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.