Mary's Pondering

"Mary's Pondering"
Luke 2:19-20

I

An old woman opened the door to the stable, with barely enough strength to just get through.  She left the door open behind her.  The daylight from outside lit up the stable.  She stood still, letting her eyes adjust.  She pivoted in a slow, 360 degree circle, scanning the room.  She was looking for something.  She stopped in her circular movement and smiled.  There was the feeding trough.  She took three slow steps over to the manger.  Using a post, she eased herself down to the straw strewn dirt floor beside the tiny feed bunker.  She sat using the post again as a back rest.

She gazed back at the door.  Dust that she had stirred by her entrance was dancing in the light.  She didn’t look at the door as much as she was looking through it.  She wasn’t looking at something as much as she was looking at another point in time, now held only in her memory.

In her mind’s eye she saw a younger woman.  The young woman was walking down the street.  Small groups of women whispered as she passed.  “There goes Mary.  She sinned before her wedding.  Now she’s telling everyone God got her pregnant.  What a hussy!  Does she think anyone is going to believe such craziness?  Poor Joseph.”
“Not, ‘poor Joseph,’” Mary whispered to herself.  Dear Joseph.  At least he believes me.”  She hurried through a courtyard and into her home.  The long months of hurt and rejection washed over her in waves.  She sat weeping into her apron.  She had spent most of the last months in tears.  So much so, she thought she’d run out of tears, but more would come.

She prayed a psalm through her tears.  Each time she cried, she would say these words:
Sing praises to the Lord, you who belong to him; 
praise his holy name.  
Crying may last for a night, 
but joy comes in the morning.  (Psalm 30:4-5)

The words of the Psalm wrapped around her like bandages for her wounds.  She clung to the promise that all of God’s nights are followed by God’s mornings.  Again, as she did at the angel’s visit, she whispered the words, “Oh, yes, my Lord.  Let it be.”

II

Now the old woman stretched out her legs.  She folded her hands and placed them on her stomach.  She looked down at her hands.  She stared at her wrinkled fingers.  They were no longer straight and flexible like when she was young.  Now the knuckles were swollen  and ached most of the time.  The fingers were gnarled and curled by years of hard work and praying.  More like the talons of a hawk than the hands of woman.

She unfolded her fingers.  She stroked her stomach.  Looking out through the shaft of light in the stable door, the old woman again became lost in thought.  Her face was like a rippled stone and her eyes unblinking.

Behind those eyes she saw the young Mary, lying under a blanket on her bed.  Her time was close.  She was praying her bedtime prayers, as she had for most of her 16 years.  She said, “Why, God, have I been chosen?  You could simply speak this child into existence if you wish.  Yet you make me a partner to your work.”  Mary smiled when she said that.  “Yet, to share with you, O God,” she prayed on, “has been the deepest joy of my life.”  She stared at the moon that shone through her window.  She stroked the mound that had become her belly and whispered quietly, “Sleep on, little one.  Very soon you too will enter upon your high and holy partnership with the Lord.”

III

A colt in the stable jostled and pawed the dirt with it’s hoof.  The suddenness of it startled the old woman from her thoughts.  She turned her head.  She looked into the large, dark eyes of the animal.  In the reflection of the colt’s eyes a scene appeared.  The old woman saw Mary.  She was close to full term and ready to have the baby.  Joseph was helping her on the back of a colt.  “Why do I have to go to Bethlehem?” she asked Joseph.  “I wanted to stay back in Nazareth, safe in my bed.  I want to be close to my family.  I could have delivered the child there while you were away.  My mother and my aunts and the mid-wife were there to help me.”

But Joseph did not reply.  He was the man.  He didn’t have to answer.  He just led the donkey onward.  They were like shadows in the evenings fading light, moving in a dream.  A very bad dream in Mary’s mind.

Mary stared at Joseph’s big, wood worn hands as he tugged the colt forward.  Not looking back at his wife on the colt, he finally said, “As sure as I am leading the donkey, God is leading us.”  He looked up at the strange star in the clear purple night sky.
“It looks like a candle in God’s window,” Mary replied, looking at the same star.
Now the sound of the donkey’s hoofs on the path didn’t seem as lonely.  “This is not a journey of fear,” Joseph said.  “It is a journey of faith.”
“Yes,” Mary replied.  “How can I fear the unknown when I travel with the One who is always there to place a lamp in the window, and gently draw us in the right direction?”

IV

The old woman turned away from the colt’s blank gaze.  She turned her head in the other direction.  There was the manger, full of fresh hay, that a calf was now eating out of.  The woman painfully raised her arm and grasped the splintered rim of the small feeding trough, startling the calf away.  Her wrinkled and spotted fingers grasped some hay.  She squeezed it as tightly as her old grip would allow.  She drew the straw to her nose and smelled it.  She closed her eyes with the dusty and pungent odor of the hay in her nostrils, lost the grip of it and let it cascade down upon her chest.  She saw Mary, holding a baby.

“It is finished,” Mary whispered to the infant.  “You are born, little Jesus.”  Mary lay back into the pile of blanket covered hay, holding the baby to her chest.  She was breathless from pain, but exhilarated.  There was wonder on the wind.  The lantern above her made her glow in the yellow light.  The silence was so deep, it was as if they were underwater.

Mary kissed the small face nestled against her cheek.  She counted his fingers, uncurling them one-by-one.  His little heart was beating hard, in rhythm with hers.  Holding the ten, tiny, pearly white fingers, she asked the child, “Oh, human child, whose fingerprints do you bear?  With those fingerprints do you enter the human world?  Who are you?”  That moment seemed to hang on the end of a golden thread held in suspension by God himself.
Joseph put his arm around Mary holding the baby and said, “Our baby’s birth does not belong to us alone.”
“What do you mean?” Mary asked him.
“I just have the feeling,” he replied, “that this baby will be reborn to generations to come.  They will ask the same question you have just asked.”
Mary touched her lips to the child’s ear once more and whispered, “No, our little son, it is not finished.  It has just begun.”

V

The old woman shifted a bit and the straw on her chest fell to the ground.  She pulled her legs up close to her chest and wrapped her boney arms around them.  She rested her forehead on her knees.  She untied the kafia that covered her head.  Her thin, gray hair flowed over the dress that covered her spindly legs.  She drifted from consciousness, and as she drifted, she saw the young Mary, awakening suddenly from her sleep.  She had a look on her face that said, Now I remember; I am a mother!  “Jesus?  Jesus, my baby,” she called out.  “Where is he?”

Across the stable Joseph was cuddling a small bundle in his arms.  “See,” he said to the baby with a smile.  “I told you your mother would be awake soon.”  Softly he walked over to where Mary lay, and eased the baby Jesus into hollowed hay in the manger.
“What a night,” she said.  “Was I dreaming, or were there really a bunch of shepherds here last night?”
“You weren’t dreaming,” Joseph replied.  “There was a whole group of them.  They got down on their knees praying to God, thanking God for our child.  When they left, they were singing psalms to God.”
“I remember that,” Mary said.  “With voices like theirs, I hope they don’t sing very often.”
“And with a smell like theirs,” Joseph butted in, “it was nice to just have the odors of this cattle stall.  “Besides,” he continued, “who would care about their singing except their sheep and the stars?”

Joseph and Mary smiled at each other.  Mary had gotten up, bent over the manger and kissed the tiny nose of their baby Jesus.  Beyond the quietness of the stable were the sounds of the world going on outside:  Conversations about the census; sandals scuffing along the dirt road; children playing in the morning light; wagon wheels creaking.  Mary traced the baby’s face with her finger and softly said, “My precious one, I do not know why you have come.  Perhaps the reason has to do with all the people outside who wander by so casually.”

Mary reached for Joseph’s hand.  As he took it, he said, “God is alive in the world.”
“Yes, my husband,” Mary replied.  “I believe God is.”  Deep from the swaddling cloths, Jesus cried.  Mary bent down and lifted him up to her breast.  Suddenly she had a vision, a much sadder picture, a horrifying visage of Jesus being lifted up, not for nurture, but for death.

VI

The old woman looked up from her knees into a brilliant light.  Someone must have opened the stable door, she thought.  A hand reached down to her.  It had a scar in the palm.  She raised her arm weakly, and the strong hand in the light gently lifted her.  It lifted her not to her feet, but above her feet.  Beyond her body.  Beyond the stable.  Beyond life.  She heard a Voice, a Voice she knew intimately.  That Voice said, “Welcome, my loving and faithful mother.”

