Unlocking the sayings- the voiceless one in the middle
I wonder if you have ever taken time to ponder the smaller sections of the bible. Those pithy one-liners that are scattered among the pages of the gospel like seeds waiting to spring up from the ground and surprise us with their verdant growth within our life as meaningful and powerful tools of shaping and honing our faith.
There’s quite a few of them and I’m going to read a few of them to you now as our bible text for the week. They are forms of poetry, and as we know poetry has the ability to say several things all at once, and yet for one whose ears are not ready to be open, they can also say nothing.
Someone once talked the parables in a similar fashion. They said the parables are a bit treasure box. You know they contain something of great worth inside, and that worth might become yours. You approach the box, you furtively look around you to see if anyone else would lay claim to this seemingly abandoned treasure, and you try the lock on the front.
Sometimes, it just so happens that you have the key to fit the lock. A glimmer of satisfaction comes your way as the oiled mechanism clunks into place and you know you can lift the lid. What is inside... well now. Your eyes might be taken by an amazing gem that captivates your sight, calling you to see yourself in the words. Another beside might reach out with glee for the gold wristbands that will be their reminders of how to go about things in the day ahead. Still another might rake low into the box like a child would amongst lego, and find a tiny pearl, or a coin, something that fits a necklace that has for a long time had something missing. When the lid opens, the treasure we find in Jesus’ words will be various.
Sometimes, however, we will try the lock and feel frustrated as the mechanism refuses to move. The key we have doesn’t seem to fit this one. And that is like those times we come to church and hear the bible story, and think pffft, where I am I in that one. And then we hear the preacher, and think, sigh,... this one isn’t for me today. But it is for someone else who may be here.
The thing with God’s word is, we can’t always know when we will find the treasure. I walked along the beach a couple of months ago and watched someone who was out with a metal detector while the tide was low. They scanned back and forth always their eyes bent to the ground, but most of themselves was somewhere in their ears, listening to the song of the metal detector. Every once in a while, they stopped and double checked, and then moved on again. Sometimes they even got on the knees and started digging, only to find some odd scrap washed in from the sea and for however long buried but not that old, not that meaningful. I didn’t see the detectorist find anything amazing. They didn’t suddenly run off down the street yelling with joy, I had to go before I saw anything like that. But what struck me was their intention to keep their focus, no matter the wind, or the sun, the rain, or anything else around them such as odd vicars staring at them from the promenade. They were totally focussed on the sounds from the machine because they knew that every so often, something akin to treasure would be found.
Our bible is like the metal detector. We listen to the sounds, and we keep ourselves attentive. Sometimes, but not always, the sound in our ear changes, and we can dig down and find that the spirit of God is waiting for us there.
So I am going to read out these tiny one liners from the bible, with a pause between each. And I will end it with one of the mini stories, just a smidgen longer than the others. As I read, I wonder and I hope that each of us will listen for the sound of the machine, to see if we are tuned in enough to sense when it tells us there, in that verse, there is the spirit waiting for me.undefined
Read Mark 9.33-37, the Book of Books by Trevor Dennis, p.371 onwards is recommended.
I’m going to take that last bit- the story of the little child that we heard- and share with you a tiny treasure that I found in it.
You may have found something else in one of the other snippets, and if you have, that’s great, stay with that and ignore anything else I say. It’s more important for you to stay with what God has shown you.
The way the story of who is the greatest disciple is presented to us, fills in, with artistic licence, something of the child’s experience in the story. This child, as was true back then, and sometimes still is, was left to get on in a corner, until she was brought to the centre by Jesus.
She was a ‘lesser than.’ The adults around were the important ones. She was not a decision maker. Her needs were apparently inferior. She was a minority. A voiceless one.
When Jesus held her, and I have this image of her in my mind with arms raised up being lifted high up by Jesus and giggling as he moved her about for her entertainment. When Jesus held her, this voiceless one, suddenly became the important one.
And I heard the words of Jesus arriving like this:
‘Unless you change,’ Jesus said to the others, ‘and become, as it were, as one without a voice; a minority, an inferior one, you cannot know what it means to belong to the kingdom of God.’
For many of us, we have journeyed on paths through life and society that have given us certain levels of privilege. Sometimes, and it varies for all of us, we won’t know what it is to not have a voice.
The disciples when they argued on the road, they had plenty of voice, and it is telling that Jesus was silent until the journey they were on had finished. We may not have had the experience of being a voiceless one ourselves, but we all know various voiceless ones, and I wonder if we could imagine that person as the child and visualise what it might mean to belong to the kingdom of God.
When we look back at all the other snippets and one-liners we have heard from Jesus today, it would seem that putting the voiceless one in the middle might well be the meaning he intends for them all.