March 20, 2011 | 4:00 p.m.

Questions around the Table

Part of the Sermon Series
“Preaching through the Gospel of Mark”

Matthew J. Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 11:27–33
Mark 12:18–27
Mark 12:28–34

“By what authority are you doing these things?” “When a woman with seven husbands dies, whose wife will she be?” “Which commandment is the first of all?”

Our Gospel texts today ask tough questions of Jesus, but we are going to leave those aside for a moment and focus on another group of tough questions. Last Friday, a group of friends gathered for dinner out at a nearby restaurant. The world had just been shocked by the unfolding tragedy and horror that had taken place in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake and tsunami damage. Although their Friday night dinners were typically pretty raucous and fun, the tone of that evening’s dinner was rather somber. Discussion briefly touched on the NFL lockout that also took place that day, but it felt weird to talk about football players and owners disagreeing on how to split $8 billion dollars on a day when thousands were expected to die and many more would be homeless. Instead, the group took turns remarking on the terrifying destruction and on some of the equally terrifying responses from various people. “I know they don’t represent everyone, but how can anyone who calls themselves a Christian claim that this earthquake was God’s punishment for not being saved?” “I saw some other commenter claiming that this was karma for Pearl Harbor.” “It really is amazing that some people seem to think that God caused this”.

The conversation continued like this for a while before one member of the group said, “You know, it’s things like this that really make me wonder. It’s not just the people who seem to think that God cares only about the United States. It’s that things like this happen at all. How can natural disasters occur? How can a loving God let there be so much suffering in the world?”

Another member around the table voiced their opinion: “I’ve always wondered why good people seem to have worse lives than the ones who cheat, steal, and are just plain hateful. It just doesn’t seem fair.” Someone else asked, “Why doesn’t God have a stronger presence in our world?” Finally one member of the group stated, “It just doesn’t seem as though God is very loving.” And after that, no one dared to ask any more questions.

We are in the midst of Lent right now, a time of introspection both in our own lives and in the life of the church. It is a time of asking difficult questions, much like the questions posed in the fictional gathering I just spoke of. This Lenten season began on Ash Wednesday with words reminding us that we are impermanent: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Sobering words to be sure. To me, it is reminiscent of Job sitting upon the heap of dust as he questions God using many of the same questions: “Why did bad things happen to me even though I was righteous? Why did a natural disaster cause my house to collapse and kill my family?” Job suffers immense pain and hardship, and he can’t help but question God by asking “Why?” It’s a fair question, but it is ultimately one where we can’t seem to find a satisfactory answer. I don’t think we have a satisfactory answer for why an earthquake occurred in Japan, and so in that confusion, morally repugnant answers are given for the sake of logical order. Those who are afraid to admit that they don’t know why the earthquake occurred make dubious claims that it was God’s will. We should never be afraid to question what occurs in our world or to question God’s role in it, but we will also come to a hard realization—like Job did—that there are many things in this world about which we may never know.

I bring this scene of friends talking around a dinner table up because there are lessons for us in the three Scripture passages we read from Mark. In each of these three scenes, religious thinkers from the first century brought tough questions to Jesus. These questions were some of the pressing questions of their day: “Who had the authority to teach about God?”; “Was there a resurrection and what did it look like?”; and “What is the most important aspect of following God?”—difficult religious questions that were discussed in the public squares and dinner tables much as the difficult religious questions of our day. And yet despite the importance of these first two questions to the religious landscape of the time, they are not given clear answers in the Markan text. In our first passage, Jesus nimbly evades the question of authority entirely. In the second, Jesus tells the Sadducees that they are conceiving of the resurrection in the wrong way but then only offers a cryptic conception of the afterlife. There are some things, it would seem, that people are either not meant to know or are able to understand; there are questions we have that will not be answered.

And yet one can’t help but notice that the third and final question is answered immediately in the text. When a scribe asks Jesus what the most important commandment is, Jesus responds that it is to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength—but then he continues, stating that each person is to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The scribe correctly ascertains that this is more important than all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices—common religious practices in that day—and Jesus agrees with him. There is none of the ambiguity that arose from the earlier two questions, and it is valuable to ponder, why is that?

It is obviously reductionistic to assume one single cause for this, but I can’t help drawing parallels to the questions and battles being fought and discussed in churches all over the world today. Last week, John Vest brought up Rob Bell and the ensuing arguments over Bell’s claim that God’s love triumphs over evil. This clash between various speculations about how God’s grace and judgment operate is remarkably similar to the speculation of the Sadducees on the afterlife, speculation that ultimately receives an unclear answer from Jesus. Or is it unclear? Perhaps we are not meant to know; perhaps we should not be so bold as to pretend that we are the arbiters of God’s grace and judgment.

