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Jesus would never have made it as a church pastor. By any estimation his ministry was a public relations disaster. Church growth experts and media consultants agree on one simple rule for success: “Don’t give people what they don’t want.” But Jesus was apparently not as savvy as the sound-bite wizards and church growth gurus of our day.
Along the road in his ministry, Jesus made a number of stops and committed a number of terrible gaffs. For instance, the one that was recounted in the 14th Chapter of Luke, in which he was being pursued by great numbers of people, all excited about his power and potential. And what did he do? He “turned on” the crowd and came forth with this little gem to lead the six o’clock news: “If anyone comes after me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
George Buttrick, writing in the Interpreter’s Bible, says that Jesus’ words here were so stern that “the crowd was winnowed.” If I had been on Jesus’ board of deacons, I would have begun to pull my hair out.
And this little beauty from today’s scripture reading: A very wealthy man (obviously a fine prospect to get involved in the movement) came up to Jesus and expressed an earnest desire to get more involved. He had been a virtuous and exemplary individual, keeping all the commandments, and he was asking what more he could do to gain this “eternal life” that Jesus was talking about. And what does Jesus do? He scares him away by telling him (of all things) that it would cost him everything he owned! He told him to give it all away!
At that point, Jesus’ board of trustees would have joined with the Stewards and started a movement to throw him out.
Of all the things to say! To tell a prospective member with fine credentials and a sincere, intelligent question, that the cost of discipleship is so high that he can’t possibly afford it! What in the world could he have been thinking?
George Frederick Watts has painted the sad shuffle of that young man as he walked away from Christ. In the painting, all we see is his back. He is stooped, as though carrying a heavy burden.
He came to Jesus unburdened by the plight of the poor, and left with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He came to Jesus with a simple, careless question, and got more than he bargained for. He came to Jesus confident of his righteousness, wanting to know the price of divine approval. Jesus told him, in essence, “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”
I have a confession to make; I don’t like Jesus’ answer any more than did the man who walked away. When I was little, I learned that putting my hand into the cookie jar meant getting a spanking, and doing the dishes meant being praised. All my life I have believed that hard work and faithfulness counted for something. If the divine realm is at all fair, there should be some kind of larger reward for those who commit themselves to larger devotion. There is a difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa! If there’s a heaven, she deserved to go there if anyone does; if there’s a hell, he deserved to go there if anyone does. When I want to know what it takes to be counted among the good, I want to know! Don’t tell me it’s impossible!
I see people who are good, and loving and faithful. I can point them out, the ones who really have a way of knowing and caring about others, the ones who genuinely feel the hurts and respond to the needs of others, the ones who come through when the chips are down. There are truly good people in this world.
And I know my own strengths and my own weaknesses. I know how often I tend to be insensitive, to not hear, not think, not follow through. I know that there are some things I can do well. And what I want is to do them well enough! I want to do the things I’m good at in such a way that they make up for the things I suck at. And I only pray that those things are enough!
I want to make a mark with my life, because otherwise I might just come to the end of my days having lived without consequence! And I can’t bear that – I can’t bear the possibility that I will end up just being a waste!
So don’t tell me there’s nothing I can do that’s enough! Don’t tell me the price is far too high for me to pay it! Don’t tell me that the search for personal worth and value is a waste of time! Because then I’d have to walk away with a dagger in my heart, and the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Jesus shows no mercy to those of us who want desperately to be good enough.
In one way or another – in our church work, in our relationships, in our professions, in our community service – we keep trying to measure up. We keep asking through our efforts the question: how much is enough? And Jesus says simply: Trust me; you can’t afford it.
You can work your whole life to be the best person you can be. You can wear yourself to death caring for others, making your mark, growing in strength of character, and you will never be enough! You will never be good enough, you will never be kind enough, you will never be important enough, you will never be sincere enough. There is no way out of this bad news about life – no way –
. . . except surrender – to surrender to the truth of your insufficiency, your inadequacy, your common lot with all others, your utter dependence on grace. And, in the sort of irony that is always the Lord’s way with us, that’s enough.
That’s the simple truth of the well-known story of the prodigal son. After trying his hardest to go it alone, after taking all the gifts he had been given, and letting them carry him as far as he could go, after crashing into the limitations of being human and weeping over his failure, he miraculously discovered that all he had to do was turn and say, “Here I am.”
Paul Hoon writes, “The God of the twelve basketsful also is the gratuitous God of Israel who leads the people into a land where they shall eat bread without scarceness and where all they have is multiplied. He is the God of the Psalmist who speaks of a stream of living water, of a table prepared in the midst of one’s enemies, and of a cup that runneth over. He is the God who . . . when [people] lack the wine of life’s joy, bids them – as Jesus in Galilee – ‘Fill the water pots,’ and ‘they filled them up to the brim.’ He is the God who does not merely run to welcome home the prodigal son but who does so much more than he needs to, who brings forth a robe and a fatted calf, and causes music to play. He is the God who, even after [humanity has] forsaken and crucified him, yet prepares a breakfast of bread and fish on a lakeshore, and calls: ‘Come and dine’.”1
Hoon has it right. This is not “cheap grace.” With apologies to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the gracious acceptance of abundant life is not merely “cheap,” it is absolutely free!
So, are loving and caring and contributing and trying pointless? Hardly. Grace simply means that we do these things not for any gain or benefit or merit, not because it will earn us something, not because our efforts will somehow finally allow us to measure up, but because by the grace of the ageless divine embrace, we are freed to love because he first loved us, we are freed to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, we are freed to rejoice in hope, to be patient in tribulation, to be constant in prayer, to contribute to the needs of the saints, to practice hospitality.
One of the great frustrations of life is that we only seem to get answers to the questions we ask. And we waste a lot of time asking the wrong questions. So long as we keep asking what must we do to be worthy, to be of value, we will continue to get the same answer Jesus gave the rich young man: If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, reflecting on his term on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, addressed those at a dinner held in his honor, “. . . what is to show for this half lifetime that has passed?” he said. “I look into my book in which I keep a docket of the decisions of the full court which fall to me to write, and find about a thousand cases . . . many of them upon trifling or transitory matters, to represent nearly half a lifetime . . . Alas, gentlemen,” he said to those assembled, “that is life . . . We cannot live our dreams. We are lucky enough if we can give a sample of our best, and if in our hearts we can feel it has been nobly done.”2 This, from one of the most distinguished jurists of all time. The price of worthiness is indeed out of reach.
So, as the time approaches for our annual stewardship campaign, some of you, aware of our church’s great financial needs, may be wondering: how much should I give? How much is enough? Truth is, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. I hope the board of trustees does not resign en masse if I give you a surprising answer. The good news is this: the water of life, the wine of salvation, the milk of Divine loving kindness, these things are priceless!
The word of the Lord, from the prophet Isaiah:
“Ho, every one who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money
and without price.”
1 Paul Waitman Hoon, The Integrity of Worship: Ecumenical and Pastoral Studies in Liturgical Theology, Abingdon Press, 1971.
2 Extract cited in J H Wootten, Creativity in the Law (1972).
In last week’s sermon I dealt with some words of Jesus that I told you I wished he hadn’t said. The truth is, there are a number of things that I stumble upon emanating from the lips of Jesus that I can hardly believe are coming out of his mouth. I landed on another one these “things I wish he hadn’t said” in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark.
I have read these verses before — the ones about anyone who divorces and remarries being an adulterer — and usually I have just quickly kept reading. Looking for something a little more uplifting and theologically or spiritually satisfying. As most of you are well aware, I have been divorced and remarried, and I’m not particularly fond of what Jesus has to say on the subject. In fact, I wish he hadn’t said it at all.
I suspect I’m not alone. Howard Clark Kee, writing in the Interpreter’s Commentary on the Bible, talks about Matthew’s account of this saying of Jesus. In Matthew, the words are a little different. Jesus’ blanket condemnation of divorce and remarriage is softened a bit in the Matthew account. Here, a person is given the right to divorce on the grounds of unchastity. Kee sees this as a tinkering with the words by the early church. He describes the more lenient account in Matthew as a “setting aside of the unconditional rejection of divorce and remarriage in Mark 10, which was surely the teaching of Jesus himself. Matthew shows that the early church was not able to live by the radical demands of Jesus, but had instead to modify them — as it thought — practicable.” If Kee is to be believed, folks have been having trouble swallowing these words of Jesus all the way back to when they were first written down.
It’s interesting to note, that, in the same book of commentary, Lindsey Pherigo, commenting on the Mark passage says almost the opposite – that “this account represents a Gentile Christian adaptation of Jesus’ original teaching . . . Matthew 19:9 more accurately represents Jesus . . .” Apparently, neither commentator wants to claim these words, in the gospel they are dealing with, as the words of Jesus. I bet there are a lot of folks who just plain wish he had never said this.
But, as much as I dislike this saying of Jesus, I have come to regard it as among the best of Biblical arguments in the debate about homosexuality and the church. That statement obviously requires a little explaining. So, here goes:
Whenever I hear someone quoting scripture to support their condemnation of gay and lesbian people, I tend to think I’m not hearing a reasoned scriptural position so much as a bit of proof-texting to support a deeply held personal feeling based on a strong cultural taboo. But whenever the subject of homophobia comes up, what I hear from those anti-gay Christians is something like this: “Oh no, this isn’t about homophobia. It’s purely a matter of being faithful to scripture. The Bible says it’s an abomination, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve met a lot of gay people; I’m not homophobic. I just follow the Bible.”
The only problem with that argument is, well, this morning’s scripture reading. If it’s all simply a matter of following scripture, then if folks are going to go into a rage about immorality and all those people who flaunt the moral laws of God, why is it I never hear them talk about this one? I think they must kind of skip over it too, the way I’d like to, hoping nobody will notice. Which is pretty wise for those among our more conservative brethren and sistren, since probably 40% of their constituents are divorced and remarried. It’s one thing to stand up and rail against the evils of those kind of people, whoever they may be, but when you start saying such things about such a large percentage of your constituents it gets a little more dicey.
