Breaking the Chains that Bind Us

Has it ever happened to you?  You made a commitment to yourself to break a bad habit.  You said to yourself.  When that happens again, I won’t react so badly.   I’ll behave better. I won’t worry or get stressed like in the past.  Or maybe, you simply promised that the next time you went to that buffet, you wouldn’t go back for that third plate.   And as you said it, you so much wanted to believe it would happen.  You may have even believed it would.

And maybe it did happen.   But if so, that is awesome!   But too often, that habit doesn’t stay broken.   That bad reaction rises up again.   No matter your promises, when that third helping at the buffet calls, you still answer.    

How many times have we made such commitments to ourselves only to break them?   How many times have we resolved to rise above a certain behavior, only to find ourselves falling right back there again?  The Apostle Paul when he wrote to the believers in Rome put it this way.

“I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”

Can you relate at all?   Do those words not describe what each of us face to some extent in our lives every day?     What is going on that holds us back so?    More importantly, how do we become free to live the life we want to life, freed from our bondage to bad habits, to wrong thinking, to uncontrolled appetites.  In this story of healing and liberation, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Mark 1:21-28

Why do we, so often in our lives, find ourselves bound to bad habits, caught in worries and fears that limit us, trapped by appetites that we find hard to control?   More crucially, how do we become free from these very things we yearn to be free from?  In this story, Jesus shows us.   Jesus shows us that strangely enough it is our very loves that limit us.  But Jesus also shows us that only through love can we truly become free.  

How can that be?   Well first, we need to see how love limits us.  And strangely enough one word in this story points to our problem.   As Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, he encounters this person afflicted by what Mark, the writer, describes as an unclean spirit.   But what does it mean for something to be unclean?  It seems a strange choice of words. But in that word unclean God is communicating a profound truth on the human problem.         

A few years ago, my nephew, Colton, taught English in China.  Those months turned out to be an incredible experience, but it didn’t start out that way.   Colton had no idea how difficult it would be to get used to China.  

I asked him.  “What was the hardest thing to get used to?”   He mentioned several things that made it tough.   In the area where he taught, the combination of poor sanitation and rapid growth, made simply the smell of the place hard to handle.   Then, he soon realized that their idea of what sanitation meant was different too.  He saw again and again that in his part of China the whole world was their restroom if you get my drift.   But those things, he got used to.  One thing though he couldn’t.   He never got used to seeing dog being served at the butcher’s shop or in a restaurant.   He understood. There was nothing inherently wrong in the practice.  After all, it is meat, and it’s certainly edible.  But it felt so wrong, so not the way things should be.   Still, it did motivate him to learn to read Chinese to make sure that he never ordered Fido, when he went to a restaurant.  

What was going on with Colton’s revulsion?  He was experiencing the same sort of thing devout Jews in Jesus’ day felt when they saw some Gentile munching on a piece of bacon.  Sure, they knew that such food wasn’t inherently bad, but it felt revolting nonetheless.   Why?  They had a cleanliness code, and every culture has one. 

Now what is a cleanliness code?  Well, let me show you.   In this cup, I have a little bit of tea left.   But what if I spilt just a bit of this tea here on the table.   What just happened?   Well, I made the table dirty, right?   But how come in the cup the tea seemed perfectly fine, clean if you will?  But now that it is on the table, it is dirty, unclean?  Well, tea belongs in cups, but it doesn’t belong on tables.   And therefore tea on a table makes the table dirty.   It’s out of its proper place.

Cleanliness codes help us define where things belong.   In our culture, dogs belong in the back yard, and not on the dinner table.   That’s part of our cleanliness code.   And in the Old Testament, God gave his people a pretty detailed one.  By the way, when you see that something is kosher, that’s what it means, that it is clean according to this Biblical code.   But why did God do this?  

Because in these codes, God was pointing us to the core of our problem, to what at the deepest level is destroying us.   In our lives, and more profoundly in our hearts, things are out of order.   They have lost their proper place.   In too many areas of our lives, we are unclean.

This unclean spirit in the story is only the most extreme example of something we all have. This man may be possessed by something that is palpably, even supernaturally evil, but every one of us gets possessed by something or someone.   What do I mean?    In 2005 at Kenyon College, the writer David Foster Wallace gave what has become one of the most acclaimed commencement speeches ever.   And in that speech, he made this devastatingly true observation. 

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.  And the compelling reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough…worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.  And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you…Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and unafraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.  Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.  But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is…. they’re unconscious.  They are default settings.

Do you see what Wallace is saying?   All of us get possessed by something, and with only the exception of God, whatever it is that possesses us will eat us alive.  But why is that?   It’s not because money is a bad thing or beauty or power or intellect or whatever it might be.   In reality, all these are good things.   What makes them bad or unclean is that they lose their proper place. 

Think about it.   If you put your career above everything else, your family, friends, even your health, that decision will wreck your life and others’ lives too.     But on the other hand, if you put your children above anything else, that smothering love will wreck your life and theirs’ too.  Our problem is not that we love these things.   It’s that we love these things too much. We don’t love them in the right order.   We look to family or relationships or work or things or even our own lives for ultimate meaning instead of to God.   And thus our loves get out of order.    They become unclean.  And when that happens, we don’t possess our loves as much as they possess us. 

Whenever we struggle with a habit that is hard to break or a behavior that we can’t break free from, at the heart of our struggle is a love out of order.   Let’s say when someone criticizes us or expresses disappointment in us, it devastates us.   So we try desperately to please everyone, even if it means others treat us badly.   We know. This need to please is hurting us and others, but we can’t stop.  

What is going on?  We have come to love the approval of others too much.  It is possessing us even.  Our loves have gone seriously out of order.  But how do they get back into order?  How does that happen?  Here Jesus shows us.

Have you ever noticed that whenever Jesus teaches, he always accompanies it with some act of power?  Why is that?   Does Jesus just throw in some special effects to wow the crowd?   No.  Jesus is making clear what he has come to do.