Submission

"Submission"
Luke 1:38

I
It just so happened that a charismatic TV preacher, as a side job, ran a dog obedience school.  A lady brought her dog to him and told the preacher that her dog was totally wild and wanted the full obedience training.

After three weeks the lady called, and was told her dog was ready.  When she went to pick up her dog, the preacher demonstrated what the dog had learned.  First, he said, “Sit!” and the dog sat.
“Lay down,” he said, and the dog lay down.
“Roll over,” was the next command, and the dog obediently rolled over.
“That’s wonderful,” the woman exclaimed.

But then a sudden realization hit her and she asked, “But what if the dog just obeys your voice and not mine?”
“Give the dog a command,” the preacher said.
“Come,” the lady said, and the dog came to her side.  She started to walk away, and commanded, “Heel!”  The dog immediately knocked her over, placed its two front paws on her forehead and bent its head and prayed.

We’ve come to think of obedience as something that has to be force learned.  When you’re training a horse, you have to first “break” it; that is, force it to submit to your will and your command.

I remember one of the buzz phrases back in the 1980’s, pertaining to raising children was, “the strong-willed child.”  That term was used to describe a child who was stubborn or uncontrollable.  Books with titles like, Shaping the Will Without Breaking the Spirit were popular bestsellers in the parenting section of the book store.

That’s how submission usually happens.  People submit because they are out-manned or over-powered.  It isn’t about submission.  It’s about spirit-breaking and dominating.

When I’m working with couples who are preparing to get married, we get to the point of planning the service.  We talk about the vows.  We talk about the sacredness of the vows and what it means to speak a vow to another.  But there is one phrase that used to be in the traditional vows that couples refuse to say:  “...to honor and obey…”  Obey has become an ugly word.

Obedience is a form of submission, of giving our will to another out of fear of consequences. It is almost essential to obedience that there be no specific rationale for the action demanded by the authority. “Do as I tell you” leaves no room for questions. We are not supposed to understand, only to carry out.

II
The Roman culture of New Testament times was similar to our modern western culture in that freedom was one of the greatest of all virtues.  We are the land of the free.  The Bill of Rights insures certain freedoms that each citizen has by virtue of living in this country:  freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, freedom to assemble, and so on.  We work hard to make sure that none of those freedoms are trod upon.

The Roman culture during the time of the New Testament looked down their noses at slaves and servants.  There was clear contempt for slaves by those who were free.  Being free was such a value, anyone who was not free, like a slave, was deemed to be a class lower than human.  Likewise, we work hard to make sure we aren’t totally under someone else’s thumb.  We also don’t mind if we have at least a few people under our thumb, that we can order around so we can feel powerful and important.

We have to be careful, then, not to race over certain parts of the Christmas story because they make us twinge a bit.  Parts like when Mary submits to the plan of God to carry and give birth to the Savior.  Mary said to the angel messenger, “I am the Lord’s servant! Let it happen as you have said” (CEV).

What she told the angel is that she will submit to God, as a slave would submit to her master.  J.B. Phillips, in his translation of the New Testament, catches the flavor of what Mary said:  “I belong to the Lord, body and soul.”

At another place in the Christmas story, Joseph refused to take Mary as his wife because she was carrying a child that wasn’t his.  He felt betrayed and humiliated.  The angel came to him in a dream and told him to forego his pride, submit to God’s plan, and take Mary as his bride.  He woke up and without hesitation obeyed God’s word.  Two other times the angel visited Joseph with a plan from God, and Joseph submitted himself to that plan.

The wise men who searched for and eventually found the Christ child were told by God that they were not to return to Herod, but go home by a different route.  They were not to tell Herod if and where they found the Christ Child.  They obeyed, and went home a different way.

Obedience and submission are woven into the fabric of this birth story.  People were approached by God to submit to God’s plan.  Those people obeyed and followed God’s word.  God didn’t overpower the main characters of the story.  God didn’t force them to submit.  God didn’t back them into a corner so they had no other choice.

That’s what’s important to remember as we read these stories.  God allowed these people the right to say “no.”  Mary could have said no, refusing to have God’s child.  Joseph could have said no and allowed Mary to be stoned for adultery, or rejected her and marry someone else.  The wise men could have said no and gone and talked to Herod anyway.

But they didn’t.  It was more like they voluntarily and happily submitted to what God asked them to do.  Maybe it was the way God asked.  In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard has a chapter about submission.  In that chapter he wrote,
Submission, though, is a call for help to those recognized as able to give it because of their depth of experience and Christlikeness.

That was a new thought for me--that submission is a reply to a call for help from another.  Is it possible that God’s message to Mary and Joseph and the wise men was not in the form of a demand or a proclamation as much as it was a call for help from God?  Did Mary hear the angel’s message not in the tone of “this is a done deal and you will obey,” as much as in the tone of, “God needs you.  You are the only one who can help.  Please participate with God in God’s plan to save the world.”

Mary becomes a willing spirit, submitting herself not to a command that has no choice, but a plea, a request of urgency.  By asking her, God recognizes that she has the depth of character and selflessness that is able to willingly submit to God’s plea.

Mary becomes a witness to all of us “no-sayers" who refuse to see how God needs us.  Are we so into ourselves and our own little self-made worlds, that any request from God is immediately seen as an arm twisting demand?  We fail to recognize that when God makes some request of us, that God has already decided we have the depth of character and faith to do what God is asking of us.  It is an honor to be told by God that he needs us to take some action.  Do we twist that honor into seeing it as a demand for our unwilling obedience?

This week I read an excerpt of a book that hasn’t been published yet.  The book is titled Reweaving the Human Fabric, by Miki Kashtan.  In this excerpt she tells about how she has always struggled with authority figures, and been rebellious to their demands, refusing to obey.  Then a light came on for her and she saw that it isn’t about obeying or rebelling.  It is about her own inner character.  She wrote:
Internally I was more preoccupied with not giving in than with knowing what I wanted and going for it.  I chose my actions reactively, not truly from within.  I didn’t see what is now so clear to me: that true choice, true freedom, emerges from inner clarity.

That, I think, is what’s behind Mary’s ready submission to God.  She wasn’t playing a game with God and resisting just for the sake of resisting.  Mary had an inner clarity, and inner sense of character that helped her realize what she wanted.  Having that inner clarity is what is so freeing.

Here’s another way to say this.  Jonathan Edwards was a great revival preacher in the early 1700’s.  He believed that submission is an exercise of the will in the direction of the affections of the soul.  (Let me say that again--listen closely.)  What I get out of that is that each of us have certain affections deep in our soul.  They could be affections for any one or any thing.  When we will ourselves to submit, we do so in the direction of those deep affections.  We willingly do what we deeply love.

So, if our affections are for God and the things of God, we will have no problem willing ourselves to submit to God and the pleas of God.  But if we have little or no affections of the soul for God, it will be hard for us to bend our will to submit in God’s direction.

Inner clarity, deep affections of the soul, no matter what you call it, that is what is at the basis for the times of our greatest and most willing obedience and submission.  Mary must have already had deep affections for God and the ways of God.  Because of her long held inner clarity, it was easy for her to submit to God and say, “Let it be to me as you have said.”

III
This inner clarity resulting in true submission does a couple of things.  First, it shows how much we value another person.  It demonstrates to others to whom we submit how important they are to us.  How important their dreams or plans are to us.  We don’t submit to people who don’t mean anything to us.  Mary’s submission to God and God’s plan was a demonstration of how much God meant to her.

Secondly, true submission, arising out of the deep affection of the soul, becomes an alignment of the inner person with outer actions.  It is possible to obey a master, or a boss, or a parent, or a spouse, without living in a spirit of submission.  We can do what others ask of us and at the same time harbor rebellion and resentment in our hearts.  We can be obedient to God, but grudgingly, as if we are being put upon.

We would rather let our submission be like paint which only covers the surface, without penetrating or sinking in.  But true submission is like stain, which penetrates deeply into the grain and fibre of the wood.  The inside matches the outside.

Frances de Sales, Bishop of Geneva back in the early 1600’s wrote this in describing the devout person: (on screen)
They are people with angelic hearts.  They are full of vigor and spiritual agility.  They have wings to soar aloft in holy prayer and they also have feet to walk among people in a holy and loving way of life.  Their faces are beautiful and joyous because they accept all things meekly and mildly.  Their thoughts, affections, and deeds have no purpose or motive but that of pleasing God.  Such are devout persons.


IV
This Advent season, spend some time in prayer, using this quote from de Sales as a mirror.  Let it penetrate the fibre of who you are, and who you want to become.  How do you see yourself in comparison to its reflection.  Look at the descriptive words:  words like “vigor,” “spiritual agility,” “affections.”  How do they reflect, or not reflect with your life.  Let these words be like God’s plea to you, a plea to your deep affections, to your sense of inner clarity, that this is who God wants you to be for him, starting this Christmas.  God’s not demanding it.  It’s a plea.  Will you submit?