The point is, it was the Apostle Paul who said that “men [being] consumed with passion for one another” was “unnatural.” Jesus never said a single word about homosexuality. But it was Jesus himself who said that if a man divorces his wife and marries another he commits adultery! I personally would put a lot more stock in the words of Jesus than in those of Paul – Paul, who also said that women should keep silent in church – Paul, who condoned slavery. No, this condemnation of those who divorce and remarry comes from Jesus himself. So, my point is this: if it’s not about homophobia, and it’s purely a matter of faithfulness to scripture, why aren’t the Southern Baptists throwing all those “remarrieds” out of the church. I mean, here are people who are, according to Jesus, living in an adulterous relationship. They are unrepentant. And worse, they’re “flaunting” it!
I realize that all of this doesn’t do anything to get me off the hook. As a divorced and remarried man, I’m still hanging out there dangling in front of these words of Jesus that I’d like him to take back.
There may be a few of you sitting out there who are thinking, “boy, this really is a problem. I’m glad I’m not divorced and don’t have to think about it.” Well, guess what, I’ve got a few for you to consider, too.
Do you think you might have ever said or done anything that may have been hurtful or a “stumbling block” to others — particularly children? Have you ever said anything like, “Johnny, what’s wrong with you? Why did you do such a stupid thing?” Or, strike out at a child in anger, unintentionally communicating that he or she is of lesser value or unacceptable? Have you ever wondered if such brief thoughtless moments have had any cumulative negative impact on them?
Listen to what Jesus said about that: “Stumbling blocks are sure to come, but woe to him by whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.” Welcome to the club.
Jesus had some very harsh language for any of us who may have felt we had sufficient justification for anger at our parents. He administered a scathing blow to those who soften the commandment to honor one’s father and mother. He shouted at them, and called them hypocrites!
And when I read through the rest of scripture, I find things like Paul saying that those who are immoral or idolators, or greedy will not inherit the kingdom of God. What does that say about every one of us sitting in this room — every person who has grown up in America, a nation built and flourishing on the primacy of greed, and the idolatry of power, wealth, youth, and possessions.
And if I haven’t hit you yet with one you’re guilty of, trust me, I could stand up here for the next hour quoting scripture, and sooner or later, I’d getcha.
Now, I realize, you may be thinking that I just shifted the focus again, because I didn’t want to keep dealing with this saying of Jesus about divorce. It hits a little too close to home. Maybe it’s true. I have to confess, of all the sins I find listed, and all the commandments, and rules and restrictions, I find myself reading this one from Jesus, and just wishing he hadn’t said it.
Well, I have some bad news. Try as I might, I haven’t found any way around these words of Jesus. I haven’t been able to do the exegetical shell game of Mr. Kee and Mr. Pherigo, and say that the words in Matthew aren’t the original words of Jesus, so they don’t count, and coincidentally, the words in Mark aren’t either. I’m afraid I’m stuck with Jesus’ condemnation. And, I’m sorry to say, so are you — stuck with whatever it is in this book that you are guilty of.
Now, I realize preachers aren’t supposed to be hitting people over the head with the Bible in this age of enlightened positive thinking. We’re all supposed to feel good about ourselves. We’re supposed to stand in front of the mirror every morning, and say, “I’m capable. I’m creative. I’m competent. I’m a winner!” And church is not supposed to be a place where we have all our positive self-image ripped to shreds. Someone told me once that one of the terrible things he remembers about the church of his youth is how he walked out of church every Sunday feeling like he had been beat up. Nobody likes that. In fact, I agree! I don’t want to walk out feeling like I’ve just beat up on myself! But I still can’t just ignore these words of Jesus, and pretend he didn’t say them.
So what’s the point? Simply this: I have only one plea: guilty as charged. But at least I’m not alone. So do you. That puts every last one of us in a kind of club together — or a family. It’s a family of sinners. It’s a club for everyone who stands guilty — convicted. And that’s all of us. And we are bound together in that family, as William Sloan Coffin said, because of our “. . . inability to separate ourselves from each other through judgement. And that is no mean bond.”
You see, the more I read scripture, the more convinced I become that there is an evil that transcends the evil of divorce and remarriage, or the evil of adultery, or the evil of failing to honor father and mother, or the evil of causing a child to stumble, or the evil of greed, or the evil of idolatry. When I read the teachings of Jesus, I realize that he saved his most devastating and scathing words for those who separated themselves from others through judgement. He said, “Judge not, lest you yourself be judged.” He said, “Take the log out of your own eye, before commenting on the speck in your neighbor’s eye.” And for their hypocrisy and self-righteous judgments, he called the Pharisees a bunch of snakes!
I think the teachings of Jesus and the words of scripture are not intended to leave us feeling self-satisfied. I think the point is we’re supposed to feel just a little beat-up. We’re supposed to be right there with the disciples when they find their heads spinning from it all and finally say to Jesus, “Then who can be saved?” We’re supposed to be right there, so that we can be ready to receive his answer, “With God, all things are possible.” We’re supposed to know our need of grace, so that we can stand shoulder to shoulder with all of our fellow human beings under the shelter of that same grace.
Loren Eisley, the great naturalist writer, told of coming upon a remarkable sight one afternoon while on one of his excursions in a barren desert valley in the western United States. A huge blacksnake had coiled itself around a hen pheasant. The bird was struggling to free herself. Eisley watched for a moment and saw the “bloodshot glaze” deepen in the bird’s eyes, but finally knew he had to intervene. He describes how he arbitrated the matter:
“I unwound the serpent from the bird and let him hiss and wrap his battered coils around my arm. The bird, her wings flung out, rocked on her legs and gasped repeatedly. I moved away in order not to drive her farther from her nest. Thus the serpent and I, two terrible and feared beings, passed quickly out of view.
“Over the next ridge, where he could do no more damage, I let the snake, whose anger had subsided, slowly uncoil and slither from my arm. . . . which throbbed from his expert constriction. The bird had contended for birds against the oncoming future; the serpent writhing into the bunch grass had contended just as desperately for serpents. And I, the apparition in that valley — for what had I contended? — I who contained the serpent and the bird and who read the past long written in their bodies. . . . I had struggled, I am now convinced, for a greater, more comprehensive version of myself.”
Eisley made a great discovery by holding the bird and the snake — containing them within his experience in an instinctive act of grace. He knew himself to be as mortal and struggling as they, and so shared his life with them for a brief moment, and found his own world was made larger.
That’s what grace always does. It allows us to touch one another, hold one another, contain within ourselves something of each other’s life. Because it is only when we know ourselves to be equally mortal and equally in need, together breathing the same fresh air of Divine infinite love and forgiveness, that we can truly enter into each other’s experience.
And for what? Perhaps, in Eisley’s words, “for a greater, more comprehensive version of ourselves.”
I feel compelled to offer a disclaimer at the outset. The plain truth is, I don’t like the message I am about to deliver today. This is a sermon being preached to the preacher, and it makes me uncomfortable. Jesus said a lot of things that I wish he hadn’t, and this is one of them: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” The implications of that are staggering, and the end result doesn’t set well with my basic make-up. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s get on with it.
Before explaining all that, I think I need to back up and talk about the way things would be in the world, and in the church, if I were in charge. First of all, if I ran the show, people would be rational. Nobody would cut me off on the highway, and if I wanted to move over in front of someone, they would slow down and let me in. Everyone would have a clear sense of appropriate boundaries. People would stick to their own turf, and not interfere in mine. Now, that just all seems to make sense, doesn’t it? For instance, take those who choose to believe in a strict code of moralism. That’s fine with me, but if the world worked the way I wanted it to, they wouldn’t be allowed to try to influence public policy with their moralism – while those of us with more moderate, and more reasonable approaches, would of course have tremendous influence on public policy. And, by the way, things would be a far sight different in church, too. If I were in charge, I’d be in charge. People would do things my way. Important issues I’d get to decide, and the insignificant and tedious stuff other people would take care of. That’s what I mean – everyone would know their place. It would all be so reasonable.
That’s why I started to have trouble right off the bat when I read this passage from the book of Numbers. The Lord God gives a commandment to Moses. Now, the Bible makes it clear that God really is in charge. And a commandment from God is – well – a commandment from God. So God told Moses to get all the officers and elders together at the tent. And when Moses did this, scripture says the Spirit of God came and “rested” on all of them. Now that’s a beautiful thing. I love it when a plan comes together.
But here’s the catch. These two guys, Eldad and Medad, didn’t go to the tent. They stayed in the camp. Now, they were bona fide, registered, card-carrying elders and everything, but they didn’t follow orders. So the Spirit of God came and rested on them right there in the camp. Some of the folks got wind of this and were understandably upset. All the elders were supposed to gather at the tent. The Spirit of God thing was supposed to happen there, and these guys were in the wrong darned place! Now, here they were prophesying and doing their thing just like the elders who did what they were told. Joshua is my kind of guy. He spoke right up. He said to Moses, “Stop these guys!”
I’m with Joshua. These fellas were breaking the rules. And not just Moses’ rules. These were the Lord God Almighty’s rules! It was God who said, “all elders are to be at the tent.” They weren’t at the tent. So how does Moses deal with these rule-breakers? He says to Joshua: “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”
Now, if you’ll pardon me, that stinks. Moses just changed the rules in the middle of the game. He told all the elders to get to the tent. And when these two didn’t do what they were told, and got the Spirt poured out on them in the wrong place, Moses just said, “wouldn’t it be great if all the people were like them!”
