The Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” (Mark 8:11-12)
Why do we ask for signs? For guidance. For reassurance. As markers that we’re on the right path. Signs can come in many forms. Sometimes they are as obvious as voices from heaven. Sometimes they are subtler: a thought, an intuition, a synchronicity, a word from a friend at just the right moment. Sometimes when I am trying to make a particularly important decision I look for the sign: after all the rational analysis and weighing of pros and cons and careful balancing of factors I wait for the intuitive “click,” or the significant coincidence, or the gut feeling that one option is just right — the suprarational sign of guidance for that moment.
But the Pharisees who come to Jesus are looking for a sign for a different reason. They seek a sign “to test him.” They want proof — irrefutable, incontestable, unquestionable proof — that Jesus is acting on behalf of God. They want something that will make them believe that Jesus is doing what God wants done in the things he does and the precepts he teaches and his (to them) radical notion that devotion to the reign of God made manifest in love of God and love of neighbor is more important than devotion to Torah. They want a sign to make them believe.
There’s just one problem: signs don’t work that way. Signs can’t force belief, but instead function within an already existing system of significant relationship. That’s true not only of religious signs, but of all kinds of signs. These words you’re reading, for instance: they are, on one level, nothing but glowing pixels, nothing but a series of shapes and squiggles against a background field. The shapes and squiggles on their own can’t communicate anything to you. But you are reading them and understanding them (I presume) because you and I share a relationship as speakers of English. It is the existing system of word-meanings, and the metaphorical power of meanings to connect with and point to deeper and wider and more suggestive meanings, and the presumption of trust that I am trying to say something and you are trying to understand it, that make all these shapes and squiggles come together to signify, to point to, a reality that is bigger than they are on their own. These word-signs can’t make you understand anything; but because you begin with a basic belief that they say something, they may have the power to point you to a new understanding that wasn’t in you before.
It is the same with religious signs. Miracles, healings, voices from heaven, intuitions, visions, feelings of transcendence, multiplications of loaves and fishes, rising from the dead — they can’t compel belief in anyone. They function as signs, they point to special meanings, because they function within an already existing system of relationships. The sign cannot prove the relationship, but the relationship is revealed in the sign. If you hold back from the relationship, if you’re not willing to attempt the relationship even provisionally, even experimentally — then you’ll never understand the sign. Jesus says no sign will be given to the Pharisees, not because he refuses to give it, but because they refuse to try to believe him, even to experiment with believing him, and so they refuse to receive it.
Christians believe that our primary relationship, the relationship in which all other relationships are comprehended and sustained, is our relationship with God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” That fundamental relationship is what gives the potential of significance to everything else we say and do and feel and experience. In a sense, therefore, our lives are surrounded by signs, the very texture of every momentary experience is filled with factors that point beyond themselves to the love of God. That can’t be proven to someone who chooses not to experiment with experiencing life that way; these aren’t signs by which we test what we are willing to believe. But these are signs that reveal the reality of relationship in God that is always already there.
One of the purposes of the disciplines of Lent is to sharpen our ability to read the signs of everyday experience. Prayer, fasting, giving, reading and meditating on God’s holy Word — all of these build up our awareness of our foundational relationship with God, the ultimate context in which even the most ordinary things become signs that point beyond themselves to extraordinary love. That can be Lent’s gift of wonder and joy.
What signs will you seek today?
Why do we ask for signs? For guidance. For reassurance. As markers that we’re on the right path. Signs can come in many forms. Sometimes they are as obvious as voices from heaven. Sometimes they are subtler: a thought, an intuition, a synchronicity, a word from a friend at just the right moment. Sometimes when I am trying to make a particularly important decision I look for the sign: after all the rational analysis and weighing of pros and cons and careful balancing of factors I wait for the intuitive “click,” or the significant coincidence, or the gut feeling that one option is just right — the suprarational sign of guidance for that moment.
But the Pharisees who come to Jesus are looking for a sign for a different reason. They seek a sign “to test him.” They want proof — irrefutable, incontestable, unquestionable proof — that Jesus is acting on behalf of God. They want something that will make them believe that Jesus is doing what God wants done in the things he does and the precepts he teaches and his (to them) radical notion that devotion to the reign of God made manifest in love of God and love of neighbor is more important than devotion to Torah. They want a sign to make them believe.
There’s just one problem: signs don’t work that way. Signs can’t force belief, but instead function within an already existing system of significant relationship. That’s true not only of religious signs, but of all kinds of signs. These words you’re reading, for instance: they are, on one level, nothing but glowing pixels, nothing but a series of shapes and squiggles against a background field. The shapes and squiggles on their own can’t communicate anything to you. But you are reading them and understanding them (I presume) because you and I share a relationship as speakers of English. It is the existing system of word-meanings, and the metaphorical power of meanings to connect with and point to deeper and wider and more suggestive meanings, and the presumption of trust that I am trying to say something and you are trying to understand it, that make all these shapes and squiggles come together to signify, to point to, a reality that is bigger than they are on their own. These word-signs can’t make you understand anything; but because you begin with a basic belief that they say something, they may have the power to point you to a new understanding that wasn’t in you before.
It is the same with religious signs. Miracles, healings, voices from heaven, intuitions, visions, feelings of transcendence, multiplications of loaves and fishes, rising from the dead — they can’t compel belief in anyone. They function as signs, they point to special meanings, because they function within an already existing system of relationships. The sign cannot prove the relationship, but the relationship is revealed in the sign. If you hold back from the relationship, if you’re not willing to attempt the relationship even provisionally, even experimentally — then you’ll never understand the sign. Jesus says no sign will be given to the Pharisees, not because he refuses to give it, but because they refuse to try to believe him, even to experiment with believing him, and so they refuse to receive it.
Christians believe that our primary relationship, the relationship in which all other relationships are comprehended and sustained, is our relationship with God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” That fundamental relationship is what gives the potential of significance to everything else we say and do and feel and experience. In a sense, therefore, our lives are surrounded by signs, the very texture of every momentary experience is filled with factors that point beyond themselves to the love of God. That can’t be proven to someone who chooses not to experiment with experiencing life that way; these aren’t signs by which we test what we are willing to believe. But these are signs that reveal the reality of relationship in God that is always already there.
One of the purposes of the disciplines of Lent is to sharpen our ability to read the signs of everyday experience. Prayer, fasting, giving, reading and meditating on God’s holy Word — all of these build up our awareness of our foundational relationship with God, the ultimate context in which even the most ordinary things become signs that point beyond themselves to extraordinary love. That can be Lent’s gift of wonder and joy.
What signs will you seek today?
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