A MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION – AND LESSON

A story from the Internet: "During my second month of nursing school our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: 'What is the name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name?

"I handed in my paper leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. 'Absolutely!' said the professor. 'In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘hello.’ I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy."

           

The story reminds me of the last question on my first Old Testament test in seminary: "Who is the author of the text book?" I hadn't the foggiest. On that same test we were asked to draw a map of Israel and indicate where the Twelve Tribes were located, and by name. Needless to say, I did not do well on that test, nor did the rest of my classmates. But like that young student nurse, we learned our lesson. People and places and peoples' places in life are very important – to them – and should be to us as well.

I would like to be able to say that that first Old Testament exam sure was a lesson to me. I would like to say that. The lesson took a long time in learning. The question was important. The answer was more important, but the lesson, the learning did not come without a lot of halts and hesitations along the way. It is still too easy for me to be caught up in my own little world and not be concerned about others.

(I’ve probably told this story before because it has made a life-long impression on me.) I remember years ago arriving at a new church. It was a downtown church and many of the street people stopped for a cup of coffee and, in the winter, to get out of the cold. It was winter and a very cold one. One young man was there every day. It took me two months to learn his name because he wasn't important. What was important to me back then, or so I thought, was to learn all the names of all my parishioners. After all, they paid my salary. Larry only came for a handout.

When I finally realized what I had been doing, how unchristian I had been, I apologized to him. He was kind enough to tell me it was nothing, maybe because he was used to being ignored, maybe because he was more Christian than I was or will ever be. But, as I said, I have never forgotten that incident in my life, just as I have never forgotten that quasi-lesson my Old Testament prof perhaps unknowingly tried to teach my classmates and me all those years ago. But it took Larry, years later, for the lesson to sink in.

The people we encounter in our daily lives are all important even though we don’t think that is true. Maybe we encounter them and they us because that is God's plan for them and God’s plan for us for us. As the prof said, they deserve our attention, if all we do is say a simple pray for them.

WHAT A GREAT GOD!

Every preacher likes to be told that the sermon was great. It gives the ego a boost. Yet the preacher's ego being inflated is not the goal of the sermon. J. H. Jowett on the real goal of the sermon: "What you are after is not that folks shall say at the end of it all, 'What an excellent sermon!' That is a measured failure. You are there to have them say, when it is over, 'What a great God!' It is something for [people] not to have been in your presence but in His."

When I read that quote, I was a little ashamed. My shame came not from the fact that my goal in preaching is to receive compliments – it is not (but, to be honest, it is always nice to hear when it happens), but that I often forget what that goal is: to remind all of us, myself included, how great God is.

God is great. That is, above all else, the message of the Christmas Season. In spite of everything, in spite of our sinfulness and selfishness, in spite of the fact that we often think more of ourselves than we do of God, in spite of everything we have done and will continue to do, God loves us. As that famous passage from John reminds us, God loved us so much that he gave us His Son whose birth we celebrate during this time.

God gave us God’s Son to love us, to live and die for us, to show us by his life the type of life we, too, can and should live – from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death and every second in between. It was not an easy life for Jesus, to be sure and, as we all well know from experience, it is not an easy life for us at times. But it is the life we are called to live.

The Christmas Season is a time for remembering God's greatness, a time for giving thanks for God’s great love and God’s great Gift to us, a time to remind ourselves that our lives are to reflect God's glory and not our own by what we say and do each moment of each and every day. We do all that, or at least try to do that.  But like preachers, we often forget that we are to do it all the time and not some of the time.

Maybe we'll never get it right all the time given our humanness. No, we will not get it right all of the time. Thankfully, God knows and understands and forgives. Maybe that is why we need seasonal, if not constant, reminders of who we are, who God is, what God has given us and what we should do in response.

May we all take some time during this season to personally reflect on God's greatness and goodness and give thanks in the way God did in and through Jesus: by giving of ourselves to others even more than we already do. Giving ourselves: not giving gifts but the greatest gift of all, the gift of self. That is not always easy to do, as the Gospels remind us. But as those same Gospels also attest, the grace of God is always present, always offered. May we be open to receive it. And not only receive it, but do all we can to live it.

A blessed and grace-filled and grace-giving Christmas and every day thereafter.

DO I CAUSE ANYONE TO DOUBT

There is a scene in the Gospels where John the Baptist is in prison and begins to wonder if he has Jesus and Jesus’ message all wrong. John believed that the Messiah would be a grand military leader, round up an army of followers to take on and overthrow the Roman government. But that was not the message he was getting from what he was hearing about Jesus. So he sends some disciples to put it to Jesus point blank: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

Yet, we still might ask why would John the Baptist have any doubts about who Jesus was? He had heard what Jesus was doing, namely what Jesus told John’s disciples to tell John what he was doing: the blind seeing, the lame walking, lepers being cleansed, the deaf hearing, even the dead being raised to life. Only the Messiah could do such things, right? Well, maybe wrong. Maybe many people can, could and do some or all of that. And maybe some were doing it even during John’s and Jesus’ time.

Why else would John need to have his disciples ask such a question? Even today blind people see again, the lame walk again, lepers and the like are cleansed, deaf people receive their hearing back or hear for the first time. Those who perform such miracles are not called the Messiah today and they were not called the Messiah back then even if they did and do Messianic deeds. Some were called doctors and some were called miracle workers but none were called the Messiah.

