| The Real Big Brother |
September 10, 2000
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There is an old joke among United Methodist ministers
that a funeral isn't really a funeral unless the hymns
Amazing Grace,
How Great Thou Art, and
The Old
Rugged Cross are sung.
These are songs I grew up on.
Back in the early 70's when worship was pretty much worship, organ,
choir, etc.
When the discussion around worship design was which version of the
Gloria Patri to sing.
Things are different now.
I haven't even heard most of those old hymns in years.
Until this week.
I was invited to officiate at a funeral of a long time church member
who had slipped into the mystery.
Sweet lady.
I was sitting behind the pulpit in the chapel in the big
chair.
No one could see me, what with the pulpit and the alter
and the
flowers.
The first hymn was Amazing Grace.
And Janet was playing it on a grand piano.
I got misty.
Choked up.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like
me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
'tis grace that brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.
I thought of the old ones who went before...
the ones who knew how to live gracefully and peacefully,
the ones who have slipped away from our presence.
And then I had to stand up and talk.
And when I sat down again the closing hymn was How Great Thou
Art.
O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder
consider all the worlds thy hands have made,
I see the stars, and hear the rolling thunder,
thy power throughout the universe displayed...
Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art!
Again, I got choked up.
Grateful for a choir that sang it like they meant it.
Grateful for women and men who lived like they understood it.
Something deep inside me that I wasn't even aware of, was
touched.
I think a lot of times I go through my day engaged by
"out here" and don't even have an awareness of
"in here".
That's what our text is about today.
An awareness of an inner realm to our existence.
And a hunger to live into that place.
But before we get to the text, will you pray with me?
. . . . .
I want to caution you that our text today could be construed to
be somewhat shallow and obvious.
It is seldom spoken on in churches because we try to deal with it as
a stand alone text.
As with most things in the life of Jesus,
there is a great deal of other texts and stories behind it.
Read text.
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
You're being watched.
Hidden cameras.
Photographed.
If you don't fill in your registration card you will not get extra
peanuts from America West.
You're being watched.
In Paradise Valley, that means you'll get a ticket for
speeding.
Photo radar sits beside the road snapping your picture as you speed
by.
The gun records your speed while the camera focuses on your license
plate.
The traffic cop doesn't need to be there, and you won't know you're
caught until you get the ticket in the mail!
Video cameras are popping up everywhere, like virtual seeing
eyes.
School districts are installing cameras in school buses to document
to unbelieving parents how their children behave.
YMCAs have mounted security cameras in weight rooms, mirrored
aerobic rooms,
gymnasiums, child-care centers
and indoor tennis
courts and tracks.
You can't pause to scratch yourself when you take a break in your
workout without the act
getting caught on camera.
In London, cameras have been posted in some neighborhoods,
two or three to a block, putting citizens under constant
surveillance. Yet, most people seem to approve.
Now, day-care dads and minivan moms are getting into the act using
hi-tech tools to monitor their precocious - or atrocious - children
while they are away at work.
With Webcams positioned strategically throughout the child-care
center, parents can log on to the Internet to see what's happening
with their babies.
Parents like this peekaboo technology for two reasons:
They can be sure their children are safe,
and they feel more connected with their kids.
On days when children are upset at the time they are dropped, the
video images can be particularly comforting, to see if the children
are adapting.
It's also reassuring to check on teachers.
Webcams placed in strategic locations put people on their best
behavior.
No matter how they might be feeling at the time, no matter what they
might be thinking, their behavior is always accessible for public
viewing and evaluation.
In other words: Virtual morality.
This seems like a sure-fire way to create a well-behaved
society.
But outward behavior doesn't necessarily reflect inward
character.
When the cameras aren't rolling, we're more likely to drop the role
we've been playing
and just "be ourselves."
And that's what we call character - who we are when no one is
looking.
The YMCA is watching our workouts.
Government is watching in London.
Parents are watching in day-cares.
God sees what is in our hearts and minds.
God has - God is - the ultimate Webcam, an all-seeing
Holycam perched inside our souls
and pointed in our
direction.
I think maybe we've been playing to the wrong camera.
