"Small Potatoes"
Luke 1:46-55
On February 16, 1955, a team of surveyors in the Soviet Union surprised the world. They made the announcement that a previously uncharted mountain had just been discovered in Siberia. I guess not many people vacation in Siberia, unless you are sent there on a government excursion of indefinite duration. Out in Siberia it is cold and slow going. Not too many people who go there get out much to see anything. Even so, the discovery of this hitherto uncharted mountain is certainly amazing. Especially since the mountain was 24,664 feet high. How could anything so massive be overlooked for so long?
Often, the things we overlook are not that huge. But they may be just as startling. Our lives are mostly hustle and bustle, taking care of written or unwritten lists of details. When we get through with one list, we start all over. Another is created. It seems we have to take care of so many things in order that we not miss anything. Sometimes things get lost in the daily shuffle. Like priorities. That’s the way it is. The more significant things keep getting pushed aside for less important items.
In our push to get done what we have to get done, we overlook some things. Mostly, I think, we overlook people. Think about it: while doing your Christmas shopping, for example, with your list in hand, how many people do you bump shoulders with? You are completing your tasks, but how many faces do you pass doing those tasks? You may or may not glance into their faces. You don’t know them. You’ve never seen them before; you’ll probably never see them again. Imagine what you may be overlooking. Or, should I say, WHO you might be overlooking.
Stanley Marcus, former chairman of the Newman-Marcus store in Dallas, Texas, told about a customer who once wrote him a letter. The letter read:
There’s a very nice-looking elderly woman whom I frequently see in your store. She picks the dead leaves from the plants throughout the store. Surely you can find a better position for a person such as her.
Marcus wrote back to the customer thanking her for expressing her concern. He explained in his reply, “...the only higher rank the woman could have would be my job. The woman to whom you are referring is my mother, Mrs. Robert Marcus, Sr., now age 93, and a member of the Board of Directors.”
How many people had just walked past this mountain of a woman—this leaf-picking member of the Board of Directors? To our eyes, and in the midst of our plodding through our days, most people seem insignificant. Small potatoes. But in God’s eyes, and in God’s plan, they may loom as large as uncharted and hitherto unnoticed mountains.
We are so familiar with the Christmas story and its characters, we plow through it, thinking we know everyone, the role they play, and so we don’t feel we have to take as much notice. How many times have we heard this story already!?
Today, all the people in the Christmas story are seen for their importance. We are looking at the Christmas story from the perspective of those who know the outcome. We can’t read these parts of the gospel of Luke or Matthew without assuming we know all about Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zechariah, the shepherds, and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
We miss how important they are, though, unless we can force ourselves to see these characters with pre-stable, pre-star, pre-wise men eyes.
I may have told the story about the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Slapstick. His books usually have a surprising bite to them, and full of satire and social commentary. In this book, there are two female characters. One is a shopping bag lady who roams the streets of New York City at night. She carries everything she owns in her shopping bags. She lives in a large cardboard box during the night.
The other woman is described only within the smart surroundings of a fashionable, uptown, corporate boardroom. She is the owner and Chief Executive Officer of a huge corporation. It isn’t until the end of the novel that you begin to realize that the two ladies are actually one and the same person.
Then you go back through the novel, thinking about how the woman was treated in each of her surroundings, knowing she led a double life. The reader’s perspective all of a sudden changes about the shopping bag lady, who has been ignored and overlooked while on the streets. Even some of the big-whigs who did business with her in the corporate board rooms mistreated her, or took no notice of her while they passed by this bag lady.
That is what I want us to see, or the way I want us to see the Christmas story. Let’s take Joseph and Mary for example. Today, there isn’t a Christian alive who doesn’t know who Mary and Joseph are. I would dare say that even a lot of non-Christians recognize their names, at least at Christmastime.
But how many knew Joseph and Mary back then? Do you remember those old American Express credit card commercials. Somebody would be shown, they’d ask the viewer, “Do you know me?” Then they’d hold up their American Express card, and we’d figure out who they were. I don’t think an American Express card would have gotten Mary and Joseph recognized, nor secure a room at the inn. They were a shopping bag couple. They were the kind of people we see, but really don’t see. Think of all the people we go through life seeing, but never really see. Some of those people just might be Mary and Josephs.
Even those closest to us have a way of being taken for granted. We look across the dining room table, and assume the other person who is looking back at us is someone we know. And yet, in reality, we have missed something here, overlooked something there, and made many assumptions in between. We see, but we really don’t see, even those closest to us.
So why should it be any different with all the Mary and Joseph’s that go by us each day. Insignificant faces in a crowd, looking for a room. Looking for attention. Looking for a face that will look back—really look back—with some kind of acknowledgement that someone is really seeing them.
The incongruities can be alarming when we think of Mary. Here is a young woman whom God has visited through an angel. Here is a young woman who bears within her the Savior of the world. Here is a young woman whose every move must have been watched by every angel in heaven. But, here is a young woman who couldn’t get anyone else to look at her long enough to see, really see, who she was, what her needs were, what her mission was.
Have you ever been told, “You are special simply because God created you,” but then wondered if God can see you are so special, why others don’t see you that way?
In the movie, “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,” French movie director Francois Truffaut plays the part of a scientist trying to communicate with extra-terrestrial visitors. In real life, he is not particularly interested in UFO’s. He said, “The encounters one has in real life are so mysterious, so difficult to handle successfully, they are enough to satisfy my curiosity.”
He went on to give an example:
The creatures from outer space in “Close Encounters” were played by children. To us, they looked identical in their costumes. But they would recognize each other, and from time-to-time, we’d see two of them give each other a high five, or put their arms around each other’s waists. That was beautiful.
In that kind of childlike innocence there was true seeing. There was recognition beyond the exterior.
“Why doesn’t anybody notice me?” you might ask yourself. “Why must I fight for recognition, so that people will notice who I really am?” Or, “You’re OK God, and I know you are with me always, and it’s not that I dislike your companionship, but I’d like to feel welcomed by at least a couple of people, too.”
That was Joseph and Mary before the birth. Now, everyone knows them, and really sees them for who they are. And, maybe, that was you or I before whatever it is that may happen, that will make those around us finally notice us for who we are. Because that’s one of the lessons, isn’t it? That it is the “you or I’s” in the world, the small potatoes, the shopping bag people, the overlooked, who just may be those with mountainous characteristics and roles to play in the world. It is the neglected innocents who God has chosen, and will continue to choose to make the great changes in our world.
As Mary sang:
God has scattered those who are proud...
God has brought down rulers from their thrones,
and has exalted those who are humble.
God has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent away the rich empty-handed.
So, if you are looking for the newsmakers, the ones who are going to have a lasting impact on this world of ours, don’t look at summit meetings. Don’t look in the White House or the Kremlin. Instead, it will be one of the faces you passed in the crowd. One of the faces you saw, but really didn’t see.
If you are looking for the places out of which the great trends of the future will be determined, don’t look in New York City, or Washington, or Moscow, or North Korea. Instead, it will be in one of those towns so small their motto is, “You don’t need to use your turn signal; we already know where you’re going.”
If we are looking for God’s big potatoes—the people God is using for grand plans—all we need to do is pay closer attention to the small potatoes.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
Making A Change
"Making A Change"
Mark 1:1-8
What is the hardest thing for a person to do? What would be your guess? (responses)
I think the hardest thing for a person to do is change. But I’m talking about a certain kind of change. There are a number of kinds of changes.
There is straightforward change, like changing your car, or changing your hairstyle, or deciding on making a change of clothes.
There is changing something you do, and relearning a new way; like changing your golf swing or learning a new style of carpentry.
There is changing something that obviously needs changing, but you either don’t want to, or you can’t quite see how it could be done. This kind of change usually involves a habit--smoking for example. You know you shouldn’t, but you can’t seem to make the change and stop.
There is the kind of change that’s imposed upon you, and over which you appear to have little or no control. This kind of change often feels like suffering, and the suffering may be real, especially when the change is caused by a medical prognosis like cancer, or lupus, or MS. We have no say in the matter, and it feels like something is being done to us, or someone is doing it to us. Companion feelings like being cheated or unfairness tag along. When change is forced upon us, we can easily feel disempowered by the experience.
The first three kinds of change we deal with, in one form or another, almost every day. We make little changes all the time. You may never completely give up smoking voluntarily (until the doctor tells you you have lung cancer), but at least it’s a kind of change you are conscious of. You can choose fairly easily how you will deal with the first three kinds of changes, and even the fourth kind--forced change.
But making those kinds of changes, for the most part, isn’t going to fundamentally change your life. And when I say making change is the hardest thing a person can do, these first four kinds of change are not not what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about is a fifth kind of change: changing something we absolutely, positively know we can’t and don’t want to change. This kind of change is about our beliefs. This kind of change is a confrontational kind, because it rubs up against the beliefs and truths we’ve created for ourselves that underpin our whole lives.
This type of change asks, either gently or by demand, that we change a dearly and closely held point of view. It’s a kind of change that challenges us to adopt a way of seeing the world that is at odds, or very different with the the way we are used to seeing our world. It’s a matter of changing our world view.
This kind of change, this fifth kind, this seemingly impossible kind of change, is the kind of change that John the baptizer is demanding the people make, in order to prepare for God’s entrance into the world through Jesus Christ.
Even the imagery from the prophetic quote in these first few verses of Mark’s gospel has to do with this kind of change: “Make the road smooth and straight.” The assumption behind the image is that the road is not as it should be at the moment. That the road is not smooth, but bumpy, pot-holed, rocky and washerboardy. That the road is not straight, but windy, curvy, and irregular.
The imagery is about making the road what it is not; to effect a major change upon the road that would make it starkly and characteristically different. That would make it unrecognizable from what it was before.
Transfer that imagery to your life. Think about the meanings of the changes of the road, to making changes to your world view. That’s the force and purpose and intent of John’s message of preparation and change to the people on the eve of the coming of the Messiah.
John expects change to happen, or expects that change should happen in the lives of his listeners. The changes he speaks about to the crowds, and the change he expects them to make aren’t just little tweaks here and there. They aren’t about the first four kinds of change I mentioned earlier. It isn’t like just saying to yourself, “I’m going to smile more.” They aren’t surface kinds of adjustments, like changing your hair color.
The kinds of changes John expects from his listeners are deep life-shifts. They are changes like the changes to the road, that transform you from one kind of person to becoming a significantly different kind of person—by changing your world view.
And John assumes these kinds of changes are entirely possible, else he wouldn’t have asked people to make such changes.
If it is possible for us to make such changes, then it is possible also for us to resist making those changes. John can preach, and rant and rave all he wants about the deep changes people need to make, but the people can say, “No.” “I just can’t.” “I just won’t”
I dealt with a couple in counseling when in California. He was an abusive alcoholic. She was tired of it and hauled him into my office “to set him straight.” We talked for a short while about his drinking and behavior. We talked about making changes. Once we started talking about the C word (change), he got defensive and blaming. In a word, resistant. He started up a monologue that was all too familiar to his wife, by the expression I saw on her face.
“Look, this is the way I am. I’m going to be like I’m going to be. If you don’t like it--if you don’t like me the way I am, that’s YOUR problem, not mine. You’re not going to change me, so you’re going to have to change YOUR attitude about me.”
In other words, according to him, his abuse both of alcohol and of his wife was not his problem, but hers (and by inference, mine). He resisted the major world view shift he needed to make away from some deeply held beliefs about himself and his situation in life. The first shift was to deal with his denial (“I have no problem!”); and then with his blame (“If there’s a problem it has to do with her, not him.”).
One side of resistance to change has to do with control. We want control of our lives. If we are told by someone we need to change, and that someone tells us what we need to change, then we are giving them control to effect and have power over the direction of our lives. But our need to be in control, and to be so self-entrenched, is an awful way to live that causes blind spots about the kinds of people we are. We don’t want to give up that kind of control, even if it’s John the baptizer, or the Lord who is asking us to make that kind of life shift. Our desire for control is largely at the heart of our resistance to change.
I’ve also read that in counseling situations, the greater the resistance by the person being counseled, the closer you’re getting to that person’s pain. No one wants to confront their pain, so they resist any effort to get close to it. I thought it interesting that personal pain is linked to resistance to making significant change. Dealing with the pain in our lives, facing our painful memories or feelings, healing the open and ongoing wounds to our spirits, and courageously dealing with that pain could free us up to then make significant changes in our approach to life.
Maybe that’s what John was talking about when he told the people that the Messiah “will change you from the inside out.” That is, the Coming Savior will deal with us where we hurt most. And by taking care of that pain, by letting him inside our pain, he will then free our spirits to make great changes in life. To make life smooth and straight, so that his coming into our lives is an easier process.
Even though the outcome of change will be a smoother and straighter life, our pain, which in turn creates low self-esteem, limits and restricts our willingness to change. Letting go of our pain, transforming our low self-esteem are hard nuts to crack, and may seem impossible for us. The reason is that we allow these negative self-belief systems and patterns of pain to become stronger in us than the evidence and promise of positive changes. We have held on to misguided and deeply held negative beliefs a lot longer than we should have. Because they have been part of us for so long, we just assume we should continue in them, and die with them, rather than experience the straightening and smoothing John speaks of.
Whatever John was telling the people, it’s clear he’s making the assumption that people need to make a change. People need to be changed if the coming Messiah is to be understood, recognized and embraced by us.
But, as I said from the outset of this message, change is one of the scariest words we hear, and one of the hardest things to do. We are more comfortable with pattern and routine. We set the patterns of our thinking, values, and beliefs very quickly. Just as quickly, they become deeply set. To make a change feels like it’s just asking too much. We’re giving up too much; giving up something we’ve held on to for so long. And now someone is telling us we need to let go of it, heal it, and discard it. We intuitively know that to make such a change will hurt.
We don’t like change because we don’t like the disorientation part of letting go, discarding and healing. Sometimes the disorientation happens to us, like when God tried to changed the people’s hearts through the Exodus from Egypt, or the Exile into Babylon.
But the kind of disorientation that John is asking of his audience is a “self-inflicted” kind of disorientation, where you must choose to embrace a major change, and thus embrace the disorientation that comes with it.
The question people may ask themselves when challenged to make such a change and enter a period of disorientation is, “Why? Why would I do that to myself?” Plus, such a change won’t just affect you. It will affect the whole system of relationships around you. When one person makes a life-change, everyone close to them must now change. “Why,” you may ask yourself, “would I not only put myself through the disruption of making a major change of my world view, but also to those around me whom I care about?”
Take for example Paul. When he had his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus that day, and changed the whole direction and meaning of his life, think of all the people that change had a ripple effect upon. He was probably married. What happened to his marriage relationship when he became a Christian? Any children? We don’t know. If so, their life was changed that day as well. What about all the other Jewish leaders who were backing Paul, had taught Paul, had mentored Paul. All those relationships made a major shift as well, the day Paul gave into the summons of God, and shifted his world view about his religious beliefs in a whole new way in response to Christ.
