A Teachable Spirit

Matthew 15:10–28

Lincoln and I were hanging out at the house Monday morning as Carter slept in and Christy was at work. We discovered that a package had been delivered. I wasn’t expecting a package and didn’t know what it could be. Lincoln has been going through a bit of a mummy and all things Egypt phase, so Lincoln speculated that there might be a mummy inside the package. Of course, I anticipated the whining and groaning that would commence upon discovering that there was not a mummy inside of the package. And so I proceeded to try and temper his expectations as I told him that it wasn’t a mummy. I knew I hadn’t ordered anything mummy related. Well, my warnings went unheeded. Whatever was inside, was certainly wrapped up very carefully and took a few minutes for me to unseal the package, the box inside the package, and the padding inside the box. All the while, Lincoln was blathering on about how there could be a mummy inside, while I kept telling him — it is not a mummy. Finally, I get to what’s inside and pull out a pan — lo and behold, it was a mummy cake pan. My wife had ordered a mummy cake pan for Lincoln’s birthday unbeknownst to me. This smug little four year old, just knew it all along. It was a mummy. He was delighted. He wanted to bake a cake immediately. He took the pan and started playing with it as if it were just one of his many mummy toys. “Dad, you were wrong.” Thank you son, indeed, I was.

Have you ever been wrong about something that you just knew you were right about?

In a sermon that I gave to you fine people one time, I quoted Mark Twain, saying, [SLIDE #1] “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” I’m here this morning to confess. It wasn’t just the mummy that I was wrong about. According to an article in The New Republic, this is actually a fake Mark Twain quote, popularized because it seems like something Twain would say and it was erroneously used in the 2015 movie, The Big Short, a movie about the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis. But because it fit a point I was trying to make and it just kinda sounded like something Mark Twain would say, I used the quote in my sermon without further investigation. Yet, the quote does not appear in any known work by Mark Twain and appears to have been constructed as the perfect epigraph for a movie that illustrates what can go wrong when an entire industry has a false sense of certainty. The movie was based on the journalist, Michael Lewis’ book by the same name documenting the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis that led to the 2008 economic depression. And Lewis has a similar quote in his book that IS authentic and makes a similar point. This one is from Russian author Leo Tolstoy, which states, [SLIDE #2] “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” (Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion, but as a New Theory of Life, University of Nebraska Press, 1984, page 49)

I think the erroneous Twain quote is better. It is a pithier version of the same truth. And putting this truth in Twain’s mouth as opposed to Tolstoy’s is also preferable because of Twain’s reputation for plain, folksy, truth telling. Yet, it is more than ironic that this quote that is now widely attributed to Mark Twain in just the matter of a few years is actually apocryphal.

Leo Tolstoy is best known for his works of literature with the novels War & Peace and Anna Karenina. The quote comes from a lesser known book that is a treatise on the Christian faith, a book called,The Kingdom of God is Within You. This lesser known book of Tolstoy is credited with being a major influence on Mahatma Ghandi and of Quaker abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison. In this book, Tolstoy makes the claim that Christianity is actually far simpler than most of us assume and that the true teachings of Christ have actually been clouded by the development of Christian doctrine and theology that we’ve laid on top of the plain teachings of Christ. Just before the quote that Lewis uses from The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy is making the point that it is precisely because everybody thinks they’ve understood Christianity for so long, that they have actually missed its core simple truth. In Tolstoy’s own words, [SLIDE #3] “Christ’s teaching is not generally understood in its true, simple, and direct sense even in these days…when the Gospel is influencing every side of human life — domestic, economic, civic, legislative, and international. This lack of true understanding of Christ’s words at such a time would be inexplicable, if there were not causes to account for it. [SLIDE #4] One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers alike are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ’s teaching a long time, and that they understand it so fully, indubitably, and conclusively that it can have no other significance than the one they attribute to it. [SLIDE #5] And the reason of this conviction is that the false interpretation and consequent misapprehension of the Gospel is an error of such long standing. Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full.” (Tolstoy, 49)

According to Tolstoy, the clear heart of Christ’s teaching, in Jesus’ own day was a rejection of all the “elaborate religious observances” and of “law laid upon law” (50). Rather, Tolstoy says, Jesus points us towards a [SLIDE #6] “type of inward perfection, truth, and love in the person of Christ, and — as a result of this inward perfection being attained by men — also the outward perfection foretold by the Prophets — the kingdom of God, when all men will cease to learn to make war, [SLIDE #7] when all shall be taught of God and united in love, and the lion will lie down with the lamb….The fulfillment of this teaching consists only in walking the chosen way, in getting nearer to inward perfection in the imitation of Christ, and outward perfection in the establishment of the kingdom of God.” (50–51).

