This Is Jesus, King of the Jews"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Stonework To Stone-Hard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This little guy has high expectations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The One Thing

"The One Thing"
Job 19:13-22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mirrors

"Mirrors"
Luke 19:1-10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honest To God

"Honest To God"
Luke 18:9-14

Muhammad Ali, when in the prime of his boxing career got on an airplane.  He was instructed by the stewardess to buckle his seat belt.  “Superman don’t need no seatbelt,” Ali told her.
“Superman don’t need no airplane, neither,” the stewardess said back.  Ali buckled his seatbelt.

Our ego is an amazing part of us.  It is the psychological and emotional part of us that meets the world head on.  It’s the part of us that has to make its way in the world as it is.

I've been reading a lot lately about what are called ego defense mechanisms.  They are tactics we use to defend our fragile egos.  If we feel we are being attacked, personally, and we don't want to hear what the other person is telling us; or, what they are telling us is hitting home and it's painful, then we launch into an ego defense position.  We defend ourselves.  We try to keep ourselves from feeling what we are feeling.  So there's this part of our psyche that steps in and puts a buffer between our self--our ego--and that which is trying to cause our ego pain.

Ego defense mechanisms have been defined as the lies we tell ourselves to shield or protect ourselves from pain.  Maybe we've heard messages like, "You are worthless."  Or, "You will never amount to anything."  Or, "You are unloveable."  Those are very painful words to hear, time and time again.  Some people give in, and live into those kinds of words.  They believe what they're told and become what others say they are.  Other people recoil at such words.  They launch back at the speaker of such words, refusing to feel the sting those words carry.  That is partly what our ego defense mechanism does.  So in some ways, it's a healthy mechanism.

But it can be a detrimental tactic if we protect ourselves from painful words spoken that we might need to hear.  Like if your spouse says something like, "You aren't as loving towards me as you used to be."  Your first reaction--your FIRST reaction--on some level is to hear those words and feel the sting of their truth.  But rather than embracing that pain, and accepting the truth of that statement, your second reaction would be to go into ego defense mode.  By trying to rebut those words, you really aren't trying to convince your spouse of your loving ways.  You're trying to convince yourself and protect yourself from a painful truth about yourself.  Our egos don't like to take in that there just might be something wrong with us, and that we aren't the great person we are trying to project to the world.

Truth hurts.  Truth causes pain.  Ego defense is a protection against the truth, but mostly against the pain of the truth.

(Does that make sense?)

OK.  Besides ego defense, there is ego inflation.  Ego inflation is a way of building ourselves up in the face of low self-esteem and insecurity.  Ego inflation is defined as the lies we tell ourselves to shield or protect ourselves from our sense of inadequacy.

A Texas man, bragging about the bigness of everything in Texas, was surprised when a Kansan agreed with him.  The man from Kansas said, "Yes, that's right, everything is big in Texas.  Why, I once knew a Texan who was so big they couldn't find a coffin big enough to bury him in when he died."
"So, what did they do?" asked the Texan.
"Well," said the Kansan, "they just let the air out of him, and buried him in a shoe box."

That's what ego inflation does.  It's when a person feels as big as a shoebox, but is always puffing themselves up in front of others, so they can appear bigger, better, more wonderful than they really feel.  Narcissists actually fit in this category.  Narcissists actually have a really low self image, and over-compensate with a lot of self-inflation.

There was a well-known Christian businessman who was visiting a church.  He was asked to say a few words, in terms of witness, to the congregation.  Unfortunately, the man got carried away and went on to tell the congregation about all the wonderful things he had done for the Lord:  "I have a large house, a fine family, a successful business, and a great reputation.  I have enough money to do whatever I want.  I'm able to support a number of Christian ministries very generously.  There are many organizations that want me on their boards.  I have great health and almost unlimited opportunities.  I can't think of anything else that God could give me in this life."
At that point a voice from the back shouted, "How about a good dose of humility?"