Now, here’s what really burns me. As if all that weren’t bad enough, Jesus takes the whole thing even farther. When some guy started going around casting out demons in Jesus name, John tried to put a stop to it. Understandably. This clown was not one of the disciples. He hadn’t been part of the crowd, probably hadn’t ever even met Jesus. He didn’t have the proper authorization – no credentials – no seminary education – no Clinical Pastoral Education – no Ministers’ Council membership card! Just who did he think he was? And how did Jesus deal with this crisis? He told them to leave the guy alone – let him keep it up! And he tops it off with this beauty: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Excuse me? Do you have any idea what the ramifications of that statement are? It means that the distinctions among us get awfully blurry. It means the apathetic and uninvolved are part of the good guys. Now, that really burns my beans. Jesus doesn’t even seem to understand how things work. In my tidy little world where people act reasonably, the rule is that those who opt out, who become indifferent, who put on a cheap show that’s “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” are playing for the wrong team. The rule is: non-involvement and carelessness are just as bad as active opposition. The rule is: whoever is not for us is against us. Just listen to our country’s historic leaders – either you’re a supporter of the United States and whatever war we are in at the time, or you’re an enemy of freedom. Jesus has got it all turned around. He obviously just doesn’t get it.
Here’s my problem: If you listen to Moses and Jesus, you get the idea that there aren’t really hardly any rules at all. It sounds like they’re saying that so long as it turns out OK, it doesn’t matter if you do what you’re told, or wear the right uniform. It sounds a lot like situational ethics to me.
Well, as much as I like my world to be tidy, I’m starting to wonder if Moses and Jesus were onto something. We live in an increasingly, sharply divided world. The middle ground seems to be disappearing faster than Florida’s coastal wetlands. There are hardly any purple states in America. They are mostly only red and blue. No one is allowed to support a reasonable compromise for the Israel/Hamas crisis. You are either in for the long, bloody haul, or you’re a cut-and-run coward. There’s no place in the lexicon for sincere believers who question authority, and sometimes even question their faith, you’re either a raging fundamentalist, or you’re part of the atheist, liberal elite. Most frightening of all, there’s less and less ground to stand on for those of us who see the Spirit of Divine power at work in all times, and all lands, and all hearts. Vast numbers of people in this world are being drawn to see their own faith (be it Muslim, Christian, or Jewish) as the exclusive abode of God’s promise, and those of all other faiths as infidels, terrorists, or hate-mongers.
Increasingly, our beliefs and actions are prescribed and proscribed by those who assume authority, be it political, ecclesiastical, or ideological. And growing numbers of hot-blooded and hot-headed supporters are blindly following their pronouncements.
It’s a very dangerous world. And maybe, just maybe, what we need is someone taking a sledgehammer to our rules, mucking up the fine, sharp lines we draw between ourselves, and scattering power around among the powerless like Johnny Appleseed planted trees.
That’s a bit of what is being suggested in these scripture passages. I mean, once you let the Spirit have free reign to just do whatever the heck seems good in any given situation, you have anarchy. And maybe, just maybe, we need a pinch of anarchy these days. Maybe just enough to remind us of our common humanity, and our shared frailties.
I’d like everyone to be like me, and see the world the way I see it. And when I look around and see other kinds of Christians (Catholics and other Protestants, fundamentalists and evangelicals), and when I see people of other faiths (Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists) growing in power and getting all excited about their faith, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I start to worry that maybe they’ll just take over, and I’ll become obsolete. It’s like the Spirit isn’t paying any attention to the boxes I’d like to put it in. And I confess, it makes me nervous.
But when we conceive of the power of that Spirit being loosed in people of faith all over the globe to build a new spirit of love and truth, it’s a pretty darned impressive vision. Isn’t it?
I’d like my world to be tidy, predictable and reasonable. The way to make a world tidy, predictable and reasonable, is to have very clear rules, and make sure everyone follows them. And mostly those rules have to do with ensuring that I can get my way to the greatest degree that fairness allows. It’s as simple as that. But the more I read the Bible, the more I get the idea that the Spirit of the Lord has a little anarchy in its system. The more I read the Bible, the more I get the feeling that that Spirit doesn’t like rules so much as faithfulness and results. The more I read the Bible, the more I get the notion that the Lord of Life wants every single person to be empowered to speak life-changing words, come up with world-shattering ideas, and turn things upside down.
I’m not real happy with it, because it makes my life a whole lot more complicated. But I have to admit, in my best of moments, I sit back and simply shake my head in awe at those who claim the power to live out and act out a vision that the Spirit has given them. In my best of moments, I marvel at the rebirth of faith that I see around the globe, from third world countries, to Asia, to Dallas, to Boston. In my best of moments I forget about the rules I’d like to see put in place, and the world the way I’d like it to work, and I say, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”
There may be some of you out there who don’t know that I’ve written a book. I say that some of you may not know about it, because I’ve certainly done my best to get the word out. I bring it up whenever I can. You see, I don’t want anyone to know about this, but I’m actually quite proud that I’ve written a book. I’ve become quite expert at finding ways to subtly work it into a conversation. For instance, someone may be discussing the economy or the weather, and I very adroitly say, “Did you know that I’ve written a book?” This is not just vanity, mind you. Well, it’s not entirely vanity. Actually, it may be mostly vanity. Ok, it’s vanity.
I wrote the book for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, I guess, it’s because I had a bunch of things inside that I wanted to say. I didn’t even care much at first if it ever got published. I just had to get some of this stuff down on paper. I know I’ll never be the writer that Nowell is, but it wasn’t long before it became clear to me that a major part of doing this thing was that I wanted to leave something behind that was important – you know, when I’m gone. It was Ben Franklin who said, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” Well, that’s the real hook – when you start to think that maybe you’re going to write that book that becomes a classic and changes lives, and somehow you’ll find your place in history because you’ve made such a significant contribution to the library of human consciousness. Not that I have delusions of grandeur or anything. Well, maybe a few. Ok, I’m delusional.
Wouldn’t we all love to find a way to “make our mark” on the world? With the elections coming up, I think of all those people who have chosen to run for office across our land, from town councilors to US Senators to candidates for the Presidency. And it strikes me how these are not extraordinary or superhuman beings; they’re real live people who have, at some point in their lives, made a decision to step forward and try to make a difference. There are certainly those who are trying to make a mark in the world and going about it in the wrong way – Vladimir Putin and Nicolás Maduro among them (not to mention a few political leaders in our own country). But for every public figure who is using his position to exercise his dysfunctions, there are a dozen more, I’m convinced, who are genuinely doing their best to have a positive influence in the world. I think at some level we all hunger to have just a little of that feeling.
OK, so maybe I’m not going to write the book that makes the New York Times best seller list and alters the course of human history, but I’d like to at least leave something behind. Maybe someone, a hundred and fifty years from now, will pick up a dusty copy of my book in a yard sale and read it, and it’ll be meaningful to them, and something I did will survive in some small way into the future. Maybe you won’t become President, but you’d like to stand for something that matters, and try to be part of improving society just a little (or perhaps even one little corner of it), so that your influence will outlive you. Maybe you won’t command armies and have nations rallying to your side, but you’d like to be in charge of something – a working group, or a committee – or at least have someone listen to you, and feel that your opinion carries some significance. Even if it’s just vicariously, we’d like to be part of a team that wins the World Series or the Super Bowl, or to be part of the nation that is, as many of us are fond of saying, “the greatest country in the world.” In one way or another, most of us would like to “make our mark.”
So, when we read about the disciples of Jesus arguing on the road about who was going to be named “disciple emeritus”, and who was going to get their book published, it’s a cinch to walk along beside them and join the fray. That’s where you and I fit in this story. Maybe we’re not quite as blatant about it as they were (actually arguing over who will be the greatest), but we have our own ways of competing for prominence, or position, or just trying to be memorable.
I picture Jesus being almost amused as he overheard the disciples arguing and jockeying for position. I picture him being almost amused when you and I yearn to “make our mark” in the world. He said, “‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking the little one in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’” It seems that there is a different ledger in which the true marks of our worth are made. It is the Lord Almighty who pays attention to our greatness and validates it. But that greatness in the eyes of the Lord has nothing to do with being prominent citizens, getting books published, or even having opinions that get listened to. The enduring marks that we leave in the Divine register are things like helping and serving another person, visiting a lonely soul to bring a word of hope, welcoming a little child into our midst, and taking time to listen to her story with eager ears. These are the marks of greatness that assure us a place in the noblest of histories. These are the shining record of our existence that outlive the sun and the stars.
William Willimon, the theology guru at Duke University, tells of learning something about being the least and the greatest. He says, “While in seminary, I learned of the death of an uncle who was killed in a crash while flying his private plane. Being near my aunt’s home, I was summoned by my family to go to her side and to minister to her in her grief.
“Though a young seminarian, I had received some training in pastoral care and thought I might be able to bring some comfort to her and the family. I had handled similar situations while serving as a pastoral intern the year before.
“My aunt has a son who is mentally retarded and was about ten years old at the time – Joey, we called him. He didn’t understand fully what had happened to his father, but he saw his mother’s grief and felt instinctively the need to reach out in some way to comfort her. In his room Joey took out a few crayons and a sheet of paper. he drew her a picture. It wasn’t very well done, but Joey put his best into it and you could easily tell what it was meant to depict. In the picture were three objects: an airplane, a rainbow, and a cross. Joey took the gift to his mother and said, ‘Here, Mama. I made this for you.’ Then he went back to his room.”
Willimon says, “Even in my relative inexperience in pastoral matters, I had the good sense not to try to wax theologically about what had happened.” Joey had said all that needed to be said.
You and I are not asked to be brilliant. We are not expected to become world leaders. We are not called to be bright or articulate or witty or charming. We are not encouraged to win, or to achieve great things, or create monuments to ourselves. We are given with this great gift of life a simple opportunity to serve others, and welcome children, and open our hearts in love, and thereby be acknowledged for the only kind of greatness that truly matters in this world.