Tolstoy says that there’s clear evidence of us adding doctrine on top of this core, simple Christian gospel right in the pages of the New Testament. Using the Jerusalem Council compromise in Acts as an example, Tolstoy states, [SLIDE #8] “The first example in the book of Acts is the assembly which gathered together in Jerusalem to decide the question which had arisen, whether to baptize or not the uncircumcised and those who had eaten of food sacrificed to idols. The very fact of this question being raised showed that those who discussed it did not understand the teaching of Christ, who rejected all outward observances — ablutions, purifications, fasts and sabbaths. [SLIDE #9] It was plainly said, ‘Not that which goeth into a man’s mouth, but that which cometh out of a man’s mouth, defileth him,’ and therefore the question of baptizing the uncircumcised could only have arisen among men who though they love their Master and dimly felt the grandeur of his teaching, still did not understand the teaching itself very clearly.” (54)

I would add to Tolstoy’s point that our own doctrines about Scripture itself also add fogginess to the clarity of Christ’s simple message. In holding the well-meaning, but ultimately gospel-distorting view that Scripture is inerrant or in holding that all Scripture is equally inspired and authoritative prevents us from seeing that the Jerusalem Council, in Acts chapter 15 where some were saying that in the church that “unless you are circumcised according to the tradition of Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1) was a step away from the teachings of Christ. The Apostle Paul and Barnabas argued against this position and James, representing the circumcision faction, agreed to a compromise that Gentiles abstain from food “polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled from blood” (Acts 15:20). So if we believe that all Scripture is inerrant or even equally sort of valid — we are forced by our doctrine of Scripture to read this Jerusalem Council compromise as being the will of God, rather than a documentation of the watering down of the clear, concise teachings of Christ — including the teaching we have in our Scripture this morning — that it isn’t what goes into the mouth that defiles, but what comes out.

I think taking on these doctrinal views as part of our faith is usually done in an attempt to be faithful. In this instance, to take Scripture very seriously. And so to suggest that the compromise reached at Jerusalem over table fellowship represented a step away from the core of Jesus’s gospel teachings transgresses this doctrine that Scripture is inerrant or all of equal weight that we are using as a lens through which we are interpreting Scripture, often without awareness. Yet it is this extraneous doctrine about Scripture that is clouding a clearer understanding of the step away from Jesus’s teaching that the compromise over table fellowship represented. This isn’t to say that the Jerusalem Council was the wrong compromise for the early Christian leaders to make — it was probably the best they could do under the circumstances. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t let its presence within the pages of Scripture keep us from seeing that the table fellowship rules of Acts 15 is a step away from the simplicity and truth that Jesus speak of in Matthew 15. It isn’t what goes in that defiles, but what comes out.

There’s another layer of doctrine that I want to expose this morning that I believe can keep us from a clear reading of what is happening in our Scripture this morning. That doctrine is a certain understanding of the perfection of Jesus. The two natures of Christ doctrine was formulated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. This orthodox “Christology,” as it is called teaches that Christ is both fully human and fully divine. Because Jesus is fully divine, we assume that he must therefore be perfect. And this doctrinal assumption that Jesus was perfect in every way, actually prevents us from seeing what I think is most important in our Scripture passage today.

Jesus grows spiritually. Something smaller within him, father away from God is replaced by something larger and closer to the heartbeat of God. But how could that be? If Jesus is perfect, then he can’t have grown, can he? Otherwise, then the place he grew from would have been imperfect. This is how doctrine sometimes get in the way of the simple truths Scripture is trying teach us, particularly in the teachings of Jesus. But it is clear from Scripture that Jesus both grows and does not regard himself as perfect. [SLIDE #10] Consider Luke 2:52, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and humans.” In another instance, Jesus asked a man who addressed him as “Good Teacher,” [SLIDE #11] “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:18)

Perhaps whatever we might think of the perfection of Jesus, it isn’t a static sort of perfection. Jesus too, is on a journey, one that we are all on. And to be authentically on this journey that Jesus invites us towards, we can’t assume we know everything, even core doctrines of the faith, with absolute certainty. Knowing things with certainty prevents us from seeing things we were unaware of. We naturally don’t like to believe things that contradict that which we already believe in. It is called confirmation bias. Jesus actually was a really good example of holding his convictions loose enough that he was able to receive correction from this Canaanite woman. Jesus is at first kind of brash and moves forward with the assumption that his mission is only to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Yet, this woman who was persistent in her faith caused Jesus to realize that he had some blinders on. He was certain of some things that just weren’t so.

The simple message of the gospel that Jesus gives us is that God can transform us and our world from the inside out. This is a journey that even Jesus Christ was on. And thankfully God used the persistent faith of this Canaanite woman to expand Jesus’s vision and mission for his life and ministry.

Friends, I’m convinced that we face very similar situations in our daily lives. We have many, often times unexamined, beliefs that shape how we experience everything that comes to us in life. Sometimes, these beliefs are limiting the expansiveness through which God can use us to be a light in our world. And we can be very stubborn about these beliefs, holding onto them even when facts and situations directly reveal them to be limiting or incorrect. When we opened the package earlier this week, I could have persisted in my belief that this package was merely an aberration and that less than .1% of all packages contain mummies. I could have insisted that Lincoln just got lucky and that a broken clock is right twice a day. I could have accepted that there was a mummy inside that package and still held on to my overly rational and statistically informed belief that 99 times out of 100, I would have been right and so even though I was wrong in this instance, I really made the right call and Lincoln just caught lighting in a bottle. What this misses is that Lincoln’s persistent and vibrant passion for mummies actually made his speculation all the more likely, because they are what caused my wife to order the pan. Jesus could have remained resolute in his belief that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel — but I believe this, ironically would have made Jesus imperfect — stubborn in a way that limited how God could use him. In short, Jesus was willing to take correction. Friends, where do you need correction? It may just be in those places that you’re certain that you don’t. Would you pray with me?