John 14:1-14
Thomas Merton, reared without religious reference points, came to Christ while a student at Columbia, spent the remainder of his life as a follower of Jesus … specifically a Roman Catholic … and then a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky.
As a child, he shuttled between the United States and Europe … his mother died when he was a child; his father died a few years later … he was loved and nurtured by extended family and close friends … he was brilliant, undisciplined, and always searching … above all else, he was a writer … words poured out him like water out a bucket … though he tried to stop writing several times, he failed to stop the flow of words, and when he became a monk, his superior noted Merton’s skill and encouraged him to write … not for himself any longer, but now for Christ.
Merton at first shunned the world, but the world was already inside of him.
Even within the four walls of the monastery, the world lived and breathed in Merton’s mind and heart; he was a monk, but a monk with an eye on the world … after some years of writing specifically religious material, Merton turned his attention to the Cold War, Civil Rights and finally world religions.
An avid reader of Eastern religions – Hinduism and Buddhism and their variants … he discovered beneath the doctrinal differences a common experience of the divine.
It was this common experience that created a common ground … yet Merton was clear, we can never forgo the specifics of faith and doctrine …
Christians have Christ and the Bible
Hindus have the Upanishads …
The Jews have Moses and the Torah …
The Buddhist has the Bahadavita …
The Muslim, the Koran …
Experiments to meld it all together have always failed … there is too much richness in each tradition … too much beauty and goodness in the specifics … lump it all together, and it’s lost … what’s left is formless mass – a little of this and little of that, and none of it makes any sense … sort of like dumping into the soup all the spices and herbs in our cupboard.
When I first started cooking, I would put in everything … Donna had to tell me: “Only one or two flavors tonight … other flavors tomorrow night.”
The religions of the world … rich in the specifics … God in the details!
Merton was clear: the best dialogue between traditions is when people are totally grounded in their traditions … thoroughly knowledgeable, and deeply committed to the doctrines, ideas, images of their sacred writings and their experience of the Divine …
People who know their own tradition will talk reasonably with people of other traditions.
And we all discover a great mystery:
No one has to be wrong in order for someone to be right …
But the human spirit loves to have enemies …
Every tradition has its own brand of fundamentalism … Buddhists and Hindus clash … Muslims and Jews fight it out … and Christians, too often, have taken on the whole world …
But Thomas Merton discovered – beneath the specifics, something universal … the only way to the universal is through the specifics … and the only way to preserve the universal in all traditions is to preserve the specifics of every tradition.
When confronted with doctrinal differences, Merton was humble and real … in one of my favorite quotations, Merton said, “This is beyond me at the moment.”
I love it … “This beyond me at the moment.”
Isn’t that what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, now we see in a mirror dimly … now I know only in part… ?
This is beyond me at the moment.
Dear Christian friends, I have been a believer all of my life … some of my earliest memories are of God … I can’t say anymore than that … it’s beyond words … God was there.
I grew up in a family where the church was central … attended Christian high school and then Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan … and then Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan … preachers and churches, sermons and theology, discussion and debate … the Christian faith was my milieu – Christ was in the air I breathed … Scripture was in the water I drank.
Jesus is my LORD and my Savior … He gave His life that I might live … and I live for Him, as best I can … in bits and pieces … sometimes more so, sometimes hardly at all … but I live for Him, because He lives for me.
I’ll talk to anyone about Jesus … but I’ve learned to listen as well … when dialoguing with Muslims and Buddhists, to be gracious … appreciative … there is always much to learn about Christ by learning how others worship and live.
I have learned over the years, and I’m still learning, how to read the Bible carefully …
Our text today, John 14, says something grand, something good … but it has to be read carefully.
In the hands of a fundamentalist, this text can be read narrowly, exclusively … but let’s think of Jesus … let’s think of the Gospel of John … let’s think of the cross, the empty tomb … let’s think of God who loves the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son.
The text begins with simple encouragement: Do not let your hearts be troubled.
And then the follow up: Believe in God … believe also in me.
Jesus is the face of God … what we see in Jesus is a perfect representation of the life and love of God … God for us, God with us, God around us and God inside of us … God taking up our burdens, God resolving the issues. God doing the heavy lifting …
When Jesus speaks of my Father’s house and its many rooms, the imagery is that of space … lots of space, lots of elbow room … nothing small here … a place for everyone, and everyone in their place … a place where everyone can be comfortable … a place of safety and peace, appropriate to every human being, every religious expression, every culture, every faithful way of life, whatever it is: Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and who knows how many other variants in this remarkable world.
A gentleman died and was received into heaven … and St. Peter said, “Come with me, I’ll show you around.”
Coming to one part of heaven, St. Peter said, “Here are all the Roman Catholics … and over there, just across the way, all the Methodists … and then around the block, that’s where all the Presbyterians are …
And so they walked around heaven, and nearing one corner, St. Peter suddenly turned to the man, and said, “Shhh, we have to be very quiet here.”
“Why?” asked the man.
“Because this is where the Baptists are, and they think they’re the only ones here.”
When someone asks me, “How does this all work,” I respond as Merton: “This is beyond me at the moment.” I only see in mirror dimly … now I know only in part.
But this I know for sure … we’ll not be in heaven alone … no one will be left behind!
Let’s push on …
Jesus speaks of going on ahead to do the work for us; preparing a place for us … this is grace, pure unbounded grace … God getting the place ready for us; God doing the heavy-lifting …
Fr. Jim Fredericks at Rolf Muenker’s memorial service told a marvelous story … someone asked a priest, “What can we believe?” The priest said, “God has done the dishes, but it’s up to us to put them away.”
God has done something marvelous in Christ … and God has done it for the whole world … it’s done; it’s finished.
When Jesus was dying on the cross, when all was ready, he said, “It is finished!”
Finished for all the world … those who believe and those who don’t … those who know the name of Jesus, and those who never will … those who love greatly, and those who love only a little bit … those who see clearly, and those who live in a fog … for all the world He did it … pure unbounded grace.
Thomas asked, “How can we know the way?”
That’s just about the biggest question we can ask …
Jesus speaks of grace … “I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life” – for you Thomas, for everyone … for all the world …
What Jesus has done, He’s done for all … Jesus is too generous to restrict His grace only to those who know Him …
His grace flows from Calvary to every creature … His grace flows from that empty tomb to overcome the power of death with life … His grace fills every heart with hope, every prayer with a sense of the divine, every temple with God’s presence.
