“Son of Dirt” Mark 10:46-52 Lawrence Jackman
Today is Reformation Sunday. We Protestants make quite a thing of it usually. Now I am not exactly here to kill the sacred cow, but…… is anyone up for hamburger? My belief is that the whole business is infinitely more complex than we make it generally.
In 1500 the world of Europe was literally in the initial pangs of labor and giving birth to change on many fronts. The Reformation was something that had to happen just as a birth does when it is time.
There was political change underway. City-states were rising to the top of the political ladder. They had evolved from an earlier system but the change was of real substance. There was social change. The Feudal definitions of who people were and what they would do had broken down. In the between space of princes and serfs there arose a middle class of entrepreneurs and manufacturers. Division of labor really began to push the old definitions.
Economic change was afoot also. It was the start of the demise of the Agricultural age when everything pivoted around crops and movement into an age of manufacturing and toward improved farming as a sort of industry, if not yet industry in the full sense.
Technological change was out there dramatically. Now, I guess we have a hard time seeing it as true technology, but it was. The movable type printing press truly was a pivot point in history. It pulled together groups of people and made the world much smaller. It was as radical as the internet. Learning, education science were all under significant pressures to change. The Muslim world kick started a lot of our Western tradition into movement forward.
So all this stuff is out there. And for every new force of change there is an equal and opposite reaction to hold onto what has been. There is a literal life and death struggle to keep the world as it is. As with all such struggles there were serious attempts to co-opt God on behalf of one side or the other.
It is into this swirl of chaotic forces stumbles a little Augustinian monk named Martin Luther. He really had little to no grasp of the cosmic issues. His was a personal issue. Luther was about extreme pathological guilt. He burned with a sense of his own unworthiness. He was so driven by his sense of guilt that he literally wore out confessors. On his way to his quarters from confession he would remember something or become remorseful that he didn’t confess more freely. He would return to confession to fess up to this new deficit in his character.
Luther, quite unwittingly became the spark which ignited a re-formation of the whole business of the Church. He was teaching the book of Romans and a verse lit up for him. The citation was one that suddenly allowed the gift of lifting of his sense of guilt. The news he had never really appreciated was that “the righteous are made so through trust”. Had he been around in our experience we would have pumped him full of Zoloft and prayed for the best. There were no pharmaceuticals, but there was this promise. You do not need to be burdened with guilt—you can be free: just trust and be made just.
The awareness unleashed in Luther a sincere desire to talk the issue in scholarly dialogue. So, he went over to the chapel door and posted his thesis statements about his thoughts on the door. It was an invitation to debate—not a manifesto.
But the forces were out there. They played themselves out with Luther, the Papacy and the rest of the players being simply that—players in theater that they only scarcely influenced. And so, history was written by forces too strong to resist and it was shaped by the deep inner need in a single person.
Jesus walked down the road one day through Jericho. It was a different world from ours and certainly from the world of Luther. In really broad brush terms here was the problem and the fix of the religious world in which Jesus was born. The problem was, according to the religious people, that humans were not clean—they were impure. Some, of course, were more impure than others. Some were dirt. The fix, according to religious people, was that you did something, if possible, to become clean. You washed yourself of the dirty reality of your own outside and made it all better.
In short that was the religious reality. Well there sat this man by the road in Jericho. It was a bit of an equivalent of say Meridian Street in Indianapolis. He was the first century’s version of a homeless beggar with HIV. He was seen as dirty. His name literally meant “Bar” the son; “Timeaus” dirt. He was the Son of Dirt. He is tolerated and generally ignored. But there are some social conventions which regard him. He is to be quiet and as invisible as possible and to graciously/silently accept whatever alms may be dropped at his feet.
So the man is sitting there in his dark silence. And he hears the commotion going on in the street. He breaks the rule of social convention and begins to call out. And the good religious folk tell him to shut up. So he decides the rule needs to be fractured instead of just broken. He cries out all the more for the mercy he intuits is present in the man he cannot see. Religion has told him the solution for his filthiness. But Jesus offers him his first opportunity to diagnose his own problem. “What do you want?” “I want to see.” “You have got it. Want to go with us to Jerusalem?”
The world of Luther had the problem diagnosed for him, too. The problem, the good religious people said, was eternal salvation. Luther redefined the problem and when he did the forces waiting to play restructured and re formulated the Christian faith. Bar Timeaus was a spark among many in Jesus’ ministry. The forces present in the world of the first Century redefined religious reality.
