Genesis 3:1-7
September 25, 2011
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Last summer I had an interesting, online conversation with a guy about the place of religion in public discourse. We struck up the conversation after I had written an op-ed piece for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, titled “God or No God Is Not the Only Choice.” I had written the piece in response to a previous op-ed piece in which an atheist wrote that religious people, when discussing and debating policy in the public sphere, should leave their religious ideas out of the dialogue. He was basically saying that Christians should check their religion when it comes to private matters of faith. We should only engage in religion-neutral language in politics.
My article argued against that, asking how we can ask someone to put aside perspectives and rationales that were developed out of their religious convictions. Why should a seemingly scientific logic and rational be allowed, while asking religious people to put aside thoughts that come from other sources as well?
When you write op-ed pieces, you expect a lot of emails afterwards. My articles in the past have almost always appeared in the Sunday paper, so often when I get home from church there are lots of emails waiting for me. Typically about 60% are nice, thanking me for the articles. Another 30 are respectful, telling me where I went wrong. Then there are the 10% that are rude, telling me how stupid I am. Fortunately, the original email I mentioned from the man above was one of the 30%. He was an atheist, and he was adamant that because religious and theological thought is rooted in thinking that lacks logic and rationality, it should be left by the wayside. He wrote, “Faith and belief, by their very definitions, mean accepting things without sufficient evidence. And that's fine in the privacy of your own home. But should we decide court cases without sufficient evidence? Should we decide to go to war without sufficient evidence? Should we pass financial laws without sufficient evidence? Tell me what topical issue or policy debate cannot be resolved empirically and morally without needing to invoke metaphysical beliefs. It may sound cold, and it may not be aesthetically pleasing, but when it comes to public discourse and policy we should stick to ‘just the facts.’"
I’m certainly not going to disagree with him about deciding court cases based on the facts and rational thinking. We should. Still, our religious convictions can lead us to offer mercy at times. But that’s not what our discussion was really about. He assumed that being religious meant being irrational, illogical. What I ended up arguing with him about was how truly logical and rational any of us can be. The fact is that as logical and rational as we might like to be, we aren’t built for merely that kind of thinking. Humans were created with the ability to think logically and rationally, but we were also created to think in another way. The ancient Greeks, Jews, Romans, Persians, and others understood that we humans balance two ways of thinking. All of them certainly embraced logic, but they also embraced “myth,” and they knew that myth opened us to a whole different way of thinking.
Quite simply, ancient people balanced both logos (or rational logic) and mythos (mythological thinking). The problem we have in the modern world is that we are so logos-oriented, we’re so oriented to logical, rational, empirical, and scientific thinking that we don’t see the need for mythological thinking. As a result, we dismiss mythological thinking. For example, whenever you hear that something is a “myth,” what does that mean to you? It means that something isn’t true, right?
We think that because we are stuck in a logos-only thinking culture that prizes logic and rationality. We only see value in logic. But ancient people knew that wisdom isn’t truly gained through rational thinking. Wisdom is gained from myth that moves us into a deeper kind of wisdom.
So what’s the difference between logos and mythos? Logos, as I’ve already said, is logical, rational thinking. It is the thinking that undergirds so many of the wonderful technological miracles that we’ve had in the past 500 years. Logos underlies things that we take for granted today: rockets, electric power, digital music, movies, television, cameras, telephones, cellphones, computers, houses, buildings, cars, and everything else surrounding us on a day-to-day basis. Without logos, we cannot have all the conveniences we love. Logos is good, and logical thinking is good, especially in the religious and theological spheres. Logos helps us to think things through, and to test ideas. The Bible embraces logos in John’s gospel, where he calls Jesus the Logos.
The problem with logos is that it advances knowledge, but not necessarily wisdom. Logos doesn’t tell us how we should use all of those technological advances. It doesn’t tell us how to balance life, it doesn’t tell us how to love, it doesn’t tell us how to care. People come up with logical reasons for these, but they are justifications, not wisdom.
Mythos is a more ancient, symbolic, metaphorical way of coming to understand life. Mythos underlies stories, legends, art, music, poetry, and everything else that tries to communicate something deeper. It taps us into a way of understanding that we can’t access through logos. It tells us how to live, it tells us about God, and it tells us about life. The stories of Genesis aren’t really trying to teach us history. History is a discipline developed out of logos. In fact (and this may be hard to grasp), history as a discipline really didn’t exist till the Age of Enlightenment, beginning in the 17th century. People didn’t study history, or even really write history, till the economy was such that people could carve out a living studying history. To do so requires time to read, time to investigate, and time to study. Prior to the Age of Enlightenment few had time for any of those things. Coming out of the Dark Ages, and the Medieval period, it was hard enough for people to survive. Ancient people didn’t think historically. They though mythologically.
The writers of Genesis were more interested in mythos than in history. They were trying to teach us about God and us. They were telling us, in the story, that God wants to walk among us and live in a state of blissful innocence, but we don’t want that. We want more than were ready for. So when God says, “Don’t eat of that fruit,” or when God says don’t in general, we become consumed with it. It also tells us of our tendency to blame others for what we do. When Adam gets caught, he blames Eve. And when she gets caught, she blames the serpent. The poor serpent had no one left to blame. The story also tells us that we constantly reject bliss and peace, instead pursuing ways of life that lead to struggle and pain. But the rest of the Bible teaches us how to live in the midst of that struggling and pain.
In the end, logos gives us knowledge, but mythos gives us wisdom. Wisdom without knowledge makes us misguided, while knowledge without wisdom makes us fools
So what does this teach us about how to deal with skeptics? Skeptics want us to cut off one whole way of thinking when we talk with them. They want us to stick just to logos, which is what they value, while dismissing mythos, which is part of what we value. Ironically, many of them do value mythos in the form of movies and video games. Many love movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix, which are all films that appeal to mythos. But what they don’t like is ancient mythos.
So what do you say to skeptics? Well,… you can talk extensively about mythos and logos, but they’re going to probably dismiss you. What I would simply say is that our faith is rooted in something beyond just human logic and knowledge. We’re rooted also in ancient wisdom.
Amen.
What Do We Say to Skeptics? Experiences Matter
Exodus 3:1-14
September 18, 2011
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“
Twenty years ago I had a surprising phone call from John, a guy I went to high school with. He and I knew each other somewhat well since we had played some sports together. He was a couple of years behind me, so we didn’t hang out a whole lot together, other than after lacrosse games. He told me that he wanted to set an appointment come over to my condo and talk about something.
Having been a pastor for a few years, I wasn’t sure what his agenda was. Did he want talk with me about a problem? Did he want to ask me about something perplexing religious issue? Or was it something else?
On the appointed day, we sat down, exchanged a bit of chit/chat, and then he got down to business. John wanted to talk with me about water. Specifically, he wanted to talk about me buying a water filter from him. It was a bit surprising. That’s not what I expected. But being a person who likes clean water, I bought one from him.
After I wrote the check, we started talking about other things. Specifically, he asked me a bunch of questions about why I became a pastor, and what attracted me to ministry. At one point he said something interesting. He asked me, “Do you really believe in love—that love is real and that people really love each other?” I replied, “Sure, I wouldn’t be very good at what I do if I didn’t believe in it.” He said, “I don’t believe love is real. I think people do good deeds and act in ways we call ‘love’ because of what they hope to get in return. We call it love, but it’s really self-interest. People do nice things for each other because of what they hope for in return.”
I told him that I had met a lot of people in church who did things without concern for their own benefit. He replied, “Yeah, but they really do those good deeds because they believe God will let them into heaven for doing them. They’re doing it for what they hope to get in return.” I said to him that Presbyterians don’t believe that good deeds get us into heaven; that we believe God lets us in based on God’s love.” He pushed that idea aside, saying, “You say that, but all Christians do good deeds to get into heaven.” I tried to convince him otherwise, but no matter what I said, he dismissed me. At the end he said, “Sorry about all that. Do you still want the water filter?” I said, “Sure, John, but only because I love you.”
I thought about John’s visit for a long time afterwards. I realized, knowing a bit about his background, that he hadn’t had a lot of real loving experiences growing up. So it made sense that he didn’t believe in love. His father had been an alcoholic, and his mother remained a bit distant as she tried to maintain normalcy in the face of dysfunction. John hadn’t experienced much love. He believed what he believed because he hadn’t had a self-sacrificing, altruistic love experience. Simply put, he couldn't believe in what he hadn’t experienced.
So what do you think? If you don’t experience love personally, does it really exist? What about joy, contentment, depression, hope, and more? If you don’t experience any of those states of being, do they really exist? For example, many people look at those with depression and think, “Why doesn’t he just snap out of it?” That’s certainly an attitude saying that depression really doesn’t exist—that it’s just a sadness that we can choose to quit feeling if we want to.
The question of whether experiences really exist if we don’t experience them is like the old philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there, does it make a sound?” If we don’t experience something personally, does it really exist? We would probably say that it does, even if we don’t experience them. But when the topic gets to God, so many people say that God doesn’t exist because they don’t experience God.