Even though John’s summons to change seems huge, seems like he’s asking way too much, seems like maybe we’ve piled up too much to sweep away, lived too long in some set of beliefs that just haven’t worked but were held on to anyway, we still have to respond. It is possible. It can be done. The Lord can enter your life and change you from the inside out, straighten out what’s crooked, smooth out what’s been pot-holed for way too long. This kind of life-shift change is possible. It’s needed. It’s necessary. End the resistance. Just say to God, “OK. I’m ready.”
Mark 1:1-8
What is the hardest thing for a person to do? What would be your guess? (responses)
I think the hardest thing for a person to do is change. But I’m talking about a certain kind of change. There are a number of kinds of changes.
There is straightforward change, like changing your car, or changing your hairstyle, or deciding on making a change of clothes.
There is changing something you do, and relearning a new way; like changing your golf swing or learning a new style of carpentry.
There is changing something that obviously needs changing, but you either don’t want to, or you can’t quite see how it could be done. This kind of change usually involves a habit--smoking for example. You know you shouldn’t, but you can’t seem to make the change and stop.
There is the kind of change that’s imposed upon you, and over which you appear to have little or no control. This kind of change often feels like suffering, and the suffering may be real, especially when the change is caused by a medical prognosis like cancer, or lupus, or MS. We have no say in the matter, and it feels like something is being done to us, or someone is doing it to us. Companion feelings like being cheated or unfairness tag along. When change is forced upon us, we can easily feel disempowered by the experience.
The first three kinds of change we deal with, in one form or another, almost every day. We make little changes all the time. You may never completely give up smoking voluntarily (until the doctor tells you you have lung cancer), but at least it’s a kind of change you are conscious of. You can choose fairly easily how you will deal with the first three kinds of changes, and even the fourth kind--forced change.
But making those kinds of changes, for the most part, isn’t going to fundamentally change your life. And when I say making change is the hardest thing a person can do, these first four kinds of change are not not what I’m talking about.
What I’m talking about is a fifth kind of change: changing something we absolutely, positively know we can’t and don’t want to change. This kind of change is about our beliefs. This kind of change is a confrontational kind, because it rubs up against the beliefs and truths we’ve created for ourselves that underpin our whole lives.
This type of change asks, either gently or by demand, that we change a dearly and closely held point of view. It’s a kind of change that challenges us to adopt a way of seeing the world that is at odds, or very different with the the way we are used to seeing our world. It’s a matter of changing our world view.
This kind of change, this fifth kind, this seemingly impossible kind of change, is the kind of change that John the baptizer is demanding the people make, in order to prepare for God’s entrance into the world through Jesus Christ.
Even the imagery from the prophetic quote in these first few verses of Mark’s gospel has to do with this kind of change: “Make the road smooth and straight.” The assumption behind the image is that the road is not as it should be at the moment. That the road is not smooth, but bumpy, pot-holed, rocky and washerboardy. That the road is not straight, but windy, curvy, and irregular.
The imagery is about making the road what it is not; to effect a major change upon the road that would make it starkly and characteristically different. That would make it unrecognizable from what it was before.
Transfer that imagery to your life. Think about the meanings of the changes of the road, to making changes to your world view. That’s the force and purpose and intent of John’s message of preparation and change to the people on the eve of the coming of the Messiah.
John expects change to happen, or expects that change should happen in the lives of his listeners. The changes he speaks about to the crowds, and the change he expects them to make aren’t just little tweaks here and there. They aren’t about the first four kinds of change I mentioned earlier. It isn’t like just saying to yourself, “I’m going to smile more.” They aren’t surface kinds of adjustments, like changing your hair color.
The kinds of changes John expects from his listeners are deep life-shifts. They are changes like the changes to the road, that transform you from one kind of person to becoming a significantly different kind of person—by changing your world view.
And John assumes these kinds of changes are entirely possible, else he wouldn’t have asked people to make such changes.
If it is possible for us to make such changes, then it is possible also for us to resist making those changes. John can preach, and rant and rave all he wants about the deep changes people need to make, but the people can say, “No.” “I just can’t.” “I just won’t”
I dealt with a couple in counseling when in California. He was an abusive alcoholic. She was tired of it and hauled him into my office “to set him straight.” We talked for a short while about his drinking and behavior. We talked about making changes. Once we started talking about the C word (change), he got defensive and blaming. In a word, resistant. He started up a monologue that was all too familiar to his wife, by the expression I saw on her face.
“Look, this is the way I am. I’m going to be like I’m going to be. If you don’t like it--if you don’t like me the way I am, that’s YOUR problem, not mine. You’re not going to change me, so you’re going to have to change YOUR attitude about me.”
In other words, according to him, his abuse both of alcohol and of his wife was not his problem, but hers (and by inference, mine). He resisted the major world view shift he needed to make away from some deeply held beliefs about himself and his situation in life. The first shift was to deal with his denial (“I have no problem!”); and then with his blame (“If there’s a problem it has to do with her, not him.”).
One side of resistance to change has to do with control. We want control of our lives. If we are told by someone we need to change, and that someone tells us what we need to change, then we are giving them control to effect and have power over the direction of our lives. But our need to be in control, and to be so self-entrenched, is an awful way to live that causes blind spots about the kinds of people we are. We don’t want to give up that kind of control, even if it’s John the baptizer, or the Lord who is asking us to make that kind of life shift. Our desire for control is largely at the heart of our resistance to change.
I’ve also read that in counseling situations, the greater the resistance by the person being counseled, the closer you’re getting to that person’s pain. No one wants to confront their pain, so they resist any effort to get close to it. I thought it interesting that personal pain is linked to resistance to making significant change. Dealing with the pain in our lives, facing our painful memories or feelings, healing the open and ongoing wounds to our spirits, and courageously dealing with that pain could free us up to then make significant changes in our approach to life.
Maybe that’s what John was talking about when he told the people that the Messiah “will change you from the inside out.” That is, the Coming Savior will deal with us where we hurt most. And by taking care of that pain, by letting him inside our pain, he will then free our spirits to make great changes in life. To make life smooth and straight, so that his coming into our lives is an easier process.
Even though the outcome of change will be a smoother and straighter life, our pain, which in turn creates low self-esteem, limits and restricts our willingness to change. Letting go of our pain, transforming our low self-esteem are hard nuts to crack, and may seem impossible for us. The reason is that we allow these negative self-belief systems and patterns of pain to become stronger in us than the evidence and promise of positive changes. We have held on to misguided and deeply held negative beliefs a lot longer than we should have. Because they have been part of us for so long, we just assume we should continue in them, and die with them, rather than experience the straightening and smoothing John speaks of.
Whatever John was telling the people, it’s clear he’s making the assumption that people need to make a change. People need to be changed if the coming Messiah is to be understood, recognized and embraced by us.
But, as I said from the outset of this message, change is one of the scariest words we hear, and one of the hardest things to do. We are more comfortable with pattern and routine. We set the patterns of our thinking, values, and beliefs very quickly. Just as quickly, they become deeply set. To make a change feels like it’s just asking too much. We’re giving up too much; giving up something we’ve held on to for so long. And now someone is telling us we need to let go of it, heal it, and discard it. We intuitively know that to make such a change will hurt.
We don’t like change because we don’t like the disorientation part of letting go, discarding and healing. Sometimes the disorientation happens to us, like when God tried to changed the people’s hearts through the Exodus from Egypt, or the Exile into Babylon.
But the kind of disorientation that John is asking of his audience is a “self-inflicted” kind of disorientation, where you must choose to embrace a major change, and thus embrace the disorientation that comes with it.
The question people may ask themselves when challenged to make such a change and enter a period of disorientation is, “Why? Why would I do that to myself?” Plus, such a change won’t just affect you. It will affect the whole system of relationships around you. When one person makes a life-change, everyone close to them must now change. “Why,” you may ask yourself, “would I not only put myself through the disruption of making a major change of my world view, but also to those around me whom I care about?”
Take for example Paul. When he had his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus that day, and changed the whole direction and meaning of his life, think of all the people that change had a ripple effect upon. He was probably married. What happened to his marriage relationship when he became a Christian? Any children? We don’t know. If so, their life was changed that day as well. What about all the other Jewish leaders who were backing Paul, had taught Paul, had mentored Paul. All those relationships made a major shift as well, the day Paul gave into the summons of God, and shifted his world view about his religious beliefs in a whole new way in response to Christ.
Even though John’s summons to change seems huge, seems like he’s asking way too much, seems like maybe we’ve piled up too much to sweep away, lived too long in some set of beliefs that just haven’t worked but were held on to anyway, we still have to respond. It is possible. It can be done. The Lord can enter your life and change you from the inside out, straighten out what’s crooked, smooth out what’s been pot-holed for way too long. This kind of life-shift change is possible. It’s needed. It’s necessary. End the resistance. Just say to God, “OK. I’m ready.”
Monday, December 4, 2017
Keeping Watch
"Keeping Watch"
Mark 13:32-37
I'm guessing, from what little history I've read, the world has always been crazy. And by world, I mean people. Animals can just be animals. Plants can just be plants. They seem to exist by different rules than we humans do. Animals have instincts. Plants have photosynthesis.
But we humans. We have free will. We have hormones. We have emotions. We have imaginations. We have drives. We have motivations. There's so much that goes into being human, and all of that can end up being one big bad.
I wonder if in any and every era, the people of that time think, "Man, can it get any worse than it is now?" Do we all wonder if we live in the worst of times? As Charles Dickens started his book, Tale of Two Cities, from a previous era:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…
And that's the trouble. It's all a mix. It's not all bad. But it certainly is not all good either.
Just prior to the statements Jesus makes that were read in Mark 13, he talks about "that day and hour," and "in those days" and, "at that time." Jesus went on to describe what those days and hours and times will be like.
It will be a mix. The bad part of the mix is how everything falls apart. This is how Jesus described it:
the sun will be darkened
the moon will not shine
the stars will fall from the sky
the heavenly bodies will be shaken
In other words, the world is going to be like a completed jigsaw puzzle that is broken apart, separated back into individual pieces, put back in the box, and shelved.
I have the idea that Jesus was not just talking about the literal elements of our universe. Certainly, it would be catastrophic if the sun didn't shine. All of our sources of food would die with no sun light, and we would be frozen to death from no warmth. The stars falling and the heavenly bodies being shaken is a description of total destabilization. Think of it…we measure and gauge everything we call permanent by the stars and planets and heavenly bodies. People, ever since there were people have been looking up at this stars and seeing the same thing. We have devised time itself (not only on our watches, but on our calendars) by the sun and the moon. To lose the sun and moon would be to lose total track of time.
But there's another way to look at Jesus' statements. Especially that "the stars will fall from the sky." How many "stars" have fallen in the last weeks, due to sexual misconduct? How many of the mighty have fallen?
Jesus was right when he said in one of the other gospels, "What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight. What you have whispered to someone behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops" (Luke 12:3). What are we learning from all the women who are now shouting from the rooftops about what has happened to them in secret at the hands of men we may have admired or looked up to for leadership and a good word?
The stars are truly falling from the sky. But have such stars not always fallen from their lofty perches? Donald Trump may have thought he was right, when he was caught on tape, making his own lewd comments to Billy Bush about his sexual attitude towards women: Trump said, "When you're a star, they (meaning women) let you do it. You can do anything." Is that how all the "stars" think? That they have some sort of entitlement!? Enamored by their own twinkling?
But what Jesus said was, when you're a star, you will fall from the sky, and it will be your worst day, leading to an even worse life. You can't do anything you want. There are consequences. You will fall. You who think you are stars.
And as Humpty Dumpty found out after his "great fall," "…all the king's men and all the king's horses couldn't put Humpty together again."
Three times in his little sermon, Jesus used the word, "watch." Whenever a word is used a number of times, you better pay attention. Which is what the word "watch" means. Pay attention. Be vigilant. Be awake. Be alert. Always give your full attention. Watch!
Jesus contrasted the word, "watch" with the word, "asleep." It's a powerful word. It doesn't mean just sleeping. In the case of this word, being asleep means giving in to a certain laziness about your faith. To be asleep means being lazy towards the sin that tempts you throughout your life. Being asleep means being indifferent about your salvation. Being asleep means being spiritually dead.
Being indifferent means succumbing to a low interest about your beliefs. Being indifferent means having only a smidgen of concern about your spiritual self. Being indifferent means not caring deeply about much of anything, let alone your faith. Being indifferent means being apathetic about your salvation No big deal.
This is an easy season to become lazy and indifferent to our faith. It's an easy time to lose total attention to the depth of the true story of Christmas. This is an easy time to take a shallow dive, stay just below the surface where the alternate story has no real, or lasting consequence in your life. During that time where we allow ourselves to be immersed in the alternate reality of the secular Christmas stories, we get truly lulled to sleep.
We fall asleep from the story of Santa and the elves, rather than remain fully awake and vigilant to the angels who sing out Good News. We fall asleep as we float on the surface stories about Rudolph's red nose guiding Santa's sleigh rather than remaining alert to the depth of the story of a guiding star, leading three wisemen to the Christ-child. We fall asleep in the dreamy mythology of the North Pole, rather than immerse ourselves in the watchfulness of a small town place called Bethlehem. We fall asleep waiting for Santa rather than give our full attention to the birth of the blessed Christ child, the Savior of the World. We are more worried about what the Elf on the Shelf thinks of us rather than be alert to the ever watchful God who has totally immersed himself in this story and into our world at Christmas.
It is so easy to be lulled asleep this time of year, than being at high alert. To fall asleep, in all its meanings, is to succumb to our own peril. So, being watchful has to do with two fronts. We have to be watchful for the Lord's coming. And we have to be on the alert for any form of calamity of sin we so easily sleep into that would keep us from seeing Jesus.
Jesus said, in this sermon, to be watchful for the "master of the house." The word literally means Lord. It describes the one to whom a person or a thing belongs. The owner—the Lord—is the one who has ultimate control. The Lord is the one who has the power to decide.
In Jesus’ sermon, in this parable, Jesus describes a time when the owner goes away, putting others in charge. Those others are us. The faithful. The obedient. The followers. The ones owned. The ones who, presumably, know our place. Who feel no sense of entitlement, thinking we can grab whomever and whatever we want. Who know we are not stars who can do as we please, but who wish only to do as our Lord pleases.
We are in that time when the Lord of the place is away. During his time away, we have responsibility for the owners work. We are in that in-between time. We are in that odd time between yet, and not yet. We are waiting for the owner to return. We are to live in such a way that we are watchful for the Lord's return, and live as if we are watchful and not asleep.
But the issue here is not just watching for the Lord's return, sudden as it may be. But it is more about being watchful about who the owner is. The master of the house. The one to whom we belong. The one who has ultimate control of our eternal destiny. No elf-on-the-shelf, our Lord is the one who has the ultimate power to decide our fate.
As I said, we are in the in-between time. We are watching and waiting. But part of falling asleep, is giving into the lie our stupor creates that tells us we are the owner. The lie that we are the one in control. The lie that we are the master of the house. The lie that we belong only to ourselves. If you fall asleep in that way, you will truly be surprised when the owner arrives, and the little world of entitlement you built around yourself all falls down.