I’ve seen you out there. You’ve stopped into the church when you thought no one was around so you could take care of some little problem, or clean up a mess so someone else wouldn’t have to. It’s been noticed. When you’ve offered a word of encouragement to someone who needed a boost, you’ve been overheard. You’ve been found out. That special mission you’ve quietly supported, the child you took time to listen to, the cause you fought for, the loving energy you put in to that committee project – it hasn’t gone entirely unseen.
Don McCullough relates a wonderful story about Winston Churchill: “During World War II, England needed to increase its production of coal. Winston Churchill called together labor leaders to enlist their support. At the end of his presentation he asked them to picture in their minds a parade which he knew would be held in Picadilly Circus after the war. ‘First,’ he said, ‘would come the sailors who had kept the vital sea lanes open. Then would come the soldiers who had come home from Dunkirk and then gone on to defeat Rommel in Africa. Then would come the pilots who had driven the Luftwaffe from the sky.
“‘Last of all,’ he said, ‘would come a long line of sweat-stained, soot-streaked men in miner’s caps. Someone would cry from the crowd, ‘And where were you during the critical days of our struggle?’ And from ten thousand throats would come the answer, ‘We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.’’”1
My message this morning is this: those gallant ones among you who are striving not for recognition, who are giving yourselves to others daily in service and love, who are “deep in the earth with your faces to the coal” are the truly great ones among us, and you will leave your mark.
1Don McCullough, Waking from the American Dream
Some of the traditional evangelistic approach lines from the old-time fundamentalists have made their way into American folk lore. Like, “Have you found Jesus?” I’ll never forget the time my father was asked that question while on a trip down south. A man approached him and said, “My brother, have you found Jesus?” My dad said, “I didn’t know he was lost!”
Another one of the oldies but goodies is, “Are you saved?” Have you ever stopped to reflect deeply on that question? Aside from the overtones of condescension and theological intrusiveness, it nonetheless carries a hidden freight of assumptions and questions about faith that are terribly important to think about.
For instance, what in the world does it mean to be “saved” anyway? Many of us would simply disregard the question as irrelevant and outdated evangelical language. Others might naturally assume that there must be some standard “Bible” definition of “being saved,” and that if we have any confusion about the concept it probably just reflects our ignorance about such “theological” things. Well, the truth is, the answer to the question depends on whom you’re talking to. And it depends on who you believe Jesus is.
Just who is Jesus, and why does it matter? In response to that question, I have a story tell you about my late uncle Wayne. But before you can fully appreciate his story, we need to think together a bit about the gospel, and about the difference between “believing in Christ” and “following Jesus.”
There are those of us who read the story of Jesus and are struck by the central issue that the gospel writers seem to be addressing. It was an issue for the Jewish community, an issue for the first Christians, and it’s an issue for us: was Jesus the Christ? Was he the long-awaited Messiah? Was he, in short, the “Son of God?” The gospel writers loudly and unequivocally declare that he was indeed. And so, for them, and particularly for John, the central issue is for us to come to truly believe this. To believe that Jesus was the “Son of God” is regarded as saving knowledge. If we believe, we are saved – meaning we become inheritors of the Divine eternal promise. This is, indeed, the point of our scripture reading from John’s gospel this morning. We know it well: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The reason, in short, that Jesus was sent into the world was so that, “whoever believes in him” would “have eternal life.” This is John’s case for being a believer.
On the other hand, there are those of us who read the gospels, and are gripped by the language of Jesus, and his persistent message. In one parable after another, in one encounter after another, we hear Jesus telling people that he wants them to live a different kind of life. His teachings are mostly ethical imperatives. On the whole, he doesn’t seem to be as much concerned with what we believe, as with what we do. He tells his followers to be patient, forgiving, generous of spirit, and wise and compassionate in the use of our gifts. He speaks of the life that he calls us to as a journey – a passage through a gate. And he says that journey is not an easy one, but requires sacrifice and struggle. In today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, he says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This is not as simple a matter as believing. It’s doing. In this passage, Jesus refers to himself not as the “Son of God,” but as the “Son of Man.” In fact, in a surprising turn-around, in the verses that lead up to this reading, we find Peter professing that Jesus is the “Son of God.” He confesses that Jesus is, indeed, the long awaited “Messiah” – the “Christ.” Peter believes in him. And Jesus, in response, tells him to shut up. He explains that his role is to suffer and be killed, and he puts Peter down again. When Peter tries to smooth over all that talk about suffering, Jesus even calls him “Satan.” That’s when he says, “If you want to follow me, take up your cross.” He is clearly talking about his followers doing something more than simply believing in him. For many people, the very salvation of the world is seen to be hanging on the persistent efforts of those who take up their crosses and follow. For others, just finding this new path to walk in life is salvation enough.
So, I ask you, are you a believer or a follower? Is your salvation found in “believing in Christ” or in “following Jesus?” Is he “Son of God” or “Son of Man?”
I would suggest to you that the answer is to be found in deciding which audience you are part of. That may seem strange, but it’s true. Jesus spoke to a lot of different kinds of people, and he had a specific message for each of them. The scribes and Pharisees, who lived out a hollow orthodoxy and tried to entrap him in his own words, he condemned and called names. The poor and the outcast he had close relationships with and offered compassion to. The diseased and disabled he healed; the proud he humbled; the wealthy and powerful he brought low.
Indeed, it sounds at times like he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth — the original “flip-flopper.” For instance, in today’s reading he talks about the heavy price of following, and says, “take up your cross,” but in another place he says, “Come to me . . . my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
But here’s the thing: in each case, who is the audience? When he says, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” who is he talking to? It’s to “all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens.” In other words, he is speaking to the oppressed – to those who are victims of the crushing social machinery of prejudice and injustice. It is these people who most need the comfort of something to believe in, a divine promise to cling to. It’s those who need the strength that is offered by the “Son of God” who gives them hope if they will hold out, hold on, and keep believing.
When he says to the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” he is speaking to those who “want to become followers.” In other words, not to the oppressed, but to the those of us who can afford the luxury of “searching for a cause in life.” He is addressing those of us who would like to find a comfortable road to self-fulfillment by “doing something worthwhile.” To this audience, Jesus offers no words of comfort. He gives us no easy way out. He says, “If you want to follow, take up your cross.” He says to us that traveling on his path does not mean offering lip service, token involvement, and half a heart. It requires everything of us – everything.
Where we get into trouble is in our confusion about which audience we are part of. Do you need to hear the message of grace that is offered by the Son of God to the oppressed, or do you need to hear the call of the Son of Man to take up the burden of self-sacrifice? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to be saying this is all black and white. Surely, most of us have struggles and burdens in life of one kind or another, and surely, none of us is so consumed with greed and self-interest that we don’t give of ourselves and offer compassion to others. But it’s important to know your place in the world in broad terms. I assure you that none of us in this lovely town in the heart of this prosperous and free land are counted among the truly oppressed of the world.
Many churches are growing by exponential numbers and filling people’s hearts with happiness by selling the wrong message to the wrong crowd. In a prosperous land filled with people who have the luxury of looking for “a cause,” if the only thing a church stands for is the message to come and “believe in Christ,” and “be saved,” if they eschew the radical call to service and self-sacrifice, to mission and social justice in favor of getting everyone to simply put their hands in the air and say “praise Jesus” and “thank you, Jesus” over and over, then they’re speaking the wrong message to the wrong audience, no matter how comfortable or popular it is.
Is Jesus Son of God or Son of Man? Well, of course, he’s both. And if we, the ones who come after him, want to grasp who he is, and therefore what it means to be part of his body, then we must recognize both. We can be believers and followers. Yes, we’re allowed to say, “Praise Jesus,” and “Thank you, Jesus,” because we know we are beneficiaries of universal and eternal grace, but it’s not enough – not near enough. We are the ones who are called to pick up the burdens of the world, to take up our crosses and follow.
Which brings me to my Uncle Wayne. Uncle Wayne was a man of faith. I don’t know if a greater faith ever lived in a person. He was sure of God’s grace, and he thoroughly trusted in that grace. If ever there was a man who believed in the Son of God, it was Uncle Wayne. In the early fifties, he was a designer and construction supervisor for General Telephone Company of Southern California. He had a good job and a very promising future. He was a churchman. He and a group of friends in church would get together regularly and have a good time, spend hours together in reflection about their faith, study the Bible and pray together. Life was good, and he felt the presence of the Lord in his life. He loved the Lord.
But it was that same profound faith and trust in Divine Love that led him, through a dramatic experience at the time of the death of a friend, to hear the voice of the Son of Man, calling him to take up his cross and follow. Uncle Wayne felt called to the mission field. He gave up his lucrative position, he passed on an even more lucrative job offer, and he loaded up his young wife, their eleven-year-old daughter and three-year-old son, and left for the Congo as a missionary of the American Baptist Churches.
He spent thirty-three years in mission work. His children grew up on mission fields in the heart of Africa going off to a distant school, and learning to shoot a bow and arrow in the jungle and eat live insects. He and his family survived along with the villagers on water buffalo and crocodile that he learned to hunt. They dealt with disease, poverty, uprisings, and nervous machine gun toting soldiers at roadblocks. This was not an easy life.
Uncle Wayne wasn’t a preacher. He went to the Congo to do what he knew best. He was a builder. You could say he devoted himself to the cause of global justice. He spent his life helping to make those African jungles a better place. He built homes, bridges, high schools, agricultural schools, theological schools, general hospitals, children’s hospitals, airfields and roads. And through it all, he never stopped believing, and he never stopped trusting. It was a life well lived – a life lived as a believer, but also, in earnest response to the call of Christ, as a follower.
