What Lies Beneath

Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath (2000)

Mark 10:17-31

October 11, 2015

Myers Park Baptist Church 

Charlotte, NC

Inner-life questions are the kind everyone asks, with or without benefit of God-talk: “Does my life have meaning and purpose?” “Do I have gifts that the world wants and needs?” “Whom and what shall I serve?” “Whom and what can I trust?” “How can I rise above my fears?”
—Parker Palmer

If you are a fan of Hollywood movies, you may remember the pyscho-thriller “What Lies Beneath.” To even mention it 15 years after it was in theaters is to give it far too much credit. Its only redeeming quality was that its co-stars Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer were very easy to look at. The couple that Ford and Pfeiffer played, Dr. Norman Spencer and his wife Claire had a perfect marriage and a perfect life, at least on the surface, until the stories they told themselves and others began to unravel as what lay beneath bubbled up and broke the surface. This morning’s gospel lesson from Mark 10 is no psycho-thriller, but it is no less unsettling for what lies beneath in it.

On my first day of seminary, I walked across campus to the cafeteria with several of my new classmates. We chatted about where we were from and about our current and previous work in churches. Kirby was quieter than the rest of us and a decade or more older. He had never served a church in a paid capacity, he said. He was a businessman who two years earlier decided that God was telling him to sell everything he had and give the money to the poor. When he informed his pastor of what God was telling him, his pastor was not as fond of the idea as Kirby and God were. “If you do that,” his pastor asked, “who will provide for your wife and your two daughters? How will you survive?” Kirby quoted Genesis 22:14: “The Lord will provide,” and his pastor said they should talk again. The eventual outcome of many conversations was that Kirby’s pastor convinced him that what God was really saying was that he should sell his possessions and go to seminary. So he quit his job and sold his family’s house, and the four of them moved from Florida to North Carolina for Kirby to attend seminary. When we reached the end of the cafeteria serving line, Kirby headed off to join our classmates at a table, and I made a beeline to the opposite side of the room because I had no interest in eating lunch with someone who was obviously crazy. I had spent my whole life in church, and I had never met anyone who actually believed that God wanted her or him to sell everything she or he had.

As I sat eating my lunch alone, it dawned on me that what really disturbed me was not that Kirby might be playing with several cards short of a full deck. What really disturbed me was that his faith story called into question the authenticity and integrity of my faith story. I also believed that I was doing what God was telling me to do, but of course I was sane and he was crazy. Says who? And then there were my underlying assumptions and expectations. I assumed and expected that going to seminary would lead to a job and home ownership and providing for my family. But this guy had all that and gave it up to go to seminary. Suddenly, it didn’t look as though I was following Jesus at all. I was just one more Baby Boomer chasing the American dream conveniently covered with a thin gospel veneer.

So tell me this: What do you do when the story you are telling yourself and others about your life becomes hollow, inauthentic, fraudulent even? What happens when the “inner-life questions,” as Parker Palmer calls them, bubble up and break the surface? That’s what happens in this morning’s gospel lesson. The characters who hear Jesus’ words are forced to face what lies beneath:  those inner-life questions that call into question our assumptions and our expectations.

A college development officer tells the story of working with one of the school’s major donors to cultivate a large gift to the college from a friend of the donor. The donor had committed $2 million to the college’s capital campaign, and the plan was to ask a friend of his for a gift of $1 million. The friend’s net assets were in excess of $110 million, so the gift he would be asked to give was about nine tenths of one percent of his net assets. The donor and his friend each flew their private jets into a regional airport in a nearby state. Over dinner, the donor and the development officer talked about the college’s vision and its mission and its capital campaign and the gift the donor had made. Finally, the donor popped the question: “We want to ask you to consider giving the college a $1 million gift.” The friend was quiet for a moment; and then he responded, “O my, no. I couldn’t possibly afford to give a gift that large.” On the flight home, the disappointed development officer asked the donor, “How can he possibly think that he can’t afford to give a million dollars?” “I see it all the time,” the donor replied. “No matter how much some people have, they are insecure and anxious and afraid they will lose control of it.”

In that development officer’s story and in this morning’s gospel lesson what people have is on the surface; but insecurity, anxiety, and fear of losing control lie beneath. When the man who came to Jesus heard the words Jesus spoke to him, “he was shocked” and grieved. But it’s important for us to see that what Jesus said in Mark 10 was no less disturbing to the disciples: After the man left, Jesus said, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” and the disciples were immediately “perplexed at these words,” because these words violated their assumptions and expectations as well as those of the man who left. And when Jesus went on to say, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25), the disciples were “greatly astounded.”

In the fall of 2003 when I was preparing to preach this passage from Year B in the lectionary cycle, I came to the realization that one reason being the pastor of a tall-steeple church is exhausting is that you expend an enormous amount of energy trying to shove camels’ behinds through needles’ eyes, and both the needle and the camel are resistant to the enterprise. The resistance of the needle is grounded in the laws of physics. But the resistance of the camel is grounded in insecurity, anxiety, and fear of losing control.

Jesus knew that. That’s why Mark 10:21 says that Jesus, looking at the man with many possessions, “loved him.” Jesus “loved him.” Jesus looked at him and loved him because Jesus saw right through the veneer to what lies beneath. Jesus saw what the man with many possessions had not yet realized: The very things on which he was relying for security, contentment, and control—in his case, rules-based righteousness and possession-based contentment—were actually increasing his insecurity, compounding his anxiety, and exacerbating his fear of losing control. The story he was telling himself about his life was a fraud.

So what do you do when you awaken one day to realize that your dream job is a nightmare; that the home of your dreams is a haunted house; that your confidence in your own righteousness or your faithfulness or your talent or your good looks or your good health or your friends or your spouse or your parents or your children or anyone or anything else has been misplaced? When the story you have been telling yourself about your life becomes hollow, inauthentic, fraudulent even? What do you do when that happens?

First, like the characters in Mark 10, you are shocked, perplexed, and greatly astounded because your expectations and assumptions have been violated, destroyed. Second, you grieve because what you have lost is enormous. Whatever else you have lost, you have lost your understanding of yourself and your faith story and your relationship with God and with others and with the world. And then, third, if you are wise, you stop and strip off the veneer; you dispossess and divest yourself of the hollow, inauthentic, and fraudulent story you have been telling yourself and others.

Here’s what I know: If you will strip off the veneer to expose your insecurity, anxiety, and fear to the light of day, you will discover beneath them the solid mahogany, the genuine ebony, the cherry through and through that Jesus sees and loves in you. Looking on you in all your insecurity, anxiety, and fear of losing control, Jesus loves you. And here’s what else I know: When you discover that kind of love, accept that kind of love, and are embraced by that kind of love, you will discover meaning and purpose in your life; you will accept whom and what you shall serve; you will embrace whom and what you can trust; and you will rise above your fears. You will.

And one last thing I know: Doing that is experiencing the kingdom of God; and when you do, the needle, the camel, and the tall-steeple preacher will all breathe a giant sigh of relief. 

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.