1527AFC070315 – I could die of not-surprise!
Read it online here, please.
Mark 6:6 – 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.
Aloha pumehana ʻŌmea and welcome to Friday at the movies. When our kids, Tim and Cherie, were youngsters in middle-school in 1992, there was a Disney movie called Aladdin. One of the characters – the monkey named Abu – was played by a guy in my high school 1964 class named Frank Welker; that was cool. Another character was voiced by Gilbert Gottfried – not so cool in my book – and the character was a parrot named Iago. In one memorable scene he says, “Oh, there’s a big surprise! That’s an incredib… I think I’m gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprise!” The saying became a household aphorism ‘ “I could die of not-surprise!” I think the semantics are a little goofy, maybe, but the message is clear enough. Some things are so predictable that we are not surprised when they happen; in fact we are so hugely unsurprised that the unsurprise itself is unsurprising. That’s convoluted logic, but here are a few examples.
Internet blogs and Facebook quotes often follow such a path. Someone could post, “The best thing about water is that it’s wet.” I can practically guarantee that someone will come back with some pseudoscientific claptrap that water isn’t actually wet. We only think it’s wet because we’ve been conditioned to accept that disreality and YADA-YADA-YADA. Even if a statement is clearly tongue-in-cheek, there is bound to be someone who will take offense, or claim they have a better idea, or just make some rude remark unrelated to the topic at hand. I’ve even seen comments like “Maybe your right you’re arugment would make more sense if you spelled better.” I could die of not surprise. (misspelling intentional)
Sociopolitical “experts” seem to come like a tsunami out of the woodwork when there is an event that can garner headlines. A current noisy and noisome event here in Hawaii is the topic of building telescopes on top of the highest peaks of the volcanoes that formed the islands. The range of “experts” who take positions on this is astonishing. It goes from “this is sacred land and you have no right to be here” to “your ancestors would never have stood in the way of progress like this,” to “this is science, not religion or politics.” All of the positions have some core of validity, some aspect of truth they espouse, but the most common characteristic they share is that the arguments shaped around those core truths are specious because the truth is manipulated to suit the individual views of the speakers. On both ends of the spectrum of argument there are even sharp disagreements between parties whose differences appear to be minor but whose defenses for those positions are uncompromising. I could die of not surprise.
The volatility of remarks about “religious topics” is even more incredible and the polarization on both ends of the debates grow farther apart daily. For example, whether it’s Islam or Christianity, one is always absolutely right and the other is always absolutely wrong – except, of course, to those who think religion is a social construct (“God created man in his own image, and man returned the compliment.”), or that spirituality is really all that matters (so that polytheistic, pantheistic, theocentric, and atheistic tenets are all equal), or that my theology trumps your theology because you are fooled by the Devil. Really? “All Muslims are YADA-YADA-YADA.” “Christians have done YADA-YADA-YADA.” Israel has been YADA-YADA-YADA. Francis I is an anti-Pope. Francis I is the best (or worst) Pope ever. The Catholic Church is the antichrist. Barack Obama is the Antichrist. There’s no such thing as an antichrist because there no such thing as a Christ. You need to really study Matthew 24:1 though 25:46, then you’ll understand that you are wrong. Really? I could die of not surprise.
The topic verse for today comes from the end of Sunday’s Gospel reading. Jesus has made a second crossing of the Sea of Galilee – this time without a storm – after healing two demoniacs on the eastern shore, probably in or near Gesera. He’s back home, presumably Nazareth, so he might have headed toward the western shore of the Sea and stopped in Tiberius and then walked up to Nazareth. (Remember that the Sea of Galilee was about 700 feet below sea level while Nazareth was about 1200 feet above sea level.) As was his custom, he went to the synagogue to teach. In this passage in Mark, the people of his hometown take offense at his teaching. In today’s vernacular, it would sound like, “Where’s he getting all this stuff? How can he do all this? He’s just Jesus, the son of the construction contractor. How could he have such wisdom, or the ability to perform miracles? We know him! He shouldn’t be trying to put us on like this!” They were angry with him because he was so familiar to them that they could not accept that he was different from them – as if he were pretending to be better than them.
