"How To Be Annoying"
Acts 4:1-12
When it comes to being annoying, most people haven't yet begun to plumb the depths of creative exasperation. One of the classic ways is the crank phone call in the middle of the night. Even presidents aren't immune to that one. A New Jersey man telephoned the White House at three o'clock in the morning and asked to speak to President Woodrow Wilson. He said it was a matter of national importance. The operator rang and woke President Wilson.
"The collector of customs here in New Jersey has died," the man informed the President.
"I'm sorry to hear that," President Wilson said, "but why are you calling me at this hour?"
"Because I want to replace him," was the reply.
"Thoroughly annoyed, President Wilson said, "Well, if the undertaker has no objection, neither do I." And he hung up.
Being an annoyance comes naturally for some people. Most of us know someone who absolutely gets on our nerves, as well as the nerves of everyone they meet. I remember seeing, on someone's refrigerator, a picture that was a cartoon caricature of a woman. The woman's hair was thin and scraggly and standing on end--like she had just rubbed her few hairs on a balloon, or stuck her finger in an electric socket. The look on her face wouldn't launch a thousand ships, but probably sink a good many of them. Under the drawing of this woman was the statement, "I've only got one nerve left, and you're getting on it!"
Why is it that some people thrive on that kind of negative attention? They aren't happy until they've thoroughly bugged someone else to the point of frenzy. Sometimes, though, it's not the personality of the individual, but something about the way they act--a certain irritating behavior. Either way, whatever the behavior or personality trait might be, there are a multitude of ways to get on someone's last nerve. And new ones are being created all the time.
It is that particular word that caught my eye in the verses from Acts 4--that the disciples were being annoying. Or at least the temple authorities were annoyed by what the disciples Peter and John were doing. What they were doing was "...teaching the people that Jesus had risen from death." Now that hardly seems like anything to get irked about.
Nothing like in the cartoon, Calvin and Hobbes, who decided to have batting practice in his living room. Calvin's mother came in screaming as she looked at the broken lamps, and raged, "How could you think to do such a thing!?"
To which Calvin replied, "Inherited intelligence?"
The last frame showed him sitting in his room with Hobbes muttering, "I guess that was the wrong answer." Calvin is the king of exasperation. But proclaiming the Resurrection and teaching about Jesus hardly seems to rate with anything on Calvin's level.
Why had the disciples so annoyed the religious authorities? One of the reasons had to do with the idea of the Resurrection itself. One of the brands of religious leaders--the Sadducees--didn't believe in any kind of afterlife, resurrection, or eternity. This is it. This is all we've got. The Sadducees built their whole religious order around that disbelief. Jesus, being resurrected from the grave, flew directly in the face of their precious misconceptions. They were annoyed because they were trying to protect their own religious turf. They didn't care what the facts were. They just wanted to safeguard their ignorance and and absolute refusal to accept the Resurrection as truth.
Have you ever had that happen, when you had some cherished notion being challenged by clear evidence to the contrary? You can only do one of two things at that point. One is to let go of your misconception in light of the clear evidence. The other is to deny the truth in favor of your familiar untruth. The truth may be too hard to swallow, and we often find out how stubborn we can be about our dearly held misconceptions when they get challenged. We would rather argue our ignorance than accept the facts that stare us in the face.
But this is part of the work of the Christian. This is part of how we may be annoying. Cherished customs and beliefs abound. Some have nothing to do with God or God's truth. It is the task of the Christian to challenge these customs and beliefs, especially when they are within us. It is our task to gently, but courageously teach about Jesus so that the strongbox of ignorance may be broken into, and filled with the real currency of God's truth. As with the Sadducees, you will find that people will not welcome your teaching. People will be annoyed with you. It's not that you will come across as a holy-joe or some brash television evangelist. The truth, no matter how it is conveyed is often a harder mirror to look into.
Another reason I think the religious leadership was so annoyed was that these Christians just kept popping up. They wouldn't stay down. They wouldn't raise the white flag, but seemed to come back from defeat even stronger. A kindergarten teacher once told me keeping order in her class was like trying to keep 22 corks all submerged at the same time. You think you've got them down and then a bunch pop up. That’s the way these early Christians were.
The Jewish leaders, after finding out how Peter and John had healed a man, and then had the audacity to teach about Jesus to the crowd that had gathered, were exasperated about how these Christians kept staying afloat; and not only staying afloat, but proving themselves to be strong swimmers in the pool of religion.
It must have been risky for the disciples to do what they were doing--being an annoyance to the established religious leadership. The chief priests, the Sadducees, and the controller of the temple would have all been involved in the plot to arrest Jesus and have him crucified--which would have been only a few months prior to this arrest of Peter and John. The disciples had no reason to believe that they wouldn't be treated any differently than Jesus was. When they were arrested, they could only assume that the cross awaited them.
So, part of being so annoying to any religious establishment is a certain level of boldness--like the disciples were bold. They don't seem to learn lessons well about who's in charge. Part of the exasperation on the part of the religious leaders was that the disciples would take such a risk continuing their teaching activity in the name of Jesus.
It seems to me there are two kinds of risks. There are foolish risks, and there are, for lack of a better term, risky risks. A foolish risk would be like jumping off a tall building and hoping that you can find a way to land softly on your feet. Like the guy who jumped from a building and was heard to say as he passed the 17th floor, "So far, so good."
But there are risky risks. They may have an element of foolishness about therm. But if the risk is taken, and the outcome is successful, a hero is made.
There is an old phrase: "belling the cat." The phrase has the meaning of taking on a great risk for the sake of some great cause, for the benefit of friends, family and neighbors. The expression came from a story, attributed to Aesop, in which a mouse suggested that one from among them should hang a bell on the cat so the mice would know when the cat was coming. The only problem was, as pointed out by one of the older mice: who was going to be the one who tied the bell around the neck of the cat? Who was going to take that great of a risk? Possibly several would have to risk the venture, and die trying, before the task would be completed.
