A few months ago I listened to An Immense World,
subtitled “How Animal senses reveal the hidden realms around us,”
by the Pulitzer prize winning science author Ed Yong.
Yong’s writing immediately came to mind
when pondering today’s readings.
Yong’s book begins with a thought experiment:
an experiment that requires imagining a high school gym
in which there is an elephant, a mouse, a robin, an owl,
a bat, a rattlesnake, a spider, a mosquito, a bumblebee,
and a young woman named Rebecca, who happily likes animals.
In a magical few minutes the author explores
the various ways these creatures perceive the world:
the blind spider perceives through the vibrations of its web;
the snake senses infrared heat through its snout.
The owl of course has amazing hearing and the bat its sonar;
the mosquito smells the carbon dioxide coming from Rebecca;
and the robin feels the tug of the earth’s magnetic field.
The author concludes the thought experiment with this summary:
These seven creatures, though in the same physical space, experience it in wildly and wondrously different ways. The same is true for the billions of other animal species on the planet… . Earth teams with sights and textures, sounds vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields but every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.
There is profound truth in that summary,
especially as we approach the scariest night of the year …
no, not Halloween, but election night,
when we will witness in federal, state, county and local races
a dramatic example of how each of us is enclosed
within our own unique sensory bubble,
a tiny sliver of an immense and deeply conflicted world.
I have not been in a high school gym for a very long time,
and certainly never one with such a diverse menagerie of creatures.
But, you and I do live in an immense world of billions of other humans
and it increasingly feels that growing numbers of us
are so retreating into our own bubbles of righteousness
that we no longer embrace our shared humanity,
but rather revel in being a splintered society, a shattered mirror,
that instead of reflecting our high calling
of being made in the image of God,
instead is a disheartening testimony to our own self-interest.
Now you might be asking yourself:
what do animal sensory perceptions and fragmented societies
have to do with today’s readings, especially the gospel
which is obviously a miracle story about faith … or is it?
One of the challenges of the pattern of Catholic worship
with our sometimes irregular participation Sunday to Sunday
is that each Mass can seem to be a universe unto itself,
as we seldom remember what we heard last week
and almost never look ahead to the next.
That can pose difficulties for grasping the heart of the matter,
and is a formula for disaster for those who dare to preach.
The healing of Bartimaeus comes at the end of chapter 10 in Mark.
It concludes a series of instructions on discipleship to disciples
who score incredibly high on the
“how stupid can you get?” scale:
correcting Jesus about predictions of his impending death,
arguing about who should win the apostolic beauty contest, and
jockeying for a corner office in the emerging Jesus organization.
For me, the disciples in Mark’s gospel regularly bring to mind
that section of the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar
when the somewhat intoxicated inner circle sit around singing:
Always hoped that I’d be an apostle,
Knew that I would make it if I tried,
Then when we retire, we can write the gospels
So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died.
Tim Rice’s brilliant lyric captures the intoxication of believing
that we are obviously on the right path to discipleship
and so blissfully may go our merry, unreflective way.
Then, Bartimaeus stumbles onto the gospel stage:
the non-disciple who sees when he is supposed to be blind,
an outcast grabbing Jesus’ attention despite the crowd
trying to shout him down,
whose obvious physical disability shines a spotlight
on the spiritual disabilities of the twelve,
who owns nothing but a cloak but still leaves everything behind,
and who, unprompted, follows Jesus with reckless abandon,
putting the hand-chosen inner circle to shame,
though in their apostolic oblivion,
they seem gleefully unaware
of their evangelical embarrassment.
The center of the gospel of Mark is not the work of the twelve:
not Peter’s unsteady profession of faith,
not the sons of Thunder’s inept play for a promotion,
not insecure disciples prodding Jesus to reprimand
some outsider banishing demons in his name ––
all stories we have heard over the past few weeks.
