What is your bell?

Interruption as a discipleship

The Gospel reading for Sunday, September 22 (18th Sunday after Pentecost)

Mark 9:30–37 (ESV): 30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” 32 But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

33 And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” 34 But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

The three times Jesus foretells his deliverance into the hands of men, his death and his rising are all followed by disciples wanting to change the subject.

1. Mark 8.31-32 is answered by Peter’s rebuke.

2. Mark 9.30-32 is answered by the disciples who “did not understand…and were afraid to ask,” which led them to change the subject to one of their favorites, “who is the greatest?”

3. Mark 10.32-24 is answered by disciple-silence until James and John break the silence with the request to sit on Jesus’ right and left hands.

The disciples are at their most relatable, at least to me, when they are evidently the most common dudes you have met. Foot-in-mouth, greatness-ranking, position-jockeying. Ched Myers comments, “so deeply has the practice of domination infected human relationships.” (Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Orbis, 1997, 257).

The interruptions of the disciples are not obstacles to Jesus’ mission, but the very conditions for it. Discipleship involves two apocalypses.

Discipleship apocalypse 1: The disciples’ interior life needs to be rent asunder. Curtains torn back. What is really in the heart? The disciples refusal to understand, and I think it is a refusal to understand as Jesus’ words are not metaphorical, parable-like, or nuanced. “Delivered over, killed, raised.” Their refusal to understand and to change the subject is the very exposé by which the self-agenda, self-evaluation, and self-promotion, their “practice of domination” is laid bare. Now it is out in the open for them and everyone else to see it for what it really is: an upward lurch, white-knuckle-grasp, a greatness grab. A theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is, and this apocalypse reveals what it is that is really in there.

Discipleship apocalypse 2: Jesus interrupts their interruption. Jesus rebukes rebuking Peter (Mark 8.33). Jesus asks them, “What were you talking about along the way?” (Mark 9.33). Jesus tells them, “You do not know what you are asking” (Mark 10.38). This week’s lesson is particularly attention grabbing, as Jesus gathers the twelve, takes a child and puts him in the midst of them and says, “Whoever receives one such child receives me” (9.37). If the first discipleship apocalypse exposed the inner life of the disciple, the second apocalypse lays bear the inner life of God. In the first the disciples’ hearts are revealed. In the second, the heart of the Trinity is revealed.

Here we see that Jesus has not been sent by the Father to form a multi-national organization, or to gain popularity or the largest following, to promote a religious marketing agenda, or to boost a political movement to make Israel great again. Jesus has come to make a home (Mark 9.33), a new family, with a different language, and a different way. Here the currency is not greatness, glory, or power as the actions of the age persuade. In the house Jesus is forming, the currency is love. Unmerited. Undeserved. Agape. At the center of those jockeying 12 is a kid. An interruption.

Ron Rolheiser, OMI, writes, “St. Bernard, one of the great architects of monasticism, used to refer to the “monastic bell.” All monasteries have a bell. Bernard, in writing his rules for monasticism, told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the particular activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them. He was adamant that they respond immediately, stating that if they were writing a letter they were to stop in mid-sentence when the bell rang.” The reason, “Time isn’t your time, it’s God’s time. For him, the monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your agenda to God’s agenda.” (Ronald Rolheiser, Domestic Monastery: Creating a Spiritual Life at Home. Paraclete. 2019, 18-20).

Jesus rang a bell when Jesus put the child in their midst. This was not an addendum to their formation. This was their formation. Their time was not their own. Their life was not their own.

Rolheiser tells as story in the same book about a modern day desert father who, for decades, was in solitude. He became know as a great contemplative spiritual teacher. He visited his mother back in Italy who had spent the greater part of three decades mired deep in domestic duties, and was surprised to find that she was as spiritually mature as he was! He had a bell in the desert. She had a bell at home. His bell reminded him that he was not his own. Her bell reminded her that she was not her own. “To be a mother or father is to let your dreams and agenda be forever altered” (60).

What is your bell? What is interrupting you? What calls you out of your own “practice of domination,” self-agenda, self-evaluation, self-centeredness, self-promotion? Is it a child in your midst? Is it a lonely neighbor? Is it a prayer bell? It is a scheduled family dinner? Is it a captivating call that you can’t refuse? These are not obstacles to your spiritual life, but the very conditions in which the spiritual life is cultivated. Right here, where you sit this very moment, with the actual people who are in closest proximity, in the ordinary stuff of your day, is where your own heart is exposed, and where the heart of God is revealed.

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6.19-20.

Message starts at 36:15