(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Less is More, originally shared on February 11, 2021. It was the eighty-ninth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What if the most important personal value of
our culture is upside down? It is. Today, we’ll find out how to set it right.
Cases of COVID-19, hospitalizations and
death are all down, and vaccinations are now available.
But, it’s 2021, or 2020 The Sequel, so there
has to be a grey cloud behind that silver lining. And that gray cloud is that
there are not enough vaccine doses for everyone who qualifies in this current
early phase, to get one. The second dose of the vaccines currently being given
in the field are time-sensitive. They have to be given about three weeks after
the first, so they have been reserved for those who have been given the first
doses.
Everyone else is waiting. How a first world
country like ours came to this juncture is a sad tale, but it’s our present
reality. It diminishes our self-image which, in our culture, is everything.
There are few personal values that are more
valued and protected than feeling good about ourselves. It is at the pinnacle
of the scale of values for the most popular religion in America today:
Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism. I did a video on this a while ago called Pop
Religion, and you can find a pretty good Wikipedia article on it. I’ll put
links to both below.
Pop Religion Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiYFJhQSkjU
Wikipedia Article
on MTD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moralistic_therapeutic_deism
And yet, that value is misplaced. It is the
reverse of what Jesus calls blessed in his most famous sermon, The Sermon on
the Mount.
Here’s some of it from Matthew, chapter 5,
starting with the 1st verse:
*Matthew 5:1-12
Do these traits strike you as what the world
would called “Blessed” or what some translations of the Bible call “Happy”?
Nope. They couldn’t be more counter
cultural.
Why? Do they describe the best way to live?
No. It’s because they are the conditions that don’t point to self-satisfied
success in this world, but in the recognition that, with no where else to GO,
we need a Savior. And that we have one in Jesus Christ.
When do we pray more, when things are going
just fine, or when they are falling apart?
Which is more likely to lead us to Jesus, positive
self-esteem, or feeling like there is nowhere else to turn?
The history of Israel demonstrates a
pattern: The people of God experience prosperity and security and forget about
God; things fall apart and they remember God; God saves them and they begin
again to experience prosperity and security and forget about God.
Finally, God comes and breaks the cycle. God
acts unilaterally and saves Jew and non-Jew alike, not by keeping a covenant
but through a relationship of faith, a living relationship, sealed in our Baptisms.
Jesus once told this parable:
*Luke 12:15-21
So, if both our personhood and our
livelihood are lived as being wholly dependent on God, who am I and where is my
true self.
Paul writes to the Church at Colossae, the
Colossians, in the 3rd chapter, starting at the 2nd
verse:
The scale of our lives is not apparent. It
is hidden, hidden with Christ, who is coming to judge the world.
My favorite sports quote comes from comedian
Jerry Shandling, who once reflected on Leo Durocher, the ruthless coach of the
Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers, and who said, “Nice guys finish
last.”
Gary Shandling said, “Nice guys finish
first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where the finish line is.
The Christian life is lived in many
paradoxes: the more I give the more I have, I am both a sinner and a saint, and
this one: the less I focus on myself the more I am my true self, the more I
depend upon God the more free I am.
The difference in all these things is the
love and steadfast love of God expressed most wholly at the cross, and the gift
of a living relationship with the one true living God (that is, faith), given
by the Holy Spirit, God’s ongoing personal presence for good in the world, what
the Bible describes as like streams of living water, nourishing, unpredictable,
and transformative.
Let this be your Dependence Day. Place your
trust in God and not in the world. Seek God’s affirmation and not your own. Prepare
the way for Jesus in others and make your affirmation that of John the Baptist’s
in John 3:30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
This is the upside-down version of the world’s
focus on having a positive self-image and feeling good about one’s self. It’s
not, though, that Christians don’t value these things. We reject their pursuit
as ends in themselves, on the focus on the self. Instead, they are the
byproducts of lives lived with a focus on others. In addition, our focus is not
on personal happiness, but on joy that is foundational to the Christian life,
even when we aren’t feeling particularly good about ourselves or our place in what
the world values.
Little David killed a giant with a sling and
stone, 5000+ people were fed with 5 loaves and 3 fish, Gideon’s army of 300
defeats a vast army of Midianites, one jar of oil paid humongous debts. All
these things, though small, were mighty because God is mighty.
Jesus says we are like salt, light and leaven,
which change everything around them even in small amounts because our character
as agents of change comes from God. We have been made a new creation. We have
been born again.
Confess your sin before God turn away from
it. Believe in Jesus Christ and his power to save you. Receive the living
presence of the living God.
You cannot save yourself by your own efforts,
but God will save you. Be mighty because God is mighty. Empty yourself to be
filled with God.
Less is more.
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