Here is the most radical thing about the faith that Jesus brought to us. Jesus’ delivery on promise is this, “bring your problem; I am the way”. Jesus says clearly, that he can fix the problem that we define. Bar Timeaus’ issue was not dirty. It was that he could not see. Luther’s issue was not that he was in danger of hell, it was that he was tormented by the devils of guilt.
Now, lets think about that. I define my problem and I go in faith to Jesus. That is the story. Not, of course, that someone else defines it. And, of course, the problems may change from person to person and time to time. It may well be that we have a problem of an age.
It is true that, just like in the first century, there are forces at play that we do not even understand. The world is more than ripe for a new spark which explodes into a newly reformulated Church. The question is not whether this will happen, it will. The question is two fold—what will our response to newness be and where is the spark?
We are politically changing. In our country from Nixon to Clinton, diplomacy has emerged as the way to solve differences rather than war. That alone is enough political change to do heaven knows what.
There is social change and it is radical. Take, if you will, only the change around issues of gender in our society. In someplace between the age of “Rosie the Riveter” and now we have experienced a massive change that will continue.
There is economic change that is powerful. I always make it a point, when talking to a tech support person, of asking where they are from. You know the story—I am apt to be talking to someone in Texas, Colorado, India, Malaysia, or any point around the world. We live in a world economy and it gets more profound each day. When I get up in the morning and wonder what will happen on Wall Street today, I check Hong Kong where they have already closed trading.
Technological change is absolutely incredible. The internet is the printing press of our new world and it will reformulate us like nothing else. I have one internet site for Bible study that probably replaces 10,000 pages of books.
Our religious world, however, “ain’t doing so well”. Want this in down home terms? Bartholomew County, Indiana, counting nominal Christians, has more non-Christians than Christians. And we are the buckle on the Bible belt, for heaven’s sakes. Now it is really close to 50/50. There are 135 more non Christians than Christians in this county. And, as you may guess, the largest group of non Christians—matter of fact—the largest group of anything are folks who just do not relate to religion at all. They are not un-churched—they are simply areligious.
Here is what I think. I think we are promoting (again) an answer for which there is no longer a question. I think there is a desperate need for us to begin to listen for the real question in each individual and in the society as a whole. It isn’t that Jesus couldn’t fix dirty for Bar Timeaus, it isn’t that he couldn’t fix damnation for Martin Luther, it isn’t that he can’t fix sin for a person in this age. It is that the diagnosis belongs to the potential believer.
What is going to happen is this. Somebody in the majority portions of our world is going to begin to define the problem from their point of view. And I am hoping that they discover, buried in the debris of forgotten church messages, the answer to their question.
I think the diagnosis will be and the statement of need will sound like, “we need to belong”. The world is already saying in a myriad of ways that the deepest and profound need that is going unmet is the need to belong to others and to whatever gives order to this universe.
Someone is going to studying forgotten religious thoughts and is going to happen upon a biblical phrase (just as Luther did with justification by faith). And the new phrase is going to carry the impact, “I will be your God and you will be my people”.
And some Halloween soon we are going to look at our church doors and find the invitation to discussion about belonging and the faith.
Some tortured Luther like character, some incessant Son of Dirt, is going to clamor for a solution to THEIR issue. And when we start to pay attention, the volatile atmosphere that we have now—the world in labor for a new birth—will explode around us and emerge into a reformulated Christianity.
Get ready for the ride, because this is all going to happen.
We are going to hear the self diagnosed needs of the majority of our world. We are going to listen to the potential answer they have discovered. We are going to figure out whether we want to move with the spirit or fight the current of true reformation.
I think we are going to rise up on the wings of eagles and soar with the spirit.
Amen
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
“All About Power” Mark 10:35-45 Lawrence Jackman
Jimi Hendrix sang, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” That was way back in the 60’s.
The corollary to the Hendrix proposition is this: “Within me, when the power of love outweighs the love of power, I will know peace.” I do believe the first affirmation and I am completely convinced that the second is equally true.
However, the truth is that power, true power, is not what we think it is. The power of the faith and of the faithful really turns the worldly perception of power literally up-side-down. Jesus, in Mark, argues that power isn’t the way we understand it at all.
