January 29, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

Whoever Has Ears to Listen Should Pay Attention

Adam H. Fronczek
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 3:20–4:9

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Luke 10:27 (NRSV)

Go into the world in peace and courage.
Hold to the good. Honor all of God’s children.
Love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.

(Based on 1 Thessalonians 5:13–22 and part of the benediction given by John Buchanan at the close of each worship service.)

What if everything we do here is a lie? It’s a fair question. There are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in God, plenty who don’t believe in Jesus, and plenty who think none of what the Bible says can be trusted and that we are all wasting our time here in church.

It may be one thing to acknowledge that other people ask these questions and harbor these doubts and quite another thing to have the minister acknowledge them as the introduction to the sermon, but the truth is, most of us have probably wondered about these questions, so this week I thought I would talk about that. After all, our faith is not historically or factually verifiable. So we see signs around us where we believe God is at work—the beauty of creation or dramatic displays of selflessness and kindness—but we can’t prove that it’s God. We read Jesus’ teachings and we hear powerful lessons that shape a good life, but there are good teachings in other religions and philosophical traditions as well. Both of these are valid arguments, so it is perfectly understandable that from time to time even the most faithful and devoted Christians might wonder if what we believe is false.

If you have wondered about these things, you are not alone, nor are you the first one to ask such questions. In this afternoon’s scripture lesson, in fact, we see a group of people doing just that: doubting Jesus right to his face; wondering who he is and what he’s all about; wondering if he really is good or if he is evil in disguise; wondering if his message is false and he is out to trick us all. These questions are not new.

When I was a child, I used to wonder if everything around me in the world was false. I can remember seeing TV shows and movies in which a very normal-looking human being turns out to be an alien or a robot in disguise, and I remember wondering if my friends, my neighbors, my brother, and my parents were all something other than they appeared to be. Could it be possible that there was some sort of elaborate, deceitful plan and everyone was in on it, except for me?

For a long time, I was embarrassed by those thoughts. I was embarrassed because I knew on some level that I was being silly, but when I got a little older, I realized something else embarrassing: the mere idea that everything in the world was created and maintained just for me was incredibly self-centered, and though I realize now that it is part of normal development for children to see themselves as the center of the universe, I was still embarrassed that I had had those thoughts. But it also occurred to me that I probably wasn’t alone; I kept noticing similar ideas on TV and in movies, and it dawned on me that I could not possibly be the only person having these thoughts.

Around the time I was in college, Jim Carrey starred in The Truman Show, a movie about a reality TV program built around the life of one man who lived his entire life on TV but didn’t know it. His whole life was an elaborate scam, viewable twenty-four hours a day by people on the outside. Occasionally there were close calls for the TV crew: from time to time, outside viewers disagreed with the ethics of the program and tried to expose the crew and the whole fraudulent enterprise and set Truman free. And as Truman himself got older and smarter, the plot thickened when Truman started to wonder if there was something else out there and tried to escape. Going back to my own childhood fantasy, it occurred to me that movies like The Truman Show wouldn’t get made if I’m the only one wondering if it’s all a big lie.

When we have questions or doubts about what is real or true, we are struggling with a very basic issue: most of us would like very much to control everything in our lives—to understand what is going on around us, to know that we have all of the information that everyone else has, and to never be at the mercy of someone or something else. But the reality is that there are parts of the world that are very much beyond our control. There will always be plenty of things in life that we do not fully understand and cannot know for sure. Stories like the ones I was talking about grab us because we legitimately wonder about what we don’t know and do not control. Are we being fooled? Is someone lying to us or withholding information? And the truth is, most of us are quite afraid when unknown parts of the world are shown to us.

The fear that arises around this loss of control happens because an event or a person shows us that things are not the way we thought they were. Truman comes to the edge of his world—an elaborate TV set—and is scared to know what is on the other side. Or when we watch the alien movie—how can we not get scared when the character we thought we knew pulls off the human mask and turns out to be from another planet? In real life, the same feelings of fear can hit us—when we are surprised by a change in a person we know: a parent, a mentor, a partner, or a friend lets us down and we discover that they are not the person we thought they were. What a frightening part of life. Similar feelings can arise on a much larger scale. The scariest thing about September 11, 2001, was the discovery that American security and military power is not the impenetrable force we assumed it was; it is possible for people to attack us right here at home, and we are not as safe as we thought we were. Even inanimate objects can surprise and frighten us in this way. People who struggle with substance abuse and addiction must often face the frightening reality that what they thought was a simple pill or a glass of harmless looking liquid is not just a pill or a drink; it has extraordinary power over them, power that can destroy their life if it is not respected.

In the passage of scripture I read tonight, people begin to question Jesus because he is doing and saying things just like what I’ve been talking about. His words and his actions frighten the people around him, because he reveals that things might not be the way they seem, and he shows people the alarming idea that they are not in control the way they thought they were.

Let’s take a look at the stories. There are two stories happening simultaneously in the passage I read, and they go together. In the Gospel of Mark, Mark frequently uses a technique biblical scholars call “intercalation.” It means that Mark starts with one story, jumps to another one, and then jumps back to finish the first story, essentially sandwiching one story within another. The effect is that he takes two stories that seem very different and forces the reader to ask, “What do these stories have to do with each other?”