Such was the risk of those early disciples. They certainly had to go out among the cats--the prowling religious leaders who wore no bells--and risk proclaiming and teaching Jesus to the people. I am convinced that had they not taken that risk, we would not be sitting here today. Theodore Roosevelt once said, "No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause."
Life seems to be lived best by those who take a risk with life and what they believe in most deeply. It's not a crazy risk, but it's a risk nonetheless. Sometimes the risk is based on nothing more than a promise. Jesus told his disciples at one time:
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age. (Matthew 28:19-20)
Taking on the risk of being one of Jesus' disciples, carrying with it the responsibility of teaching and proclaiming in some fashion or another, may seem foolish. Taking a risk means sticking with something through to either the bitter or blessed end. The treasure or the trouble, or both, won't be had until the full weight of the risk has been lifted upon your shoulders and you carry it. But the risk is taken because the promise seems greater than the danger.
The disciples had two very opposite signs as to the determination of the success or failure of the risk they took. One was their arrest. If they concentrated on the arrest as a measure of the success of the risk, they would certainly have been fearful and overwhelmed by failure. Peter was one of the clear leaders of the early Christians after Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension. Was this arrest, because the disciples were being annoying to the religious leadership, going to be the end of the church? Would the church be constantly doomed to having its leadership hauled off and nipped at the bud, simply because they wouldn't stop being annoying?
On the other hand, the arrested disciples could have concentrated on the tremendous popular response their teaching and proclaiming created: 2000 new converts! What a wrenching paradoxical response to risk taken! The two disciples were marched off to jail, while at the same time 2000 new Christians were joining ranks with the other believers. Tremendous success joined by apparent tremendous, scary failure. Was the risk worth it?
Taking the risk of belling the cat can get very annoying for the cat. Taking a risk can be deadly for the mice. But for those who chose to face the cat, there is the decision as to whether the cause is worth the risk. The disciples must have made that decision, and thus knew what the possibilities were. So it is with any Christian at any place in any time. The risk is that the faith that we have and the teaching of the resurrected Jesus can annoy those who would rather not face such truth. So it is with Christians who take their faith seriously. So it is with those believers who have decided that speaking the message of Christ is worth the risk--even though you may be annoying to those who'd rather you not do that.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Laughing At The Big, Bad World
"Laughing At The Big Bad World"
1 Peter 1:1-9
John 20:19-31
The main interest in the story from John 20 is Thomas, or “doubting Thomas” as he has come to be known. Thomas is the patron saint of all Missourians: the first to say, “Show me,” and others who just aren’t sure about Jesus and the claims about him.
There are lots of themes we can develop with this Thomas story, but I’m not going to deal with any of them. The reason I’m not is because another statement of Jesus caught my eye instead. It is just as powerful--maybe more so--than the Thomas story. But we (I) have been guilty of racing right over it in order to get to the ever popular doubting Thomas.
Three times Jesus says to the disciples, “Peace to you.” Two of the times are right at the start of the story before we ever get into the doubting Thomas part of it. It’s the second of the “peace” statements that caught my attention, verse 21 and 22. Jesus says, “Peace to you,” but then adds, “Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
We need to get clear in our heads what the situation was. It was the day of the Resurrection. Later on that day, in the afternoon, all the disciples got together in one place. You’d think they’d be excited, hearing the news of the empty tomb. But evidently not. Instead they are brooding and fearful. They’re fearful of the Jews. Three days have come and gone from Jesus’ arrest, trial, beating, being bloodily paraded through Jerusalem carrying his cross, finally to be nailed to and hoisted up on that cross. It would have been absolutely gruesome to see. And frightening. The disciples fear would have come by way of “guilt by association.” Fear that they were next. Fear that the Jews were after them. Fear that what happened to Jesus was possibly going to be their same fate, simply because they followed him around.
The world certainly is a dangerous place. Especially for Christ’s followers. In one of my favorite books, Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character, Christian, is traveling from the City of Destruction to the City of the King. There are all kinds of dangers for the pilgrims who decide to make the journey to the Celestial City.
At one point on his journey he’s traveling with two others: one’s name is Timorous; the other is Mistrust. Suddenly they are terrified to hear the roar of two ferocious and hungry looking lions, one on each side of the road up ahead of them. It looks hopeless with no way past the two beasts. Timorous and Mistrust decide it’s too much--too scary, too dangerous. So they give up their journey; they turn around and head back toward the City of Destruction where they had started out. But Christian decided to keep going forward. The lions certainly represent all that’s terrifying about the world for those who would be Christ’s followers.
For the disciples, fear and paranoia mixed together to mess with their heads. They had to be filled with thoughts about the people who had killed Jesus, like, “they” were out there, that “they” were watching, that “they” were just waiting to pounce. Fear had become the two lions on the other side of those locked doors. Happiness, joy or any sense of peace were no where to be found in that gathering of disciples. So they locked the doors in an attempt to keep the lions out, and to keep themselves in, thinking there was safety in numbers. Security for them were the locks on the closed doors, and being together with other fearful people.
In the Gardner Museum in Boston, there hangs Rembrandt’s painting of “The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee.” It’s a powerful scene. The small boat is being lifted by the crest of a giant wave, sail and lines are torn loose from their riggings, flailing wildly in the wind. Five disciples are struggling, trying to hold desperately to the mast. The rest of the disciples are in the stern of the boat, frightened almost to death, one miserably seasick, hanging over the side. Others are frantically trying to wake Jesus from his sleep. What’s interesting about the painting is that Rembrandt put himself in the picture of panic. He’s standing, clutching one of the stays with one hand, holding his head in terror with his other hand. It’s as if Rembrandt was saying, by painting himself inside the boat, that’s where most of us find ourselves, caught up in the furious storms of life, threatening to sweep us overboard from a place we once thought was safe--or, should be safe. That’s certainly how the disciples were feeling: totally caught up in fear, wondering if there was any safe place.
