You Will Soon Be Free

"You Will Soon Be Free"

Luke 21:25-28

What’s going to happen in the future?

Ten years ago, as you looked into the future, is today what you saw?  Is the person you are now the person you envisioned back then?  What about 25 years ago?  50 years ago?

What’s going to happen this afternoon?  Tomorrow?  I try to keep a thorough calendar of future days.  I look at my calendar and it tells me what appointments and events will be coming up.  I look forward with anticipation to some of those events on my calendar.  Not so much anticipation with others.  But at least I know.  Each item on each day of my calendar is going to happen, right?

My calendar gives me a sense that the future is predictable.  Probably about 95% of the time, what I have on my calendar happens.  But there are times when things I didn’t expect to happen, happens.  Or things I expected to happen get canceled.  I get surprises.  Some times they aren’t good surprises.

We like to have a sense of control over our future.  We want that predictability.  Whenever we speak a sentence that begins with the words, “I will…” it has to do with what we want to happen in our future.  Earlier this week, as a number of you invited me to spend Thanksgiving with you and your families, I replied, “I will be going to Wichita for a couple of days to spend Thanksgiving with my son, his wife and her family.”  But looking at the weather I didn’t know if I would be able to say, “I will be coming home on Friday.”  If the weather said, “I will be dumping an inch of ice all over the land,” then the weather’s “I will,” just might have precedence over my, “I will.”

Whenever we start a sentence with, “I will…” it means we haven’t done it yet, or experienced it yet.  It’s something that will happen in the future.  But because we say it, we assume it will happen.  It means I have made a choice and it’s my intention to make that choice happen.

I’ve always thought that life is about choices.  And the choices are about all those, “I will…” statements we make.  But the more I thought about it this week, I wondered more and more if my “I will…” statements really have my personal power in them.

Here’s what I mean by that.  I am not the only person who is saying, “I will… do such and such.”  Everyone else is making their own, “I will…” statements.  Some of those are bound to encroach into my own “I will…” statements.  Everyone is trying to build their own future with their own “I will…” statements at the same time.  What happens when some of those future plans collide?

Certainly you and your spouse have had those kinds of conversations.  How do you handle it when your two separate “I will…” statements collide or are incompatible?  What happens when what you will be doing, even for just the next hour or the rest of the day doesn’t quite fit with what your spouse or your kids envision what they will be doing?

Or what if the two clashing “I will…” statements go something like this:  You say, “I will be going to the France-Germany soccer match tonight and I will sing and chant my voice hoarse for the French team.”  That sounds like a fun and memorable, “I will…” statement about your future.

But unbeknownst to you, there is another group of young men who are arming themselves with automatic rifles and stating, “I will go to the France-Germany soccer game and I will shoot to kill as many spectators as I can in the name of my religion.”  You who were going to the soccer game as a spectator had no idea there was another whose “I will…” statement was going to clash with yours in such a deadly way.

Thankfully, not all “I will…” statements clash in such a hideous and ugly way.

But I think we don’t stop and realize how most our choices, most of our “I will…” statements end up being negotiations, because we don’t consider how our choice will impact others, and other’s choices will impact ours.

Which brings me to one of the points in this message, Our futures are always negotiable.  Our choices are all negotiable with the others who are also making choices, and “I will…” statements, that may not mesh well with our own.

So maybe, life isn’t about choices, or the sum total of all the choices we make.  Maybe life is more about the sum of all of our negotiations that flow out of our choices and our “I will…” statements.  Think about it.  There is a huge invisible web out there that connects all of us through those negotiations that are woven by every one of our “I will…” statements.

The futurist Robert Prehoda once wrote:

Unless you believe in a totally fixed and immutable time-stream (in which case it doesn’t matter what you do, everything’s frozen in cement already) then the future must be a series of events that have not yet happened, and therefore can be altered, changed, diverted, moved, shaped by myriad of individual decisions.  There is no one certain future; there are countless possible futures, with every moment bringing new opportunities to hand.

That’s the way life works:  we make choices based on our, “I will…” statements, and we negotiate those choices within the web of relationships that we hold dear.  Then we move into our future, molded by those negotiations.

Except in one instance.  There is one future that is not negotiated.  When God says, “I will…” our only response is to like or not.  But even if we don’t like it, we don’t get to negotiate with God.  Only a couple of times did God allow negotiation according to the Bible:  when Abraham negotiated with God about any righteous people who might be in Sodom and Gomorrah; and when the people of Ninevah negotiated with God through their repentance, and God changed from the “I will destroy Ninevah in 40 days” statement.

Here, in Luke, we have one of those “I will” statements.  It is by this statement that we find out there are times in the history of the world that all our “I will” statements will be suspended; another’s “I will…” statement will take absolute precedence and there is no negotiation.

Look back through this statement by Jesus and see how many times the word “will” comes up:

“Strange things will happen…”

“The nations on earth will be afraid…”

“People will be so frightened…”

“Every power in the sky will be shaken.”

“…the Son of Man will be seen, coming in a cloud…”

“You will soon be set free.”

Six times.

Let’s look at that word, “will” and what it infers.  If something “will” happen it means whatever is to happen is expected.  Not only expected—it’s supposed to happen.  There is no shade of doubt.  There is certainty.

Also, behind an “I will…” statement is a sense of determination.  Determined in two meanings of the word.  First, determined as in predestined.  If something will happen, and there is certainty about it happening, it means it is fated, or determined that it will happen.  And nothing will be able to derail that fate.  If it will happen, it has been set.