This is what God does!
Pure unbounded grace …
But there’s plenty left for us …
Lots of dishes to put away … like loving one another and building a safe world for our children and all the children of the world … plenty for us to do, like taking care of the planet, the polar bears and the whales … plenty for us to do, like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and those in prison … plenty for us to do, like building a peaceful world and ending war … plenty for us to do.
The most challenging piece of the passage: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This, too, is grace … Jesus makes it as easy as possible …
Jesus simplifies …
Like a bridge over the Mississippi …
Like a tunnel through the mountains …
Jesus simplifies … opens up a corridor … makes the journey ever so much easier.
But now let’s put on our thinking caps …
Jesus speaks of “The Father” – we come to the Father through the Son …
Please note: Jesus doesn’t say “god” – Jesus doesn’t say, No one comes to God except by me … He says, carefully and intentionally, No one comes to the Father except by me.
This is one of the specifics of our faith … one of the details …
What Jesus offers is unique … a relationship to God through the Hebrew stories, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob … it’s specific, it’s focused, it’s detailed.
It’s our joy and our delight to be disciples of Jesus, to know the Father through Him, to live the Jesus life … every day, I thank God for Jesus and the Bible, for the Cross and the Empty Tomb … for the resurrection and His abiding presence through the Holy Spirit.
Buddhist have unique things, too.
So do Hindus and Jews and Muslims.
We can only be what we are …
We have to be something …
But can we be something without needing others to be just like us?
Can we be faithful to Jesus without discrediting the faith of others?
Do others have to be wrong in order for us to be right?
When women and men of faith get together, we discover a common mystery, a common humanity, a common experience of the Divine, yet each experience unique to its own tradition … God is found in the details … God is a God of specifics and little things; sparrows and numbered hairs …
But no doctrine holds all of God … no specific can say it all …
This week, Donna and I stopped by a beautiful Hindu Temple on Malibu Canyon road … we took our shoes off and walked around from shrine to shrine – candles and oil lamps, incense and offerings … images of Hindu gods …
I watched a Hindu walk around with hands pressed prayerfully in front of him … gentle and good … unique and wonderfully specific … I sensed the Divine there.
We don’t have to stop being a Christian in order to build bridges of peace … to the contrary, we have to be Christians all the more … we have to know our Bible well … we have to know the essentials of our faith … and we have to know the Father through Christ … if we’re ever going to speak intelligibly to others, we have to thoroughly immersed in our own faith.
But we can and we must allow God to love others, too … to reveal grace and life in other cultures and traditions … it’s a humbling experience, and Christendom – with all of its pomp and power – doesn’t take kindly to humility … but humility is the heart and soul of love! As the Bible says: God gives grace to the humble!
When I lived in Tulsa, we lived across the street from a beautiful park – playgrounds and baseball diamonds, trees and picnic tables … merry-go-rounds and rocks to climb on.
When I took Josh or Rachel to the park, I’d walk across the street and we’d be in the park … other folks came to the park from other directions … other streets, other ways, but it was the same park, large enough for all of us … plenty of picnic tables and grills … plenty of space … just like our Father’s House … dwelling places for everyone.
It would have been foolish to walk around to the other side of the park when I could enter the park by simply walking across the street.
Christianity is my entrance to the park … Buddhism is another entrance, and so is Hinduism …
Go the park at the closest entrance … and give thanks that God has provided multiple entrances …
Yes, we’ll all get to into the park … heaven is mighty big place with lots of entrances … so, if everyone is going to make it, do we have work to do?
Are there dishes to be put away?
There is always a mission field … and it’s right next door … it’s a man selling his soul to make a buck … the woman obsessed with her looks … a young man doing drugs … a young lady dreaming of being a celebrity … the mission field is the world of commercialism and commodity, competition and vanity. It’s not the Hindu or the Muslim, it’s the man or woman who has nothing inside of them, nothing greater than there own desires and dreams … and the greatest mission field of all?
The Christian Church itself … our pews are filled with folks who trust little or nothing … who believe half-heartedly … who know neither Bible nor Christ … a bland mix of vague memories and poorly formed ideas – their soul a wasteland; their spirit impoverished and lonely.
I say to them: be Christian through and through … and if not Christian, then be Buddhist, or a Hindu … be something – get into the specifics; dig into the details … and do it with heart and mind, soul and strength …
God want us to make something of the sixty, or seventy, or eighty years we have … to know God, to give and receive love, to know the truth that liberates … to put our treasure in the right place, and plant our heart in the soil of faith.
God doesn’t want us to die in regret … God doesn’t want us to enter eternity and not want to be there …
At the end of the road, there is only God …
For those who love God and yearn for God – Buddhist, Hindu or Jew - it will be joy upon joy to be lifted up into the love of God, full and complete.
But for those who turned their backs to God, who bought the materialist version of life, who thought they could gods unto themselves; to be thrust into the presence of God at the end of the road, it’ll be hell for them.
To be in the presence of a love denied in this life will be painful beyond description in the next life.
To see firsthand the grace ignored, the mercy shunned, the opportunities missed, will be a gnashing-of-teeth moment, a great sorrow; the flame of regret will burn a long, long time … British theologian, Leslie Weatherhead, 1893-1976.
So be who we are; be Christian through and through … share Christ with everyone we can … give thanks for all the great religions of the world – we’re all in this together … to build a world of faith, hope and love.
Will God work it all out in the end?
Yes, indeed!
How will God do this? This is beyond me at the moment! Amen!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Our Gate - April 13, 2008
John 10:1-10
Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill …
The Allied invasion of Normandy …
An avalanche rolling down a Colorado mountainside …
A violent storm ripping across Kansas wheat fields …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem … the city of David … the city of kings and queens … gleaming white in the hot sun of Palestine … Herod’s city, Pilate’s city … temple and palace; priests and soldiers … wealth and intrigue … a city of rumors and whispered plots …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem.
Not with armies and charging steeds … nor with spear and sword … but the Word of God, living and active … sharper than a two-edged sword … piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow … to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart … (Hebrews 4:12).
