Permission to Narrate… Again
I have lingered over the suggestive phrase of Edward Said, “Permission to Narrate.” Said’s argument in Orientalism (1978) is that “the Orient,” while viewed in the West as mystical and exotic, was also judged to be incapable of self-governance. The West (and notably Britain) accepted responsibility for the governance of “the Orient” and came to regard it as “our Orient.” This possessive attitude permitted the colonization and plundering of the Orient to the great benefit of the West. The West, moreover, took responsibility for “narrating” the Orient, since the lack of capacity for governance was taken to be connected to a lack of a capacity to narrate itself. That claim of the West raises the crucial question of who has the capacity and the right to narrate the life of another.
On March 18, 1982, The Washington Post offered a report of Ronald Reagan’s visit to a flood-vexed Fort Wayne, Indiana. On that same day, the Post also reported on a man in South Succotash, NY who was laid off work. Reagan resented having attention drawn away from his work and his achievements. In a flash of anger he asked rhetorically, “Is it news that some fellow in South Succotash has been laid off?” He meant to insist that such a job loss was not news, should not be reported, and surely should not detract from the President’s work and activity. But then, Ronald Reagan had never lived in South Succotash, nor had he ever been laid off from work. It turns out that this was big news in South Succotash, and surely important news for the man who lost his job and for others who were also candidates for such job loss.
When I juxtaposed Said’s phrase and Reagan’s dismissive comment, I got thinking about the legion of people who never have permission to narrate their lives, who struggle daily to make ends meet, and who do the hard work of living disadvantaged lives without their existence ever brought to speech or notice. In our society, the catalogue of the unnarrated includes poor people, people of color, old people, very young children, disabled people, and the LGBTQ+ community, that is, all those who fail to participate effectively in the rat-race of production and consumption. Their lives go unnarrated. In the ancient world of Jesus’ time, the “unnarrated” included the blind, the lame, lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor (Luke 7:22). They may as well have lived in South Succotash; at best they receive the same kind of custodial care that the Orient was said to be received from the West. And in like manner, they are readily exploited by the predatory economy in the same way that the Orient has been exploited by the West.
But then it occurred to me: These “unnarrated lives” constitute the primary company of folk that eagerly clustered around Jesus. In episode after episode, it is the unnarrated who flock to Jesus for valorization. This roster of unnoticed forgotten folk includes the man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21-28), a leper (Mark 1:40-45), a paralytic (Mark 2:1-12), the man with a withered arm (Mark 3:1-5), the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20), the daughter of a synagogue leader (Mark 5:21-24, 35-43), a woman suffering from hemorrhages (Mark 5:25-34), the sick (Mark 6:53-56), the daughter of a Gentile woman (Mark 7:24-30), a deaf man (Mark 7:31-37), a blind man (Mark 8:22-26), a boy with an unclean spirit (Mark 9:14-29), and blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). This is a stunning roster of nobodies who might as well have lived in South Succotash. In this series of narrative confrontations, we are told that Jesus in each case acted decisively for the restoration of the disabled person. The narrative reports are terse. But the sum of them is that Jesus restored to full life those who had been dismissed, discounted, and discarded by an economy too busy to notice, an economy bolstered and legitimated by religious claims made for and by “better” people.
Most remarkably Jesus talked with them:
-The man with the unclean spirit (Mark 1:25): “Be silent, and come out of him!”
-the leper (Mark 1:41): “I do choose. Be made clean!”
-the demoniac (Mark 5:8, 9): “Come out of them man, you unclean spirit…What is your name?”
-the synagogue leader (Mark 5:36, 39): Do not fear; only believe…Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
-the woman who had hemorrhaged (5:30, 31, 34): “Who touched my clothes…Who touched me…Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
-the Gentile woman (Mark 7:29): “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
-the blind man (Mark 8:23, 26): “Can you see anything…Do not even go into the village.”
-the father of the deaf boy (Mark 9:19, 23, 25): “Bring him to me…All things can be done for the one who believes…I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again”; and
-Bartimaeus (Mark 10:51): “What do you want me to do for you?...Go, your faith has made you well.”
Being in the presence of Jesus evoked speech from his needy public. That speech addressed to Jesus is variously affirmation, dispute, and petition.
-the man with an unclean spirit: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24);
-a leper: “if you choose, you can make me clean (Mark 1:40).
-the Gerasene demoniac: What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me…My name is Legion; for we are many (Mark 5:7, 9).
-The synagogue leader: “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live (Mark 5:23).
-The woman who had hemorrhages: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” (Mark 5:28).
-The Gentile women: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs (Mark 7:28).
-The blind man: “I can see people, but they look like trees walking (Mark 8:24).
-The father of a deaf boy: “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down. And he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid… I believe; help my unbelief (Mark 9:17, 24).
-Bartimaeus, the blind beggar: “My teacher, let me see again” (Mark 10:51).
The point I accent is that the silence is broken. Those in need receive by the presence of Jesus’s permission to narrate their lives, their needs, and their hopes. The outcome, not every time but characteristically, is dialogic engagement between those in great need and Jesus in his great restorative capacity. Thus the offer, characteristically, is one of genuine human exchange. Those who have long been fated to silence by their social circumstance are now freed and emboldened to bring their needs and hopes to speech. Jesus is recurrently an agent who will evoke and authorize dialogic exchange that is the essential platform for transformation. Thus we may imagine that Jesus, in his context, was a force for such dialogue that empowered lesser folk and broke the silence imposed by dominant society that wanted no part of disturbing speech from below.
