“It Ain’t Necessarily So”
Mark 8: 27-38
February 23, 1997
We live in exciting and unnerving times. New living arrangements are emerging throughout the world. New paradigms are being fashioned. Old truths are being discarded, and new virtues are replacing ancient idols. Partially because we’ve learned more about ourselves, and partially because the world is shrinking. What seemed like certainty fifty years ago is being replaced by a belief in the changing capriciousness of history.
When I was growing up, I was taught that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. But now I know differently. We all were taught that the time-honored ways were the best ways. But much of what we’ve seen in the last century has made us question those assumptions. Truths that were imprinted upon our psyches at an early age have been found to be seriously flawed.
One of the most enduring songs of the past fifty years comes from the show Porgy and Bess. The title is “It Ain’t Necessarily So./’ That song title serves as a symbol for many of our learnings in the last twenty years. It ain’t necessarily so what we’ve been taught, what we’ve been scripted, what the world has held out to us as truth. “It ain’t necessarily so.”
And that/s also our theme for Lent: “It ain’t necessarily so.” Lent is a time in the Christian year when we are asked to dig deep into the truths that we hold. We are asked during these forty days to plumb the depths of what we hold dear, to go into the abyss. We are asked to go against the grain and question long-held assumptions about God, ourselves, and our relationships
For Christians, the symbol of Lent is forty days in the wilderness. Forty days in the desert. Forty days of digging into the depths of what we hold as truth.
Let me warn you ahead of time. Lent is not a time of comfort for those who take seriously the call to enter into the spirit of this season. We are being asked to destabilize our beliefs, to look at our world, our culture, our common wisdom, and say, “It ain’t necessarily so.”
There are many ways that we might describe the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. One of the most current ones is to see him as a teacher of subversive wisdom. Much of his teaching seaously questions the conventional wisdom of the ages. Jesus often does this by delivering one-liners that challenge and invite us to transform our perceptions of what is truth.
Take the one-liner in our Gospel today (I’m using the New English Bible translation): “For what does a person gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self?”
The wisdom of the world says: be successful, make something of yourself, accomplish some goals. And then Jesus comes along and says: “It ain’t necessarily so.” As a matter of fact, in following the path of conventional wisdom, you are in danger of losing your soul.
Two illustrations that come from contemporary writers might serve to point out what Jesus meant by this one-liner. The first is from Peter Drucker, the management guru. In one of his books, he points out how business people can get seduced into the “accomplishment game.” The person trying to justify their existence, striving for success, and climbing to the top of the ladder is often in trouble. And sometimes, in the dark of the night, he or she begins to dig deep and raise the question, “Is it worth is?” Many people, Drucker points out, “as they climb up the ladder . . . the ladder is leaning against the wrong building.’/ Or to put it in more crude terms, winning in the rat race often only shows that you’re a rat.
The second illustration comes from Sherwood Anderson. In one of his essays, he presents us with a theory which he calls “The Grotesque.” it runs something like this. All around us in the world are many truths to live by, and they all have merit. The truth of thrift, the truth of self-reliance, the truth of patriotism. But as people go through life, they often snatch at one of these truths and make it a priority, which can turn them into a “grotesque.”
Thrift, for example, is a good think. It can be a commendable goal. But if we place too much emphasis upon this virtue, we often degenerate into hoarding. And hoarders can become misers. And then they become grotesque. Conventional wisdom also tells us that self-reliance is a good thing. And to be successful, you must first learn to be independent. The problem is that self-reliance easily degenerates into indifference, and indifference can become a lack of compassion towards those who are not able to make it in our society. This hardening toward others often turns us into “a grotesque.”
The theory of the grotesque in Gospel terms is that you can gain all the virtues that you were taught as a youngster. You can survive, be successful, achieve all that you set out to accomplish, and still end up being grotesque, losing your soul.
Good people, it’s not accidental that the most notable symbol of our faith is a broken, ruined, and abandoned human being. The image revolutionized our way of thinking and questions our very priorities. The Jesus we meet in scriptures keeps exploding our boundaries and inviting us to dig deeper than the conventional wisdom of our society.
Lent is a time for questions, for digging, for looking closely at what we have been taught. The crucified one reminds us that we can achieve all sorts of things and still become grotesque, lose ourselves, and our souls.
Let me leave you with some words from Nikos Katzantzakis, as we move into the desert of Lent. Katzantzakis commands us to listen to our depths and dig. Don’t simply accept what is, but dig deeper.
“A command rings out within me: Dig!
What do you see?
Men and birds, water and stones_
Dig deeper! What do you see?
Ideas and dreams, fantasies and lightning flashes!
Dig deeper! What do you see?
I see Nothing! A night as thick as death. It must be the wilderness.
Dig deeper!
Ah! I cannot penetrate the dark. But as I enter into it,
I proceed, trembling. One foot grips the secure soil, the other gropes in the darkness above the abyss.”
This Lent, I invite you to dig, to walk into the dark, to put aside the wisdom of the world, to gain your own soul. For what will it gain you – if you win the rat race and lose your own self?
Amen