Do not think I have to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).
In the Gospel of John, a series of miracles … each one a clash between Jesus and the ruling authorities.
Changing water into wine …
The wedding party ran out of wine.
The host underestimated the thirst of his guests … maybe the host was just cheap … now he’s soon to be embarrassed …
Jesus changes water into wine!
This isn’t about weddings and wine; this is a metaphor of comparison.
Israel ran out of wine … nothing left to offer, nothing to satisfy the guests … nothing to give to the world.
Jesus cleanses the temple … overturns the tables and scatters the money …
He tells the esteemed Nicodemus, a leader, a teacher … you’ve got it all wrong … you’ve got to start over again … fresh and clean …
The woman at the well … you Samaritans have it all wrong, too … this water slacks your thirst only for awhile … I’ll give you the water of life, and you will never thirst again.
Jesus feeds the five thousand … the crowds are hungry … desperate for hope and meaning; they’re not being feed in the right now; they’re starving to death spiritually.
Only five small barley loaves and two small fish … that’s all the disciples have, but in the hands of Jesus, the meager becomes more, the little becomes large.
Jesus walks on water in the midst of a storm … Israel is a tiny ship on a large sea … storm-tossed and unable to reach port.
Jesus is the calming presence; the master of chaos … the hope of the world in every storm, and Israel’s hope to regain it’s purpose.
The authorities have their robes in a knot … they wait for Jesus to slip up, make a mistake, overstep the boundaries, miss a beat… the authorities gather in late-night counsels, behind closed doors … plotting, planning, purposing …
Now at last, they have something …
Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath …
“You can’t do that here” … not here, not now, not ever!
The perfect crime for conviction …
A violation of law …
A breaking of convention …
“We have him at last.”
The blind man is questioned … his family humiliated …
Jesus is stunned … how can they see a man restored to life and complain about when it was done?
How can they look at such an obvious good and call it evil?
“Can’t you see?” asks Jesus.
But the powerbrokers would have none of it …
Blind as bats they are …
They can’t see the One who stands in their midst …
They can’t see their way beyond tradition and convention …
They’re locked in, and they’re locked up …
Veils of illusion blind them …
Prisoners of their own little world …
They hatch a scheme to remove Jesus …
They work with Rome …
Luke tells us: Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12) …
As for the blind man, we’ll kick him out of the temple and send him packing …
As for Jesus, we’re prepared to kill him.
Our LORD says: “You’ve got it all wrong!”
You style yourselves shepherds, but you’re thieves and bandits.
Jesus cuts to the chase … He lays down the gauntlet … He draws a line in the sand.
He saw how they treated the blind man; what they did to the man’s family …
You’re thieves and bandits, says Jesus … you’ve got it all wrong … you do violence to God’s people … more harm than good …
The setting is that of first-century sheep-farming … a community sheepfold … a hired gatekeeper … lots of sheep, and when a shepherd comes to bring the sheep out for the day, the gatekeeper opens the gate, the sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd, and they follow him out to pasture …
When Jesus speaks, everyone would have recognized the words of Ezekiel 34 …
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.
You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. ….
Thus says the LORD God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hands, and put a stop to them. ….
I will rescue my sheep….
I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. …. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down….
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak….
Remember what Jesus said to Peter?
Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep (John 21:15-18.
Take care of each other …
Love one another …
Build up one another …
Forgive one another … and Jesus said it best of all: I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.
Why is it that religion can go so wrong?
How is it that folks so well educated and trained can miss the point so completely? The Pharisees, the Sadducess, the Priests and the Scribes … the best of the best – Yale, Harvard and Stanford … they had Moses and the Prophets … but they got it wrong!
How could the church invent the Inquisition? How could the church harbor within itself such terrible thoughts and do such hideous things?
Why did so many German Christians succumb to the Nazi lie of God and Country?
Why did Christians defend the evils of slavery … deny women a place in the church … and these days, bar the door to gays and lesbians?
Why does religion run out of wine?
Why are the crowds so hungry?
Why can’t religion calm the storms and heal the blind?
Jesus dares to tell the truth! He’s a truth-teller!
As of late, I’ve been thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr … just last week, the 40th anniversary of his assassination on a Memphis motel balcony …
He told the truth … “I have a dream,” he said - a dream where the content of character prevails over the color of one’s skin …
I think of Mother Teresa … she told the truth, too … she lived compassion and mercy, she lived tenderness and kindness … and now with her diary printed, further truth: just how hard it was to live for Christ … how dark her thoughts … how sad her soul … the burdens she carried for the sake of Christ.
I think of Thomas Merton … a monk in the hills of Kentucky … who told the truth to an anxious world … censors tried to hush his voice, but ways were found to circulate and publish his letters and essays …
I think of William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Presbyterian pastor, chaplain at Yale, anti-war activist … he told the truth and lived the ways of peace … he loved America, but he loved America enough to tell the truth and show us a better way.
I think of a friend from the early Seventies, the Rev. Jim Sommerville and his wife Ricey … they were working in the Kanawha River Valley of West Virginia, organizing the poor to help them gain leverage against the coal companies … ten years earlier, in the Sixties, Jim and Ricey were forced out of their church, out of their home, because they told the truth about racism and segregation … they reminded their church of something better, something brighter …
When a newspaper breaks a story about inflated CEO salaries even as the company lays off 600 (LA Times, April 12 re CBS) …
When politicians go to bat for LAX hotel workers …
Books and film help us, too … Upton Sinclair’s Oil, or John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – films like Motorcycle Diaries, Michael Clayton, Good Night, Good Luck or Stop-Loss tell us the truth.
Folks in our own ranks …
Morrey Plotkin teaching us God’s Word … opening the pages of the text thoughtfully, prophetically … reminding us of God’s call to justice.
Dode Jonegewaard showing us something better in the open housing struggle, issues of choice and women’s rights, and justice for gays and lesbians …
Colleen Cronin and George and Clare Burr – dedicated and devoted … suiting up and showing up … reminding us that God comes first …
Our Flocks and Groups Alive, Mary Thompson and the Deacons … choir members and Faith Band … they live the truth; they sing the truth …
Folks here and around the world … millions of truth-tellers …
They love and they help …
They pray and they share …
They visit the sick, and they visit the dying …
They challenge prevailing notions … they awaken dulled minds … they stir the conscience …
They go to soup kitchens and build Habitat Homes …
They dig wells for clean water …
They gather clothing for the needy …
A million billion good people adding grace to the universe …
Grace added …
Every kindness, every good intention … adds grace to the universe …
Every time the name of Jesus passes our lips, grace is added …
Every flower watered … Every meal cooked …
Every hand held, every pat on the back, every smile and every word of good cheer, adds grace to the universe.
