Spiders are NOT Insects
Feb 18, 2009
Freda Marie S. Brown
Mark 11: 27-12:12
When Crystal Brown was 4 years old and we'd just gotten home from daycare one evening, she informed me that spiders were not insects.
"Sure they are, honey", I said. They crawl around on the ground with lots of legs, just like roaches. I use the insect spray to kill ‘em too.
"Na-unh, Miss McClendon says spiders are not insects."
"Yes they are"
"No"
Well, what are they if they're not insects, then"
"They're...a....a...I don't know...but they're NOT insects!"
"I think Ms. McClendon is wrong." (After all, I'm thinking to myself, how much can she really know? She baby-sits 3 and 4 year olds all day long.)
"Look, I have a college degree, I KNOW they are insects!" (I'm feeling pretty smug, pretty sure of myself by now)
"Ms. McClendon says...."
(Now it's time to bring out the big guns...)
"I don't care what Ms. McClendon says...Spiders are TOO Insects! And I'm the MOTHER and I KNOW!!!!"
Poor Crystal! I pulled rank on her...flashed my credentials and shut down the conversation. But she was so adamant about it...sticking to her guns...was it possible that???? Now this was before personal computers and Wikipedia and so I pulled down a handy-dandy Britannica encyclopedia and discovered, lo and behold, that spiders are arachnids and not insects at all!
At family night at the school, my husband and Crystal related the incident to Ms. McClendon and they all had a big laugh about how Crystal had to teach her mom about spiders. So on the last day of classes, Ms. McClendon sent me (by Crystal) a 2 ft. x 3 ft. laminated green cardboard spider and emblazoned across its belly in bold black script: SPIDERS ARE NOT INSECTS!!! That incident taught me a valuable lesson about certitude and about truth. I've kept that spider some 20+ years as a reminder of just how uncertain certainty can be even in the face of a college education.
Jesus has caused a violent disruption---absolute mayhem in one section of the Temple. He's overturned tables and chairs and setting animals loose in the place and in general making himself a menace. And the reasoning he uses is that the Temple is, in effect, being misused. Instead of a house of prayer, there's some thievery going on. He sure has taken a lot upon himself. They've done it like that for years!!! So the local religious folk (those whom we're closest kin to) ask to see his credentials.
"By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?" We know how YHWH is to be worshipped in this Temple; we sanction this use. We are the authority. God has given us the authority as students of the TORAH. We know the WORD of God, we've got MDiv's...we've got credentials!
This is only one of the many conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. What is raised up for us here, is the usual way that authority is defined on one hand and the alternative indicated by Jesus on the other. From the beginning of the 1st chapter of Mark's Gospel, we see the people who are witnesses to Jesus' teaching awed by the authority of that teaching. The author of the Gospel wants us to know that Jesus' authority from the very beginning is "divine"...Jesus speaks and acts with power and as a consequence the sick are healed and demons are exorcised. The only credentials are those borne internally through his intimate relationship w/the living God. It is out of this relationship that Truth is known and true power made manifest.
Then Jesus tells a story about a vineyard. The religious folk know it's about them. Everybody knows the vineyard is a standing metaphor for the nation of Israel...God's chosen... but what is this? What is he saying? "The owner of the vineyard will destroy the tenants---the caretakers---and give the vineyard to other folk? He must be crazy! The rejected stone gets prominence in the final structure of the Temple? Even as the cornerstone? Can and will God use what is ordinarily unwanted and cast off?
Consider with me that the authority given by God is often rejected by us because it just doesn't "fit" our map of reality. Just like a 4 year old or her day care teacher could not possibly know as much as someone with a college education---truth, both in word and action, is often discovered just off center...on the margins and in the unvalued places of life. It's the people on the margins we need to watch because many of them have an inside track on the power of God. Contrary to some circles of popular belief, collars and vestments will not give us authority--- only God authorizes. The old folks would say, "God doesn't send the qualified, He qualifies whom he will send."
And--- when the truth is manifested in power, we know it's God's doing and so it is marvelous in our eyes!
