Preaching the Bible on Turtle Island [3 of 6]
Scripture: Mark 1:4–15
Most readers of this story would prefer to be John.1 It is the preachers, in particular, who like to view themselves as the voice of courage in the wilderness; all of us would like to believe that we are the ones who are ready to say the truth, to challenge authority, and to clear the path for what God is planning to do. Very few of us think that we have to leave Jerusalem.
However, this may be the most important event in the beginning chapter of Mark. John is in the wilderness, and “people from the entire Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” come to see him. People are leaving the main center and walking to a place that they have been taught to view as wild, dangerous, and beyond the boundaries of proper order. John is not rejecting Judaism from outside the tradition; he is part of Israel’s prophetic tradition and is asking his own people to return to being faithful to the covenant. People are taking the first step.
Chaotic power and the heyókȟatradition
Choctaw theologian Rev. Dr. Steven Charleston was the first person to ask Christians to read John the Baptist in light of Native traditions about sacred clowns, especially the koshare of the Pueblo people. Because of Steven’s work, I began to think about this story from my perspective as an Oglala Lakota Sioux and from the perspective of the heyókȟa tradition. I want to be careful about this. A heyókȟa is not just someone who acts strangely, tells jokes, breaks rules, or challenges authority. Heyókȟa is not a title someone earns simply by seeing themselves as rebellious or nontraditional. In Sioux tradition, a heyókȟa is associated with Wakíŋyaŋ, the sacred Thunder Beings. People experience their power through thunder, lightning, wind, and storms.
Although this power can be scary and chaotic, it is not simply destructive since storms can bring rain that helps the earth heal and enables new life. People do not choose or enter into a relationship with Wakíŋyaŋ; such relationships develop from sacred experiences or visions and are then recognized by the community.
Because of this relationship, the opposing actions of a heyókȟa are not simply ways a heyókȟa chooses to behave, but are sacred duties performed for the benefit of the Oyáte, the people. A heyókȟa behaves in ways that are contrary, but not in order to draw attention to himself. The goal of a heyókȟa is to allow people to realize something they have stopped seeing. If a community becomes too confident in its own ways, a heyókȟa brings an element of uncertainty. When people regard an imbalance as normal, a heyókȟa disrupts ordinary expectations, making the imbalance clear. The work is never done solely for the individual; it is always done for the Oyáte, the people. I am not saying that John was a heyókȟa, nor am I saying that Christians should mimic a sacred Lakota Sioux occupation that is not theirs to take on. For the preacher, such a distinction is crucial.
The passage cannot be used as an opportunity for Christians to call themselves or someone they admire a contemporary heyókȟa, because doing so would remove the heyókȟa from the Lakota Sioux spiritual relationships that give the role its meaning. The better question to ask in preaching is not “Who among us is a heyókȟa?” but instead “What effect has a sacred disruption had on a community when it has revealed something that community has intentionally overlooked?” I have always been taught not to focus solely on the individual who carries out a sacred duty, but also to evaluate the effects on the people when that duty is carried out.
Repentance has feet
In Mark, the people eventually turn around. When people hear the word “repentance,” they usually think of individual guilt. They imagine a person feeling bad about something they did wrong, admitting a personal sin, and promising to try harder. However, the repentance described in this story is physical. It involves movement. Repentance has feet. The people leave Jerusalem and enter the wilderness, where they come to the water and acknowledge that something must change; they do not simply accept John’s teachings but allow themselves and their lives to be transformed. This is important from the perspective of the Lakota. If our sacred circle is damaged, healing does not come from identifying the individual who caused the most harm and blaming them for everything. Instead, healing begins with recognizing that the relationships have been damaged and asking each person to acknowledge their role in those relationships and their responsibility to help restore balance.
Thus, repentance is not simply feeling guilty about the past; repentance is adopting a new way of living that can establish healthy relationships again. This might be the true chaos in this story. The clothes are not John’s, the locusts are not why he preaches in the wilderness, nor is it his choice to preach in the wilderness. The chaos results from an entire population in motion. Rather than waiting for the religious center to inform them where God might speak, people are now willing to leave what is familiar because they have realized that familiarity does not signify loyalty. Movement like this is difficult to manage. When encountering a disruptive individual, institutions generally know how to deal with him—they can terminate his employment, discredit him, detain him, or, eventually, execute him.
However, managing a population that begins moving together as a unit is much harder. Then Jesus appears. He does not stand on the banks of the river separated from the people who are repenting; rather, he enters the water and places his body among those who are already moving. When Jesus emerges from the water, the heavens are torn apart, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him before sending him into the wilderness. Rather than leading the people back to the security of the former system, God permits the movement to continue further. Jesus is sent deeper into the wilderness—into an area where testing, relationships, danger, and spiritual preparation occur—and then John is arrested. When we seek a traditional narrative of hope, this story appears deficient. The truth-teller is removed, and the individual who called for change in the community is suppressed by political authority; however, Mark states that subsequent to John’s arrest, Jesus begins proclaiming the good news: “The time has been fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has approached.”
Hope requires presence
The fact that John is arrested does not signify that the movement has concluded; rather, it demonstrates that the movement was never intended to solely depend on John. Hope also possesses a physical presence, proceeding from John to Jesus and then throughout an entire community.
Native peoples comprehend this type of hope. Our ceremonies were outlawed. Our children were removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools. Our languages were unfairly treated. Sacred objects were confiscated. Leaders of spirituality were imprisoned, silenced, and murdered. Those in authority who committed this violence assumed that Native spirituality would cease to exist. We retained all that we knew. We recalled it. We prayed. We told stories. We continued practicing ceremonies. Occasionally, they conducted ceremonies discreetly. Other times, they waited until it was safe to educate another generation. Violence does not negate hope; rather, hope exists in the fact that violence lacked the power to determine who we would become.
Chaos of hope
That is why I refer to this as the chaos of hope. Hope does not necessarily have to be a feeling of reassurance; sometimes it is a community electing not to remain in the location where an oppressive regime placed it. It is people advancing collectively, even though they are unaware of precisely where their journey will take them. It is entering the water and acknowledging that the way we have lived does not lead toward life. Preachers may well inquire whether they possess the audacity to become another John the Baptist, for doing so would allow them to perceive themselves as heroes of this story. The more challenging questions are:
- Why are people departing from our churches in order to find what they could not discover among us?
- What has their departure been attempting to convey to us?
- Will we be prepared to abandon our comfortable position, enter the water, and undergo transformation?
- And when the individual who initially roused us is no longer present, will we sustain the movement or regress to the former order?
John is in the wilderness, but it is the people who act. Perhaps the onset of good news is not that finally, one courageous individual has spoken. Perhaps the good news is that people remain capable of causing things to be altered.
Notes
- This article is part of the six-part series, Preaching the Bible on Turtle Island.