Jesus adds enough grace to make up the difference for all of us …
He tells the truth … He lives the truth …
And He’s the truth today …
He confronts pretense and power …
He unsettles our little kingdoms and takes down the walls our ego builds …
He reveals corrupt religion when religion falls in love with itself …
His grace reaches the lost … His mercy restores the fallen …
His love penetrates hardened hearts …
He calms the crowd that would stone the woman …
He calls Zacchaeus down from the tree …
He challenges Nicodemus to try it again, and get it right this time …
Jesus is our gate … swinging wide in both directions …
Our gate into the Father’s heart …
Our gate into hope and peace …
The gate to life and the gate to love …
The gate to heaven … and a gate to the world …
The gate to service and the gate to sacrifice …
The gate to purpose and the gate to peace …
I’m ever-grateful to know Him …
I’m honored to serve Him …
And I know that you are, too!
Every day, His grace holds me …
Every hour, He forgives me …
Night and day, He restores me …
And makes all things new …
I’m one of His sheep … and so are you …
He’s our Gate … Amen and Amen!
Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill …
The Allied invasion of Normandy …
An avalanche rolling down a Colorado mountainside …
A violent storm ripping across Kansas wheat fields …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem … the city of David … the city of kings and queens … gleaming white in the hot sun of Palestine … Herod’s city, Pilate’s city … temple and palace; priests and soldiers … wealth and intrigue … a city of rumors and whispered plots …
So Jesus walked from Galilee to the fabled city of Jerusalem.
Not with armies and charging steeds … nor with spear and sword … but the Word of God, living and active … sharper than a two-edged sword … piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow … to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart … (Hebrews 4:12).
Do not think I have to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).
In the Gospel of John, a series of miracles … each one a clash between Jesus and the ruling authorities.
Changing water into wine …
The wedding party ran out of wine.
The host underestimated the thirst of his guests … maybe the host was just cheap … now he’s soon to be embarrassed …
Jesus changes water into wine!
This isn’t about weddings and wine; this is a metaphor of comparison.
Israel ran out of wine … nothing left to offer, nothing to satisfy the guests … nothing to give to the world.
Jesus cleanses the temple … overturns the tables and scatters the money …
He tells the esteemed Nicodemus, a leader, a teacher … you’ve got it all wrong … you’ve got to start over again … fresh and clean …
The woman at the well … you Samaritans have it all wrong, too … this water slacks your thirst only for awhile … I’ll give you the water of life, and you will never thirst again.
Jesus feeds the five thousand … the crowds are hungry … desperate for hope and meaning; they’re not being feed in the right now; they’re starving to death spiritually.
Only five small barley loaves and two small fish … that’s all the disciples have, but in the hands of Jesus, the meager becomes more, the little becomes large.
Jesus walks on water in the midst of a storm … Israel is a tiny ship on a large sea … storm-tossed and unable to reach port.
Jesus is the calming presence; the master of chaos … the hope of the world in every storm, and Israel’s hope to regain it’s purpose.
The authorities have their robes in a knot … they wait for Jesus to slip up, make a mistake, overstep the boundaries, miss a beat… the authorities gather in late-night counsels, behind closed doors … plotting, planning, purposing …
Now at last, they have something …
Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath …
“You can’t do that here” … not here, not now, not ever!
The perfect crime for conviction …
A violation of law …
A breaking of convention …
“We have him at last.”
The blind man is questioned … his family humiliated …
Jesus is stunned … how can they see a man restored to life and complain about when it was done?
How can they look at such an obvious good and call it evil?
“Can’t you see?” asks Jesus.
But the powerbrokers would have none of it …
Blind as bats they are …
They can’t see the One who stands in their midst …
They can’t see their way beyond tradition and convention …
They’re locked in, and they’re locked up …
Veils of illusion blind them …
Prisoners of their own little world …
They hatch a scheme to remove Jesus …
They work with Rome …
Luke tells us: Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12) …
As for the blind man, we’ll kick him out of the temple and send him packing …
As for Jesus, we’re prepared to kill him.
Our LORD says: “You’ve got it all wrong!”
You style yourselves shepherds, but you’re thieves and bandits.
Jesus cuts to the chase … He lays down the gauntlet … He draws a line in the sand.
He saw how they treated the blind man; what they did to the man’s family …
You’re thieves and bandits, says Jesus … you’ve got it all wrong … you do violence to God’s people … more harm than good …
The setting is that of first-century sheep-farming … a community sheepfold … a hired gatekeeper … lots of sheep, and when a shepherd comes to bring the sheep out for the day, the gatekeeper opens the gate, the sheep recognize the voice of their shepherd, and they follow him out to pasture …
When Jesus speaks, everyone would have recognized the words of Ezekiel 34 …
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.
You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. ….
Thus says the LORD God, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hands, and put a stop to them. ….
I will rescue my sheep….
I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. …. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down….
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak….
Remember what Jesus said to Peter?
Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep (John 21:15-18.
Take care of each other …
Love one another …
Build up one another …
Forgive one another … and Jesus said it best of all: I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.
Why is it that religion can go so wrong?
How is it that folks so well educated and trained can miss the point so completely? The Pharisees, the Sadducess, the Priests and the Scribes … the best of the best – Yale, Harvard and Stanford … they had Moses and the Prophets … but they got it wrong!
How could the church invent the Inquisition? How could the church harbor within itself such terrible thoughts and do such hideous things?
Why did so many German Christians succumb to the Nazi lie of God and Country?
Why did Christians defend the evils of slavery … deny women a place in the church … and these days, bar the door to gays and lesbians?
Why does religion run out of wine?
Why are the crowds so hungry?
Why can’t religion calm the storms and heal the blind?
Jesus dares to tell the truth! He’s a truth-teller!