Caught Between God And Disbelief

"Caught Between God And Disbelief"
Luke 1:26-38

What would you have done if you were Mary’s parents?

We read about people in the Bible, particularly in respect to the Christmas story, and we forget they are human beings like us.  We think, because they made it into the Bible, they must be amazing human beings.  But they face the same hassles of daily living.  Mary is a case in point.  She has been deified by the Catholic Church.  We in the Protestant tradition don’t know exactly what to do with her.

Part of the problem is that we know so little about Mary.  All we know about Mary is what’s written here and in a couple of other meager places in the Bible.  Since we know so little, we get to make stuff up about her, based on information we know about young women in that culture.

I want to push out into those waters of storytelling, and look at Mary from a bit different perspective.  I want to look at Mary by taking a look at the terrible difficulty God had gotten her into.  I want to see if we can figure out how Mary ever stood up under all that pressure of being the God chosen one.

So, back to my original question:  What would you have done if you were Mary’s parents?  What would you have done if your young teenaged daughter came to you with this story?

Wouldn’t you, as Mary’s parents, been crunched with a pile of mixed feelings?  They say ambivalence is defined as that time when your teenaged daughter comes home at 3 a.m. clutching a Gideon’s Bible.  That’s what you’re facing as Mary’s parents.  Only worse.

Can’t you just picture yourselves?  Mary comes into your room, somewhat sheepishly.  With her eyes staring at the floor, she tells you she is going to have a baby.  Since Joseph was the only man who was supposed to be in her life, if you’re Mary’s father you are reaching for your shotgun, and Handbook on Stoning a Person.

Mary tries to calm you down by telling you that they don’t have to worry, Joseph isn’t the father of her baby.  Which makes you worry all the more!  Then, if you’re Mary’s mother, you go into hysterical mode, because you assume Mary must be sleeping around.  By doing that, Mary has shamed you as her parents, shamed her whole family.  As her parents you are thumbing through that Handbook, figuring out the steps to have your daughter killed by stoning.

As your cloud of hysteria is building into hurricane proportions, Mary unloads on you the unbelievable bombshell.

“I know who the father is,” she half yells above your shrieks and wailing and tearing of clothing.
“Who is this man?” you demand as her father.  “Who is this man who defiles our daughter and our family!?  Who is this man?  He too will share the punishment of your folly.  It says so right here in chapter 3 of the Handbook On Stoning A Person!”

Finally, with her voice quivering and cracking, tears welling up and overflowing down her cheeks, because the implausibility of her situation is finally dawning on her, Mary squeaks out, “God.  God will be the father of this child.”

As her parents, you are suddenly silent, as if you had just both been shot in the chest.  You look at Mary and then at each other with the same look.  It is a look that is sculpted on your faces by the thought that not only has your daughter committed debauchery, but she has also gone stark raving mad.

Also, just as suddenly, you realize that Mary is only a teenager.  Assuming teenagers haven’t changed much over the last couple of thousand years, as her parents you jump on the hope that this is one of those wild stories kids tell to cover up some lesser misdeed.  And this one is a whopper.

“Come on, Mary,” you bellow as her father.  “You’ll have to think of a better one than that.  Your story is craziness—not to mention you are also dancing with blasphemy.”
“But it’s true!”  Now it is your daughter who is screaming.  Only she knew the truth or falsity of her words.  In her mind she is caught between God and disbelief.  “It is true!” she sobs, slumping on to the floor.  “An angel told me.”

As Mary’s father, you put your face close to Mary’s and speak to her as if she were a little child playing make-believe.  “Ohhhh, an angel told you.  Right,” you say.  Turning to your wife, you ask, “How long has it been since you saw an angel, wife?”
“Oh, let me see,” you as Mary’s mother says, playing along with the absurdity of your daughter’s story, “I think it was just last week when I was picking rutabaga’s in the garden.”

You, Mary’s father, turn abruptly and quickly swinging at your daughter with the back of your hand up the side of her head, knocking her flat on the floor.  “What do you take us for?” you scream at her.  “Fools!?  What kind of demon has possessed you?”

With her face and her heart aching, Mary runs from the room, quickly packing some things and runs out of the house, maybe forever.  But where could she go?  If she went to Joseph, she would have to go through the same story and reap, possibly, the same reaction, suffering his abuse.  Instead, she headed south on a road that would take her to the hill country of Judea, to the house of Aunt Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, at this point, is the only relative Mary feels she can trust.

As Mary walks away from her home, her home town, she hears her own words ringing in her ears, spoken excitedly to the angel:  “I am the Lord’s servant; may it happen to me as you have said.”  How foolish those words seem now.

At the same time Mary thought about life before the angel’s visit—how everything had been carefree and happy, the marriage to Joseph coming soon.  Now all of that is violently disrupted.  If anyone on the road were to see her face, she would not have been able to conceal her shame; nor would she be able to conceal the growing bewilderment with God who had placed her in such a situation.



Now, we don’t know how Mary’s parents actually reacted to her story.  I can only make guesses based on what little I know of middle eastern culture at that time, and my own personal feelings if my daughter Kristin came home with the story she was pregnant and that somehow it was God who made her so.  Even as a Pastor I would have raised three skeptical eyebrows, and I only have two.

But poor Mary.  What if her story is true?  And here is my point:  Life changes when God encounters us with a plan for our lives that is not our own.  Gods plan is not a choice we would have made for ourselves.  It may sound grand, but the consequences are a bit too steep.  It didn't appear that Mary may have had much choice in her being selected to give birth to the Savior of the world.  It was a mission created out of shame, embarrassment, misunderstanding; not to mention just plain disbelief from those closest to her.

I think of others in the Bible who were given a plan by God that was just as equally life changing.  Plans that had been thrust upon them which put to rest all other plans they may have had for their own future.  Noah, for example, who was instructed to build a huge ark.  I mean, really.  What would we all think of  Mark Shoup, or Nick Squires, or Mark Graber if one of them started building a huge ark the size of two football fields.  And they told everyone God told him to do that.  We'd all wonder if the hospital at Larned had a bed open.

Or what about David, a simple shepherd boy, the youngest son, another teenager chosen by God.  He was chosen to be king of Israel.  Imagine how his life changed, one day singing to the sheep, the next a curious old man comes up to him, pours oil over his head, saying God has chosen him to be king of the land.

Or Moses, who has a comfortable life in Pharaoh's palace.  He beats up an Egyptian soldier for abusing a Hebrew slave.  Moses has to run away.  He finds another comfortable life, sitting around the hill country tending his father-in-law's sheep.  But then he is jerked out of his doldrums by God in a burning bush, to go back to Egypt and demand Pharaoh let all the Hebrew slaves go.  I'm sure Moses had other plans, and he tried to convince God of that.

And Joseph, whom we're studying in Men's Bible Study, who was sold as a slave by his own brothers.  Joseph ended up in Egypt where he was sold, then imprisoned.  I'm sure he wondered what God was up to.

There are so many others whom God encountered with a plan, creating an abrupt change, not entirely to their own liking.  But also, in each and every instance, all the plans worked out in amazing ways.

Picture the expressions on the faces of the people gathered around Noah's ark.  The rain had been falling.  Noah's family went into the zoo-filled ark, and floated away.  The rains just kept falling.  The waters rising higher and higher.

Think of the Egyptian army, stuck in the middle of the Red Sea, walls of water on each side, the Hebrew slaves, lead by Moses safe on the other side.  Then the Egyptians faces collapse just like the walls of water.

Think of the faces of the Philistine armies as they watch a boy throw a rock with a sling at a giant in armor.  The giant goes down with a well aimed rock stuck in his forehead.  Then that boy, David, walks over and cuts Goliath's head off.

Imagine, as we have in Men's Bible Study, the faces of Joseph's brothers.  Standing before the second most powerful man in one of the most powerful empires in the world at the time, the brothers have come begging for food because of widespread famine.  Egypt is the only country that has food, thanks to this second in command leader.  Imagine those brothers faces when that leader says, "I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into slavery."



God's acts of salvation have an uncanny way of coming true.  No matter how incredible they seem to our ears, God's purpose to free His people from a world of sin and hurt will not be turned back.  Not even by Mary's parents.  God's plans seem to be met with constant and unending reaction of, "this is insanity!".  But what appears to us as such, we who are living out the role of Mary's parents, God always changes into the purest sanity.

