"The Gospel According to P.T. Barnum"
Luke 16:19-31
Contrast of the two men in the parable:
Rich man Lazarus
no name we are told his name
--identified only by what he has,
not by who he is
dressed in the latest fashions full of sores; licked by dogs
feasted every day desired the droppings from the table
rich poor
sat at the table lay at the gate
died died
in hell; surrounded by flames held in Abraham’s lap
buried carried by the angels
In the conversation between Abraham and the rich man, the rich man calls Lazarus by name. So the rich man knows who Lazarus is.
Even in death, the rich man’s only evaluation of Lazarus is that Lazarus should serve him: “Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue.” The rich man’s contempt for Lazarus carries over to the grave.
Mother Teresa once wrote in her book, Words To Love By,
If you are preoccupied with people who are talking about the poor, you scarcely have time to talk to the poor. Some people talk about hunger, but they don’t come and say, “Mother, here is five rupees. Buy food for these people.” But they can give the most beautiful lecture on hunger.
That’s how I see the rich man’s contempt being carried out and cloaked in religiosity. I can see the rich man giving nice talks about the hungry poor and the destitute, then coming home, stepping over Lazarus, and sitting down to a table laden with amazing food. The rich man shows his real evaluation of the Lazarus’ of the world in his “cool my tongue” comment.
Lazarus never speaks. He has another--an advocate in Abraham--to speak for him now. The once powerful rich man must now deal with others more powerful than himself. Those who are powerless--who had no voice--in this life, discover their voice speaks through others more powerful than they can imagine.
All the contrasts of this life are reversed at “the lap of Abraham.” Does that mean that people who receive their good things in this life are doomed to hell in the next? Or is it the exorbitant, self-absorption of the rich man that went along with his wealth?
The “huge chasm” between hell and Abraham. Earlier in the parable there is the distance between the rich man’s table and the gate where Lazarus lay. Do the divisions we make in this life remain in the afterlife? The separation of wealth and poverty. The “great chasm has been fixed...” What creates those huge chasms, or who fixes them? Are they the deep ditches of our own making?
Those left alive. For the rich man there are five brothers who are carrying on the Miley Cyrus self-indulgent, self-addictive lifestyle. Lazarus evidently doesn’t have anyone left behind after death. Our only question is, was there another “Lazarus”--another unfortunate with a name who took his place, laying at the gate the rich man left behind?
“Warn them...” Warn them of what? That there’s a hell? That there are eternal consequences to earthly actions and attitudes? To share with the less fortunate? “...so they won’t end up here in this place of torment.” Change for the sake of hell avoidance? Scare the five brothers with the threat of the fires of hell? That’s tract mentality. Jesus didn’t want people to be motivated by the fires of hell, but by acts of compassion and love for those whom the world banishes to outside the gates. Out of sight, out of mind.
The rich man only has a “pay-off” mentality about his relationship to God. That is, if he does such-and-such, like ignoring the poor and hungry, he gets the pay-off hell. But if he can get to his brothers, they can be motivated by the promise of the pay-off of being at the lap of Abraham. To think that if your good deeds are simply a means to get into heaven, or to avoid the fiery torment of hell is missing the point. Remember what Jesus says to those who come to him bragging about all their good deeds, saying, “Lord, Lord, I did all this great stuff in your name.” And then Jesus says, “And do you know what I’m going to say? You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don’t impress me one bit. You’re out of here!” (Matthew 7:22-23). Jesus is looking for a different motivation than earning heaven or avoiding hell.
The brothers need their attention redirected to what was in front of them all along: Moses and the Prophets. Moses was the one who acted as God’s voice when the Hebrew people were being oppressed: “...the affliction of my people...I’ve head their cries...I know all about their pain...” (Exodus 3:7). Moses is sent to be a voice for a people who have had their voice squelched, only to moan and cry out.
The prophets were called into action by God when the rich and politically and religiously powerful had lost their moral compass. Without a “true north” these misguided leaders led the people in all kinds of moral and religious buffoonery. The prophets led moral and religious reformations, helping the people find their true name and identity as God’s people, in spite of the rich and powerful.
So the rich man is saying his brothers need a warning; but Abraham is telling the rich man that the five brothers clearly have enough “warning” always with them in Moses and the prophets. The rich man immediately nixes father Abraham’s pronouncement. Which is part of the rich man’s problem. Here he’s talking to one of the main patriarchs of the Jewish people, and the rich man is telling Abraham he’s got it all wrong. That kind of arrogance was a huge issue--a huge blind spot--for the rich man. Maybe that’s what got him in hell in the first place. And maybe that’s what created the deep ditch between where the rich man and Lazarus was.
The rich man’s alternative: send Lazarus back from the dead. Question: would the five brothers even know Lazarus? Would they even know he died? And that he had actually come back from the dead? Walking past their now dead brother’s gate each day, did they even see Lazarus there?
The rich man’s take on religion is P.T. Barnum showmanship. Only the splashy and dramatic is what gets people’s attention. Send Lazarus back from the dead. It’s the “greatest show on earth.” How do you get someone’s attention and convince them there is another whole reality that exists that they have paid no attention to their whole lives? Do something really flashy, really eye-popping.
What if Abraham honored the rich man’s request and sent Lazarus back from the dead and the five brothers didn’t respond? They may have gone, “WOW!” but kept on living how they were living. Or, they might respond for a little while, but then back themselves slowly into their past lifestyles. Then something even more spectacular has to be tried the next time to get their attention. How many busses or canyons did Evil Kenevil have to jump over on his motorcycle until no one cared anymore. Evidently Abraham doesn’t seem interested in allowing himself to get trapped in that circus, can-you-top-this mentality.
“They have Moses and the Prophets to tell them the score. Let them listen to them.” But that’s not good enough, is it, for us. It should not surprise us that the really big money making movies, the ones that really sell at the box office are the ones full of special effects--amazing, glitzy, powerful images, created by computer enhancement and then superimposed over and taking the place of the ordinary. The ordinary, the real, just isn’t good enough anymore.
How long will it be before our perceptions get so attuned and distorted by computer enhanced entertainment that we won’t be able to distinguish what’s real anymore? When will we cross the line and lose complete touch with reality?
No, that’s not enough! If only someone from the dead would go to them, they would listen and turn to God. So Abraham said, “If they won’t pay attention to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen even to someone who comes back from the dead.”
In other words, “Here’s what your brothers have already, rich man. It may not be flashy, but it’s solid and it’s real. It’s not a one time wowser, but it’s stood the test of time.”
One lady wrote into Reader’s Digest saying that her husband asked her to help him shed some unwanted pounds. So she stopped serving fattening snacks when he watched TV and substituted crisp celery. While he was unenthusiastically munching on a stalk of celery one night, a commercial came on showing a woman spreading gooey, chocolate frosting over a freshly baked cake. When it was over, the husband turned to his wife and said, “Did you ever notice they never advertise celery on TV?”
There really isn’t much that’s flashy about celery. It certainly doesn’t create the come-on that a chocolate frosted cake does. Celery is ordinary looking and unappealing next to a piece of cake. “They have Moses and the prophets.”
“That’s not good enough; send somebody back from the dead!”
No to celery; yes to chocolate frosted cake. No to the ordinary; yes to special effects. No to reality; yes to virtual reality. No to the prophets; yes to P.T. Barnum.
Moses and the prophets are just as substantial as someone rising from the dead. It isn’t the big, splashy events that get people’s sustained attention. It’s the accounts of everyday people like Moses and the prophets who take God’s words and God’s ways seriously, day in and day out.
And therein lies the point of the parable. The main question here this parable begs us ask is, “What do we have available to us to help us make wise choices regarding the living of our lives?” Then there is the follow-up question: “But, what do we choose instead?” What are the resources that have been made available to people by God, but which are completely by-passed?
I am constantly astounded at how I/we make life choices not based on tried and true information and reflection. If all the Tom Clancey spy novels are even half way correct, the ones who are going to be the winners in the end are the ones who collect the most information, know how to put that information together so it’s useful, access what’s been discovered, and then make the wisest decision based on all that.
But for most of us, uninformed, unreflective life choices not based on tried and true historic principals are the rule rather than the exception. We don’t take the time to deliberate. We compress our horizons down by our own self-defined ways. We are unable or unwilling to determine what the consequences will be of our choices. We remain blissfully ignorant about the Biblical resources available to us to supply us with the information we need to discover the best life path. We just meander through our days, thinking we’re smart and that we know what we’re doing.
The rich man in the parable abruptly discovered that the life choices he made had much more far reaching consequences than he ever imagined. A lot of people still haven’t figured that one out. He had climbed the ladder of wealth and success, and when he got to the top, he found out his ladder was up against the wrong wall. For the rich man, sadly and painfully too late, he found out that those choices had to do with how he used/misused his wealth; and, how he treated/mistreated those around him, especially the poor and hungry. He discovered, through his conversation with Abraham, that had he paid attention to life lessons and life directions gleaned from Biblical men and women who had gotten it right, he wouldn’t be in an eternal fix. The rich man found out that leading an compassionless life created an compassionless and isolated dead end for himself.
And he also found out that there was nothing he could do to fix it for his five brothers who were still alive. They are making their own life choices as well. And they would have to discover the Biblically historic path of compassion themselves if they were going to make better informed choices for their path in life.
So the point of the parable lies not with Lazarus. Not with Abraham. Not with the rich man. Lazarus and the rich man are dead. We, the listeners, are not dead. If this parable is for the living, then the point of the parable lies with those who are still living in the parable: the five brothers. That’s who Jesus wanted those who listen to this parable to pay the most attention to. We are still living. We are making choices every day about the path and direction our lives take. They are choices that involve being compassionate or compassionless. And those everyday choices have eternal consequences. That’s where our focus must be in this parable.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Monday, September 23, 2013
Crossing The Rubicon
"Crossing The Rubicon"
Luke 16:13
In an old Jack Benny routine, a thief puts a gun in Benny’s ribs and says, “Your money or your life!”
Jack Benny doesn’t answer.
