Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 29, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

I’ve shared this tidbit with some of you before, but I don’t think I’ve ever preached on it. Someone once said of me: "He’s got book learnin’, but he don’t know--nothin’." Actually, he didn’t say "nothin’." He said something much earthier, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate hearing the actual word from the pulpit, so I cleaned it up. The lectionary readings for this morning got me thinking about that description of me; and I guess this sermon is in part a confession, or at least a bit of personal reflection and discernment. Most of you already know this about me, but my approach to matters of faith is more intellectual than emotional, maybe even more mental than spiritual. My time in seminary was marked more than anything else by the efforts of the Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry faculty and even of my fellow students to get me, as they put it, out of my head and into my heart.

I think they had some success in that effort. The life of the mind is still of central importance to me. Perhaps some of you think it’s too important to me and too central to how I approach things. The fact is, however, that you didn’t know me before I went through the mill of a Jesuit seminary that itself values and honors the mind but that is adamant that ministry must be done most of all from the heart. So count your blessings. It could be worse. Still, I live even now so much in my head that I was powerfully struck by several verses in the readings for today that raise the issue of the relationship between knowledge and love, that is, between the head and the heart.

The issue comes up first in these readings in Psalm 111, from which I took this morning’s Call to Worship. There, in verse 10, we read: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who practice it have a good understanding." Now please don’t get hung up on the phrase "fear of the Lord." That phrase is a Hebraism, that is, a particular Hebrew turn of phrase, that doesn’t mean being afraid of God. Think of it as meaning "the love of God." We should hear Psalm 111 saying: "The love of God is the beginning of wisdom." The point for us is this: Wisdom and understanding begin not with knowledge but with the love of God. Without the love of God, there is no wisdom.

Then we come to our epistle reading, chapter 8 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The part of that text that concerns us this morning reads: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him." 1 Cor. 8:1b-3 These pithy verses make three crucial points. First, love is superior to knowledge. The reason for this lies in the danger inherent in believing that one possesses knowledge, namely, intellectual arrogance. Claiming knowledge leads to ego inflation. Having love leads to fullness of life. Second, and probably most importantly, Paul points to the inescapable uncertainty inherent in any claim of knowledge. As another Paul, Paul Tillich, taught so powerfully, it simply is not possible for us mortals to have absolute knowledge about God. As the only true absolute, God absolutely transcends anything we may claim to know about God. Therefore, there is a necessary element of doubt in any belief we may have about God, no matter how convinced we are of the truth of our belief or how much we think we have not mere belief but true knowledge of God. Finally Paul says that love of God is superior to all knowledge because it is through the love of God and not through knowledge that we are known by God, that is, that we are saved. The goal of the religious life is not to "know" anything about God or about Jesus, but simply to love God.

Then there’s the scene from Mark. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. The people marvel at his teaching because he teaches as one having authority. That’s different from what they’re used to. This one doesn’t teach like their scribes, the experts in the Mosaic law who, I imagine, simply recited rote lessons and expected the people to do no more than hear them and believe them. In an effort to explain Jesus’ authority Mark tells an exorcism story and has the people marvel that even the unclean spirits obey Jesus. Problem is, that exorcism story doesn’t convince me of Jesus’ authority, at least not if I take it literally, because I don’t believe literally in unclean spirits. Taken metaphorically, however, the story does explain to us the source of Jesus’ authority at which the people so marveled. What’s really going on in this healing story? Jesus is showing compassion toward a troubled soul, toward a person we would probably describe as mentally ill. He is reaching out in love to a tormented person who would have been scorned and marginalized by his community. The story is an example of Jesus grounding his teaching in love and in acts of love toward people the world calls unlovable. That, I think, is what gave Jesus his authority. It wasn’t the teaching itself, although Jesus’ teaching does contain its own internal authority. It was the way he grounded that teaching--and indeed his whole life--in love. Love is the foundation without which teaching, without which learning and knowledge, mean nothing and have no authority.