So too battles rage across churches over whether or not LGBT individuals can be ordained into ministry. Can parallels be drawn to these discussions started by the chief priests about by what authority an individual can preach and teach? I think they absolutely can. Who are we to deny a call to one of our brothers and sisters? Did their baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin? At their baptism, God claimed each of these people as God’s own. How then can we tell them that their call was false?

These questions of afterlife and ordination remind me greatly of the fact that there are many deep and important questions in our religious lives about which we do not know the exact answers. However, we have spent so much time thinking in the vein of the first two questions from our Mark passages—questions intended to shape our beliefs—that it has come at the expense of the third question, a question intended to shape our hearts and actions. Perhaps instead of spending all of our time arguing amongst ourselves about doctrine and beliefs, we need to spend time asking a broad question: What does it mean to live and act as a Christian in our world today?

It is a difficult question, but I don’t believe it is unknowable. Unlike questions about the afterlife in which we receive a clear promise of salvation but an unclear picture of what exactly salvation will look like, we are told by Jesus that we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Some would argue that this command is unclear as well, but I would disagree. I think it is unfortunately too clear; it is the type of command that is convicting in its simplicity. Loving God and our neighbor is, in the words of my colleague Sarah Johnson, all that easy and all that hard. But trying to live up to the high task of loving God and our neighbor is foundational to every group and denomination of those who call themselves Christians. Even those who spew hate would claim that this message of love is at the center of their actions; yet they are hung up because they believe that they, not God, are the ultimate judges of character. If we are going to begin to understand what it means for us to live and act as Christians in our world today, we have to start with Jesus’ words to us today from Mark’s Gospel.

However, while I do believe we need to start there, we also need to make sure following this command to love God and our neighbor is not viewed as the end of our responsibility. A common statement that is often made with regards to religious affiliation is “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” which can be read as an attempt to distance oneself from the “burnt offerings and sacrifices” that the passage from Mark referred to, from the elements of belonging to a church that many feel are unnecessary. The statement “I try to be a good person” is another way of saying that a person tries to love their neighbor as themselves. And yet, it is dangerous to assume that our own personal conception of goodness or fairness is the same as anyone else’s. It is dangerous to assume that we are the ultimate judge of what is right and what is wrong, because we all have such limited vision. Instead, part of being a Christian is to be a part of a community—the church—that humbles us by reminding us that God is bigger than ourselves. We come together in church as a community, as people of many different backgrounds, thoughts, and opinions. We come together because it is the place where we can most clearly see God’s grace, a place where we can love God with all our heart and love our neighbor—every neighbor, not just the ones in our limited circle—as ourselves.

This is not to say that the church is perfect. We are assuredly not. Sometimes we allow our ritual and beliefs to get in the way of that call to love God and neighbor. Sometimes we are guilty of making “burnt offerings and sacrifices” instead acting on God’s call to us. Sometimes our collective judgment is flawed and we need the prophetic voice of an individual to stir us up. But we come together nonetheless, knowing that we do so out of love.

As we continue to think about what it means to live and act as a Christian in our world today, I lift up two other universal foundations of Christianity: the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion. These two practices are the intersection of what we just talked about: the importance of loving God and your neighbor intersecting with the church. At baptism, we hold that the water being placed on our heads marks an already present truth: we are deeply loved by God. When we are baptized, we are affirming that God loves us; but we are also affirming that we wish to know God better. We are joining a wider community known as the church as we seek to follow Christ in our lives and to discern what the Spirit is calling us to do. Baptism may seem like a completely individual act, but it is anything but. It is a foundational moment as we claim our Christian identity as intimately tied through bonds of love to God and to our neighbor. It is a living out of this commandment that Jesus lists as the greatest: to love God with all our heart, strength, and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We understand the Sacrament of Communion in the same way. The sharing of bread and cup was a foundational practice of the early church because of what it symbolized: we each have a relationship with God and the community with which we come together. Instead of each eating separately, we share from one loaf of bread and one cup. The love shown at this table is a sharing love, a witness to the life and ministry of Christ and a witness to who we are called to be as Christians. We bring many questions about God and faith, knowing that many of them will not receive a clear or easy answer. But we bring these questions around this table knowing that there are answers at this table. What does it mean to live and act as a Christian in our world today? Perhaps the answer begins with the sharing love at this open, welcoming table that Jesus invites us to. Amen.