Again the thief says, “Your money or your life!”
Jack says nothing.
The thief, becoming very impatient, says, “Answer me. I said, ‘Your money or your life.’”
Then Jack replies,”I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”
Jack Benny is probably one of the best examples in terms of portraying a character who was as devoted to his money as anyone. In real life, he was much the opposite. But the character portrayed on stage gave us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, and laugh at the ways we hold on to some things with too much tenacity.
But the laughter has to lead us somewhere. We have to allow it to penetrate to the point in our lives that makes us willing to do something that opens up our grasp from what we are clutching so tightly. Because, the truth of the matter is, if we don’t do something about our clutching, God no longer takes it as a laughing matter. God will not allow us to compromise our time, or our attention, or our loyalties that should be reserved for God alone. Our God is a very demanding God.
For Jack Benny’s character, it was money. For others it could be a whole host of things. I had our scripture read from the King James Version, because I like the word, “mammon.” It doesn’t mean just money, as some of the modern translations have rendered it. It can mean wealth and riches in terms of all your “things.” We need to see this word, mammon, in its widest possible light. We may not have the problem of giving our money a loyalty beyond it’s due. But there may be other “sacred cows” that we pay way too much attention to.
I could lay out a shopping list of sacred cows, and a few of them might hit home with you, personally. I will let you do that kind of evaluation yourself in the privacy of your own head. What I would rather spend time doing is making some comments on the assumptions I see behind Jesus’ words. Jesus seems to be very concerned with the seriousness with which God approaches the person who has allowed some thing or some one to veer their attention away from God. God doesn’t like a divided loyalty.
Jesus makes the simple and logical statement that a slave cannot serve two masters. A person can not divide their primary loyalty. Jesus’ words are less a command than they are a statement of fact. It would be like saying, you can’t walk both east and west at the same time. To go one way would be to turn your back on the other.
In Jesus’ statement, let’s assume that one of the masters in the little parable is God. If that is so, then one of the assumptions Jesus is making is that there is the possibility that God can get the short end of our stick, when a choice is made. But as Jesus says, it’s not a matter of just getting the short end of the stick. It is a matter of love and hate, holding to or despising. There’s no middle ground, no varying degrees. It’s either one or the other. The fact that we can treat God that way should be alarming.
God is easy to slight. If you aren’t entirely convinced of God’s existence, then it’s easy to push God to the side for something else. If you aren’t entirely convinced that God cares about you, then it’s easy to move on to someone else whom you think does.
But, if you have gained a firm affirmation that God really does exist, and then moved on to the fact that God cares about you so strongly, then you are standing on shaky ground if you take God for granted. You might find that God has decided that turn-about is fair play. Which means you’d discover that you have been taken, for a period of time, chosen out by God and left desperately alone in facing life. God will not punish you for your divided loyalty. God will just leave you to yourself, and let you find out what that’s really like.
A group of high school seniors went to New York City for their senior trip. When they arrived in the city they went to the hotel and registered. They were assigned rooms on the 30th floor of the hotel.
On the first day they went to Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building. Finally they got back to their hotel. The desk clerk said, “I’m sorry, the elevators are not working. You will have to walk up or wait until the elevators can be repaired.” The students had visions of their beds awaiting, so, tired as they were they decided they would climb the 30 flights of stairs. You, know. They’re high school kids.
One of them had an idea. He said, “On the way up, as a distraction, each of us will tell the funniest story we know.” The others in the group agreed and they started the climb. When they reached the 10th floor, they were still going strong. When they reached the 20th floor, their legs felt like tree stumps and they were panting for breath. The one whose turn it was to tell a funny story said, “I’m sorry, I’m just too exhausted to speak.” They trudged on in silence.
When they reached the 29th floor, one of them began to laugh. He sat down on the steps and almost went into hysterics. Finally, he got enough of himself together to say, “I’ve just thought of the funniest thing that can top all the other funny stories you’ve told.” They asked him what it was. He said, “We forgot to pick up our keys at the front desk.”
That’s a good illustration of what happens when God lets us go our own way, when we leave God in the lobby of our daily living. God is the key we decide we don’t need. We go on our merry way, and then find ourselves far away from the one we need to unlock all the doors in our future. Remember, it isn’t God who was the one who put the distance between us. It is our own choices. Then we have to back track that distance and make a new choice which will make God predominant in our lives.
A second assumption I see behind Jesus’ words is a fairly evident one: you are going to serve some thing or some one. Whether you are willing to admit it or not, you are going to put yourself into the service of some god. It’s not a matter of “if.” It’s a matter of “when” and “what” and “how.” Edwin Arlington Robinson once remarked, “The world is not a ‘prison house,’ but a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell ‘God’ with the wrong blocks.”
People want to give themselves to something that will bring meaning to their lives. If we find something or someone who holds the promise of doing that, we begin to relinquish ourselves in little, and then larger and larger ways. If we are going to do that as a matter of natural consequence, then why not give ourselves over to our Lord and Maker? If it is meaning in life that we are looking for, why not turn to the Author of Life as it is meant to be lived? The thing with God is, if we find our meaning in the Lord, then we will be able to recognize everything else that is also truly meaningful. But if we give ourselves over to that which is not God, then the opposite is not also true. It will be much harder to find God by giving ourselves over to that which has nothing to do with God.
The philosopher Plato told the parable of the four prisoners who were chained together in a cave since childhood. In the cave they stood apart from but faced a wall where shadows were cast by the firelight behind them. All they knew about the world was the shadows on the wall.
One of the prisoners was released and realized that the shadows he once thought to be the only thing of substance were actually imitations of a far greater reality. He tried to share this discovery with his fellow prisoners. But they rejected him and wouldn’t believe the truth he told. The prisoners were incapable and unwilling to distinguish between the shadows and reality.
How long would it take for someone to see that they’ve been buying into the imitation, the shadow world, the semblance, but not the reality? How long would someone go before they discovered that what they thought was meaningful, was in reality a “shadow on the wall”? How long would someone stare at the shadows, and think they were seeing something of substance, something that was full of meaning? And how would they respond to someone who tried to present the case that they have been duped, and their “meaning” has been, all along, based on phantoms?
Sam Levenson once wrote, “I set out in life to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now I’m eighty and all I’ve got is the pot.”
You are going to search for meaning somewhere. God, worthily and abundantly, fulfills all lesser loyalties we have, IF they are all put under his ultimate grace-full control. That’s what I’ve come to, after thinking about my message a couple of weeks ago, about having to turn my back on family for Jesus’ sake. I think the answer is, if I choose anything else, including my family, my kids as first in my life, I lose God. BUT, if I choose the Lord, even above my family, my son and daughter, I get God; but I also get to keep everyone else under God’s hierarchy. Jesus didn’t say that, but I think it’s the surprise if you take the chance, and make the commitment to our Lord as number one in our lives.
Related to this is the third and final assumption I see behind Jesus’ parable. And that is, there is a fight going on for who is going to have ultimate control over you. Here’s the interesting part of this: the two opposing forces--God, and whatever else--have no idea which way the outcome will be.
The reason for that is because you must ultimately decide for or against God, for or against mammon, whatever that might be for you. Jesus recognized that people have a hard time making up their mind about this one strategic matter. So he made it easier. He took away the whole middle ground and left it an either/or choice.
A psychiatrist once asked a patient, “Do you have trouble making up your mind?”
To which the patient replied, “Well, yes and no.”
There are only two choices Jesus gives us. We will all end up, one day, choosing one or the other. That’s the way it is with God. There is no middle ground in terms of who we will give our ultimate and undivided allegiance too. Either God or false-god. Either God or self. Either for Christ or against Christ. Either hot or cold. No middle ground. No half way with God.
There’s a story about two sailors adrift on a raft in the ocean. They had just about given up hope of rescue. One of them began to pray, “O Lord, I’ve lead a worthless life. I’ve been unkind to my wife, I’ve neglected my children. But if you save me, I promise…”
And just then the other sailor shouted, “Hold it! I think I see land!”
Serving God, giving yourself over to God is not just a sometime thing or a quick-fix or a rescue deal. God will not be half-served, or prayed to in half-hearted commitment.
The Rubicon is a small stream in central Italy. Julius Caesar was forbidden, by the Roman Senate, to cross the Rubicon. His crossing of the Rubicon with his army would have initiated civil war. So the phrase, “To cross the Rubicon” has come to mean taking a step of full commitment, with no turning back, no compromise as to purpose or goal.
We must decide, faced with our own crossing of a Rubicon-of-sorts, as to whether we will single-mindedly serve God or not. “No servant can serve two masters; for either she will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Luke 16:13
In an old Jack Benny routine, a thief puts a gun in Benny’s ribs and says, “Your money or your life!”
Jack Benny doesn’t answer.
Again the thief says, “Your money or your life!”
Jack says nothing.
The thief, becoming very impatient, says, “Answer me. I said, ‘Your money or your life.’”
Then Jack replies,”I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”
Jack Benny is probably one of the best examples in terms of portraying a character who was as devoted to his money as anyone. In real life, he was much the opposite. But the character portrayed on stage gave us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, and laugh at the ways we hold on to some things with too much tenacity.
But the laughter has to lead us somewhere. We have to allow it to penetrate to the point in our lives that makes us willing to do something that opens up our grasp from what we are clutching so tightly. Because, the truth of the matter is, if we don’t do something about our clutching, God no longer takes it as a laughing matter. God will not allow us to compromise our time, or our attention, or our loyalties that should be reserved for God alone. Our God is a very demanding God.
For Jack Benny’s character, it was money. For others it could be a whole host of things. I had our scripture read from the King James Version, because I like the word, “mammon.” It doesn’t mean just money, as some of the modern translations have rendered it. It can mean wealth and riches in terms of all your “things.” We need to see this word, mammon, in its widest possible light. We may not have the problem of giving our money a loyalty beyond it’s due. But there may be other “sacred cows” that we pay way too much attention to.
