Monday, November 26, 2012

I Want You For The Priesthood

"I Want You For The Priesthood"
Revelation 1:4-8


You are all priests.  You probably don’t feel like priests.  You may not have ever thought of yourself as a priest.  And you may not want to be priests.  But you are all priests.  You haven’t gone to seminary.  You haven’t taken the Standard Ordination Exams.  You haven’t taken ordination vows.  You haven’t been installed in a church.  The Presbyterian denomination, or any other denomination for that matter, doesn’t recognize your priesthood.  But you are all priests.

You don’t wear the priest’s collar shirt.  You don’t wear special robes or vestments when you come to church.  You don’t have on big priests crosses, or other liturgical jewelry.  You don’t wear those funny hats some priests wear.  But you are all priests.

Most of you have never had to preach a sermon or lead worship.  You haven’t baptized anyone or presided at Holy Communion.  You haven’t performed a marriage or funeral service.  You may do some informal advice giving to family and friends, but you’ve never heard a confession or done any formal counseling.  You may have never been a spiritual director for someone.  But you are all priests.

“When did this happen?” you may be asking.  It happened the day you gave your life to Christ as Savior.  The day you accepted the fact that Jesus Christ freed you from your sin, forgave you of all the times you passively and aggressively avoided God and God’s will, is the day you became a priest.

Kind of scary, isn’t it?  You thought you were just becoming a Christian.  You thought you were only committing yourself to being a simple believer in the Lord.  But I’m happy to inform you, there was more happening than that.  The act of giving your life to Christ was also your ordination service, so-to-speak, and your entrance into the priesthood.

How many of you knew that?  How many of you know exactly what that means?  How many of you know what a priest does, according to the Bible, so that you know what YOU are supposed to do as a priest?

Well, let’s go through the job description for a priest.  John, in these opening verses in Revelation said that Jesus freed us from our sins so that we--all of us--could serve God as priests.  If that’s true, if you are all priests, then you need to know what that means for how you are to act.  You need to know how the fact of your priesthood should shape your self-image.

First, the priest represents all the believers before God.  When the priest went into the temple to worship and pray to God, he went in not just as himself.  When you come to worship, you probably have the sense that you are basically just bringing yourself--you have come representing only yourself.  But the priest comes into the sanctuary as a representative of the people.

So when the priest prays, he is praying as if he is the mouthpiece for all other pray-ers.  He didn’t talk to God as if he were the only one speaking.  It was like the people were also having conversation with God through the priest.  What a difference this makes in our praying and worshipping.

Some people don’t know how to pray.  Like the little boy who was saying his bedtime prayers:  “Dear God, I’m not praying for anything for myself; just a bike for my brother that I can ride too.”  Some people’s motives get all mixed up in prayer.  Some people want and need to pray for themselves but don’t exactly know how to put the words together to do that.  They need a priest to help them give voice to their groaning.

Bishop Simpson was a person who just played around the boarders of the Christian faith  Sometimes there are people who are narthex believers--they hang around in the narthex but never quite make it into the sanctuary, into the holy presence of God.  That’s the kind of person Bishop Simpson was.

But one time he came home from college on a break.  He decided to go to a revival meeting his church was holding.  He watched as a group of young men went forward and gave their lives to Christ.  Simpson thought that he had already done that, but didn’t feel the emotional fervor those young men were feeling as they made their commitment to Jesus Christ.

He watched as one of that group of young men held back.  The young man was standing near the railing.  It was clear he was wrestling with the possibility of becoming a Christian.  Simpson came up behind the young man, laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and asked him if he’d like to go forward for prayer.  The young man replied he would go if Simpson would go with him.

Together the two men went to the altar and knelt in prayer.  Simpson said a prayer for the young man.  But in that prayer, in which Simpson was carrying the young man who didn’t know how to pray for himself, Simpson was also touched by the holy presence of Christ.  Simpson ended up praying for both of their souls at that meeting, dedicating the young man and himself to Christ and the work of the church.  Bishop Simpson went on to finish college and become one of the great Methodist preachers of the gospel.

That night, Bishop Simpson fulfilled his role and function as priest.  He prayed a prayer that encompassed his life and the life of another who didn’t exactly know how to pray, and needed someone else to do that.  By so doing, it had a profound effect on both of their lives.

In similar ways, the priest approaches God, carrying the people with them, saying for them what they have a hard time saying themselves.  Things like, “I’m sorry,” prayers; or “Thank you” prayers.  Or, “Wow!” prayers.

