28TH Sunday in Ordinary Time
14TH October, 2012
Mk 10, 17-30
NOT FOR THE WELL OFF
In this gospel, a rich man approaches Jesus, and asks him a question about eternal
life and how to get into it. Only a rich man would have a question like that. Peasants
are totally pre-occupied with eeking out a subsistence in this life. They are concerned
about now, not later. Jesus’ response to this rich man is interesting. He tells him to
keep the commandments, the ten of them. But he changes the wording of these
commandments. He brings in one that is not usually listed: do not defraud anyone.
And, I suppose to keep it to ten, he drops one is usually listed: do not covet. I guess
that if you really covet (= want at any cost) something that someone else has, you will
very likely defraud that owner of what he has so you can have it – you might defraud
him of his wages, of interest on a loan, or in paying off a debt. The innuendo is that
you can’t really get wealthy without taking advantage of others. This is said in
the culture of first century Galilee, and from the point of view of a man who was not
rich – Jesus, one of the peasants.
I think this explains why Jesus seems so adamant that it is hard, even well-nigh
impossible, for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of God. In earthy peasant humour,
Jesus says it is impossible – just as it is impossible to get a camel through the eye of a
needle! All bets are off!
Immediately Peter approaches Jesus. He is interested in what reward he will get for
giving up all he had and following Jesus. Jesus plays with his request. Jesus doesn’t
say that Peter will get a lot in eternal life (though he does add to his main remark, a
little phrase about eternal life). [Mark, in this gospel, shows little interest in eternal
life – later it is John’s favourite phrase in his gospel.] Jesus speaks of a restoration of
everything now, in this life (and in the age to come, eternal life). Here in the earthy
restoration, it is mainly a restoration of family life in the villages – with all the
relatives around again! A hundredfold of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, etc etc.
Is he really telling Peter, with a touch of irony, that his mother-in-law (once healed by
Jesus) will be there, and that will be his reward!!! Jesus even throws in a realistic
aside, he says Peter will get loads of this restoration – with a few persecutions thrown
in! Jesus is not promising Peter, or anyone, a never-never land where everyone is rich
as hell! What he is talking about is the way poor peasant people share now whatever
they have together, with a common subsistence, not a high yield crop. There are
never going to be rich or richly rewarded people around, in Jesus’ community, here or
hereafter! Giving up what little you have and following Jesus makes you poor, and
keeps you poor forever…. Letting go of what you claim as yours isn’t just a first step
and in the later steps you get it all back abundantly…. Letting go is a permanent
condition, and you never get anything back to be yours exclusively….You just enter
into the Kingdom of God and all is yours and all is everyone else’s at the same
time…..
I can’t help wondering here, in this juxtaposition (or is it identification?) of the rich
man and Peter, how this perspective on Christian life applies to rich people in high
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places in the Church… They can work that out. But I guess, for their consolation, if
they are celibate, they won’t have to worry about mothers in law in their future!!
‘Il benesssere pesa. La chiesa e stanca’ (Goodliving is a heavy burden. The
church is lazy/ or lazy) [Carlo Maria Martini] Or, good living isn’t good news….
----THE NEW TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE – POWERLESSNESS AS A
DIFFERENT SORT OF ‘POWER’
‘Power corrupts…absolute power is….kind of neat’ (John Lehman, US
Secretary of Navy, 80’s). That is the assumption of many people now. Let’s
have more and more power.
This is an attempt to look at power in the ancient world, power in Jerusalem in the
time of Jesus, and power in our world in our own time. And then to look at Jesus’
own approach to power.
In the Ancient Near East the name of the game was power. Power is seen mostly in
gods and in superhuman entities. At the human level, is it mostly seen in political
authorities, who are closely linked to the gods. The Roman Emperor was considered
to be (almost) divine: emperors were usually thought to be so after death, and later
emperors were looked on as gods during their lifetimes, and given cult alongside other
gods (initially in the eastern world and then in the west). This was the source of the
Pax Romana. It is peace by power, but remember, if you disagreed with it strongly
enough, you were crucified. The ‘peace’ had its element of violence.