But I like what Helen Keller once said about security:
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure (to it). Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” (Helen Keller)
The disciples were trying to avoid danger behind their locked doors. But Jesus shattered their trust in their own locks by getting past the lions, past the locks, and past the doors, suddenly showing up.
I believe Jesus knew what it was like to be really afraid. Long before his agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemene, I believe he may have been afraid to enter the world, to do what God asked him to do. Think of what it meant for Jesus to move from his place with the Father and into the world.
It would be a move from security to anxiety.
A move from stability into the unknown.
A move from the heavenly to the human.
A move from the everlasting to death.
A move from the infinite to the finite.
A move from God’s presence to Godlessness.
A move from perfection to sin.
“Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” That’s what the risen Lord said to the fearful disciples, quivering together in that room with locked doors. It’s interesting that Jesus uses two different words here for “sent.” When Jesus says the Father sent him, he uses the Greek word, “apostello.” It’s a combination word: apo and stello. “Apo” means to be separated, one thing from another; to take a part away from the whole. Almost like a birth process. “Stello” means to set in place, or to outfit and prepare oneself. So for God to send Jesus, it meant that Jesus was separated from God, taken away from God, torn away from the wholeness that was God, and outfitted to be set down in another place: the world. That’s how Jesus was sent by the Father into the world.
But when Jesus talks about how he is sending the fearful disciples, he uses a different word for “send.” It is the Greek word “pempo.” Pempo is the word used for thrusting a thing or a person out of one place into another. It means to be propelled out. Add the fact that right after saying this, Jesus breathed on them so they would be surrounded and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit becomes a party to this thrusting out process.
Remember when Jesus was sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil? Jesus is sent into the wilderness with the same word that is used here with the disciples: pempo. Jesus goes from the amazing event of his baptism and hearing the affirmation by the voice of God out of the clouds, and then is literally thrust, pushed out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to face the devil and his temptations.
Remember when the Holy Spirit came upon the believers and they all spoke the message of Jesus in different languages at Pentecost. Then they were sent out into the world, equipped with that amazing gift, by the Holy Spirit. Again the same word for sent is used. Those disciples, now equipped, were thrust and pushed out of their comfortable little room and out into the world by the Holy Spirit.
There are times when we disciples need to be pushed out of our comfortable places and out into the world where there are lions and storm tossed seas. There in the room where the disciples were gathered, on the day of Resurrection, afraid, behind locked doors, Jesus came to them and in effect said, “Look. Just as God separated me from my comfortable place in heaven in His presence; just as God outfitted me and prepared me to set me into the world as a human being, so I push you out into the scary world.” Then Jesus breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, not just to empower them but also to impel them out, pushing them, giving them a swift kick in the pants to get out and past those locked doors.
Back to Pilgrim’s Progress and the journey of Christian with lions ahead on each side of the path. As Christian moved fearfully forward, closer and closer to the teeth and claws of the huge lions, he noticed something else. Both lions were chained. Their legs were chained, and even though they could get close to the path where Christian was walking, they couldn’t get close enough to do any harm to the pilgrims who dared move forward. The thing was, Christian would never have known that had he not kept going on the path and dared get close to the lions. From where he stood, back with Timorous and Mistrust, the chains weren’t visible. So Timorous and Mistrust gave up too soon. Christian walked forward with the terrible roaring in his ears, and the lions clawing at the air, trying to get to him, but out of reach because of their chains. So he got past them unharmed, and continued his journey to the City of the King. Some of the things that scare us, may not be so fearful if we dare get closer to them.
And yet, we must be honest. There are times when the lions are loose. In the opening lines of the first letter of Peter, Peter is addressing fearful Christians who are living in scary times. During that time, the lions had been freed from their chains and were quite literally clawing believers to death. Peter addresses his readers as “exiles...scattered to the four winds.” It is deadly persecution that was causing that scattering. Christians who were captured, simply for being Christians faced numerous deadly tortures.
That’s the world the disciples were pushed out into. That’s the world where the lions were truly loose. Thankfully, we don’t live in those kinds of times. But, there are lions loose, and in more subtle ways are seeking to shred our faith. Those are the conditions under which believers were living, whom Peter is addressing in his letter.
Peter remembers the day he and his companions were pushed out of the room by Jesus. How scared they were. Peter knows that the exiled and fearful believers are asking themselves the same kinds of questions he asked on that Resurrection afternoon: Is it really worth it to be a follower of Jesus? Why believe in something that, just by believing in it, puts your life in jeopardy? Having faith in something, in someone like Jesus, should have a positive effect on your life right now, in the present moment. But will it really be so? Christians were dying simply for being a disciple of Jesus. Peter knows that the people who read his letter will want to know, as he wanted to know on Resurrection Day, if there will be any relief to their anxiety and their crisis of faith, after being pushed out into the world?
So listen to some of the phrases Peter uses in the opening lines of his letter to terrified believers. He says, “Because Jesus was raised from the dead...
Not one is missing, no one forgotten.
God the Father has his eye on each of you.
We’ve been given a brand new life.
We have everything to live for.
God is keeping a careful watch over us and the future.
You’ll have it all--life healed and whole.
You can trust God with laughter and singing.
You’ll get what you’re looking forward to.
“Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” It’s as if these statements Peter shares with scared fellow believers came right from Jesus. Jesus knew them all to be true, because they were true for him as he was sent into the world by the Father. Jesus knew his shoving the disciples out into the world was a scary, and seemingly uncaring thing to do. But, there are certain assurances from God that Peter wanted others to know about, even though they were scared.
The great 17th century French General Vicomte de Turenne was known for marching into battle at the head of his troops. Asked about it one time, he replied, “I conduct myself like a brave man, but all the time I’m afraid. I don’t give in to the fear, but say to my body, ‘Tremble, old carcass, but walk!’ And my body walks.”