It's this whole issue of experience that really gets to the heart of our struggle in dealing with skeptics. They don't believe what they don't experience. And they don't experience God because they don't believe anyone can really experience God. They argue with us over beliefs, but when it really comes down to it, faith is about our experiences of God, not our beliefs. And that’s what gets in the way of talking with skeptics about our faith.
The fact is that we don’t form our faith because someone told us, in a logical, rational way, that we must believe in something. We develop faith because we’ve experienced God in some way. I don’t even mean that we’ve had some great, “throw-away-the-crutches-I’m-healed” experience. I’m talking about just small experiences of God. Have you ever been touched or inspired by a piece of music or a hymn? Have you felt God’s stillness and peace during communion? Have you sensed God whispering something to you during a sermon? Have you sensed God while walking in the woods, reading a book, watching television, talking with a friend, or somewhere else? These are the kinds of experiences most of us have. They are experiences of God.
What's so frustrating about skeptical agnostics (people who aren’t sure about God) and atheists (people who adamantly don’t believe in God) is that they generally diminish our experiences by dismissing our beliefs. When we talk with them about God and religion, they set a subtle trap. They lure us into defending our beliefs about God, Christ, the Bible, church, and the rest by getting us to talk about these things on a rational, logical level. They want to debate us on our logic. The problem is that experiences of faith aren’t logical. When we experience God, either dramatically or subtly, it’s rarely a rational experience. It’s a deep, inspiring experience, but it doesn’t follow logical rules, much like love doesn’t follow logical rules.
Also, our beliefs don’t follow human logic, they follow God’s logic, which is often paradoxical. I wrote a book on this, Paradoxes for Living. In it I talked about how much of what Jesus taught us goes against human logic: to be strong we have to be weak; to be mature we have to become like children; to gain our lives we have to lose our lives; to become masters we have to become servants. We also believe that God is one and God is three, and that God was born of a virgin, died, and was resurrected by God. These things don’t make rational sense. But they can be experienced as true.
Basically, by their reactions to our experiences of God, faith, church, and prayer, skeptics suggest that our experiences either don’t matter, are mildly delusional, or are not rooted in the real world. They never deny their own experiences, but they do deny ours by suggesting that we are either naïve or intellectually misguided.
There are reasons why skeptics are skeptical. Some are skeptical because they had bad experiences in church. They may have grown up in a judgmental church, an uncaring church, or even an abusive church. They’ve become skeptical because of growing up in a context that makes faith hard.
Some are skeptical because they've been criticized by Christians, and they see us as being judgmental. Our judgmentalism can be our worst trait, and it turns off so many people. Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Christians social researchers, have studied the perceptions of 18-35 year-old non-Christians, and wrote about them in their book, UnChristian. They say that 87% of non-Christians in that age range say we Christians are judgmental. And there’s good reason for them to think this. Many Christians are judgmental not only towards non-Christians, but especially towards our own. So many Christians look down their judgmental noses at Christians who don’t believe what they believe. Many of us Christians have earned the judgmental label.
So what do we say to a skeptic, whether a stranger, a friend, or a family member, especially when they diminish our experiences? Let me offer three thoughts.
First, don’t say anything—let you be the experience that opens them up to the possibility of experiencing God. Sometimes talking about faith and Christianity can be our worst enemy because we say things that unwittingly push people away. St. Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary use words.” What he meant by this is that we should let our lives be an expression of the Gospel. How we live, how we treat others, our compassion and caring, should be an example of what it means to be a Christian. This puts pressure on us to live out Christ’s teachings throughout our lives so that people will experience God’s presence through us. That opens the door to sharing our faith.
Second, when openings present themselves, share our experiences of God, even if we don’t understand them. We don’t have to have dramatic experiences of God to share stories of our faith. All we need to do is to chip away at them. I’ve had so many people chip away at me by sharing their faith, and it’s their stories and faith that led me to return to the church at age 24 after leaving it at age 15. It was my first girlfriend in high school. It was a woman in college my freshman year talking about her faith and experiences of God. It was my father talking about his faith and experiences of God. None of them talked to me much about their theological beliefs. They talked simply about how they’ve experienced God in their lives and how church was a part of their experiences. This opened me back up to the possibility that God could be found in church.
Finally, live a life that allows us to experience God. We can’t actually share experiences that we don’t have. To have these experiences, we have to live lives that cultivate them. Going to worship regularly is one practice. Others are praying regularly, reading scripture, looking for God everywhere, taking time for stillness and balance in our lives, and just doing anything that opens us to God. We can also offer this same challenge to skeptics. Something that I’ve often said to skeptics is that if they are going to discover if God is real or not they need to run an experiment. Pray to God three times a day, everyday, for forty days. Ask God to reveal God’s self. See if that helps them to discover for themselves whether or not God is real (while preaching this sermon, Connie Frierson, our associate pastor, blurted out, “Graham, that’s what you did with me 12 years ago. I was a skeptic, and now I’m a pastor).
We cannot force a skeptic to believe, but if we are willing to let our lives be an example of the Gospel, if we are willing to share our experiences of God, and if we are able to live lives that build up those experiences, we can be well on our way to helping skeptics discover what we’ve discovered.
Amen.
September 18, 2011
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“
Twenty years ago I had a surprising phone call from John, a guy I went to high school with. He and I knew each other somewhat well since we had played some sports together. He was a couple of years behind me, so we didn’t hang out a whole lot together, other than after lacrosse games. He told me that he wanted to set an appointment come over to my condo and talk about something.
Having been a pastor for a few years, I wasn’t sure what his agenda was. Did he want talk with me about a problem? Did he want to ask me about something perplexing religious issue? Or was it something else?
On the appointed day, we sat down, exchanged a bit of chit/chat, and then he got down to business. John wanted to talk with me about water. Specifically, he wanted to talk about me buying a water filter from him. It was a bit surprising. That’s not what I expected. But being a person who likes clean water, I bought one from him.
After I wrote the check, we started talking about other things. Specifically, he asked me a bunch of questions about why I became a pastor, and what attracted me to ministry. At one point he said something interesting. He asked me, “Do you really believe in love—that love is real and that people really love each other?” I replied, “Sure, I wouldn’t be very good at what I do if I didn’t believe in it.” He said, “I don’t believe love is real. I think people do good deeds and act in ways we call ‘love’ because of what they hope to get in return. We call it love, but it’s really self-interest. People do nice things for each other because of what they hope for in return.”
I told him that I had met a lot of people in church who did things without concern for their own benefit. He replied, “Yeah, but they really do those good deeds because they believe God will let them into heaven for doing them. They’re doing it for what they hope to get in return.” I said to him that Presbyterians don’t believe that good deeds get us into heaven; that we believe God lets us in based on God’s love.” He pushed that idea aside, saying, “You say that, but all Christians do good deeds to get into heaven.” I tried to convince him otherwise, but no matter what I said, he dismissed me. At the end he said, “Sorry about all that. Do you still want the water filter?” I said, “Sure, John, but only because I love you.”
I thought about John’s visit for a long time afterwards. I realized, knowing a bit about his background, that he hadn’t had a lot of real loving experiences growing up. So it made sense that he didn’t believe in love. His father had been an alcoholic, and his mother remained a bit distant as she tried to maintain normalcy in the face of dysfunction. John hadn’t experienced much love. He believed what he believed because he hadn’t had a self-sacrificing, altruistic love experience. Simply put, he couldn't believe in what he hadn’t experienced.
So what do you think? If you don’t experience love personally, does it really exist? What about joy, contentment, depression, hope, and more? If you don’t experience any of those states of being, do they really exist? For example, many people look at those with depression and think, “Why doesn’t he just snap out of it?” That’s certainly an attitude saying that depression really doesn’t exist—that it’s just a sadness that we can choose to quit feeling if we want to.
The question of whether experiences really exist if we don’t experience them is like the old philosophical question, “If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there, does it make a sound?” If we don’t experience something personally, does it really exist? We would probably say that it does, even if we don’t experience them. But when the topic gets to God, so many people say that God doesn’t exist because they don’t experience God.
It's this whole issue of experience that really gets to the heart of our struggle in dealing with skeptics. They don't believe what they don't experience. And they don't experience God because they don't believe anyone can really experience God. They argue with us over beliefs, but when it really comes down to it, faith is about our experiences of God, not our beliefs. And that’s what gets in the way of talking with skeptics about our faith.
The fact is that we don’t form our faith because someone told us, in a logical, rational way, that we must believe in something. We develop faith because we’ve experienced God in some way. I don’t even mean that we’ve had some great, “throw-away-the-crutches-I’m-healed” experience. I’m talking about just small experiences of God. Have you ever been touched or inspired by a piece of music or a hymn? Have you felt God’s stillness and peace during communion? Have you sensed God whispering something to you during a sermon? Have you sensed God while walking in the woods, reading a book, watching television, talking with a friend, or somewhere else? These are the kinds of experiences most of us have. They are experiences of God.
What's so frustrating about skeptical agnostics (people who aren’t sure about God) and atheists (people who adamantly don’t believe in God) is that they generally diminish our experiences by dismissing our beliefs. When we talk with them about God and religion, they set a subtle trap. They lure us into defending our beliefs about God, Christ, the Bible, church, and the rest by getting us to talk about these things on a rational, logical level. They want to debate us on our logic. The problem is that experiences of faith aren’t logical. When we experience God, either dramatically or subtly, it’s rarely a rational experience. It’s a deep, inspiring experience, but it doesn’t follow logical rules, much like love doesn’t follow logical rules.