That's what we're looking at in Jesus' parable about the tax man and the Pharisee.  It's about prayer, in a round about way.  The parable about the widow and judge that we looked at last week was also about prayer.  About hanging in there in the long haul with prayer and God.  As we ended up last week, we saw that the parable was not just about prayer, but about a dogged faith in God that never gives up on God.

This next parable, that we're looking at this morning uses prayer as a vehicle to get at another important matter concerning we humans.  Note the opening line, like last week’s parable, telling us the purpose of the parable, even before the story is told:  "Jesus told this next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people."  Last weeks parable was directed to the disciples.  This weeks parable has an entirely different audience.  Or does it?  Could it still be the disciples?  Or the Pharisees?  Or anyone in the crowd that day?  Even us.

The opening statement doesn't say anything about prayer, or that what Jesus is about to say has anything to do with prayer.  But prayer figures in, as we shall see, as we get to the heart of this parable.

What this parable is about, as Luke has set it up for us, is facing the truth about ourselves.  Stripped of our ego defenses and our ego inflation, who are we?  Because a lot of what's behind ego defenses and ego inflations is fear--fear that others will see us for who and what we really are.  (As if they can't see that already.)

What happens when we are willing to loosen our grip on our defenses and inflations?   We defend and inflate ourselves in so many ways, both little and large, we don't even see it anymore.  How can we see, then?  And once seeing, embrace what we see?  Let go, and be seen.  Let go, and be real about who and what we are.  Let go, and not fearfully hide behind defenses and inflations, even if what will be seen isn’t that great.

Three ladies picked up their menus at the restaurant.  Each put on a pair of glasses.  "Of course, I really need mine only for close reading," said the first.
"I only wear mine when the light is poor," explained the second.
The third woman was much franker.  "I rarely wear mine," she said, "except when I want to see."

That's what we need to decide.  When are we going to put on the "glasses" Christ is offering in this parable, and put them on so we can really see, all the time, the truth about ourselves?

So, the Pharisee.  Ego defense or ego inflation?

First, let's look at his posture.  He stood.  Let's look at some others who approached God in prayer and how they reacted.  Moses, at the burning bush, covered his face.  Ezekiel, praying in personal grief before God, fell on his face.  In Isaiah's vision of the throne of God, the flying creatures with six wings covered their faces with two of the wings so they wouldn't look at God.  And Isaiah fell on his face.  When he was praying for Jonathan, David bowed while he prayed.

In all these instances people either took a posture of respect or deference or fear or grief before God.  But in the Pharisee's prayer there is no posture showing any of those qualities before God.

In a conversation I had with Eugene Peterson one time, he was telling me about a civic meeting he attended.  They noticed he was there, and decided with a minister present, they should start the meeting with prayer.  The one in charge said, "Say a little prayer, Pastor."
Eugene, who can be fairly fiery, responded in his gravely voice to the man, "There are no little prayers.  In prayer we are ushered into the very presence of God, which is a fearful thing, as if we were standing in the very presence of lion."  And I think Eugene said he refused to pray, because the man had no idea what prayer was.

Our posture needs to reflect what we believe to be true about God.  The Pharisee's posture betrayed what he thought about God.  The Pharisee is doing a lot of ego inflation, standing before God, showing no deference or respect towards God.

Jesus' parable goes on to say that the Pharisee prayed "to himself."  He didn't pray to God.  The Pharisee's posture matched his words.

When we're doing a lot of ego defending, or ego inflating, who are we talking to, really?  We may think we're trying to make our case before someone else, either defending or inflating.  We may assume it's the other person we're trying to convince.  But in reality, we're talking to ourselves, aren't we?  We're trying to make our case to ourselves, and make our selves believe it.

Bill Moyers was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary.  Moyers was a Baptist minister at one point in his career.  So he was asked by President Johnson to say a prayer at a dinner.  Moyers began praying quietly.  President Johnson became irritated and interrupted Moyers, saying, "Pray louder!"
Moyers looked up and replied, "Sorry, Mr. President, but I wasn't addressing you."

