Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday 23 June 2024
2 Samuel 17:32-49 | Psalm 9.9-20 | 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 | Mark 4:35-41
©Lauren Martin
Today we have two stories, that although different, are both equally horrifying. In the story of David and Goliath, we hear how David will cut off Goliath’s head and how they will leave the bodies of the Philistine army for animals to scavenge, ‘so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.’[1] The Psalm also contains this theme of sacred violence as proof of God’s favour. This Psalm attributed to David portrays his cause as righteous with his enemies, who conveniently also happen to be God’s enemies.
How do we look at these texts? Do we view such things as historical descriptions of events regardless of whether God approved of them or not; as stories of a primitive, barbaric and violent culture compared with that of ours today; as acts of divine retribution on wicked people and nations as necessary for the development humanity’s moral compass; that war and its tragic consequences are inevitable; that later – New Testament – revelations of God supersedes earlier stories like these; or that poetry – like Psalm 9 – are just an angry exaggeration or an emotional overstatement.
Sacred violence, or violence done in the name of God is not limited to some distant past or to one religious group. In modern times and even today we can still find violence done in the name of religion in acts such as mass suicide, ritual abuse, ethnic cleansing, the defence of slavery, and persecution of minority groups to name a few.
In the New Testament, there are two instances where the disciples suggested or turned to acts of violence, both times Jesus rebuked them – mirroring what we hear in the great two commandments to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves. [2] Just as these rebukes were not an encouragement towards passivity, likewise we should not remain silent in the face of sacred violence but should name it for what it is. Sacred violence is almost always complex and bound up with other causes (e.g. social, historical, economic, cultural, or political). As Ann Lamott wrote in Bird by Bird; that “when God hates all the same people that you hate, you can be absolutely certain that you have created [God] in your own image.”[3] In order to speak against scapegoating, sacred violence and othering we must move beyond the limitations of us and them, or of a God who hates all the same people we do, but in reality we know that this often is easier said than done.
In journeying to the ‘other side’ and subsequently through a raging storm, the disciples enter into a place of uncertainty, fear and utter chaos before more fully entering into the mystery of the divine – seeing that even the wind and waves obey Jesus. The ‘other side’, the side of the Gentiles, like many other ‘other sides’ would have been an undesirable and hostile. It is better to keep the natural order, the ways things are normally done, ‘us’ on one side and ‘them’ on the other – after all, this boundary protects us, maintains our privilege, our purity whether it is a lake, a sea, a law, fence or an attitude.
Ched Myers et al[4] noted that “The function of this crossing pattern is to dramatize the fact that, despite their cultural and political ‘otherness,’ Mark’s Jesus is determined to bring liberation to those on the other side….. The wind and waves in Mark’s story, as cosmic forces of opposition (see Psalm 104:7), symbolize everything that impedes Jesus’ attempted “boundary crossing.” The enmity between Jew and Gentile was seen by most of Mark’s contemporaries as the prototype of all human hostility. The separation between them was considered part of the “natural order.” Mark’s harrowing sea stories suggest that the task of social reconciliation was not only difficult but virtually inconceivable.”
From this perspective, this story is not just about a miracle over nature, but about trusting Jesus in crossing over our usual boundaries. Jesus takes his disciples back and forth between Jewish and Gentile territories beginning to act out the reconciliation of the human family by continually crossing the boundaries between Jews and Gentiles mirroring his actions in both places (casting out demons, miraculous feedings, healing). This stepping beyond such boundaries is important in standing up against acts of sacred violence. Afterall, The one who steps out from the crowd not only steps away from the scapegoating mob but risks becoming their victim as one who stands out. As discussed by Robert Hamerton-Kelly in The Gospel and the Sacred.
Faith sees the strength in divine weakness and the weakness in sacred power. A message that requires an active decoding in the form of a faithful response is radically noncoercive….The divine revelation does not tear the covers away from mythology, but it does invite one to lift the veil for oneself…. The miracle of the stilling of the storm introduces a series of portentous actions that disclose the mysterious power of Jesus and the essential incomprehension of even those closest to him. …. We are being shown how it is possible that three quarters of the hearers of the word could prove unfruitful, as well as the crucial fact that the insiders are in no better case than the outsiders. This irony of the excluded insider is part of the poetics of sacred violence. Those who go into the house with Jesus for private instruction are no better off than those who remain outside because they do not yet understand the cross. They treat Jesus as the demons do, as “the holy one of God” (1:24), the messianic bearer of sacred prestige. The exorcism of the Gadarene demoniac (5:1-20) ironically underlines this incomprehension (see R. Girard, The Scapegoat, 165-83). The Gadarenes, in asking Jesus to go away and leave them alone, not to tamper with the order of the Sacred in which they live, paradoxically understand Jesus better than the disciples do.[5]
As Joan Chittister wrote: “It’s when we learn faith that happiness comes—real happiness, that underlying descant of the soul that tells us over and over again that what is, in some strange, unexplainable way, is good. Most of all, faith tells us that what is, is more than good. It is becoming always better. In ways we never thought possible. And how can that be? Because God’s ways are not our ways. It is in the depths of darkness that we learn faith; it is in retrospect that we come to recognize love in darkness.” [6]
A love that encourages us to stand up against acts of sacred violence, journeying to and with the other reconciling and entering ever deeper into the mystery of the divine. A divine that brings peace and reconciliation to all.
[1] 2 Samuel 17:46
[2] Luke 9:51-55; Mark 14:47; Mark 12:28-31
[3] Ann Lamott, 2019, Bird by Bird, p.22
[4] Ched Myers, Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor, 1995, Say to This Mountain, pp.56-57
[5] Robert Hamerton-Kelly, 1993, The Gospel and the Sacred, 90-92
[6] Joan Chittister, 2009, Called to Question, p.213