 Jesus didn’t come to deliver advice.   Jesus came to deliver us.   That’s why he called his message news.   Advice is about something we do.   News is about something that has been done for us.  And Jesus not only brings the news, he is making the news.   He is creating the reality of which he speaks.  He isn’t just talking about bringing in the reign of God, he is bringing that reign into actual reality like he does in this story. So when Jesus frees this man from the unclean spirit, it’s not just good news for him.  It’s good news for us.   Because we need that same deliverance, from the things that possess us. 

Now in this man’s case, it happened instantaneously.   But this deliverance God brings usually doesn’t occur so quickly.   And because it doesn’t, we can think it’s not happening at all. But it is. It is happening in ways more powerful and profound than we realize.    But how is it happening? 

Once, the Jesuit priest James Martin writes, I was so frustrated about an unhealthy aspect of my personality that I knelt on the floor and begged God to change me as quickly as Jesus had changed the man (in the story).   As in the case of the unclean spirit, what reason would God have for not exorcising that part of me?  Why wouldn’t God do this immediately?  After an hour, waiting, I rose from the floor, the same person as before.

A few months later, Martin writes, I was speaking to a spiritual director, lamenting this.  Why wouldn’t God heal me as quickly as Jesus had healed the man in the synagogue…The spiritual director pointed to a tree outside his window.  “See that tree?” he said.  I nodded.   “What color is it?”….”Green,” I said.  “It’s a green tree.”  “In the fall it will be red,” he said.   And I knew this.  I had seen that very tree in the middle of a New England autumn.  It was a glorious scarlet. And then he said. “And no one sees it change.”

If you let Jesus deliver you, Jesus will.   At times, it may be instantaneous.  But more often, it will be a journey, a process.  But the deliverance will come.  How can you know?   Because Jesus had his loves rightly ordered.   And in that order, where did he place us?  He placed us above even his own life.  He freely laid down his life for love of us.  And through that love, he freed us from any power that might possess us, even the power of death itself.  If you let his love reign in you, this love that loves you more than you can ever grasp, then Jesus will place all your loves in their proper place. He will free you bit by bit, day by day, from the things that hold you too tightly, from what you have come to love too much.  He will make you clean.  And as he does, he will open you to a life richer, more beautiful; more mysteriously wondrous than any you could have ever imagined or dreamed.            

How Do We Defeat our Worst Enemy, Ourselves

It’s funny.  Sometimes I wanted this so bad.   But other times, I didn’t want it at all.  When I was growing up, I started playing tee-ball, which doesn’t seem all that difficult.  You put the ball on the tee, and the kids hit it.   But when God was passing out eye-hand coordination, I must have not been paying attention, because it was a challenge for me.  Still, I always ended up hitting the ball.   It was on a tee after all.  But what I hated far more than being at bat was being out in the field.   Every time the coach picked me to go out on the field, I dreaded it.  Out there in the outfield where they put the clumsiest of us on the team, I prayed fervently that no ball would come to me.   I just knew that I’d mess it up, and let some kid run the bases. 

Yet as much as I hated getting picked in tee ball, when it came time at my elementary school to pick the crossing guards, I wanted to be picked so badly.   I wanted to wear that little reflector vest that the crossing guards wore.  I wanted to get dismissed early to do this important job.  

Have you ever had moments like that, moments where you said to yourself, “Pick me, please, pick me!” or other moments, where you prayed the opposite.   When that happens, what is going on?   Too often, what is going on, is the core issue that creates the misery and pain in our lives and world. 

For example, when I yearned to not get picked to play in the outfield, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to let my team down, to prevent them from winning the game.  I simply didn’t want to embarrass myself.   Losing the game didn’t matter to me so much as long as losing it wasn’t my fault.   And when it came to being a crossing guard, I wasn’t so concerned about the safety of my fellow students during the pick-up time.   I wanted the status.  All the cool 6^th graders got to be crossing guards, and I wanted to be in that number.   My desires weren’t about others.  They were all about me.

This sort of self-absorption lies at the heart of our problems.  Our worries and fears come out of concern about ourselves.  Our bitterness and selfishness come out of focus on ourselves.   Ironically, the more self-absorbed we become, the more miserable we and usually everyone around us becomes.  Our self-absorption doesn’t free us.  It imprisons us.    It doesn’t fulfill us.  It diminishes us.   It doesn’t make us more.  It makes us less.  But how do we become free, become free of ourselves?  In this story of Jesus picking folks, God shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.

Mark 1:14-20

In life, more often than not, the worst enemy we face will be ourselves.  As the famous Pogo cartoon put it, we have met the enemy and he is us.  But how do we become free of this enemy?  How do we become free of the self-absorption that limits our lives, that wounds our world?  Here, in his words, and in his call, Jesus shows us. 

But in order to see how Jesus frees us, we first have to see exactly what Jesus is telling us.  In the gospel of Mark, the very first time we hear Jesus speaks, he is speaking the words we just heard.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”  This good news is literally the gospel.  That’s what the old English word means, good news.   But what does it mean to believe the good news.  What is the good news?    This phrase, good news, didn’t appear first with Jesus. Many folks used it in the ancient world.   And the more we understand how they used it, the more we’ll understand why Jesus did.    

When folks talked about the good news or in the Greek euangelion, they were talking about just that, news that was good.   But they didn’t mean just any old good news, like some human interest story on the 6 oclock news.   No, This is the type of good news that changes the world. 

When the news came during World War II, that we had victory in Europe, VE Day, and then later victory in Japan, VJ day; that was euangelion.  That was good news.   It was actually joyous news, the end of a brutally painful and difficult time.   And after that news, the world was never the same again.  Do you see how Jesus using this phrase tells us something hugely significant?  

