Amongst the aha moments on the recent London trip was a visit to see the Raphael cartoons at the V&A. In our own age of flickering images, CGI's and global publicity our eyes and imagination are overloaded even overwhelmed by visual data. There comes a point when we begin not to notice, when attentiveness is attenuated, and when we are weary of technological cleverness.
So to stand in front of half a dozen very large panels, and gaze on these hand painted images, meticulously detailed, richly woven with biblical allusion and imaginative reconstruction, is a sight for sore eyes.
Raphael is one of the great biblical exegetes. The cartoons are now faded with age, but the mellowing of colour, itself impossible to achieve by mere technique, gives them an aura of old truth still to be told.
One of my favourite Raphael paintings (not in London, but in The Vatican) is "The Transfiguration" in which the whole story is collapsed into one picture. Including the failed exorcism of the disciples. One of Mark's more telling one liners is uttered by the boy's father, "I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they couldn’t." (Mk 9.13) Against the backdrop of glory and Trasfiguration, the failure of the disciples to exorcise the evil spirit is a startling and intended contrast. And failure is an interesting theme in Mark's gospel, and in the lives we all have to live!
Failure, if taken rightly to heart, is an education in humility, in self understanding, an opportunity to grow. But not for the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Having failed to exorcise an evil spirit themselves, they then become the self-appointed Regional Quality Assurance officers for Exorcisms. Not surprising, that desire to regulate others, control the boundaries, – they’d just been having an argument about who is the greatest. Reminds you of years ago, a kind of Blair - Brown ambition-fest as to who would be the leader of the disciples. Jesus had just given the kind of answer that only works in the politics of the Kingdom of God, ‘Whoever wants to be first , must be last of all and servant of all.’ And like the self-preoccupied movers and shakers they believed themselves to be, they didn’t, as John Reid another used to be politician would say, ‘get it’.
So failed exorcists with a lust for leadership, presume to disqualify others from their ministry in Jesus name, and in doing so disqualify themeselves. The same John Reid would say, ‘Disciples not fit for purpose’. How dare any of us erect boundaries around compassionate ministry exercised in Jesus name. And before we become all self-defensive, ‘Well of course not all services done for people is done in Jesus name’, we do well to listen to Jesus reply, generously inclusive, ministry affirming, and welcoming compassion wherever it rears its beautiful head …"whoever is not against us is for us."
That is an ecumenicity of the heart, and it is only possible when being first is an irrelevance, and being servant of all is a priority; whoever is not against us is for us, gives not only the benefit of the doubt, but the benefit of trust; to live with such an attitude of openness to goodness, to see each act of kindness as Christ serving, to believe each costly casting out of evil wherever it lurks collaborates with God’s Kingdom, to recognise, acknowledge and celebrate compassion wherever it radiates into human lives, is to take on the generous inclusiveness of Jesus who welcomes all the help the world needs for no one who does a deed of power in Jesus name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of him.
And one closing thought – identify that part in each of our hearts, that leads us to say, without thinking clearly what we mean, ‘we tried to stop him because he was not following us’.
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