James and John are perhaps the most aristocratic of the Disciples. I think it is worth knowing that the story we create about the poor fishermen, sad tax collectors and simple people called the Disciples were not that at all. Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were owners of boats and had prized products. The fish that Peter and the others drug in their nets were sold as far away as Rome. Matthew, the tax man, was a person of real wealth. He had accumulated enough to give away a lot of money—twice what he had defrauded of anyone. So it was with the others—these were businessmen of some means. They could simply take time off to pursue religious inquiry. They elected one to be the group’s treasurer and went off to seek their spiritual fortunes.
So James and John were part of a powerful family in the area of Galilee. They were the Sons of Zebedee (a.k.a. the Sons of Thunder). Some suggest that their momma put them up to the proposal they make to Jesus. It sounds like their thinking is still all about a very earthly Kingdom and not the Reign of God. “Lord”, they proffer, “do us a favor. Make us your two chief Lieutenants. Let my brother be Secretary of State and I will hold down the Defense Department.”
So Jesus clarifies what real power is all about. “The last will be first. The first will be last”. “We are not like the norms of this world. We are rather devoted to a completely different set of norms. If you want to be greatest, you need to become slave of all the others. Catch on guys, we are here not to be served—but rather to serve.”
Now I know that it is not going to strike us as practical anymore than it struck the Disciples as particularly practical. The person with power to them was the person in the corner office, the persons with more stripes on his sleeve, the person who said “jump” and the people without power would say “How high?”
Again, the truth seems to be that those folks, at their very best, can manage and control very superficial elements of behavior and those only for a little while. Now what of a sort of power that controls and manages outcomes for a long time?
Lots of us own dogs and/or cats. One of the primary differences in these two critters is that you can manage dog behavior and you can adjust to cat behavior. They each appeal to a sort of power definition operational in the human being. Our Golden and Border Collie mix will fall over himself to do anything that pleases Kati the granddaughter. Our junk yard cat Cirrus will sometimes grace her with his presence and even allow her to pet him.
Dwight Eisenhower, Henry III, Napoleon and others who couldn’t stand anyone who didn’t come when called or salute when commanded and they also hated cats. Mohammed, Schweitzer, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain and others who could handle life with some patience and./ or humor all loved cats.
Which list of people do you believe shaped the world more? Beneath the surface of things God knows that we are all a bunch of cats. We are not led by those who “Lord it over us” or at least not for very long. We are led, if you can call it that, by a loving and gentle hand.
Nearly all of us can make a couple of lists of people who wanted to impact us. One list would be the folk who would control from the “top down” approach. They would herd us, nip at our heels like a Border Collie working sheep, harness us in teams, structure us and always make choices for us. They include not just people close but also people in levels of leadership. They probably include some choices we could make for a pastor of this church. Those folk work themselves very hard trying to mold others.
We are a bunch of cats. We don’t herd all that well. It isn’t that we can’t be domesticated, we can. We just do it on our terms. And there is a second list of folk who have real power and lasting power over us. For me it includes folks like my Granddad, my mother and a long list of folks you don’t know. Kearney Adams, Wilbur Davis, George Edwards and so many others. Those people knew I was a cat and couldn’t be herded. They led from beneath and the irony is that they did (and do) mold me. They continue to make me into everything that I am every day of my life.
Now given that, what do you think real power is about (at least for me)?
The short term stuff of power (the worldly definition) is really about control. And control is really all about fear when it is talking about us and our worldly approach. We want to manage a child’s behavior for their own good. We may want the same for a spouse, an employee, a student, or any of a number of people. We want to control them, because we can see the long term consequences better than they can. We know what is best.
Perhaps we do, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. The question is not do we know more, but rather how can we have the best, most lasting and most positive impact with our lives. The answer is, we can practice a different sort of faith filled leadership.
Now what sort of impact will I have on other people’s lives if I can but manage to subordinate the fear in my life to the love and trust in my soul. I know me. I am not going to be able to get rid of fear. What though, if I can run my human relationships as though the rule is really love and not fear. What Hendrix didn’t really seem to understand is that the “love of power” rests in a very frightened place in the human soul. Those who “love power” are ultimately people need our compassion.
If I trust the future; if I believe that the “universe is a friendly place”; if I believe that God’s hand is really all that is needed at the helm-- then maybe I can give myself to a servant sort of leadership.