I could lay out a shopping list of sacred cows, and a few of them might hit home with you, personally. I will let you do that kind of evaluation yourself in the privacy of your own head. What I would rather spend time doing is making some comments on the assumptions I see behind Jesus’ words. Jesus seems to be very concerned with the seriousness with which God approaches the person who has allowed some thing or some one to veer their attention away from God. God doesn’t like a divided loyalty.
II
Jesus makes the simple and logical statement that a slave cannot serve two masters. A person can not divide their primary loyalty. Jesus’ words are less a command than they are a statement of fact. It would be like saying, you can’t walk both east and west at the same time. To go one way would be to turn your back on the other.
In Jesus’ statement, let’s assume that one of the masters in the little parable is God. If that is so, then one of the assumptions Jesus is making is that there is the possibility that God can get the short end of our stick, when a choice is made. But as Jesus says, it’s not a matter of just getting the short end of the stick. It is a matter of love and hate, holding to or despising. There’s no middle ground, no varying degrees. It’s either one or the other. The fact that we can treat God that way should be alarming.
God is easy to slight. If you aren’t entirely convinced of God’s existence, then it’s easy to push God to the side for something else. If you aren’t entirely convinced that God cares about you, then it’s easy to move on to someone else whom you think does.
But, if you have gained a firm affirmation that God really does exist, and then moved on to the fact that God cares about you so strongly, then you are standing on shaky ground if you take God for granted. You might find that God has decided that turn-about is fair play. Which means you’d discover that you have been taken, for a period of time, chosen out by God and left desperately alone in facing life. God will not punish you for your divided loyalty. God will just leave you to yourself, and let you find out what that’s really like.
A group of high school seniors went to New York City for their senior trip. When they arrived in the city they went to the hotel and registered. They were assigned rooms on the 30th floor of the hotel.
On the first day they went to Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building. Finally they got back to their hotel. The desk clerk said, “I’m sorry, the elevators are not working. You will have to walk up or wait until the elevators can be repaired.” The students had visions of their beds awaiting, so, tired as they were they decided they would climb the 30 flights of stairs. You, know. They’re high school kids.
One of them had an idea. He said, “On the way up, as a distraction, each of us will tell the funniest story we know.” The others in the group agreed and they started the climb. When they reached the 10th floor, they were still going strong. When they reached the 20th floor, their legs felt like tree stumps and they were panting for breath. The one whose turn it was to tell a funny story said, “I’m sorry, I’m just too exhausted to speak.” They trudged on in silence.
When they reached the 29th floor, one of them began to laugh. He sat down on the steps and almost went into hysterics. Finally, he got enough of himself together to say, “I’ve just thought of the funniest thing that can top all the other funny stories you’ve told.” They asked him what it was. He said, “We forgot to pick up our keys at the front desk.”
That’s a good illustration of what happens when God lets us go our own way, when we leave God in the lobby of our daily living. God is the key we decide we don’t need. We go on our merry way, and then find ourselves far away from the one we need to unlock all the doors in our future. Remember, it isn’t God who was the one who put the distance between us. It is our own choices. Then we have to back track that distance and make a new choice which will make God predominant in our lives.
III
A second assumption I see behind Jesus’ words is a fairly evident one: you are going to serve some thing or some one. Whether you are willing to admit it or not, you are going to put yourself into the service of some god. It’s not a matter of “if.” It’s a matter of “when” and “what” and “how.” Edwin Arlington Robinson once remarked, “The world is not a ‘prison house,’ but a kind of spiritual kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell ‘God’ with the wrong blocks.”
People want to give themselves to something that will bring meaning to their lives. If we find something or someone who holds the promise of doing that, we begin to relinquish ourselves in little, and then larger and larger ways. If we are going to do that as a matter of natural consequence, then why not give ourselves over to our Lord and Maker? If it is meaning in life that we are looking for, why not turn to the Author of Life as it is meant to be lived? The thing with God is, if we find our meaning in the Lord, then we will be able to recognize everything else that is also truly meaningful. But if we give ourselves over to that which is not God, then the opposite is not also true. It will be much harder to find God by giving ourselves over to that which has nothing to do with God.
The philosopher Plato told the parable of the four prisoners who were chained together in a cave since childhood. In the cave they stood apart from but faced a wall where shadows were cast by the firelight behind them. All they knew about the world was the shadows on the wall.
One of the prisoners was released and realized that the shadows he once thought to be the only thing of substance were actually imitations of a far greater reality. He tried to share this discovery with his fellow prisoners. But they rejected him and wouldn’t believe the truth he told. The prisoners were incapable and unwilling to distinguish between the shadows and reality.
How long would it take for someone to see that they’ve been buying into the imitation, the shadow world, the semblance, but not the reality? How long would someone go before they discovered that what they thought was meaningful, was in reality a “shadow on the wall”? How long would someone stare at the shadows, and think they were seeing something of substance, something that was full of meaning? And how would they respond to someone who tried to present the case that they have been duped, and their “meaning” has been, all along, based on phantoms?
Sam Levenson once wrote, “I set out in life to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now I’m eighty and all I’ve got is the pot.”
You are going to search for meaning somewhere. God, worthily and abundantly, fulfills all lesser loyalties we have, IF they are all put under his ultimate grace-full control. That’s what I’ve come to, after thinking about my message a couple of weeks ago, about having to turn my back on family for Jesus’ sake. I think the answer is, if I choose anything else, including my family, my kids as first in my life, I lose God. BUT, if I choose the Lord, even above my family, my son and daughter, I get God; but I also get to keep everyone else under God’s hierarchy. Jesus didn’t say that, but I think it’s the surprise if you take the chance, and make the commitment to our Lord as number one in our lives.
IV
Related to this is the third and final assumption I see behind Jesus’ parable. And that is, there is a fight going on for who is going to have ultimate control over you. Here’s the interesting part of this: the two opposing forces--God, and whatever else--have no idea which way the outcome will be.
The reason for that is because you must ultimately decide for or against God, for or against mammon, whatever that might be for you. Jesus recognized that people have a hard time making up their mind about this one strategic matter. So he made it easier. He took away the whole middle ground and left it an either/or choice.
A psychiatrist once asked a patient, “Do you have trouble making up your mind?”
To which the patient replied, “Well, yes and no.”
There are only two choices Jesus gives us. We will all end up, one day, choosing one or the other. That’s the way it is with God. There is no middle ground in terms of who we will give our ultimate and undivided allegiance too. Either God or false-god. Either God or self. Either for Christ or against Christ. Either hot or cold. No middle ground. No half way with God.
There’s a story about two sailors adrift on a raft in the ocean. They had just about given up hope of rescue. One of them began to pray, “O Lord, I’ve lead a worthless life. I’ve been unkind to my wife, I’ve neglected my children. But if you save me, I promise…”
And just then the other sailor shouted, “Hold it! I think I see land!”
Serving God, giving yourself over to God is not just a sometime thing or a quick-fix or a rescue deal. God will not be half-served, or prayed to in half-hearted commitment.
V
The Rubicon is a small stream in central Italy. Julius Caesar was forbidden, by the Roman Senate, to cross the Rubicon. His crossing of the Rubicon with his army would have initiated civil war. So the phrase, “To cross the Rubicon” has come to mean taking a step of full commitment, with no turning back, no compromise as to purpose or goal.
We must decide, faced with our own crossing of a Rubicon-of-sorts, as to whether we will single-mindedly serve God or not. “No servant can serve two masters; for either she will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
Monday, September 16, 2013
Losing What's Valuable
"Losing What's Valuable"
Luke 15
A man I once knew was totally distrustful of banks. Instead of putting his valuables in a safe deposit box, he kept them in a small metal cash box. Wherever he went, he carried his cash box full of valuables. In his little box he had a large amount of cash, savings bonds and stock certificates that were to serve as part of his retirement. He also had birth certificates, and who knows what else. I told him it would have been a much more secure choice to get a safe deposit box.
Then one day it was gone. He had misplaced it on a road trip (he was an over-the-road truck driver) and couldn’t remember where he had put it, or left it. Or maybe it was stolen. Retracing his route proved fruitless. It was gone. Lost, never to be found. He was sick about it. I felt for him. I was severely tempted to say, “I told you so.” I may have given into that temptation.
Maybe you’ve lost something. Usually it’s small things, like keys, a wallet, a book, your glasses, your cell phone, or the TV remote. No matter how small or how important, just losing something is frustrating. Going through the process of trying to find something that’s lost is vexing. You retrace your steps, you look around the same areas over and over again. You throw up your hands. But if you find it, you feel immediate relief, to the point of celebration.
What I’d like us to look at, using Luke 15, is this whole drama of losing and finding the things that are valuable to us. As we go through each of these parables of Jesus, I’d like you to do something. Many of you have probably read through these parables many times. You’ve studied them or have heard at least one sermon about them. What I’d like you to do is to forget everything you know about these parables. Pretend this is the first time you’ve heard them. I would like you to take them at simple, face value. Don’t read into them any of the meanings you’ve heard before. Let’s just hear them as stories Jesus told, and hopefully find something new in them.
(Read Luke 15:1-7)
The first thing I’d like you to notice is that Jesus is putting you in this parable. It’s how he starts out: “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep,” he says, “and you lost one. What are you going to do?” Jesus is trying to get you to feel what it’s like if you lost a sheep. Jesus didn’t say the sheep wandered off on it’s own. Jesus didn’t say it was the sheep’s fault it was lost. Jesus is saying you lost one of your sheep.
How could you have lost one of your sheep? Shepherds are supposed to be constantly alert. They are supposed to keep all the sheep in a relatively close area so they can all be watched easily. If one begins to wander away, you--the shepherd--are supposed to notice. You’re supposed to take out your sling and lob a rock at that sheep’s nose to turn it around and make it come back. It’s your job as the shepherd to watch over all the sheep. To know where they all are at all times.
Thus, your single sheep could have only been lost because you were negligent. You weren’t being watchful like you were supposed to. Because you weren’t paying attention like you were supposed to; because you were paying more attention to something you weren’t supposed to, you let something valuable become lost. And now that sheep’s life is in danger, because of you.