Jesus didn’t come to bring us advice; Six simple ways to a free and fulfilled life the Jesus way!   Jesus came to bring us news.  He came to tell us of something that actually happened, something accomplished for us, joyous news that changes everything.   Lots of folks today offer you fulfillment by giving you advice or offering a technique.  But we don’t need advice or technique.  We need a real change.  We need a profound deliverance.  And that’s what Jesus brings.  He brings us news of a real victory in our real world.  

So what is this joyous news, this victory news that Jesus brings.   He tells us.   The time is fulfilled.  The Reign of God has come near (Reign is actually a more accurate translation than kingdom).   In that news, Jesus points to the enemy that we need to defeat.

In the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, we read this curious sentence.   They were naked and not ashamed.   What does this mean?   It doesn’t mean that they were strutting around saying, “Look at my washboard abs.”   It means they knew each other, I mean, really knew each other, as completely as any human being can, but they had no shame, no insecurity.  In other words, they had no self-consciousness, no self-obsession. They had no hidden places.  They didn’t keep any guilty secrets.  They didn’t wall off some part of themselves.  They were naked and not ashamed.

But then Adam and Eve chose not to trust God.  When God said to them.  Trust me about this tree.  They said.  “No, I don’t think so.”  We’re going to become our own authority for everything.  We’re not going to trust you.  We’re going to place ultimate trust in ourselves.  But what seemed to them such a great option, the way to freedom, actually took their freedom away.   For after they took the fruit of that infamous tree, their self-focus didn’t free them, it bound them.  That’s why the Bible tells us that they took fig leaves to cover up their nakedness.  

God isn’t telling us there that Adam and Eve were having body image issues.  God is saying that their focus on self, led them not to self-liberation but to self-consciousness.  They didn’t become secure in themselves.  They became profoundly insecure.   And in their insecurity, they hid from themselves.  They hid from one another.  And above all, they hid from God.    And from that sickness of self comes all the misery that affects us individually, and our world as a whole.   We don’t need to think more highly of ourselves.   We certainly don’t need to think more lowly of ourselves.  We just need to think of ourselves less.  

Jesus’ news offers us the way out.  He is proclaiming that the true ruler has returned, that the reign of self is over.  God, the rightful ruler has come to set things right, to free us from our bondage to ourselves.    That is the victory news that Jesus proclaims, and it changes everything.

And as Jesus calls his first followers, we are seeing how that change happens.  It happens when we truly understand and live out these cryptic words.   “Follow me, and I will make you to become fishers of people.”    We have likely heard these words a lot, but do we really grasp what they mean?  I don’t think I did until this past week. 

I always thought of it as if there were these people-like fish that Jesus followers were grabbing up out of the water.  But does that really make any sense?  Several years ago, after the movie, The Perfect Storm, came out, I read a lot about folks who fish commercially for a living.  And what I read kind of freaked me out.   I read of unbelievable physical punishment, of going without sleep for literally days on end, and most disturbing of all, how utterly perilous the sea could be.  I remember reading of how someone could get quickly caught on a hook as it went over the side, and find themselves in water so cold, it would kill them in minutes, in the midst of waves that were bigger than houses.   Commercial fishing is the most dangerous job in the world. That’s why the reality show about commercial fishing is called The Deadliest Catch. 

And who is Jesus talking to?   He is talking to commercial fisherman, to folks who knew how utterly perilous it was to get caught in the sea, who when it happened hoped that their fellow fisherman would do all they could to fish them out before they died.    And the Sea of Galilee was particularly treacherous, known for terrifying storms that could come up and swamp a boat in moments.   So when Jesus tells them that they will fish for people, this is what he is talking about.  He is saying.   We live in a world where people are figuratively drowning around us everywhere.  They desperately need someone who will fish them out of the chaos that is killing them.  And I’m asking you to join me on that rescue mission.      

But how does that happen?   How do we become free of ourselves, so free that we can even help rescue others caught up in the same bondage.   In these words of invitation, Jesus tells us.  Jesus says, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of people.   In other words, Jesus is saying.  Here is the way to freedom.   Follow me.   Stop placing your trust in yourself.  It’s a dead end.  But if you place your trust in me, I will lead you out.   And his words make it clear, that this isn’t some sort of magical once in a lifetime moment.  Jesus is inviting us into a journey, one in which if we follow, he will make us to become fishers of people.  That’s what Jesus says, not that I will make you fishers, that I will make you become.  In other words, I am inviting you into a journey, a journey that if you follow will free you step by step, day by day from yourselves. 

I am reminded of how this works every time I walk the labyrinth that lies behind our sanctuary.  If you’ve walked that path or one like it, you’ll know how it works.   The path will lead you to the center and back out again, but the way it does so will not make sense.   At some point, you’ll think that the path needs to go one way, when it actually leads you in another.   But, as uncomfortable as it seems, you let the path take you its way, no matter how counter-intuitive it feels.   Do you see what that labyrinth path is showing us?    It is showing how following Jesus frees us.   No matter how many times I walk that labyrinth path, when it takes that unexpected turn, I want to resist.   But when I resist that resistance, when I let go, and trust the path to lead me, I find freedom.  I realize I don’t have to stress out about where to go.  I simply need to let the path show me the way, that if I trust the path, it will lead me to exactly where I need to be.

If you follow Jesus, he will take you down some twists and turns that make no sense.  You will want to resist.  You will want to go your own way.  But if you trust, if you follow, if you let go and let Jesus lead you, then he will free you.  In that following, he will free you more and more from your desire to go your own way, a way that is actually no way at all.   And as he does, you will not lose your way, you will discover it for the first time. 

How can you trust Jesus to do this?  Because he has already done it.  He lost himself so that you can find yours.   He gave up his life to reclaim yours.    He showed us in his death and resurrection that until we die to ourselves, we can’t really live.  In fact if we’re not dying to ourselves, we’re already dead.  