Also, our beliefs don’t follow human logic, they follow God’s logic, which is often paradoxical. I wrote a book on this, Paradoxes for Living. In it I talked about how much of what Jesus taught us goes against human logic: to be strong we have to be weak; to be mature we have to become like children; to gain our lives we have to lose our lives; to become masters we have to become servants. We also believe that God is one and God is three, and that God was born of a virgin, died, and was resurrected by God. These things don’t make rational sense. But they can be experienced as true.
Basically, by their reactions to our experiences of God, faith, church, and prayer, skeptics suggest that our experiences either don’t matter, are mildly delusional, or are not rooted in the real world. They never deny their own experiences, but they do deny ours by suggesting that we are either naïve or intellectually misguided.
There are reasons why skeptics are skeptical. Some are skeptical because they had bad experiences in church. They may have grown up in a judgmental church, an uncaring church, or even an abusive church. They’ve become skeptical because of growing up in a context that makes faith hard.
Some are skeptical because they've been criticized by Christians, and they see us as being judgmental. Our judgmentalism can be our worst trait, and it turns off so many people. Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, Christians social researchers, have studied the perceptions of 18-35 year-old non-Christians, and wrote about them in their book, UnChristian. They say that 87% of non-Christians in that age range say we Christians are judgmental. And there’s good reason for them to think this. Many Christians are judgmental not only towards non-Christians, but especially towards our own. So many Christians look down their judgmental noses at Christians who don’t believe what they believe. Many of us Christians have earned the judgmental label.
So what do we say to a skeptic, whether a stranger, a friend, or a family member, especially when they diminish our experiences? Let me offer three thoughts.
First, don’t say anything—let you be the experience that opens them up to the possibility of experiencing God. Sometimes talking about faith and Christianity can be our worst enemy because we say things that unwittingly push people away. St. Francis once said, “Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary use words.” What he meant by this is that we should let our lives be an expression of the Gospel. How we live, how we treat others, our compassion and caring, should be an example of what it means to be a Christian. This puts pressure on us to live out Christ’s teachings throughout our lives so that people will experience God’s presence through us. That opens the door to sharing our faith.
Second, when openings present themselves, share our experiences of God, even if we don’t understand them. We don’t have to have dramatic experiences of God to share stories of our faith. All we need to do is to chip away at them. I’ve had so many people chip away at me by sharing their faith, and it’s their stories and faith that led me to return to the church at age 24 after leaving it at age 15. It was my first girlfriend in high school. It was a woman in college my freshman year talking about her faith and experiences of God. It was my father talking about his faith and experiences of God. None of them talked to me much about their theological beliefs. They talked simply about how they’ve experienced God in their lives and how church was a part of their experiences. This opened me back up to the possibility that God could be found in church.
Finally, live a life that allows us to experience God. We can’t actually share experiences that we don’t have. To have these experiences, we have to live lives that cultivate them. Going to worship regularly is one practice. Others are praying regularly, reading scripture, looking for God everywhere, taking time for stillness and balance in our lives, and just doing anything that opens us to God. We can also offer this same challenge to skeptics. Something that I’ve often said to skeptics is that if they are going to discover if God is real or not they need to run an experiment. Pray to God three times a day, everyday, for forty days. Ask God to reveal God’s self. See if that helps them to discover for themselves whether or not God is real (while preaching this sermon, Connie Frierson, our associate pastor, blurted out, “Graham, that’s what you did with me 12 years ago. I was a skeptic, and now I’m a pastor).
We cannot force a skeptic to believe, but if we are willing to let our lives be an example of the Gospel, if we are willing to share our experiences of God, and if we are able to live lives that build up those experiences, we can be well on our way to helping skeptics discover what we’ve discovered.
Amen.
Real-Life Proverbs: We Only See What We Believe
To read the sermon, including the pictures that are a part of the sermon, copy and paste into your browser the link below:
http://www.ngrahamstandish.org/Site/Sermons/Entries/2011/8/28_Real-Life_Proverbs__We_Only_See_What_We_Believe.html
http://www.ngrahamstandish.org/Site/Sermons/Entries/2011/8/28_Real-Life_Proverbs__We_Only_See_What_We_Believe.html
Real Life Proverbs: Everyone Needs a Yardstick. Proverbs 3:1-6
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.
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.
Real-Life Proverbs: Appreciation Is the Doorway to Love
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 14, 2011
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
I don't know if you recognize the name Charles Lamb. Most people don’t read his works anymore, since he wrote back in the early nineteenth century. At the time he was known world-wide for his books of essays, and as a result of his writing, he became a well-known and sought after speaker. He did have a little quirk, though, at the end of his talks. If someone would come up to him and say, “Mr. Lamb, I really loved your talk. I want to introduce you to my friend,” Lamb would often say, “I don’t like your friend.” Shocked, the person would reply, “But you don’t know my friend.” Lamb would respond, “That’s exactly why I don’t like him.”
An odd quirk, but Lamb was hitting an essential idea, however inappropriate it was. Lamb had a point. How can you actually like, or even love, a person if you don’t know the person? And how can you actually know the person if you don’t have an interest in him or her?
Lamb captured a fundamental point in being a Christian: you cannot love someone unless you have an appreciation for that person. And in our day and age it’s easy to find reasons to depreciate people rather than appreciate them. Before I go on, I want to go over the two words I just used: appreciation and depreciation. They are two of my favorite word because of how much they say.
Let’s start with “appreciation.” The word is used in a lot of contexts, but think of it in terms of your home. If our house appreciates, what does it do? It increases in value. If it depreciates it decreases in value. When we appreciate a person, we see her as someone of increased or enhanced value. We see her as valuable. When we depreciate a person, we see him as having decreased or no value. We don’t see him as being valuable. These two terms get right to the foundations of love. If we say that we love people, we have to see them as inherently valuable and treat them as valuable. But we live in an age in which people are easily devalued and depreciated.
When we depreciate people, we may criticize them, but even worse than criticism is to not even recognize them. The most typical way to not recognize people is to functionalize them. In other words, we only recognize what they do for us. We don’t regard them as people in their own right. Let me give you an example. When you go to a grocery store, a clothing store, or some other store, how do you regard the clerks and salespeople? Typically, we see them primarily as people who sell us stuff or process sales. They are primarily a function. We don’t necessarily see them as people with value, especially if they are doing something that gets in our way (being too slow to process a sale, or taking too much time with another customer). This is only a fraction of the ways we functionalize. We constantly functionalize people at work in terms of their jobs. We look at people in our offices in terms of what they do, not who they are. We depreciate them by functionalizing them. We depreciate co-workers, salespeople, government workers, bosses, employees, neighbors, teachers, students, and sometimes even spouses and children.
To love someone, we have to start as seeing him as being valuable beyond what he does. And once we see the person as valuable despite what he does, then we can start treating him with respect, kindness, compassion, and even love.
I said that in this day and age it’s easy to depreciate people, but it’s always been easy to depreciate them. Humans have always had a hard time with appreciation. Depreciation is the cause of every war because we depreciate our enemies. It’s the cause of every act of violence. It’s the cause of all conflict. And it’s the true cause of poverty and the sinful ways we treat each other.
It was Jesus’ great appreciation for all people that led him to talk so much about the poor, the ill, the hungry, the imprisoned. He knew that these people were always being depreciated. So he constantly talked about valuing the devalued. He told us in Matthew 25 that we’re going to be judged by how we treat those who are hungry, homeless, ill, imprisoned, and rejected by society. He told the man who was rich, and who followed all the commandments but wanted to take the next step, to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. Jesus also spent much of his time healing and lifting up those rejected and devalued by Jewish society. He healed the servant of a centurion, a soldier in the Roman army whom the Jews saw as oppressive and against God. He healed a woman with a hemorrhage, seen as sinful because of her condition. He healed a Canaanite woman, the blind, and those with leprosy, all who were seen as sinful. He lifted up the woman caught in adultery, prostitutes, as well as Samaritans who were considered to be the worst of the worst because they took the Jewish faith and synced it up with other faiths. And he lifted up tax collectors, making one his disciple, even though tax collectors were looked upon with the same regard that today we might look upon someone in the Mafia. Jesus appreciate them all, and as a result was able to love them all.
The only people Jesus seemed to depreciate were those who persistently, and then violently, depreciate him. He criticized the Sadducees and Pharisees who saw no value in him, yet we know that if they came to him for help he would have helped because despite his criticisms he loved them. Jesus was able to love those who were devalued by Jewish people because he saw value in them. He appreciated them
We are called by Jesus to love everyone, but to do that we have to find a way to value everyone, to appreciate them. A lot of people think they are loving in a Christian way, but they constantly devalue others, which means they can’t love. The whole idea of forgiveness is wrapped up in appreciation. We can’t forgive another person until we begin to find value in that person despite what she or he has done to us or another. To forgive we have to find value in a person and see that person as loved by God—to see our love of that person as essential to healing that person of all that has led her to do terrible acts to us or others.