One of the things I used to do was work with kids in the foster system. Often they would live half or more of their lives in a system of control. All choices and decisions were made for these kids and very few, if any, were made by them. Where they would live tomorrow, when they would see parents, what they would study in school, and everything about their lives would be carefully and usually very lovingly managed.
Then, about the time they turned 17 and we knew that the system would simply drop them into the world in another year, we got worried. We knew in our hearts that they had been controlled and not really nurtured or served. We prayed that the love which had gone into our care would outweigh the rightful fear that they couldn’t manage. We started, with some despair, to try to make them ready for their date with the world.
We had transitional living programs as a crash course in responding to leadership. I always looked for people to work in those programs who loved a lot and trusted a lot. I looked for servant leaders and not for worldly ones. Sometimes the best people I could get were frankly not all that bright or great at living their own lives, but they ultimately trusted that life was a survivable thing. Those were the people who could mold human beings into better beings.
My sincere belief is that Jesus’ teaching about power in Mark’s Gospel is not some warm fuzzy ideal that can only happen in another realm. It is the most practical advice that you will ever get or give to another. Want to change the world? Do it from beneath and not from on top. Want to help another grow? Be a servant and not a ruler. Maybe you are really ambitious, do you want to change the whole course of history and the future of this world? Seek servant status and not a ruler’s throne.
I have an experimental observation for you to make as you go home today. First remember what the worldly powers were all about in Jesus’ day. Caesar had control of so much. The Caesars had the money, the government, the army, the ships. Rome had much of the world under their rule. They could, in the words of Jesus, “lord it over others”.
Christians had not so much worldly power. They were fed to lions, crucified, persecuted and dominated. They came from a country that was a puppet of the government in Rome. Not so much….. not so much of everything for the Church. Except they had this lesson about real power—about being servants.
On your way home today make me a count of two things. How many Roman soldiers you can see and how many crosses you can see. Who won that decisive battle of history and what was the operational definition of power?
Amen
Jimi Hendrix sang, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” That was way back in the 60’s.
The corollary to the Hendrix proposition is this: “Within me, when the power of love outweighs the love of power, I will know peace.” I do believe the first affirmation and I am completely convinced that the second is equally true.
However, the truth is that power, true power, is not what we think it is. The power of the faith and of the faithful really turns the worldly perception of power literally up-side-down. Jesus, in Mark, argues that power isn’t the way we understand it at all.
James and John are perhaps the most aristocratic of the Disciples. I think it is worth knowing that the story we create about the poor fishermen, sad tax collectors and simple people called the Disciples were not that at all. Fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were owners of boats and had prized products. The fish that Peter and the others drug in their nets were sold as far away as Rome. Matthew, the tax man, was a person of real wealth. He had accumulated enough to give away a lot of money—twice what he had defrauded of anyone. So it was with the others—these were businessmen of some means. They could simply take time off to pursue religious inquiry. They elected one to be the group’s treasurer and went off to seek their spiritual fortunes.
So James and John were part of a powerful family in the area of Galilee. They were the Sons of Zebedee (a.k.a. the Sons of Thunder). Some suggest that their momma put them up to the proposal they make to Jesus. It sounds like their thinking is still all about a very earthly Kingdom and not the Reign of God. “Lord”, they proffer, “do us a favor. Make us your two chief Lieutenants. Let my brother be Secretary of State and I will hold down the Defense Department.”
So Jesus clarifies what real power is all about. “The last will be first. The first will be last”. “We are not like the norms of this world. We are rather devoted to a completely different set of norms. If you want to be greatest, you need to become slave of all the others. Catch on guys, we are here not to be served—but rather to serve.”
Now I know that it is not going to strike us as practical anymore than it struck the Disciples as particularly practical. The person with power to them was the person in the corner office, the persons with more stripes on his sleeve, the person who said “jump” and the people without power would say “How high?”
Again, the truth seems to be that those folks, at their very best, can manage and control very superficial elements of behavior and those only for a little while. Now what of a sort of power that controls and manages outcomes for a long time?
Lots of us own dogs and/or cats. One of the primary differences in these two critters is that you can manage dog behavior and you can adjust to cat behavior. They each appeal to a sort of power definition operational in the human being. Our Golden and Border Collie mix will fall over himself to do anything that pleases Kati the granddaughter. Our junk yard cat Cirrus will sometimes grace her with his presence and even allow her to pet him.
