain knew to remind himself repeatedly of the basics.

The captain’s little slip of paper held information that everyone already knows.

But it was his secret, the basic source of his ability to act.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is a little like that Captain. He has a secret.  It is often called “The Messianic Secret” and it is especially pronounced in Mark.

He is secretive about his identity. Jesus refrains from appropriating any Messianic title for himself (8:29031; 14:60-62; 15:2-5).

He chooses an enigmatic teaching genre. He teaches in parables in which the secret of the kingdom of God lies hidden. (4:11; 33)

He repeatedly “sternly orders” people not to tell his secret.  “Shhhh,” is Jesus’ message to demons he exorcizes (Mark 1:25, 34; 3:11f).  “Shhhh,” is his word to a leper healed (1:44), a synagogue leader whose daughter he restores to life (5:43), a deaf man he restores to speech (7:36), and a blind man at Bethsaida he restores to sight (8:26).

“Shhhh,” Jesus orders Peter after his confession “You are the Messiah” in 8:30.

“Shhhh,” Jesus commands Peter, James and John as they descend the Mount of Transfiguration.

William Wrede in 1901 proposed that the “Messianic Secret” was Mark’s face-saving creation, a way to explain why Jesus was not recognized as the Messiah until after his resurrection.

Other scholars have contested Wrede’s theory on the ground that it may well be that the “Messianic Secret” permeated the traditions on which Mark drew. Still others point out that the Messianic Secret is not a damage control strategy Mark made up.

For Mark it functions throughout his gospel like the little slip of paper in the captain’s safe. It expresses the heart of Jesus’ divine identity.

The healings and exorcisms reveal the effects of Jesus identity and divine power, but the good news is not reducible to them. Jesus’ immediate withdrawal in verse 35 early in the morning while was still very dark to a deserted place to pray emphasizes that the power and authority of his exorcisms and healings came from God.

Says New Testament scholar Hugh Anderson: “Such externals might satisfy the popular craving for the spectacular, but they do not ever constitute the good news. For Mark the good news begins with Jesus and what is decisive about Jesus is his suffering and death and call to follow him” (Anderson, 93)

Jesus’ repeated  stern injunctions to people “not to tell” are not completely successful. The demon knows him in 1:24-28. The healed leper spreads the news (1:45) and a whole crowds observes the healing of the paralytic let down through the roof by his friends (2:12). In the Transfiguration, the disciples are witness to his supernatural glory (9:2-8).

Is the Messianic secret really a secret? No, and yes. It is and remains a secret to those who define power and authority in conventional ways. Those who seek conventional power and authority seek far different advice for living. It is available in countless books, blogs and seminars offering  “secrets for success. “

Jesus’ authority and power come from his willingness to submit himself to God in sacrificial love for us. We are called to do the same for one another.

Those who would be disciples of the enigmatic Messiah of Mark’s gospel keep a slip of paper in a safe place on which is written the real secret of the kingdom of God in Mark:  Divine power only flows through a cruciform life.

In a culture and a time that holds an opposite understanding of the source and purpose of power, we continually need this reminder.

As Christians, we all know at an intellectual level the secret of the kingdom of God: divine power only comes from a cruciform life. We know it the same way we know our left from our right. But the whole person has to get involved, not just the intellect and the lip service, when it comes to moving in one direction or another.

An old drunkard gentleman (drunkards are a group related to the Church of the Brethren) was once walking down the street in a little Pennsylvania town.  A young evangelist approached him and handed him a tract, and asked him “Sir, have you been saved?” The old gentleman took the tract, peered at it a moment, then pulled a pencil out of his pocket and began writing on the tract. The younger man stood by impatient and curious. Finally the old man handed him back his tract.

“I’ve written down the names and phone numbers of several of my family and friends. Ask them if I’ve been saved. I could tell you anything.”

If we are living faithful lives, seeking to serve others and love them as Christ loved us, it’s no secret to anyone.

Loving the Body

I just spent a week at “House of Hope” in Puerto Lempira, Honduras. House of Hope (Casa Esperanza) is a clinic/school/orphanage that meets the needs of the children of the Mosquito Coast of eastern Honduras. It is sponsored by a ministry called Send Hope. Send Hope was founded about 20 years ago by Dr. Tom Brian, a dentist in Allen, Texas. He started out fixing teeth, and gradually the ministry has expanded to include a school, a milk program for malnourished children, and an orphanage for disabled children. I went to Honduras with Dr. Tom, Laurie Hosack, a registered nurse from First United Methodist Church of Allen, and my 22-year-old son Matt McKenzie. We spent the week painting children’s rooms, playing with them and holding them.

It was hot. It was sometimes buggy. We Texas folks who are used to living in our air-conditioned ice box houses and offices had to sweat and sweat some more. We ate beans and rice and plantains. The electricity went out several times, always at night. To people used to a level of comfort and convenience, values around which life in suburban North Dallas is built, the week involved a level of physical discomfort. I worked hard not to get fried by the sun or bitten by mosquitoes. I was glad for the Spanish I had learned and determined to know more by the time I returned.

I spent a lot of time holding young children that week. That’s one of the most important roles of volunteers who go to the House of Hope. As I sat in the heat holding one, then two, sometimes three young children at one time, I couldn’t help but think of Paul’s beautiful image for the Church as the Body of Christ. For one thing, La Mosquitia is cut off from the rest of Honduras, with no roads and few natural resources. The rest of the country seems to say to it: you are a part of the body we don’t really need. For another thing, I was aware of a level of discomfort in my own physical being and of the level of the need for affection of the children clambering onto my lap. I felt love for these children and felt surrounded by their need for love.