There are an awful lot of seemingly good Christians who believe they love, but then show the limits of their love. For example, about fifteen years ago I was sitting at a traffic light behind a car whose bumper displayed both the owner’s level of “appreciation” along with her level of “depreciation.” On the left of the bumper was a sticker that said, “We Vote Pro Life.” Now, there’s a person who appreciates people. She cares about the unborn, and seemingly about all people who live. Yet on the right side of the bumper was another sticker that said, “Die Liberal Scum.” I guess she’s only pro-life if the person is either unborn or agrees with her religion or politics. I’m sure she sees herself as loving, but if you devalue everyone who’s liberal, you are not loving the way Christ taught us to love. In fact, you are loving only those close to you or who agree with you. That’s not true Christian love.
Let me close with a final story that I think captures how important appreciation is to love. Once there was a small village that had a reputation for being a unfriendly, especially towards strangers. One day, a raggedy stranger showed up in town and knocked on a number of doors, asking for food. Predictably, he was rejected by everyone. Finally, he came to the last family’s door. The wife answered, and the raggedy man said, “Could you spare some food for me, I’m very hungry.” The woman, wary of strangers, said, “We have very little ourselves. I’m sorry. We can’t help you.” The man smiled and said, “Not to worry. Not to worry. I really only need a pot, some water, and a fire. You see, I have this magic soup stone, and with it I make the most incredible soup you have ever tasted. Would you be willing to lend me a pot and some water? I’ll build a fire, and then I can feed myself.” After consulting with her husband, the woman agreed.
He built the fire, and as the pot heated up he dropped his odd-looking stone into the pot. He began stirring the pot, pausing every once in a while to peer in. Soon he took the spoon and tasted his soup: “Oh my! This is wonderful! But you know, it is lacking one thing.” “What?” asked the woman, who hovered to watch what he was doing. “I hate to bother you, but it could use a few potatoes.” “Sure,” said the woman. Then she retrieved some potatoes, chopped them up and threw them into the pot. By now a crowd was gathering, wondering why their neighbor was conversing with this raggedy man. Once again sipped the soup. “Oh my Lord, this really is wonderful! If only,… if only…” “What?” asked a few people. “If only we had a few carrots, that would really round out the flavor.” Immediately a few people ran home and brought back some chopped carrots.
Again he sipped, and again he declared the soup the wonderful, if only we had some lamb—done! If only we had some spices—done! If only we had some scallions—done! By now everyone was gathered around the pot. Finally, the man sipped the soup and yelled, “Perfect! It’s done! This is the best soup I have ever had. Soup for everyone! Get your bowls and share in my feast!” They all grabbed their bowls and shared in the soup, and everyone agreed that it was the best soup they had ever tasted. They shared it with each other, they talked, they laughed, they began to dance, and it turned into a real celebration. What they didn’t notice was that in the middle of it all, the man had slipped away, leaving the magical soup stone in the bottom of the pot. To this day the town gathers once a week to share in the magic powers of the soup stone, a stone that makes the best soup ever. And they invite the poor, the hungry, the hurting to share in their feast.
The raggedy man was depreciated when he first came into town. He was appreciated once he made the soup. But what if he had been appreciated at first? That would have made all the difference.
Amen.
August 14, 2011
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
I don't know if you recognize the name Charles Lamb. Most people don’t read his works anymore, since he wrote back in the early nineteenth century. At the time he was known world-wide for his books of essays, and as a result of his writing, he became a well-known and sought after speaker. He did have a little quirk, though, at the end of his talks. If someone would come up to him and say, “Mr. Lamb, I really loved your talk. I want to introduce you to my friend,” Lamb would often say, “I don’t like your friend.” Shocked, the person would reply, “But you don’t know my friend.” Lamb would respond, “That’s exactly why I don’t like him.”
An odd quirk, but Lamb was hitting an essential idea, however inappropriate it was. Lamb had a point. How can you actually like, or even love, a person if you don’t know the person? And how can you actually know the person if you don’t have an interest in him or her?
Lamb captured a fundamental point in being a Christian: you cannot love someone unless you have an appreciation for that person. And in our day and age it’s easy to find reasons to depreciate people rather than appreciate them. Before I go on, I want to go over the two words I just used: appreciation and depreciation. They are two of my favorite word because of how much they say.
Let’s start with “appreciation.” The word is used in a lot of contexts, but think of it in terms of your home. If our house appreciates, what does it do? It increases in value. If it depreciates it decreases in value. When we appreciate a person, we see her as someone of increased or enhanced value. We see her as valuable. When we depreciate a person, we see him as having decreased or no value. We don’t see him as being valuable. These two terms get right to the foundations of love. If we say that we love people, we have to see them as inherently valuable and treat them as valuable. But we live in an age in which people are easily devalued and depreciated.
When we depreciate people, we may criticize them, but even worse than criticism is to not even recognize them. The most typical way to not recognize people is to functionalize them. In other words, we only recognize what they do for us. We don’t regard them as people in their own right. Let me give you an example. When you go to a grocery store, a clothing store, or some other store, how do you regard the clerks and salespeople? Typically, we see them primarily as people who sell us stuff or process sales. They are primarily a function. We don’t necessarily see them as people with value, especially if they are doing something that gets in our way (being too slow to process a sale, or taking too much time with another customer). This is only a fraction of the ways we functionalize. We constantly functionalize people at work in terms of their jobs. We look at people in our offices in terms of what they do, not who they are. We depreciate them by functionalizing them. We depreciate co-workers, salespeople, government workers, bosses, employees, neighbors, teachers, students, and sometimes even spouses and children.
To love someone, we have to start as seeing him as being valuable beyond what he does. And once we see the person as valuable despite what he does, then we can start treating him with respect, kindness, compassion, and even love.
I said that in this day and age it’s easy to depreciate people, but it’s always been easy to depreciate them. Humans have always had a hard time with appreciation. Depreciation is the cause of every war because we depreciate our enemies. It’s the cause of every act of violence. It’s the cause of all conflict. And it’s the true cause of poverty and the sinful ways we treat each other.
It was Jesus’ great appreciation for all people that led him to talk so much about the poor, the ill, the hungry, the imprisoned. He knew that these people were always being depreciated. So he constantly talked about valuing the devalued. He told us in Matthew 25 that we’re going to be judged by how we treat those who are hungry, homeless, ill, imprisoned, and rejected by society. He told the man who was rich, and who followed all the commandments but wanted to take the next step, to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow him. Jesus also spent much of his time healing and lifting up those rejected and devalued by Jewish society. He healed the servant of a centurion, a soldier in the Roman army whom the Jews saw as oppressive and against God. He healed a woman with a hemorrhage, seen as sinful because of her condition. He healed a Canaanite woman, the blind, and those with leprosy, all who were seen as sinful. He lifted up the woman caught in adultery, prostitutes, as well as Samaritans who were considered to be the worst of the worst because they took the Jewish faith and synced it up with other faiths. And he lifted up tax collectors, making one his disciple, even though tax collectors were looked upon with the same regard that today we might look upon someone in the Mafia. Jesus appreciate them all, and as a result was able to love them all.
The only people Jesus seemed to depreciate were those who persistently, and then violently, depreciate him. He criticized the Sadducees and Pharisees who saw no value in him, yet we know that if they came to him for help he would have helped because despite his criticisms he loved them. Jesus was able to love those who were devalued by Jewish people because he saw value in them. He appreciated them
We are called by Jesus to love everyone, but to do that we have to find a way to value everyone, to appreciate them. A lot of people think they are loving in a Christian way, but they constantly devalue others, which means they can’t love. The whole idea of forgiveness is wrapped up in appreciation. We can’t forgive another person until we begin to find value in that person despite what she or he has done to us or another. To forgive we have to find value in a person and see that person as loved by God—to see our love of that person as essential to healing that person of all that has led her to do terrible acts to us or others.
There are an awful lot of seemingly good Christians who believe they love, but then show the limits of their love. For example, about fifteen years ago I was sitting at a traffic light behind a car whose bumper displayed both the owner’s level of “appreciation” along with her level of “depreciation.” On the left of the bumper was a sticker that said, “We Vote Pro Life.” Now, there’s a person who appreciates people. She cares about the unborn, and seemingly about all people who live. Yet on the right side of the bumper was another sticker that said, “Die Liberal Scum.” I guess she’s only pro-life if the person is either unborn or agrees with her religion or politics. I’m sure she sees herself as loving, but if you devalue everyone who’s liberal, you are not loving the way Christ taught us to love. In fact, you are loving only those close to you or who agree with you. That’s not true Christian love.
Let me close with a final story that I think captures how important appreciation is to love. Once there was a small village that had a reputation for being a unfriendly, especially towards strangers. One day, a raggedy stranger showed up in town and knocked on a number of doors, asking for food. Predictably, he was rejected by everyone. Finally, he came to the last family’s door. The wife answered, and the raggedy man said, “Could you spare some food for me, I’m very hungry.” The woman, wary of strangers, said, “We have very little ourselves. I’m sorry. We can’t help you.” The man smiled and said, “Not to worry. Not to worry. I really only need a pot, some water, and a fire. You see, I have this magic soup stone, and with it I make the most incredible soup you have ever tasted. Would you be willing to lend me a pot and some water? I’ll build a fire, and then I can feed myself.” After consulting with her husband, the woman agreed.