Dwight Eisenhower, Henry III, Napoleon and others who couldn’t stand anyone who didn’t come when called or salute when commanded and they also hated cats. Mohammed, Schweitzer, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain and others who could handle life with some patience and./ or humor all loved cats.
Which list of people do you believe shaped the world more? Beneath the surface of things God knows that we are all a bunch of cats. We are not led by those who “Lord it over us” or at least not for very long. We are led, if you can call it that, by a loving and gentle hand.
Nearly all of us can make a couple of lists of people who wanted to impact us. One list would be the folk who would control from the “top down” approach. They would herd us, nip at our heels like a Border Collie working sheep, harness us in teams, structure us and always make choices for us. They include not just people close but also people in levels of leadership. They probably include some choices we could make for a pastor of this church. Those folk work themselves very hard trying to mold others.
We are a bunch of cats. We don’t herd all that well. It isn’t that we can’t be domesticated, we can. We just do it on our terms. And there is a second list of folk who have real power and lasting power over us. For me it includes folks like my Granddad, my mother and a long list of folks you don’t know. Kearney Adams, Wilbur Davis, George Edwards and so many others. Those people knew I was a cat and couldn’t be herded. They led from beneath and the irony is that they did (and do) mold me. They continue to make me into everything that I am every day of my life.
Now given that, what do you think real power is about (at least for me)?
The short term stuff of power (the worldly definition) is really about control. And control is really all about fear when it is talking about us and our worldly approach. We want to manage a child’s behavior for their own good. We may want the same for a spouse, an employee, a student, or any of a number of people. We want to control them, because we can see the long term consequences better than they can. We know what is best.
Perhaps we do, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. The question is not do we know more, but rather how can we have the best, most lasting and most positive impact with our lives. The answer is, we can practice a different sort of faith filled leadership.
Now what sort of impact will I have on other people’s lives if I can but manage to subordinate the fear in my life to the love and trust in my soul. I know me. I am not going to be able to get rid of fear. What though, if I can run my human relationships as though the rule is really love and not fear. What Hendrix didn’t really seem to understand is that the “love of power” rests in a very frightened place in the human soul. Those who “love power” are ultimately people need our compassion.
If I trust the future; if I believe that the “universe is a friendly place”; if I believe that God’s hand is really all that is needed at the helm-- then maybe I can give myself to a servant sort of leadership.
One of the things I used to do was work with kids in the foster system. Often they would live half or more of their lives in a system of control. All choices and decisions were made for these kids and very few, if any, were made by them. Where they would live tomorrow, when they would see parents, what they would study in school, and everything about their lives would be carefully and usually very lovingly managed.
Then, about the time they turned 17 and we knew that the system would simply drop them into the world in another year, we got worried. We knew in our hearts that they had been controlled and not really nurtured or served. We prayed that the love which had gone into our care would outweigh the rightful fear that they couldn’t manage. We started, with some despair, to try to make them ready for their date with the world.
We had transitional living programs as a crash course in responding to leadership. I always looked for people to work in those programs who loved a lot and trusted a lot. I looked for servant leaders and not for worldly ones. Sometimes the best people I could get were frankly not all that bright or great at living their own lives, but they ultimately trusted that life was a survivable thing. Those were the people who could mold human beings into better beings.
My sincere belief is that Jesus’ teaching about power in Mark’s Gospel is not some warm fuzzy ideal that can only happen in another realm. It is the most practical advice that you will ever get or give to another. Want to change the world? Do it from beneath and not from on top. Want to help another grow? Be a servant and not a ruler. Maybe you are really ambitious, do you want to change the whole course of history and the future of this world? Seek servant status and not a ruler’s throne.
I have an experimental observation for you to make as you go home today. First remember what the worldly powers were all about in Jesus’ day. Caesar had control of so much. The Caesars had the money, the government, the army, the ships. Rome had much of the world under their rule. They could, in the words of Jesus, “lord it over others”.
Christians had not so much worldly power. They were fed to lions, crucified, persecuted and dominated. They came from a country that was a puppet of the government in Rome. Not so much….. not so much of everything for the Church. Except they had this lesson about real power—about being servants.
On your way home today make me a count of two things. How many Roman soldiers you can see and how many crosses you can see. Who won that decisive battle of history and what was the operational definition of power?
