Reflections on Mark 9:38-50

This morning I would like to tell you a bit about one of my heroes. Her name is Melanie Klein. Her life and work have had a big influence on my life and work and also on how I understand today's Gospel text. Mrs. Klein was a British psychoanalyst who revolutionized the field of mental health, particularly children's mental health. Back in the 1940s, she took up Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, and not only understood it inside and out, she was able to see its crucial flaws and to correct them. She completely re-shaped psychoanalysis in a way that honored the spiritual dimension of human growth and development. And she did all of this in a way that was so politically clever... that Freud and his disciples were powerless to argue against her. Until Klein came along, psychoanalysis was very much an “old boys club,” and anyone who disagreed with Freud (who was the oldest boy in the club) was blackballed in the mental health field. Whoever was not for them was against them. Then, Klein walked humbly, but with great dignity, into this old boy's club.... and as it turned out, her entry was a bit like the Trojan Horse entering the gates of Troy. No one, probably not even Klein herself, realized the great wisdom that she was carrying inside of her... and how she would, gradually, in a very polite British way, take apart the unhelpful views of her colleagues and put them back together again on a better, firmer foundation.

The real keys to her success, in my view, were two.

First, was her lack of arrogance. She didn't assume, as Freud had, that she was going to single-handedly come up with a way to improve the mental and emotional health of the entire world. Her humility allowed her to respect the world's ancient wisdom traditions. She saw the wisdom of Plato & Aristotle, Moses & Jesus, at the foundation of our Western civilization, and she realized that it would be naïve, at best, to think that she or any modern person could invent greater wisdom about human nature and how it grows, or fails to grow. And so, Klein didn't waste her time trying to reinvent the wheel; instead she bowed to the wisdom that she found in these sacred traditions and she re-built the entire theory & practice of psychoanalysis on top of that sacred foundation.

The second key to her success (again, in my view) was that in all of her thinking and theorizing and writing, she always remained very closely tied to her own personal life experience, particularly her experience as a mother. She had very carefully and compassionately witnessed and fostered the development of her own children, and that experience cultivated a wisdom of its own in her. She wouldn't put forward any ideas unless they made very good sense in terms of her own life experience.

Klein is still relatively unknown outside of mental health circles. She has been a very important mentor of mine ever since 1989, when I came to Canada, and made the shift from working with adults to working with children in the mental health system. And I learned very quickly that Klein's ways of understanding and healing the emotional wounds of children were virtually the only approach that actually worked for the children I was seeing. At the time, I didn't really appreciate why it was that Klein's approach worked so well; I was only concerned that it did work. Now, however, I am much more interested in why it works so well...

Klein's vision of healing the mind and helping it to grow started with a simple common-sense observation: it seems to most of us that there are basically two kinds of people in the world: There are those who say “Whoever is not for us is against us...” Their way of being in the world is suspicious, adversarial, & intent on imposing its will. It is the way of domination. And there are others, in contrast, who say “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Their way of being in the world is one of openness and peace-making. It is committed to dialogue, tolerant of difference and gray areas. In brief, it is the way of relationship. It is not overly afraid of conflict, because it has developed the capacity and the confidence to resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise in this life. Klein's genius was that she had the courage to follow a key insight found in the ancient wisdom traditions of our civilization, & to use that insight to help us understand what in modern terms we now call “mental health” & “mental illness.”

The key insight that she drew from our Jewish, Greek, and Christian forbears, was that it is actually not true that there are two kinds of people in the world. It seems to be true, but actually it is not. In reality, there is only one kind of human being in the world, and he or she is neither good, nor evil. He or she is both, at the very same time. She proposed that there is built in to the very structure of human nature, a way that leads to life, and a way that leads to death. These two basic spiritual positions, and the requirement to choose between them, is like our spiritual DNA. It is the bedrock of our human nature. It is what makes makes us distinct from other life forms on the planet. We have a fundamental option built into our very nature. And this means that, in any given moment of our lives, from the time that we are born until the time that we die, we are necessarily occupying one, or the other, of these two positions. And so, in every moment of our lives we are being presented with a choice. The way of domination and death which says “Whoever is not for us... is against us.” Or the way of relationship and life which says, in contrast, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Our capacity to make that choice is both the agony and the ecstasy of our human existence. And Klein realized that, once we begin to accept and understand this most basic fact about ourselves, it becomes very clear how to foster mental health and how to heal mental illness. In a nutshell, we have to learn, in all of the ins and outs of our daily experiences, how to choose the way of life, the way of relationship, instead of the way of domination. That “move” – from the one position to the other – may sound easy, but it is actually not... It is a move that can only be made through grace, and yet, at the same time, it is a move that requires great effort on our part. It also seems to require good examples, good teaching and guidance, and extensive life experience.