Generally, the priest is someone who is comfortable in the presence of God.  Most people don’t feel comfortable in the presence of God.  The quietness is unsettling.  They don’t know if they’ve been heard.  Not hearing much in reply is frustrating.  But we as priests have become comfortable with God.  We move in and out of God’s presence daily.  We are relaxed in the quietness of God. Our ears are tuned to the still small voice of God who speaks deeply to our soul and spirits.  As a priest, that is one of your main roles and functions.


Another role and function of the priest is an unidentical twin to the first.  The priest represents God to the people.  The priest demonstrates the character and purposes of God in their own person.  Therefore, the priest drives both directions on the street of holiness.  The priest represents the people before God, and the priest represents God before the people.

This can cause an identity crisis.  Most people have a hard enough time representing themselves before others.  We struggle with our own sense of what kind of character we are.  We live aimlessly, trying to discover what our purpose in the world is supposed to be.  How can we portray God’s character and purpose in our lives when we may not even have a grasp of what our character and purpose is?  The answer is that we find ourselves in God’s self.

The opening chapters in Genesis tell us that we are made in the image of 
God.  There is something of the likeness of God built into every one of us.  It stands to reason that we can only find ourselves by tapping into that image of God that is “in there” somewhere.  Only by finding God will we find ourselves.  Only by portraying that God-likeness that is in us will we be portraying our truest self.

A large part of what is at the heart of the character and purpose of God is serving.  Jesus, when he washed the disciple’s feet, told them that his main role was that of a servant of others.  He told them that that was to be their role and function as well.  The apostle Paul always addressed his letters with the words, “From Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…”  Here in these verses that open up Revelation, where John says that Jesus has made us priests of God, notice the word he uses:  “...who has made of us a royal house to serve as the priests of his God and Father…”

One of the problems Paul and the first evangelists faced was that the message of serving Christ and serving others was repugnant to Greek culture.  To the Greeks, service was undignified.  Something that was built into the Greek psyche was that people were born to rule, not to serve.  A person served only if it promoted them to a place of authority.  To always be serving others meant those others were ruling over you.  It was a hard message to hear that Christ had come to make any believer into a priest, but by being a priest, that meant servanthood, not authority.

I think our culture isn’t too different from the Greek culture Paul faced.  We also undervalue and underestimate the holiness of serving.  It won’t be long before the Christmas movie classic, It’s a Wonderful Life will be airing on TV.  It’s a great story starring Jimmy Stewart about a man who had used his life serving others, but didn’t think it made any difference in anyone’s life.  A frumpy angel by the name of Clarence gives him the chance to see what his town would be like if he had never lived.  It was a profound statement about the powerful effect on life could have when they take priestly serving seriously.

Mother Teresa wrote:
If I had not first picked up the woman who was being eaten by rats--her face, and legs and so on--I could not have been a Missionary of Charity...Whatever you do, even if you help somebody across the road, you do it for Jesus.  Even giving someone a glass of water, you do it for Jesus.  Such a simple teaching, but it’s more and more important...In the work we have to do, it does not matter how small and humble it may be, make it Christ’s love in service.

To be a priest in this respect is to find your identity in serving.  Serving is at the very heart of God.  It’s part of the image we share with God.  If you serve as a priest of God, representing God before people, it will be in the identity and integrity of a servant.

Victor Daley, and Australian poet, was being cared for in a Catholic hospital while he was dying of cancer.  One of his last acts was to thank the nurses for all their kindness to him.  “Don’t than us,” the nurses said.  “Thank the grace of God.”
With holy perception, Daley replied, “But aren’t you the grace of God?”

In serving others, we are the grace of God.  We are demonstrating the image of God.  We are, as priests, representing God t the people in the holiest ways of service.


You are all priests.  I know you don’t feel like priests.  Now that I have explained a little about what a priest is, you many not feel up to being a priest.  But the truth is, you are all priests whether you feel like it, or whether you want to be or not.  It is your role and function to represent the people before God.  When you go into the presence of God in prayer and worship, you carry the people of God with you.  And you represent God to the people.  In your attitude and character of serving, you demonstrate to others who God is.

Welcome to the priesthood.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Mitey Giving

"Mitey Giving"
Mark 12-37-44


I can’t figure it out.  Why did the poor widow do what she did?  The REB says, “...with less than enough, she has given all she had to live on.”  The TEV says, “...poor as she is, she put in all she had.”  And, from The Message, “...she gave what she couldn’t afford -- she gave her all.”