Amen
Sunday, October 11, 2009
October 11, 2009 Sernon
“That Which Weighs Us Down” Mark 10:17-31 Lawrence Jackman
Today we read from what is one of the more disturbing passages from the New Testament and from a terribly unsettling book of the Old Testament. Don’t ask me why the lectionary took us here, but it did. Both passages, it seems to me bring us “face to face” with the issue of what is allowed to stand between our souls and the Devine. It is axiomatic in the story from Mark that “possessions can stand between us and God.”
The book of Job, however, goes several more steps in laying out a picture of righteousness that lets nothing stand between Job and God. The clear intent of the book is to lay out the proposition that, for the righteous individual, nothing will stand between God and good people. Even as Job develops personal contempt for God, the relationship is still there. Job does not like the relationship and is clearly angry, yet he does not abandon the working principle of his life—that he is and is to be in relationship to God.
Now neither of these stories have much comfort to offer us. There are some caveats that really need to be mentioned. First of all, you need to understand that the Book of Job is some very powerful things and, at the same time, it is not a whole bunch of things. It is not a story to be appreciated in a concrete way. This is a morality play. It is akin to any other morality story that spins a yarn in order to, in the end, assert a rather simple lesson. But the story itself, puts the lesson in a setting like a gemstone in an extravagant ring. The lesson would mean not near as much if the story wasn’t told for setting.
Aesop’s Fables, Uncle Remus’ Tales and others come to mind as this sort of literary form. You can hardly say, “slow and steady wins the race”, without someone chiming in with “the hare and the tortoise”. “Don’t throw me in the briar patch” is equivalent with another being outsmarted and punishment ends up meaning that you just got turned loose from real pain or even death. Now, even though people will finish your quote when you say, “the patience of a ……” , with “Job”. The book has a bigger message than that one simple word.
So here is what not to get carried away with when you hear the story of Job. Skip right over the malevolent set up for this story, that is not what it is about. The set up is God and Satan playing a chess game in which the character Job becomes a pawn. “Let’s see how much grief we can give him before he curses you and the life you propose”, says Satan. “You are on”, answers God and the play is begun. That is all literary device to establish the sequential ripping away of all the tangible things in Job’s life in what ends up being a trial of unbelievable proportions. This story is about the character Job and not about God or Satan. It is most certainly not about who wins the chess match.
While part of the issue may be patience, much more of this story is about the perseverance of a single human as he seeks to be faithful to the creator. This is a story about a human and his relationships with his family, with his well meaning friends, and with the Creator.
This story is not about God testing a man in a game of “one-up” with Satan. It is, rather, a story about a man’s passion for God that will not be overcome.
The story in Mark is a bit different. It is about a person who lets possessions come between him and doing what he knows to be the homecoming of his soul. Now this is also a story that really needs some perspective. We say, rightly, this is the story of the rich young ruler. Look, I am old, I don’t rule anybody and I am not rich—it is not about me. And, we add in our hearts, this is certainly not about my possessions. I am not wealthy enough. The message is from us to God, “don’t mess with my possessions”.
And that boils down almost to a threat—it says this is something that can come between me and God.
We probably ought to explore, just for honesty’s sake, the assumption that we are not indeed rich. There is some stunning information out there. A high school student working fast food for 20 hours a week makes more money than, ready for this? That student makes more than 85 percent of the world’s population. Throw in a very minimum value for the housing, food and transportation that the parents provide and you have someone who rates up there in the 90’s.
Last Thursday our presbytery approved a minimum salary schedule that places a starting minister in the top couple percent. A starting teacher in this country is richer than more than 90 people out of 100. A starting lawyer is in the top three percent.
My observation is that we are, everyone of us, rich young rulers. Some of us just happen to be not terribly young. The ruler lets his stuff come between him and God.
So what is it we let enter and stay in that space between God and our soul? Because however proximate we are to another being. However close to the other, there is always a space or a gap. There is the arena where “freedom of choice” lays. And the things we allow in that space are that which weigh us down. They weigh us down when they are on a purely human level and certainly when they involve us and God.
It isn’t that those things must be selfish or that they are bad. It is what our free choice makes them to be that can become a problem.
We can be weighed down by good and wonderful and highly valued things and even by people. It is clearer when it is something material that we can measure objectively but it is just as operational when it is something like a human relationship, or even the cleanest human love of which we are capable.