He built the fire, and as the pot heated up he dropped his odd-looking stone into the pot. He began stirring the pot, pausing every once in a while to peer in. Soon he took the spoon and tasted his soup: “Oh my! This is wonderful! But you know, it is lacking one thing.” “What?” asked the woman, who hovered to watch what he was doing. “I hate to bother you, but it could use a few potatoes.” “Sure,” said the woman. Then she retrieved some potatoes, chopped them up and threw them into the pot. By now a crowd was gathering, wondering why their neighbor was conversing with this raggedy man. Once again sipped the soup. “Oh my Lord, this really is wonderful! If only,… if only…” “What?” asked a few people. “If only we had a few carrots, that would really round out the flavor.” Immediately a few people ran home and brought back some chopped carrots.
Again he sipped, and again he declared the soup the wonderful, if only we had some lamb—done! If only we had some spices—done! If only we had some scallions—done! By now everyone was gathered around the pot. Finally, the man sipped the soup and yelled, “Perfect! It’s done! This is the best soup I have ever had. Soup for everyone! Get your bowls and share in my feast!” They all grabbed their bowls and shared in the soup, and everyone agreed that it was the best soup they had ever tasted. They shared it with each other, they talked, they laughed, they began to dance, and it turned into a real celebration. What they didn’t notice was that in the middle of it all, the man had slipped away, leaving the magical soup stone in the bottom of the pot. To this day the town gathers once a week to share in the magic powers of the soup stone, a stone that makes the best soup ever. And they invite the poor, the hungry, the hurting to share in their feast.
The raggedy man was depreciated when he first came into town. He was appreciated once he made the soup. But what if he had been appreciated at first? That would have made all the difference.
Amen.
Real-Life Proverbs: Always Seek Simplicity
Psalm 131
August 7, 2011
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and for evermore.
My guess is that you've never heard of Neel Kashkari, but I am willing to bet that at some point you've criticized him. You just didn't realize you were doing so. Well, you didn't criticize him, per se, but you may have criticized what he was in charge of.
Today, if you were to look for Neel, you wouldn't find him in his haunts from three years ago. You'd have to go to Truckee, California, above Lake Tahoe, to find him. He lives a simple life there. As he says, he chops wood, builds a shed, and gets in shape. Back in 2009, he and his wife moved there to escape their lives in Washington, D.C.
Neel first came to Washington in 2006 along with the George Bush's new Treasury Department Secretary, Hank Paulson. He had been working for Goldman Sachs as a tech banker in San Francisco when Paulson, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, was tapped to become the secretary. He called Paulson out of the blue and asked if he could join him. Neel had wanted to be part of government ever since he saw the Iran Contra hearings as a twelve year-old. He was captivated by how democracy worked, and he wanted to be part of it.
Things went okay at first, and then Neel was asked by Paulson to head up something big. He was asked to head the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October of 2008. It was a big task, and as soon as he was chosen the critics gathered. Congressmen and women criticized him for being too young, at age 36. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that he was too inexperienced to take on such a large task.
Neel was given very little time to put the program together. It quickly overwhelmed him, as it did all of his colleagues. He was asked to come up with a stimulus sum, and quickly create seven teams to disburse the funds. He had no idea how much money they should ask for. He initially told Paulson that he thought $1 trillion might do it, but Paulson said that they'd never get that amount through Congress. So Neel came up with a formula: there were $11 trillion in troubled residential mortgages, and $3 trillion in troubled corporate loans, so take 5% of that and you get $700 billion. Kind of arbitrary, but there was no manual.
Everyone had an opinion on where the money should go, and no matter where he sent the funds, people were unhappy. His friends thought he was crazy for taking the job, and they urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches.
As soon as Neel and his teams started designating where the stimulus funds should go, he became the favorite target of critics, especially the Wall Street Journal. Members of Congress, who would agree with him in private, slammed him in public. He was constantly called into hearings to explain what was going on, but he soon learned that the Congressmen and women were holding hearings so that they could be seen as doing something about the economy. They didn't care what Neel had to say.
Neel barely slept. He rarely got more than 6 hours of sleep a night, and those 6 hours were usually interrupted by his blackberry, which went off at all hours of the night. His marriage slowly crumbled. By May of 2009, he felt like a zombie. When he initially appeared before Congress for hearings, he would answer questions smartly and with passion. By May he appeared, but his answers were often distracted, and he spent much of his time looking forward with a glazed look.
Then he abruptly resigned in May of 2009 soon after one of his colleagues suffered a heart-attack. He didn't want to have one of his own. So Neel and his wife decided that the way to put their lives back together was to move north of Truckee into a small house in the woods, where he would chop wood, build a shed, lose weight, and eventually help Hank Paulson write his book.
What Neel was doing, in essence, was simplifying his life. He realized that his life was disturbingly out of balance, and that he needed to change everything. In doing so, Neel discovered a wisdom that Christians throughout the centuries have discovered, forgotten, discovered, forgotten, discovered and forgotten a million times. The wisdom is that whenever we find ourselves becoming overwhelmed and putting God to the side, the answer is to simplify. Actually, Christian wisdom says to keep things simple and to always simplify our lives, but often we don't discover that wisdom till we become overwhelmed.
The problem with the idea of simplifying our lives is that to do so seems to go against the wisdom of our culture. We live in a 24/7 culture, and we act as though that’s a good thing. We constantly hear praise for people who are available to others 24/7, and who appear to be able to accomplish everything with little sleep, rest, or relaxation. What drives much of this 24/7 culture is our technology, which makes us available 24/7.
I remember when I first became aware of how technology was making life harder by making it more complex. It was back in 1990, and one of the members of the church I was working in at the time, Gary, told me about a struggle he was having with fax machines. They had only been widely available for a few years. He told me that faxes were ruining his life. Too many of his clients (Gary was a respected attorney) were faxing him documents for him to work on at 4:30 in the afternoon, and expected him to get back to them first thing the following morning. Or they sent documents at 5:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon and expected him to work on them over the weekend and get back to them first thing Monday morning. He felt guilty if he said no, and felt intruded upon if he said yes.
Things have only gotten worse since then. If only fax machines were our problem. Today we have email, Facebook, the internet, cell phones, and more, and they all impinge on our lives. There's rarely any opportunities for quiet and simplicity because we fill our lives with technology, which constantly demands our attention with bings, pings, ringtones, or just the implicit message, "You're bored. Come and play with me." They all add to complexity.
The problem is that we weren’t built for complexity. We were built for simplicity. Let me prove my point. Answer this question: Are you good at multitasking? If you say yes, you're wrong. You may think you're good at it, but you aren't. If you are a woman, you're good at multitasking in comparison to a man, but that's not saying much. Men are typically terrible at multitasking. They're not built for it. That's why, when you try to talk to a man while a football game is on, he can't respond. He can't watch and talk to you at the same time.
What makes women better at multitasking than men is that they have a bit more of a bundle of neurological fibers, called the corpus callosum, connecting the two halves of the brain. The increased connection allows information to flow more between the two halves of the brain, allowing them to communicate better. Still, that's not saying much because even women aren't built for multitasking. They have two halves of their brain, not full connection.
Brain researchers have found that the human brain really only has the ability to hold two thoughts at once. There's an experiment that researchers have used to demonstrate this. They've taken volunteers and placed them in a long hallway with many doors. Then they've asked these subjects to walk to the door at the other end of hallway and tell the person there a four digit number--something like 5438. About half the subjects were stopped at the midpoint by someone opening a door and offering them a piece of cake. About 70% of those offered the cake forgot the number by the time they got to the other end of hallway. Almost all of the subjects who weren't offered cake remembered the number. The distraction of the cake presented too many thoughts at once, and the first one was forgotten. Our brains are built for simplicity, not complexity.
A lot of movements throughout history have recovered the need for simplicity and have connected it to the life of faith. Probably the first big simplicity movement in Christianity occurred in the 3rd through the 5th centuries with the Desert Fathers movement. Later women, called the Desert Mothers, joined them. These were people who went out into the deserts of Egypt to live simpler, more God-focused lives, where they could grapple with their human foibles and their need for attachment to things. The monastic movement also arose in the 4th and 5th centuries in the Italian peninsula in response to a world going to chaos. The Western half of the Roman Empire was crumbling under the weight of barbarian attacks. Eventually, a Germanic tribe, the Lombards, conquered it. The economy and the culture was in chaos. The original monastics were reacting to a complicated and chaotic world by creating a culture of simplicity within their communities. Other movements has similarly tried to move people to simplicity. The Quaker movement was one. The followers of George Fox tried to simplify by creating simpler ways to pray, to worship, and to live. The Shakers grew out of the Quakers, and became known for their simple styles of furniture and houses.
There have been similar non-Christian simplicity movements such as the Transcendentalists in the 1840s, such as Henry Thoreau, who called on people to live simply and to "suck the marrow out of life." Also, the commune movements of the 1960s and 70s were a simplicity movement.
