Who are
we? Why are we here? Where are we going?
These are the fundamental questions that we all ask. When sleep simply will not
come, and we lie wide awake in our beds…when we get out of our cities, away
from the traffic and the street lights and stare up at the stars… when we look
out from the top of a high mountain into the valley beneath… or when our ship
sails far from shore and we look at the vastness of the ocean, these questions come
to us.
Three
writers epitomize the modern world’s answer to these questions: Charles Darwin,
Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx.
Although
Darwin lost his faith, he retained a profound reverence for the beauty and
mystery of nature. So although Darwin himself might not have put it this way,
Darwinists would answer our three questions this way: We are predatory animals,
the combination of enlarged brains and carnivorous appetites, who have been
more successful than most animals in reproducing and feeding ourselves.
Freud
would say that we are motivated by unconscious motives that are most
irrational. Some of our motivations are inherited from our parents and other
ancestors. Some of our motives are pure appetite, and reason tries to
adjudicate among these conflicting motivations.
Marx
would say that we are the unconscious agents of history that will realize
itself through us whether we like it or not, that economic forces beyond our control
move us about like pawns.
But there
is another conversation and other answers to these questions.
You have
often heard me said that we are part of a great conversation. None of us has
ever prayed alone or read the Bible alone. Our prayers are part of the prayers
of the saints that are always rising to God’s heavenly court. And whenever we
read the Bible, we read it in conversation with every minister, Sunday School
teacher, or Bible study leader that we have ever heard.
Today’s
readings add several voices to that conversation.
The
Psalmist tells us:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
5
What is man that you should be mindful of him? *
the son of man that you should seek him out?
the son of man that you should seek him out?
6
You have made him but little lower than the angels; *
you adorn him with glory and honor;
you adorn him with glory and honor;
7
You give
him mastery over the works of your hands; *
you put all things under his feet:
you put all things under his feet:
And
according to the author of Genesis:
The LORD
God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a
helper as his partner."
Then, the author of Hebrews: “Long
ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in
these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…”
Mark’s gospel is also part of the
conversation, but I will return to Mark.
What answers do these three
authors gives to the questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we
going?
The Psalmist tells us that we are
powerful but finite. God made us “lower than the angels,” but adorned “with
glory and honor.” We have mastery over the works” of God’s hands and God has
“put all things under his feet.”
In other words, the psalmist
answers our questions in a vertical way. Our status, our dignity, is primarily
dependent on our relationship with God. If you will, we are part of a divine
chain of command, a celestial flow chart, or as the ancients expressed it, the
great chain of being. First God, then the heavenly beings, then human beings,
then animals.
But notice that the psalmist does
not ask the question in the abstract. She does not way “Who are we?” She says,
“What is man that you should be mindful of him?” IN other words, the psalmist
askes some ONE this question. Specifically, she asks God.
Genesis also adds a voice to our conversation.
God said, “Let there be light and there was light… God said
let the earth bring forth living things… God made the greater light to rule the
day and the lesser light to rule the night…”
The first chapter of Genesis is a litany. God speaks… and
the invisible chorus sings, “It is good… it is good… it is very good.”
But at last we are told that something was NOT good – It is
NOT good for man to be alone.
To our
questions – Who are we? Why are here? Where are we going? – Genesis answers us
horizontally: Humans are social creatures. Humans are a we, not an I. It is not
good for us to be alone.
The
author of the letter to the Hebrews also speaks:
“Long ago
God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in
these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…”
Who are
we? We are beings addressed by God. God does not merely speak to us, God does
not just send us messengers. God sends his Son, his heir, the very agent of
creation itself.
Finally,
the gospel of Mark speaks:
Some Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is
it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?...Moses allowed a man to write a
certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." And Jesus replied, “What God
has joined together, let no one separate…. Whoever divorces
his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces
her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."
At first
glance, Mark does not seem to be addressing our three questions, but I think
there is an implied answer.
First,
let me observe that this is one of Jesus’ so-called “hard sayings.” In Mark,
Jesus prohibits all divorce. Period. This is not just hard for us. It was also
hard for the early church. Mark was the first gospel written. A few years
later, Matthew’s gospel was written and records Jesus’ teaching on divorce
differently. In Matthew, Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for
unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”
In other
words, the Spirit guided the early church to a broader understanding of
divorce. And I believe the Spirit continues to guide us.
But think
again of our questions - who are we? Why
are we here? Where are we going?
The
answer implied in Jesus’ teaching on divorce is also a horizontal answer to our
questions. We exist in a network of mutual obligation. We have responsibilities
to others and they have responsibilities to us.
In Mark,
Jesus was answering the question about divorce in a way that was favorable to
women. In his time, a divorced woman would likely have no way to protect
herself and no one to protect her, so the prohibition of divorce was Jesus way
of standing up and speaking out for the rights of women.
We live
in a culture that does not want to hear the Bible’s answers to these questions.
Our
culture wants to reduce us to individual social atoms floating in a vacuum.
Culture wants to tell us that all of our relationships are voluntary, that we
do not have obligations to others, obligations that we cannot shirk or can only
shirk at our peril.
And above
all our culture does not want us to believe that we are addressed by a voice
from beyond, a voice that says, “You did not create yourselves. You have
obligations beyond yourself to others.”
When Harvard University built Emerson Hall in 1900 and named
it after distinguished Harvard grad Ralph Waldo Emerson, they asked the faculty
for a suitable inscription for the building. The faculty suggested, “Man is the
measure of all things,” but Pres. Eliot chose instead, “What is man that thou
art mindful of him?”
This
question, the psalmist’s question, “What is man…” is not asked in a vacuum. It
begins and ends with a word of praise. “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy
name…” That is the King James’ translation. I can’t stand the way it is
translated in our prayer books, “O Lord, our governor, how excellent is thy
name…” because I do not know any governors who have excellent names.
But what
I am saying and what I think the psalmist is saying is that the only way to ask
and answer these questions correctly is to do so in the context of worship.
Who are
we? Why are we here? Where are we going?
To ask
and answer these questions well, we must begin and end with the worship of God.
O Lord,
our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.
