(Note: This blog entry is based on the text “How To Get Ahead”, originally shared on August 24, 2022. It was the 231st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The Bible says that the Church is the Body
of Christ, and that Christ is its head. Is that what it means to get ahead in
the Reign of God? Today, we’re going to find out.
I’ve read that two of the best-selling kinds
of books are cookbooks and diet books. I think I’m seeing a pattern there. Religious
books are very popular (the Bible is a perennial best-seller), as are self-help
books.
Self-help books are especially popular in
the United States, where we tend to be optimistic and believe that we can
improve ourselves and our position in life to a greater degree than is believed
in many more class-conscious societies.
But, while we are not as class-conscious as
other countries, we are very status conscious. We talked about “keeping up with
the Jones” for many decades before we were Keeping Up With the Kardashians”.
Look at how some people in LA judge others
by the car that they drive, where we live, and what musicians we listen to.
We are tempted. We are tempted to want what
others want, and especially what our friends, what our peer group, our
coworkers, our family and our team thinks that we should want.
We want to get ahead.
To do so, there is a lot of pressure on us
to be what others want us to be. We need to look a certain way, dress a certain
way, have certain things. And we can do that. Southern California is the place
that people come to reinvent themselves.
During the 70’s there was a joke among
pastors that that white stuff on the Sierras wasn’t snow. It was the church
transfer letters discarded by Lutherans moving out here from Minnesota.
But it started way before that.
Dale Carnegie wrote How To Win Friends
and Influence People in 1936. It became one of the best-selling books of
all time, with over 30 million copies sold to date. What did he say was the
most beautiful sound to any person’s ears? Their name. You can thank Mr.
Carnegie for the number of times you hear your name when someone wants to sell
you something.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill was
published in 1937 and has sold 15 million copies and was named the 6th
best-selling business book 70 years after its original release.
Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of
Positive Thinking in 1952. Rev. Robert Schuller, who promoted “possibility
thinking”, was said to have been greatly influenced by him. But, when Rev.
Peale denounced Alai Stevenson as being unfit to be president because he was
divorced and John F. Kennedy unfit because he was a Catholic, Stevenson said,
“I find St. Paul appealing and St. Peale appalling.
I guess self-help can only take you so far.
Many other books have followed, from Looking
Out for #1 to Being Your Own Best Friend.
Today, books have been replaced by social
media and the role of influencers on everything from what we buy to what we
believe about ourselves.
I often think about the pastor I know who
sat beside a person on an airplane who said that they didn’t go to church
because it was boring, and they rattled off the things they did instead. The
pastor said, “I am always interested in people who find ancient religion
boring, but who find themselves endlessly fascinating.”
This is not a new phenomenon. I remember
hearing George Carlin, a comedian who had been burned by religion, talk about
how our culture had changed over time
He said that in the 1880’s people started reading
a magazine called “Life”. Things don’t get much broader than “life”.
Then in the 1920’s a new magazine got
popular called “Time”. Time is also all encompassing, even more so than life.
Then a magazine called “People” became
popular in the 1970’s. People are a smaller part, a part of life.
Then people started reading “Us Weekly”, not
all people just some people. Us.
Then, in 1979, another magazine got popular.
It was just called “Self”.
Martin Luther, the 16th century
Church reformer, once described the effects of Sin on people as making us
curved in on ourselves rather than curved out toward God. He said, “Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, [being] so deeply curved in on itself that it
not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is
plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God
himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so
wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake."
Jesus describes and challenges the outcome
of this human curved-in-ness in a story, in Luke 14:1,7-14, starting
with verse 1,
1On one occasion when Jesus
was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the
sabbath, they were watching him closely.
They had their eyes on Jesus.
The religious authorities were watching
Jesus to see what he was going do next. He had already healed on the sabbath in
Luke 13:10-17, something the authorities thought looked like work on the
sabbath. And then, he does it again in Luke 14:2-6! He challenges the religious
authorities to tell him why he shouldn’t. And they can’t. Again. But instead of
backing off, he continues by challenging their desire to get ahead in their
culture, in verses 7-10.
7When he noticed how the
guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8“When
you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place
of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your
host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to
you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to
take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit
down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you,
‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who
sit at the table with you.
So, do the authorities get some practical
wisdom in how to behave, in how to win friends and influence people? We don’t
live in a honor and shame culture, so what difference does it mean to us,
anyway?