Now, most of us aren’t cut from the cloth that my Uncle Wayne was. I certainly don’t have that kind of total, selfless dedication. But the point is, any of us can use our gifts, commit ourselves, put our lives and spirits forward for the sake of something bigger than ourselves.
Who is Jesus? The “Son of God,” who offers hope, confidence and an eternal promise to the burdened and dispossessed. Who is Jesus? The “Son of Man,” who says to the strong and the thriving, “Do you wish to come after me? Take up your cross and follow.” And why does it matter? Because, as a Christian, your answer to the question says everything about who you are.
A very curious phrase appeared in last week’s scripture reading from the book of James. It was in verse 25: “But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.” It’s that phrase, “the law of liberty” that caught my attention when it showed up again in this week’s reading. James writes, “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” I love the turn of words; I’m not entirely sure why. I guess it’s because I love the word liberty, and, stuck together with the word law, it sounds almost like an oxymoron. What in the world could this “law of liberty” be?
James starts out by talking a lot about transgressing [I don’t like that word as much as the word liberty]. He offers a little snapshot of one of our familiar transgressions, welcoming the rich, nicely dressed, influential person with great falderal, and ignoring the poor, dirty stranger with shabby clothes. Then he says, “. . . if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”
Now, I have to admit, I’m not fond of reading from scripture about “committing sin” and being “convicted as a transgressor.” I have a feeling there are others who share my discomfort. From time to time I hear someone say, “I don’t like those prayers of confession in worship. I don’t like to wallow around in guilt. When I come to church I want to be uplifted, not put down.” Believe me, I sympathize. It makes me a little uncomfortable too. I’ve got guilt stuff running around in the back of my head from all the way back in Sunday school, and it’s one of the things that turned me off about church when I was a teenager. After all, I knew I was going to be judged worst of all, and probably go straight to hell because I used to sit up in the balcony of the sanctuary playing poker with my friends during worship (you know, holding the cards down real low so the preacher – who happened to be my father – wouldn’t see).
But you have to admit, there’s a lot said right there in the Bible about sin, and a lot about confessing sins and seeking forgiveness. Jesus certainly spent a lot of time talking about it, and he gave us a pattern of prayer to use that began, “Our father, which art in heaven,” and led to “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” So, you can argue that it doesn’t feel good to admit you’re a “transgressor,” but you can’t argue with Jesus.
And after all, James does have a good point in this passage when he talks about our sin of favoritism. It does seem to be in our nature to play favorites. When “a person,” as James says, “with gold rings and in fine clothes” walks in, and “a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in,” don’t we tend to take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please”? The exasperating thing James has to say about this is that he lumps it right in there with adultery and murder. Now, it seems to me that showing a little partiality is a thoroughly human thing to do. And it doesn’t seem to be as serious an offense as murder, for crying out loud. And our hearts were all broken and even filled with rage to hear about the shooting rampage of a 14 year-old boy at a high school in Georgia, and how he got access to his weapon. At least if I were in charge of the universe, that sort of thing would be pretty far from showing a little partiality on the damnation scale. If anybody were going to be sent to “H, E, double hockey sticks,” I’d think it would be the murderers. Those of us who just forget ourselves every now and then and show a little extra courtesy to the one who butters our bread can surely be understood and won’t lose our assigned seating on the bus to the pearly gates. But James has got this bug in his bonnet about being “transgressors.” And he says that “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” In other words, I guess he’s saying, if you’re trying to be good and not do any bad things, then if you show partiality to someone, you’re just as bad off as the murderer. Now does that seem fair to you?
After all, Jesus himself showed partiality in a big way. In this remarkable story we heard from the gospel of Mark, Jesus is confronted by a Gentile, a woman who is described as Syrophoenician. I find that interesting because it means she was a Syrian from the Phoenician coast. The place she lived – in the vicinity of Tyre – is now in Lebanon, but was then part of Syria. That area was densely populated and quite wealthy at the time. So it was what we might refer to as a geopolitically prominent region. We might be likely to offer her one of the best seats in the house if she came to visit in her fine clothes and rings. And these days, our hearts especially go out to Syrian citizens, so we’re likely to side with her on a number of counts. But Jesus apparently had a problem with her. She was a Gentile. She asked him to heal her daughter. And his reply? “Let the children [that is, the Jews] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs [that is, the Gentiles].” Essentially, he called her a dog. This Syrian woman from a wealthy, influential region, he called a dog; his ministry was for the Jews. Now I ask you, is that not showing partiality?
Here’s the kicker: this woman who had every right to be incensed, who might easily have spit in his face, or at least wheeled around and left in a huff, said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” That’s a woman of substance and grace. And Jesus knew it. He told her, because she said that, her daughter was healed. Something tells me that Jesus was so tuned in – so capable of reading a person’s character in an instant – that he knew how she would respond. Something tells me he set the whole thing up to make a point and to demonstrate something to those around listening in. Something tells me it had everything to do with the law of liberty.
After all the admonitions about transgressing and showing partiality, James tells us to “So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.” And the “law of liberty” sounds like something different than the regular old law about not playing poker in the balcony. Indeed it is. James says, “For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy. . .” It seems this harshest of verdicts is reserved only for one kind of sinner, the one who shows no mercy himself. Maybe the murderers and people who show partiality aren’t necessarily going to hell after all. Maybe there’s some real grace in being held equal with the murderers. Maybe I am just as guilty for showing partiality (or playing poker in the balcony) as the guy doing twenty to life for first degree homicide. And maybe that truth is actually liberating; because maybe it breaks down the barrier between me and him. Maybe in the eyes of the Almighty he and I can’t be separated from each other by judgment, because we’re both guilty as charged, and both share the free grace of Divine mercy. If that’s the case, then whether he’s behind the bars, or I’m strolling around free as the breeze paying lots of attention to the person with rings and fine clothes, we’re still brothers, bound together by mercy. Maybe Jesus knew that. In his day a Jew and a Gentile were separated in the eyes of the faithful by a judgment as severe as that of the Taliban. And Maybe Jesus was making the point that a Gentile woman could hold her own in a contest of wit and grace with a learned Rabbi, and was equally deserving of mercy. Maybe he was making the point that Jews and Gentiles, faithful followers and blatant transgressors were bound together by a judgment of mercy. And that’s no meager bond. Maybe that’s what it means to be “judged by the law of liberty.” Maybe the law of liberty is the law of mercy.
The law of liberty is this: mercy trumps judgment. That’s what James is saying. Sometimes we play the judgment card, and say “you evildoer, you’ll have to answer for that!” or “I know I’m no good; I’ll never forgive myself.” But, by the spirit of grace, we also can play the mercy card. Every so often a little break in the clouds of our hearts opens up and we find ourselves capable of saying something like, “I know you hurt me bad, but I can’t just quit loving you,” or “If I can be forgiven, knowing what I’ve done, then maybe I can forgive myself.” The point is that when someone plays the judgment card, and someone else plays the mercy card, mercy wins. That’s what I like about faith. Mercy trumps judgment.
We’re beginning a whole new program year here at the Memorial Congregational Church. And I’d like to start us off on a keynote: if we are to stand for something in this world, if we are to be known for something in the community, if we are to speak a word to those who come looking for a little light on their path, then let it be this: Let us set judgment aside, and let this be known as a place where mercy is proclaimed, and mercy is given. Let us be those who affirm and hold ourselves accountable to the law of liberty.
Who are you? Have you ever stopped to ponder what it means when you say to someone, “I decided not to go”? Or what you’re talking about when you say you “changed your mind,” or “talked yourself out of something”? Who is this “you,” of which you speak? Do you know yourself? To what degree can you, in fact, know yourself? Or are you, perhaps, trapped within the distorted self-images and subjective experiences that leave you incapable of seeing yourself as you truly are?
All this may seem like idle musing about some abstract philosophical query. But I would suggest there’s a lot more to it than that. I think there are some intriguing clues, or at least fascinating questions, in scripture about this notion of a “self.” How is a person defined, and what does it mean when I take some responsibility for being “me?”
Jesus opened the question for us when he said, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” In other words, we are not simply tainted by the world with which we come in contact, we must assume full responsibility for our actions.
Jesus is actually making a rather profound statement here. He is saying in essence that if you want to find the source of evil, don’t look around you, look within. From where, indeed, does evil come? From where does goodness come? Is it all so clear as Jesus makes it sound? What is this “human heart” that he speaks of?
There was a professor of pastoral psychology at our seminary who used to say that everyone is simply doing the best they can with what they have to work with. Some people wind up being so emotionally twisted by the combination of their genes and the developmental influences on them that all they have to “work with” is rage. Some people have had the natural instinct for human compassion squeezed right out of them. If so, one might ask to what degree that person is responsible for the limitations and distortions of their own heart. What goes into making a criminal mind? What causes a man to kidnap an eleven year old girl and hold her in a secret backyard prison as a sex slave for eighteen years, fathering two children with her? What leads another to be a powerful contributor to society, or a positive influence on others?
I remember several years ago taking Dadgie out to a nice restaurant for a belated celebration of our anniversary. It happened to be right after the death of Ted Kennedy. There was a piano player in the room, so I stuffed some money in his jar and asked him if he could play Camelot in honor of Teddy. He stopped playing for a moment, and asked me what I thought of him. I recall that he, like John McCain, at the time, had a gift for connecting with people on a personal basis and working across the aisle. He asked me why I thought he was able to do that and I said I thought that because of all the trauma and difficulty of his life, a good portion of it of his own making, he was more in touch with basic human frailty, and able to be less judgmental of others. The piano player agreed. And he played Camelot for us.
Truth is, Teddy and John were, like all of us, a product of the circumstances of birth, and all the experiences and influences that make up a life. All of this goes into creating a “human heart” – for good or for ill.