Jesus has been our general, who was sent by the Father ahead of us into the battle, into the terrifying world, to face what we, who follow him, may face. By pushing and prodding, Jesus takes us into the world with him, moving us beyond the doors we have kept locked to keep us from facing our fears. All he asks is that we say to ourselves, “Tremble old carcass; but WALK!” knowing we are walking with the Risen Lord.
1 Peter 1:1-9
John 20:19-31
The main interest in the story from John 20 is Thomas, or “doubting Thomas” as he has come to be known. Thomas is the patron saint of all Missourians: the first to say, “Show me,” and others who just aren’t sure about Jesus and the claims about him.
There are lots of themes we can develop with this Thomas story, but I’m not going to deal with any of them. The reason I’m not is because another statement of Jesus caught my eye instead. It is just as powerful--maybe more so--than the Thomas story. But we (I) have been guilty of racing right over it in order to get to the ever popular doubting Thomas.
Three times Jesus says to the disciples, “Peace to you.” Two of the times are right at the start of the story before we ever get into the doubting Thomas part of it. It’s the second of the “peace” statements that caught my attention, verse 21 and 22. Jesus says, “Peace to you,” but then adds, “Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
We need to get clear in our heads what the situation was. It was the day of the Resurrection. Later on that day, in the afternoon, all the disciples got together in one place. You’d think they’d be excited, hearing the news of the empty tomb. But evidently not. Instead they are brooding and fearful. They’re fearful of the Jews. Three days have come and gone from Jesus’ arrest, trial, beating, being bloodily paraded through Jerusalem carrying his cross, finally to be nailed to and hoisted up on that cross. It would have been absolutely gruesome to see. And frightening. The disciples fear would have come by way of “guilt by association.” Fear that they were next. Fear that the Jews were after them. Fear that what happened to Jesus was possibly going to be their same fate, simply because they followed him around.
The world certainly is a dangerous place. Especially for Christ’s followers. In one of my favorite books, Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character, Christian, is traveling from the City of Destruction to the City of the King. There are all kinds of dangers for the pilgrims who decide to make the journey to the Celestial City.
At one point on his journey he’s traveling with two others: one’s name is Timorous; the other is Mistrust. Suddenly they are terrified to hear the roar of two ferocious and hungry looking lions, one on each side of the road up ahead of them. It looks hopeless with no way past the two beasts. Timorous and Mistrust decide it’s too much--too scary, too dangerous. So they give up their journey; they turn around and head back toward the City of Destruction where they had started out. But Christian decided to keep going forward. The lions certainly represent all that’s terrifying about the world for those who would be Christ’s followers.
For the disciples, fear and paranoia mixed together to mess with their heads. They had to be filled with thoughts about the people who had killed Jesus, like, “they” were out there, that “they” were watching, that “they” were just waiting to pounce. Fear had become the two lions on the other side of those locked doors. Happiness, joy or any sense of peace were no where to be found in that gathering of disciples. So they locked the doors in an attempt to keep the lions out, and to keep themselves in, thinking there was safety in numbers. Security for them were the locks on the closed doors, and being together with other fearful people.
In the Gardner Museum in Boston, there hangs Rembrandt’s painting of “The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee.” It’s a powerful scene. The small boat is being lifted by the crest of a giant wave, sail and lines are torn loose from their riggings, flailing wildly in the wind. Five disciples are struggling, trying to hold desperately to the mast. The rest of the disciples are in the stern of the boat, frightened almost to death, one miserably seasick, hanging over the side. Others are frantically trying to wake Jesus from his sleep. What’s interesting about the painting is that Rembrandt put himself in the picture of panic. He’s standing, clutching one of the stays with one hand, holding his head in terror with his other hand. It’s as if Rembrandt was saying, by painting himself inside the boat, that’s where most of us find ourselves, caught up in the furious storms of life, threatening to sweep us overboard from a place we once thought was safe--or, should be safe. That’s certainly how the disciples were feeling: totally caught up in fear, wondering if there was any safe place.
But I like what Helen Keller once said about security:
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure (to it). Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” (Helen Keller)
The disciples were trying to avoid danger behind their locked doors. But Jesus shattered their trust in their own locks by getting past the lions, past the locks, and past the doors, suddenly showing up.
I believe Jesus knew what it was like to be really afraid. Long before his agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemene, I believe he may have been afraid to enter the world, to do what God asked him to do. Think of what it meant for Jesus to move from his place with the Father and into the world.
It would be a move from security to anxiety.
A move from stability into the unknown.
A move from the heavenly to the human.
A move from the everlasting to death.
A move from the infinite to the finite.
A move from God’s presence to Godlessness.
A move from perfection to sin.
“Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” That’s what the risen Lord said to the fearful disciples, quivering together in that room with locked doors. It’s interesting that Jesus uses two different words here for “sent.” When Jesus says the Father sent him, he uses the Greek word, “apostello.” It’s a combination word: apo and stello. “Apo” means to be separated, one thing from another; to take a part away from the whole. Almost like a birth process. “Stello” means to set in place, or to outfit and prepare oneself. So for God to send Jesus, it meant that Jesus was separated from God, taken away from God, torn away from the wholeness that was God, and outfitted to be set down in another place: the world. That’s how Jesus was sent by the Father into the world.
But when Jesus talks about how he is sending the fearful disciples, he uses a different word for “send.” It is the Greek word “pempo.” Pempo is the word used for thrusting a thing or a person out of one place into another. It means to be propelled out. Add the fact that right after saying this, Jesus breathed on them so they would be surrounded and filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit becomes a party to this thrusting out process.
Remember when Jesus was sent into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil? Jesus is sent into the wilderness with the same word that is used here with the disciples: pempo. Jesus goes from the amazing event of his baptism and hearing the affirmation by the voice of God out of the clouds, and then is literally thrust, pushed out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to face the devil and his temptations.
Remember when the Holy Spirit came upon the believers and they all spoke the message of Jesus in different languages at Pentecost. Then they were sent out into the world, equipped with that amazing gift, by the Holy Spirit. Again the same word for sent is used. Those disciples, now equipped, were thrust and pushed out of their comfortable little room and out into the world by the Holy Spirit.