We need to remember who it is we're addressing when we're locking ourselves into our ego defensiveness and our ego inflations.  When it comes down to it, it certainly isn't others, and it certainly isn't even God.  It is ourselves we are trying to convince.  Thus, the Pharisee, praying to himself.

The other character in this parable is the tax collector.  A guy who was a Jew, but had sold out to the Roman government, taking the job of collecting taxes from his own people for the Romans.  Hated turn coat.  Spit on.  Despised.

He's there in the temple praying as well.  Ego defending or ego inflating?

Check out his posture and words.  He's sitting in a corner.  Covering his face.  Not even feeling worthy to look up toward heaven.  If he wanted to look up to heaven, then what did his posture say about where he was directing his prayer?  Not to himself, but to God.  His is a prayer and posture of deference and fear and grief before God.

He simply says, "God, give mercy.  Forgive me, a sinner."  That's what most translations have.  The CEV has the tax collector say, "God, have pity on me! I am such a sinner."  That is closer to it.  What the tax man literally says is, "God have pity on me, the sinner."  That is, not just one sinner among many, but at the head of the class of all sinners.

No ego defense.  No ego inflation.  Just pure self confrontation with the reality of who and what he is before God.  No comparison with others, which is the Pharisee's tactic of self inflation.

There was a man who commuted to work on the train every day.  On one part of the trip, going through the countryside, there was a farmhouse.  The farmhouse, in it's whitewashed exterior seemed almost to glow.  But that first Winter of the man's commuting, it had snowed.  He looked out the window as the train passed the farmhouse.  This time the farmhouse looked drab, and dirty, and almost gray.  It looked that way, because he could compare it to the purity and whiteness of the fallen snow.

When we compare ourselves to ourselves (or to others) we get a very different picture than when we compare ourselves to the amazing purity and person of God.

And that's where prayer enters into this parable.  Because the parable isn't about prayer.  It's about honesty with ourselves.  It's about giving up the posturing.  It's about confronting all the ego defenses we spew out, and the ego magnifications we inflict upon others and ourselves.

The only way to confront ourselves with our selves, according to Jesus, is by prayer.  It was the tax collector who “was pleasing to God,” said Jesus.  This is one of the qualities of prayer that people least understand.  Prayer isn’t something we speak to others or to ourselves.  Prayer is a face-off with God and with the self.  Prayer isn’t an oration; it’s a confrontation.  As Eugene Peterson said, “There are no small prayers.”  As the tax collector found out, prayer is the only thing that can cut through and counteract all the work we do at ego defense systems and ego inflations.  Prayer is the only way through all that to the truth about who and what we are—and therefore into the pleasing presence of God.

Jesus said at the end of this parable, “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face; but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”  Humility, Jesus humility, radical humility, is to be in prayer, to strip ourselves naked of all our self-delusional language before God, and thereby experience God’s true and “pleasing” mercy.

Why Is Prayer So Frustrating?

"Why Is Prayer So Frustrating?"
Luke 18:1-8

       According to repetitive Newsweek polls, somewhere between 80-90% of us pray at least weekly.  According to those same polls, 85% of us who pray say their prayers are unanswered.  And 13% of that 85% have stated that they have lost faith because of unanswered prayers.  Even though they have lost faith, I wonder if the 13% still make ventures into praying every now and then, just in case.  The rest of us keep on praying.  Even in the face of God’s silence, inactivity, or apparent avoidance.

        The great Christian, C.S. Lewis, once wrote that when his mother died, he lamented that his prayers had failed.  His grief had taken him to a dark night of the soul.  He wrote, “My praying didn’t work, but I was used to things not working, and I thought no more about it.”