When the late Rosa Parks left her seamstress job for the day she was physically tired. Dubbed the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement, she states in her autobiography that after years of fighting in court against flogging, murder, peonage, and rape of black people, (she and her late husband were active members of the local chapter of the NAACP) she "just got tired of giving in." You know the story--- she refused to surrender her seat to a white male passenger and found herself summarily arrested, fined, and unemployed. How did it come to that? When the bus driver stopped the bus and came to her seat with his credentials and told her to get up, she sat; and when the white policeman boarded the bus to arrest her, he came with his credentials---a badge, a gun and a billy club, but she sat. And she sat self-authorized by The Truth within her until arrested. The Truth was that it was as fitting for her to be in that seat tired from a long day of work as for anyone else and the power to remain seated was tremendous given the consequence. Who knew what could happen to an attractive black woman in a Montgomery jail? She must have been crazy! But because she chose to own and honor the Truth, the era of apartheid in the United States of America cracked and was subsequently broken.
John the Baptist came preaching and baptizing in the wilderness wearing a camel's hair garment and eating au natural. He looked like a wild man but spoke so convincingly, the people knew he was obviously sent by God. In no way could he have been considered to be one of the religious elite, and yet there was some authority...some persuasive power in the intensity of his words---enough to make them act---enough to make them submit to a baptism of repentance in the Jordan.
The authority of the divine is the power of God given as gift to us to effect God's sovereignty within the earth; to reconcile all things to God's self. It is usually not honored by worldly powers and is actually rejected because it challenges the world's map of reality. John was beheaded and in two chapters from today's gospel reading, Jesus too, will be tortured and killed. St. Paul describes to the Corinthians his engagement with this divine power: He says in part, "I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling...but with a demonstration of the Spirit and the power of God so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God." (I Co 2: 1-5) Yes, the margins, the weak, the off-center places are places where God's truth and power are found.
I was very blessed many years ago to participate in one of the most enriching bible studies ever. I was with a group of homeless men and women at the Austin Street Shelter in downtown Dallas. There was such a joy and love of Our Lord within the group...such devotion and healing shared. It was a very powerful and inspiring experience for me and I will not forget it. People who lived on the street and struggled to survive daily showed me true community, hospitality, and hope. This is not to romanticize their situation, but to say that the Presence of God is truly made manifest most often among the marginalized of the world. Those whom society might give a passing nod to or no nod at all.
Given this understanding, what is God's call to us as leaders and future leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ? One of my former professors, liberation theologian Joerg Rieger, wrote a book called GOD AND THE EXCLUDED. In it, he talks about how openness to those on the margins is an openness to the wholly OTHER, God. He describes some of the things to be learned from people living on society's fringe.
A. The margins teach us about living a life of ambiguity, liminality, and uncertainty---a life of faith.
B. The margins teach us how to encounter God anew in previously unidentified ways amidst tension, conflict, and struggle.
C. The margins teach us, the Church, of our "ongoing need for repentance and conversion." How might we, as Church, perpetuate and support exclusivism and marginality?
Reiger says when we open up to the DIVINE OTHER in our encounter with the human other, we create space for a new awareness of God's work in the world. (p. 169)
The good news is that "God has given us of His Spirit" we are responsible to cultivate, to make ourselves available to God...to spend time being still and moving into ever deeper intimacy with him. This is necessary for the vitality of life needed to spiritually lead in Christ's Church. This gift of Spirit allows us to accept our own marginalization when we experience it---and we will--- whenever we commit to fully participate in the Christ-life. As one wise and learned priest would say, "Ya gotta learn to look good on wood." But, no matter---we have great company on the margins, Dr. King and Mr. Ghandi, Teresa of Avila and even Martin Luther.
External authority is truly powerful when it aligns itself with the divine power of God---when it is manifesting out of the authority of Christ. But, instead, often human power and authority sleeps with a certitude of certainty that opposes and rejects openness and receptivity before God. I have learned that, like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, such certitude is based in fear, not faith, and it cripples Christ's ministry of reconciliation through us in the world. It needs to be avoided at all costs.
So, what does it mean for us to pay attention to those who are usually not attended to? To see them as possible models of the faith we proclaim? What does it mean for me?
I have learned that I don't know as much as I would like to think I do and so I've learned to stay open, to listen to children and that "Spiders are NOT insects."
Amen---