Time to get personal.  God may not come to us with plans to become parents of the Savior of the world, or build an ark.  It may be that God simply lets us know, in no uncertain terms that we are loved--and God wants us to let others hear that message also.  God makes it as clear to us as if He had sent an angel to tell us.  That God is full of pleasure to make that love known to us.  That God wants His best for us.

And yet, God's plans do not come change-free.  Our lives will be changed.  Maybe, drastically.  But God's plans do come with a guarantee:  that what God says He will do, He does.  We may not think God's plans are in our own best interest, but just wait and watch how they turn out.

This is one of the themes of Christmas.  God is presenting us with a plan of how we can be free from our sin and ourselves--which may be one and the same thing.  God is presenting himself in a vulnerable and loving way, hoping we might be drawn to him.  "Here is the plan," God is saying.  "As incredible as it all sounds," God asks, "do you want to be a part of it?"

Getting Pregnant

"Getting Pregnant"
Luke 1:26-38

I don't get the idea that too many people knew Mary.  When you think of the total world population at the time, there was probably only a small handful who knew Mary personally, and a few more who were acquainted with her.

Since that first Christmas night, all that changed.   Amongst Christians, next to the name of Jesus, Mary's is probably the most recognized--especially for Catholics, who make up the largest share of Christianity today.

According to various news stories, Mary keeps popping up here and there around the globe, making herself visible and known to both children and adults.  Some of these self-revelations are accompanied by miracles and healing.

Beyond this modern day popping in and out by the mother of Jesus, there is no getting around the fact that she was, and still is, an important figure in telling the story of our faith.  But in the same breath, it must not be forgotten that it was not always so.

Part of the Catholic theology concerning Mary is that not only was she a virgin when she conceived Jesus, but that Mary herself was the child of a virgin.  Mary, as the "mother of God" could be nothing less than born of a virgin, as that line of thinking goes.

The Bible will support none of that.  The Bible story puts its emphasis where it should be:  on God and God's activity, not on Mary or anything having to do with her history.  The planets of this amazing birth story orbit around God, not Mary.  Paying attention to the particulars of this story will lead us in God's direction, not Mary's.


So, let's look at the story.  The message of God is given to the Messenger of God, Gabriel, to be delivered to Mary.  Gabriel's greeting to Mary is important.  Listen closely:  "The Lord is with you and has greatly blessed you!" (vs. 28).  "God has been gracious to you" (vs. 30).  The point of the greeting is that Mary was not some overly saintly person, better than all the rest of the world's women at that time, or at any other time.

The emphasis is on God and God's gracious choosing of Mary.  Because we believe that God is working according to some plan, we know that God's choosing of Mary was not some arbitrary procedure.  But it was also not a choice made by God based on some beauty pageant scheme.  Mary was not one of the 10 semi-finalists who finally wowed the judges with her interview answers about how much she loved people and wanted world peace.  Mary did not win the "Mother of the Savior" reality show in order to gain the honor of birthing the baby Jesus.  And it doesn't appear that she was chosen for that role as a reward for her exemplary behavior.

It wasn't like the church bulletin blooper that read:  "The Pastor is starting a Young Mother's Group.  All those women who would like to become a young mother, see the Pastor in his office after church."

Part of God's plan, discovered not only by careful reading of the details of this story, but many other such stories throughout the Bible, carries a couple of characteristics.  First, it's God who chooses, and those whom God chooses are, in the larger scheme of things, unknown.

In George Bernard Shaw's play, "St. Joan," the heroine, Joan of Arc, speaks of hearing God's messages.  At one point in the play she talked to King Charles.  She was a constant annoyance to the King.  He clearly doesn't appreciate this crazy lady in armor who insists on leading armies.  He said to Joan, "Oh, your voices, your voices, always your voices.  Why don't the voices come to me?  I am the King, not you."

Mary was certainly not a royal figure--not someone you would assume the angel of God would be sent to with such a message, and such a role.  She had no apparent heroic reputation either in terms of her community life, or in her life of faith.

A second characteristic of the way God does things is that when God makes His choice, it is a blessing for that person and an act of grace.  It is not a blessing in terms of reward, as I've already said.  It is a blessing in terms of a totally undeserved, unprecedented, and even uncalled for action.  The stark and simple truth is that Mary was chosen by God.  Period.  For Luke the storyteller, and we the story-listeners, that has to be satisfyingly enough.

We can understand this a little better when we pay attention to Mary's initial response to the angel (vs. 29).  She is "deeply troubled" and disturbed.  One translation (Phillips) adds a whole different connotation by saying Mary was "deeply perturbed."  Evidently there are a lot of ways you can go in translating this word describing Mary's emotions which include shades of annoyance, confusion, and perplexity.

"She wondered what his words meant," Luke tells us about Mary.  It wasn't as if Mary was a person of high spiritual attunement.  She wasn't a person, evidently, piously prayerful, waiting on God to notice her religious fervor and purity, and so reward her with something grand.  Mary may not have even been a model church goer.  The point is God chose her for this pivotal role, and that's all that is important.

Because Mary is chosen by God, she is treated and spoken to with respect by the Messenger Gabriel.  Maybe this is another part of Mary's troubled response and wondering about what Gabriel's words meant.  It is not only what he said, but how he said it.  She has maybe never been talked to with such respect.  She doesn't know exactly how to hear such a quality of voice.

Why wouldn't God have respect for what He has created and the ones He has chosen?  If God does treat people in such tender and joyful ways, why do we treat each other so badly, so hurtfully, so coarsely?  Demeaning, belittling, biting words.  Or even cold silences can hurt worse than anything spoken.  In opposition to the barrage of negative communication launched at us, comes the word of God spoken with respect and honor.

The content of that word, that message from God, is the opportunity for Mary to bear the Savior of the world.  This would be the work of the Spirit of God, who from the opening chapters of the Bible is the one who hovers over differing kinds of emptiness and creates life where there was none.  If Mary agrees, the creative Spirit of God would be set in motion again.  Where at one time there was no life in her womb, there would be life.

Notice, I said, "If Mary agrees..."  Before the impregnating can occur, there has to be a spirit of willingness, of receptiveness, to be a part of God's plan.  Not everyone would want to receive such a message, or be a part of such a plan.  Maybe that was the one quality that God saw in Mary that made Him decide on choosing her.  It wasn't that she was some perfect person.  She was just receptive.  She was "impregnable" rather than "impregnable."

There are two meanings to the same word--another highlight of our confusing English language.  To be impregnable means that you are able to withstand attack.  But the word's second meaning is to be receptive to fertilization in order to give birth.  Impregnable or impregnable?

This is the point at which this no longer becomes just Mary's story anymore.  It becomes terribly personal for you and me.  Which are we, impregnable or impregnable?  Receptive or defensive?  Open and attuned to God's messages, or put a block on anything incoming from God?  How will we ever know if we could be part of God's plans if we're constantly trying to withstand Him?

The Apostle, Paul, wrote about this in his letter of Colossians:
God's plan is to make know His secret to His people, this rich and glorious secret which He has for all peoples.  And the secret is that Christ is in you, which means that you will share in the glory of God. (1:27)

Listen to that last sentence again:  "And the secret is that Christ is in you..."  The wonder of this Advent Season is that we--men and women--can all become impregnated by God and be carriers of Christ.  We all can be receivers of His gracious Word, we can all be hovered over by the Holy Spirit, and receive the life that God has to offer.

There was a period in which artists depicted the impregnating of Mary by God with the image of God speaking in Mary's ear.  The organ of her impregnation was her ear.  To be impregnated by God means listening--really listening--for the voice of God and then being receptive to that voice.  But it's hard to be listening or be receptive if we are, by our busy-ness and unwillingness, trying to be impregnable rather than impregnable.

In Europe, when work was done for the winter, the men would take the wagon wheels off their wagons and hang both wagons and wheels in the barn.  One of the wheels would be brought in the house and used for the Advent Wreath.  There are times when we need to take the wheels off our various wagons of busy-ness so that we can stop, take time, and listen to the Word of God.  Only then will we be impregnated with God's secret:  Christ in you.

I had a conversation with Eugene Peterson when he was Pastor of Christ our King Presbyterian Church, in Bel Air, Maryland, just outside Baltimore.  We were talking about this very story of Gabriel's message to Mary.  Eugene said one time when he was preaching on this passage he mentioned, half-seriously and half-jesting, that it would be really fun if a number of people in the congregation got t-shirts imprinted with the message, "I Got Pregnant At Christ Our King Presbyterian Church."