Let Jesus free you from yourself.   Let Jesus raise you up.   Let Jesus fish you out of the chaos of our insecurities and self-obsessions.   As he does so, you will discover.  You won’t be thinking too highly of yourself or too lowly.  You’ll be hardly thinking of yourself at all.    Let us pray.      

 

 

Reality is a Dance because God is a Dance

When my dad was learning to fly a plane, his instructor warned him that he could easily lose touch with the reality around him, that he couldn't trust his senses.  He had to trust the instruments to tell him the truth.   One day the instructor drove that lesson home.  While they were flying through a cloud, the instructor asked my dad.   Are we flying right side up or upside down?   Dad answered right side up.  The answer seemed obvious.  Then the instructor said.  “Look at the instruments.  The instruments told the real story.  The place had turned completely upside down, but my dad had never felt it.”

That’s how JFK Jr. died.   When he flew his plane directly into the ocean, he thought the ocean was far below.   That’s the story his eyes were telling him.  But if he had looked at the instruments, they would have told him the truth, a truth that might have saved his life. 

But it’s not only in the air that our perceptions will lie to us.  They blind us to the reality that lies around us right here, right now.   That blindness may not kill us, but it will kill the life we’re meant to live.   It will limit our relationships.  It will take away our peace.  It will give us ambitions that lead nowhere, false fears that only bring us to dead end places.   That blindness will lead us away from who God created us to be.   What is this reality that we often can’t see, but desperately need to.  In these words, Jesus shows us.   

  

Matthew 3:13-17

In this strange story, Jesus shows us reality, the reality that actually exists rather than the one we often believe does.   And in doing so, he opens the door to a life that will liberate us from the false beliefs that bind us, even enslave us.   How is all this happening in a simple story about Jesus’ baptism?   But is this story so simple?   Have you ever asked?  Why is Jesus getting baptized in the first place?   If Jesus is who he says he is, that makes no sense. 

But to find the answer to that question, we need to see what happens after Jesus’ baptism.  When that dove descends, and that voice comes down, we’re not simply seeing a divine special effects show.   God is showing us the very heart of reality, the meaning of life, the truth that undergirds everything in the universe.   How is that? 

The key to what is happening here lies in a detail we can overlook.  Beyond this description at Jesus’ baptism, God is likened to a dove in only one other sentence in the Bible, in reality, only one unique translation of that sentence.    At the very beginning of the Bible, in the creation story, the very first sentence tells us that the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.  But the word isn’t really moved, it’s actually the word fluttered, like a bird flutters.   So in the Aramaic version of the Bible, the one that Jesus and his disciples read, the rabbis wrote the sentence as “theSpirit of God fluttered above the face of the waters like a dove.”  

At creation, Genesis is telling us three parties were present, God, God’s Spirit, and God’s Word through which God created.    Now at Jesus’ baptism we see the same three parties, the Father who is the voice, the Son, who is the Word, and the Spirit, who is the fluttering dove.   By pointing back to the beginning, do you see what God is doing?   God is telling us.   I am bringing in Jesus, a new beginning, a new creation. 

But more than that, in both places, God is telling us.  This is who I am.   I am a Trinity.  I am One God in three persons.   Now, as difficult as that reality is to grasp, if we don’t grasp it, we miss everything.   God is telling us.  This is the reality that lies at the heart not only of creation, but at the heart of the new creation I am bringing in Jesus. 

Think about it.  Why do we say that God is love?  How can that be true?    Love is something that one person has for another person.   So if God was a single being, then before the world was made, God couldn’t have been love.   But of course most people don’t get this, because they read these words more like.  “Love is God.”   As in Love is where it’s at.  It’s like the Bible version of the Beatles song.  "All you need is love.”   But that’s not what the Bible is telling us at all.    

No, the Bible is saying that the “living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and it is that activity of love that has created everything else, that is in reality, God (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)…… In other words, God is not a static thing—not even a person—God is a dynamic, pulsating activity of love, a life, almost a kind of dance.    

And if God is that, if God is a dance, then that means all reality is also a dance.  And stunningly, the more science studies the universe, the more this reality becomes apparent.   When we look at this table, we see a table, but in reality, this table is billions of infinitely small particles moving ceaselessly around in well, a dance.   And what is true of this table is true of everything around us, at the heart of every piece of matter that exists is adance.  And, at a bigger level, we see that in everything that exists around us, even in us.  It all has a rhythm, the rhythm of the waves, of the seasons, the rhythm of our own breathing and heartbeats.   Everything around us is dancing all the time, but here’s the problem.  Often, we’re not.  

You see to create a dance, you need people who are willing to defer to one another, who can let go of their own egos in order to create something larger than themselves.   That’s the rhythm of a dance.   But often, we don’t do that.    No, instead we want a world where everyone dances around us.   Now, we don’t say that because, well it would be rude, but we do.   Its why, when I need to get somewhere fast, and I hit too many red lights, I get frustrated.  Why?   Because, I want all the lights to be green for me.    But do you not see how that way of seeing life is insane, how it is utterly disconnected from reality, even sad? 

Imagine you’re at a party, and one group is all coming together in one big group dance.  They’re all clapping, singing together; kicking their legs together.    It’s like a scene from the best Jewish wedding you’ve ever witnessed.    And then there’s one dude over in the corner, yelling “Hey look at me.   I can do the moonwalk!”    Wouldn’t that kind of be pathetic? 

Or have you ever seen the Rockettes do their thing at Radio City Music Hall?  It’s amazing, seeing these incredible dancers all moving together to create something beautiful.   Then imagine, if all of a sudden, one of them moves in front of everyone, and starts doing her own little routine of crazy kicks. It would mess the whole thing up.   And you’d just be embarrassed for her, for her obvious cluelessness to the whole point.

