Monday, November 28, 2011

Mark 8:5-11

Here is the place, if anywhere, to talk about my other favorite change, since it's the verse from which it was derived. So I'll say briefly how much more intimate and real it is to talk about God coming "under our roof" and thus into our lives as opposed to a more passive "receiving." There's the duty owed to a guest when it's the roof, and it's a more permanent bond.

But what really struck me about the reading today (and perhaps it's only because I watched an episode of Robin Hood that featured a wisewoman) was the way that the soldier shut down any pretense, any need for a ritual or herbal cover. In fact, this encounter and the healing of the servant (points to the soldier for that, by the way) is the inverse of what a lot of rituals of the time and since were: an elaborate ceremony to shroud in mystery that you're giving someone an aspirin. The Aztecs built elaborate architecture to catch the sun at certain moments to give themselves proper religious credibility. Most religious have been guilty of some form of this.

Jesus took pity on him - and more than that, He didn't make demands of the soldier. He didn't demand his belief, He offered to come and make a bit of a show, extend His hand to touch the servant. And the soldier said no. The soldier believed that Jesus was God - in utter command of the world. That distance and homeopathic magic was meaningless - that all the ritual was unnecessary to the power of God.

And since all of the ritual is for us, not God, because we go to Church because it helps us to come to a place that helps us grow in our faith and not because it gratifies God in some way in itself, Jesus agreed that the ritual would not be needed. The soldier had faith without it.

The soldier saw the world simply. The soldier simply believed, and his description of Jesus' power was straightforward and implicitly subservient and absolute. No magic required.

I remember writing something down once about how so often the final ritual of a supernatural show is often disappointing - plugging the hole of the Lost island, dumping the Stone of Tears on a little ledge in Legend of the Seeker (don't watch that show), the whole mess at the end of [editted]. The best you can hope for in that situation, when you find the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West, is that the problem being solved will be accompanied by a flashing light or rumbling noise. Otherwise it would feel too much like the actions you take every day.

But maybe they should, in a way. Our religion should feel like routine, because we practice it all the time - such that disrupting that routine causes problems with the new translation. And perhaps better if we don't need it - if we know the truth of God without seeing the Spirit.

Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe.

Blessed are those who don't have to dress their faith up in rituals to know the truth at the heart of it. Blessed are those who know. Who know that we are not worthy to have Him enter under our roof, but that He would anyway. That He has, always, been there.