Jesus pushed the idea of simplicity in so many of his teachings. For example, he told people, "Do not worry. Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Look at how God cares for them. Won't God care even more for you?" He also tells the rich man, who has followed the commandments and wants to know what more he can do, to sell all he has, give to the poor, and follow him. He's not against wealth, but he knows that wealth brings with it complexity that pushes out simplicity.
I believe in this idea of simplicity not only in faith, but in life. I've tried, in my life, to live somewhat simply. I try to bring this to my preaching and teaching. For instance, my goal, in most of my sermons, is to try to communicate a spiritual message simply so that you can hold onto it. Usually I have one simple idea I try to hammer home. Think about this sermon. What's the message. I teach in a similar way, trying to take what can be difficult concepts and making them simple. Even in the way I try to lead the church I try to integrate simplicity. For instance, I've often held back on instituting programs because I didn't want to overload the church. When I came to Calvin Church I also did things to simplify ministry for our elders and leaders. Back in 1996, the elders of this church not only had to chair committees and attend session meetings, but they had to be ushers, count money after church, and serve communion once a month. I thought that was too much, so I led them to delegate the other duties, and just focus on leading committees and the session.
If we are to grow spiritually and draw closer to God, we need to live more in intentional simplicity. But what does that mean, especially in our modern age where we can’t get away from technology and the demands of work, kids, and life? I don’t think it means that you have to be like Neel Kashkari and move to Truckee, California to chop wood and build a shed. Nor do I think we have to dramatically unplug, which is increasingly harder to do in our culture, unless you feel called by God to do so. The answer to simplifying is to have technology, but not be of technology.
We need to resist the temptation to be ruled by our need for constant stimulation. We all have that need. You've given in to it many times. If you have a smart phone, how often, when you're bored, do you pick it up and start fiddling with one app or another? How often do you check your emails or your phone for texts? How often do you feel the need to text someone for no reason? That’s being of technology.
To simplify means letting go of that need, and being able to sit periodically in stillness. It means letting go of the things that don't matter, and to be able to figure out what does and doesn't matter. It also means taking time, in quiet, to pray, reflect, read, slow down, and even stop and smell the roses.
The fact is that life is overwhelming, but there is something you can do about it if you choose to do so. You can simplify.
Amen.
August 7, 2011
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and for evermore.
My guess is that you've never heard of Neel Kashkari, but I am willing to bet that at some point you've criticized him. You just didn't realize you were doing so. Well, you didn't criticize him, per se, but you may have criticized what he was in charge of.
Today, if you were to look for Neel, you wouldn't find him in his haunts from three years ago. You'd have to go to Truckee, California, above Lake Tahoe, to find him. He lives a simple life there. As he says, he chops wood, builds a shed, and gets in shape. Back in 2009, he and his wife moved there to escape their lives in Washington, D.C.
Neel first came to Washington in 2006 along with the George Bush's new Treasury Department Secretary, Hank Paulson. He had been working for Goldman Sachs as a tech banker in San Francisco when Paulson, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, was tapped to become the secretary. He called Paulson out of the blue and asked if he could join him. Neel had wanted to be part of government ever since he saw the Iran Contra hearings as a twelve year-old. He was captivated by how democracy worked, and he wanted to be part of it.
Things went okay at first, and then Neel was asked by Paulson to head up something big. He was asked to head the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October of 2008. It was a big task, and as soon as he was chosen the critics gathered. Congressmen and women criticized him for being too young, at age 36. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that he was too inexperienced to take on such a large task.
Neel was given very little time to put the program together. It quickly overwhelmed him, as it did all of his colleagues. He was asked to come up with a stimulus sum, and quickly create seven teams to disburse the funds. He had no idea how much money they should ask for. He initially told Paulson that he thought $1 trillion might do it, but Paulson said that they'd never get that amount through Congress. So Neel came up with a formula: there were $11 trillion in troubled residential mortgages, and $3 trillion in troubled corporate loans, so take 5% of that and you get $700 billion. Kind of arbitrary, but there was no manual.
Everyone had an opinion on where the money should go, and no matter where he sent the funds, people were unhappy. His friends thought he was crazy for taking the job, and they urged him to use the money to buy the Cleveland Browns and fire the coaches.
As soon as Neel and his teams started designating where the stimulus funds should go, he became the favorite target of critics, especially the Wall Street Journal. Members of Congress, who would agree with him in private, slammed him in public. He was constantly called into hearings to explain what was going on, but he soon learned that the Congressmen and women were holding hearings so that they could be seen as doing something about the economy. They didn't care what Neel had to say.
Neel barely slept. He rarely got more than 6 hours of sleep a night, and those 6 hours were usually interrupted by his blackberry, which went off at all hours of the night. His marriage slowly crumbled. By May of 2009, he felt like a zombie. When he initially appeared before Congress for hearings, he would answer questions smartly and with passion. By May he appeared, but his answers were often distracted, and he spent much of his time looking forward with a glazed look.
Then he abruptly resigned in May of 2009 soon after one of his colleagues suffered a heart-attack. He didn't want to have one of his own. So Neel and his wife decided that the way to put their lives back together was to move north of Truckee into a small house in the woods, where he would chop wood, build a shed, lose weight, and eventually help Hank Paulson write his book.
What Neel was doing, in essence, was simplifying his life. He realized that his life was disturbingly out of balance, and that he needed to change everything. In doing so, Neel discovered a wisdom that Christians throughout the centuries have discovered, forgotten, discovered, forgotten, discovered and forgotten a million times. The wisdom is that whenever we find ourselves becoming overwhelmed and putting God to the side, the answer is to simplify. Actually, Christian wisdom says to keep things simple and to always simplify our lives, but often we don't discover that wisdom till we become overwhelmed.
The problem with the idea of simplifying our lives is that to do so seems to go against the wisdom of our culture. We live in a 24/7 culture, and we act as though that’s a good thing. We constantly hear praise for people who are available to others 24/7, and who appear to be able to accomplish everything with little sleep, rest, or relaxation. What drives much of this 24/7 culture is our technology, which makes us available 24/7.
I remember when I first became aware of how technology was making life harder by making it more complex. It was back in 1990, and one of the members of the church I was working in at the time, Gary, told me about a struggle he was having with fax machines. They had only been widely available for a few years. He told me that faxes were ruining his life. Too many of his clients (Gary was a respected attorney) were faxing him documents for him to work on at 4:30 in the afternoon, and expected him to get back to them first thing the following morning. Or they sent documents at 5:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon and expected him to work on them over the weekend and get back to them first thing Monday morning. He felt guilty if he said no, and felt intruded upon if he said yes.
Things have only gotten worse since then. If only fax machines were our problem. Today we have email, Facebook, the internet, cell phones, and more, and they all impinge on our lives. There's rarely any opportunities for quiet and simplicity because we fill our lives with technology, which constantly demands our attention with bings, pings, ringtones, or just the implicit message, "You're bored. Come and play with me." They all add to complexity.
The problem is that we weren’t built for complexity. We were built for simplicity. Let me prove my point. Answer this question: Are you good at multitasking? If you say yes, you're wrong. You may think you're good at it, but you aren't. If you are a woman, you're good at multitasking in comparison to a man, but that's not saying much. Men are typically terrible at multitasking. They're not built for it. That's why, when you try to talk to a man while a football game is on, he can't respond. He can't watch and talk to you at the same time.
What makes women better at multitasking than men is that they have a bit more of a bundle of neurological fibers, called the corpus callosum, connecting the two halves of the brain. The increased connection allows information to flow more between the two halves of the brain, allowing them to communicate better. Still, that's not saying much because even women aren't built for multitasking. They have two halves of their brain, not full connection.
Brain researchers have found that the human brain really only has the ability to hold two thoughts at once. There's an experiment that researchers have used to demonstrate this. They've taken volunteers and placed them in a long hallway with many doors. Then they've asked these subjects to walk to the door at the other end of hallway and tell the person there a four digit number--something like 5438. About half the subjects were stopped at the midpoint by someone opening a door and offering them a piece of cake. About 70% of those offered the cake forgot the number by the time they got to the other end of hallway. Almost all of the subjects who weren't offered cake remembered the number. The distraction of the cake presented too many thoughts at once, and the first one was forgotten. Our brains are built for simplicity, not complexity.
A lot of movements throughout history have recovered the need for simplicity and have connected it to the life of faith. Probably the first big simplicity movement in Christianity occurred in the 3rd through the 5th centuries with the Desert Fathers movement. Later women, called the Desert Mothers, joined them. These were people who went out into the deserts of Egypt to live simpler, more God-focused lives, where they could grapple with their human foibles and their need for attachment to things. The monastic movement also arose in the 4th and 5th centuries in the Italian peninsula in response to a world going to chaos. The Western half of the Roman Empire was crumbling under the weight of barbarian attacks. Eventually, a Germanic tribe, the Lombards, conquered it. The economy and the culture was in chaos. The original monastics were reacting to a complicated and chaotic world by creating a culture of simplicity within their communities. Other movements has similarly tried to move people to simplicity. The Quaker movement was one. The followers of George Fox tried to simplify by creating simpler ways to pray, to worship, and to live. The Shakers grew out of the Quakers, and became known for their simple styles of furniture and houses.
