IT’S OKAY TO SIT ON THE FENCE
I generally like to preach from what we call the Revised Common Lectionary. The Revised Common Lectionary is a set of prescribed Scripture passages for every Sunday of the calendar year. There’s an Old Testament passage, a psalm, a gospel lesson and an epistle lesson.
I was taught to preach from the Revised Common Lectionary for a number of important reasons. First of all, it keeps us in tune with the Christian year. For example, we journey to Bethlehem during Advent and we journey to Jerusalem during Lent. Second, it gets us as preachers to cover the bulk of the Bible over the course of three years. The lectionary runs in three-year cycles. Third, it prevents us as preachers from falling into what I like to call a thematic rut. Preachers all have their favorite themes and the lectionary keeps us from preaching them week after week after week. And finally, preaching from the Revised Common Lectionary forces us as preachers to preach on passages we would not otherwise choose. Some passages are difficult to understand and they do not lend to easily or hastily constructed sermons.
Case in point, the passage I read from the gospel according to Mark. This is not a passage I would have chosen on my own. It is a difficult passage to understand and I assure you, this sermon was not constructed hastily or easily.
Jesus and his disciples have begun wandering throughout the region of Galilee. Some commentators call it Jesus’ preaching tour through Galilee. Then, out of nowhere, a leper approaches Jesus and begs him for healing. Matthew says it happened after Jesus preached his Sermon on the Mount. Luke says it happened in one of the cities of Galilee. In any case, a leper approaches Jesus and begs him for healing.
Jesus took pity on the leper and healed him. He then told the leper to show himself to the priest and to offer for his cleansing what Moses commanded. What did Moses command? It’s recorded in the 14th chapter of the book of Leviticus. It included a number of sacrifices, and it also included shaving one’s entire body. It was a fairly elaborate process that would take far too long for me to describe here.
Yet he said something else to this leper that is worthy of note. After cleansing the leper, Jesus said, “See that you say nothing to anyone.” In other words, “Go to the priest and do what Moses commanded, but don’t tell anyone what I have done for you.” This marks the beginning of what we call the messianic secret. We find it sprinkled through-out the pages of Mark’s gospel. Jesus does something fabulous for someone, then he tells them, “See that you say nothing to anyone.” What is the point of this messianic secret?
After all, if people were to talk about the wonder-working Jesus and what he had done for them, his fame would surely spread. He would be welcomed in every town. He would be lauded as the Son of God. The people would rally behind him and he could easily become their supreme ruler. And after all, isn’t that what a messiah is supposed to be?
That is exactly what the Jewish people of 2000 years ago thought the messiah was supposed to be. They saw him as a military leader akin to what King David had been.
They envisioned the nation of Israel becoming a world power once again. Under the leadership of this messiah, they would cast off the yoke of Roman oppression and the world would look up to them as it had done when David and Solomon were kings.
But that’s not quite what Jesus had in mind. That’s why, according to Mark, Jesus instituted the messianic secret. Now let me state first of all that no one knows for sure why Jesus started this messianic secret. We can only speculate. But I think Richard B. Hays puts it very well in his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament. He writes, “Those who know Jesus only as a worker of wonders do not understand him at all, for the secret of the kingdom of God is that Jesus must die as the crucified Messiah.” Let me repeat that. “Those who know Jesus only as a worker of wonders do not understand him at all, for the secret of the kingdom of God is that Jesus must die as the crucified Messiah.”
Perhaps that’s why Jesus started this messianic secret. He did not want people drawing conclusions about the book of his life until the final chapter had been read. Write that down. He did not want people drawing conclusions about the book of his life until the final chapter had been read. The purpose of Jesus’ life, according to Mark, was not to work wonders and become a great military or national leader. Jesus would not become the messiah people expected. Jesus came, rather, to proclaim the kingdom of God, and to suffer and to die as a crucified messiah.
Of course, that’s not the end of the story. Christ died that our sin might be put to death once and for all. Then he was raised from the dead that we might have the hope
of a resurrection as well. Yet none of that is obvious until the final chapter is read.
Ladies and gentlemen, the messianic secret makes it very clear that the people of Jesus’ day did not have all the answers. They needed to wait. They needed to let God’s plan unfold, rather than jump to quick conclusions. Ah, perhaps sometimes it’s okay to sit on the fence. As a wise, old spiritual director once said to me, when the way is not clear, God is telling us to wait.
Waiting or sitting on the fence are not appealing notions to us though, are they? We want the world to be colored in black and white. We want decisions and we want them right now. To wait, or to sit on the fence, is seen as a sign of indecisiveness. To wait, or to sit on the fence, is seen as a sign of weakness.
I was intrigued by an article I recently read that came out of the Alban Institute. The Alban Institute is a sort-of “think tank” for church leadership and theology. The article was written by Wesley J. Wildman and Stephen Chapin Garner and is entitled, “Meet Me in the Middle.” They write:
There are plenty of Christians who feel theologically and spiritually displaced. They feel lost in the middle between noisy extremes of religion and politics and long to feel at home right where they are. They sense that it is possible to ignore the oversimplifications of left and right and, instead, move deeper into their faith. But they are not quite sure how to do that. They know the path they seek has something to do with love because they understand the power of love to unite people of different kinds, to overcome alienation, and to bring about transforming forgiveness. If only they could understand their situation clearly, perhaps they could plot the path ahead.
Society has tried to polarize us, politically and theologically. Are you left or right? Are you liberal or conservative? Are you for us or against us? There doesn’t seem to be room to be moderate any more. Moderates are seen as fence-sitters. And sitting on a fence is seen as a sign of weakness, or indecision.
Some people get frustrated with religious and political polarization. Perhaps they would not be frustrated if they could identify wholeheartedly with one of the opposing agendas, but they simply cannot. Some people know both sides well enough to feel a little drawn to both. Some people know both sides well enough to feel a little repelled by both. Either way, discerning moderate Christians experience the frustration of not fitting in. They sometimes feel overwhelmed by certain situations and don’t know how to change them.
Moderates can become downright disgusted by famous televangelists making judgmental pronouncements about how others should live. Then they watch those same televangelists fall from grace when they betray their own marriage vows in covert – even bizarre – fashion. Moderates can become disgusted by so-called left-wing attacks on conservative moral critiques of American society. They react to public caricatures of conservatives as embarrassing anti-intellectual reactionaries, as if the moral tone of society did not need transformation.
Somewhere inside the moderate Christian is a notion that the love of God is more important than doctrinal or political unanimity. Moderate Christians feel intuitively certain that it might be possible to find a home worshipping and serving alongside good-hearted political and theological opponents. It’s like I always say, why can’t liberal Christians and conservative Christians sit in the same pew and worship the same God?
Jesus united many different people in his ministry, driven by the belief that all human distinctions fall away before God. How nice it would be if Jesus would come and unite us all in one common belief right now. Yet I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.
I happen to believe that the world needs a diversity of faith perspectives. We need the conservatives to keep our time-honored traditions alive. We need the liberals to challenge those time-honored traditions when they become oppressive. Yet we also need moderates to sit on the fence and to wait for God’s plan to unfold. It’s okay to sit on the fence. Because the fact of the matter is, ultimately, the fence-sitters are the ones who will cast the deciding ballots. Amen.
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