The other part of being on watch, as I mentioned earlier, is to be watchful of ourselves so that we don't fall into some calamity of sin. I think I've already made enough of a case about those who have fallen asleep morally and are now paying dearly for that sleeping.
But their immorality doesn’t effect just them. It's their families. Their colleagues. Their constituents. Their viewers. We tax payers who have ended up picking up the tab for the payouts to the women they have harmed.
If they had just watched. If they had just been alert against temptation and sin. If they had just been awake to what they were doing.
But it's not just them, is it. It's all of us. All of us who are asleep instead of awake and alert.
That's what this season of Advent is all about. It's about waking up! The Lord, the Master, the Owner is coming. And the Lord has expectations about our alertness and our watchfulness. Begin now. Let these four weeks, prior to Christmas Day, be your time to wake up and watch; to no longer sleep.
Mark 13:32-37
I'm guessing, from what little history I've read, the world has always been crazy. And by world, I mean people. Animals can just be animals. Plants can just be plants. They seem to exist by different rules than we humans do. Animals have instincts. Plants have photosynthesis.
But we humans. We have free will. We have hormones. We have emotions. We have imaginations. We have drives. We have motivations. There's so much that goes into being human, and all of that can end up being one big bad.
I wonder if in any and every era, the people of that time think, "Man, can it get any worse than it is now?" Do we all wonder if we live in the worst of times? As Charles Dickens started his book, Tale of Two Cities, from a previous era:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…
And that's the trouble. It's all a mix. It's not all bad. But it certainly is not all good either.
Just prior to the statements Jesus makes that were read in Mark 13, he talks about "that day and hour," and "in those days" and, "at that time." Jesus went on to describe what those days and hours and times will be like.
It will be a mix. The bad part of the mix is how everything falls apart. This is how Jesus described it:
the sun will be darkened
the moon will not shine
the stars will fall from the sky
the heavenly bodies will be shaken
In other words, the world is going to be like a completed jigsaw puzzle that is broken apart, separated back into individual pieces, put back in the box, and shelved.
I have the idea that Jesus was not just talking about the literal elements of our universe. Certainly, it would be catastrophic if the sun didn't shine. All of our sources of food would die with no sun light, and we would be frozen to death from no warmth. The stars falling and the heavenly bodies being shaken is a description of total destabilization. Think of it…we measure and gauge everything we call permanent by the stars and planets and heavenly bodies. People, ever since there were people have been looking up at this stars and seeing the same thing. We have devised time itself (not only on our watches, but on our calendars) by the sun and the moon. To lose the sun and moon would be to lose total track of time.
But there's another way to look at Jesus' statements. Especially that "the stars will fall from the sky." How many "stars" have fallen in the last weeks, due to sexual misconduct? How many of the mighty have fallen?
Jesus was right when he said in one of the other gospels, "What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight. What you have whispered to someone behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops" (Luke 12:3). What are we learning from all the women who are now shouting from the rooftops about what has happened to them in secret at the hands of men we may have admired or looked up to for leadership and a good word?
The stars are truly falling from the sky. But have such stars not always fallen from their lofty perches? Donald Trump may have thought he was right, when he was caught on tape, making his own lewd comments to Billy Bush about his sexual attitude towards women: Trump said, "When you're a star, they (meaning women) let you do it. You can do anything." Is that how all the "stars" think? That they have some sort of entitlement!? Enamored by their own twinkling?
But what Jesus said was, when you're a star, you will fall from the sky, and it will be your worst day, leading to an even worse life. You can't do anything you want. There are consequences. You will fall. You who think you are stars.
And as Humpty Dumpty found out after his "great fall," "…all the king's men and all the king's horses couldn't put Humpty together again."
Three times in his little sermon, Jesus used the word, "watch." Whenever a word is used a number of times, you better pay attention. Which is what the word "watch" means. Pay attention. Be vigilant. Be awake. Be alert. Always give your full attention. Watch!
Jesus contrasted the word, "watch" with the word, "asleep." It's a powerful word. It doesn't mean just sleeping. In the case of this word, being asleep means giving in to a certain laziness about your faith. To be asleep means being lazy towards the sin that tempts you throughout your life. Being asleep means being indifferent about your salvation. Being asleep means being spiritually dead.
Being indifferent means succumbing to a low interest about your beliefs. Being indifferent means having only a smidgen of concern about your spiritual self. Being indifferent means not caring deeply about much of anything, let alone your faith. Being indifferent means being apathetic about your salvation No big deal.
This is an easy season to become lazy and indifferent to our faith. It's an easy time to lose total attention to the depth of the true story of Christmas. This is an easy time to take a shallow dive, stay just below the surface where the alternate story has no real, or lasting consequence in your life. During that time where we allow ourselves to be immersed in the alternate reality of the secular Christmas stories, we get truly lulled to sleep.
We fall asleep from the story of Santa and the elves, rather than remain fully awake and vigilant to the angels who sing out Good News. We fall asleep as we float on the surface stories about Rudolph's red nose guiding Santa's sleigh rather than remaining alert to the depth of the story of a guiding star, leading three wisemen to the Christ-child. We fall asleep in the dreamy mythology of the North Pole, rather than immerse ourselves in the watchfulness of a small town place called Bethlehem. We fall asleep waiting for Santa rather than give our full attention to the birth of the blessed Christ child, the Savior of the World. We are more worried about what the Elf on the Shelf thinks of us rather than be alert to the ever watchful God who has totally immersed himself in this story and into our world at Christmas.
It is so easy to be lulled asleep this time of year, than being at high alert. To fall asleep, in all its meanings, is to succumb to our own peril. So, being watchful has to do with two fronts. We have to be watchful for the Lord's coming. And we have to be on the alert for any form of calamity of sin we so easily sleep into that would keep us from seeing Jesus.
Jesus said, in this sermon, to be watchful for the "master of the house." The word literally means Lord. It describes the one to whom a person or a thing belongs. The owner—the Lord—is the one who has ultimate control. The Lord is the one who has the power to decide.
In Jesus’ sermon, in this parable, Jesus describes a time when the owner goes away, putting others in charge. Those others are us. The faithful. The obedient. The followers. The ones owned. The ones who, presumably, know our place. Who feel no sense of entitlement, thinking we can grab whomever and whatever we want. Who know we are not stars who can do as we please, but who wish only to do as our Lord pleases.
We are in that time when the Lord of the place is away. During his time away, we have responsibility for the owners work. We are in that in-between time. We are in that odd time between yet, and not yet. We are waiting for the owner to return. We are to live in such a way that we are watchful for the Lord's return, and live as if we are watchful and not asleep.
But the issue here is not just watching for the Lord's return, sudden as it may be. But it is more about being watchful about who the owner is. The master of the house. The one to whom we belong. The one who has ultimate control of our eternal destiny. No elf-on-the-shelf, our Lord is the one who has the ultimate power to decide our fate.
As I said, we are in the in-between time. We are watching and waiting. But part of falling asleep, is giving into the lie our stupor creates that tells us we are the owner. The lie that we are the one in control. The lie that we are the master of the house. The lie that we belong only to ourselves. If you fall asleep in that way, you will truly be surprised when the owner arrives, and the little world of entitlement you built around yourself all falls down.
The other part of being on watch, as I mentioned earlier, is to be watchful of ourselves so that we don't fall into some calamity of sin. I think I've already made enough of a case about those who have fallen asleep morally and are now paying dearly for that sleeping.
But their immorality doesn’t effect just them. It's their families. Their colleagues. Their constituents. Their viewers. We tax payers who have ended up picking up the tab for the payouts to the women they have harmed.
If they had just watched. If they had just been alert against temptation and sin. If they had just been awake to what they were doing.
But it's not just them, is it. It's all of us. All of us who are asleep instead of awake and alert.
That's what this season of Advent is all about. It's about waking up! The Lord, the Master, the Owner is coming. And the Lord has expectations about our alertness and our watchfulness. Begin now. Let these four weeks, prior to Christmas Day, be your time to wake up and watch; to no longer sleep.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Let Go Of Your Balloon
"Let Go Of Your Balloon"
1 Thessalonians 5:16
Are you a joyful person?
Do you have a deep sense of indwelling joy?
"I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
down in my heart
down in my heart,
down in my heart,
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
down in my heart,
down in my heart to stay.
Notice, I didn't ask, "Are you happy?" If I asked that, then you'd be tempted to intellectualize your answer. You'd respond with questions like, "What do you mean, by 'happy'?" "Everyone defines happiness differently," you would rightly say. But that's all just evasion so you don't have to answer the question: Are you happy?
Each of us knows the answer to that question. It's a yes or no question. It's not an essay question. Yes or no—are you happy? And, more importantly for today's message …are you a joyful person? Yes or no? Do you have a deep sense of indwelling joy? Yes or no?
I'm not going to let you off the hook here. Mainly because I wouldn't let myself off the hook as I asked myself that question all week. I am troubled by my answer. If I were preaching a sermon about prayer, I'd be excited about all I could say. I know about prayer.
If I were to preach about being thankful in all circumstances, I would be excited to talk about that because I have learned so many lessons about that—the hard way.
If I were to preach about the power of the Holy Spirit, I would be excited about that, because I have done a lot of thinking and reading about the Holy Spirit in the last few years.
But talking about joy, deep indwelling joy, has me a bit nervous. I'm not really sure if I really know what it's like to be joyful always.
I once attended a conference at a Presbyterian church in Omaha, when I was serving a church in the Lincoln area. People were given red helium filled balloons as we entered the sanctuary. We were told to release the balloons at some point in the service when we felt like expressing the joy in our hearts. It was a very Presbyterian thing to do, since we Presbyterians usually don't feel free to say "Hallelujah," or, "Praise the Lord." Unless you're Alan and Jan Luttrell's granddaughter. So, all through the service, balloons ascended. When the service was over 1/3 of the balloons were unreleased. One third of the people there were still holding on to their red balloon.
Did I let my balloon go? You're wondering aren't you? I'm sad to say, No. I was one of the third who was still holding on to my balloon.
Am I happy? By all outward circumstances, yes. Mainly because happiness is dependent on outward circumstances. Think of similar words: happenstance, happens. All are from the same root word, hap. Hap means lucky, or fortunate. Happenstance is a combination of the two words happen and circumstance. Those all have to do with things that go on outside of ourselves that effect us internally.
So, am I happy? I have two wonderful, amazing kids and their spouses—we have a great relationship. I have a vocation I dearly love—being a pastor is all I have ever wanted to be. I think I will always be a pastor, somehow, someway, even into retirement. I am in a great congregation. You are welcoming, and embracing, and open to new directions, and take on phenomenal local mission projects like Eagle Wings, and you are forgiving, and loving, and fun and funny. I could go on and on about how great this congregation is. It's a jewel, and there aren't many congregations like ours out there. So, am I happy? By all means, yes! Life is good.
But am I joyful? Do I have a deep sense of indwelling joy? I'm not sure. Why did I hold on to my balloon?
The word for joy in the Bible is chara. It is where we get our English word, "Harrah!" from. It's an expressive word that has to do with the whole person celebrating the indwelling presence of God. Chara was a way that the early believers greeted God in the morning—with the utter joy of being alive each new day. It was a word used when people wrote letters to each other. The first word of the letter would be, chara! Joy!
So why is it not my first word in the morning? Maybe some of you are now asking yourself the same question.
Something gets in the way. I/we allow something to get in the way. I think I know what it is, for the most part for me. If you answered "no" to the joyful question, or you aren't sure, then you must figure out what it is you are allowing to get in the way. Different historic figures have tried to put their finger on their reason for a lack of joy.
The philosopher, Voltaire once wrote: "I wish I had never been born." Clearly, though an amazing thinker, his lack of joy came from a miserable self-hatred.
Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure more than most. But he once wrote: "The worm, the canker, and grief are mine alone." His lack of joy came from letting little things eat away at his life.
Jay Gould, the American millionaire, when dying, said: "I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth." His lack of joy came from trying to hold on to everything he could, and never found a way to let it go.
Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed more than his share of both position and fame in society. But in old age he wrote: "Youth is a mistake; manhood a struggle; old age a regret." His lack of joy came from never finding anything worthwhile to really give his life to.
Or, Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world in his day, wept in his tent, before he said, "There are no more worlds to conquer." He thought his joy was an insatiable quest for power, but found that way to joy was a lie.
For me, a large part of what has gotten in my way of the kind of joy I am trying to describe is an unyielding loneliness. Loneliness has been, for me, like a low grade headache that won't go away.
This loneliness for me has had to do with a loss of place. From the time I left home for college, and then to seminary, and into the ministry, I have made nine major geographical moves. All of them have been from one state to another. Three of them were moves half way across the country. How many have made nine major geographical moves in the past 40 years? Eight? Seven? Six? Five? Four? Three? Two? One? None?
When you think/when I think of place, I think of rootedness and story. You can build your personal story best when you are rooted in one place for a long time. I've learned that when a congregation starts telling me stories, not only about the church, but about their personal lives, they are pulling me into the story of place. They are making me part of who and what they are. And I am part of all that. It's immensely embracing to hear, and be included in your story. It makes me less lonely. More in touch with what a deep joy is for me.
But there's this occupational hazard in the ministry that no one ever talks about. In seminary we were taught to not make friends in the congregations we would serve. I have failed that immensely. The rationale for such advice was, we weren't supposed to make the congregation feel like we were playing favorites.
And the other hazard I wasn't prepared for was that we are to cut all ties with people in the congregation we are leaving. I have already been warned by the moderator of the Committee on Ministry that I better have plans to move away from here after I retire, or suffer her friendly reprimand.
So for those nine major moves, I have had to cut off my relationships with all my friends. At each new congregation I served, I was more and more aware about how tough and how lonely it will be to someday leave. There is an immense importance of place, and longevity in a place, in creating and maintaining identity. To cut myself off from past places; to move to a new place, and know it will never be my place, has been very emptying for me. Very lonely. And that vocational and geographical loneliness has stunted my feeling of inner joy. No other vocation is like this, in this respect.
But something is emerging as I get closer to retirement. Something that I think has to do with joy and not happiness.
As I pondered joy this week, it seemed one thread ran through all I read and thought about—joy comes out of nakedness. (That got your attention, didn't it?) Not the rip all your clothes off kind of nakedness. So let me explain, before you get the wrong idea.
St. Francis of Assisi told about a time in which he was stripped of everything: physical comfort, shelter, recognition, community, even identity. He had nothing. And then St. Francis wrote, "True joy consists in patient acceptance of this nakedness." St. Francis was trying to make the point, not only vocationally as a priest, but also by the way he lived, "…that there is radical joy in having nothing to lose, nothing to protect, nothing to hide from, nothing to gain." (Weavings, vol. III, no. 6, page 18)
That may sound a bit weird to you. I thought about that a lot this week. I think I will continue to think about it for a long time.
