I’m
trying very hard to find positive examples for us to follow today. It is
certainly easy to find negative examples, so let me try some unfamiliar ground.
I have been a life-long fan of Boston teams. I have even been a fan of the New
England Patriots, long before they were any good at football. In the decades of
the seventies and the eighties, they were a laughing-stock. Now others despise
them because they win too much. The difference is the mindset or the culture of
the team.
The
head coach is often disparaged because people think he cheats, or he wears a
dull grey hoodie, or he grunts at press conferences. What he has brought to the
team is a no-nonsense approach. Do your job. Good players are let go when they
demand too much. It’s all about the team and everyone doing what they need to
do to win.
I
remember when the Patriots had a few good players – and it was all about a few
spectacular plays and maybe a few wins, and maybe some success as a team. I
raise this because a change in attitude that everyone accepts has made a great
difference in this team. Attitude can make a great difference in our life
together as well. Sports metaphors are often stretched to make the wrong
lessons. We are not athletes, and we are not seeking success by our natural
abilities, nor are we trying to achieve worldly acclaim. We are trying to be
faithful together and to live as God calls us. Are we on the right path?
Micah
is speaking to people who have lost their way. He is discouraged, and he
imagines a heavenly court where the people are guilty of failing to follow God.
What is required? Through Micah, God commands that we “do justice, love
kindness, and walk humbly” with God. All three aspects are with God – not just
humility. We are to do right actions – with the help of God. We are to do good
things out of love (not fear or pride) – with the guidance of God. We are to be
humble, or live in a right attitude towards God and others. This is God’s more
articulate, “Do your job.”
Jesus
proclaims a similar and expanded message in his sermon on the mount. The
blessings sound “spiritualized” compared to a familiar version in Luke. Jesus
is not discounting the lives of the poor or the weak. In fact, the attitude he
is describing is that of the mass of many poor people who make up the majority,
who are trying to live faithfully. The poor in spirit are also the meek. Those
who mourn the failure of God’s people are also the ones hungry for
righteousness. They are also merciful or compassionate. They are seeking peace,
as an act of reconciliation. They are pure in heart. The reward is persecution.
They will be reviled and persecuted and spoken about falsely. This is the
expected reward of living as Jesus calls us.
Why
is this? To accept the ways of Jesus is to reject the ways of this world and
it’s values and its rewards. We live under the illusion that our world shares
our values. Increasingly this is not true. In the early church, there was a
need to stand in opposition to the ways of honor and shame. The church opposed
the machinery of the empire. They rejected the conventional measure of blessing
– money, status, and power. The early church declared Jesus to be Christ, the
anointed one, the Son of God – as opposed to Caesar. They accepted persecution
because of this.
When
Paul writes to the Corinthians, he no longer praises their gifts and their
wisdom. He reminds them of the foolishness of the cross. The message of the
gospel is not wise or clever. The good news is a gift that we don’t figure out
as much as accept and agree to live into. From the outside it looks foolish.
From the outside we are naïve, or stuck in the past. We are not trendy or
creative. We have nothing to brag about. We know we are called to follow Jesus,
who gives us life. The act of following is the path of living as Jesus lived.
We try to do right and we ask for forgiveness when we fail. We have no idea
when we will ever arrive at our destination, but we keep on going.
In
the past, we could have taken pride in our liturgy or our status as a de-facto
established church. No one takes any of that seriously anymore. We have nothing
to sell, and nothing to boast of – except the love of God given freely and
gladly taken. That’s all we have to offer. It doesn’t look like much, yet it is
what changes hearts and changes the world.
God
has no need for any of us to be superstars. God needs us to walk the path we’ve
been given each day. We are called to live rightly, as God shows us. We are
called to do good things out of the love we have been given. We are called to
be humble and remember that all that we have is a gift from God. This changes us
and it has the potential to change the people we meet.
Coach
Belichek says, “Do you job.” That’s all he expects (which turns out to be quite
a lot.) We can’t be overwhelmed by all the nonsense we see in the world. We
can’t be perpetually outraged by what we hear. (Perhaps we shouldn’t even be
surprised.) We can seek to know God and to follow Jesus. This may be even more
important than we thought. God will use us to accomplish greater things than we
ever thought possible. God will use us to bring light and life to the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment