Yeah, but ... Not yet, but Already

Yeah, the "externality of the organization" says "All are Welcome", 
but ... the interiority says "as long as you do it our way"

Yeah. we believe in justice
but ... "if you believe in justice and not in mercy, you'd better not make any mistakes!"

Yeah, you are called to follow Jesus as he says "I make a NEW thing"
but ... "we've never done it that way before"!

Yeah, we're NOT YET living out our faith without ACTS and PRAXIS
but, we are ALREADY justified by faith and can not earn "our way in" by works! 

This is a blog of devotions, testimonials, old sermons, and ruminations on the Word in the New Testament as seen through the lenses of themes from this first Diakonia course in The New Testament. This is a miscellaneous mix of "Yeah, but", "the tensions of opposites", "not yet, but already", and "principalities and powers" - a stream of consciousness journal of The New Testament Word with contemporary writings, movies, art, poetry,oral stories, and what ever else I happen to be reading or listening to on NPR. 

You can view the blog directly at 

http://digitaldiakonia.blogspot.com 

The Cost of Ambition

Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, Wauwatosa

Lay Preacher: Vince Prantil

James 3:13-4:3(a), 7-8(a)

Mark  9:30-37

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/786C9C59-967D-0367-BC70-1B6CCF7383CF.mp3

I read the New Testament texts for today … laced with stories of ambition … and I heard a voice. It was a voice of Maurice Boyd, Senior Minister of 5^th Avenue Presbyterian Church in NYC ….

And he said if you’re going to talk about ambition, you need to recognize its ambiguity. It can be a very healthy and pretty destructive. We need to say Yes to it and No. We blame people for having it and not having it:

We say of her “Oh, she’s sooooo ambitious!”

And we say “The problem with him, ya see, is he has no ambition.”

No matter what you think about it, ambition has an energy about it … it makes our wheels go ‘round. It can bring out the best in us: ingenuity, discipline, determination. But, in excess, it can become immoral and demonic.

In James, we are asked what pursuits are worthy of children of God.

“If there were dreams for sale, what would you buy?”

We all have dreams, don’t we? We’re all striving for something … buying something? What is it we’re striving for? What are you buying?

 … ‘cause everything you’re after’s got a cost. Every day they cost us 24 hours and, in the end, they cost us our life.

The Masoud, the Israeli Secret Service, says it can get anything from anybody  with one or a combination of three things: sex, power & money. What does this say about what we really want??

What really drives us?

Is it the promotion? the new car? the new boat? the title of “greatest”? And are we willing to kill for it? To covet out of bitter envy and selfish ambition?

God knows that if we ask for these things, we ask with wrong motives”… God’s not in the wish-granting business … and God knows that these greedy motivations deceive us.

The principalities and powers of this world lure us to become complicit in their corporate culture. When the externalities give way to the sway of the interiority, it is possible to get sucked into “that black hole”.

If you want something so bad we’ll do anything to get it, they’ve really got you and we will find our ambition becoming demonic. What drives us is our basic principle and we can’t expect more from our basic principle than it can deliver …

Is that really so difficult? Well, Boyd says, then let’s make it very simple …

If you put self at the center, you’d better prepared to be find your outer limits … and that can be very lonely.

If what you’re after is power … then you’d better forget about affection. It’s difficult to be after both.

If you’re interested in justice and not in mercy … you’d better not make any mistakes

If what you’re after is security … forget about ecstasy

If you seek comfort, you might have to relinquish meaning

If you’re consumed by your work … you’d better keep one eye on your relationships

If you’re ruthless on the way up … don’t root for kindness on the way down

It’s hard to be after the things we think will satisfy our earthly desires and the ones God created us for …. What dreams are we buying? … and if we manage to succeed, will what we get be worth what’s it’s costing us?

There’s a great little picture book – Hope for the Flowers … self-described as ‘a tale – partly about life and lots about hope – for adults and others’ … in which two caterpillars, Sprite and Yellow come upon a pile of caterpillars rising into the sky as far as the eye can see. 

“Do you know what’s happening?” one says to another. “I just arrived myself. No one has time to explain. They’re so busy trying to get where they’re going – up there,” came the reply. “But what’s at the top?” Stripe asked. Again, the reply:”No one knows that either, but it must be awfully good because everyone’s rushing there.” There’s only one thing to do reasons Stripe and he jumps right in. Caterpillars climb atop one another, pushing, shoving, and knocking each other indiscriminately off the pile in an all-out effort to “get to the top”. Eventually Stripe pushes through the clouds only to find there’s nothing “up there”. “High up there”, he concludes, “only looked good from the bottom”. And he climbs back down.

Pastor Mohn said it very similarly back in March:

“If that’s all there is, we wind up right where we started.”

It’s a zero-sum game, you only climb the pile if you’re willing to knock your neighbor off. Our neighbor becomes our obstacle, our enemy rather than our brother, only someone in the way of our ambition for “what’s up there”.

So Stripe heads down the pile telling everyone he sees that “there is nothing up there” and that they would be so much the better for building cocoons; that they could fly if only they become butterflies. “I saw a butterfly – there CAN be more to life,” Stripe realizes.

The pile of caterpillars climbs on, ignorant of the beauty contained within each of them. There is in each of us a butterfly … and Pastor Mick said it best when he said “You need not be perfect, you need only to be the ‘perfect you’. God has had a plan for you since you were in the womb. You just have to find out ‘what that is’ because it doesn’t come with blueprints”. And we won’t find it by knocking our neighbors “off the pile” only “to wind up where we started”.

What does it take to satisfy us? Often when we reach the end of the rainbow, the top of the pile, the pot of gold doesn’t quite have the luster we had imagined. And if what dreams you’ve bought don’t satisfy, more of the same won’t either.

“I learned this from my friends who have sailboats,” Boyd whispers, “No matter how big your sailboat is, somebody’s always got a bigger one!” If I only had a bigger house, a wealthier husband, the boss’ office … and it doesn’t work. Arguing “which among you is greatest” is moot.

The gap between MORE and ENOUGH never closes …

Sometimes we know how to spend, but not how to buy. …  we tend to spend on the trivial and we’re often willing to pay a lot for it. If we equate “the pursuit of happiness” with sex, power & money, we grant ourselves the God-given right to exploit our neighbor or “do whatever we have to” to get what we want.

God’s Great Joke Part I:

But, in the end, these things don’t satisfy. There’s less on top of the pile than we imagine. Material rewards won’t satisfy immortal longings. Worldly possessions are not enough for other-worldly creatures.

So then there’s things James says are worth our going after them … character, humility, good-heartedness, sincerity. Pursuits worthy of children of God. How do you attain these things?

God’s Great Joke Part II: … is that …

These things you can’t get by going after them! … and the harder you try, the farther you are from getting them … Imagine trying to be humble and finally saying “Wow, I’m the greatest at humility!” It doesn’t ring true.

There are some people that are desperately trying to be happy and they’re some of the most miserable people on Earth. Out there, there are some people desperately trying to be original and they’re not even interesting. Because they’re after something you can’t get for the reaching.

These things come only by what C. S. Lewis calls “the principle of inattention” – they can be yours ONLY when you’re not looking for them.

… you only get these heavenly things, when you’re after something else, something ULTIMATE and ETERNAL.

Well … that doesn’t sound very concrete, does it?

Perhaps, the good news is that God has endowed all of us … you and I with what Boyd called A Lovely Ambition

 … something you don’t have to try hard at all to do or to be or to chase

… something you are so gifted at that when you find it, it’s as if you’re remembering it more than ever having learned it

… and when you’re “doing this thing” … telling a story, singing in the choir, playing in the band, helping others find their calling, dancing, nurturing K5er’s, loving your children, … well that produces a certain kind of person, the kind that says, well …

… it doesn’t matter if I ever sing at the Met as long as I sing with dignity and purpose

… it doesn’t matter if I paint a masterpiece so long as I paint with creativity, the best way I know how

… because when you’re doing these ULTIMATE and ETERNAL things, those other things … humility, sincerity, the good heart … fly up and land on your shoulder …you get all that thrown in!!

