The sendmail distribution contains the the following line in cf/cf/redhat.mc: FEATURE(virtusertable',` -o /etc/mail/virtusertable') ^^ :which needs a ` here. This causes the resulting file to be usable, but missing virtusertable functionality, as well as a few other things that the file contains that get left out after the parsing error.
After working with the server I believe this line must further be changed to: FEATURE(`virtusertable', `hash -o /etc/mail/virtusers') ^^^^ so that sendmail knows what class the virtusers map is, not having this keeps the server from starting.
Fixed in 8.9.3-8