It has been speculated that the coins were the wedding coins a woman was given when she got married.  A number of coins were woven into a head-band sort of thing, and worn around her forehead at her marriage ceremony.  These coins were an insurance policy of sorts in case her husband died.  A woman was totally financially dependent on her husband, and had no other way to earn money, other than the money her husband earned.  So if he died, she would have no way to earn money.

I remember a tearful news conference, when the PTL ministries and Jimmy and Tammy Fae Bakker were going under.  Tammy Fae was pouring out her heart because they were down to their last $100,000 and she didn’t know how she and Jimmy were going to survive.  I guess what it means to be down to your last two coins means different things to different people.

We know the woman in Mark’s story is a widow.  Jesus identifies her as such.  Are these two coins she is holding her last two “insurance” coins, given to her at her wedding?  She could have kept one.  Should she have kept one?  No one would have thought less of her if she did.  The literal Greek translation of the verse I just highlighted a moment ago, says:  “She gave her whole life.”  Why?  Why would she do that?

There is the story of the millionaire who was sitting in church.  He got up to give his testimony and he said, “I owe the millions I have today to a certain experience I had in church long ago.  I was down to my last dollar.  The offering was being taken up.  As the plate was nearing my row, I had a decision to make.  Was I going to give up that last dollar for the Lord, or hold on to it along with the last shred of security it symbolized?  The offering plate came to me and I joyfully put in the last dollar I had to my name.  I gave it all.  The Lord honored that, and has blessed me greatly since that day; all because I was willing to give all I had.”
At that point, a woman in the back stood up and said, “I dare you to do it again.”

This widow did.  She dared do it.  We know so little about her.  We only know she is a widow.  And she is poor.  Is she a young widow?  Or an older widow?  Does she have children, grandchildren, or not?  We can only guess.

II
And we can only guess why she gave “her whole life.”  With so little detail, we are only left to our own speculations as to what motivated her to do what she did.  Here are some possibilities.

Maybe the widow gave out of her THANKFULNESS to God.  When asked why they give to the church, why they put money in the offering plate, people give this is as the number one reason:  because they are thankful to God.  Maybe, despite how her life has turned out, the widow has never lost the hand of God’s care.  Even when down to her last two coins, she may be acting out of trusting thankfulness.  If I were in her shoes, (I would be a lot smaller), but I might be tempted to think God isn’t caring about me very much.  Not her.

Or, maybe the widow is putting her last two coins in because she’s BARGAINING with God.  Maybe she wanted something from God, and was trying to get what she wanted through this risky form of a bribe.  Like the millionaire in the story I told a moment ago, maybe she’s saying to God, “If I put my last two cents in, then you will have to take care of me; you will have no other choice.”

Or maybe she’s giving all she has out of GUILT.  Is she feeling guilty about something she had done in her life and is trying to show God how repentant she is by putting her last two coins in the offering horns in the temple?

In William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, Macbeth’s wife is suffering from the awful effects of guilt.  Out of hopelessness and despair, Macbeth begs the doctor to cure his wife of her guilt.  Macbeth cried out:

Cure her of that.
Can you not minister to a mind distressed,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Burn out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Maybe the widow is suffering from just that kind of guilt, and is trying to find any way she can to rid herself of it, even if it means giving up her last two coins.

Or maybe the widow was just IMPULSIVE.  Maybe she did a lot of things without thinking about the consequences.  There are people like that, who don’t have good control over their impulses, and just do stuff without thinking.  They don’t think about the consequences their actions will have on themselves, and others who depend on them and love them.  Maybe the widow just had poor impulse control issues.

Whatever the reason for her actions, it is hard to understand why a poor widow would give up all she had to live on, and put it in the big brass horns in the temple.

III
Maybe we’re looking at this story the wrong way.  Let’s get ourselves in the picture.  There were seven horn-shaped receptacles in the temple treasury.   The offering collected in these brass receptacles went for the temple upkeep and for the cost of performing certain religious rituals.

People would come up and put in their coins (there was no paper money back then) with a clang and a bang.  The courtyard was probably crowded.  People were coming and going from the offering horns.  We almost get the impression that this was a common pastime of watching people put in their offering.  Jesus was just fitting himself in with the crowd of offering watchers.

