The Elephant in the Room
October 11, 2015
A few years ago a colleague
of mine was going through a really rough time.
There were many challenges in her life but from the outside the biggest
challenged seemed to me that her work was not longer working for her. She was a very private person and did not
open up to very many but we had established a friendly relationship and because
she and I also had many life circumstance in common. I thought we had a
somewhat close relationship, we used to get together every month or so to share
some time together, we knew what was going on in each other’s lives. I had heard through the grapevine, that her
work world was really shaky and she had been asked to leave her present
position. Trying to be supportive, I
called her up and invited her out to lunch.
We met and shared a meal together, and I will never forget our time together
that day. It was not so much about what was
said, but what stands out is what was not said.
We spent a good two hours together having a leisurely lunch. The whole time we were together we filled
with conversation, there was never long periods of silence. I asked what I thought were leading questions
to move the conversation towards what was going on in her life and tried to be
a responsive presence so that she could share or talk about what was going on,
but the harder I tried the more the conversation stayed on superficial
levels. It felt like we were running
around and around an elephant that was smack in the middle of the conversation,
but we never ever addressed it. I never
seemed able to say – ‘hey friend, I am so sorry you lost your job’ and she
never seemed to be able to say – ‘I am really struggling right now, or even ‘mind
your own business I don’t want to talk about it’, instead we kept circling the
elephant named Job-Loss, pretending he wasn’t there.
This Mark scripture today
is an elephant in the room scripture. This story is about recognizing the ‘elephant’
that is in the middle of our rooms and being able to let them go and move
towards a deeper richer relationship with God.
Each of us have an ‘elephant’ gets in our way, and blocks us from being
fully present to God.
Okay – some of you may be
scratching your head right now and wonder what the heck I am talking about – elephants? There are not elephants in the reading this
morning. But bear with me…I am using
elephants as a metaphor for something that is within us that is being ignored
or not looked at and is blocking us from a truer relationship with the
Holy. For that the man that approached
Jesus this morning his elephant was wealth and possessions.
It probably makes us
squirm a bit as people who have many possessions to witness someone be
confronted about selling all his stuff in order to ‘gain eternal life’. That’s a pretty big elephant that I think we
all recognize. I just moved again and
gave away more stuff and threw away many of my possessions and still I was able
to more than fill a four bedroom home. This
elephant makes us very uncomfortable.
Especially if addressing this elephant would mean that we would have us
giving away our savings accounts and our GIC’s to the poor and the homeless or
selling our big screen tv’s and computer equipment to sponsor a refugee family
or cashing in our wedding rings and heirloom jewellery to feed the hungry.
Jesus is journeying this
morning moving from one place to another to continue to share the good news
about God in the world. In the past few
days he has been in Capernaum and now he is in Judea. He has been challenging his disciples and has
been challenged by the Pharisees. He has blessed some children and talked about
the law. He is about start a new journey but before he can leave, a man rushes
up to him, falls at his feet and asks what it is he can do to ‘earn eternal
life.’ Obey the commandments and sell
your possessions and follow me is Jesus answer.
If only it were that simple.
Some context around this
story could help us here. Remember where
we, this is in the last part of Jesus ministry.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, which is bible code for preparing for
his betrayal, and death. He has been to
the mountaintop, where he was in transfigured, and now has come down to move
into the final phase of his ministry and also his life. The disciples have been trying very awkwardly
to figure things out and where they fit into the story – they have been having conversations
about which is the greatest and Jesus continues challenge their thinking about
the world and God and what God wishes for them.
So the kingdom of God, that is the world according to God’s plan the
hoped for dream of people, the kingdom of God is far from being realized
instead it almost feels like a direct contradiction. Jesus is also continuing to be tested by the
Pharisees who are challenge him and his teachings and try to make him appear
ridiculous so that the large group of followers that are surrounding him will
fade away and things will go back to the way they were before Jesus.
And some context about the
culture, in Jesus time, there was no middle class, there are only two classes
of people, the wealthy and powerful or the poor and helpless. The culture beliefs of his day implied that
wealth is deserved, and for the wealthy it means that God if you are Hebrew --
or the gods if you are Roman- - are reward you for being faithful by providing
you with wealth. And conversely, being poor means that if you
are not being provided with wealth than God does not look with favour upon you.