Determination also has the sense of volition behind it.  If I make an “I will” statement it means I am being deliberate in my choices and actions.  I am exercising my own purposes.  I am determined.  “I will make this happen.”

Coupled with that is fact that in order to say you will make such-and-such happen, you must have the power to make it happen.  I can’t say something like, “I will make Donald Trump drop out of the presidential election.”  I could show all the determination I want about that statement, but I just don’t have the power to pull it off.  So if you say you will do something, you better have the power to make it happen.

One other part of this statement Jesus makes about all the things that will happen has to do with design.  Some things will happen simply because that is the way they are designed.  That’s the feeling we get when we read Jesus’ six “will” statements—that this is the way the future is designed, and that future can’t do other than how it has been designed to play out.  Thus we get back to fate or determinism.  We may not like the way certain things about life are designed, but that’s tough.  There are some things about the design we don’t get to have a say in.

The ultimate destination of our future, or the future of the world, is one of those.  At least according to this statement of Jesus.

The other dissettling part of these six will statements is that they are open-ended.  We can be sure that they will happen.  We just don’t know when.  Most of our “I will” statements that we make we try to be close-ended.  “I will buy a different car next week.”  “I will write a book in the month of November.”  “I will drink some oolong tea with my lunch today.”

Not so with Jesus’ statements.  The Second Coming, and these events, could start happening this afternoon.  Or 50 years from now.  It’s already been over 2000 years since Jesus made this statement.  So when?  We don’t know.

There were “will” statements made about the first coming of the Savior for thousands of years.  And then, as Luke states in the Nativity story, “Suddenly there were angels in the sky singing…”  The Savior was here.  “Suddenly.”

In the coming weeks of Advent I will look at what has happened with the first coming of the Savior, and compare that with what will happen when the Savior comes again.  “I will” do that.  Unless the Lord breaks in and the sea starts roaring and the stars start shaking out of the sky.  My “I will” must bow to Christ’s.

The Two Lingering Scents

"The Two Lingering Scents"

Mark 14:3-6

Believe it or not, there are people who devote their entire lives to studying stinky, smelly things. Take Dr. George Preti, for example.

Preti has been studying odors for just under 40 years, primarily at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.  Once, he accidentally knocked over a flask filled with concentrated armpit extract, which shattered on the floor of his lab and splattered all over. He cleaned the mess and put his shoes in a plastic bag, thinking he had contained the odor.

“But it’s like when you work in a restaurant where they’re cooking something really pungent,” Preti said. “After you’ve been there for awhile, you don’t smell the odor anymore.”

Preti took the train home, getting more than a few dirty looks from his fellow commuters, and was picked up at the station by his wife. “As soon as I got in the car, my wife said, ‘You smell like a street person!’ She was just overwhelmed with the odor, and I couldn’t smell anything,” he says. Preti later calculated that he had spilled the equivalent of “about 600,000 people’s armpits” onto his sneakers and pants.  “I threw the shoes and pants out,” he said. “There’s no way I could’ve neutralized the smell.”

Smells and odors can be overpowering.  In fact, the sense of smell is, of the five senses, the one most linked to memory.  We remember the experiences of smells much more easily than things we see, touch, taste or hear.  Especially if it’s the smell of 600,000 armpits.

On the other end of extreme odors from armpits, would be nard.  Nard is the extract from a Spikenard plant grown in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, China, and India.   The underground stems of the flower are crushed and distilled into an intensely aromatically pleasing amber-colored essential oil.  Nard oil is used as a perfume, an incense, a sedative, and an herbal medicine said to fight insomnia, birth difficulties, and other minor ailments.  When the oil is used as a perfume, it is usually mixed with some kind of ointment.

When the nard oil is mixed with an ointment to make a perfume, a small jar of the ointment—back in the time of Jesus—would cost a person’s entire annual income.  Imagine spending your annual income on a small jar of perfume.  I wonder how much the concentrated extract of 600,000 armpits cost Dr. Preti when he accidentally spilled it.

There are so many questions surrounding this story of the woman and her nard ointment.  Such as, Who was she?  We aren’t told her name or given any hint about her identity.  She could have been a prostitute, since prostitutes would often carry vials of perfume around their neck on a string.  If that’s who this woman was, it might explain some of the outrage of the guests.

It would also be telling concerning spending a years wages of a prostitute to buy the nard and then spill it all out on Jesus’ head.  Jesus told the guests the woman had done “something wonderful.”  Maybe Jesus wasn't talking about how she poured the ointment on his head.  Maybe she turned her life around from the “world’s oldest profession” and was making something new with her life.  Maybe hearing the gospel of God’s love from Jesus, she came to a place of significant change where she totally reordered her life.  Out of gratitude to Jesus, she symbolically poured out the proceeds of her past life upon Jesus so she could become someone new.

Isn’t that what Jesus is all about?  Having our past human failings poured upon him so they become his to carry and not ours anymore?  So that we can be free of those failings, free of our past.  Even when those pasts have reaped for us what we thought were valuable rewards.  Which is why we continue to hold on to them.  Only by pouring out all that upon Jesus’ head, all the wages of our failings, all that bottled up stuff, will it be reckoned to us as “something wonderful” by the Lord.

Others identify this mysterious woman as Mary, Lazarus and Martha’s sister.  They were close personal friends of Jesus.  Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  You will remember that when Jesus told Martha to have her brother’s tomb opened she replied there would be an awful stench.  It would have been an interesting connection to this story of the woman and her nard—if it was sister Mary.