But what was he watching, exactly?  He’s sitting across from the offering horns.  He had just given the crowd there a warning about the religion scholars and how they act.  Listen, again, to what he told the people about those religious peacocks:
Watch out for the teachers of the Law, who like to walk around in their long robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplace, who choose the reserved seats in the synagogues and the best places at feasts.  They take advantage of widows and rob them of their homes, and then make a show of saying long prayers.  Their punishment will be worse!” (TEV)

Jesus is making a contrast between the religious showmanship and unethical actions of the religionistas vs. the poor they manipulate and steal from.  The Greek literally means, these teachers of the Law were “eating up the property of the widows.”  Isn’t it interesting, then, that in the next scene, it is a poor widow who comes in and puts in her last two coins.  She is the one that Jesus identifies for his disciples.  She is the one he wants to make sure his disciples, and maybe many others sitting around, doesn’t miss.

IV
By pointing her out, Jesus is adding a huge punctuation mark to what he just said to all the people about those who were being taking advantage of by the religious establishment.  The key question that Jesus may want his followers to struggle with is NOT, “Why does the poor widow give her last two cents?”  The key question instead, may be, “Why does the poor widow only have two coins left to her name?”  What or who has forced her into these kinds of circumstances?

Jesus pointed out the wealthy who “gave what they’ll never miss.”  I get the idea, because of what he said to the crowds prior to his people watching at the treasury, that Jesus is not just talking about proportional or sacrificial giving.  He certainly makes that point -- that the poor widow, in proportion, gave much, much more than the wealthy who put in a lot of money.  But because of his comments that set up this scene, Jesus may also be trying to get his listeners to ask the question, “How did the moneybags get all their over abundance of wealth in the first place?”  How many widows did they step on, how many widow’s homes did they take away, or,  how much widow’s property did they “eat up” in order to get their ungodly amount of money?

Again, the question is not why the widow gave everything away?  The question is, “Who is doing what to the widow that reduced her to the point of having so little?”


V
But there is an even deeper level than that one, it seems to me.  There is a further question that Jesus is forcing his disciples to consider by calling them over and speaking privately to them about the widow’s giving.  And that question is, “Who is ALLOWING the widow to be taken advantage of?”  Who is standing by and doing nothing while the widow’s rights are being taken advantage of by the religious leaders, and she is reduced to two coins that she slides together between her fingers, standing before the offering trumpets, and finally throws them both in?  “Who would allow such a thing to happen, and keep happening?” Jesus is asking the disciples.

Jesus was in open praise of the widow.  But his praise was a back-handed slap at the hypocrites who gave large amounts of money, unjustly gained, for the temple upkeep, while neglecting the real human needs right there in front of their faces -- some of those needs which they, the rich, created.

The widow was so poor because she was getting eaten up by the fat cats and then neglected by the religious system that was only concerned about keeping its building shiny and its impotent rituals going.  Everyone ooohed and aaahed at the coins being poured in.  But no one asked the question about how the wealth was gained (except Jesus); or pointed out the human injustice (except Jesus); nor pointed out the human neglect in the distribution of that offering (except Jesus).

VI
All of a sudden, just putting money in the plate has much greater weight than just taking up a few minutes in the worship service.  Putting money in the plate has to do with our motivations for giving.  Putting money in the plate has to do with the manner in which it is given.  Putting money in the plate has to do with how it is that we are gaining that wealth in the first place.  Putting money in the plate has to do with making sure that nothing we’ve done, in our accumulation, has stepped on or taken advantage of helpless others.  Putting money in the plate has to do with making sure that we don’t just give, but that we are paying attention to those around us -- especially the down-and-out -- who are rubbing their last two coins together, and making sure that they are being taken care of, rather than having to make the awful choice of sacrificing everything.

Because Jesus is watching.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Ockham's Razor

"Ockham's Razor"
Mark 12:28-34


William of Ockham was a philosopher back in the early 1300’s.  The school of philosophy to which he subscribed and attempted to perfect was called “reductionism.”  Basically, what a reductionist does, when faced with an issue or a problem, is to reduce that issue to its simplest form.  You don’t get caught up in a lot of details.  Those details, that minutia might lead you astray.  You don’t add on layers to a problem in trying to solve it, thereby making it more complex.  You don’t pay any attention to all the sidecar issues that arise in the problem-solving process.  Instead, you cut away all the extraneous stuff in order to get to the heart of the matter.  Reduce things down to their simplest form.  That is where you will find the truth, according to Ockham’s way of thinking.

