September 27, 2009
(Second Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 6)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Herds and Hierarchies
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
Callie is always the first to greet me when I walk into the south pasture of the Northland Equine Center on Friday mornings. I’m on her turf because my riding lesson is due to start and I need to catch one of the horses in the herd, and lead him to the stable to groom him and tack up. But there is an etiquette in the pasture and it behooves me (so to speak) to honor it. So I speak to Callie, who happens to be an enormous old Belgian mare. She recognizes my voice and scent by now, and her behavior signals to her herd that all is well. The lower ranking horses go back to grazing while the higher ranking ones amble over one by one to greet me as well, usually in the same order each week. Herds of horses, I’ve learned, like groups of other domesticated animals, are hierarchical. I don’t know how or when Callie got to be in charge of the herd, but her leadership is undisputed. So is the pecking order. In fact, the only time that things get dicey is when a new horse arrives on the scene. Then everything changes, and even a novice like me can sense the heightened tension in the pasture. Will the new arrival accept being low man on the totem pole, or will he or she enter in with higher status? Will Chance, the bottom-rung horse, move up in rank or will he remain at the bottom? One thing is certain, the herd will work it out, usually with teeth and hooves. The new horse will be incorporated into the herd, the hierarchy will be re-ordered, and order will be restored…until the next interloper appears in the pasture.
Well I was thinking about herds and hierarchies in relation to our gospel passage for today. In last week’s gospel, the disciples respond to Jesus’s prediction of his suffering and death by arguing about which of them is the greatest. Jesus settles their hash by placing a child – the most marginal of human beings in First Century society, as Father Michael cogently reminded us last week – in their midst and telling the disciples that greatness in God’s kingdom is measured by the degree to which we embrace the least, the last and the lost.
The disciples are still processing this stunning revelation when John, one of the Zebedee boys, steps in the doo-dah again. He rats out the unauthorized exorcist who was healing in the name of Jesus. The implication is that this unnamed interloper was muscling in on Jesus’s turf, healing without the proper credentials and permission, and John seems to expect that Jesus will approve of his gate-keeping activities. After all, it’s one thing to welcome in persons of low social rank, like children or slaves. That would in some ways benefit a bunch of Galilean fishermen who weren’t exactly the upper crust of society. But to permit an outsider to “steal” the thunder from their Rabbi? Extend the bonds of discipleship beyond community boundaries? Surely Jesus will approve of the lines John has drawn.
But Jesus has a different model for the Reign of God in mind – one of radical inclusivity. He sets the boundaries in as broad a context as possible: Those who are not against us are for us. Wow. What a remarkably subversive way of looking at things. Seriously. In a world of limited commodities and competing desires for those limited commodities, humans are more likely to see each other as rivals. Our goal is to get what we need, guard what we have, and get more if we can – whatever that commodity may be – wealth, prestige, security, a sense of belonging, you name it.[1] Jesus, by contrast, turns this scarcity-based mimetic rivalry on its ear. Those who are not against us are for us. Or, as he will put it elsewhere in the Gospels, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.”
How serious is Jesus in this radical, subversive view of the abundant reign of God? Serious enough go all apocalyptic on us and use imagery that certainly gets our attention. Serious enough for the man, who has spent his entire ministry healing the lame and bringing sight to the blind, to suggest that we'd be better off maiming or blinding ourselves than to stumble in this way.
It’s a sobering message for us all, because all of us share in this innate human tendency toward rivalry, scapegoating, and exclusion. It plays itself out across the boundaries of time and culture, in the arenas of politics, education, social or economic status, religion, or human sexuality. But when we do it in God’s name, or on behalf of God, we are on shaky ground. We need not take Jesus’s evocative warning literally, but we must take it seriously. The Church is called to be an open, inclusive community, not because of enlightened self-interest but because Jesus himself drew no boundaries of exclusivity.
Clearly, we are not the only species that is organized around insiders and outsiders. We are not the only species that attack or ostracize the one or the ones who threaten the well-being of our tribes. But near as we can tell, we are the only species that has the prefrontal cortex to think about what we do, and how we behave, and whether our actions stem from real or imagined places of scarcity. What Jesus would have us anxious, scarcity-bound disciples know is that when it comes to the reign of God, we live as it were in a verdant pasture, knee deep in clover, with ample water to quench our thirst and abundant shelter to shield us from scorching sun and pounding rain. We can make room in the herd. There need be no outsiders because the reign of God is never about scarcity, and salvation is never a limited commodity.
[1] I refer here to Mimetic Theory, as identified by philosopher Rene Girard, which postulates that all human learning is predicated on desire and leads to desire; that unmediated by a scapegoat, such mimesis leads to anxiety, conflict, and violence. Search on Mimetic Theory for more information.