In the other notable story, Jesus visited the home of Mary and Martha.  Martha was in the kitchen banging pots and pans around, preparing a meal, while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet in adoration and attention.  Martha, indignant, came out from the kitchen and demanded Jesus tell Mary to get in the kitchen and help.  Jesus’ reply to Martha:  “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing.  One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it…” (Luke 10:41)

If this mystery woman is indeed Mary, Martha’s sister, then she continues to choose the essential thing:  complete devotion to Jesus.  In the first instance, it was her sister Martha who misunderstood her sister’s devotion.  Martha thought duty should trump all other activity.  Including devotion to Jesus.  In this second instance it is those around the table who misunderstand Mary’s devotion, thinking duty to the poor is more important than any other activity.  Including devotion to Jesus.

Each time, if this is indeed Mary, her actions are misrepresented.  But Jesus comes to her rescue—both with Martha and with those sitting around the table.  The word that describes the criticism of the woman by those around the table literally means, “snort with anger.”  It’s a funny picture of a bunch of men snorting their disdain of the woman like a sty full of pigs.  But Jesus commends her for her courageous devotion.  Mary keeps choosing the “good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

The other mystery people are those sitting at the table with Jesus.  Is it the disciples?  Is it some other Jewish religious leaders?  We don’t know.  The only thing we know about them is that they saw the woman’s actions as a “waste.”  What does that tell us?  What does that tell us about what these mysterious guests thought about Jesus?  What does that tell us about what these men thought of this woman?  What does it tell us about what they thought of this woman’s actions?  “Why was this waste of the ointment made?” they snorted.

In answer to the first question, the guests statement tells us they didn’t think Jesus was worth it.  That Jesus isn’t worth spilling out one of the most expensive perfumes in the known world.  That Jesus wasn’t worth being honored in that way.  That Jesus wasn’t worthy of such a lavish outpouring of devotion.

We don't know much about the host of this gathering.  We know his name is Simon.  We know Simon was a leper.  Was--past tense.  If Simon were still a leper, he wouldn't be in his home.  He would be in a colony of other lepers.  The fact that he was a leper and is no longer means he had been healed.  Which didn't happen.  Ever.

Unless Simon had been healed.  By Jesus.  And maybe that's why Jesus was at Simon's home.  Out of gratitude for being healed, Simon invited Jesus to his home for a celebration of that healing, and showing gratitude for Jesus.

So, what is startling is the snorting and comments by the men gathered--including Simon the healed leper host--that Jesus isn't worth the waste of the poured out nard ointment.  If we are right here in assuming Simon was healed from a death sentence disease, wouldn't you think he'd think Jesus was worth it!?  Evidently not.

With the same snorts the men must not have thought much about the woman either.  This stupid woman evidently had no concept of the value of the perfume she just poured out to the last drop on Jesus' head.  What was she thinking!?  If she was going to get rid of the nard ointment, she could have at least sold it for a boatload of money and use that for the poor!  Why waste it in such a stupid action by a stupid woman by pouring it on Jesus?  Snort, snort, snort.

But Jesus has to reframe their snorting for them so they can see what's really happening:  "Let her alone.  Why are you giving her a hard time?  She has just done something wonderfully significant for me."  Notice Jesus didn't reprimand the other guests for their evaluation that he, Jesus, wasn't worth the sacrificial waste of the perfume.  He wasn't worried about what they thought of him.  But he was concerned about their snorting disdain of the woman who poured out the ointment of nard.

It made me think of Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard.  The workers who worked only for an hour got paid the same amount as those who worked all day in the heat of the sun.  The workers who worked longer snorted at the vineyard owner for paying everyone the same.  The vineyard owner's response:  "Do you give me the evil eye because of my generosity?" (Matthew 20:15)

Wouldn't the mystery woman be able to say the same thing to these judgmental and snorting men around the table?  Wouldn't she be on the same ground as Jesus to ask, "Are you judging me because I choose to show my generous devotion by pouring this lotion upon Jesus?  Is it not mine to do with what I want?"

I don't know if the Gospel writer Mark intended this or not, but this story of the unknown woman showing her fragrant devotion to Jesus, is sandwiched between the stench-filled stories of the Jewish religious leaders plotting to kill Jesus, and then the beginnings of Judas' betrayal of Jesus.  What we have is this rose of a woman showing scent-ual devotion to Jesus, surrounded by the thorns of plotting, jealous, and murderous leaders, and the back-stabbing of one of his own disciples.

That is the mix of our world--beautiful, sacrificial acts done in the midst of horrific human atrocities.  As I waded through all the articles about the terrorist attacks in Paris, I was looking for something specifically.  I was looking for just one story of someone stepping up, in a selfless way, to risk stopping the shooting.  Especially in the full house venue of the rock concert or the soccer game.  I was expecting to find at least one story of someone, like the marines on the train a month earlier who took that risk and stopped a bomber.  But I found none.  I found no stories of valor or heroism in the midst of humans being the worst that a human can be.  So often, one act of beauty can overpower even the most sneering acts of ugliness.  I was looking for at least one story of beauty, but found none.

In the home of Simon that day, there were two scents.  The nard lotion, once freed from its alabaster jar would have filled that house with an amazingly beautiful scent.  It would have cascaded out the windows into the homes nearby.

But there was another scent being given off by the men around the table.  From their snorting they would have created an "air" of resentment and bitterness.  And just plain being a small and shriveled human being.

