The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proper 11B: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
July 23, 2006
Honoring the Questions
In my High School Latin class, I could spit out the future verb endings faster than anyone else. I know this for a fact because when we played quiz game on Fridays I always won that challenge. Now you may not all be familiar with Latin, but I bet you are familiar with class quizzes whether they come in the form of games or tests. I am sure more than one of you has at least witnessed, if not personally experienced, the reward given those for knowing the right answer and giving it faster than anyone else. In this country, our entire education system as well as most work places assigns high value on knowing the answers. Learning, whether in Kindergarten or tenth grade or on-the-job training, is mostly defined as finding the right answers and then committing them to memory so that you can use the information. Having the answers is valuable. Information is power.
But are answers the only information that counts? What about the questions? What if we lived in an economy where asking questions was valuable? Where the questions themselves were significant regardless of the answers? What does it look like to honor the question?
So much of our life and labor is spent looking for the answers: what should I be when I grow up, how can I get a better job, where can I find a life partner. From the time we begin our formal education in this country we spend at least the next 12 years learning the answers. We learn that answers are what we seek. Questions are only a vehicle to get us to the answer. But what would it look like if instead o spending our lives learning the answers, we spent them learning the questions?
What does it look like to honor the question? For the past two days I have been with a small group of people (some from Cathedral, some from our diocese, some from beyond our diocese), committed to nurturing youth in the church as we attended a training for mentors in our Journey to Adulthood Training. We began this training with a discussion about spiritual formation. How we are formed as spiritual people? Who are we as people in relationship to God and one another? What dies it look like to be people who seek God in all places in all times in all things? The grounding question for people who understand that relationship to God is primary, is: Where is God in this? This question assumes that God is. God is present. God is caring. God is where and when. If, as a spiritual person, as a Christian, a follower of Christ, I intend my life to be one lived in relationship to God (and God is in relationship to us whether we recognize it or no), then the foremost driving principle of my life becomes where am I in relation to God and God’s people?
The gift of spiritual formation lies not is discovering THE ANSWER to who I am or what God has planned for me, but rather in the process of discovery itself. The journey rather than the destination becomes key. Being intentional about our spiritual formation leads us to let go of a determination to get to the answer as quickly as possible and to take hold of a commitment to investigating the questions. To honor the question takes time. It is not as quick as learning the answers and having them at the ready. Spiritual formation often requires us to slow down. This often flies in the face of (or in the pace of) our fast-paced frenetic culture. We are so busy getting things done, getting from place to place, getting the answers, that we often miss the point.
Today’s Gospel lesson reflects this frenetic pace--but it wasn’t meant to. If you thought the grammar of the Gospel reading in your bulletin was a bit off, you would be right—it is not a typo. Part of the story is missing. While the reading comes from the 6th chapter of Mark, you will notice that several verses are omitted. It caught me up short when I first read the lesson in preparing for today. What is missing? Just the small matter of the feeding of the 5000, Jesus walking on water, and the stilling of the storm. Here’s how the full story goes. Jesus had called the twelve together and sent them out two-by-two. They went about proclaiming God’s word, casting out demons, and healing the sick. Then they report back. They gather around Jesus telling him all they have done. Jesus says come and rest, let’s go to a deserted place. They had been so busy they hadn’t even had time to eat. The only problem with this plan is that people see them going, take a short-cut, and the place is not so deserted when they get there. As Jesus goes ashore, he sees the great crowd and has compassion for them “and he began to teach them many things.” And our reading this morning continues “When they had crossed over they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat.”
In that gap, in that space between getting to one destination and the next, a lot of life happens. 5000 people are feed from five loaves and two fish. The disciples leave in a boat and get caught in a storm. Jesus walks across the lake to meet the disciples and stills the storm. Then they land at Genesseret. Without this middle part, without the meat of the story, our reading portrays a frenetic pace of going and going. No time to rest and look and see. I think it ironic that the editors cut it this way. I think this kind of editing is something we do all the time. We get to the point and get to it fast, but in doing so we miss so much. This reading also models the lives we lead. The editing of this story depicts Jesus’ ministry as going, going, going. Quickly moving from one destination to another with no time to eat or think or ponder life’s questions along the way.
Does that sound at all familiar to you? How often are we so focused on our destination, that we see nothing along the way? And what is between the destinations in our Gospel story? What is found along the way from the deserted place to the shores of Gennesaret? Well, Jesus for one thing. Along with food, fellowship and a miracle or two, Evidence of God’s power and sustaining love.
Now don’t despair. We will get the feeding story next week (although it will be John’s version). And we will get fed here today and it is not fast food. It is the sustaining food of community, of prayer, of God’s love.
What might we discover if we slow down enough along the way to see where we are? How might we be fed? Where might we encounter God if we pay attention to the in-between places? Make no mistake, Jesus is found in the frenzy as well and he offers healing there. But what more of God and ourselves is there for us to revel in if we remember the in-between places? What happens if we ponder the questions?
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
