“Along the Way: The Wonderers,” Rev. Jason-Paul Channels, 3/15/15
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https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/718809-9c270249.mp3“Along the Way: The Wonderers”
A sermon preached at
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, CO
by the Rev. Jason-Paul Channels
March 15, 2015
Mark 12:28-34
Mark 12:28 One of the legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them. He came over and asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus replied, “The most important one is Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, 30 and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 31 The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.” 32 The legal expert said to him, “Well said, Teacher. You have truthfully said that God is one and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love God with all of the heart, a full understanding, and all of one’s strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is much more important than all kinds of entirely burned offerings and sacrifices.”34 When Jesus saw that he had answered with wisdom, he said to him, “You aren’t far from God’s kingdom.” After that, no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Wonder. The driving impetus for the legal expert to ask Jesus just one more question about living a faithful life. Just prior to today’s text from Mark Jesus answers a question with such depth or confidence or profundity or care or something that the legal expert is left wondering what the answer would be to his question. And so he asks.
Isn’t wonder one of the tell-tale marks of Jesus’ ministry as he approaches his entrance to Jerusalem? Isn’t this wave of wonder and attraction of questions and followers as well as fear and worry what seems to take up so much of the narrative of this time? People wondering what Jesus really means, people wondering what the future will look like, people wondering if Jesus is really all that others have said he is and so checking it out for themselves?
In our Lenten theme—Along the Way—today’s focus is on the wonderers. Those people and those times when our faith journey, our life journey, is connected to wondering. We joked in the planning that one of the weeks needed to be “Are We There Yet?” but isn’t that what part of this journey holds too? A wondering if we are doing it right, a wondering when it will get easier. A wondering when we will be done with the hard work, the tough time, the uncertainty, the frustration. A wondering when the next shoe will drop or when this joy that “just couldn’t possibly last” will come to an end.
Jesus encountered wonderers. We don’t really know how many. We read more about his encounters with the doubters and those that seem sure in their proclamations. But what about those like the man today who asked Jesus “Which commandment is the most important of all?” I don’t think he asked it because he was looking for a right answer. I don’t think he asked it because he knew the answer and was just giving Jesus a chance to make his views known. I think he was wondering what his answer might do to what he already knew/thought. If this is true we can also safely assume that what the man had wondered or explored or thought about the role of loving one’s neighbor was not a “sermon” he had preached out loud before. In his statement he was supporting a teaching which was not a widely promoted perspective. Let’s read that again: “Well said, Teacher. You have truthfully said that God is one and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love God with all of the heart, a full understanding, and all of one’s strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is much more important than all kinds of entirely burned offerings and sacrifices.”
It seems clear to me that this man had wondered before about the responsibilities of offering and sacrifice and the role of love and its place in the order of focus and living. And when Jesus was before him answering questions and sharing new insights into how to live a faithful life the space created in that time ignited the wonder he had held so long. And he had to respond.
Why? Why? The question kept repeating over and over. No matter my response I could not seem to answer the question fully. I could not get words to form and come out of my mouth that seemed to meet the need and the urgency of the question. I did not have the facts or the mechanics or the heart or the understanding or whatever was needed to be able to respond to the deep need to know, to have answered that question that seemed to come from even deeper than her bones. All I wanted to say was “I don’t know.” But I am not sure that even that answer would have ended the almost chant-like repetition of “Why?”
The most confusing part of facing that afternoon’s encounter was that “Why” was asked, not in the soul tearing heart wrenching cry of grief or loss I was most accustomed to hearing it uttered. But instead pronounced with an almost breathless upward lilt whYY? WhYY?
The question was asked not out of public nicety or off-hand inquisitiveness or even as an invitation to theological discernment and exploration. Instead it was asked from an even more terrifying place…out of a bottomless pit of wonder and a 2-minute-attention-span. You see I was not at the side of a hospital bed or in the funeral home chapel or even a high-topped table in a coffee shop. I was at the playground. Answering a machine-gun repetition of “Why?’ from a four-year-old who was suffering a severe case of wonder and awe of the world around her.
Ever been there? Ever been in the presence of someone so caught up in the amazingness of what they are seeing and experiencing and trying to figure out what it all means? Have you ever seen the world anew through the questions and the examination and the exploration that is happening for them? Or sat with a child as they share a story that begins with the question “I wonder…”
wonder
a : a cause of astonishment or admiration <it’s a wonder you weren’t killed> : marvel <the pyramid is a wonder to behold>
b : miracle
2: the quality of exciting amazed admiration
3
a : rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience
b : a feeling of doubt or uncertainty[1]
wonderful: Exciting wonder
“I wonder…” the key phrase to our Children Worship and Wonder program each week led by Erin Tyler and other talented story tellers. The telling of the story is different each week but the follow up to the Bible story question comes from the same place every time…wonder.
If you are not a young person, or could not make our second Lenten dinner this year, you have missed out on a chance to experience first hand the power of our Worship and Wonder ministry at Heart of the Rockies. You have missed out on seeing simple features wooden figures transformed into the disciples and followers of Jesus. You have missed out on the liturgy and the rhythm of laying out the simple pieces of felt which become lakes and rivers and beaches and plains and desert landscapes. You have missed out on hearing and seeing the stories of faith develop in front of your eyes and ears and twist and turn and move from beginning to end. But more importantly you missed out on an explicit invitation to wonder about the story and what it might be saying to you…
Children Worship and Wonder teaches our young people not just the story and the people and the plots and narratives but teaches them to wonder about it as a way to enter the story themselves and to engage it in different ways. Every story ends with time to sit in the presence of the story and ask questions that begin with “I wonder…” and allows the listeners space and time to truly wonder about the parts and the pieces shared and not shared. Those parts that have been spoken about the story those parts known about the story sit along side those that are not known, have not been spoken. This time helps our young people to see the space between, to experience the more, to give room to the Holy Spirit that is working in our midst…to become wonderers themselves.
As a Lenten people about to become an Easter People we too must be wonderers. We too must take time to sit in the presence of God’s story. We too must have the courage to look in the spaces between. To give voice to the uncertainty that is present in faith. As our quote on the front of the bulletin challenges us to wonder more so that we might love more.[2] We must also wonder more so that we might embrace more. We must wonder more so that we might see more. We must wonder more so that we might serve more. We must wonder more so that we might experience more grace and love and forgiveness and hope and miracles and light in the gifts we have received from God.
[1] From www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wonder
[2] “I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”― Alice Walker, The Color Purple