But here's the surprise for me. The Women's Bible Study has been looking at the letter to the Philippians. I've been kind of reading along, as a silent partner, in their study book. Philippians 3:8-9 (Jerusalem Bible) caught my attention. Verse 8 reads,
For Christ, I have accepted the loss of everything and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ…
I would always stop there because the verse numbering splits Paul's sentence. This time I read on…
…if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him. (read whole verse again)
That phrase, "…and be given a place in him…" hit me, not like a ton of bricks, but like a running embrace for which I have always longed. I have a place! I felt a connection with Paul—someone who also moved around a lot and was feeling place-less. I have always had a place. In Christ. That loneliness I have always felt simply began to evaporate. Why did I take so long to realize this? In the nakedness that both St. Francis and Paul speak to, in that kind of loneliness, I discovered I really have everything! "…If only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
In the nakedness of my loneliness, feeling like I had no place, I discovered I really have all places…"if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
In the nakedness of my loneliness, understanding more fully how that loneliness blocked my joy, I discovered joy…"if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
Are you joyful?
Find your joy.
But I think you are going to have to look where you are most naked, in the way that St. Francis and Paul describe it. Only then will you find your joy. In Christ who is waiting there.
When your joy comes, when that day comes, you must release yourself to it, and give it expression. You must let your balloon go.
1 Thessalonians 5:16
Are you a joyful person?
Do you have a deep sense of indwelling joy?
"I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
down in my heart
down in my heart,
down in my heart,
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
down in my heart,
down in my heart to stay.
Notice, I didn't ask, "Are you happy?" If I asked that, then you'd be tempted to intellectualize your answer. You'd respond with questions like, "What do you mean, by 'happy'?" "Everyone defines happiness differently," you would rightly say. But that's all just evasion so you don't have to answer the question: Are you happy?
Each of us knows the answer to that question. It's a yes or no question. It's not an essay question. Yes or no—are you happy? And, more importantly for today's message …are you a joyful person? Yes or no? Do you have a deep sense of indwelling joy? Yes or no?
I'm not going to let you off the hook here. Mainly because I wouldn't let myself off the hook as I asked myself that question all week. I am troubled by my answer. If I were preaching a sermon about prayer, I'd be excited about all I could say. I know about prayer.
If I were to preach about being thankful in all circumstances, I would be excited to talk about that because I have learned so many lessons about that—the hard way.
If I were to preach about the power of the Holy Spirit, I would be excited about that, because I have done a lot of thinking and reading about the Holy Spirit in the last few years.
But talking about joy, deep indwelling joy, has me a bit nervous. I'm not really sure if I really know what it's like to be joyful always.
I once attended a conference at a Presbyterian church in Omaha, when I was serving a church in the Lincoln area. People were given red helium filled balloons as we entered the sanctuary. We were told to release the balloons at some point in the service when we felt like expressing the joy in our hearts. It was a very Presbyterian thing to do, since we Presbyterians usually don't feel free to say "Hallelujah," or, "Praise the Lord." Unless you're Alan and Jan Luttrell's granddaughter. So, all through the service, balloons ascended. When the service was over 1/3 of the balloons were unreleased. One third of the people there were still holding on to their red balloon.
Did I let my balloon go? You're wondering aren't you? I'm sad to say, No. I was one of the third who was still holding on to my balloon.
Am I happy? By all outward circumstances, yes. Mainly because happiness is dependent on outward circumstances. Think of similar words: happenstance, happens. All are from the same root word, hap. Hap means lucky, or fortunate. Happenstance is a combination of the two words happen and circumstance. Those all have to do with things that go on outside of ourselves that effect us internally.
So, am I happy? I have two wonderful, amazing kids and their spouses—we have a great relationship. I have a vocation I dearly love—being a pastor is all I have ever wanted to be. I think I will always be a pastor, somehow, someway, even into retirement. I am in a great congregation. You are welcoming, and embracing, and open to new directions, and take on phenomenal local mission projects like Eagle Wings, and you are forgiving, and loving, and fun and funny. I could go on and on about how great this congregation is. It's a jewel, and there aren't many congregations like ours out there. So, am I happy? By all means, yes! Life is good.
But am I joyful? Do I have a deep sense of indwelling joy? I'm not sure. Why did I hold on to my balloon?
The word for joy in the Bible is chara. It is where we get our English word, "Harrah!" from. It's an expressive word that has to do with the whole person celebrating the indwelling presence of God. Chara was a way that the early believers greeted God in the morning—with the utter joy of being alive each new day. It was a word used when people wrote letters to each other. The first word of the letter would be, chara! Joy!
So why is it not my first word in the morning? Maybe some of you are now asking yourself the same question.
Something gets in the way. I/we allow something to get in the way. I think I know what it is, for the most part for me. If you answered "no" to the joyful question, or you aren't sure, then you must figure out what it is you are allowing to get in the way. Different historic figures have tried to put their finger on their reason for a lack of joy.
The philosopher, Voltaire once wrote: "I wish I had never been born." Clearly, though an amazing thinker, his lack of joy came from a miserable self-hatred.
Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure more than most. But he once wrote: "The worm, the canker, and grief are mine alone." His lack of joy came from letting little things eat away at his life.
Jay Gould, the American millionaire, when dying, said: "I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth." His lack of joy came from trying to hold on to everything he could, and never found a way to let it go.
Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed more than his share of both position and fame in society. But in old age he wrote: "Youth is a mistake; manhood a struggle; old age a regret." His lack of joy came from never finding anything worthwhile to really give his life to.
Or, Alexander the Great, who conquered the known world in his day, wept in his tent, before he said, "There are no more worlds to conquer." He thought his joy was an insatiable quest for power, but found that way to joy was a lie.
For me, a large part of what has gotten in my way of the kind of joy I am trying to describe is an unyielding loneliness. Loneliness has been, for me, like a low grade headache that won't go away.
This loneliness for me has had to do with a loss of place. From the time I left home for college, and then to seminary, and into the ministry, I have made nine major geographical moves. All of them have been from one state to another. Three of them were moves half way across the country. How many have made nine major geographical moves in the past 40 years? Eight? Seven? Six? Five? Four? Three? Two? One? None?
When you think/when I think of place, I think of rootedness and story. You can build your personal story best when you are rooted in one place for a long time. I've learned that when a congregation starts telling me stories, not only about the church, but about their personal lives, they are pulling me into the story of place. They are making me part of who and what they are. And I am part of all that. It's immensely embracing to hear, and be included in your story. It makes me less lonely. More in touch with what a deep joy is for me.
But there's this occupational hazard in the ministry that no one ever talks about. In seminary we were taught to not make friends in the congregations we would serve. I have failed that immensely. The rationale for such advice was, we weren't supposed to make the congregation feel like we were playing favorites.
And the other hazard I wasn't prepared for was that we are to cut all ties with people in the congregation we are leaving. I have already been warned by the moderator of the Committee on Ministry that I better have plans to move away from here after I retire, or suffer her friendly reprimand.
So for those nine major moves, I have had to cut off my relationships with all my friends. At each new congregation I served, I was more and more aware about how tough and how lonely it will be to someday leave. There is an immense importance of place, and longevity in a place, in creating and maintaining identity. To cut myself off from past places; to move to a new place, and know it will never be my place, has been very emptying for me. Very lonely. And that vocational and geographical loneliness has stunted my feeling of inner joy. No other vocation is like this, in this respect.
But something is emerging as I get closer to retirement. Something that I think has to do with joy and not happiness.
As I pondered joy this week, it seemed one thread ran through all I read and thought about—joy comes out of nakedness. (That got your attention, didn't it?) Not the rip all your clothes off kind of nakedness. So let me explain, before you get the wrong idea.
St. Francis of Assisi told about a time in which he was stripped of everything: physical comfort, shelter, recognition, community, even identity. He had nothing. And then St. Francis wrote, "True joy consists in patient acceptance of this nakedness." St. Francis was trying to make the point, not only vocationally as a priest, but also by the way he lived, "…that there is radical joy in having nothing to lose, nothing to protect, nothing to hide from, nothing to gain." (Weavings, vol. III, no. 6, page 18)
That may sound a bit weird to you. I thought about that a lot this week. I think I will continue to think about it for a long time.
But here's the surprise for me. The Women's Bible Study has been looking at the letter to the Philippians. I've been kind of reading along, as a silent partner, in their study book. Philippians 3:8-9 (Jerusalem Bible) caught my attention. Verse 8 reads,
For Christ, I have accepted the loss of everything and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ…
I would always stop there because the verse numbering splits Paul's sentence. This time I read on…
…if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him. (read whole verse again)
That phrase, "…and be given a place in him…" hit me, not like a ton of bricks, but like a running embrace for which I have always longed. I have a place! I felt a connection with Paul—someone who also moved around a lot and was feeling place-less. I have always had a place. In Christ. That loneliness I have always felt simply began to evaporate. Why did I take so long to realize this? In the nakedness that both St. Francis and Paul speak to, in that kind of loneliness, I discovered I really have everything! "…If only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
In the nakedness of my loneliness, feeling like I had no place, I discovered I really have all places…"if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
In the nakedness of my loneliness, understanding more fully how that loneliness blocked my joy, I discovered joy…"if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him."
Are you joyful?
Find your joy.
But I think you are going to have to look where you are most naked, in the way that St. Francis and Paul describe it. Only then will you find your joy. In Christ who is waiting there.
When your joy comes, when that day comes, you must release yourself to it, and give it expression. You must let your balloon go.
Monday, November 13, 2017
The Wedding Wait Dance
"The Wedding Wait Dance"
Matthew 25:1-13
Weddings. Ugh. I’ve always said that I’d much rather do a funeral than a wedding. There doesn’t seem to be any other kind of event than a wedding where Murphy’s law applies most often: If something can go wrong it will.
The thing that’s irksome to me about weddings is that couples want to get married in a church, but have no idea why. When I ask the “why” question, the most usual answer I get is, “That’s where a wedding is supposed to be, isn’t it?” But they don't have an answer as to why weddings are held in churches.
And another thing that’s irksome (I have a whole list of irksome wedding things—sorry Shane and Erika) is that usually someone besides the bride and groom hijacks all the wedding planning. Do you remember that book from quite a while ago, Everything I Learned, I Learned In Kindergarten. Robert Fulgham, the guy who wrote it is a minister. One of the essays was about a wedding he did where the mother-of-the-bride took over everything. Come the day of the wedding, something went wrong that delayed the start of the wedding. While the bride was waiting, she was snacking on reception food and glasses of champagne. By the time the wedding processional started, the bride was green from all the food and alcohol she had consumed. Just as she got to the front of the church, she turned to her mother, smiled awkwardly, and threw up all over her.
So it’s more than a bit disconcerting to me, that here, at the end of his life, at the time where Jesus was trying to make sure people got it, he chose this image of an emotionally laden wedding event to tell about the kingdom of God. I think Kingdom of God...wedding...wedding...kingdom of God...and my mind just goes to a very dark place.
At the start of the gospel of John, the first “sign” Jesus did was at a wedding. And Murphy’s Law was operating there as well, since they ran out of wine. If something can go wrong, it does. Jesus had to bail the wedding host out by turning water into wine. You think that Jesus would have gotten it, that weddings may not have been the best symbol for the Kingdom of God. But evidently not, because here we are, near the end of his ministry, he is talking about the Kingdom of God, and what does he liken the Kingdom to? Weddings.
Here’s what happened at weddings in Jesus’ day. The guests would all get together at the home of the bride. If the bride and groom were from a small town or village, everyone would be invited. It was the bride's parents job to entertain all these people while they waited for the groom to show up. The groom, not the bride, was the most important person at a Middle Eastern wedding.
When the groom showed up, all the guests lit lamps, or torches, and in a parade-like procession, walked to the groom’s home where his parents were waiting to start the ceremony. After the ceremony there would be a great banquet that would go on for days.
In Jesus’ parable here in Matthew 25, Murphy’s law strikes again: the groom is delayed several hours. Even though there is an expected timeline for these kinds of events, those expectations are irritatingly dashed by some kind of delay by the groom. We aren’t told in the parable what caused the delay. We Americans read that line in the parable and immediately bristle.
We hate delays. We hate to wait. We can’t stand it when:
—we are put on hold with a customer service representative named Achmed who lives in Pakistan;
—we are stopped at a highway construction site, and the pilot car is no where in sight;
—we are having to read all the magazines at the doctor’s office because they don’t seem to know how an appointment works;
—Amazon ran out of what you ordered, and it will take two whole days more to get what you want.
As a result, we value a more fast-paced world. Faster communications, faster food, faster weight loss, faster job advancement, faster answers to prayer. I read this week about a new phenomenon called, “speed yoga.” That sounds like one of those oxymoron’s. But it might be fun to watch (mimic a speed yoga session).
I also read this week about a new movement called the Slow Revolution, or the Slow Movement. It has sprung up in the last couple of years as a criticism and balance to the growing global addiction to the fastness of things. Carl Honore, one of the voices of the Slow Revolution said, “...the world has become a giant buffet of things to do, consume, experience—and we rush to have it all.”
Tiredness is a symptom of trying to take life at too fast a pace.
So is not engaging deeply in and with the people and events of your life, because you’re living too fast? Think about that. How deeply are you engaged with others and the things that happen in the now? One of the statements that gave me pause to reflect, as I read more about this Slow Revolution, was this: “Going too fast keeps you from (having) vivid memories.” Doesn’t that just slap you up the side of your head? Taking life at too fast of a pace makes everything a surface experience. Nothing sinks in. There is no depth. No time to fully experience. No relaxing reflection. No “vivid memories.” Does that not strike you as sad, but true?
OK. So what does all that have to do with Jesus’ parable? The groom delayed arriving. Which meant the guests were waiting. At the bride’s parents home. Who have to entertain all those waiting guests for hours. Hours nobody signed up for. Imagine the house full of guests are all Americans. Impatient. Checking their watches or smart phones every five minutes, wondering when this dog-and-pony show will be over so the real thing they came for can get started, so the ceremony can be over, so the reception can start, and the liquor starts flowing. “C’mon! Where’s the groom? Let’s get this show on the road. We have places to go, people to see!”
Now here’s the kicker. Whenever Jesus told a parable about a wedding or a groom, the groom usually represented himself. Oooh, snap. Here we have a parable about the Kingdom of God and a groom and waiting. So it’s not just a groom we’re waiting on. It’s the very Kingdom of God and the very Savior Jesus. The parable is forcing us to deal with our patience and our comfort level with waiting and delays, especially as those perceived delays involve God. How long can we wait on God to arrive and act before we start grumbling? How much do we build into our lives the readiness to wait on God, no matter how long it takes? How do we act if we don't think God is showing up quickly enough to take care of what we want God to take care of?
That’s why the wise girls are let into the wedding celebration when the groom finally arrives. They had extra oil for their lamps. What does that mean? It means they were prepared to wait. It means they were willing to live their lives prepared for the groom's timeline, not theirs.
The foolish girls only brought enough oil for their lamps to last the limit of their own expectations. If the groom didn’t come by the time their lamps ran out and their flames went out, too bad for the groom. It’s his loss. It means the unwise girls were more concerned about their own agenda, rather than the timing of the groom.
