Three Men

"Three Men"

Luke 4:14-30

There is a short poem by John Masefield that reads:

And there were three men

Went down the road

As down the road went he

The man they saw, the man he was

And the man he wanted to be.

As the poem states, there is but one man walking on the road.  But within the one man there are really three:  the person others see, the person he really is, and if caution could be thrown to the wind, the person he’d really like to be.

We all have opportunities in our lives when we have the chance to make minor or major adjustments in those three selves—that trinity that is within us all.  One of those times may be when you are embarking on something new, like starting a new job, or making a career switch.  Or you’ve lost a loved one, and you have the opportunity to redefine those three selves without the other in your life.  The same happens after a divorce.  Or maybe you have reached a point in life when you are tired of who you are, and you begin a new self-examination, pondering changes you want to make in those three selves.  Or maybe you are a teenager and you are trying to put yourself together apart from parental control and influence, not to mention peer pressures.

There was an actor who came to Hollywood from Paris to look for work—to make his dream come true of breaking into the entertainment world.  As he entered each casting office, he would leap over the secretary’s desk.  No one every forgot him.  Whenever they needed an actor of that type, they called “the fellow who jumped over desks.”  Likewise, most of us search for some way, some look, some behavior, some attitude, some characteristic that will distinguish us from the rest of the pack and make us memorable.

But at some point in our lives, we all have to figure out some way to reconcile the “three selves” each of us live as.  There is the person others see.  Some of what other people see about us is within our control and some is not.  It’s determined by how well we define ourselves in ways we want to be defined, rather than being wet clay, always formed in someone else's image.

In the book on marriage titled, Scary Close, that Men’s Bible Study just finished up, there is this illustration that fits well here.  Donald Miller and his fiancé went to a place called “Onsite” for pre-marital counseling with a group of other prospective couples.  This is what happened in one of the group sessions.

Back at Onsite, our group therapist created a terrific visual example of what a healthy relationship looks like. She put three pillows on the floor and asked a couple of us to stand on the pillows. She told us to leave the middle pillow open. She pointed at my pillow and said, “Don, that’s your pillow, that’s your life. The only person who gets to step on that pillow is you. Nobody else. That’s your territory, your soul.” Then she pointed at my friend’s pillow and told her that was her pillow, that she owned it and it was her soul. Then, the therapist said, the middle pillow symbolized the relationship. She said that both of us could step into the middle pillow any time we wanted because we’d agreed to be in a relationship. However, she said, at no point is it appropriate to step on the other person’s pillow. What goes on in the other person’s soul is none of your business. All you’re responsible for is your soul, nobody else’s. Regarding the middle pillow, the question to ask is, “What do I want in a relationship?” If the pillow you two step on together works, that’s great. If not, move on or simply explain what you’d like life to feel like in the middle pillow and see if the other person wants that kind of relationship too. But never, she said, ever try to change each other. Know who you are and know what you want in a relationship, and give people the freedom to be themselves.

This is a huge developmental question for all of us.  Who am I on my own pillow?  There are people who allow all kinds of others to stand on their pillow and tell them what kind of person they should be.  From the poem, that’s “the man he was,” or, “the man he wanted to be.”  I would amend this to say that if there is only one other who is allowed to stand on your pillow, it should be Jesus.

Jesus, himself, had to deal with that at the start of his Galilean ministry.  He had already launched his mission in the Capernaum area on the north shore of Lake Galilee.  Stories about Jesus traveled northward through the Galilean region so that by the time he got to Nazareth, expectations were already being formed about what He would do and who He was.

Walking through the little hill village of Nazareth, where he grew up, Jesus had to be sensitive to the “three men:”  the man they saw, the man He was, and the man He wanted to be.  I think Jesus had those three worked out in His mind, but did any of those who came into contact with Him—especially with whom He grew up with in Nazareth?

I was reading an article this week about the state of American religion and spirituality.  There was a phrase that caught my attention.  The article stated that in America, we live in “the Christian ghetto of the already convinced.”

Not only in the church, but in every facet of life, there is a segment of people who are “already convinced.”  That is, they have their opinions already set.  They have their ways of thinking already set.  They have their impressions already formed.  They have their beliefs already poured into concrete.  No new thoughts are entertained.  No new ideas are contemplated.  No new ways of being are attempted.