Which scent would be stronger?  Which of the two scents would overpower the other?  The scent emanating and wafting from the beauty and devotion of the mystery woman's act with the nard lotion flowing down Jesus' head?  Or the sneering and snorting stench from the ungracious men around the table?

Which of the two scents do you put off, as you move in and around and through your day?  Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthian church:

For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.  And who is adequate for these things?  (2 Corinthians 2:15-16, NASB)

What is the aroma you put off?  The aroma of life?  Or the aroma of death?  You are adequate to do either.  I say, choose the aroma of life and beauty, all wrapped up in your devotion to Christ.  Snnnnniiiiiiffffff!

We All Fall Down

"We All Fall Down"

Mark 13:1-2

Let me show you some pictures.

Here is the Colosseum in Rome.  The Loomis’ were just there this past summer.

As you can see, it’s in a bit of disrepair.  The stadium floor is gone.  As is some of the arch work around the top.  Seats eroding.  It was once a great and terrible place.  Now it is collapsing in on itself.

The next picture is the Temple of Aphrodite in what was Ephesus.

It was once considered one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.  You see the columns.  There used to be 121 of those all around and inside the temple.  A magnificent structure that was built and then rebuilt.  People came from all over the world to see it.  This is all that’s left of it.

Our next picture is a model of Jerusalem.

This is what it would have looked like in the time of the Roman occupation.  The temple complex is there to the left.  The deck upon which the temple was built was all buttressed up by huge stones and filled in.

This picture is all that’s left of the temple mount—the western, or Wailing Wall.

Herod the Great had the temple rebuilt.  The construction started around 1 B.C. and took nearly 46 years to finish.  The Roman emperor Titius destroyed it in 70 A.D.  So it would have been in the process of being built when Jesus was alive.  Hence the disciples statement—“Teacher, look at these beautiful stones and wonderful buildings!”

An average stone used in building the temple was 3 ft. by 4 ft by 15 ft.  Each stone weighed around 28 tons.  The largest stone they found used in the building was 44 ft. by 11 ft. by 17 ft. and weighs approximately 600 tons.  So, yes:  “Look at these beautiful stones…”

Beautiful stones, not just in the Jewish Temple, but the Colosseum, the Temple to Aphrodite, and so many like them.  Once magnificent buildings.  Now rubble.  ISIS is now going around blowing up even the rubble, with human beings strapped to the stones.

A little over two years ago we were talking about what the mission of this congregation is.  We were taking a serious look at our building, wondering if it fit with what we wanted the mission of the church to be.  Does this building serve us in doing the ministry into the future?  If not, what are our options?  Some of you were angry and dumbfounded that we were even entertaining the idea of tearing this building down, or abandoning it, so we could create a different kind of space and a different kind of ministry.

This is just a congregation.  One church among many Christian churches.  Jesus was talking about the central building of a whole religion--the Temple--being torn down.  It became one of the main charges against him at his trial, this statement spoken to the disciples about the destruction of the Temple.

Think of what the Temple represented.  It was the seat of the whole Jewish religion.  At all the religious festival days, it was to Jerusalem and the Temple that people would come by the thousands.  Many of the Psalms are marching Psalms that the people used, reciting, chanting and singing them as they processed up the hill to the Temple.

The Temple was the ultimate symbol of the tradition and history and worship of the Jewish religion.  The building of the first Temple was traced back to King David and his son Solomon.  So the history of a people and their greatest King was imbued in the temple.

The Temple housed the High Priests and Sanhedrin--the ruling Jewish council.  Therefore the Temple was the seat of all rule and authority of the institutional side of the Jewish religion.

But most importantly, the Temple was the closest point of contact between God and the Jewish people.  It was in the Temple, in the inner most part, called the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was housed.  The Ark itself housed the stone tablets of the 10 Commandments given by God to Moses.  It was upon the Ark that God sat when God spoke to the High Priests.  Only the High Priests were allowed in.  Ropes were tied around their waists, in case they died inside the Holy of Holies so they could then be dragged out without another High Priest having to go in and retrieve the body.  The Temple was believed to be God's house upon the earth.

So, it wasn't just the building.  It was all of this that was represented by the building.  The Temple was the heart and soul of the entirety of the Jewish religion.  Without the Temple, the Jewish people assumed they could have no religion and their existence as a unique people would be gone.   Try to wrap your minds around this, because we have nothing like it in the Christian religion.

Jesus makes one deliberate comment in reply to one of the disciples statement.  We don't know which disciple it was.  Jesus tersely replied, "Do you see these huge buildings?  They will certainly be thrown down.  Not one stone will be left in place."

Thrown down.  Destroyed.  Put down.  The word Jesus used infers intention.  The Temple will intentionally be thrown down.  It won't be like an old abandoned farm house out in the middle of no where, the roof caved in, trees growing out of shattered windows, cows using it for shelter in the Winter.  No, not like that.  Intentionally thrown down.

If you're with me here, or ahead of me, you're asking the question, "By whose intention will the Temple be thrown down?"  What kind of force would be needed to make it so, "Not one stone will be left in place"?

What is the answer to our questions?  Whose intention is it to "throw down" the Temple?  Remember, Jesus was the one who made the statement.  (God.)  Now, even more questions:  "Why would God intend to destroy this connection between himself and the people?"  And, "If it is God's intention, how does a person survive that intention?"

In a dystopian novel I finished reading a month ago, one of the characters said to another, "There are only two things in life:  survival or death."  I would add, "And eventually there is only death."

