Mark 4:1-34
The Teacher and His Teachings
James Sledge January
25, 2015
I
assume that many of you are familiar with what is typically called “The
Jefferson Bible.” Thomas Jefferson never actually called it that. His title was
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.
It isn’t an entire Bible. It’s a retelling of the four gospels, merged into a
single narrative. It seems to have been primarily for Jefferson’s personal use,
and it wasn’t published in his lifetime. But it gained popularity over time and
can be purchased in paperback from Amazon.com for $4.99.
Jefferson
was a deist who did not believe in miracles or the Trinity. He had no use at
all for clergy and thought much of the New Testament had misrepresented and
corrupted the pure teachings of Jesus. And so he set out to fix that.
Jefferson
took a King James version of the Bible and, using a razor, cut out, rearranged,
and pasted together verses from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He took out all
references to miracles, and he ended with Jesus in the tomb; no resurrection.
He saw himself distilling something pure and useful from the corruptions of
ignorant and superstitious New Testament writers. He wrote of this distillation
process in an 1813 letter to John Adams. “There will be found remaining the
most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.
I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out
of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his, and
which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.”[1]
Few
of us are as ambitious as Thomas Jefferson, but many of us, perhaps most of us,
engage in a little distilling when it comes to Jesus. Perhaps we are
uncomfortable with miracles ourselves. Maybe the notion of bodily resurrection
unnerves us. Maybe it’s something else altogether, but you don’t have to look
with much care at the wide variety of Christian belief and practice to realize
that there are a lot of different versions of Jesus floating around out there.
Surely
one of the more common, and least controversial, is the one Jefferson so loved:
Jesus as teacher par excellence. During
my time in churches, I’ve seen parents who have no real connection to a
congregation, who do not attend worship or participate in mission, who
nonetheless drop off their children for the Christian education hour so that
they can get a little “moral instruction.”
I’ve
got no problem with moral instruction. I would think that Jesus is all for
children receiving moral instruction. But the fact of the matter is, very
little of Jesus’ teachings are about morals. They are about the ways of
something Jesus calls “the kingdom of God,” This kingdom is nothing like the world as it currently exists, and
that is why Jesus must teach his followers this kingdom’s strange and radical and
counter-intuitive ways.
Our
gospel readings today show Jesus teaching in parables. Notice that there is
nothing in the way of morals in these parables. They are not guides for living
a good life. They are about the mystery of the kingdom.
The
first, the parable of the sower, is well known to many. A version of it appears
in both Matthew and Luke as well. It fits ancient, Palestinian farming methods
better than it does modern ones, but it’s still not that hard to picture. The
amazingly fruitful power of the word produces unbelievable transformation in
the faithful who hear, who listen and respond.
But
a real obstacle to embracing Jesus’ teachings in our day arises from this term
“kingdom of God.” If you’ve read the Brian McLaren chapter connected to today’s
sermon, you know that he speaks at length about this. He tries to correct the
misunderstanding that the kingdom is about something that happens when you die.
After all, Jesus taught us to pray for the kingdom to come here on earth.
Even
more, McLaren tries to develop a modern term that might convey something of what
kingdom of God did in Jesus’ day. He
offers global commonwealth of God, God’s
beloved community, God’s regenerative economy, God’s holy ecosystem, God’s
sustainable society, and God’s
movement for mutual liberation. He also draws from John’s gospel to speak
of the life of the ages or life to the full. That he offers so
many options suggests that no one term is quite adequate, but together they do
speak to the wonderful, new thing Jesus means when he says, “kingdom of God.”
When
Mark’s gospel introduces him, Jesus’ first words are “The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark
then makes clear that the power of this kingdom is present in Jesus as he heals
the sick, calls disciples, and preaches. And in today’s readings, Jesus uses
parables to speak at length about this kingdom for the first time.
These
parables provide no moral lesson or instruction. Instead they speak of the
mystery and the power of the kingdom, and the only behavior they demand is one
of attentiveness. “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!.. Pay attention to what you hear.”
For the mystery of the kingdom present in Jesus and the word that he
speaks have the power to transform and to give life in abundance.
I’m not sure that attempts like
Jefferson’s, or many of ours, to ferret out something useful from the words of Scripture
fully appreciate what Jesus was up to, what he was teaching, or what following
him is about. I’m not sure they draw us very deeply into the kingdom, the
beloved community of God that Jesus proclaimed and taught.
____________________________________________________________________________
The
other day, I was reading Father Richard Rohr’s daily devotion that arrives in
my email inbox early each morning. Above the actual devotion was a quote from
the playwright, Eugene Ionesco. “Over-explanation separates us from
astonishment.”
The
devotion itself began with this paragraph. “We need transformed people today,
and not just people with answers. I do not want my too many words to separate
you from astonishment or to provide you with a substitute for your own inner
experience. We all need, forever, what Jesus described as ‘the beginner's mind’
of a curious child. A beginner's mind or what some call ‘constantly renewed
immediacy’ is the best path for spiritual wisdom. Tobin Hart writes: ‘Instead
of grasping for certainty, wisdom rides the question, lives the question....
When the quest for certainty and control is pushed to the background, the
possibility of wonder returns. Wonder provides a gateway to wise insight’”
I
wonder if we might not all gain immensely from approaching Jesus and his
teachings from such a pose.
We Make the
Road by Walking. The practice
begun in Advent continues through summer of 2015. Scripture and sermons will
connect to chapters in Brian McLaren’s book. This week’s chapter is 22, “Jesus
the Teacher.”
[1] October
12, 1813, “John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Correspondence, 1812-1823, excerpts
of ten letters,” National Humanities Center collection, http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/livingrev/religion/text3/adamsjeffersoncor.pdf
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