It will not surprise you, reader, that I suggest it is a central role for the contemporary church, after the Source of such speech, to break the silence that envelops the “inconvenient” who do not measure up to the speed and requirements of the dominant economy. The dominant economy has effective ways of silencing those who come from such places as South Succotash and do not figure in the great affairs of state or in the big sums of the economy. When care is too closely allied with moneyed interests, it tends to reflect indifference to the “unqualified” in their need and deficit. For a long while, the church in the US participated in that dominant top-down practice of care. But now among us that season in the church is long gone. For the most part, the church is no longer a habitat of powerful, managing, influential people. It has become, rather, a community of the vulnerable who are drawn to the generosity of the gospel, and who in turn practice their generosity toward the neighbors in ways of which they are capable.
In our community, it is not such a long or difficult reach to be aware of the socially silenced. Thus the church community, in its vulnerability, can more directly and effectively give voice to needy persons who live exposed, vulnerable lives. On the one hand, the church can speak for such nameless persons, representing and addressing their needs in quite quotidian ways. In many congregations, not unlike my home congregation, the church extends a ministry of food and shelter to at-risk and homeless persons. The congregation does that when much of civic society has failed to accept this responsibility. In my home town, it is to be appreciated and much affirmed that civil society has stepped up to provide some protection, shelter, and care for those who are without resources. But such civic engagement is most often triggered by the witness of the congregation.
In the end, the Christian congregation is able to go beyond being a voice for such needy persons, and may itself become a forum and venue wherein the needy from South Succotash are permitted and empowered to voice their own needs and hopes. Thus the congregation becomes a host for exactly the kind of honest dialogue that is essential to a viable community in which all parties are authorized to speak their need and hope.
Such a voice of need and hope stands at the point of origin in the biblical tradition. Indeed the entire account of God’s emancipation begins with the slave utterance that is an uninflected cry of pain:
The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God (Exodus 2:23).
The cry of the enslaved is not addressed to anyone. It is simply a cry of pain, helplessness, and abandonment. That initial utterance by the slaves, moreover, is followed in the Bible by a loud, long season of lament and complaint that reiterates and echoes the anguish cry of those slaves. That cry that compelled the attention of the Lord of history, arises wherever there is desperate need, unbearable pain, anguish, and desperation too deep to bear. It is on the lips of a king who loses his son in battle (II Samuel 18:33). It is on the lips of every parent who stands by helplessly as a child suffers. It occurs among us when we grieve a loved one, or when we hear of violence erupting among vulnerable peoples. We may indeed imagine that South Succotash, like every community, had its share of loss, grief, hurt, and disappointment. The sounds that arise in such a community are sounds that challenge and contradict the “official speech” that goes from strength to strength and from success to success. Thus we may imagine that while dominant society celebrates its success and wellbeing, the church meets especially to provide access to the underside of lived reality that is acknowledged in ways that defy self-congratulatory success.
The church provides a venue for such pain from below. The church has been bold in its representation of such need and speaks for the left behind. But it may also be a venue wherein such needy persons themselves are allowed to be seen and heard as “real persons” in a society long on denial and dismissiveness, real persons who have names and histories and needs and hopes.
Thus my home congregation—and every such local congregation—can be asking, “Who is kept silent among us? Who is not permitted to speak? Who must live without narrative or notice?” When we give answers to these questions, we will have identified our proper locale for missional engagement. And now that we are a bit “woke,” we notice the unnoticed parts of society and of non-human creatureliness that is unprotected and abandoned in their hope and need.
Imagine the congregation:
-in its prayers: offering urgent petition for those who have no power;
-in its praise: offering glad celebrative affirmation for those who receive sustenance for life;
-in its offering: as it makes palpable gestures in solidarity for those with uncommon need;
-in its missional action: because we believe that the world of God’s creation is on its way to wholeness;
-in its proclamation that declares the coming of the new, generous governance of God.
I am reminded in Advent that when the “wise men” came to Jerusalem seeking “the child who has been born king of the Jews,” (Matthew 2:2) they are guided by the poetry of Micah to redirect their effort to Bethlehem, an unnoticed village outside of the capitol city. So among us, we may imagine seeking an alternative future in the citadels of capitalism or seeking learning in our great universities. It turns out, however, that we are redirected to South Succotash and a thousand like places where we had thought there was no life-giving prospect on offer. It turns out quite unexpectedly that the inhabitants of South Succotash must be given voice; that voice, moreover, is not to be silenced or overpowered by celebrative power or learning. The church meets, every time, to hear and reiterate the forgotten claims of out of the way places like Bethlehem, Nazareth, and South Succotash. The sounds we may hear from such venues include the sobbing of mother Rachel who refused to be comforted, the laughter of mother Sarah in her surprise, the imperatives of Moses, the blessings of Aaron, and the indefatigable hope of the prophets. It is no wonder that Jesus found his closest companions in such company. It is this company that is “spellbound” by the offer of Jesus, even while the dominant powers sought to silence and eliminate him:
Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard (Luke 19:47-48).
It is always a contest between those who were spellbound and those who wanted him silenced. No wonder that we are summoned to participate in that dangerous either/or.