Lucy has a way of doing that for all her friends, but mostly for Charlie Brown.  In one strip, Charlie Brown is looking morose, with a wrinkled forehead and downcast eyes.  He’s leaning over a wall, staring off into nowhere.  Lucy approaches him and says, “Discouraged again, eh Charlie Brown?”
No answer.
Lucy continues.  “You know what your trouble is?  The whole trouble with you is that you are YOU!”  Lucy has reduced all of Charlie Brown’s issues, all his troubles, and worries into one simple, but inclusive statement.
Charlie Brown then turned to Lucy and asked, “Well, what in the world can I do about that?”
To which Lucy’s forehead wrinkles, and she replies, “I don’t pretend to be able to give advice...I merely point out the trouble!”

I don’t know what Lucy calls her brand of reductionism, but Ockham called his, “Ockham’s Razor.”  He would attempt to cut away the meaningless layers of argumentation, and find the heart and soul of an issue.  Once that is discovered, unlike Lucy, Ockham felt the solution would be simple and affect all the other issues that were heaped upon it, like so many clothes draped over a bedroom chair that you can’t even see the chair anymore.

Ockham’s detractors called him and his ideas too simplistic.  They felt that the issues and problems we face in life were too large to be reduced to simple terms.  They are too complex.  Life itself is too complex to be reduced from pages to mere sentences, as it were.  Ockham’s philosophy was ridiculed as something for simpletons, whose minds couldn’t grasp the great complexities of life.

What I’d like to do this morning is apply Ockham’s Razor to the church.  But not only William of Ockham’s, but more powerfully, Jesus Christ’s razor.  Jesus’ has a much better ability to cut away at the fat and excess of religion, helping us discover in any time what is the heart and center of our beliefs.  Christianity, under Jesus’ razor, is at its most simple and yet most potent and profound form.

Let’s turn our attention back to what was read from Mark 12.  Jesus is fielding and responding to a question pitched at him by one of the teachers of the Jewish religion.

But we need to take one further step back to see what was happening just before that question was asked.  There was another group of Jewish teachers called Sadducees.  They didn’t believe, in opposition to the Scribes, that there was eternal life with God.  Jesus had been teaching about that topic.

This group of Sadducees came to Jesus with an inane question:  It was the law that if a man married a woman and then he died, his brother was supposed to marry the widow and take care of her and any children she had.  So the Sadducees asked, What happens if a woman marries into a family with seven brothers; all of them die in turn, leaving her to the next brother in line.  When she gets to the heavenly kingdom, whose wife is she going to be?

The response of Jesus to their question leads us to believe that these Sadducees felt their question was of great importance.  It was like if they found out the answer, one of the great mysteries of the universe would be solved.  Nights of worry could end, and the Sadducees could finally get some sleep.

The Scribe--the teacher of the law--had been listening to all this, probably with some amusement at the inflated level of importance to which the Sadducees had raised this issue.  Finally, he cut in with his Ockham’s Razor type question:  “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  That is, “Let’s cut through all this fat and religious gas that is ultimately meaningless, and get down to what’s most important.  In simplest terms, Jesus, what is really expected of us?”

Jesus’ answer:
The first in importance is, “Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.”  And here is the second: “Love others as well as you love yourself.”  There is no other commandment that ranks with these.  (EHP)

I believe that one of the greatest problems that is faced by the church at large, and congregations in particular is that they are asking and acting upon Sadducee types of questions, rather than the Scribe’s type of question.

Instead of asking questions that get at the simple heart of the matter concerning our mission and goals, we ask the trivial, that serves only to get us lost in the layers of meaningless complexity.  The whole organization of the church and individual congregations is developed around pursuing the trivial and the inconsequential, elevating it way beyond its own level of importance.

I have turned, at different times in my ministry, to the book, In Search of Excellence.  If you’re not familiar with it, it is a book that investigated our nations most successful companies, trying to discover what made them so.  The researchers hit upon seven principles that were found in each company.  One of those principles they called, “Simple Form, Lean Staff.”  Listen to a few of the statements the author’s make:

Along with bigness comes complexity, unfortunately.  And most big companies respond to complexity in kind, by designing complex systems and structures.  They then hire more staff to keep track of all this complexity, and that’s where the mistake begins …
On the other hand, making an organization work has everything to do with keeping things understandable for the people who must make things happen.  And that means keeping things simple …
The organization gets paralyzed because the structure not only does not make priorities clear, it automatically dilutes priorities.  In effect, it says to people down the line:  “Everything is important; pay equal attention to everything.”  That message is paralyzing. (pg. 306-308)

The authors then make a telling statement that capsulizes their thoughts about how the successful companies keep their organization simple:  “One dimension--e.g. product or geography or function--has crystal clear primacy.”