But that’s us.   We live as if the dance has to be all about us, but that’s not a dance at all.  It’s our own twisted desire to be God, a desire that shows us that we really have no clue who God actually is at all.   And that twisted desire isn’t just pathetic.  It is deadly.  It messes up our relationships.  It leads to fractures in our families, and misery in our work-places.  It brings us a world of appalling inequality and horrifying violence, to the evil we saw at Mother Emmanuel this past week. We have become separated from reality, from the dance, and that separation is killing us.      

That’s why Jesus got baptized.   He didn’t do it because he needed it.   Baptism stood for a desire for cleansing from wrong-doing, for a return to a relationship with God.    Jesus was already clean.   And he already had an intimacy with God we can’t begin to comprehend.  His cousin, John knew this.   It’s why Jesus’ request puzzled him.  But Jesus’ reply gives us the answer.  He said, “I am doing this to fulfill all righteousness.”   Jesus isn’t talking about his righteousness. He is talking about ours. Righteousness simply means being in a right relationship with God, in rhythm with God’s rhythm so to speak.   And when Jesus entered those waters, Jesus was saying, I have come to bring you that relationship, to bring you back into the dance. 

Several years ago, I traveled to Nova Scotia in what is called dance season.  During the brief summer months, folks gather each weekend at these local village halls for huge dances.  They bring in the best fiddlers they can find, and everyone comes together in these elaborate Scottish folkdances.   The music is incredible, and the all dancers know the steps so that it looks great too.   So I went, and stood in the corner and watched.   An old man saw me, and said in his gruff Nova Scotian way, “You’re at a dance.  Get out there and dance.”   I said, “I don’t know anyone, and I don’t know the steps.”  He said, “That doesn’t matter.  Just go, and they’ll show you.”   I didn’t want to go, not because I didn’t want to.   I just didn’t want to embarrass myself.  I had too much pride.   But he kept pushing me, and he was pretty intimidating, so I did.   And it wasn’t all that pretty.  I missed some cues, but people helped me along.  They patiently showed me the way. They forgave my faulty steps.  And before I realized it, I was caught up in the dance, in the flow of the music, in creating something beautiful with people I hardly knew.   And it was wonderful.   

Jesus came to invite us into a dance of infinitely greater beauty and wonder than that, one that has been going on for all eternity.   When he entered those waters of baptism, he was opening the door to that dance.  He was saying, “I will make up for all your faulty steps.   I will heal all your self-conscious, self-seeking ways.   I will free you to dance once again, even at the cost of my very life”   That is the gospel, the good news, the good news we all need to hear. 

As the song Sydney Carter wrote puts it:

I danced in the morning when the world was young, I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun 
I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth At Bethlehem I had my birth 
They cut me down and I leapt up high I am the life that will never, never die 
I'll live in you if you'll live in me I am the Lord of the dance, said he 
So….Dance, dance, wherever you may be I am the lord of the dance, said he 
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he

That’s the point of life, the point of everything, to live in the flow of that dance with God, with each other, and with our world.  It’s why Jesus came and died so that the dance might live in us once again.   And as we let Jesus bring us into that dance, it will change everything.  It will change us.  It will change our relationships.  It will change our world.   Let us pray. 

Freedom From Anxiety - Making the One Thing the One Thing

I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize how bad.   It’s one in five?   One in five people really?  But that’s what the study shows.   One in five people in our nation are takingsome psychiatric drug.   Now some of those are for things like ADHD or schizophrenia.  But most folks are taking them because they are either depressed or anxious or both.    40 million Americans alone have some form of anxiety problem.    And lots of them aren’t even doing anything about it. 

What about those that are?  Well, more and more we’re finding out that the medications don’t work so great.   Now, yes, a fair number of folks do need medications.  But for a lot of folks the drugs aren’t doing much of anything.  In fact, they may even be making them worse. Yet since 1985, the sales of just those drugs haveincreased by 5,000%.  That’s a lot! 

And let’s be honest, whether we have a diagnosed problem or not, who doesn’t get anxious?  Terrorists are out to kill us.   Who knows what the next test at the doctor’s office might show?   And it seems all too easy to lose a job these days, and all too hard to find a new one.   And heck, what about the day to day worries of life, running late for an appointment, getting stuck on 95, dealing with our kids or grandkids or our parents or spouse?   Heck, how many of us are a little worried about Thanksgiving, anxious getting everything ready or wondering if so and so will make a scene?  

So what do we do with all that?  How do we find peace in a world of anxiety?  How do we live lives more free of worry and all that comes with it?  In the words of this psalm, God shows us the way.  Let’s hear what God has to say.

Psalm 27

What’s up with this song?  The writer, David, ignores one of the basic rules of eliminating anxiety.  What is that?  Well, think about it.  What often makes you and me anxious?  We are thinking the worst.  We are catastrophizing.  We are creating in our heads disasters that haven’t happened and probably won’t.  Yet we’re creating them, and worrying about them too.

But what does David do.  He thinks the worst.   Though an army encamp against me, though my mother and father forsake me.   Sheesh!  Why does David imagine the worst, awful scenarios that haven’t even happened?  Why?  David wants to have a strategy against fear and anxiety that can stand against anything the world can throw at him.    He wants to know that if even the worst he can imagine happens to him, he will still be okay.   And let’s get real, David did have some real problems, including folks who wanted to kill him.  That’s probably more stress than any of us are dealing with.  So what is the strategy that David develops?

Well, he lays it all out in verse 4.  He says.  “One thing I asked of the Lord that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”  What?  That’s the secret?    Going to church 24 hours a day?  Really? 

But David isn’t asking that at all.   David is telling us.   I want to experience the presence of God, every moment of my life.  I want to behold the face of God.   If I have that, I know, even if an army camps against me, I won’t fear. But what does it mean to be in the presence of God?   I mean.  Isn’t God everywhere?  Aren’t we always in the presence of God?

