When we place God first in our life, the ordinary human experiences of every day become extraordinary events.
Mark begins his story of Jesus not with his birth but with his baptism. The most important day in a person's life is not when he was born, but when he discovers why he was born. Baptism for most of us is a very special event, but not extraordinary. For Jesus it was extraordinary, life defining and life determining. Perhaps if we look behind the obvious, we can discover glory in the ordinary experiences of our lives.
Consider our Lord's baptism. . .Jesus was 30 years old when John baptized him in the River Jordan. A voice was heard: "You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased." In Mark 9, Jesus is recorded as having been praying and the other disciples heard a voice saying: "This is my beloved son, listen to him." These ordinary events, a man praying and a man being baptized, are told like extraterrestrial visitation events. In the transfiguration event, Moses, by then dead and buried for 1200 years, and Elijah, the prophet of Israel who 900 years earlier was seen going to heaven in a chariot of fire, and here they both reappear. Ordinary events? Oh no, extraordinary!
In the transfiguration event, I believe what actually happened was that for the first time the eyes of the disciples were opened, they finally realized who Jesus was! They realized that in him and in his teachings was the personification of Moses, the great Law Giver, and Elijah, the great Spirit Filled Prophet, who had defeated the prophets of Baal. The disciples' eyes and ears were opened. They at last could see! They at last could hear! Jesus was the very essence of God and all who had come before him. They saw the divine nature in the one who was their human friend. Everything was transformed. It was an unusual moment as it pulsated with possibility for all time. Just as had occurred at this baptism, when Jesus' ears were opened and he heard God's affirmation, "Thou art my beloved son," so now the disciples see and hear and believe! Remember, "All things are possible. . . ."
Have you seen the glory in the ordinary yet? Have you experienced the divine in the human events of your life yet? Lent now begins - an ordinary time with unusual possibilities.
Albert Einstein once wrote: "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle and the other as though everything is a miracle." Since Christ came into my life, and a few attitude adjustments along the way, I now see everything as a miracle. The sick do get well, the lames do walk again, the blind do see, and the dead is raised up.
Recently one of our members in our church got new glasses and could see with new clarity. The colors were richer, the mall became a circus of dazzling colors, an afternoon sunset an explosion of color.
This ability to see the holy, the divine, the extraordinary in the human, the everyday, the ordinary takes place in our experience when our eyes are opened by the grace of God in our lives and we see what we can become. When this happens:
This is for sure, God will answer your prayers if you seek his will. He will open doors to you previously locked as you knock in faith. He will give you answers as you seek a means of alignment.
Browning once wrote, "Earth is crammed with heaven and every bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes."
The gift of the ordinary being seen as extraordinary could very well happen in this season of Lent.
Let me make these four suggestions:
1. First, let us during these days put first things first. Let's make the main thing the main thing. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to "Seek first the Kingdom of God" and love God with our whole heart. When a person is baptized and/or confirmed in the church someone answers the question, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your savior and put your whole trust in his grace?" This is a season to put legs to these words. John the Baptist said to his disciples concerning Jesus: "He must increase and I must decrease." I don't really know if we will ever be really happy until we place Christ in the center of our life, rather than as one factor among many. If Christ is to be the main thing, then think of him and thank him for each day's ordinary blessings. You will never know when an ordinary day will become a mysterious transformation into glory.
2. Be persistent in the pursuit of your main commitments. Often in Jesus' stories he illustrates the importance of persistence in prayer. The woman looking for bread from a neighbor late at night when unexpected guests arrived. And there was the woman who demanded justice and would not be silent until justice was awarded. And there was the woman who lost a coin and looked everywhere until she found it. And the shepherd with 99 lambs secure in the fold went in search for the one that was lost. Do you know what you want in life? Ask, and you will receive! Seek and you will find, know and it will be opened.
3. Thirdly, surround yourself with persons who share your dreams and your focus. Paul writes: "Do not pare up yourself with unbelievers. Your friends, your associates, your family have great influence on you. Did you read about the six-year-old preschooler who carried a pistol to school and shot and killed another child? He apparently was living with an older brother in a drug house where crazies would take guns and wave them around and threaten others. It's on every television program today. The kid apparently just did what he saw all around him doing. Let us choose for a season to carefully those who influence our behavior. In Key West there are hurricane bars that link one small house to another. So, when we are strong we are linked with one another.
4. Accept the Power and Strength God is giving to you in these unusual days.
Summary: I predict these days of Lent will be unusual days for you, extraordinary days, glory days!
If you are a contestant on the new TV hit show, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" you are asked, "and your final answer?" It is a question that life itself will also ask of us at the various crossroads which present us with alternative decisions. Recently a contestant was trying to decide whether the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Stockholm or Oslo. You may know that Alfred Nobel was Swedish so you may want to go with Stockholm. And that is your final answer. If so, you lose for the correct answer is Oslo. The Nobel prizes for physics, economics, chemistry, medicine and literature are in fact awarded in Stockholm, but the Peace Prize is always presented in the audience of the King and Queen of Norway, so is presented in Oslo.