We in the smaller sized congregations have it easier in keeping the organization clear, without too many extraneous layers.  But we, like larger congregations, and the denomination as a whole, have just as much of a problem keeping priorities clear.  We fall into the trap, as the authors point out, of trying to chase after too many priorities at once, telling our people that all these priorities are of vital importance, thereby diluting what is of ultimate importance and confusing everyone who is carrying on the work of the church.

In order to avoid becoming like the Sadducees, dominating by asking too many of the wrong kinds of questions, we need to land ourselves on those singular dimensions of our work which will have crystal clear primacy over everything we do.  We need to hear the question asked by the Scribe, and we need to hear Jesus’ answer.  Above our Lord’s answer there’s nothing more important.  And everything we do much fall in line with his answer.

In simplest terms, and in its simplest form, our faith and ministry must be guided by these two primary commandments:  Love God with everything that is you; and, love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Anything else must be cut away.  All that we do in ministry must be able to be reduced to these two common denominators.  And everything we plan for our future must have it’s starting point and motivation from these two statements of Jesus.


Peter Drucker in his book, The Effective Executive wrote that, “Effective executives do first things first and they do one thing at a time...This is the secret of those people who do so many things and apparently so many difficult things.  They do only one at a time.”

Stephen Covey in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People devoted a whole section of his book to this important fact.  He pointed out that even great musicians such as Bach and Handel could only devote their energies to one piece of music at a time.

Such is the case of Christian ministry as well.  We will find it more productive to focus on certain areas of ministry that need taking care of rather than trying to do something in every area at once.  The way to prioritize is to be guided by the two most important commandments of loving God with all that we are, and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Prioritizing like this, and concentrating on just a couple of areas of ministry may be counter intuitive, or at least feel like it goes against the grain of our multi-tasking society.

It’s like the college student who rushed into the office of his faculty advisor just after mid-terms.  “I need help, bad,” he said, plopping down in a chair.
“What’s your trouble?” the advisor asked.
The student replied, “I just made four F’s and a D.
“Well, what’s your explanation for that?” the advisor asked.
The student said, “I spent too much time on that one subject.”

In our multi-tasking culture, it’s the person who can do so many things at once who is being held up as the ideal.  But in that chase, our culture has also lost the ability to distinguish between the real and the unreal, the necessary and the unnecessary, the important and the trivial, the relevant and the irrelevant.  Along with that comes the growing awareness that in all our business we are utterly lost in a forest of tasks.  And nothing of any substance is getting done.  We’re flunking all our subjects.

If only we could stop, and be still, if for just an instant.  If only we could stop the ceaseless business that goes along with covering too many bases that don’t need to be run.  If only we could silence the ongoing chatter and jabber that comes with doing too much that doesn’t matter and no one really cares about.  If only we could cut through all the deceptive illusions and let the real seep in.  If only we could choose that which could enter our souls and meet those deep places within.  If only we would concentrate on loving God with all that we are, and loving others as we love ourselves.

But that won’t happen until all else is cut away, and we feel the barrenness of our need for that which really matters.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Mine

"Mine"
Mark 12:1-12


I don’t have a whole lot of stuff that I can call mine.  Especially big stuff.  Something substantial.  I own a truck.  That’s the most expensive thing I’ve called mine.  I’ve never owned land.  I’ve never bought a house.  I’ve never owned a boat.

But the American Dream is to have something (like a house or some land) that you can behold and say, “This is mine.  I own it.”  It’s what drove the settlers out to the plains states.  Getting a piece of the wide open spaces.  Having something that is all yours--something that no one else can say “mine” about.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie, “Finding Nemo” is the seagull scene.  Nemo’s father, an overprotective clownfish named Marlin, and Dory, a regal tang fish, are close to finding Marlin’s son Nemo.  But they need the help of a pelican to save them from the seagulls.   Here’s the scene.

(Show movie clip)

The seagulls are great examples of everything that drives us to say “Mine!”  There are a number of problems with continually saying, Mine.  One is discontent.  Once we say “mine” to a few things, we become discontent and want more that we can call mine.  Once we have some, we want more.  The danger is that we are never totally happy with what we already have.