Jesus says, "Listen to me, all of you, and
understand:
There is nothing outside a person that by going in can
defile, but the things that come out are what
defile"
(Mark 7:15).
It's the unclean stuff in there that causes trouble when it gets
out.
As I mentioned a few moments ago, this text is not on its
own.
In fact, this might be a summary of many texts in the
bible centered around what we do with what we are feeling inside
because of what has happened to us.
Just a short history.
The story is of two brothers.
Suffice to say, that for the older brother, Cain, things are
difficult.
And for the younger brother, things came easy.
One morning, Cain's brooding, envious anger deepened as
he watched the smoke of Abel's sacrifice rise clear and
straight into the morning light.
Just a few minutes earlier his own sacrificial smoke had been
blurred by an unexpected shift in the morning breeze, blown back in
his face like a rebuke.
An idea entered his mind, bristling with fury: somehow
his brother was blocking the way to a blessing that belonged
to Cain, too,
Abel was hogging it all to himself;
maybe even bribing the unseen but very palpable
Presence that grew especially strong each morning and
evening.
The smoldering heat in Cain's chest and belly set his
whole body shaking with rage, now that he saw so clearly where the
problem lay, who the enemy was.
The heat pushed Cain's jaw out, turned the corners of his mouth into
a frown,
settled in his jaw and shoulders,
and throbbed his legs
into motion.
Cain struck and killed his brother Abel.
Blood was spilled on the ground.
After he had vented his fury, satisfaction quickly turned to an
unfamiliar emptiness.
Suddenly he felt seen.
He glanced around furtively to make sure no one was
there. The feeling grew, enfolding him all around, as if
some great Knowing hovered at the edge of his skin.
Ayeee! The Presence!
He shrank before it, wanting to hide, fearing the
delivery of a blow as hard as the one that had toppled his tall
brother from his proud height.
It is in this state of mind that Cain hides himself from the
Presence.
In fact his fear of having been seen is shown in the words of the
text...
"My iniquity is too great to be borne. . .
and from your face must I conceal myself"
(Gen. 4:13-14).
And so he hides from God's presence rather than facing being
banished from God's presence.
Well, the retaliatory blow Cain expected never came.
Despite God's strong aversion to murder, God does not strike the
sinner down.
This is a God who wants in times of wrath to "remember
mercy"
(Hab. 3:2).
God seeks not to retaliate but to stop at its outset the
betrayal and bloodshed that come so early and often in the
human story.
Instead of punishment, God seeks to bring the murderer into
awareness of the heinousness of the crime, to issue a
challenge to master the "crouching demon" of
sin at the door, and to offer protection from
vengeance through the mark so often misunderstood as a curse.
(Gen. 4:1-16)
God is setting an example for us who so often feel we are
justified in doing all those things
Jesus listed...
whether in response to personal betrayals or in reaction to the
evils of the world.
We are shown again and again a God who cares enough about the
betrayal of life's goodness to react with "angry, troubled
trembling,"
It might be helpful to know the Bible contains a richly nuanced
vocabulary to describe this wrath.
Especially in the Old Testament...
in Hebrew, where the storytellers delight in showing God's wrestling
match with wrath,
there are at least eight terms for the state:
showing an angry face;
raging;
fierce heat;
furious heat;
angry sadness;
response to boundary-breaking;
reaction to provocation; and
trembling, troubled sadness.
Yet in the end of almost every story of wrath, those
seeking God seek always to be "conquered by
mercy."
And as an example, God leads the way.
In the story of the flood, God acts in anger against a
disobedient humanity.
The Talmud imagines God lamenting the destruction that comes with
acting in anger, "for when I conquer, I lose, for I destroy
my world."
Too often in our attempts to flee from ancient ideas of a
vindicating God we seek to banish the tales of Divine Wrath,
not realizing that so many of them are intended to teach
us a process by which we can break the cycle of frustration, anger,
attack, and counterattack.
How else can the Cain in us keep from killing Abel
except by remembering that the object of our wrath is also our
brother?
This kinship love-- chesed, "merciful
kindness," of which we catch first glimpse here in Genesis
finds its full voice in the words of Jesus today... ...the spiritual
challenge to filter what comes out of us through mercy.