        So why do we do it?  Why do we keep on praying?  Is it like playing the roulette wheel?  Our number’s bound to come up some time?  Or is it like the slot machines?  The one arm bandits, as they are called, are fixed so that you win just enough times to keep playing.  Psychologically, we don’t like games where we win too much (they seem too easy and not enough of a challenge).  Or we don’t like games we lose all the time (it seems pointless to play something you never win).  So, knowing that, casino owners have the odds set on the slot machines so that you win, but not very much.  Then it will seem like enough of a challenge for you to keep putting your quarters in, or dollars, (or in Rex's case, the offering plate money) or whatever.  Is that what prayer is like?  Is God like the casino owners, letting us have something we pray for once in a while to keep us playing the praying game?

        That’s where the rub is for many who pray and keep praying.  Many, including myself, have frustrations with prayer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with prayer itself.  It has to do with our free God who chooses to act or not act on our prayers.

        If it were about praying itself, then we would keep going, and when one technique doesn’t work we try another.  Maybe instead of praying on your knees, you could pray laying face down; or standing up with arms extended looking heavenward.  If one position isn’t working, try another.  Or maybe we aren’t saying the right words.  Some try praying scripted prayers like the Serenity Prayer, or the Lord’s Prayer.  Or, they try silent meditation with no words--just sitting quietly trying to rid your mind of all words so that God will somehow magically enter an empty mind.  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, though, that is putting technique above substance.

        So, what if the lack of response by God has nothing to do with all the different techniques we try?  What if it has to do with God and how God freely chooses to respond or not?  Certainly, if God is free to be God however God wishes, then God is free to answer our prayers.  Or not answer them.

        A God with that kind of freedom bugs us.  Come on.  It does, doesn’t it?  We make these huge assumptions about how God is supposed to be.  God is supposed to be attentive.  Answering.  At our beck and call.  Caring.  Responsive.  Intimately involved with our concerns.  A father who is ready to take care of the needs of we, God’s children.  That’s what we think, isn’t it?  That’s what we want to believe.  Because it is all about us, isn't it?  That's what we assume about God.  But if God is free to be God however God wishes, then God is free to choose to answer, or not answer our prayers.  We don’t like God to have that kind of freedom.  Especially as that freedom relates to our praying.

        And let's face it.  We also think we deserve to be listened to by God, responded to by God, don't we?  If there are no immediate answers forthcoming to our prayers, we get a little silently miffed at God, because we thought we deserved better treatment than that.  After all, we're good people.

        That’s what this parable of Jesus about the widow and the crass judge is all about.  In a rare turn about, Jesus tells the disciples (because it is told to them) what the parable is about before he even speaks the parable.

        Let’s look at what a few translations do with Jesus’ pre-parable explanation:

                “...pray consistently and never quit.”  EHP
                “...they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”  RSV, NEB
                “...should always pray and never become discouraged.”  TEV
                “...always pray and not give up.”  NIV
                “...always to pray, and not faint.”  KJV

        No matter which of these you choose, all of them assume, by their statements in the negative, that prayer can be greatly frustrating.  All these statements assume that when you pray you will be tempted to quit, lose heart, become discouraged, give up, or faint.  And remember this is Jesus talking.  Jesus realizes that there is the temptation--because prayer seems sometimes like talking with a brick wall--the temptation is to just stop praying.

        Remember, as I mentioned a moment ago, this parable is told to the disciples.  What would the significance of that be?  When we look back at Luke 11, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, “...just as John taught his disciples.”  The disciples are clearly interested in and fascinated by Jesus’ praying habits.

        So is Jesus’ parable here, for the disciples, an expression of what Jesus himself experienced in prayer:  that sometimes it takes God a long time to attend to our prayers, even if you’re the Savior?    Like when Jesus was on the cross and prayed, "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" (Mark 15)

        Prayer is basically talking with God.  The question then is, “Why does talking with God create the temptation to stop talking with God?”  What is it about talking with God that makes the praying person want to quit/lose heart/become discouraged/give up/faint?

