I teach at Wycliffe College. Although I didn”t study at Wycliffe, numerous relatives did including my Father and Uncle. My uncle was the senior student in 1955 and my father was the senior student in 1957. And in between, in 1956, the senior student was Tom Harpur.
Some of you may know Tom Harpur or may know of him. For a while he was a leading figure in the Anglican Church. An ordained Anglican Minister,
- He did a stint teaching New Testament at Wycliffe.
- For 12 years he was the religion editor for the Toronto Star.
- He is the author of numerous books.
- He is gifted and accomplished individual
- On his website he says “that he is Canada”s best known spiritual author, journalist and TV host.”
Yet, somewhere along the way he began to travel in a very different direction from the early days of his ministry. In 2004 he wrote the book The Pagan Christ: recovering the lost light. In the book he basically rejects everything that he had previously been committed to. In the book he claimed that early Christian leaders fabricated a literal and human Jesus based on ancient myths – so for Tom Harpur, Jesus is a myth and not a real person.
How does it happen that a person who has lead in the church, who is very knowledgeable, who appears to be committed to the Christian faith, how does a person like that end up going in the opposite direction from where they began?
There are interesting parallels in Mark where Jesus warns against the scribes – Beware, stay away from, watch out for the scribes – well, we know about the scribes – didn’t everyone know the scribes were leaders who said one thing and did another?
Or at least that is how we have often thought of the scribes. In reality, the scribes were venerated, held in awe as wise, devout leaders in the faith. When a scribe showed up at a special meal or event they were welcomed with open arms; it was a great honor to have a scribe present. If a scribe walked through the marketplace people stopped what they were doing to acknowledge the scribe; they were deeply respected.
Perhaps a little like Tom Harpur in the early days of his ministry when he too was well respected. But, where Tom Harpur has clearly rejected a traditional understanding of the faith, the scribes did not. On the contrary for the most part they were still trying to do the right thing and to live the right way. They took seriously their role in watching over, guiding and helping others: they wanted to be faithful. But Jesus says “beware of the scribes” so something clearly went wrong – what was it?
Our reading today comes at a crucial time in Jesus’ ministry. Some of the scribes and the Pharisees have identified Jesus as a dangerous opponent – one who is misleading the people. They have been asking him questions with the hope of tripping him up or finding a way to make him look foolish, to discredit him. They are about to resort to desperate measures to get rid of him.
Just before Jesus warns us against the Scribes two important things happen.
First, a scribe comes and asked Jesus a question. This scribe wasn’t one of those who was trying to trap Jesus he just showed up as Jesus was talking and was very impressed by the answers Jesus was giving. So he asks an honest question: “What is the most important commandment?”
Jesus responds: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and the second is that you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
And the scribe, clearly impressed by Jesus, responds – those are great answers. You see, he didn’t realize that all the other scribes around Jesus were trying to discredit him. You can imagine the other scribes looking at the newcomer with horror – don’t say that – it will just make people more convinced by Jesus. But Jesus, respecting the scribe’s honest answer, says to him – “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.
That put an end to their questions – after that no one dared ask Jesus anything else.
So Jesus asks them a question based on Psalm 110. “He says how can the Messiah, the one you are expecting, the one sent from God, how can he be both the son of David as well as David’s Lord?” The scribes, the theological experts, are stumped – they don’t know how to answer that question. What makes the question particularly potent is that everyone there knows that rumours are swirling around that Jesus is the Messiah, the one promised from God. That is why the crowds have gathered. Most people are there hoping against hope that he is the Messiah, their deliverer. But the scribes are there because they see Jesus as a dangerous imposter who they must discredit. Jesus forces the scribes, the theological experts, the intellectuals, to admit that they don’t fully understand what they should be looking for in the Messiah. And this is the problem: if they don’t really know what they are looking for how can they determine who is or who isn’t the Messiah? You could say that Jesus just won the argument. Except, Jesus isn't interested in winning the argument. No, he wants to open their eyes and our eyes to what is real and true. With the scribes standing right in front of him Jesus says beware of the scribes.
This is the point at which we might expect Jesus to carefully explain why we should believe him rather than believing the scribes. But he doesn’t do that. He says - beware of the scribes they love to be treated with honor and respect. And with that simple statement he exposes their false motivations. They aren’t seeking to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength – even though they believe that they are and almost everyone around them believes that they are. Instead they have got caught up in seeking their own honor, recognition and respect. Perhaps, something like Tom Harpur claiming on his website “that he is Canada’s best known spiritual author, journalist and TV host”. But the real giveaway is that The Pagan Christ reflects one of the oldest arguments around – that we have discovered something that other people haven’t seen (a secret knowledge) in 2000 years. Even though the information is right in front of everybody we are the ones who have seen the truth.