What’s the lesson for us in these three passages from this morning’s reading? Before I get to that, let me point to one possible reading of them that I am convinced is false yet which would be consistent with the approach of most popular Christianity in our country today. The most vocal and visible parts of the Christian church among us today are aggressively anti-intellectual. We see this failing of popular Christianity most clearly in the well-publicized instances when Christian people attack scientific or scholarly understanding when, as they believe, it conflicts with their rigid, literal readings of scripture. Does science say homosexuality is a naturally occurring variant of human sexuality? Reject the science, they say, because the Bible, they believe, says otherwise. Does science say human life evolved over the course of many millions of years through natural biological processes? Reject the science, they say, because Genesis 1 says creation took only six days. Do scholars point out contradictions within the Bible and say that it’s various writings reflect the very human experiences of people from many different historical periods with many different understandings of God? Reject the scholarship, they say, because the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God. I am convinced that this rampant anti-intellectualism in American Christianity is unhealthy and will lead to the death of the faith if we cannot overcome it.

Still, this anti-intellectual approach could find some support in our passages this morning, especially perhaps from Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians: "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge." Sounds pretty anti-intellectual, doesn’t it? Yet our passages this morning do not reject learning. They do not reject the mind and the life of the mind. They cannot legitimately be used to exclude the mind from the life of faith. Maybe it was to avoid that unwarranted reading of Paul that the lectionary people paired his words about knowledge and love with the passages from Psalm 111 and the first chapter of Mark. Psalm 111 says that the love of God is "the beginning of wisdom" and that all who practice it have "a good understanding." The Psalmist certainly is not rejecting the life of the mind here. In his presentation, wisdom and understanding are the goal. The love of God is the starting place, but the challenge to us does not stop there. We are to use the love of God as our foundation for obtaining wisdom and understanding. The love of God is indispensable, but it is not all there is to the life of faith.

In Mark, we see Jesus precisely teaching, and indeed teaching in church, in the synagogue. What is he teaching? Our little passage from Mark doesn’t say so, but teaching in a Jewish synagogue is primarily teaching of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Certainly Jesus taught his listeners, and teaches us, about the love of God; but Jesus in no way excludes understanding from the life of faith. He doesn’t just exhort us to love, he teaches us about the faith. His teaching was not rote repetition of the words of the Bible. He interpreted the Bible. He interpreted it as being about love, God’s love for us and God’s call to us to love one another. Jesus was love incarnate, but he also clearly has an extremely sharp mind, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. Jesus will not support an anti-intellectual, know-nothing approach to the faith.

So where are we? Clearly the Bible teaches that love is superior to knowledge. That shouldn’t surprise us. The Bible teaches that love is superior to everything. Yet the Bible does not reject the life of the mind. It calls us, or at least some of us, to the life of the mind in service to the church and to the faith. Yet the life of the mind must not be separated from the life of love. If the love of God is the beginning of understanding, then true understanding increases our love of God. If the authority of Jesus’ teaching lay in his love for all people, as I believe it did, then true teaching must always lead to the growth of love in our lives and in the world. Intellectualization can be very sterile, very cold. Mere ratiocination can lead to supposed learning that may be perfectly logical but that is amoral at best and demonic in its effects at worst. That’s why we Christians who value the life of the mind must always remember to ground our learning in love. Love always comes first. Love is always basic. You can have a kind of faith without learning as long as you have love. You cannot have authentic Christian learning if you do not have first of all love. Paul would of course repeat this point five chapters after our reading this morning, in his great ode to love in Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians.

So let us continue to learn. Let us study the Bible and the great saints and theologians of our faith tradition. Let us keep asking questions. Let us never be satisfied with pat answers or appeals to authority of any kind that function to cut off learning and new understandings. But let us always be mindful that love comes first, and let us always remember that any claimed learning that contradicts Christ’s law of love is not true Christian learning. Amen.