Trauma

 

Further notes on Mark 10.17-31

Having presented us with the account of a man who managed many estates, who was desperate to become one of Jesus’ apprentices but unable to take hold of the thing he desired, the biographer Mark records for us Jesus’ conversation with those who were already his apprentices. Those whose number the man longed to join.

Jesus employs a culturally familiar aphorism to convey how hard it is for those who manage the business concerns of others – many estates – to live under and participate in God's sovereign will. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle – that is, impossible for humans, but not for God.

For anyone, to enter into this experience is like passing through a small gate, easy to miss. But for those who manage many affairs, it is incomparably harder.

The insurmountable problem preventing the man from embracing the thing he most desires is not greed. Here is a man whose actions show that he loves God wholeheartedly, soul-fully, mindfully, with every fibre of his being; and loved his neighbour as himself.

He is not a camel who is unwilling to pass through the eye of a surgeon’s needle, but a camel who has tried and failed, because it is impossible, for anyone other than God.

The insurmountable problem preventing the man from embracing the thing he wants most of all is that he has taken on an identity that is more than he can continue to bear and has become so traumatised that he is – ironically and tragically – unable to let it go. He has become traumatised by playing the role of redeemer to too many people.

This is often the tragedy of those who manage the affairs of others, whether businessmen or women or politicians, who come to see themselves – and often, themselves alone – as a saviour figure.

The same is true of churchwardens and clergy, along with the patriarchs and matriarchs of family units. Those who believe that if they do not do what needs to be done, the world will fall apart; for no one can do it as well as them.

Jesus saw the man and loved him. This is how Jesus always sees those who are weighed down with many burdens, often self-imposed, burdens that distort our character until we are, increasingly, unlovable. Unlovable, and yet loved. For this is how God sees us, with eyes of love, for Jesus can only do what he sees the Father doing.

Jesus looks on the traumatised man with compassion.

He loves him, and longs for him to be free of his burden. Free to heal, to grow strong again. To be who he was created to be, and not what he had become.

This is how God always beholds us, seeing us in our trauma, loving us, and moving to set us free.

This is why Jesus does not ask the man simply to surrender the estates he manages, but also to surrender the capital he would receive in so doing. Not because he is bound by greed, but because he is bound by the role of redeemer, of patron. Because he needs to be radically cut off from that false self.

This is not to say that we have no responsibility to help meet the needs of our neighbours, of our families, of the poor. We do (Jesus rebukes those who have the means to help but refuse to do so; he does not rebuke this man, or any trauma survivor). But we are not their – or anyone’s – saviour.

It is to say that Jesus is the master surgeon who rightly diagnoses our condition, who understands our trauma – often exacerbated by our own crude attempts to heal ourselves – and who holds out the very quality of life we long for. Whose love is not conditional on our being able to receive it or respond.

It is to say that the God who is one with Jesus can, alone, take that needle’s eye and make it wide enough for a camel to pass through.

The man was not able to become one of Jesus’ apprentices at that time, though this is not to say it was a once-only offer, or that he did not get there in time. We do not know. We do know that at that point of first invitation he experienced both shock and grief, as is often the case when a trauma survivor is offered the path of healing and growth, of integrating a difficult past within a healthier future.

If that is where you are today, that is okay. But you do not need to stay there forever. Nor do I. May you know the love of God which pushes out our fear, until we are able to step out from the roles we hide inside and step into the life that is waiting for us.