There are times when we disciples need to be pushed out of our comfortable places and out into the world where there are lions and storm tossed seas. There in the room where the disciples were gathered, on the day of Resurrection, afraid, behind locked doors, Jesus came to them and in effect said, “Look. Just as God separated me from my comfortable place in heaven in His presence; just as God outfitted me and prepared me to set me into the world as a human being, so I push you out into the scary world.” Then Jesus breathed on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, not just to empower them but also to impel them out, pushing them, giving them a swift kick in the pants to get out and past those locked doors.
Back to Pilgrim’s Progress and the journey of Christian with lions ahead on each side of the path. As Christian moved fearfully forward, closer and closer to the teeth and claws of the huge lions, he noticed something else. Both lions were chained. Their legs were chained, and even though they could get close to the path where Christian was walking, they couldn’t get close enough to do any harm to the pilgrims who dared move forward. The thing was, Christian would never have known that had he not kept going on the path and dared get close to the lions. From where he stood, back with Timorous and Mistrust, the chains weren’t visible. So Timorous and Mistrust gave up too soon. Christian walked forward with the terrible roaring in his ears, and the lions clawing at the air, trying to get to him, but out of reach because of their chains. So he got past them unharmed, and continued his journey to the City of the King. Some of the things that scare us, may not be so fearful if we dare get closer to them.
And yet, we must be honest. There are times when the lions are loose. In the opening lines of the first letter of Peter, Peter is addressing fearful Christians who are living in scary times. During that time, the lions had been freed from their chains and were quite literally clawing believers to death. Peter addresses his readers as “exiles...scattered to the four winds.” It is deadly persecution that was causing that scattering. Christians who were captured, simply for being Christians faced numerous deadly tortures.
That’s the world the disciples were pushed out into. That’s the world where the lions were truly loose. Thankfully, we don’t live in those kinds of times. But, there are lions loose, and in more subtle ways are seeking to shred our faith. Those are the conditions under which believers were living, whom Peter is addressing in his letter.
Peter remembers the day he and his companions were pushed out of the room by Jesus. How scared they were. Peter knows that the exiled and fearful believers are asking themselves the same kinds of questions he asked on that Resurrection afternoon: Is it really worth it to be a follower of Jesus? Why believe in something that, just by believing in it, puts your life in jeopardy? Having faith in something, in someone like Jesus, should have a positive effect on your life right now, in the present moment. But will it really be so? Christians were dying simply for being a disciple of Jesus. Peter knows that the people who read his letter will want to know, as he wanted to know on Resurrection Day, if there will be any relief to their anxiety and their crisis of faith, after being pushed out into the world?
So listen to some of the phrases Peter uses in the opening lines of his letter to terrified believers. He says, “Because Jesus was raised from the dead...
Not one is missing, no one forgotten.
God the Father has his eye on each of you.
We’ve been given a brand new life.
We have everything to live for.
God is keeping a careful watch over us and the future.
You’ll have it all--life healed and whole.
You can trust God with laughter and singing.
You’ll get what you’re looking forward to.
“Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you.” It’s as if these statements Peter shares with scared fellow believers came right from Jesus. Jesus knew them all to be true, because they were true for him as he was sent into the world by the Father. Jesus knew his shoving the disciples out into the world was a scary, and seemingly uncaring thing to do. But, there are certain assurances from God that Peter wanted others to know about, even though they were scared.
The great 17th century French General Vicomte de Turenne was known for marching into battle at the head of his troops. Asked about it one time, he replied, “I conduct myself like a brave man, but all the time I’m afraid. I don’t give in to the fear, but say to my body, ‘Tremble, old carcass, but walk!’ And my body walks.”
Jesus has been our general, who was sent by the Father ahead of us into the battle, into the terrifying world, to face what we, who follow him, may face. By pushing and prodding, Jesus takes us into the world with him, moving us beyond the doors we have kept locked to keep us from facing our fears. All he asks is that we say to ourselves, “Tremble old carcass; but WALK!” knowing we are walking with the Risen Lord.
Monday, April 2, 2012
A New Way To Be Human
"A New Way To Be Human"
Matthew 6:1-6
Psychotherapist Philip Chard says of pride that given “our national plague of entitlement, combined with our go it alone approach to the world, I’d say we’re full of ourselves.” He went on to write that as a country, “...we are overrun with narcissists, egomaniacs, and spoiled brats.”
I thought about what Chard was saying. I wonder if a country is defined by who we emulate. We honor and respect our military, police and firefighters. But we emulate movie stars, entertainers, and sports figures--most of whom are self-addicted. I mean, how many award shows does one profession need? There are no award shows for plumbers: “And now the award for the best installed trap in a home setting goes to…” Why do singers and movie and television personalities need so many award shows, serving to make them even more self-infatuated?
Pope Gregory the Great, who first created this list of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrote, that in pride, man “favors himself in his thought and walks with himself...and silently utters his own praises.” But now with our country’s rampant narcissism, there are no silent praises. People hire publicists to do that for them.
In Jesus’ day, he only had to talk about people praying in public places for show. Now people act in every negative way imaginable, just to keep themselves in the spotlight and national attention.
People like Whitney Houston. Dying in her own bathwater after snorting cocaine, an addiction she evidently never kicked, gets continued headlines. A lot of those headlines talk about her deep faith. If she had such a deep faith, why is she snorting cocaine? One could ask the question if she planned her death in a sick way to get more publicity.
Like Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for the rock band, Nirvana. He committed suicide back in 1994, and left a tortured, angst-ridden suicide note that closed with the words:
Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.
Peace, love, empathy. Kurt Cobain
Addicted to publicity, even in death, the prideful find ways to self-destruct in self-promotion. One last string of headlines.
