Why? (As in, the question every child asks every time a parent offers an answer...)
Video from The Work of the People - Sitting at the Elbow
The best transfer of knowledge happens when the apprentice sits at the elbow of the master….
That particular sentence has stuck with me.
I pay attention when something sticks like that.
Think about it…
Feel this, taste this…sometimes you just have to know something in your body. And the only way to know is to experience it.
And some things you can only experience because someone else shows you what they see or taste or do.
I wonder…
How do we learn to be the church this way?
Inviting people to feel what we feel…
Experience what we experience…
I truly believe we do it by sitting at the elbows of others…
Those older and younger, those more orthodox or less.
Sometimes those we least expect to learn from.
In our scriptures from both last week and this week, Jesus has a specific kind of exchange with the disciples.
In each account, Jesus first shares shocking details about how he will die, then the disciples misunderstand his meaning, and then Jesus offers a clarified explanation. And if you look at the 10th chapter of Mark, you’ll find this pattern plays out in yet a third interaction between Jesus and the disciples.
More specifically, the pattern looks like this:
Hard information that reframes something important,
misunderstanding that leads to either denial or distraction,
clarification that extends the hard information into some sort of suggested way of being a follower of Jesus.
Throughout Mark’s gospels, the disciples are rather bumbling…they are unfocused and unaware, disbelieving and misinterpreting. The original ending of Mark’s gospel even has the women at the tomb unable to speak to pass along news of the resurrection. It’s as if there are all these moments of the followers failing to understand right up to the last word – “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
They are oh so very human.
And they are just like me.
And maybe they are just like you.
A little unsure, a little worried about themselves, unable to understand all the finer points of what they are experiencing.
And a part of the pattern is that Jesus doesn’t “back up” from their misunderstanding to break it down into simpler parts and pieces. No, in general, he complicates their understanding a little bit further – by making it affect them in some deeply personal way.
Take up your cross.
Whoever wants to be first must be last.
Be more like a child.
None of this makes sense in rational terms.
It can only be learned in the company of others sharing life. And not sharing our curated-for-public-consumption only. Not our social media lives. Not our highlight reel lives.
Our human, sometimes broken, sometimes hard, generally messy lives.
And Jesus was leading his disciples into more questions than answers.
I really think it was because he knew.
I mean, he was God in flesh.
Of course he knew.
Flesh can’t be taught everything in rational ways.
Flesh has to teach in fleshy, messy, life ways.
It’s easier, more private to go online and learn how to become a disciple, but…our lives have to roll up against each other…we might be disappointed with one another. But together we learn how to follow God together.
May it be so.
Amen.
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