The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, once wrote a short story titled, “How Much Land Does A Man Require?”  It was about a wealthy landowner who was selling his land.  Another man, Pahom, not satisfied with his already ample parcel of land, saw this as an opportunity to expand.

The wealthy landowner said to those who wanted a piece of the estate he was selling that they could buy as much as they could walk around in one day.  So Pahom set out walking.  Later that morning he had walked around a good-sized piece of land, but thought to himself, This isn’t enough land for a man; I require more.  So he set out again and walked faster this time, encompassing a larger tract of land.  Again, he said to himself, This isn’t land enough for a man, and started running.

Just before sunset, which was the time limit the estate owner had set, Pahom could be seen running and stumbling along.  He was totally spent.  Just as he arrived at his starting point, having walked around a huge portion of land, Pahom fell down dead.  Tolstoy ended the story with the biting line, “His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he required.”

That ties in with another dissatisfaction that comes with saying, “Mine.”  It creates confusion between needs and wants.  Or a need becomes defined as anything I want whether I need it or not.  The preacher, E. Stanley Jones, told about the time he spent the night as the guest of a poor farmer.  The man led Jones to his bed in the hayloft and said to Jones, “If there’s anything you want, let us know, and we’ll come and show you how to get along without it.”

And the other danger of saying, Mine, is a python-like hold on what is owned.  Once we have something that we call “mine,” we don’t let go of it easily.  We put alarm systems in our homes so that we can be alerted when someone breaks in to take by force what is ours.  Some people try to cling to what is theirs to the point of death.  Even though I’ve never seen a hearse pulling a UHaul trailer, there are still people who try to “take it with them.”

Rose Greenhow was a Confederate spy during the Civil War.  She tried to make sure her fortune was not confiscated so she sewed all her gold coins into the hems of her dress.  She got on a boat that was crossing the Mississippi River.  The boat sprung a leak and sank.  Greenhow had a life preserver on, but the weight of her gold sewn into her dress was too much for the life preserver to keep her floating.  She sank to the bottom of the river and drowned.

I wondered, when I read her story, if she had the sudden realization at the point just before death, that it all didn’t matter--that what she clung to so fiercely trying to protect with her life, was really worth giving up her life, after all.


By being compelled, like the seagulls, to say, “Mine,” we may not be able to hear Jesus’ parable fully.  Or, we may her it clearly, but our resistance to its truths is going to be too hard to overcome.  There are people who would rather fight over, cling to, or go down with what is “mine” than embrace the truth of Jesus’ parable.

The parable Jesus told was about an owner of some land.  The landowner developed the land into a vineyard, doing all the work himself.  He got the ground ready.  He planted the grapevines.  He dug the pit for the winepress.  He built the winepress.  He built a watchtower from which to protect his investment.  It took a few years before the grapevines matured to the point where grapes could be harvested.  The landowner waited, taking care of the vines during this maturing period.  When the vines developed to the point of producing harvestable grapes, the landowner rented his vineyard out.

At that point in the parable, there are some unspoken, but clear assumptions and expectations of the vineyard owner.  The first is that he is the owner.  The renters are not the owners.  He assumes this is clear to the renters.  They don’t own anything in the vineyard.  They are hired only as caretakers and harvesters.  The renters are given full authority to work the vineyard, but not own the vineyard; or have any hope of ever owning anything in the vineyard.

The second unspoken expectation of the vineyard owner is that the renters will do the work of upkeep, vine dressing, and harvesting.  He expects this because he had made a considerable investment of time and money in those grapevines.  If the renters don’t do their work, they could not only lose the landowner a lot of money, but they’d destroy the vines and therefore any hope of a future harvest.  So the landowner expects the renters to take care of his property and crops.

That leads us to the final expectation of the vineyard owner, and that is that the renters will, when the grapes are harvested, pay him his profits.  The renters will certainly be paid for their hard work and diligence, but the landowner still expects that he will receive from the renters the return on his investment since he is, after all, the owner.

The tension is created in Jesus’ parable by the fact that the renters have an entirely different set of assumptions and expectations.  One of the foremost assumptions is that they, the renters, can become the owners.  That is the prime motivation behind all the renter’s actions.  It comes to a head when the vineyard owner sent his son, after all the other messengers and servants had either been beat up or killed by the renters.  The renters said, “This is the owners son.  Come on, let’s kill him, and his property will be OURS” (vs. 7).  The renters want what they don’t own, can’t own, but try to own by deadly force.