His intention, of course, was that people would proclaim their coming to faith, their hearing and receiving the life giving Word of God.  Unbeknownst to Eugene, someone in the church had a bumper sticker made with that very message, and hung it in the back window of his van.  Eugene got in his van and drove around town making visits and doing his errands not knowing it was there.  He did that for a week, before he discovered the bumper sticker.

"I Got Pregnant At Pratt Presbyterian Church."  Is that the shirt that some of you could wear?  Or wish to wear?  "I Got Pregnant During Advent, 2013."  That's a possibility.  For anyone.  To hear the amazing Voice of God through His angels speaking the wondrous words, the Christmas miracle, the secret of God can be yours, impregnated with it:  "Christ is in you...share in the glory of God."

"I am the Lord's servant," said Mary;  "may it happen to me as you have said."

This Is Jesus, King of the Jews"

"This Is Jesus, King of the Jews"
Matthew 27:35-40

This Sunday is called, “Christ The King Sunday.”  It’s the last Sunday in the long church season called Pentecost.  Pentecost starts with Pentecost Sunday, usually in late May or early June, and ends today—the last Sunday in November.

So the Christian calendar, and the Christian lectionary are making us pause, before Advent starts up next Sunday, and think about Christ as our King.

There are certain elements of kingliness.  They are what we associate with a king.  Like royal robes.

Jesus had a robe.  It was actually the only thing he owned.  Think of everything you own.  Jesus only had a robe.  Homespun.  No seam.  A simple piece of thick cloth he used to keep himself warm.  We don’t even know what color it was.  He wore it wherever he went.  He slept with it, using it for a blanket.  That’s it.

At Jesus’ crucifixion the Roman soldiers were throwing dice to see who would win Jesus’ robe.  Imagine that scene.  Above the soldiers is a naked man, whom they don’t care about, spiked to a cross.  Below him, the soldiers are gaming for the naked Jesus’ robe.

Imagine that robe.  As you watch them throw the dice, you know that this is the only thing Jesus owned in the world.  When they took his robe and clothes off his body to crucify him, they were taking all of his worldly goods.  Once one of the soldiers won Jesus’ robe and took possession of it, Jesus would have owned nothing.  Jesus, the King, was in the process of dying totally naked.  That is, totally possession-less.

What the soldiers were doing was routine at executions.  Gaining the extra clothes of the executed was a “perk” of the job.  Imagine what it would have been like for Jesus, hearing down below him, the soldiers rolling dice for his robe.  Imagine Jesus thinking about his robe and what it represented.  Did Jesus close his eyes and remember?

Did Jesus remember back to the hemorrhaging woman, whose condition had lasted 12 years (Mark 5:25-34)?  She had spent all her money trying to get well.  She had no other options but one.  She had heard about Jesus.  Jesus was her last gasp attempt at getting well and being free of her condition.  She thought to herself, as the gospel story tells us, “If I can just put a finger on his robe, I can get well.”  And that’s what she did.  She slipped up behind Jesus, touched the hem of his robe, and was healed.  Just touched his robe!  His only possession.

Did Jesus remember how the towns would round up all their sick whenever he would be traveling through?  How, as Matthew’s gospel tells us, all those who were rounded up simply “asked permission to touch the edge of his robe.”  And whoever touched that robe was healed (Matthew 14:34-36).

And did Jesus remember, as he hung on the cross, above the soldiers who gambled for his robe, how during one time of prayer, that robe was changed.  How, there on the mountain, when Moses and Elijah suddenly appeared and talked with Jesus, how “his clothes became blinding white” (Luke 9:29).  How, during that Transfiguration, everything about Jesus changed to brightness, especially his robe.

Did Jesus wonder, as he hung there upon the cross, if the soldier who won his robe knew exactly what he had won?  What power had flowed through that robe?  How many people’s lives had been affected simply by a touch upon that robe?  How many diseases had been healed by the hem of that robe?  His robe.  Jesus’ clothing symbol of his kingship upon the earth.


Then Matthew tells about the sign.  As a King processed through a city, a sign would be held up on a standard, letting everyone know who this King was.

But when you’re crucified, the only sign you got was tacked above the head.  The only thing the sign announced was the crime of the one being crucified.  Most likely, Jesus had to wear the sign around his neck as he carried the cross through Jerusalem on the way to Skull Hill.  Everyone would have been able to read the crime for which Jesus was receiving capital punishment:  “This Is Jesus, The King Of The Jews.”  To make sure everyone could read it, the sign was written in the three predominant languages of the day: Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

The sign was not made by the Jews.  It was made by the Roman soldiers, probably on orders from the governor.  The sign was a calculated slap in the face of the Jewish authorities.  The Jews saw Jesus as a hostile threat to their system.  They took crucifixion with dead seriousness.

The Romans took a more playful view.  They saw no threat in Jesus, and viewed the Jewish seriousness as laughable.  In order to have a little fun with the Jews, the Roman authorities fashioned this sign.  They saw Jesus’ crucifixion as an orchestrated farce, more an aspect of the Jewish leadership’s paranoia than anything else.  So, by making the sign, the Roman’s were making Jesus out to be a tragic court jester, tweaking the Jews with Jesus’ death.

But under that sign, Jesus is invisible for who he really is.  The sign is a way for both the Romans and the Jews to deny the awesome holiness of Jesus.  Authorities on both sides only seek to use Jesus as a ping pong ball between the paddles of their assumed authority, to do with Jesus as they will.  The Jews claimed Jesus as no king.  The Romans saw Jesus as no threat.  Indeed, the sign should have read, if the truth be known by Jews and Romans, “This Is Jesus, The King Of The World.”  And his throne was a cross, with a sign above it.


And lastly, a King had those who helped him rule.  There may have been a person who had the office of The Hand of the King, who was second in command, who took care of all the King’s messy work.  In Men’s Bible Study, we are looking at the story of Joseph.  Joseph, the Hebrew who was sold into slavery by his dysfunctional brothers, became the second in command in Egypt to Pharaoh himself.

These dignitaries who served the King would have chairs beside the throne of the King, one on the left, and one on the right.

In Matthew’s story of the cross, we are told Jesus was executed with two criminals.  Jesus’ cross was placed in the middle of the crosses of the criminals.  The word that Matthew used to describe these two others literally means “one who seizes.”  That is, one who seizes the property of another, as in a thief.  Or, one who seizes authority from another, as a revolutionary would.

These two criminals were either robbers or revolutionaries.  Or both.  That may say something about how Jesus was being viewed at his Crucifixion.  A revolutionary.  An overthrower.  The question that forces us to ask is, “What exactly was Jesus trying to overthrow?”  What revolution was he trying to unleash?  Discovering the correct answer to those questions will help us understand the meaning of the cross, and Jesus’ true Kingship.

Knowing what we do, now, about a King and his throne, and the two seats on either side, why does Matthew make sure we know Jesus was crucified between two criminals and not just on the end of the three?

Do you remember the question that was tossed at the disciples most often by the Jewish authorities:  “Why does your Master eat and drink with sinners?”  At times the Jewish leaders mustered up the guts to ask Jesus that question themselves.

Why did Jesus live amongst sinners?  Why did Jesus eat and drink and live between sinners?  Jesus’ answer was a parable:  “Where are doctors needed most?  Isn’t a doctor’s work with those who are sick and not the healthy?”

Jesus lived between the sick, the maimed, the rejects, the nerds, the geeks, the made-fun-of, the leftovers, the given-up-on, the throw-a-ways, the invisible, the socially unacceptable, even the criminals.  How appropriate, Matthew is telling us, that this Jesus who lived between such people should also die between such people.  But not only between them—for them.  Two thieves on the right and on the left of the kings throne/cross.  That’s how Jesus, “The King Of The Jews” lived, and it’s how he died.  It is what made him most kingly.

This cross is a terribly poignant scene.  There is so much to see.  I hope by seeing all the elements of Jesus’ Kingship, you will come to love him as your King.

From Stonework To Stone-Hard

"From Stonework To Stone-Hard"
Luke 21:5-19

Jesus was in the temple.  He had just watched as a poor widow put her two pennies into the offering urn.  Jesus told those around him that she had put in more than the rich, because she “gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”  The others, Jesus said, were just giving their leftovers.

Those who listened to that statement were clearly uncomfortable with it.  We know that because those gathered around Jesus came back at him with a deflecting statement:  “…remarking how beautiful the Temple was, the splendor of its stonework and memorial gifts.”  In other words, they didn’t get what Jesus just said.  Because basically they were saying, if it wasn’t for those “leftovers” from the wealthy, the temple wouldn’t exist at all.