        It may baffle us to wonder why Jesus, God’s Son, is telling the disciples that this loving, caring, Father God is hard to talk to.  So hard, that you will be tempted to hang up and walk away from your connection with God.  Why talk to someone--especially God--if you get a recorded message or are put on hold for a long, long time.  Imagine calling the Crisis Hot Line and being put on hold.  Or you keep calling God and it rings and rings--you know God is there--but your call isn’t picked up?

        In the cartoon Beetle Bailey, the General has just set his mess tray down on the table, looks at it, and says grace:  “Oh, Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.  Amen.”
        He looks again at the tray and then looks up to heaven and says, “I guess I’m not getting through, am I?”

        That’s what we wonder, isn’t it?  Am I getting through?  When we feel we aren’t (which is apparently about 85% of the time) why do we keep at it?  Am I asking too many questions?  Sounding too much like a skeptic?  Making you feel a little uncomfortable?

        Let’s look more closely at the parable.  First, there is the widow.  A widow, in middle eastern culture is a woman with no rights.  The only rights she has are those she gains through her husband.  Since her husband has died, she is powerless.  Unless her deceased husband had a brother, then he's supposed to take care of her.  Since she is still a widow, her husband evidently didn't have any brothers.  A widow is the symbol of all those dispossessed people who need to be defended.

        Thus her plea to the judge:  “My rights are being violated.  Protect me!”  Women, particularly widows, were easy prey for being taken advantage of.  Her opponent was probably a family member, a male, who was trying to rob her of all her possessions that she gained from her late husband.

        And then there is the judge.  He’s definitely not a people person.  He’s definitely not a religious person.  He has independently decided that he could hear whatever cases he wanted, which goes against the social norms for a judge.  What’s ironic is that even though the judge shows no respect for people or God, he certainly shows a healthy respect for the widow’s anger and persistence.  His phrase about being accosted by the widow is literally, “She will beat me under the eye.”

        So the powerless widow is pitted against the crass and powerful judge in this parable.  She comes at the judge time after time after time after time.  It has gotten to the point where the widow has given up on a feminine, deferential tactic.  Now she is in all out annoyance mode.  One might be tempted to even use the “b” word in describing her attack mode on the insensitive and unjust judge.  That’s what she’s been reduced to, in order to get this judge’s attention.

        Remember, this is a parable about prayer.  And Jesus contrasts God to the judge.  In contrast to the judge, Jesus says God listens and is attentive to the injustice being pressed upon people.  But how long do the people have to pray before God finally responds?  Jesus says that God, in contrast to the judge, will not drag his feet.

        In Exodus 2, God says he has heard the cries of his people under the oppression of the Egyptians.  The cities and the monuments being built at the time the Hebrew people were slaves, took about 80 years.  How many of those 80 years did the Hebrew people cry out under their oppressive conditions?

        In Genesis 17-21, Abraham and Sarah prayed their whole married life for a child.  Having a child was part of God’s initial promise to Abraham that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore.  But it wasn’t until Abraham was 100 years old that that promised son was finally born, and their prayers were answered.

        In 1 Samuel 1, there is the story of the birth of Samuel who would eventually become a prophet.  Elkanah and his wife Hannah were unable to have children.  They prayed for years to have a child.  Finally, in a tearful prayer in the temple, God pays attention to Elkanah’s tearful depression, and answers her prayer.

        In the Psalms (69:3; 73:11-14; 83:1-2; 40:1) waiting on God seems to be a common theme.  Many psalmists question the whereabouts of God who seems, “out to lunch,” not listening, distant, and distracted.  Still they pray on.

        In the final book of the Bible, Revelation, the martyrs, who are under the altar of God, are wondering out loud how long God would wait before their murders were avenged (Revelation 6:10).

        These don’t sound like speedy resolutions to people’s prayers.  If our frustrations with prayer really don’t have to do with prayer itself, but with God, then we need to get a clear picture of God from the parable and the other scripture stories I’ve highlighted.

        First, it is apparent that God does care very much for people.  Notice, in the parable and in the other stories, the nice mix between individuals and groups of people that God is attentive too.  God is paying attention.