So, you lose only a million dollars. What's the big deal? Easy come, easy go, they say. But a lot of folks watch this new program. The Fox network has followed suit with a similar show with a $2 million jackpot called unapologetically "Greed". And recently, there was the embarrassing program, "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" where 50 desperate women who have been screened to meet some minimum requirements for the show, which is a half-breed between the "Miss Universe Contest" and the "Dating Game." A woman by the name of Darva Conger was the winner, or loser as the case may be. So, we have greed for money in your face. Greed, one of the seven deadly sins.
Wonder what's next for our visible media? Lust? Gluttony? Sloth? Don't get me started on the values which such television programs stir up. The fact is, folks in our society are hungry to achieve money and the status which money brings. In the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez, the author points out some revealing statistics:
The majority of Americans have bought into a way of life that is in contrast to the way of the Bible, thus the reason why Will Willimon, Dean of Duke University's Chapel would name one of his recent sermons "Aliens in a Strange Land.". We have, for the most part, and it is tempting for all the rest of us, bought into a way of life, which is of Mammon, the God of this earth, and have lost sight of the God of Eternity. We will eat, drink and be merry, and not be concerned about anything else. This is a life style choice and it frankly has the power to destroy a human being who was created to live life in the image of God.
We are trying to save our lives by building bigger barns, but Jesus says we've got it all wrong., and he poses a question contestants on the Greed show or the Millionaire Show might find it hard to answer: "For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" And your final answer?
Jesus doesn't make the Christian life easy. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." Denying yourself, losing yourself, taking up your Cross. These are some of the hardest of the hard sayings of Jesus to our 21st Century ears. Sometimes against the backdrop of modern society, Jesus sounds like a mid eastern mystic. Is he so out of touch? But hear my affirmation today: "He is the Way and the Truth and the Life." We had better make peace here. We had better come to grips with this dimension of our life's goals. "What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" And your final answer?
Now, in the interesting new show "Who wants to be a Millionaire? when a contestant is not sure of the correct answer, he or she has what is called three lifelines.
Lifeline #1 is Holy Scripture. God's Holy Word helps you eliminate some of the obviously wrong choices. The word of God gives us guidance, helping us to avoid bad choices and make good ones.
Concerning Greed, the Old Testament philosopher of Proverbs says: "The greedy person stirs up strife, but whoever trusts in the Lord will be enriched." He goes on to say: "Those who are greedy for unjust gain make trouble for their households.
"Concerning …worrying,: The Bible teaches us to trust in the Lord. Said Jesus: "Consider the birds of the air and the flowers of the earth, they neither toil nor spin nor store in barns but God takes care of them. Oh, how he will take care of you, "oh ye of little faith."
The Gideon's are doing a good job of making God's word available across the land.
Lifeline #2 (Poll the Audience): Here the lifeline which God has provided is the Church. We can poll the community of faith for support when we are facing a challenging decision in our life.
Lifeline #3 (Call a friend) Jesus is our friend.
Summary: I used to say to family and friends when we were parting, "Good Luck" knowing they were facing challenging decisions, but no longer. We now have the clear guidance for living as the Scripture instructs, the church counsels, and Jesus walks beside us. "God Be With You", is the better parting word!
One Person Can Make A Difference, When He Is Different!
Rev. Henry E. Roberts
Deuteronomy 5:6-21
Consider the stories in our faith tradition where one person made a difference, when they were different. Moses 1200 BC. confronted the Pharaoh of Egypt and led the Hebrew slaves to freedom in the wilderness and then to the edge of a promised, prosperous land. He was different, not because he wore tattoos or nose rings or made a fool out of himself. He was different because he loved God and sought with all his being to be obedient to His ways.
During this season of Lent, we remember Jesus, who was different. He retreated to the wilderness for a season of reflection, which became for him the launching pad for the final significant three years of his life. He was in the wilderness and he considered God's reason for his birth and how he would be different and accomplish the reason for his life.
I have spent some time lately thinking about persons who make a difference in our community and I have asked the question "what makes them different?" My tentative conclusion is that people who make a difference are people who are different. They have unique values and they value others in a special way.
Let me illustrate this through a lengthy consideration of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. These would be the laws that would govern our people since our early beginnings in the wilderness of Judea. Soon after the Egyptian slaves were free, they found themselves in the wilderness, hungry and thirsty, God through Moses gave them these laws which made them different. We act in a certain way because we believe a certain way. Our behavior arises out of our relationship to God and our respect of others.
You shall have only one God, and no graven images of him, Do not take the name of the Lord in vain Observe the Sabbath day, keep it holy Honor your father and your mother You shall not kill Neither shall you commit adultery, or steal, or bear false or desire what is your neighbor's.