(read Luke 15:8-10)
In the second parable, Jesus doesn’t put you in the parable. He simply makes the main character a woman. She has ten coins. Each coin is equal to the amount of one days wages. She has lost one of her coins. She lost it. It didn’t just disappear. Someone didn’t sneak in and steal it while she was asleep. She was responsible for losing the coin worth an entire days wages.
She knows it has to be in the house somewhere. So what does she do to find the coin she has lost? She cleans the house. What does that tell you about the condition of her house? It’s got to be a mess.
I remember one weekend, back when I had cable, the A&E channel had a marathon of the show called “Hoarders.” Anybody watched that show? There’s a lady who drives by my house sometimes, in a red pick up, and it’s jam packed with trash, inside and out. I wonder what her home must look like. These people’s homes are jam packed with junk, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, room to room. Even spilling out of the house and into the yard. They just keep bringing in more and more junk.
I imagined the woman of the parable living in a house like that. How would you ever find a valuable coin in a place like that. Evidently the coin was more important than her mess, and she started cleaning. She picks everything up, she straightens, she sweeps, she dusts, she looks under the cushions, she lifts the couch, she wipes off the top of the refrigerator, she looks under the bed, she checks the dust lint catcher in the dryer.
She had lost the coin because she had allowed it to become absorbed by the mess of her home. All the clutter in her life that she lived with every day and had become used to, now became her enemy in her search. Every bit of the mess of her house is cleaned in an effort to find that valuable coin that she had lost.
(read Luke 15:11-24)
In the Middle Eastern culture it would have been a gross insult for a son to ask for his share of his inheritance when the father is still alive. Ken Bailey was a Presbyterian college professor, teaching in Lebanon and Israel for a number of years, and has done extensive cultural research about the parables in particular. He’s learned that if a son asked such a thing of his father, what he was telling his father was, “I wish you were dead.” How else can you inherit something unless someone has died? What an awful slap in the face, then, for a father to hear his son basically say, “I wish you were dead; just give me what I would inherit when you die, now, so I can get out of this house and as far away from you as possible.”
What a terrible son, you might be thinking. But my question is what had the father done that would have caused his son to insult him so deeply? In looking at the story, we have always felt sorry for the father for having to deal with such a belligerent and incorrigible son. But in the real world of fathers and sons, I have seen a large number of fathers who deserved the belligerence they got from their sons. It is always a two way street. Jesus, I’m sure, was aware of that reality.
If we are going to be fair, and stay in the real world, we have to ask the question: what did the father do that pushed his son away so severely? When sons run away from home they may be running toward something they desire. But they are also, at the same time, running away from something they just can’t abide anymore. We know what this younger son is running toward. But what is he running away from that had particularly to do with the father and their relationship?
Too many fathers are overly stiff, demanding, negative, perfectionistic, humorless, or emotionally distant and detached from their sons. They starve their sons not only with lack of time, but also with lack of praise and encouragement. Too many fathers can’t, or won’t, say to their sons, “I love you.” They think their sons are just supposed to know that, or pick it up via satellite, or on Twitter.
The father in this parable lost his son. The son wasn’t abducted. The son didn’t wake up one day and decide he hated his father. The hate had grown over a long period of time from having to deal with a father who refused to be emotionally connected to his son. On that eventful day, when the father finally saw the hate in his son’s eyes, and heard the tone of voice when the words were spoken (“I wish you were dead; give me my share of my inheritance now.”) it was like a wake up call. But it wasn’t enough of a wake up call for the father to tell the son he was sorry, and get him to stay.
In the days that followed, the father realized his part in pushing his son away. The parable tells us that the father probably searched the horizon every day hoping against hope to see his son coming back. He looked down the road every day because he longed for another chance to be a father. To show his son that he did love him, and that he wanted to be a father differently. If only he could have a second chance at fatherhood and not lose his son for good.
So, if we are taking these parables at face value, as parables, then what’s the point? To get to the point, these parables will force us to ask some fairly important questions. These parables compel us to examine our life and figure out some answers. What have been the “valuables” we have lost along the way? These parables demand that we look for, and accept the responsibility we have in losing the sheep, the coins, and the sons from our lives. These parables ask us to sit down and make a list of that which has been lost by us and how we lost it and how we’re going to find it.
In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd could only have lost the one sheep by negligence and inattentiveness to what he was supposed to be doing. If we’re going to stop losing what’s valuable then we need to start paying attention to that which is right in front of us.
In the second parable of the lost coin, we discovered the woman lost the coin because it had become absorbed in the messiness of her everyday life. If your home--that is, your individual life--has become so messed up and disorderly, how do you expect to ever keep track of the valuable coins of God’s gifts? How can we take the precious things of God and then just turn and toss them on the pile with everything else? Those precious things of God need to motivate us to create an environment in our lives so they can always be seen, always be at hand, always clearly in their place of prominence.
In the third parable of the lost son, the father may have alienated his son by a long acted out rigidity and cold indifference. He had pushed his own son to the point of desiring, more than anything else, to run away. How can we continue to take a gift from God on the level of a son, and push him or her away, push him or her away, push him or her away? How long will the way we are choosing to live tell God that we don’t care much about what God has brought into our lives? What will it take for us to finally get the wake up call of how we have, for so long, through stiffness, negativism, or lack of emotional connection, pushed that which is of God out of our homes, out of our lives?
Doesn’t all that sound sad to you, and more than just a little bit scary? Think of all that has been lost. Now it’s time to find it. Now is the season to come to our senses and find that which is God-given valuable. To find what we have lost.
Let’s use these parables to figure out what we need to do to find them: paying attention; avoid being negligent; clean up the messes in our lives; let the people close to us know in every way possible that we love them; quit pushing away. In this way, we will create an inseparable and unloseable bond between ourselves and that which is of true and Godly value.
Luke 15
A man I once knew was totally distrustful of banks. Instead of putting his valuables in a safe deposit box, he kept them in a small metal cash box. Wherever he went, he carried his cash box full of valuables. In his little box he had a large amount of cash, savings bonds and stock certificates that were to serve as part of his retirement. He also had birth certificates, and who knows what else. I told him it would have been a much more secure choice to get a safe deposit box.
Then one day it was gone. He had misplaced it on a road trip (he was an over-the-road truck driver) and couldn’t remember where he had put it, or left it. Or maybe it was stolen. Retracing his route proved fruitless. It was gone. Lost, never to be found. He was sick about it. I felt for him. I was severely tempted to say, “I told you so.” I may have given into that temptation.
Maybe you’ve lost something. Usually it’s small things, like keys, a wallet, a book, your glasses, your cell phone, or the TV remote. No matter how small or how important, just losing something is frustrating. Going through the process of trying to find something that’s lost is vexing. You retrace your steps, you look around the same areas over and over again. You throw up your hands. But if you find it, you feel immediate relief, to the point of celebration.
What I’d like us to look at, using Luke 15, is this whole drama of losing and finding the things that are valuable to us. As we go through each of these parables of Jesus, I’d like you to do something. Many of you have probably read through these parables many times. You’ve studied them or have heard at least one sermon about them. What I’d like you to do is to forget everything you know about these parables. Pretend this is the first time you’ve heard them. I would like you to take them at simple, face value. Don’t read into them any of the meanings you’ve heard before. Let’s just hear them as stories Jesus told, and hopefully find something new in them.
II
(Read Luke 15:1-7)
The first thing I’d like you to notice is that Jesus is putting you in this parable. It’s how he starts out: “Suppose one of you had a hundred sheep,” he says, “and you lost one. What are you going to do?” Jesus is trying to get you to feel what it’s like if you lost a sheep. Jesus didn’t say the sheep wandered off on it’s own. Jesus didn’t say it was the sheep’s fault it was lost. Jesus is saying you lost one of your sheep.
How could you have lost one of your sheep? Shepherds are supposed to be constantly alert. They are supposed to keep all the sheep in a relatively close area so they can all be watched easily. If one begins to wander away, you--the shepherd--are supposed to notice. You’re supposed to take out your sling and lob a rock at that sheep’s nose to turn it around and make it come back. It’s your job as the shepherd to watch over all the sheep. To know where they all are at all times.
Thus, your single sheep could have only been lost because you were negligent. You weren’t being watchful like you were supposed to. Because you weren’t paying attention like you were supposed to; because you were paying more attention to something you weren’t supposed to, you let something valuable become lost. And now that sheep’s life is in danger, because of you.
III
(read Luke 15:8-10)
In the second parable, Jesus doesn’t put you in the parable. He simply makes the main character a woman. She has ten coins. Each coin is equal to the amount of one days wages. She has lost one of her coins. She lost it. It didn’t just disappear. Someone didn’t sneak in and steal it while she was asleep. She was responsible for losing the coin worth an entire days wages.
She knows it has to be in the house somewhere. So what does she do to find the coin she has lost? She cleans the house. What does that tell you about the condition of her house? It’s got to be a mess.
I remember one weekend, back when I had cable, the A&E channel had a marathon of the show called “Hoarders.” Anybody watched that show? There’s a lady who drives by my house sometimes, in a red pick up, and it’s jam packed with trash, inside and out. I wonder what her home must look like. These people’s homes are jam packed with junk, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, room to room. Even spilling out of the house and into the yard. They just keep bringing in more and more junk.
I imagined the woman of the parable living in a house like that. How would you ever find a valuable coin in a place like that. Evidently the coin was more important than her mess, and she started cleaning. She picks everything up, she straightens, she sweeps, she dusts, she looks under the cushions, she lifts the couch, she wipes off the top of the refrigerator, she looks under the bed, she checks the dust lint catcher in the dryer.
She had lost the coin because she had allowed it to become absorbed by the mess of her home. All the clutter in her life that she lived with every day and had become used to, now became her enemy in her search. Every bit of the mess of her house is cleaned in an effort to find that valuable coin that she had lost.