Then Jesus basically slapped them up the side of the head (and I’m sure he had a lot of fun in doing so) when he said, “…the time is coming when every stone in that building will end up in a heap of rubble.”  Which would have been something to see, since some of the stones in the temple were 37 feet long, 12 feet high, and 18 feet wide.  That’s quite a throw down.  I would have paid to see that.  And evidently a lot of people who were listening to Jesus would have also, since their first question was, “When is this going to happen?”  They wanted front row seats.

But Jesus, as Jesus often does, didn’t answer their question.  Instead he began talking about how everything is going to change.  Starting with the temple shake down.  And then doomsday deceivers claiming to be the Christ.  Wars and uprisings.  Famine.  Pestilence.  Falling skies.  And awful betrayals by family members and loved ones.

Jesus closed out his little talk with an amazing statement that you should all underline in your Bibles.  It’s verse 19.  The Message Bible says it this way:  "Staying with it—that’s what is required.  Stay with it to the end.  You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.”

Jesus started out reacting to the people’s statement about the stone-hard firmness and beauty of the temple, by making his statement that even those stones can be shaken down.  Jesus ended up by making his great statement that what really matters is an unshakable endurance.  He’s making a contrast between stonework that doesn’t, in the end, matter, and stone-hard “sticking-to-it kind of faith” that does.

So, for Jesus, the question isn’t about signs of the end, or when it will all happen, or what will happen when the world collapses.  The question for Jesus is “How will you get through it?”  What is the quality needed to get you through a shattered world—especially, when it’s your own personal world that is being shaken to pieces?  That one quality is endurance or “staying with it.”

What’s interesting about this word is that the motivation for this kind of endurance isn’t for glory.  The person who lives this kind of endurance isn’t doing it so people will sing songs about her or him.  People who endure this way aren’t looking for acclaim, or are hoping for some reward.  Their one motivation is inward—that is, they are enduring, holding fast, standing firm, out of love.

The word that Jesus used for endurance has a lot of great meanings.  It’s a word that is used to describe the person who stays behind, against huge odds, to protect others.

During World War II, 1st Lieutenant John Robert Fox was directing artillery fire in the Italian town of Sommocolonia to stall an advance. While Fox was directing fire, a large enemy force moved in on his position. Realizing that this force was a huge threat to his small company of men, that they were completely outnumbered, Fox ordered his men to retreat while he stayed behind to single-handedly man one of the machine guns, protecting his men's retreat.  As the enemy troops surrounded him and launched a final assault on his position, Fox called a final artillery strike—on himself.

When his men eventually retook the position, Fox’s body was found surrounded by 100’s of dead enemy troops.  John Robert Fox was given the Medal of Honor for heroically staying behind, against huge odds to protect his men.  That’s one part of the meaning of the word that Jesus used.

The word can also mean standing firm with courage.  Clarence Jordan was a man of unusual abilities and commitment. He had two Ph.D.s, one in agriculture and one in Greek and Hebrew. He did a translation of the New Testament called The Cottonpatch Version, which was a best seller at the time.  So gifted was he, he could have chosen to do anything he wanted. He chose to serve the poor.

In the 1940’s, he founded a farm in Americus, Georgia, and called it Koinonia Farm. It was a community for poor whites and poor blacks. As you might guess, such an idea did not go over well in the Deep South of the ’40’s. Ironically, much of the resistance came from good church people who followed the laws of segregation as much as the other folks in town. The town people tried everything to stop Clarence. They tried boycotting him.  They slashed worker’s tires when they came to town. Over and over, for fourteen years, they tried to stop him.

Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan had had enough of Clarence Jordan, so they decided to get rid of him once and for all. They came one night with guns and torches and set fire to every building on Koinonia farm, except Clarence’s house, which they riddled with bullets.

They chased off all the families except one black family, which refused to leave.  Clarence recognized the voices of many of the Klansmen, and, as you might guess, some of them were church people. Another was the local newspaper’s reporter.

The next day that reporter came out to see what remained of the farm. The rubble still smoldered and the land was scorched, but he found Clarence in the field, hoeing and planting.  "I heard the awful news," he called to Clarence, "and I came out to do a story on the tragedy of your farm closing." Clarence just kept hoeing and planting.

The reporter kept prodding, kept poking, trying to get a rise from this quietly determined man who seemed to be planting instead of packing his bags. So, finally, the reporter said in a haughty voice, "Well, Dr. Jordan, you got two of them Ph.D.s and you’ve put fourteen years into this farm, and there’s nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you’ve been?”

Clarence stopped hoeing, turning toward the reporter with his penetrating blue eyes, and said quietly but firmly, "About as successful as the Cross.  Sir, I don’t think you understand us. What we’re about is not success, but faithfulness. We’re staying. Good day."

Beginning that day, Clarence and his companions rebuilt Koinonia and the farm is still going strong today.  (Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat, pp. 188-189.)  That’s the kind of courage Jesus is talking about when using this word.

It’s a word that describes the person who doesn’t just stand fast, but stands fast with high expectations.

A teacher asked a second grade boy, “Why are you walking around sticking your stomach out?”

“The principal told me to,” the boy replied.  “This morning I told him I had a stomach ache.  He told me to stick it out until noon and then I could go home.”

This little guy has high expectations.

It’s been said that people don’t fail; they just give up trying.  And one of the main reasons they give up trying is their expectations give out.  If your expectations give out, it means you’ve lost sight of the end.  You don’t have the end in mind anymore.  That’s what Jesus is saying here—keep the end in mind, and never give up your expectations that you’ll reach the end.  You give up those expectations of making it through and you’ll fall by the wayside.

One gold miner out in Colorado bought the deed to a gold mine that had proved to be a total bust.  He went down into one of the shafts of the mine, to look over his new acquisition.  At the end of the shaft was a rusty, old pickax.  It was stuck in the wall of the totally unproductive mine.  One of the previous miners had left the pickax stuck there as a symbol of failure and expectations given up on.

The miner, who was the new owner, pulled the old thing out of the wall, and just for the heck of it took a swing at the wall where the pickax had been stuck, and broke through into what is now known as the Comstock Lode—one of the largest gold finds in the history of all gold mines.  Just one swing more was all it took, if only that miner from the past had stuck with it a little while longer.

Jesus was saying the same thing.  Stay with it.  Don’t give up, even though it looks hopeless, and there is no reason to expect anything more than failure.  If you can stick with your faith in Christ you will find the “gold”—that is, “you’ll be saved.” 

And finally, the word that Jesus used is a word that describes a person who puts up an energetic and successful resistance.  Some years ago, a man named Guillemet was in an airplane which crashed in the French Alps.  Although seriously injured, he was able to find shelter under the wreckage of the airplane.  The other passengers who weren’t killed in the crash gave up and died.

A blizzard howled around him for hours.  When it subsided he crawled for 16 hours down the mountain slope.  He was finally discovered by a rescue party.  Some days later, as he recovered, someone asked him how he managed to survive.  He replied, “I was trying to get back to my wife.  She was my goal.”

What makes resistance successful against the odds the world throws at us, against our faith in Christ, is that we have that goal.  We resist because we know where we’re going.  We resist because we know what we’re aiming at.  We resist because we have a clear vision of where we want to be and what we want to attain.  For Jesus, that goal is our salvation.  We keep that goal in mind, and we resist against all the crazy stuff going on in the world, that’s trying to keep us from reaching the salvation we have in Christ.

This is a great word Jesus used about the quality that gets us through hard times, even times that seem insurmountably bad.  He gave this word to the disciples, to the believers, and to all Christians down through history who through atrocity, “Stay with it…stay with it to the end.  You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved.”

The One Thing

"The One Thing"
Job 19:13-22

Do you remember the movie, “City Slickers”?  Billy Crystal plays Mitch.  Mitch works for an ad agency in a big city.  He’s getting burned out.  His marriage has gone dry.  He’s having a mid-life crisis.  He doesn’t know who he is and what his life is about.  He needs to figure that out.

So he convinces two of his friends to go with him to New Mexico to a dude ranch for two weeks where they will be working a real cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado.  Jack Palance plays the real cowboy, Curly, who will lead the cattle drive.  Curly teaches these three friends a few lessons.  Here’s one of them.

(Show scene from movie, “City Slickers” where Curly talks about “the one thing” to Mitch:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k1uOqRb0HU).  Michelle had to edit out a word in Curly’s statement.

This idea of “one thing” comes up in a lot of places.  In Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People there’s a chapter titled, “First Things First.”  In that chapter, Covey says we need to answer this question:  What one thing could you keep in front of you, that if you kept it in front of you on a regular basis would make a huge positive difference in your personal life?