In the gift of the Decalogue, the ten commandments, God was saying to the people of Israel, if you are going to be my people, and that is why I delivered you from slavery in Egypt so that you would be my people. "You are to be a light to the nation" "A holy priesthood." If you are going to be different, then this is how it will happen. You will have no other Gods before me…
In North Alabama, a local Judge has legally sought to hang the Ten Commandments in his court room for all to see, and to know that society's life is guided by an Ancient Moral Code. Our neighbor in the Scottish Rite Building have posted the Ten Commandments for all to see as they leave downtown Pensacola. I think both attempts at public exposure of the Commandments is fine and I would like to see more exposure, but the truth is, the Commandments are not designed for everyone, they were hand-crafted for God's People. They were not given for all of society, but they were given for you, for they define our religious and moral boundaries.
These Commandments which define the difference of God's people are found in two places in the Bible. First in Exodus 20 and then in the beginning of Deuteronomy, which means "the repetition of the law." This repetition of the law was delivered as Moses turned over the leadership of the nation to Joshua and the other tribal leaders of Israel before they entered the Promised land. God was saying through the Decalogue: "I want a different people and this is how you are going to be different. The two versions of the Ten Commandments are the same, but different somehow. The difference is the result of the influence of one man who was different. Stay with me here and you will learn an important lesson from God's word, which is not obvious at first glance.
The book of Deuteronomy, although carrying the assumption of Mosai authorship, as do the other first five books of the Bible, is recognized by Biblical Scholars as having grown out of a later historical time period. It is obvious that the message is congruent with Moses teachings, but that he didn't write the book as his death and burial are recorded in the last chapter, chapter 34. You discover upon careful study of Exodus 20 and Deut. 5, that there is only one small but significant change in the commandment's presentation in Deut. It is found in 5:12, in the Sabbath Day commandment:
"Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant and your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you."
You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." This careful addition came from a period of time of spiritual reform, under one man who was different and made a difference. His name was Josiah and he would lead a spiritual reform for the nation of Judah that preserved the nation for another 50 years. The Reformation would eliminate all traces of foreign worship and as is seen in this addition, the reason for a Sabbath rest was "so that your workers could rest as well as you." This could be regarded as no big deal, unless you were a servant living and working in the house of the Jewish landowners in 600 B. C. The importance of this is that as Jesus would later say: We are to love God first in our life but also to love our neighbors", and only when you accomplish both dimensions of the commandments are you different. Jesus would elevate the second dimension of the commandments as did Josiah, to the point where Jesus would say that the final judgment would be on the bases of "if you did it unto the least of these."
Josiah became the King of Judah at the age of eight in the year 639 B.C. when his father was assassinated. The Northern Kingdom was destroyed a hundred years before Josiah's time, by the armies of Assyria. The prophet Samuel had early on warned the people of Israel: "If you will not heed the voice of the Lord but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you." (I Samuel 12:14-15)
Josiah's nation of Judah would be destroyed 50 years after his leadership, but not during his leadership. The Jewish people would often suffer opposition and destruction, and the prophets would call them to task by pointing out to them that the people brought it on themselves because they would forget who they were. Moses' exhortation to obedience in Deuteronomy would often ring true.
"When you have had children and children's children, and become complacent in the land, if you act corruptly by making an idol in the form of anything, thus doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, and provoking him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to occupy, you will not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples." (Deut. 4:25-27)
According to 2 Kings 23, the spiritual reform in Josiah's time was motivated by the discovery of "the book of the Law" in some remote part of the Temple. Josiah's reign was a time of Judean national resurgence. I submit to you Josiah made a difference because he was different. He knew the law of God and he was obedient to it and required the nation in his lifetime to be obedient to it.
For you to survive in a violent age and in a culture, which is unfaithful and often times untruthful, you must know the law and be obedient to it.
I suggest the following: Learn the Commandments and Keep them. They will provide structure for your life and protection against the evil, which is in our world.
Summary: A quick survey of the Internet turned up innumerable versions of the Ten Commandments. These were listed: "The Ten Commandments of Dog Ownership, Love, Leadership, Wealth, Travel, and Tattoo Care." Look at a few:
1.I am thy Main Squeeze, thou shalt squeeze no others before me.
2.Thou shalt not take the name of thy squeeze in vain, or badmouth me behind my back.
3. Remember our Anniversary, and keep it holy, Or else.
4. Honor My mother and father.
5. Thou shalt not kill my love behaving tackily and making me embarrassed to be seen with thee.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery, nor shalt thou even think of it if thou knows what's good for thee. And from here on they get worse.
The commandments that we must set to heart are the commandments in the Bible. They can provide structure for you and boundaries. I visited in the Escambia County jail recently a young man, who confessed he had moved beyond all boundaries and tried to live unsuccessfully beyond the rules, and that it was too late. I hope he is mistaken, but I think he is correct. I know he was wrong, and I pray God will restore him health. May you live above the need for restoration by your obedience to the best that you know.