IV
(read Luke 15:11-24)
In the Middle Eastern culture it would have been a gross insult for a son to ask for his share of his inheritance when the father is still alive. Ken Bailey was a Presbyterian college professor, teaching in Lebanon and Israel for a number of years, and has done extensive cultural research about the parables in particular. He’s learned that if a son asked such a thing of his father, what he was telling his father was, “I wish you were dead.” How else can you inherit something unless someone has died? What an awful slap in the face, then, for a father to hear his son basically say, “I wish you were dead; just give me what I would inherit when you die, now, so I can get out of this house and as far away from you as possible.”
What a terrible son, you might be thinking. But my question is what had the father done that would have caused his son to insult him so deeply? In looking at the story, we have always felt sorry for the father for having to deal with such a belligerent and incorrigible son. But in the real world of fathers and sons, I have seen a large number of fathers who deserved the belligerence they got from their sons. It is always a two way street. Jesus, I’m sure, was aware of that reality.
If we are going to be fair, and stay in the real world, we have to ask the question: what did the father do that pushed his son away so severely? When sons run away from home they may be running toward something they desire. But they are also, at the same time, running away from something they just can’t abide anymore. We know what this younger son is running toward. But what is he running away from that had particularly to do with the father and their relationship?
Too many fathers are overly stiff, demanding, negative, perfectionistic, humorless, or emotionally distant and detached from their sons. They starve their sons not only with lack of time, but also with lack of praise and encouragement. Too many fathers can’t, or won’t, say to their sons, “I love you.” They think their sons are just supposed to know that, or pick it up via satellite, or on Twitter.
The father in this parable lost his son. The son wasn’t abducted. The son didn’t wake up one day and decide he hated his father. The hate had grown over a long period of time from having to deal with a father who refused to be emotionally connected to his son. On that eventful day, when the father finally saw the hate in his son’s eyes, and heard the tone of voice when the words were spoken (“I wish you were dead; give me my share of my inheritance now.”) it was like a wake up call. But it wasn’t enough of a wake up call for the father to tell the son he was sorry, and get him to stay.
In the days that followed, the father realized his part in pushing his son away. The parable tells us that the father probably searched the horizon every day hoping against hope to see his son coming back. He looked down the road every day because he longed for another chance to be a father. To show his son that he did love him, and that he wanted to be a father differently. If only he could have a second chance at fatherhood and not lose his son for good.
V
So, if we are taking these parables at face value, as parables, then what’s the point? To get to the point, these parables will force us to ask some fairly important questions. These parables compel us to examine our life and figure out some answers. What have been the “valuables” we have lost along the way? These parables demand that we look for, and accept the responsibility we have in losing the sheep, the coins, and the sons from our lives. These parables ask us to sit down and make a list of that which has been lost by us and how we lost it and how we’re going to find it.
In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd could only have lost the one sheep by negligence and inattentiveness to what he was supposed to be doing. If we’re going to stop losing what’s valuable then we need to start paying attention to that which is right in front of us.
In the second parable of the lost coin, we discovered the woman lost the coin because it had become absorbed in the messiness of her everyday life. If your home--that is, your individual life--has become so messed up and disorderly, how do you expect to ever keep track of the valuable coins of God’s gifts? How can we take the precious things of God and then just turn and toss them on the pile with everything else? Those precious things of God need to motivate us to create an environment in our lives so they can always be seen, always be at hand, always clearly in their place of prominence.
In the third parable of the lost son, the father may have alienated his son by a long acted out rigidity and cold indifference. He had pushed his own son to the point of desiring, more than anything else, to run away. How can we continue to take a gift from God on the level of a son, and push him or her away, push him or her away, push him or her away? How long will the way we are choosing to live tell God that we don’t care much about what God has brought into our lives? What will it take for us to finally get the wake up call of how we have, for so long, through stiffness, negativism, or lack of emotional connection, pushed that which is of God out of our homes, out of our lives?
VI
Doesn’t all that sound sad to you, and more than just a little bit scary? Think of all that has been lost. Now it’s time to find it. Now is the season to come to our senses and find that which is God-given valuable. To find what we have lost.
Let’s use these parables to figure out what we need to do to find them: paying attention; avoid being negligent; clean up the messes in our lives; let the people close to us know in every way possible that we love them; quit pushing away. In this way, we will create an inseparable and unloseable bond between ourselves and that which is of true and Godly value.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Jesus Must Not Want Many Disciples
"Jesus Must Not Want Many Disciples"
Luke 14:25-33
This is one of those statements I wish Jesus wouldn't have said. Wouldn't it have been better, when Luke was putting together his gospel, once he came to this story, to just leave it out? Matthew is the only other gospel writer to include this statement of Jesus, and even then he shortened it to just two verses. Matthew must have been uncomfortable with such a stringent statement. Mark and John were so uncomfortable with Jesus words they left it out of their gospels entirely.
Jesus' words sound so, well, unChristian. They almost sound cultish, don't they? Think of all the people who have left families and friends and joined a cult.
One of my best friends in high school and college joined what I would call a Christian cult. Tim was one of those natural athletes who played every sport and excelled at them all. He had a gift and he knew it was from God. At that time, around 1972, Tim was being talked to by Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Tim was a wide receiver, had hands of glue, speed, and coach-ability.
Then Tim got mixed up with a group who called themselves The Local Church. They based their beliefs on a Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee. About the middle of our sophomore year in college, Tim quit football. Then he quit school. Then he broke off his engagement to his high school sweetheart. He said everything about his past was death, and he was putting it behind him. He was giving it all up for Christ and the shouting hysteria that was called worship at The Local Church. Tim gave up everything dear to him (including our friendship) for Christ and for his affiliation in that offbeat church.
I tried to keep track of Tim. He moved to the east coast to help start other Local Churches. I heard he had been elevated to the level of prophet in that church, whatever that meant. I wrote, but he never wrote back. Or my letters were returned. Then I lost touch with him. Sort of gave up looking. Last I heard, he was married, has two kids, and lives in Idaho or Montana.
I think about Tim from time to time and wonder. He took Christ's words literally and did it. He took what was nearest and dearest to him and flicked it all away, so he could follow Christ as part of The Local Church. It just didn't seem right. When I think of our lost friendship, I still feel pangs of grief and loss that I don't exactly know how to deal with.
I don't know how to deal with that loss because Christ's words are all wrapped up in that loss and grief. Hard words of Christ. Words I wish Christ wouldn't have spoken, because maybe I wouldn't have lost a friend.
Why would God put us in families and friendships and then turn around and disrupt them? Why would God create such strong bonds of love and then demand that we treat them as if they don't matter or exist? Why would God create, from the start, marriage and family as the bedrock of humanity, and then have Jesus utter a few words that crushes that foundation?
As you know, my mom is now with the Lord. Part of the strong bond I had with her was because of our commonly held faith in Christ. She helped me get started in the faith. Over the years that bond got stronger. How could Christ ask me, while she was alive, to kiss that relationship goodbye? Especially when the strength of that relationship is because of Christ!
And I love my children. Ryan and Kristin are worth more to me than my own life. No one knows what we have been through together, and how that has created such a strong bond between us. I would unquestioningly or unhesitatingly step in front of a bullet for either of them. They are both amazing and wonderful people. There isn't a day I don't thank God for them.
I was always afraid of being a father. I didn't know if I'd be very good at it with the role model I had. But from the day each of them were born, from that day when they first breathed air and I held them in my big hands and became a daddy, I poured myself into that role with all the love I could.
I've accomplished some amazing things in the ministry. I've been given some accolades I didn't feel I deserved. But I have loved every minute of it, and still do. As great as living out my calling has been, I have loved being a father more.
How can Christ tell me that I can't be a true disciple unless I am willing to let the children I love go and turn my back on them? It is by God that they were even born at all. It goes against everything that I am, against everything that God has instilled in me as a human being and a human father.
It seems to me to be the height of child abuse for me to turn to Ryan and Kristin now, or especially when they were children, and say, "Sorry kids. I can't be your father anymore. I have to go follow Christ now. You're on your own. So long." I could no more do that than rip out my own heart.
I saw a lot of ministers when I was growing up and then after I became a pastor myself, who sacrificed their families (and their children especially) on the altar of the ministry. That somehow they could justify neglecting and abandoning their wives and children because of their "high, holy calling." When I was talking with Mark Graber's step-father, he said that the kids he knew that were the biggest hell-raisers were minister's kids. Same with some of the kids I knew in junior high or high school. And it was because their father's thought they were obeying Christ's words.
I've told God all along that I would not let even the ministry get in the way of being a father. When I moved from Colby to Hickman, Nebraska, I told the church in the interview that very thing. I said, "If there's a conflict between a church meeting and one of Kristin's play productions, or Ryan's basketball games, I'm going to choose my kids every time over the church." If they didn't like it, I told them not to hire me. But they did. And they all said they would make the same choice. So I found myself in a congregation of rebels from Christ's words.
It just seemed to me that ever since the time God brought Adam and Eve together and told them to go have children, that the primary way we fulfilled our calling as human beings was to be in a family. That if God intended us to be successful at any one main aspect of life and humanity, it was by loving relationships in the family. That I fulfilled my calling even as a minister best, by fulfilling my calling as a father first.
So how can Christ throw a major monkey wrench into all that and demand that I do the opposite? How can Christ throw out God's primary relationships, instituted from the time of creation? It doesn't seem natural, in terms of God's nature, imbued in us from the beginning of time.
I want to throw this monkey wrench back at Christ in the form of a resounding NO! "No, Christ! I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong. And besides that, I just can't do it. And I won't do it. So I guess I'm not one of your disciples, if that is how you're going to define what it means to be a disciple."
This is a weird sermon, isn't it? A sermon in disagreement with Christ. A sermon telling you why I think it's wrong to follow this particular teaching of Jesus. Isn't it my job to defend the Lord, no matter what?
It's just that this statement of Jesus is too harsh. It's just too much. It's right up there with the statement he made that if your eye causes you to sin, you should pull your eyeball out of the socket. Or if your right hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off. If we followed those words to the letter we'd all be blind and handless. Self-mutilation just doesn't seem to be Jesus' way. Especially if the Cross and Resurrection takes care of our sin, why would we need to be cutting and gouging? Or turning our back on our families to prove ourselves worthy?
