Experiencing God In The Marketplace

"Experiencing God In The Marketplace"
Matthew 9:36--10:4

I wondered about something this week that I've never wondered about before in all my years of ministry.  What I wondered about was why Jesus chose the disciples he did.  Jesus chose the earlier disciples:  Peter, James, John, Andrew.  Andrew brought a couple of the others.  But the rest of the 12 we don't know if Jesus chose them or if they were just tag-alongs.

Most of the time, if a Rabbi became popular, young men would follow the Rabbi around hoping he would choose them to be a disciple.  And most of those who hung around a Rabbi, in order to become a disciple, did so because they, themselves, wanted to become a Rabbi some day.  But Jesus was proactive, by going out and purposively looking for specific kinds of men.

Most of the 12 were fishermen: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Phillip.  Matthew was a customs tax officer, working for the Romans.  Simon was a Zealot, who was trying to overthrow the Romans.  Conversations between Simon and Matthew must have been interesting.  I would have liked to have heard some of those.

But the others in the group of disciples--it's just not known what their backgrounds were in terms of their occupation.  Or if Jesus sought them specifically, like the others.  Or if they just came up to Jesus and asked if they could sign up.

Maybe this isn't that interesting of a question for you, why Jesus chose the 12 men he did.  But I wonder about what Jesus' choices of disciples means in terms of the kind of things he wanted to accomplish during his time on this earth.    Why these 12 in light of Jesus' ministry goals?  What was Jesus going to be able to accomplish with these 12 particular men that he wouldn't be able to do with 12 other kinds of men?

I'm going to do some surmising here.  I'm not sure why Jesus chose the disciples he chose.  I don't think anyone else knows either.   So I'm going to make some guesses.  Just wanted you to know they are my conjectures, and nothing else.

It appears that Jesus wanted working people rather than people who were on some religious fast track.  Because Jesus chose people who were very familiar with the marketplace, there was something about these down-to-earth people that was strategic to Jesus' ministry.

Jesus didn't chose priests sons, or church acolytes.  Jesus didn't choose choir boys.  It's not even known if the men he did choose had a good church background, or went to Sunday School.  It's clear by all the instruction Jesus had to give the disciples, and the constant inability of the disciples to "get it", that they weren't religiously indoctrinated as kids very well.  But Jesus chose them nonetheless.

I want to tie in here a parable that Jesus told his disciples that has always bothered me.  It's about the shrewd manager, in Luke 16.  A rich man finds out that one of his managers has been running up huge personal debts on the company credit card, and has been mismanaging the master's accounts.  The manager needs to find a way, so that when he's finally out on his ear, he'll have a place to stay.  So he tries to get in good with those who owe his master, by lowering each of their debts significantly.

It sounds crooked and self-serving of the manager.  And it is.  But here's the surprise and the part that has always bothered me.  Jesus then says to the disciples,
The master praised the crooked manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way... (Luke 16:8)

Doesn't that sound kind of un-Jesusy to you?  But remember who Jesus' audience is for this parable--the disciples.  These fishermen, tax collecting, rebel disciples.  These non-religious types who work hard and play hard.

Based on the parable, and Jesus' choice of these 12, is that why he chose these men?  He wanted "streetwise people," men who knew how to look after themselves, who knew how to fly by the seat of their pants, and survive by their wits.  Jesus wanted people who were comfortable in the marketplace.  These fishermen disciples, for example, not only knew how to catch fish, sail a boat, and mend nets.  They knew how to market their fish, haggle the prices with people, talk the lingo, how to be shrewd and when to be soft. How to deal with everyday people as everyday people.  To be an "average Joe."

That's what it appears Jesus is looking for in a disciple.  Not an overly religious person who is socially awkward and unable to carry on a common conversation with regular people unless it had to do with theology.  Jesus wants marketplace men and women, not holy temple types.

I think there are at least four qualities of marketplace disciples.  Again, I'm not sure if these are the qualities that Jesus was, and is, looking for in disciples.  But try them on and see how they feel.

First, a marketplace disciple is willing to keep their eyes open in order to see a connection between their daily work and it's place in a wider sense of purpose.  If your vision is only allowing you to see a part of the horizon of your work--like blinders on a horse that only allows the animal to see a small piece of straight ahead--you will miss the larger picture of how what you are doing fits in with a larger picture.

With blinders on, and not seeing a larger view of what your work is in the whole of God's marketplace, you can quickly succumb to a feeling of bitterness, a sense of futility, and if nothing else, sheer boredom about what you are doing.  When the bigger picture is missing, we tend to resent work a lot more than we enjoy it.  If we allow God to open up our blinders and see more of God's horizon--more of God's larger picture--we will see how our part of that horizon fits with the larger wonder of God's panoramic work.