So if giving sight to the blind or making the lame walk is not a sign or the sign that one is the Messiah, if such great deeds can be done by the ordinary, what was it Jesus said to tell John that sealed the deal for John, let John know that Jesus was who he said he was and who John believed he was? I can’t prove this, but I think it was that last words Jesus told John’s disciples to say to John: “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

No one could take offense in what Jesus said and did, honestly take offense. It is true that many people took Jesus to task for breaking the Sabbath, for not being politically correct. But those who did knew, in the most secret places in their hearts, even if they would not admit it publicly or to anyone else, that there was nothing in what Jesus said or did for which they could take offense. Nothing.

That is what John needed to hear. That is what set Jesus apart from anyone else before or after. He simply never sinned. Even those who did or do wondrous deeds, like a Mother Theresa or a Francis of Assisi, sin and on a daily basis. They would be the first to say they do, too. Granted, their sins may pale into insignificance when compared to ours; nevertheless, they cannot or ever say, “blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Neither can you or I. Jesus could and did.

We know that we sin every day, give offense to others, give them pause to doubt us and about our love and care and concern for them. Giving no offense and no reason to doubt means becoming more and more aware each day of our responsibilities to teach others by word and example. Not easy, but Jesus never said it would be. But we must try.

THE MESSAGE IS THE SAME

There are times in our lives when we all need a wake-up call. We live our lives from day to day, day in and day out, one day turning into the next, one year after another. Nothing much changes around us and we do not change. At the end of the year when we often, for one reason or another – maybe because it is the end of the year and it is something good to do – we take time to look back on the preceding three hundred sixty some days. What we often discover is that we don’t see that much has changed in our lives. This year looks very much like last and next year bodes the same. Life goes on.

Such is our life and such were the lives of the people of John the Baptist’s time. Perhaps back then those who came out to hear John only came out because he was different. He looked differently, dressed differently, ate a different menu than they did. Perhaps they had nothing better to do on the day they set out for the Jordan River. Perhaps. Once they arrived and were able to get past John’s appearance and everything else about him, many of them began to listen to what he had to say. They listened intently.

As they listened, they began to think about their own lives. They began to understand John was speaking as much to them as he was to anyone else. He wasn’t just lashing out at the people in power, although he was doing that, but it was more than that. For these mainly curiosity seekers John’s message was a wake-up call.

After they left John and went back home and took more time to reflect on what they heard, they began to examine their lives. What they discovered was a void: something was missing. And as they reflected further, what they found missing was a certain seriousness about life and about the way they lived their lives.

They discovered they had been living day to day without much thought as to why they were doing what they were doing, about what life was all about, about what their own lives were about. They discovered that they needed to take charge of their lives, to get serious with themselves and even with their God.

And they did, at least many of them did. But not all. Many of them, even after realizing John’s wake-up call was addressed to them, decided it was too much work, took too much of an effort to make any serious reforms in their lives. And so they went back to the same-old same-old. Some of those who did not, who took John’s message seriously and to heart, eventually became Jesus’ disciples. 

Nothing has changed, has it? John’s message is a real and alive and is addressed to us today just as it was to those who heard that message almost 2000 years ago. The question for them back then and for us today is one and the same: How will we respond? How will I respond? Will I listen to John’s words and take the time to seriously reflect on them, do the work to change what needs to be changed even though it may be difficult, or will I nod my head in agreement and do little or nothing?

Those who listened to John had that choice. So do you and I? What will we/I do?

OUR ATTITUDES ARE IN CHARGE

A bad attitude is almost as bad as a bad action: bad attitudes lead to bad actions and not the other way around. We do what we know is wrong because we want to do what is wrong. Our attitude at the moment of doing that wrong is compliant with the wrong about to be done. Thus, being jealous of another often leads or certainly can lead us to doing harm to the other. That does not mean a bad attitude always leads to bad and selfish actions. It simply means that such actions stem from such attitudes. If we allow such attitudes to control our lives, we know the consequences.

There is a remedy, of course, as Paul clearly notes in his letter to the Roman community. What we must do, he says, is "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:14) If we live as Jesus would live, if Jesus lives in us, we will not give in to our emotions or desires that will cause harm to others as well as to ourselves. We will live a life of self-control and not allow our attitudes or emotions to control us.

Easier, much easier, said than done, of course. To do that takes discipline and hard work, often very hard work. It does not come easily or because we desire to live in such a manner, no matter how strong such a will and desire is. Jesus regularly took time to pray, to rest, to discipline himself for his mission and ministry. All the great saints throughout history did the same. They knew how easy it is to allow our emotions to take control of our lives, how a bad attitude toward anyone or anything can lead to words and deeds later rued and regretted.

So do we, because we have been the victims of our own emotional outbursts. We have hurt others, often those closest to us, those who love us the most, because of some petty jealousy. We have said and done things that we regretted almost as soon as the words came out of our mouth or the action was done. It happens all the time and happens more than we would like to admit because, in doing so, we have to admit as well that such emotional outbursts could have been prevented had we been more disciplined in our spiritual lives.

A strong spiritual life demands that we keep on top of our emotions. Such a life will also help us do so. Thus, we need to constantly examine our emotional state to determine if we are thinking and acting as if Jesus were living in and working through us. Emotions and attitudes being what they are, bad ones can quickly grab hold of us and take control. In fact, it almost seems as if the bad attitudes are stronger than the good attitudes, and perhaps they are. That is why we must do all we can to prevent such attitudes from taking control of the moment.

As Paul would remind us, we need to grow more and more each day in the understanding and realization that others are to see Jesus in us and, even more, we are to see Jesus in us. Frightening thought, perhaps. But if we try each day, with God’s offered grace and help, to clothe ourselves in love, fill ourselves with God’s wisdom and grace, we will live as God would have us live, as we would have us live. That’s the attitude to have.