Something Someone Somewhere Said
(#1 in the “Only This and Nothing More?” Lenten series)
Someone has testified somewhere,
“What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
or mortals that you care for them?”
(Hebrews 2:6)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the First Sunday in Lent, February 14, 2016
(Volume 5 Number 28)
St. James United Methodist Church, 321 Pleasant Valley Drive, Little Rock, AR 72212
“Who are we?” That age-old quest for self-understanding is captured in the pages of the
Hebrew bible in a simple question, “What is man?” That’s the elegant translation of the King
James, faithful to the Hebrew original, mah enosh? Psalm 8 asks the question in a context of
praise and adoration: “O LORD our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth . . . When I
behold your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have
established, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you’ve made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor!”
Because the word “man” comes across gender specific, that elegant translation has become
regarded as outdated and thus re-translated, “What are human beings?” There’s no question that
all humanity is in the psalmist’s view. In using enosh -- a word for man seemingly pointing to
his infirmity and frailty -- the psalmist clearly referred, not to male as a gender distinct from
female, but to “mankind” or “humankind.”
The question “What is man?” encapsulates humanity’s search for self-understanding and is
surely one of the most recognizable phrases in the Hebrew bible. It’s no wonder it’s quoted in
other biblical passages. In the scholarly world it’s paramount to academic integrity to provide
citation when quoting another. To do otherwise, to pass off another’s work as one’s own, is
regarded as dishonest, a form of literary piracy known as plagarism. While in seminary at
Memphis and at the University of Michigan I remember well the many “midnight drearies”
when I “pondered, weak and weary” working to get the bibliography just so, perfectly right as
guided by The Chicago Manual of Style with its complicated rules on citation. It seems I had to
study the manual as much as I did my research subject, leaving me “nodding, nearly napping.”
I haven’t picked up The Chicago Manual of Style in many years, but I’m pretty sure it would not
be allowed to cite a known passage with, “Someone Somewhere Said.” Still, I love how the
writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews introduces his quote of Psalm 8, “Someone has
testified somewhere.” I assume this intro was a rhetorical device, not to send the unknowing on a
search for chapter and verse, but to spark within the knowing a deep reflection upon the wonder
of humankind’s place in the created universe.
I liked so much the ring of that “Someone Somewhere” citation that I expanded upon it for the
title of this first message in my new Lenten series, “Something Someone Somewhere Said.”
What Something Someone Somewhere Said is a stunning proclamation in Psalm 8 of the worth of
human beings in the creative order. I’ve balanced that wonder, however, a second Hebrew bible
passage using the same question, Mah Enosh, What is Man? quite differently. If Psalm 8 asks
the question in rapturous wonder, the question as Job framed it was in bitterness. For Job it is
not the heavens and the stars that are in view, scanning the heavens in awe, but rather his eyes
fall upon the dust of the earth and the grave as he seeks shelter, feeling himself a target of God.
Job’s asking of the question is entirely appropriate for this First Sunday of Lent, only days
removed from our Ash Wednesday, our mortality experienced as ashes were smeared on our
foreheads to say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
What is man, that You should exalt him,
That You should set Your heart on him,
What have I done to You, O watcher of men?
Why have You set me as Your target?
Why then do You not pardon my transgression,
And take away my iniquity?
For now I will lie down in the dust,
And You will seek me diligently,
But I will no longer be.
Where the psalmist sees the stars, Job sees the grave. Holding Psalm 8 and Job 7 in balance, we
discover a paradox, both the littleness and the greatness of mankind.
The cover of our bulletin stacks the images I’ve used to advertise this series, inspired by the
famous riddle of the Sphinx: “What is the creature that in the morning goes on four legs, at
midday on two legs, and in the evening on three legs?” The Sphinx killed herself when Oedipus,
the mythical King of Thebes, guessed correctly that the creature is none other than mankind – an
infant crawling on all fours, an adult on two, and the elderly aided with a cane.
On Ash Wednesday I placed ashes on the foreheads of those in each of these categories – from
babies cradled the arms of mom to the elderly unable to bend at the chancel, standing with the
aid of a cane. With each, the formula was the same, the baby no less than the aged: “Remember
that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” At the chancel we witnessed a panoramic
illustration –cradle to grave -- of our Lenten theme of human mortality.
I want us to ask in this series, is our physical journey from cradle to grave all there is to our
being human? Only This and Nothing More? Let me tell you where I found the words with
which I title this series. They conclude the first stanza of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-Only this and nothing more."