It’s all about timing. And whose timing. And what we do during the delay. And if we are prepared for, and comfortable with waiting on God. Like I said, Jesus didn’t give us any details about why the groom delayed so long. It was evidently the grooms own business. And the delay wasn’t contingent on the patience or impatience of the guests.
But I’m going to toss you an idea about the reason for the delay—those times you are waiting, and waiting, and waiting on God. Remember I mentioned the “vivid memories”? Maybe in your waiting, maybe in your test of patience, the Lord has one or two vivid memories he needs you to make. But in order to pass those on to you, the Lord needs to get you to slow down from all the speed of life, all the surface living you’re doing, and get you to rest, to relax, to breathe, to even sleep (as the girls did in the parable), to reflect on that which will give you something—a vivid memory—you will never forget. And it may have nothing to do with the thing you are waiting for during the delay. The Lord, the Groom, only knows.
Then, when the Groom arrives, you will truly be ready to receive him, to go into the celebration with him, and smile like you’ve never smiled before.
Matthew 25:1-13
Weddings. Ugh. I’ve always said that I’d much rather do a funeral than a wedding. There doesn’t seem to be any other kind of event than a wedding where Murphy’s law applies most often: If something can go wrong it will.
The thing that’s irksome to me about weddings is that couples want to get married in a church, but have no idea why. When I ask the “why” question, the most usual answer I get is, “That’s where a wedding is supposed to be, isn’t it?” But they don't have an answer as to why weddings are held in churches.
And another thing that’s irksome (I have a whole list of irksome wedding things—sorry Shane and Erika) is that usually someone besides the bride and groom hijacks all the wedding planning. Do you remember that book from quite a while ago, Everything I Learned, I Learned In Kindergarten. Robert Fulgham, the guy who wrote it is a minister. One of the essays was about a wedding he did where the mother-of-the-bride took over everything. Come the day of the wedding, something went wrong that delayed the start of the wedding. While the bride was waiting, she was snacking on reception food and glasses of champagne. By the time the wedding processional started, the bride was green from all the food and alcohol she had consumed. Just as she got to the front of the church, she turned to her mother, smiled awkwardly, and threw up all over her.
So it’s more than a bit disconcerting to me, that here, at the end of his life, at the time where Jesus was trying to make sure people got it, he chose this image of an emotionally laden wedding event to tell about the kingdom of God. I think Kingdom of God...wedding...wedding...kingdom of God...and my mind just goes to a very dark place.
At the start of the gospel of John, the first “sign” Jesus did was at a wedding. And Murphy’s Law was operating there as well, since they ran out of wine. If something can go wrong, it does. Jesus had to bail the wedding host out by turning water into wine. You think that Jesus would have gotten it, that weddings may not have been the best symbol for the Kingdom of God. But evidently not, because here we are, near the end of his ministry, he is talking about the Kingdom of God, and what does he liken the Kingdom to? Weddings.
Here’s what happened at weddings in Jesus’ day. The guests would all get together at the home of the bride. If the bride and groom were from a small town or village, everyone would be invited. It was the bride's parents job to entertain all these people while they waited for the groom to show up. The groom, not the bride, was the most important person at a Middle Eastern wedding.
When the groom showed up, all the guests lit lamps, or torches, and in a parade-like procession, walked to the groom’s home where his parents were waiting to start the ceremony. After the ceremony there would be a great banquet that would go on for days.
In Jesus’ parable here in Matthew 25, Murphy’s law strikes again: the groom is delayed several hours. Even though there is an expected timeline for these kinds of events, those expectations are irritatingly dashed by some kind of delay by the groom. We aren’t told in the parable what caused the delay. We Americans read that line in the parable and immediately bristle.
We hate delays. We hate to wait. We can’t stand it when:
—we are put on hold with a customer service representative named Achmed who lives in Pakistan;
—we are stopped at a highway construction site, and the pilot car is no where in sight;
—we are having to read all the magazines at the doctor’s office because they don’t seem to know how an appointment works;
—Amazon ran out of what you ordered, and it will take two whole days more to get what you want.
As a result, we value a more fast-paced world. Faster communications, faster food, faster weight loss, faster job advancement, faster answers to prayer. I read this week about a new phenomenon called, “speed yoga.” That sounds like one of those oxymoron’s. But it might be fun to watch (mimic a speed yoga session).
I also read this week about a new movement called the Slow Revolution, or the Slow Movement. It has sprung up in the last couple of years as a criticism and balance to the growing global addiction to the fastness of things. Carl Honore, one of the voices of the Slow Revolution said, “...the world has become a giant buffet of things to do, consume, experience—and we rush to have it all.”
Tiredness is a symptom of trying to take life at too fast a pace.
So is not engaging deeply in and with the people and events of your life, because you’re living too fast? Think about that. How deeply are you engaged with others and the things that happen in the now? One of the statements that gave me pause to reflect, as I read more about this Slow Revolution, was this: “Going too fast keeps you from (having) vivid memories.” Doesn’t that just slap you up the side of your head? Taking life at too fast of a pace makes everything a surface experience. Nothing sinks in. There is no depth. No time to fully experience. No relaxing reflection. No “vivid memories.” Does that not strike you as sad, but true?
OK. So what does all that have to do with Jesus’ parable? The groom delayed arriving. Which meant the guests were waiting. At the bride’s parents home. Who have to entertain all those waiting guests for hours. Hours nobody signed up for. Imagine the house full of guests are all Americans. Impatient. Checking their watches or smart phones every five minutes, wondering when this dog-and-pony show will be over so the real thing they came for can get started, so the ceremony can be over, so the reception can start, and the liquor starts flowing. “C’mon! Where’s the groom? Let’s get this show on the road. We have places to go, people to see!”
Now here’s the kicker. Whenever Jesus told a parable about a wedding or a groom, the groom usually represented himself. Oooh, snap. Here we have a parable about the Kingdom of God and a groom and waiting. So it’s not just a groom we’re waiting on. It’s the very Kingdom of God and the very Savior Jesus. The parable is forcing us to deal with our patience and our comfort level with waiting and delays, especially as those perceived delays involve God. How long can we wait on God to arrive and act before we start grumbling? How much do we build into our lives the readiness to wait on God, no matter how long it takes? How do we act if we don't think God is showing up quickly enough to take care of what we want God to take care of?
That’s why the wise girls are let into the wedding celebration when the groom finally arrives. They had extra oil for their lamps. What does that mean? It means they were prepared to wait. It means they were willing to live their lives prepared for the groom's timeline, not theirs.
The foolish girls only brought enough oil for their lamps to last the limit of their own expectations. If the groom didn’t come by the time their lamps ran out and their flames went out, too bad for the groom. It’s his loss. It means the unwise girls were more concerned about their own agenda, rather than the timing of the groom.
It’s all about timing. And whose timing. And what we do during the delay. And if we are prepared for, and comfortable with waiting on God. Like I said, Jesus didn’t give us any details about why the groom delayed so long. It was evidently the grooms own business. And the delay wasn’t contingent on the patience or impatience of the guests.
But I’m going to toss you an idea about the reason for the delay—those times you are waiting, and waiting, and waiting on God. Remember I mentioned the “vivid memories”? Maybe in your waiting, maybe in your test of patience, the Lord has one or two vivid memories he needs you to make. But in order to pass those on to you, the Lord needs to get you to slow down from all the speed of life, all the surface living you’re doing, and get you to rest, to relax, to breathe, to even sleep (as the girls did in the parable), to reflect on that which will give you something—a vivid memory—you will never forget. And it may have nothing to do with the thing you are waiting for during the delay. The Lord, the Groom, only knows.
Then, when the Groom arrives, you will truly be ready to receive him, to go into the celebration with him, and smile like you’ve never smiled before.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Rulz
"Rulz"
Matthew 23:1-12
I was talking with Jennifer a week ago, or so, about some of the results of the survey the Pastor Nominating Committee has emailed out. According to an early assessment of the early results of the survey, it appears even Jesus may not measure up to what people want of their next Pastor.
So I shared with Jennifer a version of the description of the perfect pastor that has been going around on the internet for a number of years. The following is a variation of what I sent Jennifer. This version is a chain letter about the perfect pastor. This is what it says.
The following is a description of a perfect pastor. A perfect pastor is one who preaches exactly 20 minutes, but who shares with people the wisdom of the ages.
The perfect pastor condemns sin but never hurts anyone's feelings.
The perfect pastor works from 6 a.m. until midnight, and is also the janitor.
The perfect pastor makes $100 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a nice car, and gives $75 a week to the church.
The perfect pastor is good looking.
The perfect pastor loves to work with the youth, and spends most of the time with older folks.
The perfect pastor smiles all the time with a straight face, has a great sense of humor and is seriously dedicated to the work of the ministry.
The perfect pastor makes 25 visits a day on church members, yet spends most of the time evangelizing the unchurched and is always in the office if and when needed.
If your pastor does not measure up to this description, box up your pastor and send him/her to the church at the top of the chain letter list. In one week you will receive 1,562 pastors. One of them should be perfect. Please follow the instructions closely. Don't break the chain. One church broke the chain and got its old pastor back.
I've seen a number of lists like this. Someone has even made a poster of the perfect pastor with a number of the same details. What is interesting to me is that I have not seen a similar list, from the Pastor's point of view, of what they think the perfect church member, or the perfect congregation would look like.
I know ministers get together and grumble from time to time. But the wisest of pastors I know have come to terms with the fact that there is no perfect congregation. And the wisest congregations I know have come to terms with the fact there are no perfect pastors.
And a further truth is, we are all ministers. The dividing line between ministers and parishioners is a false one. We are all trying to do the best we can in the work of Christ in this place. We all struggle with how to be effective in our own ways in this thing called ministry.
Maybe you have asked yourself, What can I do in service to the Lord? How can I know that I've made some impact on other people's lives in the name of Christ? How do I best do ministry?
When I am asking myself these kinds of questions, I turn to the 23rd chapter of Matthew's gospel. In this chapter, Jesus is frustrated. He is frustrated by people who are trying to be ministers but they're going about it all wrong. They are asking themselves the same kinds of questions we ask ourselves, but their answers are all wrong.
A businessman decided to move his family to the country because he wanted to be a chicken farmer. So he got a batch of eggs and started to work. But all the eggs died. He got another batch of eggs and tried to get them to hatch. Not one of them did. So, he went to his county agent and tried to find out what he was doing wrong. He looked at the agent and said, "Am I planting the eggs too deep or too far apart."
Jesus is telling the disciples and the crowd that those who are going about the ministry all wrong have the eggs, they have the tools, they have the farm, but they are using the right things in the wrong way. By listening to what Jesus says the ministry is not, we discover what Jesus thinks the ministry is. By listening to how Jesus tells the people how ministry is being done wrong, we find out at the same time how to do the ministry right.
One side fact you need to remember is that the Pharisees, to whom Jesus was talking, were not priests, they weren't ordained, nor were they clergy in any way. They were lay people. Parishoners. Church members, trying to be more intentional about being ministers. They were like you. So let's turn to Matthew 23 and see what Jesus said about how they went wrong, so that we won't make the same mistakes.
First, Jesus said that the people who were trying to be serious about doing ministry didn't practice what they preached. The problem wasn't with what they were saying. It wasn't their preaching.
They weren't like the minister who was preaching his sermon when a man in the back pew turned his head to one side and said, "Louder!" The preacher raised his voice a notch and continued his sermon, which was not too interesting. After a few more minutes the man said again, "Louder!" The preacher raised his volume even more and continued on. But by now, the sermon had become really boring. The man in back said again, "Louder!"
At this point a man on the front row turned and yelled back to the man in rear, "What's the matter, can't you hear back there?"
"No," said the man in the back.
"Well," said the man down front, "move over, I'm come back to join you."
The people Jesus was talking about, on the other hand, knew how to communicate. They were good story tellers. They had all the right scripture memorized. In fact, they knew their Bibles from the front cover to the back. There was just one problem, said Jesus. They weren't listening to their own preaching and teaching. They didn't do what they were telling everyone else to do. They weren't following the advice they were doling out. They weren't practicing what they were preaching. There was a huge gulf between what they said and how they acted.
By telling people how ministry should not be done, Jesus is telling us at the same time how it should be done. If you want to be an effective follower of Jesus, what is vitally important is that how you live be in line with what you profess. People who are observing you, who may not be believers, are trying to gauge how much you really believe what you are saying you believe. The only way to figure that out is by how much you put into action, how much you practice, what you say you believe.
My brother in Minneapolis put up a post on Facebook that told about an older couple from that area. They were found in their home frozen to death. They had had their electricity shut off. They were apparently eating dog food out of the can for their meals. There were two ironies about this frozen couple. The first was, in their closet, a suitcase was found with $60,000 in cash. The other irony was that this couple volunteered at the local community health clinic, teaching the poorer people in the Minneapolis area about proper personal hygiene and food preparation.
What Jesus is saying here is clear. What it really comes down to is not what you teach. You can still be an effective teacher just spouting information, Bible verses, theology, or, evidently, hygiene and food preparation. But you can be much more effective in your ministry if you make sure that how you live is the same as what you teach and what you profess. That's called integrity. Integrity is the best witness. Integrity is that quality where what you believe comes together with how you live. Integrity, says Jesus, is the most profound way to do ministry.
The next rule Jesus addressed had to do with the rules themselves. How'd we get so many rules? That's the question Jesus is asking. Who made up all these rules, and why are people trying to carry them all around like a burden strapped to their backs? Why do religious leaders push so many rules at people, and why do people accept those rules as the gospel? What is Christ's ministry and teaching and sacrifice on the Cross all about, anyway?
Let me read to you a list of verses that answer those questions and see if you pick up on the most important word in all of them:
For freedom Christ has set us free. Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. (Galatians 5:1)
God has called you to a life of freedom. (Galatians 5:13)
You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free. If the son set you free you are free indeed… (John 8:32, 36)
Live as free people… (Hebrews 2:16)
My friend, the message is that Jesus can forgive your sins! Trying to follow all the religious laws to the letter could not set you free from all your sins. But everyone who has faith in Jesus is set free. (Acts 13:38-39)
The Holy Spirit will give you life that comes from Christ Jesus and will set you free from sin and death. (Romans 8:2)
Did you catch the key word in all those verses? What was it? (Free/Freedom) You are free! Free from what? You are set free from a tyranny of shoulds and oughts, rules and regulations, heaps of expectations, loads of guilt ridden intimidation. You are free because God in Christ has forgiven you. God has forgiven all those who make too many religious rules and those who break too many religious rules. God has forgiven it all.
If it is forgiven, then why are we still carrying it around? Let it go. In fact, what I think Jesus is saying here is that those who want to be effective in their ministry are the ones who loosen burdens, not add to them. Ministry is not about pushing burdensome religiosity. Ministry is not about loading people up with guilt and then saying, "Have a nice day." Ministry is about helping each other become relieved of all that, ripped off of us if need be.