My friend Jay was a good man. He came from and lived in a rough and tumble world where people struggled, confronted and intimidated each other. Tears were streaming down his face because he had just lost his dear son to an illness. “I just left to go get a sandwich in the cafeteria. I was only gone for a minute.” He said to me.
I responded to his implied question. “Kenny couldn’t get out of here with you hanging onto his ankles. You were holding him down. He needed to go home.” That could have been a cheap thing to say. But what I said was born in a relationship with me and Jay and Kenny and it was OK to say. Then, when it was no longer Kenny, it became a conversation that said Jay still sought, loved, and wanted God more than ever. The loss wasn’t going to weigh him down.
So what floats around in that space for you or for me? What are the highest and best and most beloved realities that you let hover up there with God in that divine arena where we can and do make choices?
For the rich young ruler it was his things. If he had to make a choice between God and his stuff, he would turn his back on God. Remember it was not without sadness that he did this, he was sorry that he was making the choice. It wasn’t about belief—he believed in God and even in Jesus. It wasn’t about understanding; he had that too. It wasn’t about good or bad behavior because that too was in place. This was a good behavior young man. One might presume that this man had it up on more than half the disciples as presenting good character. He would have made a pretty good Presbyterian, you know? He was a presentable, correct, and appropriate guy—just what a person might want for a son-in-law.
My space is occupied by good and wonderful things along with a good and wonder filled God. My space of most dear things is occupied by a wife, by my kids and grandkids, by the lifestyle I want to live and by valuable chores to attend. My space has a lot of church stuff floating through it. There is a rich heritage of tradition, of education and of types of service. None of that is bad. All of it is good. But I can’t let any of those most dear realities come between me and God.
The challenge here is not about money, much that stewardship season might want us to see. It is simply and always about ultimate priorities.
In organizational work of planning a direction for an organization we often go through a process. You put all the good ideas up on the board. Then you rank them in a sort of moral ranking. This set of things are good, but low on the list. This set is higher but not yet the highest. Then, left, is a set of realities that are highest and best.
But even that set must be prioritized. So up there someplace are the things which you rightly claim as the highest and best. God’s claim on your life is among the items on that list. Now is time to look at what is highest.
Amen
Today we read from what is one of the more disturbing passages from the New Testament and from a terribly unsettling book of the Old Testament. Don’t ask me why the lectionary took us here, but it did. Both passages, it seems to me bring us “face to face” with the issue of what is allowed to stand between our souls and the Devine. It is axiomatic in the story from Mark that “possessions can stand between us and God.”
The book of Job, however, goes several more steps in laying out a picture of righteousness that lets nothing stand between Job and God. The clear intent of the book is to lay out the proposition that, for the righteous individual, nothing will stand between God and good people. Even as Job develops personal contempt for God, the relationship is still there. Job does not like the relationship and is clearly angry, yet he does not abandon the working principle of his life—that he is and is to be in relationship to God.
Now neither of these stories have much comfort to offer us. There are some caveats that really need to be mentioned. First of all, you need to understand that the Book of Job is some very powerful things and, at the same time, it is not a whole bunch of things. It is not a story to be appreciated in a concrete way. This is a morality play. It is akin to any other morality story that spins a yarn in order to, in the end, assert a rather simple lesson. But the story itself, puts the lesson in a setting like a gemstone in an extravagant ring. The lesson would mean not near as much if the story wasn’t told for setting.
Aesop’s Fables, Uncle Remus’ Tales and others come to mind as this sort of literary form. You can hardly say, “slow and steady wins the race”, without someone chiming in with “the hare and the tortoise”. “Don’t throw me in the briar patch” is equivalent with another being outsmarted and punishment ends up meaning that you just got turned loose from real pain or even death. Now, even though people will finish your quote when you say, “the patience of a ……” , with “Job”. The book has a bigger message than that one simple word.
So here is what not to get carried away with when you hear the story of Job. Skip right over the malevolent set up for this story, that is not what it is about. The set up is God and Satan playing a chess game in which the character Job becomes a pawn. “Let’s see how much grief we can give him before he curses you and the life you propose”, says Satan. “You are on”, answers God and the play is begun. That is all literary device to establish the sequential ripping away of all the tangible things in Job’s life in what ends up being a trial of unbelievable proportions. This story is about the character Job and not about God or Satan. It is most certainly not about who wins the chess match.