I wonder, if you see your place in the marketplace as futile and boring, causing an inner bitterness, that maybe God isn't behind those feelings, trying to urge you on to get you to find a better way to fit what you're doing with God's larger purposes.  When we are able to fit our work, out there, in the marketplace within God's larger purposes, that work feels productive, creative, stimulating.

So, being a marketplace disciple means seeing what you are doing out there in that marketplace and how it fits in with God's wider purpose.

The second characteristic of a marketplace disciple is to understand the inner effort that being in the marketplace for God will take.

What I mean by that is understanding that there is an inner and outer dimension to everything we do in life.  The outer dimension is what people see of us--how we work, how we act, what we say, our behavior, the way we exhibit our habits--those kinds of things.

The inner dimension is the spirit of a person, their core beliefs, their perspective on life, their emotional selves, their inner thought processes, their passions.

In order to find not just satisfaction, but a deep inner happiness as a marketplace disciple, there has to be an alignment of these inner and outer dimensions.  There has to be a congruity between your deep inner self and the work and behaviors you exhibit to the outer world.

If these two don't line up, then you get what you call dissonance.  It's a musical term that describes how notes in a chord don't match up.  Or a song that has discordant notes that are at odds with each other and don't create a harmony or pleasing music.

So think of that kind of dissonance between your inner and outer self.  The bigger the gap, the more discord there is, the harsher and more grating your life becomes.  The more frustrating your work becomes, as your core beliefs about your self and your work don't match up with what you're actually doing.  Without that connection between your inner and outer dimensions, there will be no song in your work and place in the marketplace.

The poet Walt Whitman has written a poem titled, "I Hear America Singing":

          I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
          Those of mechanics
each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
          The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
          The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
          The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
                   singing on the steamboat deck,
          The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench,
the hatter singing as he stands,
          The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or
                   at noon intermission or at sundown,
          The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
                 the girl sewing or washing,
          Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
          The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows,
               robust, friendly,
          Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

I think Whitman has caught some of the flavor of what life is like when the inner and outer dimensions are as close to synch as possible.  There is little or no detectible dissonance.  Life is a song, and we aren't just hearing someone else sing it--it is our voice that is heard in the marketplace, singing the song of witnessing life to our place in God's wider purpose.

Thirdly, to be a marketplace disciple means to value the people-making more than the product making or the bottom line.   The real marketplace is driven by the bottom line.  By the amount of product you make or sell.  Your usefulness to the marketplace is gauged by how much you contribute to the productivity of that marketplace.  Your value is determined not by who you are but by how much you contribute to the economy of the system.

But a marketplace DISCIPLE is someone who helps people value not the things they are making, but the ways they are making themselves.  Theologian Jean Lacroix wrote that, "to work is to make oneself...producing an achievement, to perfect oneself while perfecting the world."  The marketplace disciple helps people truly make themselves, rather than being used as a cog in the bottom line marketplace that doesn't care who you are as long as you are being economically productive.

In her book, Peoplemaking, Virginia Satir writes about the four aspects of what she calls "peoplemaking."  The first aspect are the the feelings and ideas a person has about themselves.  Another term for this is called self-worth.  The second aspect are the ways people create meaning with one another.  She calls this, communication.  The third aspect are the rules people use for guiding how they should feel and act.  And the fourth aspect is the way we relate to other people and institutions outside of ourselves.  She calls this the link to society.

When people are having problems, Satir goes on to describe, the way to relieve their pain involves working on one or more of those four peoplemaking factors:  self-worth, communication, rules, and link to society.  This is what marketplace disciples are all about.  We who follow Jesus are not about making people more productive to the economy.  We are about helping them work to make themselves better, more faithful human beings.  Boiled down, that was Jesus' work.

And lastly, what it means to be a marketplace disciple means overcoming the false duality between the sacred and the secular.  We are great compartmentalizers, we human beings.  We have a compartment for our work self, another for our family self, another for our spouse self, another for our playful self, and on and on.

And one of the most common compartments we create is the sacred and the secular.  We have a compartment for things we think are of God, and a compartment for all the stuff we decide is not of God.  But the truth is, God is over all, in all, and in control of all.  There is nothing where God is not involved.  Therefore there is no division between secular and sacred.

So a marketplace disciple not only sees the holiness in all things, but also helps others see that same holiness.  The marketplace disciple keeps others from making the judgements that go along with dividing up what is supposedly sacred and what is supposedly secular.  All is God's, and all is of God's.  That gives us a whole new perspective on others and things.


OK.  So I started out talking about the 12 disciples and why Jesus chose them.  I think he chose them because he saw the qualities of men of the marketplace that I've been describing.  And then he transformed their marketplace perspectives so that they weren't just men of the marketplace, but marketplace disciples.  Men who were out there in the real world and new how to deal with that world as marketplace disciples:  constantly alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  Helping Jesus in the work of peoplemaking.