As ministers to one another, we can't allow each other, in the name of Christ, to take our Christian beliefs and turn them into a bully stick of do's and don'ts, and beat each other over the head with it. Why do we do that to ourselves?
I attended a preaching seminar in Dallas early in my ministry. Someone asked the minister who was leading this one particular workshop why his loud, more forceful preaching of his younger days had given way to a quieter, more persuasive manner of preaching. The minister laughed and said, "When I was young I thought it was the thunder that convinced people; but when I grew older I discovered it was the lightening. So I determined that in the future I would thunder less and lighten more."
That's the role of effective ministry, says Jesus to the disciples and the crowd. Ministry is about the business of lightening people's loads, not adding to them. Don't carry all that stuff around: guilt, confusion, shoulds and oughts, a sense of unforgiveness. Be free. Get together with another follower in this sanctuary and through confidential, prayerful conversation, help each other take the load off. There is no greater ministry than that of lightening people's loads.
The last point I would make (since I need to come close to my 20 minutes for this to be a perfect sermon) is that Jesus is telling people that to be effective in ministry, you must make proper use of Scripture and prayer. That is, the spiritual life, the life of scripture and prayer, is more internal than external. Those doing ministry in Jesus day got this mixed up. God gave the following commandment:
And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
People thought God meant this literally. I think what God wanted the people to do was to put God's teaching foremost in their minds and hearts. Read it as often as possible. Read it not just to read it, but so that it will become part of your thinking and feeling and daily living. Make sure God's word is in front of you, visible, and attention grabbing. Read it. Pray it. Live it.
But instead, people were wearing little boxes tied to straps that dangled right between their eyes that had tiny scripture verses inside. They literally wrote scripture on their door posts and gates. They wrote scripture on their wrists and hands. They did all that because they took this verse in Deuteronomy literally. They made their spirituality a matter of external scripture boxes, tattoos and graffiti rather than an internal matter of the heart and mind.
The spiritual life of scripture reading and of prayer is something you do like eating. If you just paint scripture on your door post, you can walk by it everyday and forget it's there. But if it's like eating you chew on it, you digest it. You let it become a part of you, nourishing every part of you, informing every decision you make. Scripture, in this way, must also be allowed to subvert, if necessary, our prejudices, our laziness, and our half-hearted commitment and faith.
Doing effective ministry means not treating our spiritual life of prayer and scripture reading as simply some adornment. We are not to let our spirituality become only a piece of jewelry, or a bumper sticker. To do that is to make a gross miscalculation of the purpose and power of scripture and prayer.
There are lots of ways to do ministry. The key is not to get side-tracked into doing ministry in an ineffective way. We all want to be faithful. We all want to be ministers for Christ in some way. Paying attention to Jesus' assessment of what effective ministry is NOT, here in Matthew 23, helps us see what Jesus thinks effective ministry really IS.
Matthew 23:1-12
I was talking with Jennifer a week ago, or so, about some of the results of the survey the Pastor Nominating Committee has emailed out. According to an early assessment of the early results of the survey, it appears even Jesus may not measure up to what people want of their next Pastor.
So I shared with Jennifer a version of the description of the perfect pastor that has been going around on the internet for a number of years. The following is a variation of what I sent Jennifer. This version is a chain letter about the perfect pastor. This is what it says.
The following is a description of a perfect pastor. A perfect pastor is one who preaches exactly 20 minutes, but who shares with people the wisdom of the ages.
The perfect pastor condemns sin but never hurts anyone's feelings.
The perfect pastor works from 6 a.m. until midnight, and is also the janitor.
The perfect pastor makes $100 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a nice car, and gives $75 a week to the church.
The perfect pastor is good looking.
The perfect pastor loves to work with the youth, and spends most of the time with older folks.
The perfect pastor smiles all the time with a straight face, has a great sense of humor and is seriously dedicated to the work of the ministry.
The perfect pastor makes 25 visits a day on church members, yet spends most of the time evangelizing the unchurched and is always in the office if and when needed.
If your pastor does not measure up to this description, box up your pastor and send him/her to the church at the top of the chain letter list. In one week you will receive 1,562 pastors. One of them should be perfect. Please follow the instructions closely. Don't break the chain. One church broke the chain and got its old pastor back.
I've seen a number of lists like this. Someone has even made a poster of the perfect pastor with a number of the same details. What is interesting to me is that I have not seen a similar list, from the Pastor's point of view, of what they think the perfect church member, or the perfect congregation would look like.
I know ministers get together and grumble from time to time. But the wisest of pastors I know have come to terms with the fact that there is no perfect congregation. And the wisest congregations I know have come to terms with the fact there are no perfect pastors.
And a further truth is, we are all ministers. The dividing line between ministers and parishioners is a false one. We are all trying to do the best we can in the work of Christ in this place. We all struggle with how to be effective in our own ways in this thing called ministry.
Maybe you have asked yourself, What can I do in service to the Lord? How can I know that I've made some impact on other people's lives in the name of Christ? How do I best do ministry?
When I am asking myself these kinds of questions, I turn to the 23rd chapter of Matthew's gospel. In this chapter, Jesus is frustrated. He is frustrated by people who are trying to be ministers but they're going about it all wrong. They are asking themselves the same kinds of questions we ask ourselves, but their answers are all wrong.
A businessman decided to move his family to the country because he wanted to be a chicken farmer. So he got a batch of eggs and started to work. But all the eggs died. He got another batch of eggs and tried to get them to hatch. Not one of them did. So, he went to his county agent and tried to find out what he was doing wrong. He looked at the agent and said, "Am I planting the eggs too deep or too far apart."
Jesus is telling the disciples and the crowd that those who are going about the ministry all wrong have the eggs, they have the tools, they have the farm, but they are using the right things in the wrong way. By listening to what Jesus says the ministry is not, we discover what Jesus thinks the ministry is. By listening to how Jesus tells the people how ministry is being done wrong, we find out at the same time how to do the ministry right.
One side fact you need to remember is that the Pharisees, to whom Jesus was talking, were not priests, they weren't ordained, nor were they clergy in any way. They were lay people. Parishoners. Church members, trying to be more intentional about being ministers. They were like you. So let's turn to Matthew 23 and see what Jesus said about how they went wrong, so that we won't make the same mistakes.
First, Jesus said that the people who were trying to be serious about doing ministry didn't practice what they preached. The problem wasn't with what they were saying. It wasn't their preaching.
They weren't like the minister who was preaching his sermon when a man in the back pew turned his head to one side and said, "Louder!" The preacher raised his voice a notch and continued his sermon, which was not too interesting. After a few more minutes the man said again, "Louder!" The preacher raised his volume even more and continued on. But by now, the sermon had become really boring. The man in back said again, "Louder!"
At this point a man on the front row turned and yelled back to the man in rear, "What's the matter, can't you hear back there?"
"No," said the man in the back.
"Well," said the man down front, "move over, I'm come back to join you."
The people Jesus was talking about, on the other hand, knew how to communicate. They were good story tellers. They had all the right scripture memorized. In fact, they knew their Bibles from the front cover to the back. There was just one problem, said Jesus. They weren't listening to their own preaching and teaching. They didn't do what they were telling everyone else to do. They weren't following the advice they were doling out. They weren't practicing what they were preaching. There was a huge gulf between what they said and how they acted.
By telling people how ministry should not be done, Jesus is telling us at the same time how it should be done. If you want to be an effective follower of Jesus, what is vitally important is that how you live be in line with what you profess. People who are observing you, who may not be believers, are trying to gauge how much you really believe what you are saying you believe. The only way to figure that out is by how much you put into action, how much you practice, what you say you believe.
My brother in Minneapolis put up a post on Facebook that told about an older couple from that area. They were found in their home frozen to death. They had had their electricity shut off. They were apparently eating dog food out of the can for their meals. There were two ironies about this frozen couple. The first was, in their closet, a suitcase was found with $60,000 in cash. The other irony was that this couple volunteered at the local community health clinic, teaching the poorer people in the Minneapolis area about proper personal hygiene and food preparation.
What Jesus is saying here is clear. What it really comes down to is not what you teach. You can still be an effective teacher just spouting information, Bible verses, theology, or, evidently, hygiene and food preparation. But you can be much more effective in your ministry if you make sure that how you live is the same as what you teach and what you profess. That's called integrity. Integrity is the best witness. Integrity is that quality where what you believe comes together with how you live. Integrity, says Jesus, is the most profound way to do ministry.
The next rule Jesus addressed had to do with the rules themselves. How'd we get so many rules? That's the question Jesus is asking. Who made up all these rules, and why are people trying to carry them all around like a burden strapped to their backs? Why do religious leaders push so many rules at people, and why do people accept those rules as the gospel? What is Christ's ministry and teaching and sacrifice on the Cross all about, anyway?
Let me read to you a list of verses that answer those questions and see if you pick up on the most important word in all of them:
For freedom Christ has set us free. Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. (Galatians 5:1)
God has called you to a life of freedom. (Galatians 5:13)
You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free. If the son set you free you are free indeed… (John 8:32, 36)
Live as free people… (Hebrews 2:16)
My friend, the message is that Jesus can forgive your sins! Trying to follow all the religious laws to the letter could not set you free from all your sins. But everyone who has faith in Jesus is set free. (Acts 13:38-39)
The Holy Spirit will give you life that comes from Christ Jesus and will set you free from sin and death. (Romans 8:2)
Did you catch the key word in all those verses? What was it? (Free/Freedom) You are free! Free from what? You are set free from a tyranny of shoulds and oughts, rules and regulations, heaps of expectations, loads of guilt ridden intimidation. You are free because God in Christ has forgiven you. God has forgiven all those who make too many religious rules and those who break too many religious rules. God has forgiven it all.
If it is forgiven, then why are we still carrying it around? Let it go. In fact, what I think Jesus is saying here is that those who want to be effective in their ministry are the ones who loosen burdens, not add to them. Ministry is not about pushing burdensome religiosity. Ministry is not about loading people up with guilt and then saying, "Have a nice day." Ministry is about helping each other become relieved of all that, ripped off of us if need be.
As ministers to one another, we can't allow each other, in the name of Christ, to take our Christian beliefs and turn them into a bully stick of do's and don'ts, and beat each other over the head with it. Why do we do that to ourselves?
I attended a preaching seminar in Dallas early in my ministry. Someone asked the minister who was leading this one particular workshop why his loud, more forceful preaching of his younger days had given way to a quieter, more persuasive manner of preaching. The minister laughed and said, "When I was young I thought it was the thunder that convinced people; but when I grew older I discovered it was the lightening. So I determined that in the future I would thunder less and lighten more."
That's the role of effective ministry, says Jesus to the disciples and the crowd. Ministry is about the business of lightening people's loads, not adding to them. Don't carry all that stuff around: guilt, confusion, shoulds and oughts, a sense of unforgiveness. Be free. Get together with another follower in this sanctuary and through confidential, prayerful conversation, help each other take the load off. There is no greater ministry than that of lightening people's loads.
The last point I would make (since I need to come close to my 20 minutes for this to be a perfect sermon) is that Jesus is telling people that to be effective in ministry, you must make proper use of Scripture and prayer. That is, the spiritual life, the life of scripture and prayer, is more internal than external. Those doing ministry in Jesus day got this mixed up. God gave the following commandment:
And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
People thought God meant this literally. I think what God wanted the people to do was to put God's teaching foremost in their minds and hearts. Read it as often as possible. Read it not just to read it, but so that it will become part of your thinking and feeling and daily living. Make sure God's word is in front of you, visible, and attention grabbing. Read it. Pray it. Live it.
But instead, people were wearing little boxes tied to straps that dangled right between their eyes that had tiny scripture verses inside. They literally wrote scripture on their door posts and gates. They wrote scripture on their wrists and hands. They did all that because they took this verse in Deuteronomy literally. They made their spirituality a matter of external scripture boxes, tattoos and graffiti rather than an internal matter of the heart and mind.
The spiritual life of scripture reading and of prayer is something you do like eating. If you just paint scripture on your door post, you can walk by it everyday and forget it's there. But if it's like eating you chew on it, you digest it. You let it become a part of you, nourishing every part of you, informing every decision you make. Scripture, in this way, must also be allowed to subvert, if necessary, our prejudices, our laziness, and our half-hearted commitment and faith.
Doing effective ministry means not treating our spiritual life of prayer and scripture reading as simply some adornment. We are not to let our spirituality become only a piece of jewelry, or a bumper sticker. To do that is to make a gross miscalculation of the purpose and power of scripture and prayer.
There are lots of ways to do ministry. The key is not to get side-tracked into doing ministry in an ineffective way. We all want to be faithful. We all want to be ministers for Christ in some way. Paying attention to Jesus' assessment of what effective ministry is NOT, here in Matthew 23, helps us see what Jesus thinks effective ministry really IS.
Monday, October 23, 2017
Three Prays-Worthy Qualities
"Three Prays-Worthy Qualities"
1 Thessalonians 1:1-3
Standing in his tower, looking out over his kingdom, the midget king of the comic, “Wizard of Id,” observed, “Thanksgiving Day again. And as I look out over my kingdom...I must pause to give thanks.” After thinking it over, he left muttering to himself, “Thanks for nothing.”
There are people like that--people who find nothing to be thankful for. They go through life bitter and depressed. That’s why one of the qualities I admire about the apostle Paul is that he could write to each church he started, and no matter how bad the situation might be in that particular congregation, he found something for which he gave thanks to God. Even in the church at Corinth--a church that created headache after headache for Paul--he still found many reasons to give thanks. And so it is with the church at Thessalonica.
When Paul first went to Thessalonica, he had only been there three weeks, when opposition mounted. A few Jews converted to Christianity, as did a number of non-Jews. But those Jews who were repulsed by the Gospel, and out of a furious jealousy of Paul, hired what Phillips translation called, “...the unprincipled loungers of the marketplace.” These people “gathered a crowd together and set the city in an uproar” (Acts 17:5). Those who had come to believe in Christ, whisked Paul out of the hands of the crowd and got him safely out of town.
It wasn’t too long after that experience that Paul wrote this letter to the Thessalonian church, giving thanks to God. For what? For such a “great” reception? No. For the believers and what they were having to go through in order to hold on to their new-found beliefs, in a church that was in the stages of infancy. He told the Thessalonian believers that he was thankful for three specific qualities he saw alive in them. Let’s go through them together.
The first trait for which Paul gives thanks concerning the Thessalonian congregation was that their “...faith has meant solid achievement.” The word Paul used that is translated, “solid achievement” has to do with the work you do in your occupation--your chosen vocation. But it isn’t about what you accomplish in your work--how many widgets you sell, how many computers you fixed, how many miles of road you got paved, how many student’s papers you graded, etc. What Paul is describing has more to do with the attitude with which you work.
When we ordain an Elder or Deacon or Minister in the church, one of the questions they are asked is, “Will you serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?” That, I think, is what Paul was describing how the faith of the believers ignited some great qualities of how they worked, not what they did in their work. Does your faith in Christ energize your working, rather than just sap you dry by the end of the day? Does your work, because of your faith, use the full reaches of your mind and intellect? Does your faith push you to stretch your imagination of what could be--of what is possible? That’s what Paul was praising the Thessalonian believers about.
