Avoiding Rhinoceritis

Mark 6:14-29

 

 

In the play Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco, reflects a view that holds the universe to be meaningless, irrational, and absurd. The play has a series of interesting events. A rhinoceros suddenly appears in a small French town, trampling through the peaceful streets. Soon a giant wave of rhinoceroses suddenly appear; a transformation of human beings into animals. The play centers on one person who at first refuses to succumb to the crowd, but then begins to reason his way to falling into line. Berenger, the last man, remains. Ionesco leaves Berenger untransformed at the end of the play. This play is about the human condition of self delusion and absorption into the dominant culture.

 

The hero survives the capitulation of all to what Merton called 'rhinoceritis' – the tendency to run with the mob. He retained his humanity, a very flawed and less than perfect condition while the thinkers, the trendsetters and the unthinking all became rhinoceroses.

 

The point of the play is what makes a person a person, is it fitting in our standing out, being relevant or irrelevant, being perfect or imperfect or simply being yourself at the edges of society?

 

In the Gospel today we have three men who are known by the choices they made:

 

1 despot, 2 prophets and 2 deaths, one completed on which Mark reflects, one not yet but imminent, to which Mark points to, one that is always just off stage waiting to make it’s entrance.

 

Here Mark points to the fate of those who wish to live an authentic Christ life in the midst of the prevailing culture. And it’s not one of success and fulfilment, of living at the high end of town. It is one of rejection, persecution and abandonment. It is no wonder very few people are willing to embrace the life of the complete human as exemplified by Christ.

 

In a conversation over an end of year celebration, the government minister present why he became a politician. He answered that he did so because of the good he could do for the local community. He stopped, looked up and asked, “Do you want to know the real reason?’ We all said yes. He answered, “For the power, it’s why all politicians are in this game. Any one who say otherwise are lying.” Now, I am sure there will be someone who will argue with this, but it does pose some interesting questions for those of us who have to vote for them!

 

The three men in our reading are a comment on this observation. Herod lives by the art of expediency and power. Both are intertwined and interconnected. His grip on power is served by his ability to read the lie of the land and to make decisions that will reinforce his position. His first marriage, his second marriage, his feasts and pronouncements are built on expediency and power. He is a political animal and is pragmatic about having to chop off John’s head. To do otherwise would have meant he lost the respect of those who were at his table, other men driven by power and expediency. He has become a rhinoceros.

 

Unlike Herod, John is prophetic –he tells it as it is. Even when he is standing in the most confrontational space – in front of Herod – he tells it as God sees it. Why could he have not been so direct, perhaps being more tactful and less inflammatory with his criticism of Herod? Couldn’t he have made the same point and kept his head? It never entered his head. It is what is and John was not going to sidestep the truth just to win favour with the despot.

 

Jesus sides with John, and becomes a prophetic spiritual leader who avoids the expedient, despite seeing what happened to John. John was Jesus’ mentor and he set the pattern for prophetic living for the younger man to follow. Jesus would have also been aware of Elijah, Elias and others who suffered for speaking the truth into a society at odds with God. Yet there is no softening of the message, no avoiding the conflict, no attempt to barter and negotiate a win-win for all. His mission was God’s mission and God’s mission was the truth. It is what it is, and Jesus was not going to deviate to negotiate with a culture that had abandoned God.

 

We have in this story the juxtaposition of the prophet and the person who has succumbed to rhinoceritis.

A prophet, according to Dan Horan, is ‘someone whose life is so open to God’s Spirit that she or he cannot help but begin to see the world in a new way’…’to see the world as God sees it, prophets sees the world as it really is.’

 

Prophets are not about telling the future seeing reality as it truly is. The Greek word propheteia connotes the idea to speak forth, to speak into, and it happens when we are one with God, when word and sacrament imbue our lives. Here we contemplate what we read and hear in the scriptures and what we experience in the sacraments. When we so inwardly digest and align ourselves with the way, the truth, the life, we are in a position to be a prophet.

 

Prophets are outsiders. They live in that marginal space from which a different perspective is gained because that marginal space does not align with nor is subsumed into the predominant power system or structure of a given society, institution or place. Prophets become a nuisance to those who have vested interest in the maintenance of power or control. (Horan)

 

Prophets are not expedient people. They don’t play politics. They are not interested in policy, quoted positions or white papers. It is not about legislation or a win-win. It is simply about the way it is. Peter Woods suggests that "Prophetic witness and personal or political expediency do not have a good history of co-existence."