Unsought … it’s God’s good gift … given when least expected as described in 1 Thessalonians Chapter 3.

What do we really value? True worship someone once said is to put the right value on the right thing … rather than chasing after trivial things God did not create us for …

… if you do what you’re gifted to do, if you’re after ‘the perfect YOU’ and you do it with discipline and integrity, God says… THAT is ambition enough

Amen

What Good Is It?

Scripture:
New Testament referral to Habakuk 2:4
Galatians 2:16
The Just  Shall Live By Faith

in tension with 

James 2:15-16
What Good is Faith if it is Empty of Works


Galatians speaks of man knowing that he is not justified by works of the law, but by the faith OF Christ, a faith Jesus offered as a gift and testament for us all. Reckoning back to the 2nd Chapter of Habakuk, the just shall live by faith and we are justified by faith and not by the notion that any works we perform can earn us redemption and salvation. So Faith is The Ticket!

But James Chapter 2 tells another story ... and so "a tension of opposites":


James 2:15-16 - Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed, "but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

I’m not an early riser. But, occasionally, God blesses me with the good fortune of retiring early and tired and rising early the following morning. On these mornings, I make breakfast in the comfort of our warm home and watch the morning walkers, joggers and school children march the morning parade that is a daily staple of the intersection of Cedar and Maple Terrace. This year, my son joined the parade as he scampers to senior kindergarten surrounded by all the elder statesmen of Jefferson Elementary School … and a walking buddy, Jack. Recently, on a bitterly cold day, we were en route when we intercepted Jack. I remember because I forgot my scarf. I kept pulling my sweater over my mouth to stay warm. Half way to school, we noticed Jack didn’t have a scarf. And his hat was more than somewhat worn around the edges. Later that week, we found out from Lorin that Jack doesn’t own a scarf. During dinner that night, Lorin said we could give him one of his scarves. He had his yellow football scarf he didn’t use so much anymore.

 And he smiled.    

A day or two later, I watched the parade’s early floaters, coffee in hand, when there came a small rat-tat-tat at the back door. The window at the top of the door revealed nothing. Opening the door revealed Jack … alongside his older sister, who walks him to school. We ushered them in. Lorin ran and got the yellow football scarf. And the boys proudly donned the armor of the Wisconsin youth before embarking into the tundra. 

My wife and I have been blessed with two wonderful children who move our hearts daily. And I relate this story not so much because they have been raised in our home as that they have also been raised in this church. And they are constantly surrounded by disciples who are mindful that our world is in real need. Among the parade battalion outside the warm dining room with fresh coffee, are hearts so close we can touch them – where a scarf is a luxury. I remember actually thinking “Why isn’t he wearing a scarf?” while my six year old son wastes no time in the throes of such analysis. He simply says that his yellow football scarf is Jack’s for the taking.

These days, I wake up mornings and seriously wonder how I can be more like my son. To not simply pray for the needy of the world, to not simply say “keep warm and well fed” in so many words. To not simply give money and let it be someone else’s work to feed and clothe the kids with one working parent with two jobs and a rented apartment they share with their sister. I remember Pastor Mohn delivering a sermon where she wondered why her Dad just got up and went up to the front of the church because they needed someone to help with Communion. 

I’m sure that somewhere every day, little children learn that lesson from their parents. 

And then there are some very cold days where parents learn it from their children. 

Yeah ... we are justified by faith and not by works
But ... it matters WHAT WE DO


In his book, Words I Wish I Wrote, Robert Fulghum deftly explains how, as he has aged, it matters as much what he sees people do to "act out" their faith as what they say:

"PRAXIS: Action as opposed to theory.

Talk is empty without experience. If you don’t play the game, you can’t know enough to make the rules. If you are not engaged in the sweaty work of the world, you should not be in charge of the deodorant concession. Nobody has a right to ride on the bus without making some contribution to the cost of the ride. We owe. If you take from the pot, you must put into the pot.”

We do "not yet" possess a ticket to ride the bus until we PAY with works
But ... we "already" are justified by faith and can't earn our way onto the bus!

Yeah ... but
Not yet ... but already