So the “solid achievements” weren’t things the believers were doing in the community--just yet. It was what they were doing in themselves, first. Then, as they changed as people, as individuals, they began to transform others around them. By making individual changes, they then began to transform the culture around them. Those are truly “solid achievements.”
During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, the British government began to run low on silver for coins. Lord Cromwell sent his men on an investigation of the local cathedrals to see if they could find any precious metal there. After investigating, the soldiers reported, “The only silver we could find is in the statues of the saints standing in the corners.” To which Cromwell replied, “Good! We’ll melt down the saints and put them into circulation!”
Our purpose as believers is not to stand in the corners of our churches and allow ourselves to be seen as only some kind of relics, who hold on to the same kind of relic faith. Our attitude toward our faith is to one of an active energy, intelligence, imagination, and love, that gets us in circulation in order to transform the culture around us.
That leads well to the second quality that Paul gives thanks to God for in the Thessalonian congregation: “...your love has meant hard work…”
This is a somewhat gruesome phrase in the Greek language that Paul wrote in. Its most literal meaning of the phrase, “...has meant hard work…” is to suffer a beating and feel the bone weariness that such a beating causes. In a more general meaning, it has the sense of the kind of exertion that brings on physical tiredness, almost to the point of collapse or exhaustion.
What Paul is praising God for, concerning the people in that congregation, is for developing the kind of love that doesn’t come easy; the kind of love which takes a beating, but is not beaten down. As the old Timex watch commercial used to say, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
A church custodian was once asked how old he was. “I’m 47,” he replied.
“But how long have you been working here at the church?” he was asked further.
“55 years,” he said in reply.
“And how could you do that?” the questioner asked.
“Overtime!” the custodian replied.
The kind of love exhibited by these Christians was “overtime” kind of love--above and beyond the call of duty. Such love, by the nature and level of antagonism dished out by the culture in Thessalonica, had to be an overtime, extra mile kind of character. We get the idea here that love is hard work, but also that the Christians worked hard because of their love. The Good News translation has this phrase as, “...your love made you work so hard…” It was for love, and out of love that the Christians kept up their work of sharing the Good News of the Gospel in the face of constant setback and abuse. In fact, Paul went further. To him, it was sheer joy.
Khalil Gibran, in his book, The Prophet , wrote,
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms from those who work with joy.
Work can only be a joy if love is the mainspring that keeps the whole thing wound and running.
If we love, it doesn’t matter what we are facing. That is not just a romantically frilly statement either. The kind of love Paul was being prays-worthy about to the Thessalonians was the kind that was willing to exert itself, the kind that was willing to work through exhaustion, the kind of love that was willing to roll up its sleeves and sweat.
The final prays-worthy quality for which Paul thanks God about the Thessalonian congregation was that, “...the hope that you have in our Lord Jesus Christ means sheer dogged endurance in the life that you live before God.”
This kind of endurance Paul is talking about is characterized by the ability to stand fast, while at the same time waiting, and being full of expectation. It’s not just an anemic kind of perseverance. It’s more an energetic (there’s that word again, like in the first quality--see how these are all tied together?)--it’s more an energetic kind of endurance.
Timothy Walker, in his book, The Stained Glass Gospel, told the story about a man who lives in Maine. The man used to live in a little town named Flagstaff, which was flooded as part of a large dam and lake project carried out by the Army Corp of Engineers. The man said the most painful part of the experience, besides relocation, was watching his hometown die. He said all improvements and repairs ceased. What was the use of painting a house which would be covered with water? Why repair a building when the whole town would be wiped out? Why worry about rubbish and potholes in the streets or graffiti on the walls? So week after week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled and desolate. Then he added this comment: “When there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.”
Hope does focus itself on the future, but it must be lived out in the here and now. That is what patience and endurance is all about. What Paul is praising the Christians for is that he knows they have hope, because they are energetically resisting and enduring RIGHT NOW! If, in the way they were living in the present was not demonstrated by such endurance, he would have known they had given up their hope.
A chaplain was talking with one of the soldiers of the army of the Potomac, who took part in the battle of Gettysburg. He belonged to the Sixth Corps, the corps that made the famous march from Manchester to Gettysburg. The soldier told the chaplain, that march, with the clouds of dust, the perspiration, the blood of wounded limbs trickling down into his boots, was the hardest experience of his whole long war service.
It is, often harder to march than it is to fight. We know what to do with ourselves in tight skirmishes with the enemy. We know what to do during the heat of the battle. But the test of endurance in life is the long march of faith. It is a march that all Christians have set out upon. You will meet many others who have gone part of the way and turned aside. You will have by your side many others who are ready to quit. But always there are some who are going steadily forward, and who have no idea of anything but enduring to the end. Of using every bit of their energy, intelligence, imagination and love to keep going.
And why is it that we are able to endure? Here is how these three prays-worthy qualities intertwine. We endure because of our faith in Jesus Christ—a faith that works, and achieves. But it isn’t our faith as much as it is Whom our faith is in: our Lord Jesus Christ.
When I lived in California, I discovered that it is one of the states that consistently rates toward the top in the country in terms of its percentage of suicides. The reason sociologists and psychologists think that is so is because many people have gone to California with what has been a last hope scenario, either as to health or for personal fortune. When that hope in a dream or hope in themselves failed them, life no longer held anything for them.
What Paul is saying is that we can be hopeful and endure because of who our faith is in—not some last gasp grasp at straws, either in California or anywhere else. Instead it is an unashamed faith in Jesus Christ and our hard-working love for Him as Lord and Savior will be the only thing that keeps us enduring.
1 Thessalonians 1:1-3
Standing in his tower, looking out over his kingdom, the midget king of the comic, “Wizard of Id,” observed, “Thanksgiving Day again. And as I look out over my kingdom...I must pause to give thanks.” After thinking it over, he left muttering to himself, “Thanks for nothing.”
There are people like that--people who find nothing to be thankful for. They go through life bitter and depressed. That’s why one of the qualities I admire about the apostle Paul is that he could write to each church he started, and no matter how bad the situation might be in that particular congregation, he found something for which he gave thanks to God. Even in the church at Corinth--a church that created headache after headache for Paul--he still found many reasons to give thanks. And so it is with the church at Thessalonica.
When Paul first went to Thessalonica, he had only been there three weeks, when opposition mounted. A few Jews converted to Christianity, as did a number of non-Jews. But those Jews who were repulsed by the Gospel, and out of a furious jealousy of Paul, hired what Phillips translation called, “...the unprincipled loungers of the marketplace.” These people “gathered a crowd together and set the city in an uproar” (Acts 17:5). Those who had come to believe in Christ, whisked Paul out of the hands of the crowd and got him safely out of town.
It wasn’t too long after that experience that Paul wrote this letter to the Thessalonian church, giving thanks to God. For what? For such a “great” reception? No. For the believers and what they were having to go through in order to hold on to their new-found beliefs, in a church that was in the stages of infancy. He told the Thessalonian believers that he was thankful for three specific qualities he saw alive in them. Let’s go through them together.
The first trait for which Paul gives thanks concerning the Thessalonian congregation was that their “...faith has meant solid achievement.” The word Paul used that is translated, “solid achievement” has to do with the work you do in your occupation--your chosen vocation. But it isn’t about what you accomplish in your work--how many widgets you sell, how many computers you fixed, how many miles of road you got paved, how many student’s papers you graded, etc. What Paul is describing has more to do with the attitude with which you work.
When we ordain an Elder or Deacon or Minister in the church, one of the questions they are asked is, “Will you serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?” That, I think, is what Paul was describing how the faith of the believers ignited some great qualities of how they worked, not what they did in their work. Does your faith in Christ energize your working, rather than just sap you dry by the end of the day? Does your work, because of your faith, use the full reaches of your mind and intellect? Does your faith push you to stretch your imagination of what could be--of what is possible? That’s what Paul was praising the Thessalonian believers about.
So the “solid achievements” weren’t things the believers were doing in the community--just yet. It was what they were doing in themselves, first. Then, as they changed as people, as individuals, they began to transform others around them. By making individual changes, they then began to transform the culture around them. Those are truly “solid achievements.”
During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, the British government began to run low on silver for coins. Lord Cromwell sent his men on an investigation of the local cathedrals to see if they could find any precious metal there. After investigating, the soldiers reported, “The only silver we could find is in the statues of the saints standing in the corners.” To which Cromwell replied, “Good! We’ll melt down the saints and put them into circulation!”
Our purpose as believers is not to stand in the corners of our churches and allow ourselves to be seen as only some kind of relics, who hold on to the same kind of relic faith. Our attitude toward our faith is to one of an active energy, intelligence, imagination, and love, that gets us in circulation in order to transform the culture around us.
That leads well to the second quality that Paul gives thanks to God for in the Thessalonian congregation: “...your love has meant hard work…”
This is a somewhat gruesome phrase in the Greek language that Paul wrote in. Its most literal meaning of the phrase, “...has meant hard work…” is to suffer a beating and feel the bone weariness that such a beating causes. In a more general meaning, it has the sense of the kind of exertion that brings on physical tiredness, almost to the point of collapse or exhaustion.
What Paul is praising God for, concerning the people in that congregation, is for developing the kind of love that doesn’t come easy; the kind of love which takes a beating, but is not beaten down. As the old Timex watch commercial used to say, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
A church custodian was once asked how old he was. “I’m 47,” he replied.
“But how long have you been working here at the church?” he was asked further.
“55 years,” he said in reply.
“And how could you do that?” the questioner asked.
“Overtime!” the custodian replied.
The kind of love exhibited by these Christians was “overtime” kind of love--above and beyond the call of duty. Such love, by the nature and level of antagonism dished out by the culture in Thessalonica, had to be an overtime, extra mile kind of character. We get the idea here that love is hard work, but also that the Christians worked hard because of their love. The Good News translation has this phrase as, “...your love made you work so hard…” It was for love, and out of love that the Christians kept up their work of sharing the Good News of the Gospel in the face of constant setback and abuse. In fact, Paul went further. To him, it was sheer joy.
Khalil Gibran, in his book, The Prophet , wrote,
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms from those who work with joy.
Work can only be a joy if love is the mainspring that keeps the whole thing wound and running.
If we love, it doesn’t matter what we are facing. That is not just a romantically frilly statement either. The kind of love Paul was being prays-worthy about to the Thessalonians was the kind that was willing to exert itself, the kind that was willing to work through exhaustion, the kind of love that was willing to roll up its sleeves and sweat.
The final prays-worthy quality for which Paul thanks God about the Thessalonian congregation was that, “...the hope that you have in our Lord Jesus Christ means sheer dogged endurance in the life that you live before God.”
This kind of endurance Paul is talking about is characterized by the ability to stand fast, while at the same time waiting, and being full of expectation. It’s not just an anemic kind of perseverance. It’s more an energetic (there’s that word again, like in the first quality--see how these are all tied together?)--it’s more an energetic kind of endurance.
Timothy Walker, in his book, The Stained Glass Gospel, told the story about a man who lives in Maine. The man used to live in a little town named Flagstaff, which was flooded as part of a large dam and lake project carried out by the Army Corp of Engineers. The man said the most painful part of the experience, besides relocation, was watching his hometown die. He said all improvements and repairs ceased. What was the use of painting a house which would be covered with water? Why repair a building when the whole town would be wiped out? Why worry about rubbish and potholes in the streets or graffiti on the walls? So week after week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled and desolate. Then he added this comment: “When there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.”
Hope does focus itself on the future, but it must be lived out in the here and now. That is what patience and endurance is all about. What Paul is praising the Christians for is that he knows they have hope, because they are energetically resisting and enduring RIGHT NOW! If, in the way they were living in the present was not demonstrated by such endurance, he would have known they had given up their hope.
A chaplain was talking with one of the soldiers of the army of the Potomac, who took part in the battle of Gettysburg. He belonged to the Sixth Corps, the corps that made the famous march from Manchester to Gettysburg. The soldier told the chaplain, that march, with the clouds of dust, the perspiration, the blood of wounded limbs trickling down into his boots, was the hardest experience of his whole long war service.
It is, often harder to march than it is to fight. We know what to do with ourselves in tight skirmishes with the enemy. We know what to do during the heat of the battle. But the test of endurance in life is the long march of faith. It is a march that all Christians have set out upon. You will meet many others who have gone part of the way and turned aside. You will have by your side many others who are ready to quit. But always there are some who are going steadily forward, and who have no idea of anything but enduring to the end. Of using every bit of their energy, intelligence, imagination and love to keep going.
And why is it that we are able to endure? Here is how these three prays-worthy qualities intertwine. We endure because of our faith in Jesus Christ—a faith that works, and achieves. But it isn’t our faith as much as it is Whom our faith is in: our Lord Jesus Christ.
When I lived in California, I discovered that it is one of the states that consistently rates toward the top in the country in terms of its percentage of suicides. The reason sociologists and psychologists think that is so is because many people have gone to California with what has been a last hope scenario, either as to health or for personal fortune. When that hope in a dream or hope in themselves failed them, life no longer held anything for them.
What Paul is saying is that we can be hopeful and endure because of who our faith is in—not some last gasp grasp at straws, either in California or anywhere else. Instead it is an unashamed faith in Jesus Christ and our hard-working love for Him as Lord and Savior will be the only thing that keeps us enduring.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Syzygus, Syntche & Euodia
"Syzygus, Syntyche & Euodia"
Philippians 4:1-3
Syzygus was nervous. He paced back and forth, biting his lower lip as he thought about the task that lay before him. In a little less than an hour he would be meeting with a group of believers in his home. Two women would be there. One was Euodia, who had been one of the first converts in Philippi. She had graciously opened her home, so the followers of Christ would have some place to meet for worship and for teaching. Syzygus had admired her courage and leadership from the first. He was the leader of this group of Christians. He’d been put in charge by Paul himself. But Euodia was the backbone of this little congregation.
A problem had arisen, and Syzygus wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it. It was time for him to step forward and take charge of the situation. Syzygus thought through how it had all began, hoping he would find a way to bring the situation under control.
Two months ago, a younger woman was brought to church by Euodia. Syntyche was her name. Euodia had been talking to Syntyche about Jesus and the group of believers who met in her home. It seemed to be an ideal situation--the older, wiser Euodia, gently bringing this young woman into the fold. Even though Syntyche lived on the other side of the city, Euodia was going out of her way to make almost daily contact with her young friend.
Syzygus remembered back to the night that Syntyche gave her life to Christ. There were a number of people who had come to Euodia’s house wanting to find out more about Jesus. Syzygus had preached about how Jesus had changed his life. Many of the two dozen believers shared how Jesus had touched their lives also, and how they had come to believe. Stories of dramatic turn-arounds were shared. Questions about Jesus were asked and answered. Several times that night the group stopped their story-sharing for prayer. The Holy Spirit was moving amongst that little collection of believers and seekers.