But when you try to peer into your own heart and know what is there, what can you see? Can you truly know how all of those bits and pieces of experience have affected you, or are they so familiar that they blind you to the reality of your virtues and your failings?
There is a remarkable verse in the book of James that focuses our attention like a laser beam: “. . . if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.” Reading this stopped me in my tracks. I thought about looking in the mirror when I shave each morning. I realized that I don’t really look at myself in a penetrating way. My reflection is like some object that I am working with, making sure that I don’t miss any whiskers. The sad truth is, I suspect I am like those who look away from the mirror and have little thought of who that person was I just saw.
Can any of us stand to look into a mirror for any length of time and catch our gaze with our own eyes, trying to see deeply into one’s soul and figure that person out? I think this may be quite difficult for us not only literally, but figuratively. But I think that’s what’s being suggested here.
Taking a good, long look in the mirror, what do we see? I think our scripture readings today are offering some things to look for.
The list of evil things that Jesus says emerge from within the human heart are instructive. There are twelve of them: “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” Every one of them is a failure of human relationship. Every one of them is a means by which we separate ourselves, and the bond between us is broken. So, perhaps the first thing to look for in the mirror is to comprehend the reality of our oneness with all others and with all of creation, and the means by which we are connected to one another – to those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. And, after all, that’s the root meaning of the word “remember.” Remembering is the opposite of dismembering. To dismember is to cut apart into many pieces. To remember is to put the pieces back together and make one whole.
Such a view leads us inevitably to see the ways in which we, by judgment, distortion, prejudice, or assumption, deny the reality of that connection and perpetrate the sometimes comfortable and always destructive myth of our complete autonomy from one another. In other words, a serious look in the mirror takes us invariably to a broader view of all those in our lives with whom we form a network of being, and the essential value of those ties.
We are not simply separate selves; we live for others. Which leads, I believe, to another truth about the person in the mirror. The one we see there is, like all the others to whom we are connected, a gifted and flawed human being – sometimes soaring, sometimes falling. And the common bond we share, the glue that binds us together, is that we live always in the burgeoning promise of Divine forgiveness. We are bound together by grace.
Consequently, we are led to recognize that we, and those to whom we are connected, are not so righteous and principled as we might suppose, and we are not so hopeless and irredeemable as we might suppose. There is great comfort, and great motivation in this knowledge. It can keep us humble, and also keep us striving to always improve, to do better.
The cautionary note sounded in this epistle of James is in verse 26: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.” In other words, what we are battling in our effort to come closer to the Lord, and closer to being the person in the mirror that we are intended to be is self-deception. Deceiving one’s own heart, as James puts it, is the enemy of true religion.
We deceive our own hearts when we focus on some other person, or some amorphous institution or practice, as the source of trouble or evil rather than, as Jesus cautioned us, to look to our own hearts. We deceive our own hearts when we think of ourselves as totally independent, autonomous beings, who are not impacted by the actions of others, and whose actions have no relationship to the welfare of our neighbors. We deceive our own hearts when we view ourselves as superior or standing on higher ground than our brother or sister. And we deceive our own hearts when we cannot face ourselves in the mirror, with shame so great that we believe ourselves to be beyond redemption.
And, can we entirely know ourselves? Perhaps not, but the value of self-examination is worth the effort. As Buechner said, “[you live the mystery of yourself] not by fully knowing yourself, but by fully being yourself.” And Plato said “The unexamined life is the life not worth living.” So I offer to you this suggestion. Take a long look in the mirror. It’s a scary idea, but I’m going to try it myself. It may be rather uncomfortable. But if you look long enough and intently enough, if you peer deeply enough into your own heart, if you try to comprehend what makes that person on the other side of the mirror tick, what all has contributed to his or her personality and perspectives, who are the circles and lines of people to whom he or she is profoundly connected, and what does it mean that his or her failings are covered by Divine, abundant mercy, then when you look away, you might be afforded the transcendent grace of remembering who you are.
I leave you with a poem from Peter “Dale” Winbrow, an oldie but a goodie:
When you get what you want
in your struggle for self
And the world makes you
king for a day,
Just go to a mirror
and look at yourself,
And see what that one has to say.
For it isn’t your father
or mother or wife
Who judgment upon you must pass;
The one whose verdict
counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you
a straight-shootin’ chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the one in the glass
says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him
straight in the eye.
He’s the fellow to please,
never mind all the rest
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most
dangerous, difficult test
If the one in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world
down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be
heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the one in the glass
There are a lot of things in life that seem like they ought to be simple, but really aren’t. For starters, computers. It seems simple enough. Turn the thing on, do your work, then turn it off. But, no, you have to update your system with the latest antivirus definitions. So you connect to the update doohickey, and start to download, which ties up your computer and slows you down while it’s going on. Then you get a message saying not all updates were successfully downloaded, so you click on the tech support link, and wait for five minutes while it tries to set you up with a technician, but then a message comes up telling you that there are 70 people ahead of you in the queue, so you send them an email about the problem but never hear back. Meanwhile, you’ve spent three hours trying to do five minutes worth of work.
Another example is love. In adolescence all that matters is the fluttering of the heart whenever the object of our desire enters the room. Two houses, three children, 967 arguments over how to squeeze the toothpaste or load the dishwasher, and several major life crises later, we discover that “love” is more than a feeling, it’s also a project, requiring a lot more attention, and a lot more of you than you initially expected.
Well, the same turns out to be true for today’s scripture reading. At first blush, we have here what seems to be a simple statement from Joshua to the gathered leaders of Israel: “Serve the Lord.” And we have a simple reply: “We will serve the Lord.” It’s hard to imagine how you could even make a whole sermon out of that. That is, until you read a little more carefully, and realize that Joshua is talking about something far more difficult and complex than it seems.
The key is here in verse 15: “Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living . . . .” The two options Joshua puts before the people are telling. The alternatives to the one true God are these: the old gods of your ancestors, or the new gods of the Amorites.
In other words, “serving the Lord” means doing the hard work of resisting the false gods we are consistently drawn to: the god of yesterday’s answers to yesterday’s problems, and the god of the latest new thing. The temptation that lies before us is to claim for ourselves someone else’s god – our parents’ god, or the god that’s on TV. The sirens’ song that would pull us into a trap of self-destruction is alternately the song of tradition and the song of modern culture. Somehow, we keep believing that we can be saved from meaninglessness and futility either by our rituals or by our toys.
We have felt the lure of tradition. Our traditions entrap us and threaten to destroy us when we make gods out of them. And how easily that happens. The implied divinity of our rituals and expectations sneaks up on us and overtakes us without the slightest awareness on our part. In a publication called “The Pentecostal Minister” William Poteet told of a Russian czar in 1903 who noticed a sentry posted in a very odd place on the Kremlin grounds apparently guarding nothing. He asked about it and discovered that back in 1776 Catherine the Great found on that spot the first flower of spring. “Post a sentry here,” she commanded, “so that no one tramples that flower under foot!” So there a sentry was posted for the next 127 years.
How many sentries do we post over the transient fancies of our lives? We are creatures of habit, including yours truly. We sit in the same pews Sunday after Sunday; we expect to sing the same familiar hymns we have sung for 30 or 50 or 70 years; we want to be reassured by the same interpretations of the same scripture as we have always known; we listen for affirmation of our favorite theological themes, and post an internal sentry to stand guard over the flowers of our assumptions, preconditions and prejudices.
I was in a church one time where they actually had people lining up, taking sides, getting ready to go to battle with each other – over whether the new carpet in the sanctuary was going to be a different color.
Sometimes we don’t even know where the things come from that we worship and hold on to as though they were sacred. For instance, as most you know, I was raised a Baptist. And as a good Baptist, I had throughout my life experienced, practiced and believed in adult baptism. For many years I would have passionately argued that baptizing babies was silly and meaningless. But then, a number of years ago, I was exposed to the idea of people coming to faith through their families. I learned of the concept of welcoming a child into the family of the church, as you welcome the rest of the child’s family, and the value of acquiring faith through a process of growth that can just as easily begin with baptism as culminate in it. So, by the time I went to a United Church of Christ church, I was already “on board” with the idea of baptizing babies. It didn’t take any effort at all to feel at home in the UCC. But that transformation didn’t happen overnight. Several years ago at a meeting of Baptist clergy I was reminded of just how far I had come. The conversation turned to the crisis in that denomination over the inclusion of homosexual people in the church. One of my colleagues said, “I just don’t understand what all the flap is about. Why should some people get upset just because the church opens its doors to everyone. This isn’t even some major theological issue. After all, it’s not like baptism or something. Now, if someone wanted me to start baptizing babies, that’d be something to go to the mat about!” I have to confess, I just shrugged and looked out the window. I realized that just a few years earlier I had been worshiping that same old Baptist tradition myself.
But it’s not only the idols of our traditions that deceive us into worshiping them – “the gods our ancestors served in the region beyond the River.” Joshua, as he spoke to the leaders of Israel, was wise enough to tell them about the equally perilous temptation of worshiping the latest cultural phenomenon – “the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.”
Those of us who aren’t serving lifeless and empty traditions that we hardly understand, are often found instead serving vain and silly fads that we also barely understand. The latest fad is artificial intelligence. I wonder sometimes how much natural intelligence there is running around. If we someday end up with an AI generated preacher, we might as well have an AI generated congregation. Then everyone can just stay home and be comfortable. Maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, but if coming to church doesn’t ever make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, then we’re not doing our job here. The great preacher and teacher, Fred Craddock, once said in a seminar I attended that a preacher has a responsibility to be interesting, but worship is not a show.