There have been similar non-Christian simplicity movements such as the Transcendentalists in the 1840s, such as Henry Thoreau, who called on people to live simply and to "suck the marrow out of life." Also, the commune movements of the 1960s and 70s were a simplicity movement.
Jesus pushed the idea of simplicity in so many of his teachings. For example, he told people, "Do not worry. Look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Look at how God cares for them. Won't God care even more for you?" He also tells the rich man, who has followed the commandments and wants to know what more he can do, to sell all he has, give to the poor, and follow him. He's not against wealth, but he knows that wealth brings with it complexity that pushes out simplicity.
I believe in this idea of simplicity not only in faith, but in life. I've tried, in my life, to live somewhat simply. I try to bring this to my preaching and teaching. For instance, my goal, in most of my sermons, is to try to communicate a spiritual message simply so that you can hold onto it. Usually I have one simple idea I try to hammer home. Think about this sermon. What's the message. I teach in a similar way, trying to take what can be difficult concepts and making them simple. Even in the way I try to lead the church I try to integrate simplicity. For instance, I've often held back on instituting programs because I didn't want to overload the church. When I came to Calvin Church I also did things to simplify ministry for our elders and leaders. Back in 1996, the elders of this church not only had to chair committees and attend session meetings, but they had to be ushers, count money after church, and serve communion once a month. I thought that was too much, so I led them to delegate the other duties, and just focus on leading committees and the session.
If we are to grow spiritually and draw closer to God, we need to live more in intentional simplicity. But what does that mean, especially in our modern age where we can’t get away from technology and the demands of work, kids, and life? I don’t think it means that you have to be like Neel Kashkari and move to Truckee, California to chop wood and build a shed. Nor do I think we have to dramatically unplug, which is increasingly harder to do in our culture, unless you feel called by God to do so. The answer to simplifying is to have technology, but not be of technology.
We need to resist the temptation to be ruled by our need for constant stimulation. We all have that need. You've given in to it many times. If you have a smart phone, how often, when you're bored, do you pick it up and start fiddling with one app or another? How often do you check your emails or your phone for texts? How often do you feel the need to text someone for no reason? That’s being of technology.
To simplify means letting go of that need, and being able to sit periodically in stillness. It means letting go of the things that don't matter, and to be able to figure out what does and doesn't matter. It also means taking time, in quiet, to pray, reflect, read, slow down, and even stop and smell the roses.
The fact is that life is overwhelming, but there is something you can do about it if you choose to do so. You can simplify.
Amen.
Real Life Proverbs: When Trust is Impossible, Wake Jesus Up.
As we continue with our sermon series on real life proverbs, I was thinking of a proverb from the Book of Psalms. Psalms 119:105 says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” This is in proverb form. It is short and pithy and it will help us with life. But many of us have lost the knack of how to use the bible. Maybe we never were raised with sacred texts, or maybe we have grown cynical and grown away from the habit. Or maybe we just never think about the bible much at all. Too many other things spring up and claim our attention. But this morning I would like to start out with a word of advise. Get yourself a favorite story from the bible, or maybe a handful of stories. We know we should read the bible beginning to end. That is a great practice. We start out strong in Genesis and a lot is happening in the creation of the world and in the lives of the patriarchs. We slow down a little in Exodus but shear willpower keeps us going. But then even the devout stall somewhere in Leviticus. We give up the project as beyond us. But we so desperately need a scriptural emergency kit, a set of stories that tell us about God and us that we can turn to again and again. God stories can save our lives. We need to grab these stories and chew on them so that they become not just God stories but our stories too.
Today’s passage from Mark, about Jesus asleep in the boat, the disciples panicking in the storm and waking him up and Jesus calming the sea, is one of those important stories and it is one of my absolute favorites. Every time I turn to this story I find more parallels to my life. I see more wisdom. This is a story about what to do in a storm, how it feels to be in a storm, how God saves our bacon every time. Today’s core real life proverb is, when trust is impossible, wake Jesus up.
Ever notice how irritating it is to watch someone else sleep? This irritation has a lot to do with what is inside of us. I suppose when I am in a calm peaceful state; I can look at others sleeping peacefully with equanimity and tolerance. Certainly I love to look at toddlers and babies sleeping. But that is because when I see a toddler or baby sleeping, my life is more peaceful. But watching a teenager, or a spouse or a school chum or a sibling sleeping is completely different. This isn’t peaceful. It is often irritating. One of two things are going through our minds; all the things they, the teenager, spouse, co-worker, could be doing to help us if they were awake, or how peacefully we could be sleeping if we weren’t awake watching that irritating person sleeping. If you can, I want you to think about a time when you were watching someone peacefully sleeping and you kicked their foot, dropped a bucket of water on them or blew a foghorn in their ear. Or if you didn’t do one of those things you thought about it. Sleepovers, pajama parties, college dorms and youth group mission trips are ground zero for these kinds of pranks.
What is happening when we want everyone to be awake like we are? We are people driven by needs and wants. The harder our needs and wants press on us the more we want to stir up everyone around us. This passage of Jesus asleep and being awakened by the disciples is a microcosm for what happens inside of us when we are in turmoil. This passage doesn’t yield just one real life proverb it reveals many. As we go through this short passage we are going to pull out proverb after proverb to help us to live life with God’s word as a lamp unto our feet.
The story starts out so ordinary. “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” Gosh, many of these guys were fisherman. Going in a boat to the other side must have been so ordinary. This was as ordinary as a run to the grocery store or the commute home or getting on the school bus. That is how life is right before the storm; you just don’t anticipate the extra ordinary happening. The line that is so telling for me is that Jesus went, “just as he was.” We go into the good and bad of our lives “just as we are.” We can’t possibly arm ourselves for every eventuality. Perhaps it would be best if we always carried our “Mae West” life preservers, our inflatable life raft, our water purification tablets, our snake bite kit, our seatbelts fastened and our tray tables in the upright and locked position. We go into our lives “just as we are” with what preparation we have made.
A TV New camera crew interviewed a homeowner in southern Florida after the destruction of Hurricane Andrew. The whole neighborhood was devastated but this guy’s house remained. The owner was asked why he thought his house stood the storm. He said he built the house to the hurricane code, with 2x6 roof trusses. He understood that whether the storm came or not wasn’t about him. His job was simply to be as prepared as he could be.
You have only to speak to a long time pastor to understand the people go into the great storms of life just as they are, prepared or not. Ask the Reverend Doctor Steve Polley the difference between walking into the hospital room of a faithful mature believer and the hospital room of someone in an un-reflected life and you will sense the difference. Recently I visited with a man in at the very end of his life. This was a joyous visit, filled with grace and humor and acceptance. This man’s life was not without storms but he weathered them secure in his knowledge that he was loved, accepted, forgiven and healed on the most important levels. This is the difference made when we go into the storm as we are, prepared by God.
This is what Jesus spoke of when he said we needed to build on a rock and not the sand. Life will throw storms our way. So when we get into the boat just as we are, it is helpful to get into the boat with Jesus, just as he is. There is the core of wisdom. Go with God. Jesus is the Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’. So set out with God. Prepare, as you can, be an expert sailor like the fishermen in the boat. But ultimately, when you go with God you have the essentials, just as you are. So the next real life proverb is to go into the storm just as you are with Jesus just as he is.
The passage goes on, “Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.” Other boats were on the Sea of Galilee. Boy! It is easy to overlook this line. As the boat was being swamped don’t you immediately think of them all alone on the lake! How many times have I read this passage and not paid attention. Other boats were with him. This is how it is when we are being swamped. We think we are alone. We have this tunnel vision that forgets how many people are if not in the same boat, in the same storm. This is one of the things that God is constantly trying to remind us. We are people of God, not God’s only person. We are children of God and not the only child. Paul is constantly reminding the churches that he is writing to that they are not Christ’s only church, but that this church needs prayer, this church is in the midst of famine, that church is sending workers and help. The blindness that happens in a storm is that we don’t see the other boats around us. This is the kind of myopia that Christ came to heal us of. The next real life proverb is that we aren’t the only boat on the lake.
When the disciples were about to be swamped they did the most natural and profound thing. They woke Jesus up. “But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Now this wasn’t the best example of trust in God. It was not accompanied by swelling music and downy wisps of angel wings. The cry for help was as much recrimination and accusation as prayer. But it was still prayer. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t yank the pillow out from under Jesus head and give his shoulder a good shake. If buckets weren’t in use from bailing out the boat they might have thrown a pail of sea water on him. We think of prayer as sweet and polite, beseeching and timid, as though God isn’t strong enough to stand up to our great need. But God is. The Psalms are full of prayers that aren’t blessedly reverent and properly humble. They are sometimes bitter. They accuse God of not hearing them. They wonder how long, how long is it going to take God to act. Need is a sharp pointy stick that often does not bring out our best. Sometimes we can’t wait to get the words of our prayer poetic and elevated enough. We can’t be calm and polite. Yet God answers the prayers of our heart in all their forms. Jesus acts and answers this kind of prayer too. For our passage says, “He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.”
