Elephants in the Room (Mark 8.27-38)

 

In a world that seems obsessed with clichés, even if it’s about avoiding them like the plague, I’ve found one that has to do with elephants.

 

I’ve used it plenty of times myself, so I guess I just hadn’t seen its coming as a cliché, which is the story of my life, really.

 

The elephant of which I speak is one of those recurring themes of the Christian life. It is, by far, the one that is least talked about, except on rare occasions and is, by far, the one issue that took up most of my time in the counselling work I did once.

 

I refer, not to those great questions of doctrine or theology nor of what people do in Church on Sundays. It’s sad to report but this elephant needs to be handled with care, mainly because of the way we’ve been raised up.

 

Either people believe it’s unseemly to think like it or they believe that it comes down to a lack of faith. There’s no middle ground here. Either way, they say, we’re on a slippery slope. It’s not coincidental but that happens to be the very best reason to expose it.

 

Today, in the Gospel Reading, we get up close and personal with this pachyderm. We note it in Jesus’ question to his A-Team, we note it in his direction not to tell anyone about his Messiahship, we note it when he ticks Peter off for not having the right kind of mind-set.

 

Our elephant, of course, is called ‘disappointment with God’.

 

No matter that the A-Team came from a background of Bible knowledge (Lamentations and Psalms, to name two) which deals with disappointment. No matter that they knew that naming disappointments is part of faith’s renewal. No matter that they’re human like us.

 

Even after the flash of inspiration that caused Big Pete to blurt out that this Bloke, his leader, is the One everyone’s been waiting for and that he couldn’t imagine for a second that the he, the hope of Israel, would be killed in an extremely inglorious way, Pete meets The Elephant.

 

I’m perpetually amazed that he didn’t seem to hear Jesus say all that stuff about resurrection, but maybe I’ve missed something.

 

There are many people like Big Pete who worship regularly, who pay their tithe, who pray and read the bible yet who find it hard going when The Big Fella seems to smack them in the mouth or it feels as if He’s just gutted them.

 

There are many people who believe it’s wrong to be disappointed with God, especially after they’ve discovered that their child has been diagnosed with schizophrenia or that their Dream Job has ended in redundancy or when any number of disappointments, even disasters, comes their way.

 

The Good News is that it’s not wrong to be disappointed with God. I rail often at the thought of this beautiful guy having to suffer the ignominy of the death he died. I am overcome with embarrassment when I think that he hung on that cross buck-naked, with the passing crowd walking and gawking and only some of them averting their eyes.

 

It’s not wrong, either, to struggle with following this Bloke. It’s OK to be in the compost of life because that’s where the best flowers grow. It’s OK to be dead because that’s where resurrection comes from.

 

It’s OK to talk about the pain of lining up on Sundays while the Church seems to be going out backwards and is, seemingly, helpless – or ignorant – to stop the rot.

It’s OK to talk about the elephant when people all around seem to not have heard a word about reconciliation but are, rather, intent on revenge and retribution and all we want to do is to send them back to where they came from.

Maybe dealing with elephants in the room goes by another name. Maybe dealing with elephants is actually another word for discipleship.