The point is this: there’s a very great temptation, and therefore a tendency, for all of us to fall into serving whatever’s at hand. For some of us that may be ideas and traditions and patterns that we’ve known all our lives, value systems we were handed by our parents, or rituals that satisfy our need for consistency. For others it may be some new craze, or cultural fixation, a shared anger about something into which we can pump our fear of futility, or even a new car or computer or cell phone. In any case, it’s likely to be chosen because it’s comfortable, it’s convenient, or it’s consistent.
Discovering where the Lord is truly at work, and where we are asked to grow, and to serve, that’s a lot more work. Because that Lord is not found in the musty old hand-me-downs of our parents’ faith, and not in the shiny new toys of the emerging culture. The power of Divinity is found in the honest encounter of your truest heart with the heart of divine truth in the here and now. Sometimes that means being rather brutally honest with ourselves. Sometimes it means challenging our assumptions. Sometimes it means letting go of the familiar, the convenient, even the comfortable.
It can even mean letting go of “God” – or at least, the conception of God that we carry around in our heads. When the people of Israel took this message to heart they said they were ready to drop their false gods. “Far be it from us,” they said, “that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed; and the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”
Joshua’s response is remarkable. Listen to this: He simply said, “You cannot serve the LORD.” The very thing he wanted them to do he told them they can’t do. Why? Because if you’re simply serving the “god” who takes care of you every time you need help, drives out the Amorites for you, and fixes every problem, you still aren’t serving the one true Lord of Life. I heard a football player on the radio once claiming that it was God who helped him hike the football just right. Dadgie and I have a name for that God; we call him, “Good-ole’-God.”
Joshua is saying that serving the Lord involves trial. It means hanging in with love, and self-sacrifice, and justice when it’s neither comfortable nor fashionable. It means doing the work to actually seek the mind of Christ when an issue or question arises instead of resorting by default to one’s own self-interests, prejudices, and familiar assumptions. It often means doing that which doesn’t come naturally. But it carries with it the great reward of feeling integrated with something beyond yourself, and of knowing you are on a path of discovery and growing into more of all that you are intended to be.
So I urge you to leave off defending either your traditions, or your innovations. I urge you to let go of the battle between the old and the new, and instead seek the divine urging that calls to your heart filling you with deep, profound appreciation for every precious moment of life. And wanting to share that joy and love with those around you, discovering that serving the Lord means serving others. I urge you to make a profound choice in your life: whether you will serve the gods of your ancestors which they worshiped beyond the river, or the gods of the strangers among you in this culture – or whether you will at least try your best to serve the Lord.
My wrestling career was short-lived. In high school, I tried just about every sport there was; I was on the football team, I ran track, I was a gymnast. But wrestling lasted about as long as it took for some sweaty, smelly guy to get my head in a ferocious arm lock. That was it. I decided quickly that wrestling was no fun.
Except for those devotees of the WWF, most of us aren’t very fond of wrestling. We’d just as soon not wrestle with the big questions of existence. We’d just as soon not wrestle with the principalities and powers of this world. Life, after all, gives us plenty enough to grapple with; we don’t need to go looking for more. We’re faced with disturbing headlines week after week about sex scandals, political scandals, and corporate scandals. We see the values of our culture changing, and familiar landmarks disappearing. Mostly, we’d like to find something solid to hang on to, and live in as much peace as we can find. We watch presidential candidates act like children in the school yard trying to pick a fight, and we recoil, acknowledging that we’d rather be, as the old saying goes, “lovers, not fighters.”
So, all things considered, I suspect that were it I, encamped alone by the river Jabbok, standing in the dark, face to face with some strange dude who I figured had divine superpowers, I doubt that I would be inclined to wrestle with him, let alone grab his arm and put him in a half-Nelson, refusing to let go until I wrested a blessing from him. Some nerve this Jacob has – wrestling with the Almighty.
What a bizarre story this is. Jacob, camped on the river, wrestles all night-long with a man who touches him and throws his hip out of joint, but Jacob holds on tight and won’t let go until he receives a blessing. So the man gives him a new name. He is now “Israel.” And, in the end, we discover that this mysterious stranger is, in some way we cannot entirely understand, none other than the Lord of all Creation. Or at least Jacob was convinced of it; he names the place Peniel (which means the Face of God), saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Jacob, you see, was used to taking what he wanted. He stole his brother’s birthright, he conned Laban out of the best of his flock, and he and Rachel took off in the night with her father’s household Gods. So, when Jacob saw the face of Divinity before him, it was only natural that he would grab for whatever he could get out of the situation.
It is rather astounding that Jacob had the nerve to try to wrestle the Lord for a blessing, but what is even more astounding is that same Lord seemed to approve. In giving him the name Israel, Jacob is made the father of a nation, a nation which is the prototype of the Lord’s own people.
Apparently, the Almighty places a much higher value on wrestling than we do. We find accounts with similar themes in other places in the Bible. Scripture says that Job stood his ground and argued with God, called God unfair, and refused to back down. In the end, that same Lord declared Job’s position to be “truth,” and rewarded Job for his tenacity. Jesus spent a night in the garden grappling with his inner fears, and with the divine burden that had been dropped on him, trying to escape, seeking the unfathomable will of the One he called his “Father.” From the prophet Elijah to the Apostle Paul, those whose minds and hearts are seized by the power of Divinity are found wrestling – wrestling with their calling, with inner doubts – wrestling with life. It seems this is intended to be the case. Apparently there is much for us to learn, and much growing for us to do. And apparently, there is no way to learn and grow without doing some wrestling along the way.
Apparently it’s in the divine plan that we are supposed to wrestle from life – perhaps even from the hand of the Almighty – that which is of value. Anyone who has put time and effort into personal growth knows that. Psychotherapy, spiritual discipline, recovery work, marriage counseling are all clear examples of the truth we know, that growth is painful, and never comes without courage and hard work. “Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”
So the Divine wrestling opponent rewards Jacob for fighting to get his blessing. There’s something a little disturbing in that. Most of us are taught from the time we’re still in diapers not to fight. We are led to believe that the peaceable and gentle folks hold the high moral ground. Even Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek.” And now, here’s Jacob, grabbing whatever he can lay his hands on, fighting for what he wants, and he gets promoted to “Granddaddy of all the children of Israel.”
For any of us who have ever been beaten up by the fifth grade bully, or cheated out of something we deserved, or beaten to the punch by some self-centered, grabby, “me-first,” line-butting idiot, we have some serious questions about this story. Our problem has to do with the use of power. We’re terribly and justifiably afraid of power abused. And anyone who becomes so used to wielding power that he’s willing to arm-wrestle the Lord of Hosts seems at the very least arrogant, and quite possibly a megalomaniac.
I believe there’s a message here for any and all of us who are inclined to shrug our shoulders against the evils of the world, turn up the TV, and plead the comfortable myth of powerlessness. I believe there’s a message here for any of us who don’t want to be bothered with difficult questions or controversial issues. I believe there’s a message here for any of us who think that life is supposed to be about fast food, no hassle checking accounts, comfortable cars, and work-saving technologies – smooth sailing, and care-free, with values clear and answers readily spelled out in black and white.
That is, I believe, the attraction of both the highly liturgical, doctrinal churches, and the conservative and fundamentalist churches. In those places, answers are easy, and wrestling matches with the Almighty are discouraged. A huge number of folks are attracted by this approach. The churches that offer “ten clear steps to salvation,” ready made answers to life’s questions, and passionate conviction about cookie-cutter Bible studies are growing by leaps and bounds. It’s extremely satisfying, not to mention comfortable, to find a lot of people around you in total agreement about matters of faith and life and society, and to have those opinions all supported by a strongly reinforced pattern of biblical interpretation.
But this is not for us. We are a church that chooses the more difficult, if less popular, path. We are a church that believes passionately in the worth and freedom of each soul seeking their own path of faith. We are a church that looks at scripture and finds there a Lord who deals with individuals in individual ways, confronts them in the midst of their particular circumstances, and calls upon them to wrestle – to wrestle with questions of truth and meaning, the questions of affluence and poverty, the questions of human worth and dignity, and liberty and justice, rather than to blindly accept what the religious authorities of the day are meting out.
That makes our path one that is not taken by many. It is a path that often leads us into conflict, and for a lot of folks, conflict is a dirty word. Not for us. Conflict is like carbon dioxide, it’s a by-product of life and growth. Ours is a path for wrestlers, those who would wrestle with life and with faith. But it is a path which we believe to be a faithful one, and to which we therefore adhere with deep conviction.
But there is a caution here for us. As I said, most of us would really rather not wrestle. We’d rather avoid conflict and struggle if at all possible. And, we find that there are many ways to avoid wrestling matches. One is to go for the easy answers, but another is to stop asking the questions.
You see, it’s easy for folks like us, and churches like ours to fall into patting ourselves on the back for refusing to accept the dogmas of either Catholicism or fundamentalism, while consistently failing to raise the hard questions and search for our own answers. It’s easy to accuse others of being sucked into Bible studies that teach everyone to mouth the same answers and close their minds, while never picking up a Bible ourselves.
A church like ours, and a faith like ours, carries with it a tremendous responsibility. In many ways it’s like the responsibility of a democracy, which quickly falls apart if the populace becomes uneducated (a catastrophe with which we as a nation are now flirting). Our community of faith cannot long survive if we cease to grapple with the questions of life, the truths of scripture, and the paradoxes of faith. If we choose, instead, to avoid the wrestling match by avoiding confronting the often complex judgements of scriptural truth, avoiding serious dialogue about controversial subjects, avoiding bringing the powers of theological reflection to bear upon the issues of our lives and our world, then we are getting no further than those with cookie-cutter answers. In fact, we may even be in worse shape than them, having become, as the writer of Revelations says, “neither hot nor cold.”
