A Wake, a Monologue, and a Hill

Marty

October 15, 2014
In which a wake for Alva McAllen 

is followed by a discussion of sin and death, 

also a crossroads, and a hill to climb.*

After last night’s surprising wake – a dried-up, or so I thought, Scots Presbyterian spinster’s arrangements for selected “friends,” “the few people that have been kind to me,” so she put it, and the few people she knew “worth being kind to”; these were to gather at Horace, the least downtown bar “to raise a glass or two or several.” After, I was walking home with Sundstrøm, the Lutheran pastor – or, he was walking home with me from there to call someone (he didn't say) to pick him up if I couldn’t convince Roz to drive him home; in my current everybody-must- feel-as-benevolent-as-I-am state, I was certain she wouldn’t mind being wakened and getting up and dressed to do that.

 We were talking about sin (singular, category), because that’s all, it seems, Lutherans ever want to talk about. He said, “I hear you’re a theologian of note” – lightly. “From whom?” “Around.” “Not from anyone that knows anything,” I said. “Unless he . . . or she . . . meant ‘sour note.’”

          It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to listen to me. He wanted to talk. The usual stuff, how sin covers not only “sins of commission” and “sins of omission” but more importantly, our limitations because we are fallen: what we cannot see because we are near-sighted, far-sighted, or astigmatic; what we cannot hear because we are deaf to one end of the range or another, or to mid-tones, or to this or that rhythm; what we cannot touch because we cannot reach; how we eat without tasting; how we breathe so shallow we cannot smell the air, either its freshness or how we have made it stale; what we cannot understand, especially what we do not understand because we deceive ourselves into thinking we know our limitations and we can work around them.

He said, “Consider all this heady talk about discipleship – denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, following Jesus to Jerusalem, suffering, and death.”

          I said, “I’ve often wondered why anyone would become a Christian if not born into it.” He: “Bait and switch? We sell resurrection and life; we don’t mention that you’ll pay for it with discipleship and death.”

He started in on Mark’s gospel, chapter ten. “I’ve been reading it all week,” he said. “You know it?” I said, “Maybe. Start and I’ll try to catch up.” “You will,” he said.

          Apparently, the Pharisees ask Jesus a question about the Law, and he will say only that Moses gave them the Law – gave us (gave all pharisees Law) – because human hearts are hard. “He gave all Pharisees then and now Law, because we are fallen, and we keep falling, making ourselves worse and worse. We cannot keep creation, that is, we cannot live as God made us; we cannot keep creation, so Moses gave us a law we can keep.”

“Do you have children?” he asked. “Maybe I should know, but I don’t.” “No,” I said, “not that I know of.” I meant it as a joke; I think he took it that way.

          “I used to,” he said, “but they all grew up and moved away. They’re not children anymore. We aren’t children. We can’t become like children, either – whatever Jesus says.

          “We’re more like the rich young ruler, who wants to follow Jesus, but he can’t – there are too many reasons to stay comfortably home. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it is the state of our affairs: we may grow up and move away, but we don’t leave home, in the sense of security, however dysfunctional, however restrictive; we don’t leave what we’ve got.”

“This is all in Mark 10?” I asked, joking again. He got that I was joking this time, I was sure.  Probably the last, too.

          “No. Back to that. Sorry.” He laughed.

          “Peter may say to Jesus, ‘What about us, who have left everything behind?’ but we know – even from Jesus’ answer – that they haven’t. ‘If anyone has,’ Jesus says, ‘he will be rewarded.’

          “They can’t leave behind desire for that, reward, power and gain – glory.” And half under his breath, “Glow-ry, glow-ry, glow-ry, Lord.”

          “Glow-ry, glow-ry, glow-ry,” I whisper-sang the refrain.

“We’re such shits,” he said. “We really can’t help it, because we can’t see shit. Blind shits. Willfully blind shits.

          “So James and John can look past the cost of discipleship, what it really means to leave behind and follow; they can look past Jerusalem, past the cross, because they don’t want to see any of that, too busy reserving their seats in glory.  Glow-ry. Shits.

          “Like us. Well, we want what we want.”

“This is where we turn,” I said, “and then again up there.” We’d come to the corner of Division and Crowder, about to climb the hill to Bishop, where I live.

          He stopped. “Let me get my breath.” “Sure.”

          “We see what we want to see,” he said, fumbling around in his coat as if looking for cigarettes. “You know, I don’t smoke any more; I stopped years ago, but when I drink a little too much and start talking, much too much, I forget that.”

          “Yeah.” I understood.

          “We see what we want to see,” he said again. “So if James and John want exceedingly to believe they are following Jesus and will be faithful to the end, that’s what they see. Then, when Jesus asks, ‘Are you able to drink the cup?’ they say they are.

          “They’re not. When the cup gets to them, they’ve already run away. In fact, they’ve run home, to Galilee, their families, their father’s pretty successful business, their nets and their nests. They’re back to the place the rich man never left.

          “Okay,” he said, gesturing that he was ready to take on the hill.

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Next time: Sundstrøm on “the atheists” and Alva McAllen’s funeral.

____________________

*I love, don’t you? the chapter titles in Tom Jones, e.g. 

Containing several dialogues between Jones and Partridge,
concerning love, cold, hunger, and other matters;

with the lucky and narrow escape of partridge,

as he was on the very brink of making a fatal discovery  to his friend.