Gospel Reading for the 26th Sunday Ordinary Time
I believe Jesus is aware that his disciples desire greatness. Perhaps they desire to be known and respected. But they want it so much that they identify with it. The desire becomes a part of their very identity. Humans do this all the time! We make something, a desire or a feeling or an opinion, a part of ourselves. It is like making something external a part of our own bodies. This understanding lies behind Jesus’ seemingly harsh command to cut off one’s hand or pluck out one’s eye if either one prevents us from entering the kingdom of God.
What desire is so much a part of our lives that it is like another part of our body? In other words, with what desires and thoughts do we identify so completely that to lose them is like losing a part of our bodies? With whom or what do we identify? The word “identity” comes from the Latin word “idem.” This word means “same.” To identify with something or someone means to make them the same as oneself. This kind of questioning lies behind Jesus’ teaching on detachment, which is another name for letting go.
Jesus calls his disciples then and now to radical detachment: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off… if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off…if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out” (Mark 9:43-47). The call is to lose whatever feels like it is a part of you but blocks out awareness of God. We may believe, for instance, that the drive to succeed is so a part of our identity that to let it go would be as devastating as losing a limb. But as Meister Eckhart reminds us, “to be empty of all created things is to be full of God, and to be full of created things is to be empty of God.” Every attachment, especially the ones that we think define us, must be left behind. And sometimes it could appear to feel like losing a limb.
Jesus presents us with the challenge of detachment. The chief way we live the cross is to detach from what we think we need to be happy so we can delight in God. To detach is to dis-identify. It is to separate the entity with which I identify from myself, to realize that the thing – a thought, an experience, or a person – is not me. Rather than a hard exercise, Jesus’ detachment is a rather simple and gentle one. A mystic can help us here.
Detachment is the key to the mystical teaching of Meister Eckhart, that wonderful medieval German Dominican friar and mystic. In medieval German, the word for detachment is abgescheidenheit and it means “to cut off.” But it is not as harsh as it sounds. Eckhart, following Jesus’ teaching on detachment, tells us in his Sermon 5b: “Now God wants no more from you than that you should in creaturely fashion go out of yourself, and let God be God in you.”
For Eckhart, as for Jesus, detachment is not a self-help tool or a technique to become more mentally healthy and balanced. Detachment is about God: “detachment makes me receptive to nothing but God.” It is about discovering God as the very reality of my life by gently dropping preoccupation with my attachments and settling into just being with God.
When we simply exist, resting in contemplative silence, then, according to Eckhart, we “have God.” “If you truly have God and only God, nothing will disturb you. Why? Because you are totally focused upon God and only God…If your intention is God and only God then God does what you do and nothing can disturb you, neither society nor surroundings. And no person can disturb you, for you consider nothing, look for nothing, relish nothing other than God.”
We detach by setting our hearts on God and letting everything else fall away. We do not push it away with force, that is, by exerting our will strongly. Rather, we gently redirect our attention and intention to God. We choose to return our hearts and minds to God when we notice we are getting hooked by an attachment, that is, when we identify with something. But if we desire God, then, cutting off our attachments will not feel like losing a limb. It will be a gentle dropping to realize our deepest happiness in the divine mystery.