In this case, the first story is about Jesus and his family, and the second is about people who claim Jesus is possessed by demons. Mark starts with the family story, jumps to the demon-possession story, and then jumps back to finish the family story.

Looking at the first story, if you think that the Bible always reinforces traditional family values, this story about Jesus and his family is more than a little troubling. Jesus, the son the family had gone to such great pains to raise up right and to apprentice as a carpenter, has left home and the family business, and a crowd has begun to follow him around the countryside as he teaches and heals people and attracts a lot of attention, not all of it positive. His family, probably quite distressed and wondering where their parenting went wrong, comes along to restrain him, and he refuses their help. He goes right on teaching and healing.

Having come this far, Mark, who is telling the story, jumps to the second story, the meat in between the bread, so to speak, and this story is about demon possession. First of all, a brief statement about demons. In the ancient world, it was quite common to personify evil and to assume that all kind of manifestations of mental, emotional, or spiritual imbalance were the result of a demon, a living being that had entered the person. One of the things that stood out about Jesus again and again is that he seemed to be able to help people with these demons when other traditional remedies did not work. In the modern world, many of us do not tend to personify evil by talking about demons, but it seems clear enough to at least agree that there is still evil in the world. The things I mentioned before—the vengefulness and violence of terrorism, the destructiveness of substance abuse, the pain of betrayal—these things may not come in the form of a person or demon, but they are clearly evil.

The people in the second story speak out against Jesus because they observe his power over evil, and they are afraid, because it is different than what they are used to: Jesus has power that no one else seems to have. They accuse him, saying, “You must be evil yourself if you can control evil; that’s the only explanation. If you can cast out demons, you must be a demon yourself.” Good people don’t have power over demons, they assume. Jesus has taken their normal assumptions about the way the world is supposed to work and has turned them upside down, and that’s frightening.

Suddenly Mark jumps right back to the first story, the one about his family. When they try again to get his attention, he does something that strikes us as quite brutal. He looks at the people gathered around him and says, “My mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers, the ones who do the will of God are my mother and my brothers.” Jesus essentially abandons the people we assume he should care for the most. You now see what Mark is doing with telling these two stories together: once again he does something that takes our normal assumptions and turns them upside down.

This is what the two stories have in common: they both frighten us because they take our assumptions about the way things are—what is real, what is true, whether it is the importance of family or the nature of evil—and, in both cases, Jesus turns people’s assumptions upside down.

As I keep going here, let me say one other thing about the family conflict: It’s probably not that Jesus hates his family or hates families generally, but let’s be honest: he does suggest that “there are causes for which it is worth turning against your family.” That may be a troubling thing for you to think about, but consider this: it was a lot harder to be a Jew or a Christian in Jesus’ day than it is in ours, particularly if you live in America. In Jesus’ time, admitting that you were his follower meant political and economic alienation and could mean persecution or even death. It was not an easy life and not the kind of thing most families would have wanted their loved ones getting involved with. Going against the wishes of one’s family to follow one’s beliefs was a decision early Christians often had to make (William Placher, Belief Commentary on Mark, p. 61). You may not like the idea that Jesus seems dismissive of his family, but what we’re seeing here is that Jesus is not naïve about the risk of being a Christian. In addition, he is not being hypocritical; he is taking chances with his own life for the sake of his message, and he’s being up front about the fact that Christianity is a risky way of life and the world is a risky place. It’s a message we may not want to hear, but Jesus is telling us the truth, and when necessary, he gives it to us right between the eyes.

The story about demons questions our assumptions about evil in a similar way. Have you ever examined some really difficult source of evil in your own life and thought all along, “I need to figure out a way to beat this, to conquer this evil, to triumph over this bad situation in my life,” only to find out that it sneaks up on you again and again? Jesus challenges this kind of thinking with his own thoughts on evil: “The evil will always be with us,” he seems to say, “and it will always be powerful, so do not beat yourself up trying to control it on your own. Admit that you are weak and that evil is powerful, and place your trust in me. For I am in control, and I will help you.” He doesn’t try to pretend the evil isn’t there; he doesn’t pretend that it doesn’t have power; he is direct and honest about it.

The thing that I find reassuring about Christian faith and the way that Jesus teaches it is not that it is easy or provides all of the answers I want or causes all of life to make sense. What I find reassuring about it is that it is honest. Jesus is willing in his words and his actions to acknowledge the difficulties of this life—the ambiguity of family life, the challenge of speaking out for what you believe in, the threat of evil—and he doesn’t promise to make the hard parts of life go away, nor does he deny that they are there. He only says, “I know that you are scared about the things you do not know and that you cannot control, but come to me, because I want to help you.”

In the end, an illustration that is quite simple sums up the whole idea of this sermon. When I work with wedding couples preparing for their marriage, I always make a point of telling them that they can come sit in my office and paint a rosy picture of their relationship and tell me that they never fight and everything is perfect, but that if they do that, they will probably not get much out of the meetings. The time will be much better spent if we get real and talk about what they struggle with and how they might make it better.

I feel the same way about what we do here in worship. We are not here to make everything pretty or nice or to pretend like we have no challenges and have made no mistakes. That is a false world, as false as the one I feared when I was a little boy. We grow in our faith when we are honest about the difficulties and the inevitable unknowns that are a part of life, so that we can help each other try to figure out how to thrive in the midst of our doubts and so that we can strengthen one another in the midst of a life that is honest, true, and real.

Amen.