As of late, I’ve been thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr … just last week, the 40th anniversary of his assassination on a Memphis motel balcony …
He told the truth … “I have a dream,” he said - a dream where the content of character prevails over the color of one’s skin …
I think of Mother Teresa … she told the truth, too … she lived compassion and mercy, she lived tenderness and kindness … and now with her diary printed, further truth: just how hard it was to live for Christ … how dark her thoughts … how sad her soul … the burdens she carried for the sake of Christ.
I think of Thomas Merton … a monk in the hills of Kentucky … who told the truth to an anxious world … censors tried to hush his voice, but ways were found to circulate and publish his letters and essays …
I think of William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Presbyterian pastor, chaplain at Yale, anti-war activist … he told the truth and lived the ways of peace … he loved America, but he loved America enough to tell the truth and show us a better way.
I think of a friend from the early Seventies, the Rev. Jim Sommerville and his wife Ricey … they were working in the Kanawha River Valley of West Virginia, organizing the poor to help them gain leverage against the coal companies … ten years earlier, in the Sixties, Jim and Ricey were forced out of their church, out of their home, because they told the truth about racism and segregation … they reminded their church of something better, something brighter …
When a newspaper breaks a story about inflated CEO salaries even as the company lays off 600 (LA Times, April 12 re CBS) …
When politicians go to bat for LAX hotel workers …
Books and film help us, too … Upton Sinclair’s Oil, or John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – films like Motorcycle Diaries, Michael Clayton, Good Night, Good Luck or Stop-Loss tell us the truth.
Folks in our own ranks …
Morrey Plotkin teaching us God’s Word … opening the pages of the text thoughtfully, prophetically … reminding us of God’s call to justice.
Dode Jonegewaard showing us something better in the open housing struggle, issues of choice and women’s rights, and justice for gays and lesbians …
Colleen Cronin and George and Clare Burr – dedicated and devoted … suiting up and showing up … reminding us that God comes first …
Our Flocks and Groups Alive, Mary Thompson and the Deacons … choir members and Faith Band … they live the truth; they sing the truth …
Folks here and around the world … millions of truth-tellers …
They love and they help …
They pray and they share …
They visit the sick, and they visit the dying …
They challenge prevailing notions … they awaken dulled minds … they stir the conscience …
They go to soup kitchens and build Habitat Homes …
They dig wells for clean water …
They gather clothing for the needy …
A million billion good people adding grace to the universe …
Grace added …
Every kindness, every good intention … adds grace to the universe …
Every time the name of Jesus passes our lips, grace is added …
Every flower watered … Every meal cooked …
Every hand held, every pat on the back, every smile and every word of good cheer, adds grace to the universe.
Jesus adds enough grace to make up the difference for all of us …
He tells the truth … He lives the truth …
And He’s the truth today …
He confronts pretense and power …
He unsettles our little kingdoms and takes down the walls our ego builds …
He reveals corrupt religion when religion falls in love with itself …
His grace reaches the lost … His mercy restores the fallen …
His love penetrates hardened hearts …
He calms the crowd that would stone the woman …
He calls Zacchaeus down from the tree …
He challenges Nicodemus to try it again, and get it right this time …
Jesus is our gate … swinging wide in both directions …
Our gate into the Father’s heart …
Our gate into hope and peace …
The gate to life and the gate to love …
The gate to heaven … and a gate to the world …
The gate to service and the gate to sacrifice …
The gate to purpose and the gate to peace …
I’m ever-grateful to know Him …
I’m honored to serve Him …
And I know that you are, too!
Every day, His grace holds me …
Every hour, He forgives me …
Night and day, He restores me …
And makes all things new …
I’m one of His sheep … and so are you …
He’s our Gate … Amen and Amen!
Sunday, April 6, 2008
How to Be a Humble Star - April 6, 2008
“How to Be a Humble Star”
Philippians 2:1-15
Dr. Dale Southorn
Calvin Presbyterian Church
Tigard, Oregon
Of all the virtues one should strive for in life, humility is the most difficult to achieve. In fact, it is something that is downright impossible to grasp. You work at and work at it, but the minute you think you’ve achieved humility, by definition you’ve lost it. You see, you just can’t be proud of your humility, can you?
I actually find it quite annoying how much God is helping me in this area of my character development. Things keep happening to knock me down a peg or two, but I guess I should be thankful because I am closer to my goal of being humble, I think.
Like most guys, I take a lot of pleasure in my cars. I’ve usually had a fairly new, nice-looking car that I keep clean and polished. But a few weeks ago I was driving the wrong car at the wrong time. I was returning from a day of skiing with my son and his friend when we noticed the car in front of us was driving erratically. He was wandering in and out of the lane, slowing way down and then speeding up. It was clear to me he was drunk so I called 911 on my cell phone. The operator connected me to the State police and the officer began to ask questions like what highway are you on, what is the driver doing and what kind of car is he driving? It is a dark Jeep Cherokee, I told him. Then he asked, “and what are you driving, sir?” For an instant I thought of saying, “A Lexus RX 350.” But honesty won out and I said, “A purple Dodge minivan.” I heard the officer wince as I imagined him saying, “I’m sorry.” My son and his friend died laughing. I thought to myself, I’m never driving my wife’s car again. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great car and it is even kind of cute. But at a time like that, guys just aren’t into cute. I was being important, being a brave citizen doing my duty, but I got humbled a little.
We were in Southern California recently visiting friends. In that part of L.A. I would not want to have had my purple mini-van. All the cars on the road seemed to be new silver German sedans or sports cars. Humility is not a virtue that is in big supply in Hollywood. It seems like everyone is either a star or they define themselves by how many stars they know, or at least how many star sightings they have in a day. Hey I saw Dustin Hoffman taking out his garbage the other day, isn’t that cool? There are a few exceptions, though. The other day I read about Harrison Ford, and he seems like a regular humble sort of guy. The article said Barbara Walters was impressed that he even called her after their interview to thank her. She said no one in Hollywood ever does that. I loved Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones series, so I can’t wait until the new one comes out.
In our society we don’t seem to make humility one of the qualities we look for in our heroes. When you stop to think about it, our heroes are really pretty one-dimensional. They can sing, sort of, or they can swing a bat or a golf club. But more often than not their personal life is a mess. For Christians, we need to look higher for our role model in life—way higher. The apostle Paul, in the letter to the Philippians tells believers that Jesus Christ himself is our hero. He is the one we should strive to be like. And in Christ, humility is not only a virtue; it is the heart of the very nature of God.