In Jesus’ time Jerusalem was a place of power. It had become the centre of a
domination system, too. It was a system in which many were ruled by few. The few
were the wealthy, the monarchs, the aristocrats. They got the wealth of all. They did
this by restriction of land ownership, imposition of heavy taxes, and a practice of
large indebtedness. They legitimated this by a religious language. Kings had a divine
right to rule. This kind of society was the way the God willed it.
Nowadays, perhaps Macchiavelli has put it best in The Prince. Power is morally
ambiguous, and could not and should not always be good. It is a force to defeat the
opposition. The ruler is a warrior and a winner. Real men are powerful, strong,
fighters, with no objective but warring and winning war, always beating the
competition. Fight or flight? No, fight. Nietzche saw it all as der Wille zur Macht –
the will to power.…
But in the New Testament what is power?
First, power belongs to God. It does not come from us. 2 Cor 4,7. But it is a strange
kind of power, a paradoxical one, and this power belongs to a very specific and
paradoxical God, not to a fuzzy idea of the divine. Phil 2: Jesus emptied himself,
precisely because he was in the morphe of this God. [Note: being in the morphe of
God is precisely the reason why he emptied himself.] If you are powerful in the usual
sense of the word, you should empty yourself of all that. You should do that because
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you love others. You humble yourself for the sake of others. You don’t grow up: you
grow down. That way you don’t get in other people’s way. This is what Jesus did.
This is what Jesus did because he was in the morphe of God. This means that God
did that. To be the real God is to be like that. The gospel (good news) is the fact that
God emptied God of power in the usual sense, and God did that out of love, for
the salvation of everyone who has faith. The Gospel is not about the power (=
greatness) of God. The Gospel is about the givenness of God, given for the sake of
believers, given in love. Given for the sake of people when they don’t deserve it and
have another and wrong idea of power.
Second, this Good News means, and actually IS, service of others. To serve is to
relate, to relate to others from a position of disadvantage, from a point of
powerlessness. When you give up power, you can have a life lived responsibly for
the sake of others.
Sometimes the New Testament calls this ‘power’ but it is using the word in an upside
down way. It is telling us that there is a strange beauty in being powerless, and in
that beauty there is a capacity to be positive with people and let them have a more
positive life. That capacity could be called power, as long as you know you are using
the word paradoxically.
Miracles are called power-deeds (dunameis) in NT Greek. Jesus did them to restore
broken lives and bring people back into community. 1 Cor 12. One of the gifts of
the Spirit is that of working deeds of this kind of power. Nor for personal gain, but
for harmony in community, that is, service, that is love. It is the opposite of
domination and greatness.
Jesus rejects the domination system. From that follows his free forgiveness of sin,
his preferential option for the marginals of that system, for a radical egalitarianism,
and for open table fellowship. From that follows too his rejection of pomp and
performance, of victory celebration and what goes with success. His own position is
seen most clearly in weakness. Whenever I am weak, then I am strong. Apparent
defeat is the chosen expression of his ‘power’. This does not mean feeling a bit low,
it means insults, and persecutions, and calamities, and hardships. In Paul it means
hard labour, prison, flogging, being near death, stoning, shipwreck, bandits… toil and
hardship, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness.
This power is not used occasionally for the service of others. It is not a few random
acts. It is a life spent in the service of others. We do not have to make an option
between power or weakness. We have to find a different sort of ‘power’ in weakness.
Weakness is not a minor case (or minimum example) (or zero instance) of strength. It
is qualitatively different, a mystery in itself, that is expressed in service. You could
say that this kind of power is not directly a manly thing, it is a Jesus thing. It is a gift
of God, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in it. Jesus is not a cipher for some
universalized idea of masculinity – in which you climb mountains, fight battles,
captivate women, and communicate over beers in monosyllabic grunts…
The danger nowadays is a mix of a secular model of power and the New Testament
model of power. Paul said to those who lived at the centre of all secular power in his
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day, Rome, ‘do not be conformed to this world’. Don’t muscle people out of your
way to clobber your enemies. The cross is the ‘power’ of God….
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