While part of the issue may be patience, much more of this story is about the perseverance of a single human as he seeks to be faithful to the creator. This is a story about a human and his relationships with his family, with his well meaning friends, and with the Creator.
This story is not about God testing a man in a game of “one-up” with Satan. It is, rather, a story about a man’s passion for God that will not be overcome.
The story in Mark is a bit different. It is about a person who lets possessions come between him and doing what he knows to be the homecoming of his soul. Now this is also a story that really needs some perspective. We say, rightly, this is the story of the rich young ruler. Look, I am old, I don’t rule anybody and I am not rich—it is not about me. And, we add in our hearts, this is certainly not about my possessions. I am not wealthy enough. The message is from us to God, “don’t mess with my possessions”.
And that boils down almost to a threat—it says this is something that can come between me and God.
We probably ought to explore, just for honesty’s sake, the assumption that we are not indeed rich. There is some stunning information out there. A high school student working fast food for 20 hours a week makes more money than, ready for this? That student makes more than 85 percent of the world’s population. Throw in a very minimum value for the housing, food and transportation that the parents provide and you have someone who rates up there in the 90’s.
Last Thursday our presbytery approved a minimum salary schedule that places a starting minister in the top couple percent. A starting teacher in this country is richer than more than 90 people out of 100. A starting lawyer is in the top three percent.
My observation is that we are, everyone of us, rich young rulers. Some of us just happen to be not terribly young. The ruler lets his stuff come between him and God.
So what is it we let enter and stay in that space between God and our soul? Because however proximate we are to another being. However close to the other, there is always a space or a gap. There is the arena where “freedom of choice” lays. And the things we allow in that space are that which weigh us down. They weigh us down when they are on a purely human level and certainly when they involve us and God.
It isn’t that those things must be selfish or that they are bad. It is what our free choice makes them to be that can become a problem.
We can be weighed down by good and wonderful and highly valued things and even by people. It is clearer when it is something material that we can measure objectively but it is just as operational when it is something like a human relationship, or even the cleanest human love of which we are capable.
My friend Jay was a good man. He came from and lived in a rough and tumble world where people struggled, confronted and intimidated each other. Tears were streaming down his face because he had just lost his dear son to an illness. “I just left to go get a sandwich in the cafeteria. I was only gone for a minute.” He said to me.
I responded to his implied question. “Kenny couldn’t get out of here with you hanging onto his ankles. You were holding him down. He needed to go home.” That could have been a cheap thing to say. But what I said was born in a relationship with me and Jay and Kenny and it was OK to say. Then, when it was no longer Kenny, it became a conversation that said Jay still sought, loved, and wanted God more than ever. The loss wasn’t going to weigh him down.
So what floats around in that space for you or for me? What are the highest and best and most beloved realities that you let hover up there with God in that divine arena where we can and do make choices?
For the rich young ruler it was his things. If he had to make a choice between God and his stuff, he would turn his back on God. Remember it was not without sadness that he did this, he was sorry that he was making the choice. It wasn’t about belief—he believed in God and even in Jesus. It wasn’t about understanding; he had that too. It wasn’t about good or bad behavior because that too was in place. This was a good behavior young man. One might presume that this man had it up on more than half the disciples as presenting good character. He would have made a pretty good Presbyterian, you know? He was a presentable, correct, and appropriate guy—just what a person might want for a son-in-law.
My space is occupied by good and wonderful things along with a good and wonder filled God. My space of most dear things is occupied by a wife, by my kids and grandkids, by the lifestyle I want to live and by valuable chores to attend. My space has a lot of church stuff floating through it. There is a rich heritage of tradition, of education and of types of service. None of that is bad. All of it is good. But I can’t let any of those most dear realities come between me and God.
The challenge here is not about money, much that stewardship season might want us to see. It is simply and always about ultimate priorities.
In organizational work of planning a direction for an organization we often go through a process. You put all the good ideas up on the board. Then you rank them in a sort of moral ranking. This set of things are good, but low on the list. This set is higher but not yet the highest. Then, left, is a set of realities that are highest and best.
But even that set must be prioritized. So up there someplace are the things which you rightly claim as the highest and best. God’s claim on your life is among the items on that list. Now is time to look at what is highest.
Amen
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