Now, some of you might well say: “We're in church here! Why should we be considering the life and work of some 20^th century British woman who cared for sick children? She wasn't a bishop, or a minister. She may not even have been a properly baptized Christian!!! How could such a person possibly help us to better understand and follow the way of Christ?”

Well, I suspect that Jesus' response to that question might well be: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Notice three simple details in this morning's Gospel text:

1^st Notice that the disciples of Jesus are very clearly standing in the position which says “Whoever is not for us is against us.” Whoever doesn't believe exactly what we believe; whoever doesn't walk exactly the way we walk and talk exactly the way we talk.... shouldn't be allowed to use our corporate logo, “the name of Jesus.” That privilege is for members only.

2^nd Notice, also, that Jesus is very clearly standing in the position which says “Whoever is not against us is for us.” In his response to the disciples he says, in effect, “Wait a minute, guys! I am 'the Corporate Logo,' and my position is that anyone who identifies with me and my words and my actions --anyone who is helping others draw closer to the One I call 'Father' – is on the same team.”

3^rd Notice that the real concern of Jesus in this text is that his disciples make the all-important move out of that inner position which is suspicious & dominating & says “Whoever is not for us is against us” & in to that inner position which is relational & cooperative & says “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

These three details are quite obvious when we read this morning's Gospel text. But what is not so obvious, which Melanie Klein's reflections help us to discern, is that Jesus knows that this necessary movement is much more than a little “attitude adjustment.” It is much more than getting the disciples to simply say the right words and go through the right motions.

Jesus knows, from experience, that the gap between these two inner positions is enormous... like an inner Grand Canyon... He knows that his disciples are miles away from him in terms of their emotional and spiritual maturity. And he knows that that is not going to change... overnight. Because, he understands that what these disciples really need is to have inside of themselves what Jesus has inside of himself. But how on earth are they going to 'get' that? How on earth can anyone 'get' that?

In the Church, we have learned the hard way to be very slow and careful in how we answer those questions. Because history reveals that many of Jesus' disciples down through the ages to the present day... never did quite “get” it... they never did become even remotely like Jesus “on the inside.” Instead they often erected a highly adversarial church whose motto might as well have been “whoever is not for us is against us!” And, naturally, we don't want to fall into that same trap....

Klein insisted that it is the very nature of health to be continually moving out of the dominating position and into the relational position, over and over again, from one context to another, over the entire course of our lives. This inner movement from an isolated, envious and reactive position into a cooperative, trusting, proactive position is the only real foundation of a healthy mind and a good life. Everything... comes down to this choice... and our ability to make it... in the midst of whatever is happening in our lives. But, still, the question remains: how exactly are we enabled to do that?

Our ancient wisdom traditions tell us that it only happens through a very deliberate and intensive process of transformation. Jesus called this process “discipleship.” It is the process that we claim to be learning and teaching here at St. James. Melanie Klein, speaking to an audience who no longer trusted in God, called it psychoanalysis – the process of repairing the mind so that it becomes free to grow into its full potential. But both Jesus and Klein saw this process as one of radically re-forming, re-shaping the heart and mind, so that, over time, with practice, the person became inclined to choose life, even when choosing life is very hard to do. Both saw it as a move that can only be made through grace, even though it does require great effort on our part. Both saw it as requiring good examples, good teaching and guidance, and extensive life experience. Klein, because of her audience, didn't describe the process in religious terms, but she did describe it in great detail.

And so, perhaps there is a great deal that we can learn about the Way of Christ from an “outsider” like Klein. Perhaps there is even a thing or two that we might learn from non-European outsiders – from Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists... The greatest errors of our forbears in the church seem to have been their falling prey to the fantasy that “we alone have got 'it' ” ... the fantasy that no one else has a clue about the Mystery we call “God.” But it is very likely that Jesus has many more friends than any of us realize. As the Queen said in her recent (2010) address to the Church of England: “In our more diverse and secular society... people of faith have no monopoly on virtue... and the wellbeing of all depend on the contribution of individuals and groups of all faiths and of none....”

It is a very good thing, I believe, to be happily at home within one's own wisdom tradition. There's nothing quite like it. I personally feel very much at home within orthodox Anglican tradition. And yet, when Jesus, the Christ, the one true Head of the Church, tells us that “anyone who is not against us is for us,” it is quite an unusual orthodoxy that he is calling us into. Christ compels us to become so very grounded in the transforming practice of this tradition that we will be free to support, and serve, and learn from “outsiders.”

“Anyone who is not against us is for us.” We are very fortunate indeed this morning if, when we hear these challenging words of Jesus, we are able to hear them as good news. Amen.