Well, yes and no.   Right now, as you heard Robert play and the choir sing, you were in their presence.   But do you really know them?   Well, you only know them if you’ve come up and met them, if you’ve been face to face with them.  That’s how we really know folks, only when we see them face to face. 

And that’s what David wants from God.   David wants to know God personally and intimately.   Sure, you can experience God looking at a sunrise, but will you know God personally?  No.   Look, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.    And if I look at a light bulb, sure I’ll experience the genius of Thomas Edison.   But if I go, Thomas, are you there?  Hello, Thomas!  I won’t get much.   The only way I will know Thomas Edison personally is if I meet him face to face.

But why does knowing God personally and intimately give us the key to a fearless life?   David gives us the answer right at the beginning of verse 3. He tells us “One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after…”   David knows.   If I make God my one thing, then I need never fear anything ever again.  Why? 

Well, where does anxiety come from?  It comes when we make anything else our one thing.  And that anything else could even be a good thing.    For example family is a good thing.  Financial security is a good thing.  Health is a good thing.   But these good things can’t be ultimate things.  They can’t be the one thing.   They can’t be the one thing that we depend upon to make us happy, to keep us secure.   We can’t live in that house so to speak.  Why?  Well, that house can collapse.   And if it does, where is our security then?  

Now I’m not talking here about every day anxieties.   A certain low level of anxiety just shows we care about things.   I’m talking about when our fears paralyze us, when our anxieties threaten to overwhelm us.  When that happens, we know. A good thing has become an ultimate thing.  And we sense how insecure that thing is.   And that insecurity leads us to fear and worry. 

Don’t you see?  Our anxieties are only the smoke.   And if we follow the smoke, it will lead us to the fire.   They will show us what has become too important, what good things have started to become ultimate things, the central things; the little idols of our lives.  Don’t you see, our worries help us.  They help us see what are the things that are starting to enslave us, the good things that are becoming ultimate things.

But if God is the one thing, then David knows that he has nothing to fear.  After all, David knows that nothing can take away God’s presence.   God is the one unshakeable reality of life. 

So what happens, even if his father and mother forsake him, what does he say?  The Lord will take me up.   And let’s be honest.   In all of our cases, our mother and father will forsake us.  It could happen while they are alive, if we have parents that are not faithful to us.   But even the most faithful parent dies.   All parents eventually forsake their kids in that way.   Yet, have you ever run across someone who can’t get over the wounds of his childhood, who can’t let go of the bitterness to a parent who injured them.  Those folks will never have peace.  In their bitterness, they have made their parents’ failings an ultimate thing, and it is destroying them. 

Don’t you see these words can be true of everything we have?  If my money forsakes me, if my spouse forsakes me, if my health forsakes me, the Lord will take me up.   If God is my one thing, that one thing can never be taken away.   And if I have that one thing, then nothing, nothing will ever be able to shake me. 

Ok, so now, here’s the question.  How do we make God the one thing?  How does that happen?  How do we live in the house of the Lord?   David tells us that we do two things.  We behold the beauty of the Lord, and we inquire in his temple.    And he splits the rest of the psalm to talk about those two things.  In verse 8, he says,  “Come, my heart says, seek his face!”   That’s beholding.   Then in verse 11 he says.  Teach me your way, O Lord.” That’s inquiring. 

So how do we seek God’s face?    Well let’s take that first image in the psalm.  The Lord is my light.   Take a moment, and think about what light means to you.   How comforting it is.  How warm it can be.  How it pushes back the darkness.   Ponder for a few moments the light of God’s love pushing back every dark place, every dark thought, every dark emotion you have.  Imagine that light of God just filling you up.       

Now before you think, woah, that seems a bit deep, just realize you’re probably already doing it, just not with God.  Let’s say you see a new car that you really like or a beautiful piece of clothing or a person you’d like to meet.     What do you do?  You fill your mind with dreams about that thing or that relationship.  You fantasize about it.  How awesome driving that car would be.  How terrific that piece of clothing would feel.  How wonderful a relationship with that person would be.  Don’t you see, it’s the same process?  It’s just that none of that stuff will ever give what you imagine they will.  But God will actually give you more than you could ever imagine.  God will lavish upon you a beauty, a peace in your life that you could never have dreamed on your own.       

So do that with God.  Take images like God is my light or God is my refuge.  Fill your mind with what that means.   Contemplate the wonder of it.   When you do that, you will be beholding the beauty of the Lord.  You will be living in the House of the Lord. 

Now what about inquiring of the Lord, what does that mean?  The word here actually simply means seeking advice.   You ask God.  God what do you want me to do?   What’s your will for my life?

Now to live in the House of the Lord, you need both these things.  If you just seek God’s will for your life, but don’t gaze on his beauty, you’ll just be uptight and legalistic.   But if you only gaze at God’s beauty and never seek what God wills for your life, that won’t work either.  Why?  Well, it never works in any other relationship, why should it work here?

Think about it with marriage.   When you fall in love with someone, sure, you gaze upon their beauty.   And if a marriage is to stay strong, you’ve gotta have some of that beholding the beauty going on.  But if that’s all you got, then that marriage will head south fast.  In marriage, much of what you do is learn how to please your partner.  You do what gives them joy, what best serves them.   If you enter marriage thinking, oh, sure, I’ll behold your beauty but you want me to do stuff for you, find out what your desires are and meet them? Sheesh, I can’t do that.    That’s way too inconvenient.   Will that marriage be a good one?   If you want to keep gazing on the beauty, then you better find out what gives your partner joy, what meets his or her needs and then give it.

If you want to gaze upon God’s beauty, then you gotta find what will give God joy, what God’s will is for you.   And the more you do that, the more you’ll experience God’s beauty.  

Several weeks ago, we looked at these lepers that wanted to be healed by Jesus.   What did they do?  They heard what road Jesus was coming down, and they hung out there.   What road do you hang out on to see Jesus?  You hang out on the road to obedience.   Jesus will meet you on that road every time.  

