Sunday, August 21
Proverbs 3:1-8
For several years I thought I was a really, really tall person. I had this picture of myself in my mind of a person just towering about four or five inches over most people. Then I was in college and I realized for the first time that I am of almost average height. I am 5’6” The average American woman’s height is 5’4.6”. I am just one and a half inches over average. This was a great shock to me. I realized that I really was way off on my body image. My internal perceptions of the world weren’t really accurate. I just had short friends in high school. Or perhaps I had taken that one year when I was the tallest girl in the class in 4th grade and I had held onto that perception way, way after it was no longer true. I remember being startled that my internal perception and the outside world were not identical. Have you ever had that experience when you suddenly realized the difference between what you assumed about the world and what was actually true? If you have ever had this experience I think this might be the seed of wisdom.
I remember Allen telling me that when you are flying a jet fighter at thousand miles an hour you don’t have any sense of how fast you are going, unless you have something to give you perspective. You could be flying around the earth in the space shuttle, but unless you looked at the earth, you wouldn’t have that feeling of hurtling through space. You can’t trust you own feeling. Sensation isn’t accurate. But as a pilot it is very, very important to know how fast you are going. It may have some life and death input if you are headed into the ground. If you want to land safely it helps to have the earth below to get a sense of urgency. It helps to have an airspeed indicator. It helps to have an altimeter. Sensation isn’t always accurate. It helps to have a few gauges. Gauges help you see where you are in relationship to the laws of thrust and gravity.
This had me thinking about our scripture; “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” We are doing a series on real life proverbs. So I bet The Book of Proverbs has a lot to say to help us out. And right at the start of Proverbs we have the heart of wisdom. Trust in God and remember the law. Make that law, not just an external legalism, but take it into yourself in your heart. God is trying to give us some perspective in life. God is trying to give us some gauges, as we hurl through space. We are a people who need help with perspective. God has given us the law so we have some guide, some yardstick so we can look at ourselves more truthfully and more accurately. Our problem is that we forget the law or we look for new yardsticks.
Evidently we do forget the law. We forget the law in your heads and in our hearts. Everyone assumes we know the Ten Commandments right. Heck, we are church going people we know the law right? Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s take a little test. I have some paper and pencils out there in the pews. This half of the church I am going to give you a head start on our test. You folks write down the Ten Commandments. Don’t worry about getting them in order or the whole wording of each commandment. Just give me the core idea. One or two word should be enough for each. But now on this half of the church name the ingredients of McDonalds Big Mac. Let’s give these two groups a moment to jot down their answers. How do you think they will do? Do you have some predictions? Well I will tell you how a recent poll did. Many, many more people will list Big Mac ingredients over the Ten Commandments. Most people will get the big ones. Thou shall not kill or steal. But only about 15 or 20 percent get ‘Don’t worship idols or keep the Sabbath’. Eighty percent will get the Big Mac ingredients. Only fourteen percent will get all the Ten Commandments. If we need a post it note of the Ten Commandments on our head, there isn’t much of a chance of the law to be written on the tablet of our heart. This is a problem because God doesn’t want these just in our heads. The only place the law does any good is if it gets in our hearts and then we trust God to complete this law inside us. No wonder many people want the Ten Commandments posted in courthouse walls. No one can remember them.
But Jesus gave us a way to remember the ten big ideas. Jesus said all the law and the prophets comes down to two ideas, love God and love each other. You can take the ten and bring them down to two lists. The first four deal with you and God. Think of them as the vertical axis. This is what you need for harmony with God. No other Gods. No idols. Take God’s name seriously. Keep the Sabbath. The other six are the horizontal axis. This creates harmony with others. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t covet. This is our yardstick, our gauge that helps us grab hold of who we are and what will make a life of peace.
Is there anything in this list that really throws us for a loop? It seems like a pretty simple list. We may not be able to give it line by line but we know the gist of this list. It does not surprise us. We instinctively know this list. Our problem isn’t so much that we don’t know better; its’ that we don’t behave better. When we don’t do things well we tend to avoid that thing. If we stink at tennis we don’t pick up a raquet. If we don’t cook well we make reservations or do take out. It is in our nature to avoid that thing that we don’t succeed at. I wonder if we aren’t just creating other yardsticks or ourselves.
I worry we might be creating Snooki Standards. Does anyone here know who Snooki is? Snooki is a girl on a MTV reality TV show called 'Jersey Shore'. She is a collection of bad choices from fashions to life styles. I don’t think her standards are working out that well for her. I think I saw in the grocery check out line that she was being booked by the police. But in our culture, if we can’t match the Ten Commandments we have a shot at not being Snooki or not being on the show Cops, or real housewives of New York, Atlanta or LA.
The key to remembering the law and keeping it in our hearts is to find the heart in the law. Some people remember lists. But more people remember the heart of a story or a person. Jesus was teaching us how to find the heart in the law and to find that heart in him. In The Sermon on the Mount Jesus was finding the heart of the law. Jesus looked at the law "do not kill," and said ‘do not be angry.’ Jesus looked at the law, ‘love your neighbor, and hate your enemy’ and said "love you enemy.” Jesus was growing the law up from the childlike list of “thou shall not’s” and telling us to grow this law into a real heart inside of us.
We find the heart when we stop focusing on stone tablets and find the heart of the law. We find the heart of the law in the hearts of people who God touches. So let’s remember someone who lives a life of harmony not a life of disharmony a life with God’s heart. So what person has God planted in your life to give you a gauge and a yardstick? They are easy to recognize because commandments kept in the heart are so concrete and real. These are the people who do things from compassion. Who bake the cake, visit the sick and take the hard job. This is the person who will sit up with the distressed and the dying. If you are fortunate you have at least one person. If you are lucky you have many. A friend of mine has the blessing of having a woman help raise him named Ginny Zimmer. My friend was one of five kids. But he was unique in that Ginny would take him on weekends and suddenly he was one on one with someone who really cared for him. In my life I had Elnora Helper who always assumed the best of me. I think of Kathy Pinkston. Kathy has a mule farm in Tennessee. Kathy knows what it is like to lose heart. She lost her heart when her son Jesse died at 14 and her husband died one year later on Jesse’s birthday. Yet Kathy has found the heart of the law as she takes in foster kids and loves them back to health. Kathy is a woman who has taken this little yardstick and grown it up into The Sermon of the Mount. Did you have a Ginny Zimmer or an Elnora Hepler or a Kathy Pinkston? Did you have in your life that person that helped you see a better way to live because they lived love for God and love for others?
We learn the law when the law has heart. We don’t remember the IRS code. That code is regulation and requirement and has no heart. But we can all picture a parent with a toddler teaching the toddler all the things necessary for a good life. The law is more like that loving parent. God is saying in the law. I love you. I know what will satisfy you and what will leave you longing for more. Start living in this way to have a life worth living. Amen.