        The different human circumstances that God responds to are also all over the map in these stories and in this parable.  God understands what we have to deal with in life, whether it be personal matters, or larger issues of justice.  God is moved by a wide range of human conditions and does respond.

        And God seems to honor those who cry out for help consistently and continually.  At a time in my own life, I cried out to God for four years out of a heart of need and direction.  My prayers have run the gamut of human emotion from tears, to depression, to anger, to anxiety, to hopefulness, to depression again; even to the point of nearly giving up on praying and giving up on God.  It appeared that those who were making my life difficult were stronger and more powerful than God.  There have been others who prayed for me and with me, especially when I was at my lowest point of despair.  For four years.

        Then everything shifted.  Quickly and substantially.  People of power took up my plight.  Hearts that were stubbornly set against me were suddenly warmed and forgiving.  Prayers were answered, and God acted.

        That brings us to what the parable teaches about the person who prays.  God chooses to listen to those who don’t quit praying.  No matter what.  The question is, “Don’t quit what?”  Don’t quit making your request?  Or, don’t quit trying to connect with God?  Either, or both, I think is the answer to the question.

        And, the other thing the praying person needs is patience.  God seems to honor long-standing patience.  I once saw a sign in a restaurant that read, “No matter how long our service takes, it’s fast.”  That’s the kind of patience God responds to--a person who prays and prays and is willing to let God be God, no matter how long God takes to answer the prayer.

        At the end of the parable in Jesus’ explanation, he makes a summary comment:  “But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?”  Faith is really what the parable and prayer are all about.  And faith is defined as something that happens as people persist for God.  Do we have persistent faith in God, or not?  That’s the main point of the parable.

        George Buttrick, the great Bible commentator, once wrote, “Home is dearer when the journey is long.”  That’s what faith, persistent, praying faith, is all about, according to Jesus in this parable.  We all want to get home.  We all want our prayers to be attended to.  We all want to know that we’ve connected with God.  Sometimes the journey is long.  There are no guarantees about how long it will take.  But when we get home, when we connect, when our prayers are attended to and answered, that home is so much dearer.

        So keep praying.  Don’t stop.  Even when prayer and God seem to be frustrating.

If...Then...

"If...Then..."
Matthew 17:20


       Here’s a couple of fun facts:
Fun fact #1:  Your body is about 80% water.  So I suppose you could take 80% of your weight and that’s how much water you’re lugging around.  For me, that’s 208 pounds of water!

Fun fact #2:   75% of your brain is water.  So, when they say we only use 25% of our brain, that’s probably true, since the rest is water!

        Here’s another fact.  I’m not sure if it’s fun or not.  The moon has an effect on water, particularly through the tides.

        If you put all these facts together you have what people, for years, called lunacy.  People thought that the phases of the moon had an effect on we human beings, being as much water as we are, just like the moon does on the tides of the oceans.  As the phases of the moon make the ebb and flow of tides, so also in people’s personality.  Realign the water content in your body, especially your brain, and you have lunacy.  Lunatics.  Crazy people.  Insanity, or at least occasional insanity depending on the phase of the moon.

        Why am I telling you all this, you may be asking?  (Or, if you weren’t, you are now.)  There’s a story that happens right before Jesus utters this statement that ??? read about faith.  It’s a story of a distraught father who has a challenging son.  In the King James Version of the Bible, the father calls his son a “lunatic.”  In the Greek, in which the New Testament is written, the word literally means, “moonstruck.”  The father has a “moonstruck” son.  The father believes the moon has taken over his son, throwing the boy into fires trying to burn him to death.  Or into water, trying to drown him.

        Now modern science, as god-like as modern science has become, has debunked this idea of lunacy.  It is now known beyond a moon shadow of a doubt that the moon and it’s phases does not affect human behavior.  (Tell that to an ovulating woman.)  Or, tell that to the distraught father in the story.  He may not care.  He just wants his son fixed.