That’s why I ask you to read the Bible, to pray, to live a simple lifestyle, to forgive others.  That’s the road to obedience.  And the more you hang out there, the more the beauty of Jesus you’ll see.  And what is the beauty of Jesus?   Well, it said David inquired in the temple.  What did David see when he inquired at the temple.  He saw a bloody mess.   He saw animals slaughtered and sacrificed.  But David grasped what that meant.  He saw a God who could not look the other way when it came to the wrongs people did.   To clean up that mess, then another mess had to be made to make it right.   But David saw a God willing to make that mess, to find a way to forgive, to love, to draw people back into intimacy with him.   In that bloody mess, David saw the love and beauty of God.

Now if David could see that in a lamb slaughtered on an altar, how much more can we see it in Jesus, the lamb of God hung on a cross?  How much more can we see God’s beauty in the face of Jesus, who to clean up our mess, literally became a bloody mess for us.   How beautiful is a God who goes that far to love us, to forgive us, to draw us back to him.    

When you get caught in worry, when you feel paralyzed by fear, ask yourself.  What good thing am I making the ultimate thing?   Then let it go.  And start gazing at the beauty of the One who is the One and the Only, the bright and morning star, our light and salvation.  Ask God what do you want me to do?  What will give you joy?   And as you do so, you will find your love and peace becoming more and more, and your anxieties and fear less and less.   You will discover the peace of God, a peace that surpasses all understanding.  And in Jesus, that peace will guard your heart and mind, so that if even an army encamp against you, you will not fear.  

Freeing Ourselves from Money Sickness

When I saw it for the first time, I knew.   People are going to remember this speech for a long time.   I certainly remembered it. Or at least I remembered its three key words.   No great figure of history made this speech.   In fact, the person who made it doesn’t even exist.  Gordon Gekko is a character in a movie called Wall Street.  Does anyone remember that movie, that speech?   Gekko’s famous words were: Greed is good!  

Is Gekko right?   The Bible says no.  The Bible tells us.  Greed is a cancer that eats away at you from the inside out.   Greed blinds you to what really matters in life.  But why does the Bible think this?  Why does greed have to be so bad?   Couldn’t greed motivate you?   Couldn’t it lead you to success?    Why does the Bible see it as deadly?  

And if it is so deadly, how can we make sure we don’t get it?  How can we avoid coming down with a deadly case of greed.   In these words, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s hear what Jesus has to say.   

Luke 12:13-34

Why is greed so deadly?    First, greed is a silent killer, and second, we don’t have to have a lot of money for it to kill us.  Greed, money-sickness, has nothing to do with how much money we have.  But it has everything to do with how we view it. It’s when we look to money to give us only what God can. So how do we view money rightly? How do we avoid the sickness?   We let what God has already given us hold us more and more.  As we do, the hold of money-sickness on our lives will become less and less.  

When I was a teenager, I competed as a distance runner. One of my running heroes was a guy named Jim Fixx.   Jim had written a huge bestseller called The Complete Book of Running.  It had made him America’s running guru.   Yet only seven years after writing the book, at age 52, Fixx died of a massive heartattack.   How could that happen to someone so physically fit?  For the same reason, folks call heart disease the silent killer.  It can take you down before you even know it’s there.

Greed works the same way.  That’s why Jesus tells the crowd.  Be on watch against all kinds of greed.  Why do you have to be on watch?  Because greed can capture you without you even realizing it.   A lot of things that get us in trouble, we know when we’re caught up in them.  If you’re stealing something, you know you’re doing it.   The same with lying or adultery.   But with greed, you can be caught up in it, and not even realize it.   It’s sneaky like that.

The Harvard economist Juliet Shor discovered that only one third of American households making over a hundred thousand dollars a year thought they could afford everything they needed.    Do you realize what that means?  It means 2/3s of the wealthiest people in the wealthiest nation on the planet don’t think they can afford everything they need.   Do you see how sick that is?  Can you imagine what folks from Latin America or Africa would say to that, heck even folks from Europe or folks right here in the U.S.?    Yet, I bet that very few of those folks would see themselves as greedy, as money-sick.  That’s what greed does.  It blinds us to our own money-sickness, to our own materialism.         

Let me make it clear.  Greed and wealth don’t always go together.  In the Bible, Abraham was wealthy, but he wasn’t greedy.  On the other hand, even with a little money, greed can capture your life.  Greed has little to do with how much money you have.  It has everything to do with how you view it.   So what are the warning signs that we might have money-sickness?  How can we catch this sickness sneaking into our lives before it does great harm?  In what we just heard, Jesus shares six warning signs that we have to watch out for.

First Jesus asks.   Does your money make you gloat?   That’s what the prosperous farmer does.  He says.  Look at me!  I am rich!   I can build bigger barns!  That will impress my neighbors.   So when our wealth leads us to gloat, to feel superior because of our nice car or the bigness of our house, it’s a warning sign.    Now that one seems obvious, but Jesus doesn’t stop there. 

Jesus gives us another warning sign.   Jesus cautions us against worry.   Now why does Jesus start talking about worry after the story of the rich fool?  Because Jesus is warning us against all kinds of greed, and if you are worrying about your money, about your lifestyle, about your stuff, then you have set your heart on money just as much as the gloating farmer.   After all, when do we worry?   We don’t worry if we have all the stuff we desire.   We might gloat, but we won’t worry.   We worry only when we don’t have it.   Do you see what Jesus is telling us?   You can have a lot of money and not have money sickness.   And you can have only a little money and be eaten up with it.   That’s why Jesus says, don’t worry about that stuff.   Doing that will make you just as money-sick, just as blind to spiritual reality as that rich fool of a farmer.   You see, we can look at one type of greed, and come against that, but not realize how another kind of greed, of money-sickness is infecting us.