Jesus says a curious thing to the disciples now after the sea is stilled. “He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” So often this passage is treated as Jesus waiving a finger at and rebuking the disciples for their fear of the storm. But that might not be the right interpretation. Notice that Jesus asks why they are still afraid, not why they were afraid. The verb tense is important. Anyone who encounters a class four hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake and isn’t afraid is an idiot. God created us with an inherent sense of preservation and part of that God given emergency adrenaline response is fear. We are physical creatures meant to act quickly to survive. Jesus isn’t rebuking the disciples for their fear of the storm. He is rebuking them for their fear of him. It is after the storm is past, when the sea is calm that the disciples have an awe that boarders on fear. When we encounter God, when we encounter Jesus as he really is as master of wind and sea, then we are suddenly aware of how little we know and how dependent we are. God wants us to move from fear to trust.
In C.S. Lewis' fairy tale, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, four children find themselves in a strange world. A talking beaver welcomes them into his home and explains that the land is held captive by an evil sorceress, but hope is beginning to blossom. The true king, Aslan, is returning. When Mr. Beaver explains that Aslan is a lion, Susan asks,
Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.
That you will, Dearie, and no mistake, said Mrs. Beaver, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.
Then he isn't safe? Said Lucy.
Safe? said Mr. Beaver. Don 't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? `Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.
We want things and storms and God to be safe. Safe is the thing we control. The truth is we don’t control God. When we wake up Christ we don’t wake up Christ so that he can do our bidding. We wake up Christ so that we can live in him in life and death. This is not safe, but it is good. Faith is better than safety. Faith drives out fear.
The disciples ask the most important question at the very last of this story. They ask, “Who is this?” That is the question we all have to ask. Who do we want to entrust our lives to? Can we wake up this sleeping Christ? Can we stir a living God in our life? Amen
Today’s passage from Mark, about Jesus asleep in the boat, the disciples panicking in the storm and waking him up and Jesus calming the sea, is one of those important stories and it is one of my absolute favorites. Every time I turn to this story I find more parallels to my life. I see more wisdom. This is a story about what to do in a storm, how it feels to be in a storm, how God saves our bacon every time. Today’s core real life proverb is, when trust is impossible, wake Jesus up.
Ever notice how irritating it is to watch someone else sleep? This irritation has a lot to do with what is inside of us. I suppose when I am in a calm peaceful state; I can look at others sleeping peacefully with equanimity and tolerance. Certainly I love to look at toddlers and babies sleeping. But that is because when I see a toddler or baby sleeping, my life is more peaceful. But watching a teenager, or a spouse or a school chum or a sibling sleeping is completely different. This isn’t peaceful. It is often irritating. One of two things are going through our minds; all the things they, the teenager, spouse, co-worker, could be doing to help us if they were awake, or how peacefully we could be sleeping if we weren’t awake watching that irritating person sleeping. If you can, I want you to think about a time when you were watching someone peacefully sleeping and you kicked their foot, dropped a bucket of water on them or blew a foghorn in their ear. Or if you didn’t do one of those things you thought about it. Sleepovers, pajama parties, college dorms and youth group mission trips are ground zero for these kinds of pranks.
What is happening when we want everyone to be awake like we are? We are people driven by needs and wants. The harder our needs and wants press on us the more we want to stir up everyone around us. This passage of Jesus asleep and being awakened by the disciples is a microcosm for what happens inside of us when we are in turmoil. This passage doesn’t yield just one real life proverb it reveals many. As we go through this short passage we are going to pull out proverb after proverb to help us to live life with God’s word as a lamp unto our feet.
The story starts out so ordinary. “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.” Gosh, many of these guys were fisherman. Going in a boat to the other side must have been so ordinary. This was as ordinary as a run to the grocery store or the commute home or getting on the school bus. That is how life is right before the storm; you just don’t anticipate the extra ordinary happening. The line that is so telling for me is that Jesus went, “just as he was.” We go into the good and bad of our lives “just as we are.” We can’t possibly arm ourselves for every eventuality. Perhaps it would be best if we always carried our “Mae West” life preservers, our inflatable life raft, our water purification tablets, our snake bite kit, our seatbelts fastened and our tray tables in the upright and locked position. We go into our lives “just as we are” with what preparation we have made.
A TV New camera crew interviewed a homeowner in southern Florida after the destruction of Hurricane Andrew. The whole neighborhood was devastated but this guy’s house remained. The owner was asked why he thought his house stood the storm. He said he built the house to the hurricane code, with 2x6 roof trusses. He understood that whether the storm came or not wasn’t about him. His job was simply to be as prepared as he could be.
You have only to speak to a long time pastor to understand the people go into the great storms of life just as they are, prepared or not. Ask the Reverend Doctor Steve Polley the difference between walking into the hospital room of a faithful mature believer and the hospital room of someone in an un-reflected life and you will sense the difference. Recently I visited with a man in at the very end of his life. This was a joyous visit, filled with grace and humor and acceptance. This man’s life was not without storms but he weathered them secure in his knowledge that he was loved, accepted, forgiven and healed on the most important levels. This is the difference made when we go into the storm as we are, prepared by God.
This is what Jesus spoke of when he said we needed to build on a rock and not the sand. Life will throw storms our way. So when we get into the boat just as we are, it is helpful to get into the boat with Jesus, just as he is. There is the core of wisdom. Go with God. Jesus is the Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’. So set out with God. Prepare, as you can, be an expert sailor like the fishermen in the boat. But ultimately, when you go with God you have the essentials, just as you are. So the next real life proverb is to go into the storm just as you are with Jesus just as he is.
The passage goes on, “Other boats were with him. A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.” Other boats were on the Sea of Galilee. Boy! It is easy to overlook this line. As the boat was being swamped don’t you immediately think of them all alone on the lake! How many times have I read this passage and not paid attention. Other boats were with him. This is how it is when we are being swamped. We think we are alone. We have this tunnel vision that forgets how many people are if not in the same boat, in the same storm. This is one of the things that God is constantly trying to remind us. We are people of God, not God’s only person. We are children of God and not the only child. Paul is constantly reminding the churches that he is writing to that they are not Christ’s only church, but that this church needs prayer, this church is in the midst of famine, that church is sending workers and help. The blindness that happens in a storm is that we don’t see the other boats around us. This is the kind of myopia that Christ came to heal us of. The next real life proverb is that we aren’t the only boat on the lake.
When the disciples were about to be swamped they did the most natural and profound thing. They woke Jesus up. “But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Now this wasn’t the best example of trust in God. It was not accompanied by swelling music and downy wisps of angel wings. The cry for help was as much recrimination and accusation as prayer. But it was still prayer. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t yank the pillow out from under Jesus head and give his shoulder a good shake. If buckets weren’t in use from bailing out the boat they might have thrown a pail of sea water on him. We think of prayer as sweet and polite, beseeching and timid, as though God isn’t strong enough to stand up to our great need. But God is. The Psalms are full of prayers that aren’t blessedly reverent and properly humble. They are sometimes bitter. They accuse God of not hearing them. They wonder how long, how long is it going to take God to act. Need is a sharp pointy stick that often does not bring out our best. Sometimes we can’t wait to get the words of our prayer poetic and elevated enough. We can’t be calm and polite. Yet God answers the prayers of our heart in all their forms. Jesus acts and answers this kind of prayer too. For our passage says, “He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.”
Jesus says a curious thing to the disciples now after the sea is stilled. “He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’” So often this passage is treated as Jesus waiving a finger at and rebuking the disciples for their fear of the storm. But that might not be the right interpretation. Notice that Jesus asks why they are still afraid, not why they were afraid. The verb tense is important. Anyone who encounters a class four hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake and isn’t afraid is an idiot. God created us with an inherent sense of preservation and part of that God given emergency adrenaline response is fear. We are physical creatures meant to act quickly to survive. Jesus isn’t rebuking the disciples for their fear of the storm. He is rebuking them for their fear of him. It is after the storm is past, when the sea is calm that the disciples have an awe that boarders on fear. When we encounter God, when we encounter Jesus as he really is as master of wind and sea, then we are suddenly aware of how little we know and how dependent we are. God wants us to move from fear to trust.
In C.S. Lewis' fairy tale, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, four children find themselves in a strange world. A talking beaver welcomes them into his home and explains that the land is held captive by an evil sorceress, but hope is beginning to blossom. The true king, Aslan, is returning. When Mr. Beaver explains that Aslan is a lion, Susan asks,
Is he — quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.
That you will, Dearie, and no mistake, said Mrs. Beaver, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.
Then he isn't safe? Said Lucy.
Safe? said Mr. Beaver. Don 't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? `Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.
We want things and storms and God to be safe. Safe is the thing we control. The truth is we don’t control God. When we wake up Christ we don’t wake up Christ so that he can do our bidding. We wake up Christ so that we can live in him in life and death. This is not safe, but it is good. Faith is better than safety. Faith drives out fear.
The disciples ask the most important question at the very last of this story. They ask, “Who is this?” That is the question we all have to ask. Who do we want to entrust our lives to? Can we wake up this sleeping Christ? Can we stir a living God in our life? Amen
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