        Jesus was away, up on the Mount of Transfiguration, doing a show-and-tell for Peter, James, and John.  So the distraught father, who has brought his son to get fixed by Jesus, must first deal with the nine disciples left behind.

        The only thing the story tells us is that the other nine couldn’t get the job done.  The kid’s lunacy was locked in tight.  But imagine what that must have looked like.  That’s the part of the story we’re not told.  That’s the part of the story that I’m interested in.  The disciples have been given power over the evil spirits (or in this case, the lunar spirits) by Jesus.  So, they give it a go with the lunatic kid.  Why not?  They’ve done it before.

        Andrew would have brought the father and son to the other disciples.  That’s his role.  He brings people.  So imagine Andrew bringing the father and son, to Philip, say, and says, “Hey, Philip, I’d like you to meet Grippo and his son Blippo.  Blippo is a bit, well, you know, (circle finger around an ear).”
        “He’s a flamin’ lunatic!” the father interjects.  “Do something!”
        “Uh, sure,” says Philip.  “Let’s see what we can do.”  He looks at the boy, who’s partially on fire, and says, “Out of him, you no-good spirit.”  Nothing happens.  “That’s odd,” Philip says to himself.

        “Let me try,” Bartholomew says, pushing Philip aside.  “With this kind, I find it works best if you really shout at ‘em.”  Bartholomew leans back and lets go a roar, “EVIL SPIRIT!!  BE GONE!!”

        One of the other disciples poured water on the kids flaming pant leg, but still the kid is rolling around, foaming at the mouth.  All of Bartholomew’s roaring had not one twit of success.  By this time, quite a crowd had gathered to watch the show.  Matthew, the ex-tax collector, and Judas set up a table to sell tickets.

        “You try,” the father pointed to Thomas.
        “Not me,” said Thomas.  “I’m a bit of a skeptic.  I don’t believe in all this hocus pocus lunacy stuff.  Hard physical science is what I’m about.  I say let’s get some leeches and bleed the kid a little.  That’ll fix him.”

        Simon the Zealot decided to give it a try.  He grabbed a stick from a shepherd boy in the crowd and started waling on the moonstruck kid.  “This is how you have to do it with this kind,” Simon said through grinding teeth.  “You gotta beat the hell out of them.”

        Simon the Zealot continued with his beat-down when, with a scary quickness, the lunatic boy grabbed the stick from Simon’s hands, broke it easily in two pieces and threw them over the heads of the crowd and out of sight.  The boy then turned towards Simon, and with a look of evil pleasure, said, “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”  Simon the Zealot slowly backed away.

        “This is a tough one,” Thaddeus said.  “We need to join forces against it.  Simon (the other one), you and Andrew, join me.  We’ll lay hands on him and pray the lunacy out of him.”  The three men approached Blippo warily.  They kneeled around him, gently laying hands on some part of Blippo’s body and started praying.  “O Lord, God, All-Powerful…”  Blippo’s eyes wildly popped open and he started thrashing.  He got Andrew with an upper cut to the jaw, Simon got kicked between the legs making him squeal a few octaves higher than normal, and Thaddeus took a kick in the solar plexus, making him suck air while he rolled on the ground.

        “Do something!” the father was shouting.  But all the disciples were backing away from this one.  They had had enough.  It was clear whatever they tried wasn’t working.  And they weren’t sure why.

        Fortunately Jesus showed up.  Matthew and Judas quickly shut their ticket sales table down, and shooed the people away.  Grippo says, “It’s my son, Lord.  Your disciples tried, but…”  Jesus held up a hand for Grippo to stop talking, as Jesus looked around at his bruised and dirty disciples.  Jesus just shook his head.  “I want to say, ‘I don’t believe it,’” Jesus said, “but I just can’t.”

        Blippo, with his hair still smoking in places, stood, staring with a deer-in-the-headlights expression at Jesus.  Jesus simply said, “Be gone!”  Blippo collapsed to the ground, like all the water had been let out of him.  A few moments later, Blippo moaned his first sane moan in a long time.  Grippo started to cry.  And many in the crowd with him.

