I bet you have heard this one before:
A vain Emperor hires two swindlers who promise him the finest, best suit of
clothes from a fabric that is absolutely invisible to anyone who is unfit for
his position or "hopelessly stupid". The Emperor cannot see the
clothing himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his
position; his ministers do the same. When the swindlers report that the suit is
finished, they mime dressing him. Next the Emperor marches in procession before
his subjects, who play along with the pretense, until a child in the crowd, too
young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretense, blurts out
that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all. The Emperor cringes, suspecting
that it is true, but continues the procession. The classic story of the
Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen was released in 1837. It
has been a favorite of school children for nearly two centuries and has been
translated into over a hundred different languages and many very different
cultures all over the world.
Now today I do not want to talk about vanity, stupidity, or swindlers. Instead I want you to put yourself in the crowd. In front of you walks the Emperor. You can see that he has no clothes but everyone is going on about how beautiful the clothes are. I know I would like to think that I would speak out like the young child... But would I? Peer pressure is strong and it's so easy to just go along with the crowd. In a crowd, people can hide behind each other as individuals lose their identity to the group. Do you see the adults in the crowd hushing the child?
Now today I do not want to talk about vanity, stupidity, or swindlers. Instead I want you to put yourself in the crowd. In front of you walks the Emperor. You can see that he has no clothes but everyone is going on about how beautiful the clothes are. I know I would like to think that I would speak out like the young child... But would I? Peer pressure is strong and it's so easy to just go along with the crowd. In a crowd, people can hide behind each other as individuals lose their identity to the group. Do you see the adults in the crowd hushing the child?
I have a friend who is a
librarian. Whenever I bring my class to the school library, I hear her
warnings. I even anticipate her "hush" as I enter on my own to
visit.
That’s
the life of a Librarian. No real surprise. I wonder, however, how much of a
"husher" am I? Not so much in my middle school class BUT in my day to
day responses to those who speak up and go against the norm. Is Dean
Smith a “husher?”
Peer pressure is an interesting
thing. A few years ago, psychologist Ruth W. Berenda and her associates
carried out an interesting experiment with teenagers designed to show how a person
handled group pressure. The plan was simple. They brought groups of ten
adolescents into a room for a test. Each group of ten was
instructed to raise their hands when the teacher pointed to the longest line on
three separate charts.
What one person in the group did not
know, HOWEVER, was that nine of the others in the room had been instructed
ahead of time to vote for the second-longest line. Regardless of the
instructions they heard, once they were all together in the group, the nine
were not to vote for the longest line, but rather vote for the next to
the longest line. The experiment began with nine teenagers voting for the
wrong line. The test subject would typically glance around, frown in confusion,
and slip his hand up with the group. The instructions were repeated and the
next card was raised. Time after time, the self-conscious test subject would
sit there saying a short line is longer than a long line, simply because he
lacked the courage to challenge the group. This remarkable conformity occurred
in about 75% of the cases, and was true of small children and high-school
students as well. The researcher concluded that,
Some people would rather be popular than be in the right.
Our scripture today from the Gospel
of Mark takes place in Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples along with a
large crowd, begin to leave the city; a blind beggar who is sitting by the road
side named Bar Timaeus calls out to Jesus. Mark
writes that many in the crowd rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he
shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” As I read over
this scripture, I picture myself in the crowd. Do I help the man or do I hush
him like the crowd? The man, however, was persistent and The Lord heard
his cry. Once Jesus calls for the man, the fickle crowd now calls him
quickly forward as if not to be seen as one of those responsible for hindering
him only moments earlier.
So why do you think the crowd was
trying to “hush” or silence the beggar? Was it because they were
embarrassed by him? Did he seem unclean, dirty, smelly… not the sort you
want to present to the popular visiting Rabbi?
In our Old Testament story of Job, a
group of Job’ s so called friends try to explain his guilt and get him to
conform. On a pile of garbage the once rich, now smelly and unclean beggar,
calls out to God. Job despite the crowd is persistent in his faith and calls
out to God. It is Job alone who acknowledges God's will and becomes the
agent to save his crowd of friends. In Mark’s Gospel, after being healed
by Jesus, Bar Timaeus follows Jesus as a witness to his Glory. In their
persistence of faith, both Job and Bar Timaeus become witnesses for the Lord.
These scriptural stories challenge me
to ask who or even WHAT are the blind beggars in our midst? Who or what are the
unclean, dirty, smelly beggars in our daily lives today?
Who are we accepting? Who are we “hushing?”
The need to be included is such a
powerful human imperative that we are often quite willing to exclude others
from the group in order to assure ourselves a place in the group. This is
the way the crowd reacted to the blind beggar until Jesus reached out to him
with compassion as a member of the family of God. Perhaps the
crowd was more concerned with what they could get from the family of God than
what they could give to the family of God. Perhaps they did not
want to face the truth that to believe in the fatherhood of God you must also
believe in the brotherhood of man. Perhaps the reason the crowd so
readily changed 180 degrees to suddenly push the man forward was that in his or
her heart, each individual knew that they had not been faithful to their Teacher’s
teaching but had justified themselves by following the crowd.
I
believe that hushing the outsiders or the powerless, in order to
impress a group or satisfy one’s own selfish greed or bias is unworthy.
To hush our own conscience when we see our own behavior and known that we are
not doing unto others as we would have others do unto us is an attempt to hush
Christ in us.
In order to do unto others as we
would have others do unto us, we must first feel for them and WITH them.
An Australian saying declares “only when you live within the skin of another
person can you feel the nails that crucify them.” The crowd described by
Mark needed to live within the unwashed skin of the blind beggar. They
needed to feel the helplessness – the hopelessness – of looking at a
frightening uncaring world through the beggar’s sightless eyes.
Today, with the election season upon
us, perhaps this would be a good time to listen again to the cries of the blind
beggar who called out persistently to Jesus, and to listen with the unblocked
ears of our conscience.
It is said that during the US civil
war, Abraham Lincoln met with a group of ministers for a prayer breakfast.
Lincoln was a man of deep, if at times unorthodox, faith. At one point one of
the ministers said, "Mr. President, let us pray that God is on our
side". Lincoln's response showed far greater insight, "No, gentlemen,
let us pray that we are on God's side."
For me, I think that I need to worry
more about what God thinks than what our peers say. Or as Nathan Johnson
wrote, "If we want to know what God wants us to do, then we must first
strive to live a life of conformity to Him." This means conformity
to what He desires, not conformity to the current whims of the majority.
What is my take on this? Maybe we
have enough "hushers” already. Maybe we need more people to help the
‘beggars’ in our lives to see The Lord.
by Dean and Dr. J.Douglas Smith 2012
Scripture: Lectionary:
* Old Testament - Job 42:1-6, 10-17
* Gospel - Mark 10:46-52
The United Methodist Church, GBOD (The General Board of Discipleship)
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