Pride has been the major target for prophets, priests and church theologians, almost since day one. It is the king and queen of sin, the foundation upon which all other sins are based. The reason is, as St. Augustine wrote, “Pride encourages man to displace God.” In that way, pride is not the thing worshipped in place of God; it’s the subtle but destructive inner voice that is trying to distract us thoroughly from God and towards ourselves.
It’s been a proven fact that ominously excessive pride, both individual and collective, has preceded the downfall of the world’s great empires. Based on Philip Chard’s evaluation of our country, mentioned at the start of this message, it does make one wonder if our country is headed for a great fall--and none of the kings men will be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Pride, as one of the Seven Deadly Sins does seem to be a yardstick for measuring the health of an individual or a culture.
You and I, wrestling with pride, is what I want to concentrate on this morning. The more I read about pride, the more I began to see that it has to do with struggling to understand our own humanness. Who am I? How do I define myself? The other deadly sins (anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth) are all ways I interact with the world. But pride isn’t about interaction. It’s about definition. Self-definition.
That self-definition is an ongoing process. But it seems to be ramped up at a couple of strategic stages in our life growth. As three to five year olds. As adolescents. And at mid-life, our 40’s and 50’s. Those are the times we are most active in defining and redefining who we are.
We seem to have two choices in how we construct our self-definition. God’s way; or our way. There doesn’t seem to be a third option. Each time we struggle with how we are going to define ourselves, those are the two choices. And here’s the deal: If we choose to go our way, we will lose both ourselves and God. To choose to go God’s way, at first, it appears we lose ourselves. But in the end we gain ourselves back. We are given ourselves back, by God, but we are different. It’s a different self than if we had just chosen our own way--which, by the way, is the way of pride.
This inner, self-defining struggle goes on in what one author calls our own, “pathetic, little, inner conversations.” We have conversations with ourselves. In those conversations, we’re trying to answer those basic questions of selfhood: Who am I? How do I matter in the world? How do I make myself matter in/to the world?
Our little inner conversations are our struggles at controlling our world. Not the big, wide world, but the little world of our singular lives. That’s the basis of the struggle: Is it really my world, my life? Or is it God’s world, and God’s life? If it is my life, then I get to feel all the pride when I make things go well. But then I must take all the brunt of negative consequences when I make things go really badly. Either way it goes, it’s all up to me.
That’s one way to be a human being. If we choose the prideful path of my life, then we go back and forth between pride and humiliation. As the Proverb states, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Proverbs 16:18).
When informed by one of his scouts that they were in for a big fight, and that there were enough Sioux to keep them busy for two or three days, General Custer replied with a smile, “I guess we’ll get through with them in one day, then.” He likewise declined help from the 7th Calvary or the aid of using Gatling guns. Well, Custer was right about one thing. One day was all it took. Custer fell as result of his pride and haughtiness. And a great fall it was, since he took his men with him.
C.S. Lewis, in his amazing book, The Great Divorce, has one of the heavenly beings say to another, “There are only two kinds of people, in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘thy will be done.’” Again, only two choices.
The choice to go God’s way as the foundation of your life against the self is called the way of humility. But even in humility, we have to watch out for pride’s subtle interference. Humility can be distorted by our own pridefulness vs. a humility that is clarified by God’s activity in history. God’s activity in history is shown, for example, in the way that God continuously chose insignificant people, who weren’t full of themselves, to carry out his historical will. Humility recognizes that there has been a lot of stuff that happened way before I came along. And there will be a lot of stuff that happens after I’m gone. All that history is controlled by God, not by my little life in the here and now.
Paul recognized this when he wrote to the uppity Corinthians, who had a huge pride problem:
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have--right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start--comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
We probably have no problem hearing these words, knowing they were written to some other church. Some other group of Christians. Not us. But what if they were? What if you were the one’s Paul called not “the brightest and the best...not influential, not from high-society”? Any inner voice telling you, “Hey, I’m a somebody; I’m not a nobody”?
That’s why pride is so insidious. We hate and despise that in others that we see in ourselves. Maybe we find it so easy to disparage pride so much, especially when we see it in others, because we see it so clearly in ourselves.
If we are ever going to move from pride to humility, then, we’re going to need a transformation. Nothing else will displace the prideful “pathetic, little, inner conversations” except for a transformation. And, as we just found out from Paul, that transformation has to happen from God’s hand through Jesus Christ. Otherwise, if we thought we effected such a transformation, it would only be fuel for our pride. We would still be in control.
There are two elements, two signs of that thorough transformation, that leads away from pride and towards humility. These two elements were identified by the desert fathers and mothers, who tried to get away from all the hubris and blow of society, escape to the desert, and wrestle with God. What these spiritual seekers found out was that they had to wrestle more with pride when they were on their own, than if they were immersed in society. They discovered there were two main ways that God effected a transformation in them through Jesus Christ, in dealing with their pride.
The first was by a willingness to learn from others. That was a sign that Christ had worked his transformation from pride to humility. It sounds like such a simple thing at first hearing. But understand that humility is a way of finding your place in relation to God and your neighbor. Humility is a way of loving both God and neighbor without allowing the need for attention, honor, gratitude, or even being right to interfere.
So being willing to learn from others means having the sight to see Christ in the other. If we greet each person as someone who carries Christ in them, then we will always have something to learn from them, no matter who they are. The Christ in them has something to teach us. If we are looking down our nose at them as insignificant, nobodies, we will miss Christ. That was one of the hallmarks of Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta--the sight to see that every one she treated was Christ in disguise, and learning from them.
This means the standards of the world no longer apply, if we are going to live the transformed life in Christ. Each person we meet can bear Christ to us in a particular way, has something to teach us.
The second sign of the transformed life that the desert monks identified is an unwillingness to stand in judgement of others. Again, this comes back to the understanding that Christ is in each person. That each person has the image of God in them. If Christ is in each person, how can anyone judge another? To do so would be judging Christ. Do you really think you can be in that position?