But I am getting a little ahead of myself. We need a little background and context before we look more closely at what I believe is one of the most beautiful passages in the whole New Testament. So in the 45 minutes allotted to me (right pastor Tom) I am going to take us back to when Paul visited Philippi on his second missionary journey; then explore the elegance and simplicity of what has been called a hymn to Christ; and finally reflect on how you and I can become stars in a world that needs to see the light.
First, who did Paul meet in Philippi? In Acts chapter 16 we have the story of the new church development of the First Presbyterian Church of Philippi. The first thing to notice was that Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man pleading with him saying, “Come to Macedonia and help us.” So Paul and Silas, and possibly Luke and the young Timothy all immediately sailed to Philippi in Macedonia, which is at the top of the Aegean Sea between Greece and modern day Turkey. The story introduces us to three people who would likely still have been part of the church when Paul wrote his letter to them from a prison cell a few years later. The first is a wealthy merchant woman named Lydia. We are told she and her whole household were baptized and the new church often met in her home. Next we meet an unnamed slave girl who was making a living for herself and her handlers through fortune telling. When Paul casts the demon out of her and she becomes a believer, her agents are furious at their loss of income and they have Paul and Silas thrown in jail. Paul, always the evangelist, even converts the jailer and his family, with the help of an earthquake that opened all the prison cells.
So here we have quite a cross section of Roman society: a rich, cultured merchant woman, a slave girl fortune teller, and a Roman civil servant. One would like to believe that they all got along famously, but the tone of Paul’s letter suggests that pride and social standing were getting in the way of creating the kind of community that Christ would have them be. And so Paul sharpens his quill for the second chapter of his letter and my does he wax eloquent.
The chapter begins with a rhetorical question. If, Paul says, if you have any encouragement, any comfort or fellowship, or any compassion and sympathy; then make my joy complete. No answer is needed to this question. Of course they have encouragement in Christ and fellowship in the Spirit. Of course they love Paul as the father of their church and they will naturally want to try to please him, to make his joy complete. So, Paul tells, not asks, tells them to be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. What Paul is not saying here is that they need to agree on everything. That is not what he means by saying be of the same mind or be of one mind. No, he is taking them to verse 5 which says they are to have the mind of Christ. And to describe the mind of Christ he focuses on this central virtue of humility.
He sets up the poem that is to follow by saying they should all have humility and regard others better than themselves; that they should look to the interests of others not just to their own. Remember he is speaking to Lydia, the slave girl, the jailer, and all the recent new members of the Philippian church. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul is speaking to you and me when he says, “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
Then in verses 6 – 11 we have what is this beautiful hymn to Christ. Let’s read that hymn together so it is fresh in our minds as we reflect on it for a few moments.
(re-read verses 6-11)
For a while I was a member of the first Presbyterian Church of Berkeley when one of the great preachers of our denomination was pastor there. I’ll never forget some of what Earl Palmer, the soon to be retired pastor of University Presbyterian in Seattle, said about this hymn. He pointed out that the flow of the poem is like a parabolic curve. It starts high, with Christ in the form of God; then it flows down through his becoming human, even a slave and then dies the most humiliating death of all—the death on a cross. Then from this cosmic bottoming out God lifts him up to where every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Some would argue the final point of the curve is even higher than the beginning point.
Let’s look briefly at each of the three parts to this curve: the journey down, the bottom, and the journey up.
Could there possibly be a greater fall imaginable. Here is the pre-existent Christ, very God of very God as the Nicene Creed says, so there’s no higher possible starting point. Then this Christ voluntarily empties himself to become a human, and even what would be in the Greco-Roman mind, the lowest form of humanity, a slave. I wonder if Paul had that slave girl in mind as he described Christ himself taking on the form of a slave.
Then in the ultimate act of humility accepts death, even death on a cross. While at this lowest possible point of the curve it is important to pause and reflect on just who was on that cross. Some scholars have tried to say that on his way down Christ emptied himself of his divinity to the point where it was only the human Jesus who died in that horrible moment. But this totally misses the point. As one commentary put it, “Christ did not cease to be “in the form of God” when he took the form of a slave, on the contrary, it is in his self-emptying and his humiliation that he reveals what God is like.”
This is the nature of God, high and lifted up, but so is this. God is with us in all our pain and struggles, even in the valley of the shadow of death. But, and here is the good news. He doesn’t stay there and neither do we. He begins the ascent in verse 9 with the word “therefore.” And whenever you see the word “therefore” you should stop and ask, what is it there for? Therefore God highly exalted him. With echoes of Easter and the resurrection Paul describes how God lifts Jesus up from the depths of death and despair by using every superlative he can think of. God gave him the name above all names, at which every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And it all comes back to the glory of God.
Wow, that’s our Jesus, our hero. Our role model for whom humility is not just one of many virtues, but it is the very nature of who Christ is. In his humility he reveals in the deepest way possible the humility of the heart of God.
So what does all this mean for you and me in our daily lives? Well, verse 12 begins with another therefore, so let’s stop and think about what it is there for. IT is there to bring us to the point of reflection on who we are in Christ. This is an awesome thing, to claim to be a follower of this self-emptying Christ. Paul tells us in a very memorable line to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Remember that the same God who was in Christ Jesus is in you, guiding you into becoming the person God wants you to be. And just as God lifted Christ up to new heights, God wants to life up you and me to stardom. No, we’re not going to be the next American Idol. But we’re going to shine like stars in a dark and lost world.
I love this image of shining like the stars. In our modern city lifestyles we have forgotten how beautiful and awesome the stars are. I’m sure you’ve had those moments of looking up in wonder at the night sky when you were out camping, away from the city lights. Just remember that Paul had spent many months at sea and the stars were not only beautiful, they guided the ship safely to its destination. That’s the kind of star you and I are going to be as we point people not to ourselves, but to Christ. That’s the humble stardom God wants for you and me.