Another mis-assumption the renters make, countering the owner’s expectations, is that they don’t owe anybody anything--especially the vineyard owner.  They can have it all for themselves.  They don’t have to give the landowner what’s rightfully his.  They can keep it all.  They believe that since they did the work, they should keep it all to themselves.

Someone in Sunday School last week brought up the story about the three television evangelists who were talking about how much of the money that comes in that they keep.  One evangelist said that he drew a circle on the ground and threw the money in the air.  Whatever landed in the small circle was for the Lord, and the rest he kept for himself.

The second evangelist said she did the opposite: only he drew a larger circle and whatever landed outside the circle was for the Lord.  The third televangelist laughed and said, “I have the simplest method of all.  I just throw all the money in the air.  Whatever the Lord wants I let him take, and everything left that hits the ground is mine.  That seemed to be the same attitude of the renters in Jesus’ parable.

The final mis-assumption the renters make is that the owner had no authority over them, even though they were just renters.  The owner was too far away, and because of that distance was powerless to stop them from doing whatever they pleased.  The owner was too far away to stop them from keeping the grapes all to themselves, from cashing in the all the profits, and mistreating the messengers to the point of killing the son.


So, the two main points Jesus has woven into his parable follow these two questions:
1)  Who is the true and rightful owner?
2)  What is the relationship of the renters to the owner?

Everything gets terribly off center when we answer the first question with the wrong answer.  A large part  of the meaning of the parable has to do with this point.  If you don’t understand who the owner is, you will get a lot of other answers wrong as well.

Whenever you purchase a piece of property, or a house, one of the processes is running the property through a title search.  Everyone who has ever owned that piece of property will be listed on the title.  The title becomes a little piece of historical information.  But I will bet the family farm that on every title for every piece of property the original owner is not listed.  In fact, the only true owner is never listed.  That is, God Almighty.

Ultimately there is only one owner of everything that is.  When, after your deaths, you stand before God, you will have nothing with you but your immortal soul.  And even that, God owns and will ultimately decide its fate.  You can say, “But I owned a bunch of land and stuff.”  God will reply, “You owned nothing; it was all mine.”

Think of everything you own.  Bring it to mind.  Picture it in your head.  Imagine all the stuff about which you say, “Mine.”  And now, with that same picture in your mind, say to yourself, “This stuff is actually not mine; I don’t own any of it.  God owns all this, and God is only giving it to me to take care of so that I can give God what is his due.”  How easy is that to say?

A woman was out shopping one day and decided to stop for a cup of coffee.  She bought a tiny bag of cookies with her coffee, putting the cookies in her purse.  All the tables were filled.  There was one at which a man sat reading a newspaper.  She asked if she could share the table, and he motioned to the opposite chair.  She sat, opened her purse, took out a magazine and began reading.

After a while she looked up and reached for a cookie, only to see the man behind the newspaper also taking a cookie.  She glared at him.  He just smiled at her, and she resumed reading.  Moments later she reached for another cookie, just as the man took another one.  Now feeling quite angry, she stared at the one remaining cookie--whereupon the man reached over, broke the cookie in half and offered her a piece.  She grabbed it and stuffed it in her mouth, as the man smiled at her again, rose and left.

The woman was really steaming as she angrily opened her purse, her coffee break now ruined, to put her magazine away.  There she saw her identical bag of cookies.  All along she’d unknowingly been helping herself to the cookies belonging to the gracious man, thinking they were hers.

How often we treat God the same way, thinking that all that we have is ours, and God is taking something from us that belongs to us.  That’s why I said it may be too hard for us to really hear this parable.  We have been, for so long, answering the primary question wrong.  We have totally lost the truth about who is the owner, and what of anything we can really say, “Mine.”

That question begs so many other questions:
Am I willing to accept the position of renter and never owner?
Can I turn my illusions of ownership over to God?
Can I trust God to be a fair owner?
Can I pay the owner his due without grousing or regrets?
Can I be free of the temptation of grasping, trying to take over ownership?
How does God want me to change my attitude towards all my stuff as renter?

We can be like the fly who landed on the flypaper and said, “My flypaper.”  But when we do, the flypaper rightfully replies, “My fly!”  It is the fly who loses.  The consequences of your answers to these questions are drastic and life altering.  Answer them carefully.