We do our judging so subtly or in jest, so we think it’s harmless. A man chatting with his neighbor said, “My family and I will soon be living in a better neighborhood.”
“So will we,” the neighbor said.
“Oh, are you moving, too?”
“No,” the neighbor said. “We’re staying.”
Remember we’re talking about transformation here. If we are needing transformation, or if we are trying to be disciples of that transformation for others, which is better to bring that about: prideful judgement, or humble compassion? Which motivates people better for the purposes of God?
But most importantly, to be unwilling to judge is an acknowledgement that you are not God. To judge others is to mistakenly feel like you get to hold the power of God over someone’s head. That’s pretty arrogant. Humility is the understanding that we will never have the sight or insight of God to be anyone’s judge.
As I said, these two signs of Christ’s transformation from pride to humility seem fairly simple. But think about it. To treat every person, every person, as if they carried Christ, or were Christ in disguise, and had something for you to learn, is immensely difficult. For us to get past that we need to quit looking at people as a lesser than, we have to get past the self-inflated assumption that we know it all, or at least know more than that so-and-so. To look at every person in the face and think first, “I have something to learn from this person,” rather than thinking, “What a loser,” is extremely hard.
And to be totally nonjudgemental, to not see yourself over and above, or more worthy than anyone is going to push you to the limit. To look at each person you see and see Christ in them, and therefore withhold your judgement, will transform you and how you live. To look at someone and not judge them in any way, either spoken or in your mind will stretch you to the utter limits of your being.
That’s why these are two signs of pride’s transformation. You can only demonstrate these if you are changed by Christ. If you are transformed. If your pride is taken over and transformed into humility.
As I said, we’re all struggling with our own sense and definition of our humanness. What does it mean to be a human being? How do I define myself at the most basic level? How am I having those pathetic little inner conversations in my head? How do I get God involved with that conversation so it’s not pathetic or little anymore, but has to do with something much larger than myself, and everything to do with God? In other words, how do I define myself as a human being not according to my pride, but according to the humility of God? How can I be transformed by Jesus Christ, so that pride is not the voice of my self-definition? Those are the questions that need to be asked.
Matthew 6:1-6
Psychotherapist Philip Chard says of pride that given “our national plague of entitlement, combined with our go it alone approach to the world, I’d say we’re full of ourselves.” He went on to write that as a country, “...we are overrun with narcissists, egomaniacs, and spoiled brats.”
I thought about what Chard was saying. I wonder if a country is defined by who we emulate. We honor and respect our military, police and firefighters. But we emulate movie stars, entertainers, and sports figures--most of whom are self-addicted. I mean, how many award shows does one profession need? There are no award shows for plumbers: “And now the award for the best installed trap in a home setting goes to…” Why do singers and movie and television personalities need so many award shows, serving to make them even more self-infatuated?
Pope Gregory the Great, who first created this list of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrote, that in pride, man “favors himself in his thought and walks with himself...and silently utters his own praises.” But now with our country’s rampant narcissism, there are no silent praises. People hire publicists to do that for them.
In Jesus’ day, he only had to talk about people praying in public places for show. Now people act in every negative way imaginable, just to keep themselves in the spotlight and national attention.
People like Whitney Houston. Dying in her own bathwater after snorting cocaine, an addiction she evidently never kicked, gets continued headlines. A lot of those headlines talk about her deep faith. If she had such a deep faith, why is she snorting cocaine? One could ask the question if she planned her death in a sick way to get more publicity.
Like Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for the rock band, Nirvana. He committed suicide back in 1994, and left a tortured, angst-ridden suicide note that closed with the words:
Thank you all from the pit of my burning, nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the past years. I'm too much of an erratic, moody baby! I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away.
Peace, love, empathy. Kurt Cobain
Addicted to publicity, even in death, the prideful find ways to self-destruct in self-promotion. One last string of headlines.
Pride has been the major target for prophets, priests and church theologians, almost since day one. It is the king and queen of sin, the foundation upon which all other sins are based. The reason is, as St. Augustine wrote, “Pride encourages man to displace God.” In that way, pride is not the thing worshipped in place of God; it’s the subtle but destructive inner voice that is trying to distract us thoroughly from God and towards ourselves.
It’s been a proven fact that ominously excessive pride, both individual and collective, has preceded the downfall of the world’s great empires. Based on Philip Chard’s evaluation of our country, mentioned at the start of this message, it does make one wonder if our country is headed for a great fall--and none of the kings men will be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Pride, as one of the Seven Deadly Sins does seem to be a yardstick for measuring the health of an individual or a culture.
You and I, wrestling with pride, is what I want to concentrate on this morning. The more I read about pride, the more I began to see that it has to do with struggling to understand our own humanness. Who am I? How do I define myself? The other deadly sins (anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth) are all ways I interact with the world. But pride isn’t about interaction. It’s about definition. Self-definition.
That self-definition is an ongoing process. But it seems to be ramped up at a couple of strategic stages in our life growth. As three to five year olds. As adolescents. And at mid-life, our 40’s and 50’s. Those are the times we are most active in defining and redefining who we are.
We seem to have two choices in how we construct our self-definition. God’s way; or our way. There doesn’t seem to be a third option. Each time we struggle with how we are going to define ourselves, those are the two choices. And here’s the deal: If we choose to go our way, we will lose both ourselves and God. To choose to go God’s way, at first, it appears we lose ourselves. But in the end we gain ourselves back. We are given ourselves back, by God, but we are different. It’s a different self than if we had just chosen our own way--which, by the way, is the way of pride.
This inner, self-defining struggle goes on in what one author calls our own, “pathetic, little, inner conversations.” We have conversations with ourselves. In those conversations, we’re trying to answer those basic questions of selfhood: Who am I? How do I matter in the world? How do I make myself matter in/to the world?
Our little inner conversations are our struggles at controlling our world. Not the big, wide world, but the little world of our singular lives. That’s the basis of the struggle: Is it really my world, my life? Or is it God’s world, and God’s life? If it is my life, then I get to feel all the pride when I make things go well. But then I must take all the brunt of negative consequences when I make things go really badly. Either way it goes, it’s all up to me.