It's right up there with the Old Testament story of Abraham believing God asked him to kill his only son Isaac as a sacrificial offering. God asks Abraham to do that. But out of the other side of God's mouth, God condemns all those other religions around Israel who performed child sacrifices to their gods. I just don't get it.
Jesus used a teaching technique called hyperbole. Using hyperbole involves making some outlandish statement that's never meant to be taken literally. But using hyperbole may be for the purpose of making a point, or teaching a truth.
Like Jesus' statements about gouging out your eyes or cutting off your hands. I don't think Jesus really intended people to do that. But by making his exaggerated statement, Jesus is trying to get across the fact of how bad sin is, how devastating it is, how malevolent it is. How important it is to keep yourself free of sin.
So is this the way we are to understand Jesus' statement about turning your back on family in order to be his disciple? It's possible. I'm not sure on this one. Certainly Jesus' listeners were much more family oriented than we are in our culture where we are becoming more and more separated and isolated.
But there is a common thread in all the very difficult teachings of Jesus I've talked about so far. That common thread is commitment. If you are totally committed to God, if you want to be an absolute 100%, bona fide, blue ribbon disciple of Christ, by those sayings of Christ, then you know where the upper most level of commitment is at. What I am hoping is that God will allow for lesser levels of commitment, because I just can't make the ultimate sacrifices Jesus is asking for. My prayer is: "I'm sorry, Lord. I just can't. Please forgive me. But please accept me just the same."
I look at the whole scene in which Jesus made this statement and I wonder if He really meant it. Luke says that a huge crowd was following Jesus that day. Imagine the kinds of groups of people who were following him around. People who needed some kind of healing from sickness, injury, deformity, or demonic lunacy. People who were in the religious establishment who only wanted to mock or dispute with what Jesus was doing and saying. People who were Hollywood types, who wanted to see some of Jesus' special effects. And there may have been some people who were genuinely attracted to Jesus and maybe thought about following him as a disciple.
Is it possible Jesus just got tired of all these people following him around? So he decided to make a strong statement that would weed a bunch of them out and send them packing. That Jesus, at this point in his ministry, wanted people following Him who were serious about making a commitment? So he turned and told them what commitment was going to look like, in the extreme. If I were there, in that crowd that day, I certainly would have rethought why I was there, and what I was doing following Jesus around, after hearing what Jesus had to say.
That's what Jesus' statement causes you to do: assess your own level of commitment. Jesus has set the scale for us. We know, now, how high the upper bar is set. And by that, we can assume the lowest end of the scale is totally and completely walking away from Jesus.
So I want to know what's in between. What are the levels of commitment in between those two extremes, and where do I fit on that scale? That's what Jesus' statement forces me to look at. Can I move my bar up a notch? Or a few notches? I may not ever ring the bell. If I don't, will Christ understand? I hope so. Because I struggle with all this. And I hope as you have been forced to listen to my rantings, you do to.
Luke 14:25-33
This is one of those statements I wish Jesus wouldn't have said. Wouldn't it have been better, when Luke was putting together his gospel, once he came to this story, to just leave it out? Matthew is the only other gospel writer to include this statement of Jesus, and even then he shortened it to just two verses. Matthew must have been uncomfortable with such a stringent statement. Mark and John were so uncomfortable with Jesus words they left it out of their gospels entirely.
Jesus' words sound so, well, unChristian. They almost sound cultish, don't they? Think of all the people who have left families and friends and joined a cult.
One of my best friends in high school and college joined what I would call a Christian cult. Tim was one of those natural athletes who played every sport and excelled at them all. He had a gift and he knew it was from God. At that time, around 1972, Tim was being talked to by Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Tim was a wide receiver, had hands of glue, speed, and coach-ability.
Then Tim got mixed up with a group who called themselves The Local Church. They based their beliefs on a Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee. About the middle of our sophomore year in college, Tim quit football. Then he quit school. Then he broke off his engagement to his high school sweetheart. He said everything about his past was death, and he was putting it behind him. He was giving it all up for Christ and the shouting hysteria that was called worship at The Local Church. Tim gave up everything dear to him (including our friendship) for Christ and for his affiliation in that offbeat church.
I tried to keep track of Tim. He moved to the east coast to help start other Local Churches. I heard he had been elevated to the level of prophet in that church, whatever that meant. I wrote, but he never wrote back. Or my letters were returned. Then I lost touch with him. Sort of gave up looking. Last I heard, he was married, has two kids, and lives in Idaho or Montana.
I think about Tim from time to time and wonder. He took Christ's words literally and did it. He took what was nearest and dearest to him and flicked it all away, so he could follow Christ as part of The Local Church. It just didn't seem right. When I think of our lost friendship, I still feel pangs of grief and loss that I don't exactly know how to deal with.
I don't know how to deal with that loss because Christ's words are all wrapped up in that loss and grief. Hard words of Christ. Words I wish Christ wouldn't have spoken, because maybe I wouldn't have lost a friend.
Why would God put us in families and friendships and then turn around and disrupt them? Why would God create such strong bonds of love and then demand that we treat them as if they don't matter or exist? Why would God create, from the start, marriage and family as the bedrock of humanity, and then have Jesus utter a few words that crushes that foundation?
As you know, my mom is now with the Lord. Part of the strong bond I had with her was because of our commonly held faith in Christ. She helped me get started in the faith. Over the years that bond got stronger. How could Christ ask me, while she was alive, to kiss that relationship goodbye? Especially when the strength of that relationship is because of Christ!
And I love my children. Ryan and Kristin are worth more to me than my own life. No one knows what we have been through together, and how that has created such a strong bond between us. I would unquestioningly or unhesitatingly step in front of a bullet for either of them. They are both amazing and wonderful people. There isn't a day I don't thank God for them.
I was always afraid of being a father. I didn't know if I'd be very good at it with the role model I had. But from the day each of them were born, from that day when they first breathed air and I held them in my big hands and became a daddy, I poured myself into that role with all the love I could.
I've accomplished some amazing things in the ministry. I've been given some accolades I didn't feel I deserved. But I have loved every minute of it, and still do. As great as living out my calling has been, I have loved being a father more.
How can Christ tell me that I can't be a true disciple unless I am willing to let the children I love go and turn my back on them? It is by God that they were even born at all. It goes against everything that I am, against everything that God has instilled in me as a human being and a human father.
It seems to me to be the height of child abuse for me to turn to Ryan and Kristin now, or especially when they were children, and say, "Sorry kids. I can't be your father anymore. I have to go follow Christ now. You're on your own. So long." I could no more do that than rip out my own heart.
I saw a lot of ministers when I was growing up and then after I became a pastor myself, who sacrificed their families (and their children especially) on the altar of the ministry. That somehow they could justify neglecting and abandoning their wives and children because of their "high, holy calling." When I was talking with Mark Graber's step-father, he said that the kids he knew that were the biggest hell-raisers were minister's kids. Same with some of the kids I knew in junior high or high school. And it was because their father's thought they were obeying Christ's words.
I've told God all along that I would not let even the ministry get in the way of being a father. When I moved from Colby to Hickman, Nebraska, I told the church in the interview that very thing. I said, "If there's a conflict between a church meeting and one of Kristin's play productions, or Ryan's basketball games, I'm going to choose my kids every time over the church." If they didn't like it, I told them not to hire me. But they did. And they all said they would make the same choice. So I found myself in a congregation of rebels from Christ's words.
It just seemed to me that ever since the time God brought Adam and Eve together and told them to go have children, that the primary way we fulfilled our calling as human beings was to be in a family. That if God intended us to be successful at any one main aspect of life and humanity, it was by loving relationships in the family. That I fulfilled my calling even as a minister best, by fulfilling my calling as a father first.
So how can Christ throw a major monkey wrench into all that and demand that I do the opposite? How can Christ throw out God's primary relationships, instituted from the time of creation? It doesn't seem natural, in terms of God's nature, imbued in us from the beginning of time.
I want to throw this monkey wrench back at Christ in the form of a resounding NO! "No, Christ! I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong. And besides that, I just can't do it. And I won't do it. So I guess I'm not one of your disciples, if that is how you're going to define what it means to be a disciple."
This is a weird sermon, isn't it? A sermon in disagreement with Christ. A sermon telling you why I think it's wrong to follow this particular teaching of Jesus. Isn't it my job to defend the Lord, no matter what?
It's just that this statement of Jesus is too harsh. It's just too much. It's right up there with the statement he made that if your eye causes you to sin, you should pull your eyeball out of the socket. Or if your right hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off. If we followed those words to the letter we'd all be blind and handless. Self-mutilation just doesn't seem to be Jesus' way. Especially if the Cross and Resurrection takes care of our sin, why would we need to be cutting and gouging? Or turning our back on our families to prove ourselves worthy?
It's right up there with the Old Testament story of Abraham believing God asked him to kill his only son Isaac as a sacrificial offering. God asks Abraham to do that. But out of the other side of God's mouth, God condemns all those other religions around Israel who performed child sacrifices to their gods. I just don't get it.
Jesus used a teaching technique called hyperbole. Using hyperbole involves making some outlandish statement that's never meant to be taken literally. But using hyperbole may be for the purpose of making a point, or teaching a truth.
Like Jesus' statements about gouging out your eyes or cutting off your hands. I don't think Jesus really intended people to do that. But by making his exaggerated statement, Jesus is trying to get across the fact of how bad sin is, how devastating it is, how malevolent it is. How important it is to keep yourself free of sin.
So is this the way we are to understand Jesus' statement about turning your back on family in order to be his disciple? It's possible. I'm not sure on this one. Certainly Jesus' listeners were much more family oriented than we are in our culture where we are becoming more and more separated and isolated.