Most wedding receptions have assigned
seating, so we’re not likely to embarrass ourselves in that way today. 😊
I read a news story online the other day about
a man and his partner who had booked a trans-Atlantic flight months in advance
and spent two hours and some extra cash to reserve bulkhead seats with extra
legroom so that they could be comfortable during the 10-hour flight.
Three days before their scheduled departure,
the person who did the booking got an email from the airline saying that their
seats had been moved back a few rows. A mother with a baby needed those seats to
be near the bathroom and to have room for the baby’s bed and other things.
The man was livid. He had done everything
right. He deserved to have the roomier seats.
Is that the way Jesus would see it? And what
difference does it mean to us, anyway.
So far Jesus has used the white gloves. Now
he drops the hammer among a group of the upwardly mobile, clawing their way to
get ahead, and we see his message for we “curved-in on ourselves” people, in verse
11.
11For all
who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be
exalted.”
This is the way it is in the Kingdom of God,
where God reigns. Things are different in the eyes of God, and one day, God
will hold each person accountable for how they treat others in response to the
living transformational relationship with God that he offers to each person on
earth.
David Geffen is the one of the founders of
Asylum Records, the founder of Geffen Records, and one the three founders, with
Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, of DreamWorks SKG. He is a ka-billionaire
and a prominent LA philanthropist.
One of my cousins, Pat Metheny, played a gig
at the Greek Theatre when he recorded for Geffen Records. There was an after
party in a backstage adjacent space and people were crowed in waiting for Pat
and the band to come out and join them. The line into the women’s restroom had stretched
out into the party area, while the men’s restroom had no line.
I saw David Geffen go into the men’s
restroom and shoo everyone out. Then he went to the middle of the line for the
women’s restroom and directed that half of the line to use the men’s restroom
until there were no lines.
He didn’t have to do that. He could have had
one of his people that. But he did not mind taking the role of washroom
attendant to make his guests comfortable.
This is what I think is David Geffen’s
greatness. Not his fortune or his success, but his humility.
Then, Jesus
drills in on his host personally (though with all others hearing and seeing),
which was very unusual behavior in a place that was an honor and shame culture,
especially by those who want to curry favor among those who could do them some
good professionally. He focuses on the reason for humbling ourselves, in verses
12-14.
12He said
also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do
not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors,
in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But
when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the
blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay
you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
Things are
different in this world where God reigns. We are blessed to be a blessing. We
love because God first loved us. We act as we are made to be in the
fundamentally transformational relationship that is faith in the one true
living God.
We get ahead
by getting out of God’s way. We get ahead by seeking God’s will and not our
own. We get ahead by stepping back in order to get the broader view given to us
by the Holy Spirit and acting on it.
Who do we look up to, and who do we curry
favor with? Our bosses, our government officials, entertainment figures, sports
stars? Whose rhymes do we know? Whose songs do we sing? Whose lifestyles do we imitate?
And, most importantly, why?
It was once pointed out to me that we can
see the change in human values over time in the construction of our leading
cities and their skylines. Urban communities were once known for their military
security, then for their great temples and Cathedrals, then for their great art
and architecture, then for their large commercial buildings, and today for
their massive entertainment and sports complexes.
What does that say about our values?
What are we before God but beggars? Should
not our values, particularly the way we treat one another, say the same? Should
not we be generous toward others as God has been immeasurably generous toward
us, drawing us out of ourselves and curving our lives toward God’s purpose on
the cross? To put others first with no expectation of return?
Because that is acting in a way the befits
repentance, and new life, a life that demonstrates the great gift we have
received in Jesus Christ on the cross.
Mother
Teresa was an Albanian nun who established an order of nuns, The Missionaries
of Charity, who cared for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. She left
instructions that when she died, her journals were to be burned. Instead, they
were preserved and published.
The world
was shocked when her innermost thoughts came to light. Her journals were filled
with a spiritual emptiness, a longing for something from God.
Some read
that and said, “See. She was a fake!”
Others
read that and said, “What a saint, to be obedient and faithful while getting
nothing in return!”
Some
people say that there is no such thing as altruism, of selfless service to
others. They say that when we do good, we feel good and that that feeling is
our reward and the reason we do the good that we do. Mother Theresa got nothing
while spending her life doing what is universally recognized as good works for
the sake of others.
That humility is not about making less of
ourselves, but of living with gratitude for the gifts we have received from God
that we can never repay.
We are together the Church, the Body of
Christ, and Christ is the head of the Church.
In Christ, and the reconciliation with God
that was won for us on the cross, we find our head, and with it our true selves
in the knowledge of Whose we are, and that forever.
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