That seems to be the way the universe is designed.  So many challenges along the way testing our survivability.  Think of the great empires of history, Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, Ottoman, Genghis and Kubla Kahn.  All gone.  Cultures of all kinds, gone.  Historical figures, some amazing, some amazingly despotic--it doesn't matter, they are all gone.

Ring around the rosie

Pocket full of posies

Ashes, Ashes,

We all fall down.

That children's rhyme may have been about the bubonic plague, but it is nonetheless true about everything else in life.  Nothing is permanent.  We all fall down.

It doesn't matter if you're a human being, a 600 ton stone, an institution, an empire, or even a religion.  Jesus said it will all be thrown down.

We would like to think that there has to be something permanent in this world.  Take Jesus' statement a step further.  Think of a mountain.  A beautiful, majestic mountain.  Snow capped.  Inspiring.  Solid.  Immovable.  Like Mt. St. Helens.  Or Krakatoa.  Symbols of solidity, in a moment blown sky high as the volcanoes they are.  Isn't the very earth we stand on foundational and firm and stable?  Until an earthquake or mudslide lets you know otherwise.

There must be something permanent.  Something that will always be.  Like a vow--that sacred promise made between a man and a woman.  A vow with supposedly that added strength of love behind it.  Right?  Until you read the statistics: 50% divorce rate.  And even if the vow is not broken by divorce, it can be undermined fiercely by affairs, or bad communication, or scores of other things.

There must be something permanent, like our values and beliefs.  What's more foundational to a person's life than their core beliefs?  You establish those unshakable beliefs in your life and use those to keep you standing throughout your life.  But there is this conspiracy inherent in life that these situations keep getting thrown at us that shake the stones of our values loose.  Down they come.

The people were angry with Jesus because he dared to say that the very things we hold on to in life in order to gain a sense of permanence will ultimately fail us.  Even the Temple and the whole religious institution and experiences that it symbolizes.   Jesus could have just as easily said, "Look around at all the solidity you think is represented by Christianity.  Christianity will be thrown down."  We would be aghast.  And we would crucify him for even hinting at dismantling our religion.

"We all fall down."

How would you live life if you realized there is nothing permanent?  That all the sturdy stones you think you are building your life with will all be thrown down?

The Christian monk, Thomas Merton, once equated our push for building permanence with the word "noise."  In No Man Is An Island, Merton wrote:

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else...The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have purpose...The silence of the sky remains when the plane is gone...It is the silence of the world that is real.  Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.

Being in the silence as the only thing that is true and permanent is an important concept for Merton.  I think the silence is represented by at least three qualities.  The first is love.  Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13 that "Love never ends."  There is that about love that found in the silence, that has nothing to do with stonework or the trivial things we grab a hold of that we define as bringing permanence to life.  Love is one of the three qualities of what Merton means by the silence.

The second quality is God's presence.  Hebrews 13:5 states, (and this is God talking) "I will never leave you nor forsake you."  And at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the world."  God's presence is that quality of being in the silence that has nothing to do with religion, religious institutions, or all the stonework that we can construct.

The third quality of the silence is God's rule.  Hebrews 1:8 states, "Your rule, O God, is forever and ever."  Again, God's rule has nothing to do with denominations or religions or temples or stonework.  God's rule has nothing to do with boundaries or human authorities.  It is God's rule.  By God.  Through God.  It is God in the silence, not in all the noise we create, especially by all those who are incessantly filling our ears with  all the talk that they know exactly what God wants, thinks and wills.

Is that what Jesus is telling the disciples?  Get away from the noise.  The noise these stones are creating.  The noise the religion going on within these stones is creating.  The noise of all the permanence building people are doing that is ultimately flimsy and worthless.  Leave it all behind.  It's all going to fall down anyway.  Come into the powerful silence of love, and God's presence, and God's rule.

Not What, But How

"Not What, But How"

Mark 12:41-44

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

At that point a voice came from the congregation saying, “I dare you to do it again.”

The desire or call to be sacrificial in one’s giving is a difficult choice.  It doesn’t matter if you are a person of great wealth or if you are a person down to your last two pennies.  For most people, the level of what it means to be down to your last two cents is different in each circumstance.  I remember a tearful news conference where Tammy Fae Bakker, of the PTL Club, was pouring out her heart because she and her husband Jimmy were down to their last $100,000.  She tearfully told the TV audience she didn’t know how she and Jimmy were going to survive.  I doubt if Tammy Fae ever considered giving away what she considered to be her last two coins.

Should it have been considered?  That is, regardless if a person is a millionaire, or if they are Jimmy and Tammy Fae down to their last $100,000, or if they are a legitimate widow who holds in their hand their last two mites—not even worth a penny, is the expectation of Jesus that it should all go into the offering plate?  That real giving is only total giving?  Is that what Jesus is calling attention to here?

Let’s examine those questions with as much openness as is possible, since talking about your money and what you do with it is probably as sensitive a topic as you will face.

Jesus positioned himself “opposite the treasury.”  He had just had an engaging discussion with the Sadducees and the Scribes in the inner court of the Temple.  Perhaps he had come out to the outer court where anyone could congregate in order to get a breather from all that heavy discussion.

There were seven horn shaped receptacles across from him that were for the gathering of people’s offering.  The court was probably crowded with people coming and going from those offering receptacles, depositing their coins.  You get the impression that this was a common pastime of watching people put in their offering.  Jesus was just fitting himself in with the crowd of people watchers.