But there is a common thread in all the very difficult teachings of Jesus I've talked about so far. That common thread is commitment. If you are totally committed to God, if you want to be an absolute 100%, bona fide, blue ribbon disciple of Christ, by those sayings of Christ, then you know where the upper most level of commitment is at. What I am hoping is that God will allow for lesser levels of commitment, because I just can't make the ultimate sacrifices Jesus is asking for. My prayer is: "I'm sorry, Lord. I just can't. Please forgive me. But please accept me just the same."
I look at the whole scene in which Jesus made this statement and I wonder if He really meant it. Luke says that a huge crowd was following Jesus that day. Imagine the kinds of groups of people who were following him around. People who needed some kind of healing from sickness, injury, deformity, or demonic lunacy. People who were in the religious establishment who only wanted to mock or dispute with what Jesus was doing and saying. People who were Hollywood types, who wanted to see some of Jesus' special effects. And there may have been some people who were genuinely attracted to Jesus and maybe thought about following him as a disciple.
Is it possible Jesus just got tired of all these people following him around? So he decided to make a strong statement that would weed a bunch of them out and send them packing. That Jesus, at this point in his ministry, wanted people following Him who were serious about making a commitment? So he turned and told them what commitment was going to look like, in the extreme. If I were there, in that crowd that day, I certainly would have rethought why I was there, and what I was doing following Jesus around, after hearing what Jesus had to say.
That's what Jesus' statement causes you to do: assess your own level of commitment. Jesus has set the scale for us. We know, now, how high the upper bar is set. And by that, we can assume the lowest end of the scale is totally and completely walking away from Jesus.
So I want to know what's in between. What are the levels of commitment in between those two extremes, and where do I fit on that scale? That's what Jesus' statement forces me to look at. Can I move my bar up a notch? Or a few notches? I may not ever ring the bell. If I don't, will Christ understand? I hope so. Because I struggle with all this. And I hope as you have been forced to listen to my rantings, you do to.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?"
Luke 14:1-14
Susie was a college acquaintance, around whom I always felt uncomfortable. Susie had cerebral palsy. When she walked to classes, her body weaved and pitched because of her spasmodic muscle control. When she didn’t walk, she rode a three-wheel bike that had a large basket in the back between the rear wheels. Her bike moved the same way she did if she were walking. At the end of the day she was exhausted because of the great effort it took to get from here to there.
One of the things that was the most discomforting to me, when I was around her was trying to talk with her. Each word she spoke took so much effort and seemed to take eons to come out. When her words did come out, it was hard for me to know what she was saying. I kept having to ask, “I’m sorry; what was that again?”
Whitworth College where I attended was a small one (1200 students). So I would see Susie often in her comings and goings. I found myself falling into the same kind of patronizing behavior toward Susie as others did who felt uncomfortable being around her. Yet it aggravated me to see others being so condescendingly polite with her, just because of her condition. But as I looked back, most of that aggravation was self-aimed because of my own frustrating attempts at relating to her authentically, person-to-person, rather than person-to-nonperson. Or worse, person-to-it.
It wasn’t that she was an outcast. She was really nice, and often funny in her own quirky way. She was definitely an intelligent person who made it through high school, eventually graduated from college, and went on to some job or career. It was just that she was hard for me to communicate with, so I would just say, “Hi,” and avoid her when I could.
Why did I react that way? Why do we? There are all kinds of people we would rather not be around. Not because they’re bad people, criminals, or aggressively antisocial. They’re just different from us “normal” people in enough of a way to make us feel uncomfortable. Like the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
They aren’t outcasts. Instead they’re the one’s most of us choose to simply leave to themselves. And if a majority of the people felt the same way about Susie that I did, imagine the implications for Susie. Imagine what she can do about it. But on the other hand, imagine what I/we could do about it.
What we can do about it, according to Jesus’ idea, is to invite the Susie’s that we know over for dinner. At the time I knew Susie, this kind of idea would have been the last option I would have entertained. The idea of sitting down at a table, would mean having to help her eat since she didn’t have the muscle control to bring a fork or spoon to her mouth. When she tried it, she usually hit her nose or the side of her cheek, or her chin. On top of that, trying to carry on a conversation with Susie at the same time would have been extremely difficult for my prudish personality to take.
That’s the stickler of Jesus’ comment. Notice it’s not some cute little parable about inviting the isolated people for a meal. Rather, it’s a barbed comment, flicked out at the host of the house where Jesus was dining. It was spoken right to the face of the host. There was no time given, like with parables, to set up study groups and sit around the grass talking hypothetically about what Jesus meant.
In my discomfort with Susie, I was the host. I only choose to have around me those with whom I am most comfortable. I usually don’t want to put myself in the position of dis-ease. But if I hear Jesus right, that’s exactly the position He wants me to get myself in. And tell the truth. Are there any other host-types out there like me?
The host to whom Jesus spoke was no slouch, either. Back at the first verse of this chapter, it says that Jesus had gone to the house of one of the “leading Pharisees.” If Jesus can stand up, and face this prominent man and his friends, and not pull any punches, then you can be sure He won’t with you or I either.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that will help us gain the full impact of Jesus’ statement to the host.
First, as I mentioned, Jesus was at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. We can well imagine most of the people there were also notables of one kind or another.
What Jesus noticed was all the jockeying for position that was going on around the table. At a meal such as this, the guests were set around the table according to importance. When you have a room full of important people, who gets to be number one? Or even number two or three? That’s what was happening. Imagine Jesus sitting off to the side of the room, watching petty arguments, and men posturing over who got to sit in which seat, especially the seat next to the host.
Having had his fill of it, Jesus arose and told the parable about how a person should choose their place at a wedding feast. Take the seat of lowest honor, and be moved up in the sight of all, rather than take the seat of highest honor and be moved down in the sight of all.
In His statement to the host, Jesus appears to be saying that the poor, the lame, the crippled, the Susie‘s, aren’t going to be concerned with or care about “who’s on first,” as much as just being overjoyed they got an invitation in the first place. These kinds of guests would be so happy someone thought of them, and included them in, they’re not going to care where they sit at the table--they’re just happy to be there. When you’ve been avoided and excluded for so long, being included becomes a gala affair.
At some point we have to face our fears and ask ourselves what would really happen if we had the people we avoid over for dinner. What would have happened if I went over and sat next to Susie in the college cafeteria, initiated conversation and helped her with her dinner? Certainly Jesus has something up his sleeve here. It appears we are only going to find out what it is by doing what he says.
We who are the host-types can certainly feel like we’re doing our good deed for the day. That’s the tone that Jesus uses in trying to motivate that particular Pharisee into compassionate action. We’ll feel good about ourselves, we hosts. We’ve done someone else a favor. Jesus acts upon our hostly mentality of acting as a benevolent superior to a needful inferior.
When Carol Stull and I went to Wichita to talk to some people at Youth Horizons about their Christian mentoring ministry, that was one of the pieces of advice they gave us. If the mentors we are training for our Eagle Wings ministry come at the kids they are mentoring with a superiority complex, the match will fail. And they had a fairly large number of matches fail at the beginning of their ministry, for that very reason.
So I can’t help but get the feeling that Jesus has an ulterior motive. Just maybe the inviter, the host, will surprisingly discover that the blind, lame, poor, crippled, Susie-type person, sitting across from the table from him really is a person. That they have a sense of humor. They’re full of personality. That though they are dealing with something hard, they are still no less of a person.
What happens is that we--the host types--will get resurrected out of our own deadly bias’. We realizes that we’ve been making a terrible misjudgment based on our fears and uncomfortability. And at the same time, we realize that just maybe we are making the same kinds of misjudgments about others--like about Jesus. We find out that we’ve been missing a great deal by carefully avoiding those people that make us feel uncomfortable.
I want to tell you the story of another person. She was a junior high girl in the church I served in Saratoga, California. When she was an infant she had spinal meningitis. When the fever subsided, she had lost about 3/4ths of her hearing. But then, as a junior high kid, one morning she woke up and discovered that her world had gone totally silent. That’s when I was there as Youth Pastor.
At the next meeting of youth group she walked up to me, handed me a piece of paper and walked away. It was a poem about her loss, and how she felt about herself now. It was one of the most crushing poems I’ve ever read. One of the lines had to do with how no one was “willing to be a friend and help.”
Most everyone was telling her what she couldn’t do because she was deaf. She was a tremendous athlete, full of natural talent, and a hard worker. But her softball coach wouldn’t let her play. Her soccer coach wouldn’t let her play. And her parents, in her eyes, backed up all those who were telling her “no.” She quickly became isolated and lonely.
I was determined I wasn’t going to let her become another Susie in my life. I would find some way to say “Yes!” to her. Shortly after she became totally deaf, Ryan was born. Which meant we would be, at some time, needing a babysitter. I had a whole youth group full of girls that were ready and willing to do so--including this deaf girl.
She had done a little bit of babysitting before, but now that she was totally deaf, no one trusted their children with her. But I told my wife I wanted to give her a try. Many other parents told us directly and indirectly that we were crazy. How could she hear Ryan cry? What if the phone rang and it was an important message? How would we check in with her while we were out, to see how things were going? How would she call if there was an emergency?
They were all legitimate questions. But they were all taken care of. First we had her over for dinner, and just spent the evening with us to get an idea of our routine. She told us about, and had brought with her, a mechanism called a TDD or TDY. It was a little laptop computer that hooked up to the phone. She could call her parents (who always stayed home when she babysat for us) and type out messages to them on their TDD. These days, with smart phones, she could have just texted us, or emailed. But nothing existed like that 30 years ago.
She would check on Ryan about every five minutes, and we never had any problems. She was, without a doubt, the best babysitter we ever had. And what’s more, Ryan was a clingy infant. He wouldn’t let anyone hold him except his mother or me. No one, that is, except for this deaf girl. She was able, in her silent way, to communicate with our infant son that was uncanny. She became like a daughter to us--so much so, that we named our daughter, Kristin, after her. Kristin, our babysitter, is now a confident mother with two children of her own--both hearing.