Perhaps baring our forehead at the chancel rail to receive Ash Wednesday’s black ashes is not
unlike The Raven in one respect, that, coming here, we are responding to a knock on our
chamber door (by which I mean these lodgings of flesh we inhabit). Do we not, arriving here,
ask the question, “What is man?” Receiving the ashes, is the paramount question not, are we
“Only This and Nothing More?”
Something Someone Somewhere Said suggests otherwise. In truth, we really don’t need
Someone Somewhere to tell us what we already know, possessing as we do this universally
innate sense as we confront our human demise that our story is NOT Only This and Nothing
More, that in fact Something More is compounded within the human molecule that separates us
from other orders of Being. We call it, the divine image, reflecting upon sacred text, “Let us
make man in our image, in our likeness.” The human sense of being unique finds expression in
God breathing life into dust, placing a treasure within our “chamber,” this lodging of flesh.
Are we not the only creature called to participate with our creator in the journey of our
becoming? What other collection of molecules so complex as to be called a living thing has the
capacity to look in the mirror and ask, “Mah Enosh -- What is man?” When we affirm, as did
the psalmist, our human uniqueness, it gives rise to a sense that we are on a journey not yet
complete, even at death. All living things change -- physically, morphologically – but though
change inherent to all living things, humankind is gifted to ponder its own identity in the face of
those changes, thus hearing the tapping on our chamber door, the Call to Become more
tomorrow – spiritually, morally -- than we are today.
These dimensions of heart and soul answering to a higher Calling constitute the treasure within
that separates us. This treasure is the basic constituent element to our Being Human. What an
interesting word pair! Human . . . Being. We are, essentially, Being. Very different though, is
our Being from, say, Bird-Being, or Bug–Being, or Plant-Being. Human Being suggests that we
can look beyond this moment, beyond what we have become. All living things change. The
trees around us soon shifting from the barrenness of winter to the blossoms of spring. The
difference for humans is that we not only are subject to change, but that, knowing we are subject
to change, that knowledge is sensed as a tapping and a rapping on our chamber door, beckoning
us toward nothing less than transcendence, the ultimate fulfillment of our meaning as created in
the image of God.
No, we are not “Only This and Nothing More.” We are More than dust returning to dust.
Something Someone Somewhere Said – I think it was the Apostle Paul writing to Corinth –
affirms that we have within these Clay Jars (the Chamber of the Flesh), a treasure. Do you not
feel it, this Treasure within? Is this Treasure not why you bother to come here at all – to a
sanctuary, to hear sermons from a pulpit that may vaguely be recalled in the future as Something
Someone Somewhere Said? Is not opening yourselves to a rapping, a tapping on the chamber
door not a seeking for a deeper understanding of who you really are, with the glad affirmation
that you, at last, are NOT Only This and Nothing More?
Or, perhaps – will you imagine with me? – perhaps we ARE Only This and Nothing More.
Perhaps we are, at last, only what we can weigh and measure and analyze with our wonderful
scientific tools. Perhaps. Still, there’s Something Someone Somewhere Said that suggests
otherwise. Again, I think it was Paul: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner
nature is being renewed day by day . . . for we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot
be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, what cannot be seen is eternal.”
If this is true, if what we see is temporary and what we don’t see is eternal, then it follows that
we are NOT “Only This and Nothing More.” Something More must be compounded into the
human molecule. “What?” you will ask. Surely Something Someone Somewhere Said could
shed light on the question. What is the Treasure? What is the Something More?
I think, to stay with Paul for a third quote from 2 Corinthians, the Treasure, this Something More
is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Paul wrote that the
same God who said, “Let there be light” has shined in our hearts to give us the knowledge of this
Treasure of Light.
Light! Do you see it, shimmering with warmth, pouring like a waterfall through these inspiring
stained glass windows, washing over the Holy Table as if to declare its elements true sacrament.
This vision of light is for you, a gift. It does not arrive here through mere human doing, through
human genius or human effort. Beyond our creating are the electromagnetic waves launched by
a colossal ball of flaming hydrogen, streaking over these last eight minutes through 93 million
miles of interstellar blackness just to flood our sanctuary with light.
Literally, factually, here is a vision created for you! Amazing, that! But far more amazing than
THAT, is THIS . . . THIS Knowing of THAT! This knowing that Someone Somewhere bid me
open my eyes to glory, a knowing leading to deep questions, such as, “Mah Enosh” -- “What is
Man?”
May your answer to that question this Lent be as the psalmist, drawing your eyes to the heavens,
rather than that of Job, dragging your eyes toward the dust.
What is Man!
The sun’s light when he unfolds it,
Depends on the organ that beholds it.
(William Blake,1793)