The desire to be respected, admired, the desire to be liked are second nature to us all. And there is a good and healthy aspect to those desires. The problem is we so often seek to have our desires met or filled in ways that will never bring satisfaction.
Last autumn a friend posted on Facebook that they had been reading something written by the celebrated author - Frederick Beuchner. Beuchner was writing about going into a book store and being completely disheartened when he discovered they didn’t have any of his books in stock. Now, Buechner has received lots of accolades for his writing, he is well respected and yet he was disheartened that a book store didn’t have his books for sale. My friend posted on Facebook, “It got me wondering. What are the roots of the human craving for affirmation and recognition, especially in cases where considerable recognition has already been given?”
Our desires are disordered when they direct us or drive us towards finding satisfaction in things that cannot satisfy. Getting a lot of accolades or recognition doesn’t leave us satisfied, it leaves us wanting more. To make matters worse, our disordered desires don’t just impact us, they cause havoc and destruction in our families and in our communities.
CS Lewis once said: “Human history is the long terrible story of man (women and men) trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” Mere Christianity
The scribes claim to be, and believe themselves to be, the kind of people who have given their lives to God but the truth is that they are seeking something quite different – they are seeking their fulfillment through honor and recognition. And because they are blind to the way their desires are disordered they end up working against God and against God’s purposes to the point that they focus on getting get rid of Jesus, they try to get rid of God.
The scribes set their hearts against Jesus, they ruled out any chance that Jesus could be the Messiah, even though it had become clear that they didn’t know what to expect in the Messiah.
In his book Learn or Die, Edward Hess (a professor at University of Virginia) argues that our ego can be a huge liability. (to our learning and our growing up). He suggests that ego gets in the way of empathy and listening, both of which are critical to learning. The scribes, who believed they were faithful were in fact trapped by their egos in their own little worlds, they didn’t listen and they didn’t learn. Jesus confronts the scribes because their egos prevented them from seeing what was right in front of them. He doesn’t confront them to condemn them but to liberate them from the narrow little world of their own egos.
What about us, you and me? I think we all know that it isn’t just people out there who have disordered desires, we all do. If we turn back a couple of pages in Mark’s Gospel to Chapter 9 there is a conversation between Jesus and his closest followers. Jesus notices they are talking about something. He asks them what they are arguing about. Like little children caught in the act of misbehaving they stand there with open mouths not saying anything. They don”t say anything because they have been just been arguing which of them was the greatest or most important.
We all have misplaced desires, it is part of being human. But to be a Christian, a Christ follower, is to allow God to expose our disordered desires so that he can renew them and reorder them.
Which brings us to the story of the widow putting her last two pennies in the treasury: Jesus watching her says to his followers – She has given everything she has. This story has often been understood as a challenge to be generous in our giving. But that isn’t really what the story is about. The widow doesn’t give generously she gives everything she has. A generous gift would have been to give half of what she had. If Jesus really wanted to talk about generosity he could have pointed to the rich people some of whom gave large sums of money. But Jesus says of the widow - “She has given everything she had to live on”. That, at least in our eyes is foolish.
Notice though that widow is not named, nor even described. Because this story ultimately points towards the one who is about to give everything he had; not just his money but his life. Jesus, who did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, humbled himself even to the point of death on the cross.
There are a couple of things that we might notice. The first is that Jesus didn’t humble himself out of a sense of duty but out of a sense of desire – he loved his Father in heaven with heart, soul, mind and strength: his desires were properly ordered. He loved God his Father and he loved his neighbor as himself. And the second thing that we see happening is that Jesus died because of our disordered desires – because we trust ourselves more than we trust God and because we believe that we can find our satisfaction in something other than God. With the scribes we consistently fail to listen and learn from God.
In the whole of Jesus’ life and death Jesus exposes the emptiness and the consequences of misplaced desires. But he doesn’t argue with us or try to convince us that we are wrong – rather he exposes the truth and bears the consequences for exposing that truth, even as he gives us the space to listen, to learn and to respond.
Our difficulty is that we don’t see our disordered desires as a significant issue. We look at Jesus or even the widow giving everything and see that as commendable but unrealistic. So, like the scribes, we get on with our lives trying to do the best that we can. But to be a Christian isn’t to do our best and it isn’t even to do our best to be like Jesus it is rather to follow Jesus as he leads us through death to life.
Tom Harpur, the Scribes and Jesus’ first followers remind us that the most natural thing in the world is to seek our fulfillment, our meaning and sense of wellbeing in places or things other than God even when we believe we are seeking after God. That is where we all start and it shapes every one of our lives. Disordered desires are a part of who we are and it will be part of what we continue to struggle with.
Jesus has come to confront our disordered desires in the same way that he confronted the disordered desires of the Scribes and of his first followers. He does that not to condemn us but to set us free from chasing after those things which will never satisfy. He does that to lead us to the life that is life.