Do you know any stars like that? People who reflect the humility of Christ in such a way that they shine brightly in our dark world. There are of course thousands of stories that could be told of those who have had the mind of Christ and lived a self-emptying life. There are the mother Teresa’s of history. But there are some even closer to home. I’m thinking of a man I know in Portland, Oregon who reflects the light of Christ to the down and out of our society.
This man’s name is Bill Russell and he was a successful attorney when he came to a place of emptiness in life. He wasn’t a believer, but he didn’t like what he saw in the lives of his heroes either. They were making money and acquiring cars and houses and ex-wives. He wanted more. So he asked a Christian colleague how he could learn more about Jesus. Bill told him, “look, I like what I hear about the life of Christ, but I don’t want to have to listen to all that hellfire and damnation stuff.” His friend told him, “Why don’t you try the Presbyterians?” No lie. He looked up the local Presbyterian church and was disappointed to see that the title of that Sunday’s sermon was “The Consequences of Sin.” But he went and he heard about grace and his heart was won over to Christ.
To make a long story short he left his career as an attorney and he eventually became the director of the Union Gospel Mission in Portland, and he has had a blast ever since. He loves working with these men and women who are the true salt of the earth types. There’s no pretense or false humility here. This is the real thing and he loves every minute of it. I’ve visited Bill and it is fun to walk around Portland’s Old Town with him. He knows everybody on the street and they know him. He knows who’s on the way up and who’s slipping downward again.
Bill’s story follows the same parabolic curve as the hymn in Philippians 2. He started at the height of all this world has to offer. He had money and prestige, but he came to a place where he saw the emptiness of it all and he surrendered himself to Christ. From that point on God has lifted him up to be a star shining the light of God’s love into the darkest part of the city.
So you want to be a star. But you wonder if you have anything to offer. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good place to start. In the Kingdom of God it is not how good or how talented you are that makes you a star. It’s how willing you are to completely surrender all you are and all you have to Christ. May we have the mind of Christ in all we do and we will shine like stars in a dark and needy world. Amen.
Philippians 2:1-15
Dr. Dale Southorn
Calvin Presbyterian Church
Tigard, Oregon
Of all the virtues one should strive for in life, humility is the most difficult to achieve. In fact, it is something that is downright impossible to grasp. You work at and work at it, but the minute you think you’ve achieved humility, by definition you’ve lost it. You see, you just can’t be proud of your humility, can you?
I actually find it quite annoying how much God is helping me in this area of my character development. Things keep happening to knock me down a peg or two, but I guess I should be thankful because I am closer to my goal of being humble, I think.
Like most guys, I take a lot of pleasure in my cars. I’ve usually had a fairly new, nice-looking car that I keep clean and polished. But a few weeks ago I was driving the wrong car at the wrong time. I was returning from a day of skiing with my son and his friend when we noticed the car in front of us was driving erratically. He was wandering in and out of the lane, slowing way down and then speeding up. It was clear to me he was drunk so I called 911 on my cell phone. The operator connected me to the State police and the officer began to ask questions like what highway are you on, what is the driver doing and what kind of car is he driving? It is a dark Jeep Cherokee, I told him. Then he asked, “and what are you driving, sir?” For an instant I thought of saying, “A Lexus RX 350.” But honesty won out and I said, “A purple Dodge minivan.” I heard the officer wince as I imagined him saying, “I’m sorry.” My son and his friend died laughing. I thought to myself, I’m never driving my wife’s car again. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a great car and it is even kind of cute. But at a time like that, guys just aren’t into cute. I was being important, being a brave citizen doing my duty, but I got humbled a little.
We were in Southern California recently visiting friends. In that part of L.A. I would not want to have had my purple mini-van. All the cars on the road seemed to be new silver German sedans or sports cars. Humility is not a virtue that is in big supply in Hollywood. It seems like everyone is either a star or they define themselves by how many stars they know, or at least how many star sightings they have in a day. Hey I saw Dustin Hoffman taking out his garbage the other day, isn’t that cool? There are a few exceptions, though. The other day I read about Harrison Ford, and he seems like a regular humble sort of guy. The article said Barbara Walters was impressed that he even called her after their interview to thank her. She said no one in Hollywood ever does that. I loved Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones series, so I can’t wait until the new one comes out.
In our society we don’t seem to make humility one of the qualities we look for in our heroes. When you stop to think about it, our heroes are really pretty one-dimensional. They can sing, sort of, or they can swing a bat or a golf club. But more often than not their personal life is a mess. For Christians, we need to look higher for our role model in life—way higher. The apostle Paul, in the letter to the Philippians tells believers that Jesus Christ himself is our hero. He is the one we should strive to be like. And in Christ, humility is not only a virtue; it is the heart of the very nature of God.
But I am getting a little ahead of myself. We need a little background and context before we look more closely at what I believe is one of the most beautiful passages in the whole New Testament. So in the 45 minutes allotted to me (right pastor Tom) I am going to take us back to when Paul visited Philippi on his second missionary journey; then explore the elegance and simplicity of what has been called a hymn to Christ; and finally reflect on how you and I can become stars in a world that needs to see the light.
First, who did Paul meet in Philippi? In Acts chapter 16 we have the story of the new church development of the First Presbyterian Church of Philippi. The first thing to notice was that Paul had a vision of a Macedonian man pleading with him saying, “Come to Macedonia and help us.” So Paul and Silas, and possibly Luke and the young Timothy all immediately sailed to Philippi in Macedonia, which is at the top of the Aegean Sea between Greece and modern day Turkey. The story introduces us to three people who would likely still have been part of the church when Paul wrote his letter to them from a prison cell a few years later. The first is a wealthy merchant woman named Lydia. We are told she and her whole household were baptized and the new church often met in her home. Next we meet an unnamed slave girl who was making a living for herself and her handlers through fortune telling. When Paul casts the demon out of her and she becomes a believer, her agents are furious at their loss of income and they have Paul and Silas thrown in jail. Paul, always the evangelist, even converts the jailer and his family, with the help of an earthquake that opened all the prison cells.
So here we have quite a cross section of Roman society: a rich, cultured merchant woman, a slave girl fortune teller, and a Roman civil servant. One would like to believe that they all got along famously, but the tone of Paul’s letter suggests that pride and social standing were getting in the way of creating the kind of community that Christ would have them be. And so Paul sharpens his quill for the second chapter of his letter and my does he wax eloquent.