 

Prophets are mirror bearers. They hold up a mirror to the world, situation, or person and ensure it is seen for what it is.  The emperor has no clothes. The mirror provides the way into seeing how God sees things, not as we imagine we see them.

 

Prophets pay the price for seeing as God does. Emerson Powery, suggests "However one understands the relationship between John and Jesus, one thing is certain: agents of God who challenge those in power usually suffer significant consequences."

 

Mark’s Story:

Mark suggests, by placing the story here the disciples via their relationship with Jesus:

·      Are prophetic. It is not a choice. That has already been made. It is now a vocation to be lived.

·      Are to avoid the political and the expedient. They are not to get caught up in the culture and to compromise or negotiate.

·      Are to tell it like it is and if people ignore them to simply shake the dust off their shoes and move on.

 

How does that impact upon us:

·      Like the disciples, we are called to be prophets because we are one with Jesus through his death and resurrection. It is an imperative, not an option.

·      To fulfil our calling we are to develop a unity with God through word and sacrament, contemplation and prayer. Here we will let go of ideas, positions, ideologies and begin to become one with God. It happens slowly and will begin to find ourselves stepping further into the margins as we let go of the expectations of our culture and society.

·      To fulfil our calling we are to simply live out of that unity. We are to live our lives and by doing so our lives will speak forth God’s seeing.

 

In conclusion:

This is not a safe and happiness inducing vocation – we will be outsiders, marginalised for our vocation. We will lose our jobs, be bullied and ostracised, be over looked and sidelined. This is not about ideology but about seeing the world as God does. We are to seek to live on the margins for change only ever comes from the edges, rarely from the centre.

 

As an individual and as a congregation we are to live prophetically, avoiding the raging rhinoceritis all around us and speak into the world through our thoughts, words and actions. A tough job, but we have to be it. 

Jesus, the True Black Swan

 

Mark 6:1-13

 

 

"I do not have clear answers to current questions. I do have questions, and, as a matter of fact, I think a man is known better by his questions than by his answers. "  (Thomas Merton) He goes on to say that he avoids the quick and easy answers the popular consumer culture provides.

 

The people in Jesus’ hometown were known, not by their questions, but by their answers. Jesus disturbed them by his behaviour and his speech. He raised questions in their mind, questions they had to find an answer to.

 

Note they move from what disturbed them – his authority and is power – to what they knew about him. He was just like them, a resident of a small village. The son of a woman they knew, one with an interesting story about his birth. They knew his brothers and sisters. There was nothing special about them. By deduction what ever was said about Jesus, whatever so called power and authority he had was to be dismissed based on the same premise we use to make decisions and to answer questions most of the time.

 

Despite how we like to think we critically analyse the situation, review all the facts and do our research, we generally decide based on ‘what you see is all there is” (WYSIATI). Author Daniel Kahneman proposes that we make our decisions based only on what we know to be the case, on what you see, you may not know what you don’t know and therefore find yourself making a decision based on only a small segment of the available information. Just how much do you or I know about the stock market, superannuation, global warming, buying cars or houses, having children or the motivation of our government on a particular issue?

 

At a Press Conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium, June 6, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld said, “There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.” While Rumsfeld was ridiculed for what he said, he is undoubtedly right. It is the unknown unknowns, the stuff we don’t know we don’t know which trips us up. This is the facts we do not account for in our decision making process because we concentrate only on what we know we know and what we know we don’t know.”

 

Kahneman suggests, ‘WYSIATI is the notion that we form impressions and judgments based on the information that is available to us. For instance we form impressions about people within a few seconds of meeting them. In fact, it has been documented that without careful training interviewers who are screening job applicants will come to a conclusion about the applicant within about 30 seconds of beginning the interview. And when tested these initial notions are often wrong.'

WYSIATI does not allow for what has become to be known as black swan events. Nassim Taleb coined this phrase in his book, Fooled by Randomness, referring to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. The phrase "black swan" derives from a Latin expression; meaning "a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”. (Juvenal) When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.(Wikipedia).