At the Elders meeting this past Tuesday, Alan Luttrell has started leading us through the process of how we are going to change directions in our congregation so we have a growing worship attendance.  We realize this is going to take some new ways of thinking about who we are, and who others think we are.  But we are looking forward to embarking on this adventure of growing our worship and program attendance, and not let the attitudes of the “already convinced” have the day.

I heard the story about a family that moved to a new town.  The youngest child in the family was, shall we say, a very active boy.  One of those kinds of kids who never gets tired and is always in the middle of something.

When the boy’s mother went to enroll him in his new school, she was asked to fill out an enrollment card with the usual information.  She filled in all the required data, such as name, address, age, family doctor, etc.  Near the bottom of the form she came to a spot reserved for “additional remarks.”  In large letters, the mother wrote, “BRACE YOURSELVES!”

Brace yourselves.  We will be looking at our congregation and not only deciding who we are, and how others see us, but who we want to be as we strive to increase our worship attendance.

I think Jesus also had some of that “Brace Yourselves” as he started his ministry, especially to people like those in his home town where they may have thought they already knew who he was.  But those gathered there to pray and sing and hear scripture were seeing a different man.  They were seeing a man who had a nice voice, who could read scripture well, maybe even prayed sincerely.  Here’s how Luke described it:  “And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth. And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph's son?’”  (verse 22)

But then Jesus pulled his three men—his three selves—together and let everyone see who he was, and who he wanted to be.  Jesus already knew that he was in the middle of a ghetto of the already convinced.  Once Jesus told them that God had sent the prophet Elijah to sustain “a widow in the town of Zarephath near the city of Sidon” (in other words, a Gentile); and that God through the prophet Elisha had only healed the leper Naaman from Syria, (also a Gentile), and that Jesus was defining himself and his ministry as one for “outsiders”, then that lit the match of their ghetto mentality.

So, at the outset of his ministry, Jesus took the misperceptions head on, and made the “three men” of who he was, who he wanted to be to come together into the seamless robe of his ministry.  But it didn’t work.  Instead of seeing him for who he chose to be, the people couldn’t see past their own self-convinced misunderstanding.  Suddenly they turned, and instead of thinking him a gracious talker, out of their wrath, they tried to throw him over a cliff, in his home town.

In Men’s Bible Study we are using the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan as the basis for our study.  If you have been using that also, this past week you would have read Mark 14 and Mark 15, the record of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and Crucifixion.  One of the points we discussed at Men’s Bible Study was the total misunderstanding of who Jesus really was.  It seemed at every turn of the story in those chapters of Mark’s Gospel, there was someone who looked at Jesus and saw only what they wanted to see.  Defined Jesus by their own misunderstandings.  It didn’t matter who Jesus really was.  Others had already made up their minds and acted toward him accordingly.  This time Jesus didn’t escape, as he did in Nazareth.  This time he was crucified.

It becomes a constant task of Jesus to define clearly who who he was and what his identity is—to somehow bring the three men together.  This story of how the Galilean ministry got started in Nazareth—with rejection—is important because it signals what kind of message Jesus is going to speak, what kind of Savior he will be, and what his followers are asked to be and do.  I think each congregation has to go through the same identity “crisis” defining who they are as a church, and how they want to be perceived.

The problem, and the truth is, most Christian churches are ghetto’s of the already convinced.  That is, we are already convinced about who we think Jesus is, what kind of message he speaks, what we are being asked to do, what kind of people are in and which are out, what the church should be like and what it should be doing.

We already know.  We don’t want to hear any new stories, like those Jesus told in Nazareth, that God’s whole project with people is a great deal larger than we had determined.  We don't want to find out that in our Bibles there are stories of God’s gracious inclusiveness and acceptance of people we would rather God not include or accept.  We don’t want our arrogant level of being convinced challenged.  We don’t want Jesus free to be Jesus the way Jesus wants to be.  We don’t want to find out we’ve been living in the Christian ghetto of conclusions that have, in all reality, deprived us of growth and experiencing Jesus in all His fulness.

Don’t we all feel the gap between the three men:  the person we are, the person people think they see, the person we really want to be.  Imagine how that must have been so frustrating for Jesus, knowing he was the Savior of the world.  Most everyone saw someone else.

And the same is true of the church.  There is the church we are, the church others think they see, and the church we really want to be.

It is time to change the ghetto in which we live.  It is time to see Jesus in the seamlessness of his own self-definition.  And it is time to take a fresh look at our church, and find a way, together, to be as seamless with those three selves as Jesus was.