The chapter begins with a rhetorical question. If, Paul says, if you have any encouragement, any comfort or fellowship, or any compassion and sympathy; then make my joy complete. No answer is needed to this question. Of course they have encouragement in Christ and fellowship in the Spirit. Of course they love Paul as the father of their church and they will naturally want to try to please him, to make his joy complete. So, Paul tells, not asks, tells them to be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. What Paul is not saying here is that they need to agree on everything. That is not what he means by saying be of the same mind or be of one mind. No, he is taking them to verse 5 which says they are to have the mind of Christ. And to describe the mind of Christ he focuses on this central virtue of humility.
He sets up the poem that is to follow by saying they should all have humility and regard others better than themselves; that they should look to the interests of others not just to their own. Remember he is speaking to Lydia, the slave girl, the jailer, and all the recent new members of the Philippian church. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul is speaking to you and me when he says, “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
Then in verses 6 – 11 we have what is this beautiful hymn to Christ. Let’s read that hymn together so it is fresh in our minds as we reflect on it for a few moments.
(re-read verses 6-11)
For a while I was a member of the first Presbyterian Church of Berkeley when one of the great preachers of our denomination was pastor there. I’ll never forget some of what Earl Palmer, the soon to be retired pastor of University Presbyterian in Seattle, said about this hymn. He pointed out that the flow of the poem is like a parabolic curve. It starts high, with Christ in the form of God; then it flows down through his becoming human, even a slave and then dies the most humiliating death of all—the death on a cross. Then from this cosmic bottoming out God lifts him up to where every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Some would argue the final point of the curve is even higher than the beginning point.
Let’s look briefly at each of the three parts to this curve: the journey down, the bottom, and the journey up.
Could there possibly be a greater fall imaginable. Here is the pre-existent Christ, very God of very God as the Nicene Creed says, so there’s no higher possible starting point. Then this Christ voluntarily empties himself to become a human, and even what would be in the Greco-Roman mind, the lowest form of humanity, a slave. I wonder if Paul had that slave girl in mind as he described Christ himself taking on the form of a slave.
Then in the ultimate act of humility accepts death, even death on a cross. While at this lowest possible point of the curve it is important to pause and reflect on just who was on that cross. Some scholars have tried to say that on his way down Christ emptied himself of his divinity to the point where it was only the human Jesus who died in that horrible moment. But this totally misses the point. As one commentary put it, “Christ did not cease to be “in the form of God” when he took the form of a slave, on the contrary, it is in his self-emptying and his humiliation that he reveals what God is like.”
This is the nature of God, high and lifted up, but so is this. God is with us in all our pain and struggles, even in the valley of the shadow of death. But, and here is the good news. He doesn’t stay there and neither do we. He begins the ascent in verse 9 with the word “therefore.” And whenever you see the word “therefore” you should stop and ask, what is it there for? Therefore God highly exalted him. With echoes of Easter and the resurrection Paul describes how God lifts Jesus up from the depths of death and despair by using every superlative he can think of. God gave him the name above all names, at which every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And it all comes back to the glory of God.
Wow, that’s our Jesus, our hero. Our role model for whom humility is not just one of many virtues, but it is the very nature of who Christ is. In his humility he reveals in the deepest way possible the humility of the heart of God.
So what does all this mean for you and me in our daily lives? Well, verse 12 begins with another therefore, so let’s stop and think about what it is there for. IT is there to bring us to the point of reflection on who we are in Christ. This is an awesome thing, to claim to be a follower of this self-emptying Christ. Paul tells us in a very memorable line to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Remember that the same God who was in Christ Jesus is in you, guiding you into becoming the person God wants you to be. And just as God lifted Christ up to new heights, God wants to life up you and me to stardom. No, we’re not going to be the next American Idol. But we’re going to shine like stars in a dark and lost world.
I love this image of shining like the stars. In our modern city lifestyles we have forgotten how beautiful and awesome the stars are. I’m sure you’ve had those moments of looking up in wonder at the night sky when you were out camping, away from the city lights. Just remember that Paul had spent many months at sea and the stars were not only beautiful, they guided the ship safely to its destination. That’s the kind of star you and I are going to be as we point people not to ourselves, but to Christ. That’s the humble stardom God wants for you and me.
Do you know any stars like that? People who reflect the humility of Christ in such a way that they shine brightly in our dark world. There are of course thousands of stories that could be told of those who have had the mind of Christ and lived a self-emptying life. There are the mother Teresa’s of history. But there are some even closer to home. I’m thinking of a man I know in Portland, Oregon who reflects the light of Christ to the down and out of our society.
This man’s name is Bill Russell and he was a successful attorney when he came to a place of emptiness in life. He wasn’t a believer, but he didn’t like what he saw in the lives of his heroes either. They were making money and acquiring cars and houses and ex-wives. He wanted more. So he asked a Christian colleague how he could learn more about Jesus. Bill told him, “look, I like what I hear about the life of Christ, but I don’t want to have to listen to all that hellfire and damnation stuff.” His friend told him, “Why don’t you try the Presbyterians?” No lie. He looked up the local Presbyterian church and was disappointed to see that the title of that Sunday’s sermon was “The Consequences of Sin.” But he went and he heard about grace and his heart was won over to Christ.
To make a long story short he left his career as an attorney and he eventually became the director of the Union Gospel Mission in Portland, and he has had a blast ever since. He loves working with these men and women who are the true salt of the earth types. There’s no pretense or false humility here. This is the real thing and he loves every minute of it. I’ve visited Bill and it is fun to walk around Portland’s Old Town with him. He knows everybody on the street and they know him. He knows who’s on the way up and who’s slipping downward again.
Bill’s story follows the same parabolic curve as the hymn in Philippians 2. He started at the height of all this world has to offer. He had money and prestige, but he came to a place where he saw the emptiness of it all and he surrendered himself to Christ. From that point on God has lifted him up to be a star shining the light of God’s love into the darkest part of the city.
So you want to be a star. But you wonder if you have anything to offer. Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good place to start. In the Kingdom of God it is not how good or how talented you are that makes you a star. It’s how willing you are to completely surrender all you are and all you have to Christ. May we have the mind of Christ in all we do and we will shine like stars in a dark and needy world. Amen.
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