There is a danger if we stop here...
we might be led to believe that it's all how we act, and that we are
to deny what we are feeling.
That would lead to something of an internal explosion.
So, we're not supposed to let how we feel flow freely.
And we're not supposed to bottle up how we feel.
What we're working on here is maturity...
finding a way to release and say, without destroying.
The first thing I want to say on this is that to
understand someone is not to agree with them, nor is it
to excuse poor behavior.
So to understand that someone came from a poor background is
helpful to finding words of mercy, but it is not an excuse for
getting away with anything.
The second thing I want to get at here is the tension between
affection and accountability.
I have a friend who has a teenage son.
Her family took him in when his mother died of AIDS.
He is too clever by half and often uses his infectious charm to
wiggle shamelessly out of trouble.
She tells, "One weekend, he'd planned a campout for our
church youth group, and raised everybody's expectations with talk of
the beautiful sunset on the lake.
Busy in the office, I'd sent him out to the parking lot to meet
the other kids and get the cars packed so we could get to the
campsite before dark.
When it was time to go, he was standing surrounded by unpacked boxes
of food and sleeping bags, charming a bevy of girls.
I was angry, and showed it.
By the time we loaded up and headed out, we were too late to get
ahead of rush-hour traffic.
His planned sunset silent meditation was a lost cause-- to say
nothing of the hassle of arriving in the dark.
We sat in silence while I fumed, listening in my overheated head
to various lectures that might make him feel guilty.
Surely he had to learn his lesson!
Finally, he coughed, turned on his dazzling smile,
shook his
mantle of black hair out of his eyes,
looked at me soulfully and
said, "Do you forgive me?"
As my righteous desire to scold,my real concern for his
moral education, andmy deep affection for him warred within
me, I knew I dare not be seduced into simply saying it was all
okay.
I also knew that, for his sake, I dare not take the path of
blaming.
A typical parental dilemma.
"Of course I forgive you," I finally said,
"so you can turn off the charm.
You don't have to win back my love because you haven't lost
it.
The issue here isn't forgiveness, but consequences.
You had a job to do and you didn't do it, and you blew something
valuable for yourself and the others.
You've got to face that, and do something about it if you
can."
More silence.
Finally he said, "Well, couldn't we meditate by the
campfire?"
She finishes by saying,
"He'd taken a step toward responsibility.
I'd learned a lesson in balancing wrath and mercy." (affection
and accountability)
"Our love had been tested and strengthened."
It is in the tension between affection and
accountability...or mercy and wrath... that we are,
finally, able to speak in ways that are righteous.
Remember Jesus cautions us not to be like some Pharisees
who passed themselves off as pious, always performing the
right rites, but whose inner lives were polluted with the stench of
the graveyard.
These Pharisees were all flash and form, performing outward works
that people could see.
Playing to the crowd, they went for the applause, inspiring Jesus to
say,
"This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are
far from me"
(Mark 7:6).
Jesus' words to the public were a bombshell:
"Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and
Pharisees,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven"
(Matthew 5:20).
If heaven was reserved for only those whose righteousness
exceeded that of the Pharisees, then most would consider
themselves in the "no hope" category.
But Jesus redefines what it means to be righteous.
It means playing to the right camera.
It means that true holiness is not defined just by what we do, but
by who we are.
It is changing our character to not even go down the road of
vengeance, retaliation, resentment or violence...
but to walk the road... with those we love, and those we don't
love...
to walk the road...of affection and accountability...
... because, the acts of the hands are inexorably linked to the
character of the heart.
Gordon MacDonald, in the 1999 Spring issue of Servant Journal,
writes...
"If you listen to [popular religion] Evangelicalism in
America it is all about what is above the water line.
It's all what you accomplish, what you own, what you look
like, what people are saying about you....
We accredit people as successful and godly because of the
appearance and scope of what they're into.
So the message is very clear to younger men and women:
It's not what's in your soul that counts... "
I want to stand counter to that with every fiber of my being and
reiterate what Jesus says in this text today,
"What happens out here where others can see comes from what
happens in here, where no one but you and God can see."
Take inventory.
What time and energy are going toward the building of your
soul as a dwelling place for God?
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