I don’t know who the Susie’s and Kristin’s are in your life. Again, they aren’t bad people, or psychopaths, or whatever. They’re the blind, the lame, the poor, the crippled, the deaf, the strangers. All those people are in some condition, by no fault of their own, and are avoided because of it, simply because us “normal” people are uncomfortable around them. Invite them over for dinner, and find out what an eye-opening and rewarding experience it can be.
It’s what our Eagle Wings Ministry is all about. But you don’t have to be a mentor to include someone at your table. There are so many Susies and Kristins out there.
I want to close with a poem by Ann Weems called, “The Colorless Child.”
I watched her go uncelebrated into the second grade,
a colorless child,
gray among the orange and yellow,
attached too much to corners
and to other people’s sunshine.
She colors the rainbow brown
and leaves balloons unopened
in their packages.
Oh, who will touch this colorless child?
Who will plant alleluias in her heart
and send her dancing
into all the colors of God?
Or will she be like an unwrapped Christmas gift
left under the tree—
too unimpressive for anyone to take the trouble? - Ann Weems
Luke 14:1-14
Susie was a college acquaintance, around whom I always felt uncomfortable. Susie had cerebral palsy. When she walked to classes, her body weaved and pitched because of her spasmodic muscle control. When she didn’t walk, she rode a three-wheel bike that had a large basket in the back between the rear wheels. Her bike moved the same way she did if she were walking. At the end of the day she was exhausted because of the great effort it took to get from here to there.
One of the things that was the most discomforting to me, when I was around her was trying to talk with her. Each word she spoke took so much effort and seemed to take eons to come out. When her words did come out, it was hard for me to know what she was saying. I kept having to ask, “I’m sorry; what was that again?”
Whitworth College where I attended was a small one (1200 students). So I would see Susie often in her comings and goings. I found myself falling into the same kind of patronizing behavior toward Susie as others did who felt uncomfortable being around her. Yet it aggravated me to see others being so condescendingly polite with her, just because of her condition. But as I looked back, most of that aggravation was self-aimed because of my own frustrating attempts at relating to her authentically, person-to-person, rather than person-to-nonperson. Or worse, person-to-it.
It wasn’t that she was an outcast. She was really nice, and often funny in her own quirky way. She was definitely an intelligent person who made it through high school, eventually graduated from college, and went on to some job or career. It was just that she was hard for me to communicate with, so I would just say, “Hi,” and avoid her when I could.
Why did I react that way? Why do we? There are all kinds of people we would rather not be around. Not because they’re bad people, criminals, or aggressively antisocial. They’re just different from us “normal” people in enough of a way to make us feel uncomfortable. Like the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
They aren’t outcasts. Instead they’re the one’s most of us choose to simply leave to themselves. And if a majority of the people felt the same way about Susie that I did, imagine the implications for Susie. Imagine what she can do about it. But on the other hand, imagine what I/we could do about it.
What we can do about it, according to Jesus’ idea, is to invite the Susie’s that we know over for dinner. At the time I knew Susie, this kind of idea would have been the last option I would have entertained. The idea of sitting down at a table, would mean having to help her eat since she didn’t have the muscle control to bring a fork or spoon to her mouth. When she tried it, she usually hit her nose or the side of her cheek, or her chin. On top of that, trying to carry on a conversation with Susie at the same time would have been extremely difficult for my prudish personality to take.
That’s the stickler of Jesus’ comment. Notice it’s not some cute little parable about inviting the isolated people for a meal. Rather, it’s a barbed comment, flicked out at the host of the house where Jesus was dining. It was spoken right to the face of the host. There was no time given, like with parables, to set up study groups and sit around the grass talking hypothetically about what Jesus meant.
In my discomfort with Susie, I was the host. I only choose to have around me those with whom I am most comfortable. I usually don’t want to put myself in the position of dis-ease. But if I hear Jesus right, that’s exactly the position He wants me to get myself in. And tell the truth. Are there any other host-types out there like me?
The host to whom Jesus spoke was no slouch, either. Back at the first verse of this chapter, it says that Jesus had gone to the house of one of the “leading Pharisees.” If Jesus can stand up, and face this prominent man and his friends, and not pull any punches, then you can be sure He won’t with you or I either.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that will help us gain the full impact of Jesus’ statement to the host.
First, as I mentioned, Jesus was at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. We can well imagine most of the people there were also notables of one kind or another.
What Jesus noticed was all the jockeying for position that was going on around the table. At a meal such as this, the guests were set around the table according to importance. When you have a room full of important people, who gets to be number one? Or even number two or three? That’s what was happening. Imagine Jesus sitting off to the side of the room, watching petty arguments, and men posturing over who got to sit in which seat, especially the seat next to the host.
Having had his fill of it, Jesus arose and told the parable about how a person should choose their place at a wedding feast. Take the seat of lowest honor, and be moved up in the sight of all, rather than take the seat of highest honor and be moved down in the sight of all.
In His statement to the host, Jesus appears to be saying that the poor, the lame, the crippled, the Susie‘s, aren’t going to be concerned with or care about “who’s on first,” as much as just being overjoyed they got an invitation in the first place. These kinds of guests would be so happy someone thought of them, and included them in, they’re not going to care where they sit at the table--they’re just happy to be there. When you’ve been avoided and excluded for so long, being included becomes a gala affair.
At some point we have to face our fears and ask ourselves what would really happen if we had the people we avoid over for dinner. What would have happened if I went over and sat next to Susie in the college cafeteria, initiated conversation and helped her with her dinner? Certainly Jesus has something up his sleeve here. It appears we are only going to find out what it is by doing what he says.
We who are the host-types can certainly feel like we’re doing our good deed for the day. That’s the tone that Jesus uses in trying to motivate that particular Pharisee into compassionate action. We’ll feel good about ourselves, we hosts. We’ve done someone else a favor. Jesus acts upon our hostly mentality of acting as a benevolent superior to a needful inferior.
When Carol Stull and I went to Wichita to talk to some people at Youth Horizons about their Christian mentoring ministry, that was one of the pieces of advice they gave us. If the mentors we are training for our Eagle Wings ministry come at the kids they are mentoring with a superiority complex, the match will fail. And they had a fairly large number of matches fail at the beginning of their ministry, for that very reason.
So I can’t help but get the feeling that Jesus has an ulterior motive. Just maybe the inviter, the host, will surprisingly discover that the blind, lame, poor, crippled, Susie-type person, sitting across from the table from him really is a person. That they have a sense of humor. They’re full of personality. That though they are dealing with something hard, they are still no less of a person.
What happens is that we--the host types--will get resurrected out of our own deadly bias’. We realizes that we’ve been making a terrible misjudgment based on our fears and uncomfortability. And at the same time, we realize that just maybe we are making the same kinds of misjudgments about others--like about Jesus. We find out that we’ve been missing a great deal by carefully avoiding those people that make us feel uncomfortable.
I want to tell you the story of another person. She was a junior high girl in the church I served in Saratoga, California. When she was an infant she had spinal meningitis. When the fever subsided, she had lost about 3/4ths of her hearing. But then, as a junior high kid, one morning she woke up and discovered that her world had gone totally silent. That’s when I was there as Youth Pastor.
At the next meeting of youth group she walked up to me, handed me a piece of paper and walked away. It was a poem about her loss, and how she felt about herself now. It was one of the most crushing poems I’ve ever read. One of the lines had to do with how no one was “willing to be a friend and help.”
Most everyone was telling her what she couldn’t do because she was deaf. She was a tremendous athlete, full of natural talent, and a hard worker. But her softball coach wouldn’t let her play. Her soccer coach wouldn’t let her play. And her parents, in her eyes, backed up all those who were telling her “no.” She quickly became isolated and lonely.
I was determined I wasn’t going to let her become another Susie in my life. I would find some way to say “Yes!” to her. Shortly after she became totally deaf, Ryan was born. Which meant we would be, at some time, needing a babysitter. I had a whole youth group full of girls that were ready and willing to do so--including this deaf girl.
She had done a little bit of babysitting before, but now that she was totally deaf, no one trusted their children with her. But I told my wife I wanted to give her a try. Many other parents told us directly and indirectly that we were crazy. How could she hear Ryan cry? What if the phone rang and it was an important message? How would we check in with her while we were out, to see how things were going? How would she call if there was an emergency?
They were all legitimate questions. But they were all taken care of. First we had her over for dinner, and just spent the evening with us to get an idea of our routine. She told us about, and had brought with her, a mechanism called a TDD or TDY. It was a little laptop computer that hooked up to the phone. She could call her parents (who always stayed home when she babysat for us) and type out messages to them on their TDD. These days, with smart phones, she could have just texted us, or emailed. But nothing existed like that 30 years ago.
She would check on Ryan about every five minutes, and we never had any problems. She was, without a doubt, the best babysitter we ever had. And what’s more, Ryan was a clingy infant. He wouldn’t let anyone hold him except his mother or me. No one, that is, except for this deaf girl. She was able, in her silent way, to communicate with our infant son that was uncanny. She became like a daughter to us--so much so, that we named our daughter, Kristin, after her. Kristin, our babysitter, is now a confident mother with two children of her own--both hearing.
I don’t know who the Susie’s and Kristin’s are in your life. Again, they aren’t bad people, or psychopaths, or whatever. They’re the blind, the lame, the poor, the crippled, the deaf, the strangers. All those people are in some condition, by no fault of their own, and are avoided because of it, simply because us “normal” people are uncomfortable around them. Invite them over for dinner, and find out what an eye-opening and rewarding experience it can be.
It’s what our Eagle Wings Ministry is all about. But you don’t have to be a mentor to include someone at your table. There are so many Susies and Kristins out there.
I want to close with a poem by Ann Weems called, “The Colorless Child.”
I watched her go uncelebrated into the second grade,
a colorless child,
gray among the orange and yellow,
attached too much to corners
and to other people’s sunshine.
She colors the rainbow brown
and leaves balloons unopened
in their packages.
Oh, who will touch this colorless child?
Who will plant alleluias in her heart
and send her dancing
into all the colors of God?
Or will she be like an unwrapped Christmas gift
left under the tree—
too unimpressive for anyone to take the trouble? - Ann Weems
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