Then it happened. Syntyche stood up, weeping and holding herself, and cried out, “I want to have Jesus in my life! I want the salvation of Jesus! I want to be free of my sin and my past. I want to live! I want to live with Jesus!” Euodia quickly moved to her side. Syzygus asked two of the other believers to bring a bucket of water from the well. Euodia was leading the people in prayer, saying a line, and then all would repeat it. The others who were still not sure about these Christians, watched everything that was happening with expressions that were a mixture of fear and wonder.
Those with the water bucket came hurriedly into the home, spilling water as they came. Syzygus asked everyone to step outside, where they all gathered around him, Euodia and Syntyche. Syzygus reached out and held Syntyche by the shoulders and said, “Syntyche, you have expressed your faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. Do you now wish to be baptized in his name?”
Through a tear streaked face, she shook her head, “Yes.”
Syzygus then said, “Under this water you will be with Jesus in his death. When you rise up from this water, you will rise up with Jesus in his miraculous Resurrection. The person you once were, you will be no longer. The person you are and are to become in Jesus is now who you will be. Sin and the past will no longer be the master of your life. Only Jesus will be your Master. Is this what you want?”
“Yes!” Syntyche burst out. “With all of my heart!”
Syzygus motioned for the bucket of water. Euodia had Syntyche kneel, then backed away a step. Syzygus held the bucket over Syntyche’s head and began to pour. The water cascaded down upon the kneeling and praying form of Syntyche while Syzygus spoke, “Syntyche, I baptize you in the name of Jesus our Savior. Receive the Holy Spirit.” When all the water had been poured out upon her, he reached down his hand, and said, “Arise, Syntyche; arise in Christ our Resurrected Lord.” She stood, a beaming smile upon her face. Euodia led everyone in a responsive hymn, and then they all congratulated Syntyche, welcoming her into the faith and their little body of believers.
Syzygus stopped his pacing, closed his eyes and paused his remembering so he could say a quick prayer of thanks to God for that wonderful night. But then other memories interrupted his praying. Memories of how a rift had grown between those once close women. Soon the two women would be gathering with other believers Syzygus had asked to come and be part of the healing. He began pacing again, wondering how it would go.
Syzygus had asked everyone to come to his home. He had received a letter from Paul, and everyone should come hear it, was the word Syzygus had put out. No one would want to miss hearing Paul’s letter read, including the two feuding women. They had both come, but they were sitting in opposite sides of the room, surrounded by their supporters, as if they were two wrestlers ready to come out of their corners when the gong sounded.
Syzygus knew what was in the letter. He had read it earlier. He had sent word to Paul about the situation between the two women, and had been anxiously awaiting a reply. He held the papyrus scroll in his hands. It was not as much as he had hoped, but he realized the little Paul had written was full of wisdom. Would the women hear it? Better yet, would they listen to it?
The room was silent as Syzygus opened the scroll and began to read Paul’s flawless handwriting. Slowly, Syzygus read his way through the letter, getting nods of approval and thoughtful expressions on the faces of those gathered. Syzygus felt like he had a live bird in his belly and it had grown in size as he neared the place in the letter. He took a deep breath, swallowed the bird down out of his throat, and continued reading:
My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.
I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn’t want his children holding grudges.
And, oh, yes, Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them. These women worked for the Message hand in hand with Clement and me, and with the other veterans—worked as hard as any of us. Remember, their names are also in the Book of Life.
Syzygus stopped reading, but kept staring at the words on the scroll, afraid to look up, and really afraid to look in each of the corners of the room where the women sat.
“How did Paul find out,” a voice asked. Syzygus knew it was Syntyche’s.
“I wrote to him,” Syzygus confessed
“I did, too.” Syzygus’ head snapped up to see who had spoken. It was Cletus, one of the original converts who had first heard the gospel from Paul.
“And so did I,” said another. Three others raised their hands pointing to themselves, signaling that they also had brought the situation to Paul’s attention. Syzygus’ shoulders relaxed quickly as he pleasantly realized he was not carrying this burden alone. Others were bothered by it as well. Syzygus would have much welcome support in the process he was about to lead.
Syzygus took advantage of this revelation. “Do you see what this means?” he spoke to the two women. They both quickly avoided his looking at them and did not speak. “It means,” he continued, “that your arguing and divisiveness affects us all. It isn’t just between you two--it is about us all.” Still they would not meet his look, nor would they speak. “Your feuding defines us all. We are no longer concerned about growing in our faith, but instead whose side we are on. Jesus no longer occupies our thinking. You two, and your gossipy bickering have taken over that spot. I believe, as your leader, given my authority by Paul, that this fight can not be resolved simply by you two alone, but must involve all of us. This is not just your problem; this is our problem.” Syzygus paused to let his words sink in to all those listening.
“And what’s worse,” Syzygus started in again, “is that it took Paul to remind you two, to remind us all, to whom we belong. We belong to the Lord Jesus. We think that Jesus is only part of our worship and our praise, and forget that Jesus is a part of our everyday lives also. And that includes our arguing and bickering and behind the back gossiping. Do you understand that?” Syzygus had rehearsed this speech over and over in his head ever since he got Paul’s letter, but now in the moment, he wasn’t sure it was coming out like he intended.
“Euodia,” he said looking her straight in the face. Then turning his head to the other side of the room, “Syntyche,” he said. “Listen to Paul’s words. ‘You belong to the Lord.’ Do you believe that?” They both nodded, “Yes.” “Do you know what that means?” he asked. No response from either woman.
Then Euodia spoke. “I believe it means we are not our own. I believe it means that we don’t get to do how our inclinations lead, but instead we are to move in the direction that our Lord leads. I believe,” she said slowly, “it means we involve Jesus in everything we do, both the good and the bad. I believe,” and now everyone gathered was repeating after her as if she were leading them in a unison reading, “that what we have as our common unity is Jesus the Lord. I believe, that every time we argue, we are not just tearing the fabric of our relationship with each other, we are tearing Christ. That is what I believe.” And there she stopped talking.
Syzygus allowed the silence to do its work.
When the silence crossed the line and became uneasy, Syzygus cleared his throat and said, “You know what I was remembering this morning? I was remembering the night of your baptism, Syntyche. It was one of the most moving experiences of faith that I have witnessed. I was remembering who was standing by your side the whole time--the same person who first told you about Jesus. As I remembered, I wished that the two of you could be like that again. I wished that that memory of the night of your baptism wouldn’t be smeared by the sight of you both in opposition to each other now. With our dear friend, Paul, I add my weight to his pleading, knowing I can’t force you two to reconcile. I can only beg of you to see clearly in this. For our sake as your brothers and sisters in Christ. For your own sake. And for the sake of the Lord Jesus to whom you both belong and binds you together.”
And then he stopped talking. He simply stood waiting and watching for any movement from either corner of the room.
Philippians 4:1-3
Syzygus was nervous. He paced back and forth, biting his lower lip as he thought about the task that lay before him. In a little less than an hour he would be meeting with a group of believers in his home. Two women would be there. One was Euodia, who had been one of the first converts in Philippi. She had graciously opened her home, so the followers of Christ would have some place to meet for worship and for teaching. Syzygus had admired her courage and leadership from the first. He was the leader of this group of Christians. He’d been put in charge by Paul himself. But Euodia was the backbone of this little congregation.
A problem had arisen, and Syzygus wasn’t sure how he was going to handle it. It was time for him to step forward and take charge of the situation. Syzygus thought through how it had all began, hoping he would find a way to bring the situation under control.
Two months ago, a younger woman was brought to church by Euodia. Syntyche was her name. Euodia had been talking to Syntyche about Jesus and the group of believers who met in her home. It seemed to be an ideal situation--the older, wiser Euodia, gently bringing this young woman into the fold. Even though Syntyche lived on the other side of the city, Euodia was going out of her way to make almost daily contact with her young friend.
Syzygus remembered back to the night that Syntyche gave her life to Christ. There were a number of people who had come to Euodia’s house wanting to find out more about Jesus. Syzygus had preached about how Jesus had changed his life. Many of the two dozen believers shared how Jesus had touched their lives also, and how they had come to believe. Stories of dramatic turn-arounds were shared. Questions about Jesus were asked and answered. Several times that night the group stopped their story-sharing for prayer. The Holy Spirit was moving amongst that little collection of believers and seekers.
Then it happened. Syntyche stood up, weeping and holding herself, and cried out, “I want to have Jesus in my life! I want the salvation of Jesus! I want to be free of my sin and my past. I want to live! I want to live with Jesus!” Euodia quickly moved to her side. Syzygus asked two of the other believers to bring a bucket of water from the well. Euodia was leading the people in prayer, saying a line, and then all would repeat it. The others who were still not sure about these Christians, watched everything that was happening with expressions that were a mixture of fear and wonder.
Those with the water bucket came hurriedly into the home, spilling water as they came. Syzygus asked everyone to step outside, where they all gathered around him, Euodia and Syntyche. Syzygus reached out and held Syntyche by the shoulders and said, “Syntyche, you have expressed your faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord of your life. Do you now wish to be baptized in his name?”
Through a tear streaked face, she shook her head, “Yes.”
Syzygus then said, “Under this water you will be with Jesus in his death. When you rise up from this water, you will rise up with Jesus in his miraculous Resurrection. The person you once were, you will be no longer. The person you are and are to become in Jesus is now who you will be. Sin and the past will no longer be the master of your life. Only Jesus will be your Master. Is this what you want?”
“Yes!” Syntyche burst out. “With all of my heart!”
Syzygus motioned for the bucket of water. Euodia had Syntyche kneel, then backed away a step. Syzygus held the bucket over Syntyche’s head and began to pour. The water cascaded down upon the kneeling and praying form of Syntyche while Syzygus spoke, “Syntyche, I baptize you in the name of Jesus our Savior. Receive the Holy Spirit.” When all the water had been poured out upon her, he reached down his hand, and said, “Arise, Syntyche; arise in Christ our Resurrected Lord.” She stood, a beaming smile upon her face. Euodia led everyone in a responsive hymn, and then they all congratulated Syntyche, welcoming her into the faith and their little body of believers.
Syzygus stopped his pacing, closed his eyes and paused his remembering so he could say a quick prayer of thanks to God for that wonderful night. But then other memories interrupted his praying. Memories of how a rift had grown between those once close women. Soon the two women would be gathering with other believers Syzygus had asked to come and be part of the healing. He began pacing again, wondering how it would go.
Syzygus had asked everyone to come to his home. He had received a letter from Paul, and everyone should come hear it, was the word Syzygus had put out. No one would want to miss hearing Paul’s letter read, including the two feuding women. They had both come, but they were sitting in opposite sides of the room, surrounded by their supporters, as if they were two wrestlers ready to come out of their corners when the gong sounded.
Syzygus knew what was in the letter. He had read it earlier. He had sent word to Paul about the situation between the two women, and had been anxiously awaiting a reply. He held the papyrus scroll in his hands. It was not as much as he had hoped, but he realized the little Paul had written was full of wisdom. Would the women hear it? Better yet, would they listen to it?
The room was silent as Syzygus opened the scroll and began to read Paul’s flawless handwriting. Slowly, Syzygus read his way through the letter, getting nods of approval and thoughtful expressions on the faces of those gathered. Syzygus felt like he had a live bird in his belly and it had grown in size as he neared the place in the letter. He took a deep breath, swallowed the bird down out of his throat, and continued reading:
My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.
I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn’t want his children holding grudges.
And, oh, yes, Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them. These women worked for the Message hand in hand with Clement and me, and with the other veterans—worked as hard as any of us. Remember, their names are also in the Book of Life.
Syzygus stopped reading, but kept staring at the words on the scroll, afraid to look up, and really afraid to look in each of the corners of the room where the women sat.
“How did Paul find out,” a voice asked. Syzygus knew it was Syntyche’s.
“I wrote to him,” Syzygus confessed
“I did, too.” Syzygus’ head snapped up to see who had spoken. It was Cletus, one of the original converts who had first heard the gospel from Paul.
“And so did I,” said another. Three others raised their hands pointing to themselves, signaling that they also had brought the situation to Paul’s attention. Syzygus’ shoulders relaxed quickly as he pleasantly realized he was not carrying this burden alone. Others were bothered by it as well. Syzygus would have much welcome support in the process he was about to lead.
Syzygus took advantage of this revelation. “Do you see what this means?” he spoke to the two women. They both quickly avoided his looking at them and did not speak. “It means,” he continued, “that your arguing and divisiveness affects us all. It isn’t just between you two--it is about us all.” Still they would not meet his look, nor would they speak. “Your feuding defines us all. We are no longer concerned about growing in our faith, but instead whose side we are on. Jesus no longer occupies our thinking. You two, and your gossipy bickering have taken over that spot. I believe, as your leader, given my authority by Paul, that this fight can not be resolved simply by you two alone, but must involve all of us. This is not just your problem; this is our problem.” Syzygus paused to let his words sink in to all those listening.
“And what’s worse,” Syzygus started in again, “is that it took Paul to remind you two, to remind us all, to whom we belong. We belong to the Lord Jesus. We think that Jesus is only part of our worship and our praise, and forget that Jesus is a part of our everyday lives also. And that includes our arguing and bickering and behind the back gossiping. Do you understand that?” Syzygus had rehearsed this speech over and over in his head ever since he got Paul’s letter, but now in the moment, he wasn’t sure it was coming out like he intended.
“Euodia,” he said looking her straight in the face. Then turning his head to the other side of the room, “Syntyche,” he said. “Listen to Paul’s words. ‘You belong to the Lord.’ Do you believe that?” They both nodded, “Yes.” “Do you know what that means?” he asked. No response from either woman.
Then Euodia spoke. “I believe it means we are not our own. I believe it means that we don’t get to do how our inclinations lead, but instead we are to move in the direction that our Lord leads. I believe,” she said slowly, “it means we involve Jesus in everything we do, both the good and the bad. I believe,” and now everyone gathered was repeating after her as if she were leading them in a unison reading, “that what we have as our common unity is Jesus the Lord. I believe, that every time we argue, we are not just tearing the fabric of our relationship with each other, we are tearing Christ. That is what I believe.” And there she stopped talking.
Syzygus allowed the silence to do its work.
When the silence crossed the line and became uneasy, Syzygus cleared his throat and said, “You know what I was remembering this morning? I was remembering the night of your baptism, Syntyche. It was one of the most moving experiences of faith that I have witnessed. I was remembering who was standing by your side the whole time--the same person who first told you about Jesus. As I remembered, I wished that the two of you could be like that again. I wished that that memory of the night of your baptism wouldn’t be smeared by the sight of you both in opposition to each other now. With our dear friend, Paul, I add my weight to his pleading, knowing I can’t force you two to reconcile. I can only beg of you to see clearly in this. For our sake as your brothers and sisters in Christ. For your own sake. And for the sake of the Lord Jesus to whom you both belong and binds you together.”
And then he stopped talking. He simply stood waiting and watching for any movement from either corner of the room.
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