Before European explorers had reached Australia, it was believed that all swans were white. Dutch mariner, Antounie Caen, was the first to be amazed at the sight of Australia’s Black swans on Shark Bay in 1636

The people in Jesus’ village relied heavily on WYSIATI and dismissed Jesus out of hand. In their eyes he could not be anyone special because the rest of his family was so normal and ordinary. Just like them. They offered him little opportunity to provide evidence to the contrary because one, including Jesus, needs the faith of another to achieve their full potential. There answers to their own questions marked them as those who missed out on participating in the fullness Jesus came to share with them.

Jesus is their “black swan”.

 

In sending the disciples out in to the world he warns them of the danger of WYSIATI in those they meet. Don’t hang around when people fail to see what you have to offer. Don’t waste your time. People will make judgements based on what they know and will be unable to accept you and the message you have to bring because they have already made up their mind.

 

Having an open mind sounds simple but is not easy. To have a truly open mind and not just a steal fortress keeping any challenging idea out or a garbage dump accepting any old rubbish, requires great discipline. You have to be able to hold a number of different ideas and emotions at the same time without sacrificing one for another on the flimsiest of evidence. Such a position allows us to identify the unknowns, the factors powerfully affecting our decision making we may miss if we act too quickly or rely just on our own experience and understanding.

 

Working for a charity, I raised the prospect of using telemarketing to solicit donations. As a professional fundraiser, telemarketing is a key fundraising tool. The objections from the board included, “No, I don’t like telemarketers’ or ‘No, my mother doesn’t like telemarketers.’ My response was, looking at the positive impact such programs had for other organisations, there were more people out there than them or their mother. The facts showed it was effective for other organisations and, therefore would be effective for us. This proved to be the case.

 

The challenge for organisations and churches is to explore options wider than our experience, to be open to ideas we have yet to encounter or know exist, and to avoid using our own limited experience as the benchmark by which we judge an idea, person or opportunity. Jesus was ignored by his community because they did just that. Their familiarity with him and his family got in the way. He then pointed to the fact that the wider community would react, more often than not, in a similar way to those he sent into the world.

 

Our familiarity with our tradition, past practice and our ingrained biases diminishes our capacity to live the good news in our community. Our familiarity with who we are, where have been and what we know can get in the way of our encountering Jesus, either directly or in those opportunities or people we meet daily. We reply with the answers we have become comfortable with, based on what we have experienced. In every walk of life there are people who have had one years of experience over and over again. What Jesus seeks is those who are capable of moving from one experience to another, embracing different questions and not being satisfied with the same answers.

 

The Anglican church is being challenged to see, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves in the world, new questions requiring answers based on a commitment to being open to much more than we individually or corporately know or have previously experienced. St Oswald’s finds itself in exactly the same place.  This is not to mean that we ignore what we know, but that we suspend our tendency to rush to a decision based simply on what we know or the answers offered by the prevailing culture.

The answer, we are told, is to get more young people into church, be trendy and ‘ elevant' and then our problems will be solved. We fail to see that this has never been the answer to the churches problems. If it was, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We would have benefited from the large Sunday schools and youth groups of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. They are not here. And they are not going to be here. In the period after the war, monasteries throughout America were crowded with young men coming home from wars, committing themselves to monastic vows. Today those very same monasteries  are almost empty. 

The church is challenged to be prophetic, not popular, and not to embrace the fetish of youth which predominates on tv, sporting fields and popular culture. We are to be who we are, and in doing so, we will be the answer to what is perceived to be the problem.

 

The challenge we face is to live with the questions regarding our place in this community, what the future holds for us, how to reinvent ourselves without closing up like a sunflower when the sun goes down because what we know now seems to be insufficient for the task at hand.

 

I love to travel. I am not a tourist. To Larry Broding’s question, "When you travel, do you intend to escape, or to seek out new things and new people?" I answer the latter. I am not interested in seeing the obvious, I want to see what is hidden, particular and distinct in the places I go. I want to find people and places off the tourist grid. Tourists see the sights. Travellers experience the questions people and places live.

The danger for us as Christians is to become tourists, seeing the sights our faith has to offer, but avoiding the questions and the unknowns it has in store for us, if we are but open to explore them.

Jesus sent his disciples out as travellers. He said live amongst those who welcome you, but do not become entrapped by the culture. Leave behind money, possessions and fads, and offer yourself to those who are living the questions. Offer no quick answers but be known by the questions you raise.

We are called to be black swans in a world where only white swans are recognised.

I like that idea.

Amen