Rather, the gospel center of Mark can surprisingly be located
in the Bartimaeus narrative
which, in all of its unpretentiousness,
well-summarizes the good news path of this first gospel.
It begins with an outsider asking for mercy
Then follows the Jesus question:
“what do you want me to do for you?”
[the same question he asks us today!]
The obvious request is that Bartimaeus wants to see
and, because of his visionary heart,
it is no great stretch to heal him of the physical ailment
that has held him back from infiltrating the apostolic band,
enabling him to leave everything behind and follow Jesus.
Earlier this year, after a month long excursion out of the country,
I decided to pull the trigger on a dream
that I have harbored my whole life.
So in March I became a puppy daddy to a 3-month-old mountain lion
masquerading as a yellow lab, named Monty.
As a somewhat successful and experienced educator,
I presumed I could call upon all of my pedagogical skills
to train the 23-pound pup through clarity of commands,
disciplined ritual repetition,
and positive reinforcement.
Needless to say, Monty was unimpressed,
even though multiple degrees, certificates and awards
are hanging around my office … just out of licking range.
So instead of me teaching him, he has been teaching me;
especially to pay attention to his incredible range of vocalizations
which my sister believes is whale song,
convinced he is part beluga.
At the most pedestrian of levels, if I don’t pay attention,
there is going to be a mess to clean up.
While dogs have a keener sense of hearing
and even better night vision than we do,
the key to their sensory world is their nose.
A dog’s sense of smell is at least 10,000 times that of humans,
enabling them even to detect cancer with their noses.
Taking Monty for a walk is like being led by a guide dog.
Even when I don’t have a cold,
I have no idea what scent has caught his attention,
what rabbit or squirrel or other dog;
what sewer gas or floral aroma has captured his nose.
I literally just stand there in wonderment
asking myself, what immense world are you in?
What real presence is beyond my grasp?
In his provocative book entitled Deviate, neuroscientist Beau Lotto
summarizes how it is actually possible
for us to rewire our brains
so that we can perceive the world differently,
discern a bit of what others experience,
maybe even be as attentive as some of our pets;
but only if we are willing to risk the process
of stepping outside of our secure ways of thinking and believing.
While Jesus is no neuroscientist, he is the king of risk:
stepping out of divinity into humanity, not only to immerse
the Godhead in the world of human perception
but also to affirm the Bartimaeuses among us,
the prophets who have pushed the limits of holy perception,
and deviated sufficiently from bumbling disciples
to be able to embrace the sacred others can’t see.
But of course Jesus isn’t done there,
because, as the deviant Messiah,
he fulfills virtually no one’s expectations of a savior,
and in the process pushes people to reimagine the reign of God.
He is committed to shake us out of our spiritual stupor,
like with his lackluster disciples in Mark,
and prod us to acquire the spiritual fortitude
necessary for stepping outside of our prejudices,
our social and political bubbles,
and stepping into the world of the other
where our salvation looms.
Previously, I suggested that the blundering disciples in Mark
remind me of the song “Always knew that I’d be an apostle.”
Alternately, Bartimeaus reminds me of the fox in The Little Prince:
the animal philosopher who sends the Prince back to look at roses
where he discovers that they are not like his rose
whom he has cared for, nurtured, and protected.
And then, in the most Christological moment in the tale,
the Little Prince proclaims:
“You’re beautiful, but you’re empty
… One couldn’t die for you.”
And, like Markan disciples, the roses were embarrassed.
Jesus the unorthodox,
the unlikely messiah,
the unexpected son of God
did deviate from the norm … and did die for us.
And, in the spirit of Ed Yong, that criminal execution
was for the sake of a humanity
yet stuck in a perception bubble,
flawed in our ability to see the immense world of divinity
and the wonder of its refraction
across every face across the globe.
We pray that the miracle of Jesus’ sight
imbedded in these holy mysteries
might puncture that bubble
so that we begin to perceive in God’s ways
and embrace the dignity of the other
through Christ our Lord.