What was he watching, exactly?  I don’t know if Mark intended it, but in telling this story he stated that Jesus was watching how the people put their money into the offering containers.  Some may have walked up and dropped their money in.  Kids, you could imagine, may have made a game out of it by playing some early version of basketball with their money, trying to flip coins in from some distance.  And others must have brought their offering in with fanfare and ceremony.

Those who got the most attention and created the most “ooo’s” and “aah’s” must have been those who brought in the most money.  If they didn’t draw attention with some grand entrance, then the clinking of so many coins being dropped in would have.

When I lived in San Jose, California there were a couple of times I got to stay in a church member’s “cabin” at Lake Tahoe.  I don’t know why they called it a cabin.  It was a five bedroom, four bathroom house.  One of the things I like about Lake Tahoe was the different kinds of wildlife, including what I’d find in the casinos on the south shore.  It was fun sitting and watching people play the slot machines and what would happen when someone hit a jackpot.

Around the dollar machines the reaction was more dramatic.  This was back in the good-old-days when actual coins shot out of the machine and hit the metal pot at the bottom with a tremendous clatter.  That continual clanging of coins, while all the time a bell was ringing and a red light was flashing on top of the machine, was an impressive racket.  Then they would gather their coins, filling the paper buckets the casino would hand out, fingers getting all gray from the oxidation on the coins.

Heads turned and watched and listened until the clamor stopped.  When I would win a jackpot at my nickel machine I’d feel a little embarrassment and some paranoia with all those eyes and ears aimed in my direction.  Then those who watched would go back to their machines, hard at it, hoping they would be the next big winner.  No one was impressed when a jackpot only yielded two or three coins.  It’s the big ones that make the difference.

So it must have been at the temple treasury—what was really impressive was the size of the offering brought in and dumped in the brass horns.  What really got people’s attention was the big clanging noise.  Those who got the big pat on the back were those who put in large amounts.  They were the ones who got the recognition from not only those gathered around, but also from the priests.  The people with lots of coins were the ones held up as an example of mighty and faithful giving.

What we must realize is that even though some of the offerings were large, when seen in proportion, they were only what the Jewish law prescribed.  There were strict guidelines to make sure that everyone was pulling their weight in terms of giving the mandated 10% of one’s income.  Thus, percentage wise, those people giving large amounts of money were giving no more and no less than those who put fewer coins in the pot.  Some just had more wealth, so their 10% added up to be more coins than others.

The sad mistake being made by some of the givers and some of the onlookers may have been that because some people gave more coins they were deemed more important.  Or that they were doing something more noteworthy than others.  Especially compared to the woman who quietly and quickly entered this scene, put in two coins not even adding up the value of a penny, then just as quietly and unnoticed, disappeared back into the crowd.

Permit me to ask more questions about this scene.  Is Jesus making a value judgement about the rich and poor here?  Are the rich being slammed, or is Jesus simply reporting a fact about the poor widow and letting his disciples grapple with the implications?  Jesus said nothing about the motive of those who put their money in the pot.  Jesus said nothing about people’s motive for giving as if they were only doing so for show and ostentation.  Mark simply told us that the rich were putting in a lot of coins, with no additional comment from Jesus.

Likewise, we must ask if Jesus was making a blanket statement in praise of the poor?  Or was Jesus highlighting the somewhat foolish things that some people do with their money?  There was a poll taken trying to find out how much of people’s income goes toward different kinds of spending.  One person, who was visibly poor, said, “I spend 50% of my income on housing, 10% on clothing, 40% on food, and 20% on incidentals”

“But sir,” the interviewer said, “that adds up to 120%.”

“Don’t you think I know it!” the man retorted.

But Jesus appeared to make no value judgement about the woman or her motivation.  She could have been giving for just as wrong a reason as the rich were.  She could have been giving out of a feeling of guilt.  Or she could have been giving as if she were putting money in a slot machine, hoping for some big Godly payoff.  Or she could have been trying to leverage God, forcing goodness out of God.  Again, these are questions, the answers to which we don’t know, and would be futile speculating about.

Instead, we must focus attention on what Jesus did for his disciples.  The disciples would have been missed it entirely if Jesus hadn’t pointed it out.  The fact that he had to call the disciples over to point out the woman, who was quickly making her way out of the temple, tells us they wouldn’t have noticed her on their own.

And that’s a lot of it, isn’t it?  Some things aren’t always what they appear.  There is something of deeper value for the disciples—and us—to learn once we discover what Jesus knows about the woman:  “…she put in all she had…”

How did Jesus know that that was all she had?  Did he notice how she stroked the coins with her thumb an fingers a while—hold them in the deepest part of her palm until they were as warm as her heart?  Was he watching her as she stopped to ponder, turn away, returned again, stopped, took a deep breath, and then dropped them in?  Just how could he tell?  The story is not intended to answer that question either.  It is simply a given that Jesus could tell, somehow.

The question then becomes:  What is it about us, something that is visible, that can be detected about the kinds of givers we are?  Karl Menninger, founder of the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, pointed out that to be able to give money away is indicative of mental health.  He said, “Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.”

On the other hand, stinginess is usually a sign of neurosis.  It is a mental disorder that bears little relation to the amount of money one may have.  The person with millions may live in just as desperate fear that he won’t have enough, as the person who will be thrown out on the street if the welfare check doesn’t come in time to pay the rent and utilities.

In talking with one patient, Menninger asked, “What on earth are you going to do with all that money?”

The patient replied, “Just worry about it, I suppose.”