In an interview with Gary Keller, real estate entrepreneur and author, he talked about the ONE thing, saying:
What you’re trying to do is set up a domino run in your life. You want to line things up with the end in mind…Your ONE Thing is always tied to your destination. At any given moment it is your most levered action – your first domino – that starts it all and gets you the most bang for your buck. We can’t do everything, but we can do ONE Thing that matters most at any given moment in time.

Gary Keller said, later in that same interview, “Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.”  In other words, you can’t have five ONE things.  You can be a multi-tasker in terms of all your activity and work, but you can’t be a multi-ONE thinger.  Having more than ONE thing just divides who you are and what you become.

Finding the “one thing” isn’t like finding your career, or even doing the one thing you were meant to do in life.  Instead, it’s like that one stone thrown in the water that sends out it’s ripple effects into every area of your life.  The ONE thing isn’t the ripples.  It’s the rock that created the ripples.  It’s like Gary Keller says in the interview above—that one domino, that first domino, that puts everything else in motion.

The German politician, poet and writer, Goethe, once said, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”  That’s what happens if we have too many ONE things.  Those which we thought were ultimately important, aren’t.  In the toss and twirl of life they are the things that don’t really matter.  But we try to force them into primary positions, and they end up forcing us into major distractions away from our ONE thing.

According to quantum physics, everything is always in motion. That means we can’t have balance.  There may be no such thing as a state of equilibrium.  Everything about physical life, down to every atom, is full of constant motion.  How often have you found yourself saying or thinking, “Everything seems out of balance.” Or, I just need to stop; I don’t want to move another inch.”  Notice, we say things like that as if it’s a problem, as if balance is something we should have. Maybe there is no balance.  There is no stillness.  What if that’s true?  If it is true, then there has to be something, the ONE thing, to keep you focused when all about you and inside of you is flux, flow and motion.

This constant, awful flux, is what Job’s ONE thing was found in.  It’s the one thing he held on to when everything was changing.  His sheep and servants were killed by violent lightening strikes.  His oxen were stolen by the dreaded Sabeans.  The Chaldeans came and stole all his camels, killing even more servants.  And the crowning blow was finding out, that while having a feast, all his adult children were crushed when a windstorm blew and the building they were feasting in collapsed.

If that wasn’t enough, Job came down with some kind of skin disease and he became covered with pus oozing boils.  That’s the Job testimony that quantum physics is right.  Everything is moving and changing every moment, and there is no way to maintain your balance in life.  It is out of that life experience that Job comes back again and again to his ONE thing that he can hold on to in the midst of the constant, tragic motion in his life.

His wife tells him to curse God and let go.  Just die.  But Job is holding on to that ONE thing that even his wife doesn’t understand.  If his life is going to end, he wants it said of him that he had that ONE thing that kept him throughout his life.

Take out the blank piece of paper from your bulletin.  I’m going to run you through an imaging exercise that I’ve adapted from the chapter, “Begin With The End In Mind” in the book  7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  Imagine. You come to church.  You walk into the sanctuary.  You realize a funeral is going on.  People you know are there.  Church friends.  Community friends.  Work friends.  Family.  You walk down the aisle and up to the casket.  You look inside and it’s you.  This is your funeral.

Several people are standing up to talk about you.  In their comments about you they are each answering one question:  “What do they think your ‘ONE thing’ was?”  Put four names across the top of your paper.  Here are the names I want you to put up there.  Think of a family member first (spouse, sister, brother, mother, father, son or daughter).  Put their name to the far left of your sheet.  Next one of your close friends.  Then someone from your work.  And the fourth is someone from here at church.  Under each of thesse four names write what you think they would say is your ONE thing.  Take a couple of minutes to do that.

If you have a lot of courage, you might write down your answers, then go and personally ask each of those people, whose name you wrote at the top of your paper, this question.  The answers may tell you more than you want to know.  You may find out that what you believed to be your “ONE thing” is not what others are perceiving at all.

What is the “ONE thing”?  It’s the inner guidance system at the heart of who you are.  Maybe one way to think about it is by starting with the very moment of the end of your life, as we just did in the exercise.  Your ONE thing becomes that which everything about you and your past is examined.  This ONE thing will also be the measure and your definition of success.  At the end of life, it will be asked, Was she or he a success?  That can only be measured by your “ONE thing.”

Bret Graber had an idea for a table.  He built the table with no plans except for the vision he had in his head.  And he built it.  Here’s the picture of Brett sitting at his table.  All he used was a saw and a hammer.  No mitre box.  No level.  No measuring tape.  Certainly, no Pintrest, Nick Squires.  Just his vision.

This is how the “one thing” works.  It’s the all-powerful idea around which everything else in life is created and built.  You have to have the idea—the ONE thing first.  Then you start putting your life together based on that one thing.  At the end of your life, you finally sit at the table you created.  You get the ONE thing in mind, first!  Then you build your life.  Not the other way around.

Job was coming to that table he had built.  He had no reason to think that he wouldn’t be the next victim of circumstance and his life would be over.  So, early on in his conversation with his “friends” he lets them know what his ONE thing has been:

I know that my Savior lives,
and at the end
he will stand on this earth.
My flesh may be destroyed,
yet from this body
I will see God.
Yes, I will see him for myself,
and I long for that moment. (19:23-27)

Job’s ONE thing was knowing that his Savior God lives.  That he would be seeing that Savior God.  But not just seeing God.  Most people, when they think of “meeting their maker” are terrified by the thought of that experience—watching all the bad stuff of your life being shown to you by God like an awful movie.  But not Job.  Job not only will see God, but Job is looking forward to it.  He lives, standing on tip toe, if you will, of that face-to-face experience with God.

Around that ONE thing, Job has built his life.  Everything about who he was as a person, everything about what he did with his life, had as its ONE foundation, the great expectation of seeing God he knew was there. No matter what happened to him in life—and a lot of awful things did happen, he still didn’t let all that effect his ONE thing:  Knowing his Savior God, and expectantly awaiting to see God for himself.  That’s why, at the start of this book, God is so enamored with Job, bragging about Job to the heavenly court.  “Have you noticed Job?  Here’s a guy who’s got his ONE thing right—he considers me in everything he does.”

“Have you noticed __________________?” God might be saying about you.  What is your ONE thing, that has been the ruler that measures all of your life, the rock that has caused all the ripples emanating out from who you are, the idea that moved you to find the lumber to build something of yourself, that has made God stand up and take notice?  What is your ONE thing?

Mirrors

"Mirrors"
Luke 19:1-10

One of the things I got sick of, reading about the personalities involved in the budget talks and government shut down that recently ended was what I’d call “image control.”  The President, representatives, and senators most in the forefront of the debates seemed more concerned about their image than the substance of what they were debating about--particularly the economic health of our nation.  The whole thing got to be more about personality conflicts, and who would be able to “save face” than about what was going to be best for our country.  Image has become more important than integrity; appearances more important than depth of character, innuendo more important than truth.

We seem to be preoccupied with appearances.  What others think about us, based on all kinds of externals, seems to have more sway in our lives as to the kinds of people we want others to see--rather than our own sense of personal integrity.  We fashion ourselves more by the reflections we see in other’s eyes and faces, and how they are reacting to us than anything else.  We would like to think it isn’t so, but it is.  We have heard, and probably believe in our heads, that our sense of self-esteem should come from within, rather than from what others reflect back at us.  But we give our sense of self-esteem over to others more often than not.

In the British Journal of Plastic Surgery there was an article titled, “The Quasimodo Complex.”  In the article, two physicians reported on their study of 11,000 prison inmates.  All of the inmates were doing time for violent crimes.  The doctors doing the study compared these inmates to the general population in one particular category.  In the general population, 20% of all people may be said to have surgically correctable facial deformities, such as protruding ears, misshapen noses, receding chins, scars, birthmarks, or eye deformities.  But the physicians research revealed that among the prison population a full 60% showed such characteristics.

The authors of the study, who named the phenomenon after Quasimodo, Victor Hugo’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” ended their article with some disturbing questions.  Had these criminals encountered hostility and rejection from classmates throughout school years because of not being “facially normal?”  Could the cruel mocking of other kids have pushed them toward a state of emotional disturbance that ultimately led to criminal acts?  Certainly we have seen too much in the news lately about school children who are taking their own lives because they were being bullied severely for being different in one way or another.  Bullying is another reflection back at us, as to what others think of us.  If the reason kids or adults are being bullied becomes a determining factor upon which one bases personal self-esteem, it’s not too much of a leap to understand why kids are taking the lives of their classmates as well as their own.  Or are possibly headed toward a life of violent crime.