Yet all throughout Galilee from the North in Damascus, Tyre, and Sidon, and then all the way South to Hebron and Gaza, people sought him out to hear him, to be healed by him, to see his miracles, and to be “in the know” about this guy from the hill-country between Samaria and Galilee. The folks in Nazareth were surprised that he was so famous and thought he was faking it. He was surprised at their lack of faith, and – because of that lack – Mark tells us he could not perform many (or any) miracles there. For two additional accounts of this event, see Matthew 13:53-58 and Luke 4:16-30. There’s a very interesting map resource here that shows the places listed in the Gospels where Jesus spent time during his life. In many of those places, the crowds were joyful to be in his presence. In some places, there were skeptics, but still some acceptance. In Nazareth, however, Jesus declares, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” (Mark 6:4) That hasn’t changed much except for the size of the “hometown” and “kin.”
Thanks to the Internet (and a slew of other modern marvels like airplanes, televisions, and other mass-media outlets), our hometown is planet Earth and our kin are the earthlings thereon because we are now a World Village. Seeing that, I get the feeling that someone out there is itching to write back, “It’s not because of modern marvels! It’s always been that way. God made humans Stewards of Creation and to say it’s only a modern phenomenon is to show your blatantly ignorent and probably a biggot, too. If the world is a village you must be it’s idiot. Maybe you’d be better off selling apple’s by the road side.” (misspellings intentional) I could die of not surprise.
What is it then that makes us so swift to embrace unbelief, disbelief, and misbelief? Perhaps it is that there no longer exists a majority of people who believe there is an independent, objective, knowable Truth that is not changed in any way at all by subjective reasoning. We are all guilty of what Thomas Merton called “The heresy of individualism.” (And please, no affirmation or negations of Merton’s worth). Here’s what he had to say:
“The heresy of individualism: thinking oneself a completely self-sufficient unit and asserting this imaginary ‘unity’ against all others. The affirmation of the self as simply ‘not the other.’ But when you seek to affirm your unity by denying that you have anything to do with anyone else, by negating everyone else in the universe until you come down to you: what is there left to affirm? Even if there were something to affirm, you would have no breath left with which to affirm it. The true way is just the opposite: the more I am able to affirm others, to say ‘yes’ to them in myself, by discovering them in myself and myself in them, the more real I am. I am fully real if my own heart says yes to everyone.” – From Thomas Merton: Essential Writings
Oliver Wendell Holmes reputedly coined the adage “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” (Even that is disputed and some attribute it to John B. Finch, Abraham Lincoln, or Zechariah Chaffee.) WHOEVER SAID IT, the concept has been widely used to describe the limitations of liberty. Limitless freedom is anarchy. Freedom OF religion has become freedom FROM religion. Constrained freedom is liberty. Making everybody right means everyone is wrong. As we continue to dissolve the constraints of liberty, we continue to suppress freedom and to promote anarchy. The choice between liberty and death is abrogated. Socioeconomic compromises are broadened with the result that First Amendment freedoms are being negated:
Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
If you disagree with supporters of those socioeconomic compromises, you are characterized as being a bigot and can face civil or even criminal prosecution. In the Gospel of Matthew, the account of this episode in Jesus’ life ends with the townspeople trying to throw him headlong off a cliff. In all three Gospels, he doesn’t remonstrate the crowd, or stay to argue with them in hope of convincing them. In all accounts, he simply leaves and goes on with his work. I know he must have been familiar with what we call Proverbs 26, but before someone quotes me Proverbs 18:2 or Proverbs 12:1, I think I’ll close by recommending we imitate Jesus by doing what we’re going to do, saying what we’re going to say, and then … just move on. Jesus told us it would be like this – people would hate us because of his name. I’m OK with that. Besides, it drives them crazy if they can’t beat me over the head with their arguments. I could die of not surprise!
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever — at your service, Beloved!
Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Yes. This is sophomoric. That’s the point.