Dr. Menninger then asked, “Do you get that much pleasure out of worrying about it?”

“No,” the man replied, “but I get such terror when I think of giving some of it away.”

Here’s a bit of geographical trivia you may already know.  The Dead Sea in Israel is dead because there are no outlets.  Water comes in from the Jordan River, but no where along the shore of the sea is there somewhere for outflow.  So the water just sits there, filling up with minerals and stagnating.

I wonder if that is descriptive of what Jesus, and others, can see that’s visible in ungiving, ungenerous people:  a certain mis-adjusted attitude that only gathers but never distributes; that takes in, but never flows out; pooled up to do nothing but stagnate the heart and spirit of a person.

The great Scottish preacher and author of the early 1900’s, George MacDonald (who I mentioned last week as being so influential on C.S. Lewis) once said, “…all that God makes must be free to come and go through the heart of His children; they can enjoy it only as it passes, can enjoy its life, its soul, its vision, its meaning, but not (hold on to it for) itself.”  Maybe that’s what Jesus saw in the woman, the flow that was never allowed to stop and stagnate in her heart, but instead continued its cascade of life through her.

Imagine how empowering that perspective could be to the poor widow—to anyone?  In comparison to the amount of coins put in by the rich, she might as well’ve kept her mites.  But it wasn’t about what she gave.  It was about how she gave.  In a world where she was powerless in almost every sphere of life, her kind of giving resulted in a feeling of empowerment pointed out by Christ.

In all the bluster and fanfare and clanging of coins, the insignificant giving of one who has so little became a symbol with tremendous impact.  The widow made a difference not because of what she gave, but because of how she gave:  free flowing, wholeheartedly, powerfully, and entirely unnoticed save by the eyes of Him who sees beyond that which appears to us to be insignificant, but is not.

If I Only Had A Brain

"If I Only Had A Brain"

Mark 12:28-34

One of my favorite songs from the movie, “The Wizard of OZ” is, “If I Only Had A Brain.”  It’s sung by the Scarecrow when Dorothy tells him she is going to OZ.  He begins to imagine what it would be like to have a brain, and sings:

I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers

Consultin' with the rain.

And my head I'd be scratchin' while

my thoughts were busy hatchin'

If I only had a brain.

I'd unravel every riddle for any individ'le,

In trouble or in pain.

With the thoughts I'd be thinkin'

I could be another Lincoln

If I only had a brain.

Oh, I could tell you why The ocean's near the shore.

I could think of things I never thunk before.

And then I'd sit, and think some more.

I would not be just a nuffin' my head all full of stuffin'

My heart all full of pain.

I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry,

If I only had a brain.

If you had a brain, what would you do with it?  Because it’s not just a matter of having a brain. It is how you use it.

My son, Ryan, and his wife don’t watch too many movies.  They’ve never gone to a movie at a movie theatre together.  But recently they watched the movie, “Lucy.”  In case you’re not already familiar, the movie is about  a woman who is dosed with a high quantity of a powerful neonatal compound, which rapidly increases her access to untapped parts of her brain giving her ‘supernatural’ abilities.

It’s been said that we use only a small percentage of our brain.  The movie asks—and tries to answer—the question, “What would we be like if we used a much greater proportion of our brain?  What would our minds be capable of with full access to the brain?

I suppose the answer to that question would have to do with what was in control of our mind on full brain mode.  If you could do amazing things with your mind, what kind of amazing would that be—good or evil?  Probably both.  Just because humans could access more of their brains, and thus use their minds to full potential doesn’t mean we would be any better off, or better people?

That’s part of the reason Jesus’ statement about the most important commandment is instructive here.

When asked what the most important commandment is by one of the Scribes, Jesus replied, "To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Heart.  Mind.  Soul.  I want to concentrate on just one of those this morning and use our brains to decide and explain what it means to love God with all our mind.

Something interesting happens in this exchange between Jesus and the Scribe about the most important commandment—especially as that has to do with God and the mind.  I’ve never caught it until this week as I was studying Jesus’ and the Scribes conversation.

Jesus told the Scribe what he thought was the most important commandment.  Then the Scribe pats Jesus on the back for his great answer, and parrots back what Jesus said.  But the Scribe changed a word in Jesus' answer.  When Jesus gave his answer, he used the word dianoia, for mind.  But when the Scribe restated what Jesus answered, he used the word, synesis, or understanding, instead of dianoia.

Then Jesus commended the Scribe, telling him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

At first reading, I didn't get why Jesus thought the Scribe was close to the kingdom of God by simply saying back to Jesus what Jesus had just said.  Then I found the difference in words.  And I began to wonder.  Was Jesus commending the Scribe for shading that one word differently?  Was the Scribe signaling something to Jesus, and Jesus understood immediately?

The two words are very different.  Dianoia, or mind, is not a clear word in the Greek.  It's root word is nous.  The best way to describe nous is by calling it a person's disposition, or their inner orientation.  It's your natural mental and emotional outlook.

Dianoia, as a derivative word of nous, is more basic than that.  Dianoia is a word that describes more the faculty from which you have your mental and emotional outlook.  Dianoia is more the place from which you do your thinking.  It is more than just saying your brain.  It is the usage of the brain—the whole of our self, that directs our thinking and uses that brain.  When you use the word “mind” you are saying more than just brain.  That is what dianoia is.  Does that make sense?

So, when Jesus said to love the Lord your God with all your mind, he was using this word to describe how people need to love God with that inner faculty and that inner orientation—that thing the Scarecrow wished he had.