And the fight is not only an inner one. We are children of the Most High, and if so, then heirs to the promise and keepers of the created world. And sometimes that world needs powerful allies. There are times when it is necessary to wrestle whatever justice or truth one can from the grasp of the world’s power brokers. At such times, people may be called upon to throw themselves into battle against a seemingly overpowering foe. At such times, a great blessing may indeed fall to one who has the temerity to wrestle – even with the Almighty.
We recoil when we consider those who assume for themselves the authority of divinity and attempt to impose their beliefs on others. The abuse of theology, like abuse of power, can be a terrible thing. But I would submit this morning that it just may be a far greater sin to live an entire life as though one were powerless. The meek may inherit the earth, but the timid and apathetic will consign it to hell.
Are we carrying on the sacred heritage of our tradition? Are we being faithful to the principle of “soul liberty” that defines us? Are we standing up and being counted in the war against ignorance, indifference, and mindless lockstep dogmatism? Are we struggling with the principalities and powers of greed and injustice? Are we wrestling with any of it?
Well, each one of us must wrestle with those questions ourselves. But while we are at it, I would suggest that we all pray for guidance, for wisdom, and for courage; and I think we should chalk one up for Jacob, a guy with the guts to twist God’s arm.
There was a popular song some time ago that went like this:
“Honesty is such a lonely word;
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard,
But, mostly, what I need from you.”
Ain’t it the truth? Gerber claimed that their Good Start Gentle formula prevented children who took it from developing allergies. A lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission ended with Gerber agreeing not to make any similar claims for the product or imply the government authorized such a claim. Sensa claimed that its powdered additive – that you sprinkle on food – enhanced the smell and taste of food, thus making users feel full and eat less. The FTC ruled that the claim misled consumers and made unfounded weight-loss claims. The organization was forced to pay $26.5 million for a settlement, and was also charged for failing to disclose that they had paid customers for their endorsement. In its ads, Lumos Labs claimed its app, which offers users access to games and brain training exercises, that it would help prevent Alzheimer’s disease or help students perform better in school, though it had no proof. The company was fined $2 million by the FTC. A television ad showed a Nissan Frontier pushing a dune buggy up a hill – a feat the truck is unable to pull off in real life. The company was forced to stop airing the advertisement, or any commercial making similar unfounded claims in the future.
Such outrageous commercial claims wash over our heads daily. We rarely object. We quietly tolerate such lies. Why? Because we know that they’re nothing more than “sales-speak” – putting together pleasant sounding words in a way that makes us feel good. So it doesn’t matter to us any more if advertisers lie to us night after night in our living rooms; we really don’t expect anything more from them.
The credibility crisis in the American market place is a very quiet disease. But don’t be mistaken, friends, it is malignant. Every time a car is described as “the ultimate in styling and performance,” every time a can of beer is promoted as having the power to completely alter reality as we know it, or a bottle of soda pop is heralded as a fountain of youth, or the best way to lose weight and look like a fashion model, every time a telephone company portrays itself as the sole custodian of down-home family values, our entire social contract is cheapened a little more, and so are we.
I remember watching a movie in which Dudley Moore played an ad-writer who decided to start telling the truth. He wrote an ad for Volvo that called the car, “Boxy, but good.” Several other ideas he came up with were equally honest and to the point, so they locked him up in a mental institution. It’s a hilarious premise for a movie, but it’s also a telling caricature of the advertising industry, an industry from which we no longer anticipate a single honest word.
But if we’ve gotten used to dishonesty in advertising, we’ve come to expect it in politics. Tell me, would you, how we got from the America that treasured the little folk legend of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and saying, “I cannot tell a lie . . .” to the America in which “politician” is a four letter word? How did we reach the point of acceptance of public deception and duplicity as standard practice for political campaigns? How did we reach the point that legislators try to get a bill passed or defeated in Congress by saying absolutely anything, no matter how outrageously false or exaggerated, to get the public on their side?
We live in a world now where you are well advised to believe almost nothing you read, especially if it comes across your computer screen. I’ve been told that I need to download someone’s product immediately because I have a non-existent virus that will take over my computer and wipe out my hard drive. Then, this email: “Permit me to inform you of my desire to introduce to you into this humanitarians work. . . I am writing to you now from my sick bed here in the hospital. . . .There is Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars my husband has in an account with the Guarantee Trust Bank of which I am the next of kin. With my health condition and because my husband and I have no child, I decide to contact you so that I will pass the right of next of kin to you.” What’s so disturbing is that I suppose there are people who actually respond to these things.
But, as troubling as all this is, there are issues of truth-telling that are far closer to home than advertising, politics and Internet schemes, aren’t there? In our families, even within our own hearts, honesty is often difficult and, at times, not even welcome.
The lighter side of this malady is, I suppose, illustrated by the case of little Sarah who decided to help get ready for company. She set the dishes out on the table and helped make everything just right. Uncle Jake arrived for dinner. Everything was fine as they sat down to eat, but then Dad noticed that something was missing.
“Sarah,” he said, “you didn’t put a knife and fork at Uncle Jake’s place.”
“I know,” she explained, “I thought he wouldn’t need them ’cause Mommy said he always eats like a horse.”
Well, there are times when we would be just as happy with a little less honesty. But most of the time we find ourselves needing more.
The Bible offers what, at first glance, looks like a very simplistic answer to a very complex problem: “Speak the truth.” That’s it. It’s the same phrase in both Ephesians and Zechariah, even though the two passages are written in different languages.
But there is a larger context of Biblical theology in which this phrase is set that unlocks the door to some valuable insights. It goes something like this: What you nurture in your own heart, and speak with your own lips, has consequences not only for yourself, but for the community and the world around you. And, truth is not just good policy, it is at the very heart of Divnity and of the message of Christ.
I’ve tried to take the biblical context and attendant observations about truth-telling and deceitfulness, and boil them all down into a few basic principles, none of which hold any claim to absolute truth, but they are my best shot.
First, truth is a way of life. Pascal said that we have to love the truth in order to know it. I think he was close, but I’m not so sure that truth is something to be known, so much as it is something to be lived!
There are a lot of folks around who are sure they know the truth. Turn on any radio talk show and you’ll hear them. But people who are convinced that they know the truth (a group which, I confess, at times includes yours truly) have a tendency to use that presumed “knowledge” to bludgeon others into seeing the same “truth.” The problem being that sometimes it “just ain’t so.” And when everyone goes around speaking the same lie, it passes for the truth.
Living the truth, on the other hand, is a life quest that refuses to be satisfied with simple answers, and is therefore always ready to decipher and expose the lie, whether it comes from the lips of another, or from one’s own. Living the truth is a body involving, mind absorbing, heart consuming commitment – a commitment to asking honest questions of life and of one’s self, and not settling for the expedient lie, to avoid embarrassment, shame, or responsibility. It is a commitment to gently suspending judgement of other people in the absence of absolute understanding of them. It is a commitment to seeking that in life which is positive and productive and up-building, because such things reflect the truth of our common bond and common destiny as children of Divine Promise. Truth is a way of life.
The second principle I offer for your consideration is this: Truth must begin as a personal commitment, and it must become a communal bond. Nothing could be more personal than these words from Ephesians that call for hands that do honest work, mouths that offer words of grace, and hearts that are tender. Nothing could be more personal, especially when you realize that what we translate as “tenderhearted” is, in the Greek, literally, “of healthy bowels.” We think of the heart as the seat of emotion; the ancient Greek and Hebrew cultures saw the bowels and kidneys as the residence of love and passion and hate.
I can’t imagine a more appropriate image for agenda-driven, ulcer-plagued, twentieth century America than the very personal note that honesty within and truthfulness without might have some connection to a sound digestive system. The truth – living the truth and speaking the truth – begins as a very personal matter. But it leads to so much more.
The reason to speak the truth with your neighbor is that, as Paul writes, “we are members of one another;” the reason to do honest work is to be able, as he says, “to give to those in need;” the reason to speak words that are good and up-building is, in Paul’s words, “that they may impart grace to those who hear.”
We are responsible to and for each other. But we sit here in this place today as those who know the tie that binds us is more than a social ethic, it is divine identity! Because we are the body of Christ. And as such, we have no greater calling than to live for truth – truth which begins as a personal commitment and becomes a communal bond.
Which brings me to my third and last principle: Truth is irrepressible, and contagious. John Jay Chapman referred to absolute truth as like perfect pitch. He says that if a perfect “A” is sounded by enough people, then those folks who are sounding a “G-flat,” or who have been “caterwauling and murdering the scale for years” will be gradually drawn to that perfect “A.”
Is there a potential for honesty and truth-telling to prevail in our national life? How far will the American public go in accepting the premise that falsehood is a necessary political expedient, or that deception and exaggeration are the only ways to do business? Do you and I have any responsibility for setting limits on public deception? And if we could, might we begin to change the mind and heart of our nation? Is it indeed possible that, if a note of truth is sounded long enough, then the lies with which we live will ultimately be drowned out?
I believe it is possible. Because when one person finally decides to get honest with himself, others take note. When a group of people finally commit to living the truth, others are drawn to them. When a nation finally speaks what it means, and stands behind its words, the world is grateful. Truth is irrepressible, and contagious.
We need a revolution in our world, a rebellion against the tyranny of falsehoods that fill our airwaves, and our minds, an uprising of social conscience that turns over the rocks which conceal the purveyors of the lie – the lie that tells us we are nothing more than helpless pawns in the big games of commerce, governance, and war.
If, in fact, such a revolution is in the offing, it will begin with individual hearts and lives, and grow through the ties that bind us in community. It will begin with a commitment to truth – truth with ourselves, and truth with one another. It will be marked by honesty – honesty on our lips, and honesty in the work of our hands, honesty that can drive the market, and reshape our political landscape.
Honesty.
It’s an ambitious agenda;
it’s a scarce commodity;
it’s hard work; and it’s, as the song says, “mostly, what we need.”
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