        That’s when the disciples asked Jesus their question, “How come we couldn’t get it done?  How come we couldn’t throw out the lunatic spirit?”
        Jesus replied something like, “What a bunch of guys with no sense of God.  When will you take God seriously?"
        "Huh?" a couple of them said with a shrug of the shoulders.
        "If you had faith, like this much, there is nothing that could stand in your way," said Jesus.   "Especially demons."
        "Wait a minute," said Simon. "We've got faith."
        "Do you have any idea what that means, Simon?" Jesus said.  "Bartholomew?  Philip?  Andrew?"  They all looked at their sandals, pushing dirt back and forth.

        Jesus continued.  "The reason you couldn't throw out that demon was because you're still hung up on thinking faith is about technique rather than substance.  You keep assuming if you did faith the right way, said the right words, acted in a certain way, organized yourself along a certain direction, had all your flow charts and graphs filled out, waved a magic wand--who knows what else--that that's what it means to take God seriously.  You couldn't be more mistaken."
        Jesus looked in their faces.  He could tell he was shooting way over their heads.  This was the most basic and important teaching he was trying to get clear to them, and they weren't getting it.
        "Look," said Jesus, "that father came to you looking for substance.  That means he was looking for someone with an authentic connection to God, someone who knew God.  He was afraid.  He was confused.  It wasn't just about his son and the son's lunacy.  The father was lost as well.  He had tried all the techniques to help his son.  They had all failed. Because they're techniques.  Not power.  Not of God.  You all just threw a bunch more techniques at him and failed.  You not only failed to heal the son; you failed to heal the father--to connect him with that which is of God.  That's what faith is all about."
        Jesus paused to see if he was making a connection with the bewildered disciples.

        "Here's another way to look at it.  See that mountain that Peter, James and John and I had just climbed?"  They all turned and looked at the gnarled mountain, all thinking they were glad they didn't have to climb up there.  "What's on the other side of that mountain?" Jesus asked.  "Can you see what's directly on the other side of it?"
        "Absolutely not," said Andrew.  They were all shaking their heads no.
        "That's exactly the view of the father with his moonstruck son.  His son was this mountain.  His experience with charlatans who promised to heal his son and failed, is this mountain.  His utter fatigue is this mountain.  His desire to just give up is this mountain.  All of his problems, that started out small, once mole hills, are now this mountain.  Everything that is keeping him from seeing any further than the next step in front of him, is this mountain.  All the pains he's experienced, the one's he created and the one's people piled upon him, are this mountain.  All his failures are this mountain.  And he can't see anything that might be beyond it."
        Jesus paused while the disciples stared at the mountain in front of them.
        Then he continued, "But..IF you have faith, IF you have even a small connection with a sense of God, IF you're connected to even a drop of the power of God, IF you take God seriously, THEN you could say to these mountains in all their forms, 'Move!' and they would move.  It doesn't have anything to do with technique.  It has everything to do with God.  That's what that father was looking for; it's what anyone who comes to us is looking for:  Faith!  Connection with God!  Something real!  The power of God to move the mountains that challenge them, the mountains they have made themselves, the mountains that are barriers which are keeping them from becoming the people they need to be, the mountains that form obstacles that look insurmountable."
        Jesus paused.
        "That's what faith is all about.  If you have it, then you move mountains."

        They all stood there for a while looking at the mountain.  Jesus could tell the disciples were finally getting it.



        So that’s how it really went that day.  Except one part.  Jesus turned toward Judas and Matthew the ex-tax collector, and went (hand out, palm up, fingers motioning).  Judas and Matthew hung their heads like guilty dogs, untied their money bags and emptied all the coins from the days take into Jesus’ cupped hands.  Jesus didn’t even look at the men.  He just shook his head, walked over to where the beggars row was, threw the coins high into the air, and let money rain down on the crippled, the blind, and the sick.

        Then Jesus walked back through the disciples and said, “Let’s go.”