Whatever your natural mental capacity is, that has to be totally under the control of your love for God.  Whatever inner guidance system you use to determine where your true thoughts come from, it has to be controlled by your love of God.  To find your way in life you have to use your mind, and your mind has to be totally immersed in loving God.  You are to love God with that whole place, that whole mind from which you do your thinking.  That way, when you think and what you think is being controlled by your love for God.  That’s what Jesus is getting at by using the word dianoia.  Love the Lord your God with that whole place where your thoughts come from.

But the Scribe requoted the same verse Jesus did, but instead of using the word “dianoia,” he used the word “synesis.”  It's where we get our English word, synthesis from.  The word means literally, "to bring together," "union," or "confluence."  A confluence is the flowing together of two or more streams or rivers to become something larger.

Using this word, synesis, for mind, it is not the faculty of the mind as it is more of a unique process of the mind.  It’s that place in our mind, when we may be mulling something over.  Then, suddenly, a couple of things come together in our thinking, and we reach understanding.  It’s when those two or more thoughts come together when we have that “aha!” moment.  We suddenly get it.  We reach a level of understanding that we had not attained before.  That’s what “synesis” is:  the joining together of two or more thoughts that create a larger truth, and we exclaim, “YES!”  It’s that point in a cartoon when a light bulb goes on over a characters head.

So what is the Scribe signaling to Jesus by using this word?  That’s the intriguing question of their conversation.  Love the Lord your God with that place in your thinking, in the way that you use your mind, when you are making connections and coming to larger truths?  Love the Lord your God with that place where all the little streams of your mind come together into the larger river of life and truth?  Love the Lord your God not by just sitting around thinking about God, but with that place where thought and real life flow together and important decisions are made—where two plus two suddenly makes four.

Probably one of the best ways to describe this is use the life of C.S. Lewis as an example.  Lewis was probably one of the most influential Christians in the 20th century, but he wasn’t always so.

At age seventeen, Lewis wrote to longtime friend Arthur Greeves, "I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best.”  That was the beginning of Lewis’ atheistic phase in life.

It was intensified during the years after his mother died.  Tragically, when Lewis's mother died, he in effect lost his father as well. Perhaps out of an inability to cope with the loss of his wife, Albert Lewis sent his two boys to a boarding school, whose headmaster, nicknamed "Oldie," was later certified as insane.

There were many other factors drawing Lewis toward atheism. One was the lure of the occult. Lewis indicated that if the wrong person had come along he might have ended up a sorcerer or a lunatic. Another factor Lewis had to face was the problem of evil. He read a lot from the Greek philosophers. Lewis came to the conclusion that, if God designed the world, it would not be a world so frail and faulty as we experience it.

Lewis came to believe in the meaninglessness of life and that we need to build our lives on the basis of "unyielding despair." Lewis's way of stating it was, "Nearly all I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real, I thought grim and meaningless.”

Then something happened.  Another stream began to flow into Lewis’ life.  Once, before embarking on a long train ride, Lewis purchased a copy of George MacDonald's book Phantastes. MacDonald was a noted Christian pastor and author of fantasy at the time.  Lewis was surprised by what happened during his reading. Something came off the pages and "baptized his imagination." Although he couldn't put this quality into words at that time, he later came to describe it as holiness.

Another stream that suddenly flowed into Lewis’ life was that of the Catholic thinker, G.K. Chesterton.   Chesterton had a significant influence on Lewis. As Lewis read The Everlasting Man, he appreciated Chesterton's humor and was surprised by the power of his presentation. Lewis wrote that he began to feel that "Christianity was very sensible, apart from its Christianity.”

Yet another stream that flowed into his life at this time was that of novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings.  The two men and their great imaginations became kindred spirits.  But Tolkien was also a Christian. One by one, because of these men and the streams they caused to flow into Lewis’ life, the arguments that were obstacles to his faith were removed.  All these streams were coming into confluence with each other in Lewis’ mind.

All these streams were finally joined into one larger river of faith in Lewis’ mind in 1929.  While riding on a bus in Oxford, Lewis had the sense that he was "holding something at bay, or shutting something out.” He could either open that door or let it stay shut, but to open the door "meant the incalculable." He finally submitted himself to God, and called himself the most "dejected and reluctant convert" in all England.  But from that time on, his confluence of mind that brought him to Christ became one of the strongest flowing rivers in all of Christendom.  He saved my life as a young pastor in my first church, not knowing if I really had anything to preach.  His river of faith caught me up, and launched me into the ministry.

 

Lewis died the same day President Kennedy was shot, and his death was lost in all the media storm that grew out of that day.  But I dare say he was much more influential in so many people’s lives than JFK could have ever hoped to be.  Walter Hooper, Lewis’ long time friend and secretary, called Lewis the "most thoroughly converted man I ever met.”  That conversion happened because Lewis loved the Lord his God with all his mind—in that place of his mind where things come together and finally make perfect sense—become the truth upon which you base your life.

I think that’s why Jesus told the Scribe he wasn’t far from the Kingdom of God. His streams of understanding were coming together and he was at the threshold of believing.

It isn’t a matter of this being an either/or thing—that we have to go with Jesus’ word, dianoia, or the Scribe’s word, synesis.  I think it’s more both/and.  Because Jesus approved the Scribe’s statement, and his usage of a different word, Jesus was affirming how the Scribe “got it.”  The Scribe had come to his own “aha” moment, and used a different word for Jesus that proved he got it.

Do you get it?