We have a parallel to this
way of thinking in our modern world as well – it is called the gospel of
prosperity in church circles – which is where we believe that the creature comforts
that we enjoy are our rights and we are entitled and we deserve them because we
worked hard to get them. We are being
rewarded for our faithfulness by the material goods that we have
accumulated. And when we are surrounded
with so much wealth, we no longer recognize that it is wealth.
It gets lost in our culture
and in Jesus society too that the things that really matter, that all good
gifts are God given and not something that we earn or even deserve. That it is the grace of God that saves us and
it is not something that we do or something that we earn, grace alone
saves.
Jesus message today speaks
clearly against this thinking that monetary rewards are about getting in good
with God and poverty as an indicator of distance from God. Jesus is speaking against the culture and
reminding us about the Kingdom. – that
is to say, Jesus is speaking about God’s wish for the world –the kingdom - how the world would be if we lived according
to the will of God. The kingdom
But there are so many
obstacles; our society and culture are struggling against hearing this
message. Jesus has just made a couple of
strong pronouncements about the kingdom of God …about who belongs and what it
is all about - the paradoxical first being last and the last being first and a
child, a child who in Jesus time has no status, no value, and no authority has
been held up as those to whom the kingdom of God belongs.
It is pretty clear here
that the elephant in the room is wealth is very complex. The man that approached Jesus knew that there
was something lacking in his life, knew that Jesus may just have that answer
about what he needs to live a full and rich life – and yet when he got his
answer from Jesus, to sell his possessions and follow he turned away and left
because he was unwilling or unable at that time to face the elephant in the
room.
David Lose suggests that
we look at this man in a different way, not as someone who is devout Jew
looking for more godly advice but instead as a someone who needed to be healed,
he writes:
“Did
you ever notice that all the people in Mark’s gospel who kneel to Jesus and ask
for a blessing either have some dread disease or are demon possessed. And
almost every time Jesus orders someone to go, like he does this guy, it’s in
relation to a healing.So what if this guy isn’t just pious but sick, heart sick, and somewhere deep down he knows this and so seeks out Jesus with his question about heavenly entrance exams because he knows that whatever his appearance on the outside, whatever his faithful and pious life, he’s still missing something, something important, something that matters, something that’s a matter of life and death. If this is the case, then maybe Jesus really does love him. Maybe Jesus sees that all this guy has – his knowledge of the law, his perfect piety, his abundant wealth – has distorted his sense of himself, and of God, and of his neighbour. And so maybe Jesus tells him to divest so that he can really live by faith in God and in solidarity with neighbour for the first time in his life, which would be like having, when you think about it, treasure in heaven.”[1]
Is
our wealth making us sick? Do our
possessions possess us? Or is it
something else that keeps us from living the kingdom. If we lost everything today – we went home
from church and found out that our house had burned with all our stuff and our insurance was not going to
cover….how would we be? Would we be
cursing God? Or would we trying to
figure out what is next? If everything
was gone, would if feel lighter, would priorities shift? Without all our stuff, would things seem
clearer? Would we be like the king in
the Quiltmaker’s Gift be happy with our new life of no possessions, our new
health? Or would we do everything in our
power to try and recoup all that we used to have?
This is Thanksgiving weekend
and many of us will be sitting at heavily laden tables with family and friends
for a feast. We will be taking to time
to thank God for the gifts that surround us, for the gifts of love and
companionship we receive from others. It
might a good time to stop and think for a moment whether we have an elephant or
two that is blocking us from our relationship with God.
We don’t always walk
the path God calls us to walk, nor do we always love our neighbour. We may have made choices and decisions based
on fear or regret or pain or to avoid the elephant, sometimes we don’t even
know why we feel the way we do about issues that confront us and we act without
thought or care for the other. Anytime
we have missed seeing the Christ in another and have excluded instead of
included, anytime we have come to a firm decision about an issue and stand
solid on one side or another unable to hear or consider that there might be
another way to think about the issue or situation, anytime a choice is made
that causes harm to another – But here is the thing, Jesus is talking about a
God of forgiveness, a God of love and a God of do-overs a God who will help us
face our elephants in the room. We get
the chance to bring healing to brokenness, to offer forgiveness to pain, to
care for each other again, to love God and to love our neighbour. And when we do this, and when we see the
Christ in another’s eyes and open up our hearts and minds in love, the kingdom
comes and God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
[1] David Lose: In the Meantime http://www.davidlose.net/2015/10/pentecost-20-b-curing-our-heartsickness/
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