That’s why Jesus talks about ravens and lilies.  Jesus isn’t pulling these examples randomly.  He is pointing out two other kinds of greed, two other types of money sickness. With the ravens, Jesus shares how the ravens have neither storehouses nor barns, yet God makes them secure.  And with the lilies, Jesus talks about how God arrays them in beauty.  What is Jesus trying to tell us?  He is pointing out two other types of greed.   In one, we look to money for our security, to make us safe.   And in the other, we look to money to make us attractive.

When it comes to the security sickness, Jesus gives a powerful example in the rich farmer.  What does the farmer say?   He says, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat drink and be merry.”   He is telling himself.  “Aaaah, now I am safe.  In an uncontrollable world, I have control.”   But how secure is he really?  Not at all.   Why?  Because money can’t give you security.  It can’t even make you safe.  

It’s been almost twenty years, but I haven’t forgotten that call.   Gerry, one of my classmates from school called me one morning and asked.  “Did you hear the news? Giovanni died.”   I was shocked.  Giovanni?  How could that be?   He was only thirty-three years old.  I asked.  How did you find out?   He said, “I saw it in the Wall Street Journal.”   So I looked up the story.   Our classmate had come down with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and even while he had gone to the best doctors in the world, it had still claimed his life.  As tragic as all that was, what shook me wasn’t just his death, but that it was Giovanni who had died.   Giovanni’s last name was Agnelli.  His family owned Fiat.  They were one of the richest families in the world, and Giovanni was their anointed heir.  But all that money had not saved his life.  You see.  When it comes to life, we are tenants, and tenants with a limited lease and subject to immediate eviction.  That’s what that rich farmer tragically found out. 

Think about it.   The truly difficult things in life are accidents, death, sickness, broken relationships.  Money can’t save you from that.  In fact, money might even contribute to broken relationships.  Money can’t make you safe, and if you hold on to it because you think it can, then we’re infected.   Ultimately, only in God are we truly safe, even from death. 

On the other hand, you can look to money as your beauty.   You can look to money to make you beautiful, worthy, attractive to others.   That’s why Jesus talks about the lilies.  Jesus is saying only God can truly give you worth.  But folks who have this sickness look to money for that.   The ones who look to money for safety may not spend much at all, but these folks spend a lot.  The researcher Thomas Stanley has even given these folks a name.  He calls them the Aspirationals.   They often make a lot of money, but they spend it all.  Why?  They want to look like the glittering rich.   So they buy houses in rich neighborhoods, drive high end cars, drink expensive liquors, all to show themselves and others they’ve made it.  But in reality, they’re in debt to their eyeballs.   They do this because money is their way of making themselves attractive and desirable.   But the irony is they’ll never know.  Do people like me for me or because of the car I drive and the money I spend?    And secondly, when you look to money like that, it’ll probably turn you into the sort of arrogant person that nobody really likes.        

But here’s the funny thing.  Those with saving sickness, look at these folks and go, “Spend-thrifts!”   And the spenders look at those with saving sickness, and go, “Misers!”   But both are sick.   They are both looking to money for something only God can do.  

Jesus then shares two final warming signs.    Jesus says:  “Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and to drink….it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things”   If you find yourself, running after money, striving to make more of it, working yourself to death for it, then you’re infected.   But it’s not only running after money that makes us sick.   It’s storing it up.  All through this passage, Jesus warns again and again about it. 

That’s why Jesus tells people to sell their possessions and give to the poor.  We can misread this because we don’t grasp how possessions worked in Jesus’ day.   Banks didn’t exist nor did the stock market.  So how did people save wealth?  They bought stuff, houses, furnishings, land, etc.   Jesus is asking folks.  Don’t just give out of your income.  Give from your wealth, from your savings.   Put your treasure in heaven and not on earth.  And if you have difficulty lowering your net worth to give to God, then you’re infected.

Do you get what Jesus is telling us?  Do you worry about money?  Do you resent people who have it?  Do you spend too much of it?   Are you working yourself to the bone to get it?     Do you have trouble giving it away, including from your savings?  Then Jesus says.  You’re infected.  You have money-sickness.  You are looking to money to give you what only God can.   Do you see how pervasive greed can be, how it can get us before we realize it?   And if you see one of these warning signs, you’re probably minimizing its effect.  You’re not seeing how bad it is.  It’s like when we have a weight issue.  We often don’t see how bad it is.  Why?  We’re looking at the other guy.  I’m not as heavy as he is.  That guy has a problem not me.  We do the same with money sickness.   So how do we get free?

We grasp what God has already given.  We lay hold of the grace that is already ours.   Does Jesus say to us?   If you sell your possessions and give to the poor, then God will give you the kingdom.  No.  Jesus says.  God has already given it to you.  It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.  Only when you see, you have already been given the kingdom, will you become free of money-sickness.   That’s what Jesus means when he talks about being rich towards God.   When you realize the inner wealth you already have, then the outer wealth will lose its power. 

What is this inner wealth?   It is what Paul told the Christians in Corinth.  “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”   Do you see what God in Jesus has done for you?  God bankrupted himself for you.   He not only gave up the riches of heaven, he even gave up his own life, to make you rich in grace, rich in mercy, rich in love.   He paid everything for you.   If you knew, really knew how much God treasures you, your money wouldn’t be your security or your beauty or whatever.  It would just be money.    

Every one of us has something at our center that we are tempted to make our ultimate treasure, what we look too to give us value and meaning.   But every treasure except Jesus will demand that you die to purchase it.  It will drive you.  It will say. You have to run after me.   You have to do anything to get me.   Every treasure except Jesus will demand that you die to purchase it.  Only Jesus is the treasure that has died to purchase you.  (Tim Keller).   Jesus is the only one who could.    Only when you see Jesus as the only treasure that matters will your money-sickness be cured.   This is the treasure of God given at infinite cost for you.   Let it free you from the false treasures that can never deliver what they promise so you can fully receive the only treasure that can.