Says Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free-and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
He continues, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”(1 Cor 12:27)

What made Paul think of this body metaphor for the divided church at Corinth?
Paul had a splinter or a thorn in his flesh, a persistent affliction that had not let up for 14 years. He doesn’t specify what it is when he talks about it in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Scholars have varied theories: migraines, a struggle with depression, pain caused to him by his opponents’ criticism, or a persistent weakness of his eyesight (See Galatians 4:12-15). Whatever the thorn was, maybe he woke up one morning and it hurt worse than usual. And maybe on top of that, his eyes were bleary and his joints ached. And he said to himself, “When one member of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. “ “Why don’t the Corinthians feel that?” Paul must have asked himself. “They’re a body!”
What made Paul think of this body metaphor for the divided church at Corinth? Maybe later that day he decided to escape the heat and crowds of Corinth and went and sat by the pool at the shrine to Asklepios. Asklepios was the god of healing and there was a shrine in his honor in Corinth. If you had an infirmity, you presented him with an offering of honey cakes, and then slept overnight in the shrine. The god would appear to you in a dream and heal the affected body part. Then you would have a terra cotta model of it made and place it on display at the shrine next to the bathing pool. (Williams, 89)
Maybe, as he sat by the pool at Asklepios’ shrine, Paul contemplated the body parts on the wall, replicas of all kinds of body parts supposedly healed by the god: heads, hands, feet, arms, legs, eyes, and ears as well as other body parts not normally displayed this openly. And maybe he thought, “What life do any of the members have unless they are joined together in a living body? Why doesn’t the Corinthian Church get that? They’re isolating themselves from one another, which will surely lead to spiritual death.”

Whatever made Paul think of it, the body is the perfect metaphor for baptismal unity! It’s perfect because in the body no member can say it is more important than any other. We are all imperfect members, but we all belong to Christ.
And we are all in the process of becoming more like Christ as we go out into the world in his name. “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18; 15:1,2) Becoming more like Christ (being saved) is a process in which we gradually come to feel the sufferings and joys of others as keenly as we do our own. As Paul says, “When one member suffers all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor 12:26) The restoration of health to one part of the body is felt throughout the body.
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As I sat with children in my lap, melded together by our sweat, I remembered that we are all being held by God. I remembered that, when God’s Son came to earth, one of his favorite things to do was embrace the children who came to him for a blessing. I pray for the work of Dr. Tom Brian and Send Hope at Casa Esperanza in Puerto Lempira, Honduras. I give thanks for the ways it ministers to children’s bodies, minds and spirits. Having the privilege of holding, comforting and playing with the children there reminded me that, as Paul knew long ago, “We are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.”

Alyce McKenzie is a Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology and blogs at her Patheos Expert Site.

Works Cited:

David J. Williams, Paul’s Metaphors: Their Context and Character (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999). Anthony C. Thistleton, 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006).

Lectionary Reflections
John 13:1-7
Maundy Thursday

The book of John is a swinging pendulum. From up (“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God”) to down (“He came to his people but his own did not receive him”). Now it’s time to go back. “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father” (13:1).

If you knew you were going to die in under a week, wouldn’t you prioritize and take care of the really important things? In John’s Gospel, that means, for Jesus, taking time to wash his disciples’ feet.

In the 1990s, I belonged to a church where they decided to hold a foot washing one year as part of the Maundy Thursday service. It was the first one they had ever tried, and, to my knowledge, the last. The pastor had the secretary call down the list of Administrative Board members trying to get twelve people to agree to sit in a row up front that night and let the pastor wash their feet. She got turned down six times. She got discouraged and ended up settling for half a dozen pair of feet up front instead of twelve.

That evening, as the sun set and the moon rose gleaming through the stained glass scene of Jesus in the Garden behind the altar, there they sat up front, in a line of folding chairs facing the rest of us, with their shoes neatly lined up next to each of their chairs like little soldiers. There was Joyce up there on the end seat. She had had a pedicure just for the occasion. I could see her bright coral nail polish blinking from my seat. I could see Ralph’s “gold toe” socks neatly folded on top of his newly polished wing tip shoes. I could smell a hint of Febreeze that Denise must have sprayed in her shoes just before she left home. We in the congregation got to watch while the pastor washed the six best smelling pairs of feet in the entire town. In my fond memories of that evening I think of it as the “Demo Footwashing.”

John’s alone of the gospels has the footwashing. Why? Well, as John’s Jesus explains, it is to set an example for us of service to others.

But I don’t think John wants us to sit in the congregation this Maundy Thursday and watch Jesus wash some other people’s feet and say, “Isn’t Jesus a thoughtful person? We ought to be doing things like that in our church.”

This text is not about watching Jesus put his hands on somebody else’s feet. It’s about letting Jesus put his hands on our feet. Not all of us want that. One reason maybe is that we’re embarrassed about our feet. It’s not as if we as the church of Jesus Christ are a foot model convention. As we get older, we may one day look down at our feet and say to ourselves, “Whose veiny, bulbous, knobby feet are those? And how did they get on the end of my ankles?”

A deeper reason we don’t want Jesus handling our feet is because to allow Jesus to touch our feet is to allow him to touch our will. We all have a mind; we all have emotions; and we all have a will—our decision making power. Our feet are how we put our decisions in motion and get places, do things. We can think about doing something. “I think I’ll go to her father’s memorial service out of respect for her.” We can feel we ought to do something. “I have a feeling it would be a good thing to do.” But if we are going to actually show up and walk up to her afterward and offer a comforting embrace, our feet have to be involved.

To allow Jesus to cleanse our feet is to remove all that prevents us from using our feet to follow him. To scrub away our insecurities, to wash away our weariness, to buff off our bitterness.