That’s one way to be a human being. If we choose the prideful path of my life, then we go back and forth between pride and humiliation. As the Proverb states, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” (Proverbs 16:18).
When informed by one of his scouts that they were in for a big fight, and that there were enough Sioux to keep them busy for two or three days, General Custer replied with a smile, “I guess we’ll get through with them in one day, then.” He likewise declined help from the 7th Calvary or the aid of using Gatling guns. Well, Custer was right about one thing. One day was all it took. Custer fell as result of his pride and haughtiness. And a great fall it was, since he took his men with him.
C.S. Lewis, in his amazing book, The Great Divorce, has one of the heavenly beings say to another, “There are only two kinds of people, in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘thy will be done.’” Again, only two choices.
The choice to go God’s way as the foundation of your life against the self is called the way of humility. But even in humility, we have to watch out for pride’s subtle interference. Humility can be distorted by our own pridefulness vs. a humility that is clarified by God’s activity in history. God’s activity in history is shown, for example, in the way that God continuously chose insignificant people, who weren’t full of themselves, to carry out his historical will. Humility recognizes that there has been a lot of stuff that happened way before I came along. And there will be a lot of stuff that happens after I’m gone. All that history is controlled by God, not by my little life in the here and now.
Paul recognized this when he wrote to the uppity Corinthians, who had a huge pride problem:
Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have--right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start--comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”
We probably have no problem hearing these words, knowing they were written to some other church. Some other group of Christians. Not us. But what if they were? What if you were the one’s Paul called not “the brightest and the best...not influential, not from high-society”? Any inner voice telling you, “Hey, I’m a somebody; I’m not a nobody”?
That’s why pride is so insidious. We hate and despise that in others that we see in ourselves. Maybe we find it so easy to disparage pride so much, especially when we see it in others, because we see it so clearly in ourselves.
If we are ever going to move from pride to humility, then, we’re going to need a transformation. Nothing else will displace the prideful “pathetic, little, inner conversations” except for a transformation. And, as we just found out from Paul, that transformation has to happen from God’s hand through Jesus Christ. Otherwise, if we thought we effected such a transformation, it would only be fuel for our pride. We would still be in control.
There are two elements, two signs of that thorough transformation, that leads away from pride and towards humility. These two elements were identified by the desert fathers and mothers, who tried to get away from all the hubris and blow of society, escape to the desert, and wrestle with God. What these spiritual seekers found out was that they had to wrestle more with pride when they were on their own, than if they were immersed in society. They discovered there were two main ways that God effected a transformation in them through Jesus Christ, in dealing with their pride.
The first was by a willingness to learn from others. That was a sign that Christ had worked his transformation from pride to humility. It sounds like such a simple thing at first hearing. But understand that humility is a way of finding your place in relation to God and your neighbor. Humility is a way of loving both God and neighbor without allowing the need for attention, honor, gratitude, or even being right to interfere.
So being willing to learn from others means having the sight to see Christ in the other. If we greet each person as someone who carries Christ in them, then we will always have something to learn from them, no matter who they are. The Christ in them has something to teach us. If we are looking down our nose at them as insignificant, nobodies, we will miss Christ. That was one of the hallmarks of Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta--the sight to see that every one she treated was Christ in disguise, and learning from them.
This means the standards of the world no longer apply, if we are going to live the transformed life in Christ. Each person we meet can bear Christ to us in a particular way, has something to teach us.
The second sign of the transformed life that the desert monks identified is an unwillingness to stand in judgement of others. Again, this comes back to the understanding that Christ is in each person. That each person has the image of God in them. If Christ is in each person, how can anyone judge another? To do so would be judging Christ. Do you really think you can be in that position?
We do our judging so subtly or in jest, so we think it’s harmless. A man chatting with his neighbor said, “My family and I will soon be living in a better neighborhood.”
“So will we,” the neighbor said.
“Oh, are you moving, too?”
“No,” the neighbor said. “We’re staying.”
Remember we’re talking about transformation here. If we are needing transformation, or if we are trying to be disciples of that transformation for others, which is better to bring that about: prideful judgement, or humble compassion? Which motivates people better for the purposes of God?
But most importantly, to be unwilling to judge is an acknowledgement that you are not God. To judge others is to mistakenly feel like you get to hold the power of God over someone’s head. That’s pretty arrogant. Humility is the understanding that we will never have the sight or insight of God to be anyone’s judge.
As I said, these two signs of Christ’s transformation from pride to humility seem fairly simple. But think about it. To treat every person, every person, as if they carried Christ, or were Christ in disguise, and had something for you to learn, is immensely difficult. For us to get past that we need to quit looking at people as a lesser than, we have to get past the self-inflated assumption that we know it all, or at least know more than that so-and-so. To look at every person in the face and think first, “I have something to learn from this person,” rather than thinking, “What a loser,” is extremely hard.
And to be totally nonjudgemental, to not see yourself over and above, or more worthy than anyone is going to push you to the limit. To look at each person you see and see Christ in them, and therefore withhold your judgement, will transform you and how you live. To look at someone and not judge them in any way, either spoken or in your mind will stretch you to the utter limits of your being.
That’s why these are two signs of pride’s transformation. You can only demonstrate these if you are changed by Christ. If you are transformed. If your pride is taken over and transformed into humility.
As I said, we’re all struggling with our own sense and definition of our humanness. What does it mean to be a human being? How do I define myself at the most basic level? How am I having those pathetic little inner conversations in my head? How do I get God involved with that conversation so it’s not pathetic or little anymore, but has to do with something much larger than myself, and everything to do with God? In other words, how do I define myself as a human being not according to my pride, but according to the humility of God? How can I be transformed by Jesus Christ, so that pride is not the voice of my self-definition? Those are the questions that need to be asked.
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