What I’m struggling to put together here is the connection between image and self-esteem.  The questions I ponder, when I read through articles like that one, are:  How is self-image and self-esteem really created?  If we are so concerned with what other people think about us, and fashion ourselves and our self-worth according to those concerns, then whose image is it really?  Is “self-image” a contradiction in terms?  And likewise, would the term “self-esteem” be a similar misnomer?  Is image and esteem really generated by the self, or is it formed out of the reflections we see of ourselves from others?

I think we have been fooled into thinking that what it means to have self-esteem is to be able to accept yourself, feel a sense of self-worth despite all the external messages.  Isn’t it hard to believe in yourself, when it feels like no one believes in you?  Think about it, really.  How good can you feel about yourself when all else about you is reflecting back the opposite?  How can you feel like you have been molded into the very image of God out of the dust of the earth, when everyone else just thinks you’re a clod?

We may not be the islands of self-contained esteem, no matter how much we think we are or can be.  We can try to be like Linus, when he says to Charlie Brown, “I think the world is so much better today than it was five years ago.”

Charlie Brown replies, “No!  How can you say that?  The world’s going to the dogs.  How can you say it’s a better place today than it was five years ago?”

To which Linus says, “Of course the world’s a better place than it was five years ago.  I’m in it now!”

What happens, though, when it seems like all the messages you receive are saying, “The world (whatever that word describes for you) would be a better place without you”?  Our town.  Our school.  Our church.  Those kinds of messages are devastating to any semblance of self-esteem.  I feel for you, if any of you have been on the receiving end of such messages.  It feels like no matter how you try to pump yourself up with self-esteeming, pat-yourself-on-the-back messages, they are never quite powerful enough to counteract the demeaning and belittling ones that you receive from others.

The sad truth is, according to the biblical story of creation, we kind of got ourselves into this fix.  God created one human being and put that human being in direct relationship with the physical creation:  plants, trees, water, sky, planets.  Then God created all animal and sea life, and put that singular human being in relation to all those critters.  Our survival and depth of relationship was intertwined with all theirs.

But, that one single human being got lonely.  That human being decided being in relationship with the physical world and all its teeming life was not enough.  Being with another human would be great.  See, what it doesn’t say in that Genesis account is that God then asked that first human being, “Are you sure you want that to happen?  It could get messy?  Why not just enjoy the animals, pick some fruit and be happy?”  But the first human being would not be convinced.  Instead the first human decided that interdependence with another human would be much better than being alone and independent.  Up to that point, self-esteem, self-awareness, and self-image was truly that.  Once the next human being was created, at the first human’s insistence, all that self stuff went out the window.

With the second, and the third, and so on, human being, self-esteem is not self-created anymore.  It is interdependently bestowed.  It is molded and adapted by us in the impressions that we see reflected back at us by others.  God must have seen it coming.  The first human had no idea what had happened and how much had suddenly changed by adding just one more human to the mix.  And a female at that!  (Just kidding!)

Now everything has shifted.  We have more power to create a sense of esteem in others, than they do just for themselves.  It is in the wielding of that power that people are made or destroyed, become a blessing or a curse.  It is in our ability and willingness to love or not to love, to endow others with esteem or not.  And in the final analysis, that mutual ability does more to build a person up, to enhance not just image but deeper things like character, integrity, and the ability to love in return.

That’s one of the reasons I really like this story of Zacchaeus.  We can only guess at what his sense of self, his self-image, his self-esteem might have been.  We do know how little he was esteemed by his neighbors:  zilch.  In fact, he was despised.  He lived amongst people who overlooked him literally (because of his shortness), and personally because of who he was and what his occupation was.

He was a tax collector.  He was the chief tax collector in his area.  Which, like I said in last weeks message, meant he was a Jew who was hired by the occupation Roman government to collect the Roman taxes from his own people.  Zacchaeus was the IRS man everyone loved to hate in Jericho.  He organized the collection of taxes and was allowed by Roman law to tack on a collectors fee as high as he wished.  Basically he was committing robbery legally.  Not much different from today.  Politicians tax us and then set their own salaries.  Same thing Zacchaeus was doing back then.

How does a person like Zacchaeus sustain any sense of esteem when even though he may be his own worst enemy, no one else would give him the time of day?  The only attention he got from anyone was negative.  The only relationships he had were based on contempt and hatred.

Self-esteem is like a solar collector.  When well-wishing and appreciation and love are shining like the sun, we collect that energy and use it to our self-empowerment.  But when none of that shines, as none of it shined for Zacchaeus, there is no empowerment for living.  Such lack of energy only creates a small, miserly, and bitter person.  A terrible cycle is started.  No one wants to show appreciation to the Zacchaeus’.  Which causes them to lash back.  Which makes others withdraw all the more.  Which causes the Zacchaeus’ to be more bitter.  And on and on it goes.  How will the cycle be broken?

Jesus was riding through town.  Zacchaeus was curious.  Zacchaeus wanted to see, but the people who lined up along the parade route kept elbowing him back, pushing him away.  All along the road, they just kept shoving him back.  Maybe more to get away from the crowd than to be able to see Jesus, Zacchaeus climbed a tree.  Nobody could shove him from up there.

Jesus came along that way and stopped under Zacchaeus’ tree, looked up, and invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ for dinner.  How unusual.  Nobody ever wanted to come to his house.  Nobody ever talked in such pleasant tones to Zacchaeus.  Nobody smiled at Zacchaeus.  Nobody paid any public or private attention to Zacchaeus.  No one ever shined so brightly for Zacchaeus’ esteem collectors to be so charged.  Jesus mirrored something back at Zacchaeus that he’d never seen before.  Esteem.  Pure, bright, unfiltered esteem.

Jesus wasn’t validating Zacchaeus’ lifestyle.  He wasn’t telling Zacchaeus that just because he wanted to come over for a meal that Zacchaeus was a good man.  Jesus wasn’t telling Zacchaeus that he was a model citizen, and one of the communities greatest benefactors.  But Jesus was validating Zacchaeus as a person, loved by God.  He was telling Zacchaeus that he wanted to come over for a meal because Zacchaeus was a man with whom God was concerned.  Jesus was telling Zacchaeus that he had the potential to be a man of faith, hospitality and love.  He had it in him to be one of Jericho’s greatest benefactors.  Jesus mirrored all that to Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus responded to what he saw in Jesus’ mirror.  He never responded, in a positive way, to what he saw in other’s mirrors.  But in Jesus, he saw a reflection that had so much drawing power that he wanted it to be true.  That’s what he wanted for himself.  Zacchaeus turned his life around because of what he saw.  His life of taking changed to a life of giving;  his greed was transformed into hospitality and philanthropy.

I came across a book titled, In His Image, by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey.  In one of the early chapters, Dr. Brand told of his experience with fighter pilots in England during WWII.  The RAF pilots who flew the agile but deadly Hurricane airplanes were largely responsible for fighting back Hitler’s bombings of London.

But the Hurricane airplane had a design flaw.  Fuel lines to the front mounted engine snaked alongside the cockpit.  If the fuel lines took a direct hit, the cockpit would erupt in an inferno of flames.  The pilot could eject, but in the one or two seconds it took him to find the lever, heat would often melt off every feature of his face.

Dr. Brand would do reconstructive surgery on these pilots during the war.  Most of the procedures he used were invented along the way.  One such pilot was named Peter.  After numerous surgical procedures, he had a face but it looked nothing like his enlistment pictures.  Peter encountered painful rejection.  Many adults quickly looked away when he approached.  Children, cruel in their honesty, made faces, laughed, and made fun of him.

Peter wanted to cry out, “Inside I am the same person you knew before!  Don’t you recognize me?  Don’t you realize I got these burns protecting you?”  Instead he learned to turn towards his wife.  “She became my mirror,” he said in appreciation and love.  “She gave me a different image of myself.”

What a great statement.  Certainly that is what Zacchaeus is saying when he promises to repay those he cheated and give half of his wealth to the poor.  Jesus gave him a new and different image of himself.  Jesus became his mirror, and the image in the mirror challenged him to become what he saw reflected there.

Esteem is something given to us by others, mirrored to us by others, reflected back to us, shined at us by others.  If you are feeling despised, abused, abandoned and unloved, there are often no good words you can say to yourself that will make you feel better about yourself.  Whether we admit it or not, those good words have to come from outside us.  And also, we have to be those mirrors for others, who desperately need to see something good and positive reflected back from us, to them.  Like Jesus did for Zacchaeus, esteem is something we do for each other, that our lives depend on from others.