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My
Father had a repertoire of signature sayings, some of which were aimed
at me. "You're clumsier than a cub bear with boxing gloves,"
he said. "You'd forget your head if it wasn't attached."
When company left our home he often said, "Glad you got to
see me." When Dad saw something unusual he called it, "Queer
as a $3 bill." There were other memorable expressions, but church
is not the place to recite them.
My Grandpa Bibbee
had some gems, too. "Look what the dog dragged in and the cats
won't eat." Talking about people he considered lazy, he said,
"He hasn't got the ambition God gave an earthworm." And
when I asked for seconds of dessert, Grandma Bibbee said, "If
you eat any more you'll be seeing bears with calico tails in your
sleep."
But I also heard
a rather dark saying that indicted people. You heard it, too. You
have said it of others. God forbid, maybe someone said it to you.
I have a sharp recollection of it because I didn't want the same
said of me.
"He'll
never amount to anything." The words carried the weight
of authority. "He will, she will, you will never amount to
anything." It meant, "There's no chance for change. The
book is closed. The dye is cast. Redemption has just left the building.
He is what he is, and there's nothing that can be done about it."
I got the sense that the one saying it really didn't want the other
person to change, so their judgment would be confirmed.
But let's unpack,
"He'll never amount to anything" and it's next-of-kin
expression, "You've got to make something of yourself."
The premise
of both is this -- you are nothing. You carry a zero balance in
your account. The theological premise is that you are born terribly
flawed and must begin life in God's doghouse. You will remain there
until you do what's necessary to work your way out. On Jefferson
Street in Mishawaka there is a sign expressing this idea -- "If
you don't accept Jesus, the devil will be glad to have you back."
I may be talking
to someone who believes they were conceived in original sin rather
than with God's original blessing. You don't believe you are worth
much. But neither God nor the Bible put this idea in your head.
The world has
a vested interest in making you believe you're nothing. Then you
will buy into the prescription promised to change your sorry lot.
You must create an identity. You must get good grades, get the right
kind of friends, live in the right neighborhood, get into the best
college, get a job that makes lots of money so you can drive a luxury
car and buy a big house and fill it with nice things which will
aid your access into circles of people who have made something of
themselves so you will feel like you've made something of yourself
but to remain on top you must work so hard and so long that you
are totally depleted and end up where you started feeling like a
nobody which means you must do more and more and so it goes and
so it goes.
For several
summers I took Lisa and John to Cedar Point where we stood in miles
of lines waiting on rides. When it was finally our turn the guy
at the gate held a painted stick beside them. If they weren't as
tall as the stick, they couldn't ride.
The world has
standards for "somebody status." The object is to do whatever
we can however we can to measure up and get on the ride.
You may be thinking,
"What's wrong with self-improvement?" Nothing. "What's
wrong with doing your best, making a name for yourself, and setting
a good example?" Nothing. Most of you have worked hard and
reaped the rewards of success. You have made something of yourselves.
Congratulations!
The trouble
is, Christianity doesn't value self-improvement and success. Jesus
didn't try to make something of himself. In chapter one of 1st Corinthians,
Paul says:
"God
chose what was low and despised in the world, even the things
that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no
one will boast in the presence of God (1: 28-29)."
Jesus came into
the world as a nobody. Somebodies were not born in stables. They
didn't grow up in obscurity in insignificant places like Nazareth
as Jesus did. "Since when has anything good come out of
Nazareth (John 1: 46)?" people said. Jesus didn't cozy-up
to people of position and power. He had nothing to do with relationships
ordered by hierarchy. "Have this mind among yourselves, which
is yours in Jesus," Paul said:
"…
who, though he was in the form of God, didn't count equality with
God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant… and as a human he humbled himself and became
obedient unto death on a cross. (Philippians 2: 5-8)."
Jesus preferred
the company of sinners to spiritual snobs. He befriended losers.
He identified with nobodies. He walked into Matthew's tax office
and said, "Leave your 1040's behind and follow me." Jesus
drew the ire of the Pharisees because he wouldn't join their sing-a-long…
"These sinners will never amount to anything." He enjoyed
eating and drinking with moral, ethical, spiritual, and societal
nobodies the dogs dragged in and the cats wouldn't eat.
The big issue
for the Apostle Paul was how mortal, sinful, broken beings are reconciled
to God. Paul was a model of devotion to the Law, but he knew that
relationship with the Holy wasn't about breaking the rules.
In our text
from Romans, Paul recounts the story of the patriarch, Abraham.
"What shall we say about our forefather, Abraham?" he
asked. "If he was justified by his works, he had nothing to
boast about before God." Abraham had no land. He didn't have
a home. At 100 years old he was as good as dead. He and his wife
Sarah had no children and therefore no future. So how was Abraham
made right with God? Not by what he did or had or earned or deserved.
He had nothing to offer God-- except faith.
There are people
with inordinately high estimates of themselves. They have what is
called, delusions of grandeur. A man named William Kerr turned
this description into an insult, as in, "David suffers from,
"delusions of adequacy." We all have delusions
of adequacy. We don't trust God. Our faith is so small and feeble
and frail. We've heard, more times than Carter's has liver pills,
that there is nothing we can do to earn or deserve the gift of God's
love and eternal life. We keep trying to be adequate by effort and
ingenuity. But God calls us to "snap out" of delusions
of adequacy, and trust that God alone turns nobodies into somebodies
by faith in God's love.
Our faith is
in a peculiar God who always picks the "runt of the litter."
Which one of Jesse's sons was chosen to be king? Not the oldest
or strongest, but little David, the freckle-faced kid out tending
the sheep. Joseph's jealous big brothers threw him in a hole and
left him to die, but Joseph became one of the most influential men
in Egypt. From Sarah's barren womb God created a nation. Mary had
God's son. It was a barely noticed birth. Her boy subjected himself
to desertion, torture, and crucifixion. For the sake of love Jesus
became a nobody. He gave us his supreme gift. "Once, we
were nobodies," Paul said. "Now we are somebodies-God's
own people called out of the darkness and into God's marvelous,
redeeming light." God delights in making something out of nothing.
In the movie,
Ironweed, characters played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep
come across a drunk Eskimo woman lying passed-out in the snow. The
two are inebriated themselves, and debate about what should be done
with her. Nicholson asks, "Is she drunk or is she a bum?"
Streep answers, "Just a bum. Been one all her life." "And
before that?" "She was a whore in Alaska." "She
hasn't been a whore all her life. What about before that?"
"I dunno. Just a kid, I guess." "Well, a kid's something.
It's not a bum and it's not a whore. It's something. Let's take
her in."
Early on, do
you suppose someone told her, "You'll never amount to anything?"
Do you think that's the way everyone saw her, and she eventually
believed it herself? Through the lens of God's grace no one is a
nobody. Everybody is somebody created in God's image and for that
reason alone should be "taken in."
We mar the image
by our sin. Daily we demonstrate our imperfection, weakness, brokenness
and mortality, all the while denying it by believing we are adequate
and able to make ourselves acceptable. God calls us to face the
delusion, but far more, God beckons us to embrace his grace.
C. S. Lewis
said that God's grace calls us to accept our need so we can become
"jolly beggars."
In 1895 a teacher
called a boy to his desk and handed him a sealed envelope. In a
stern voice he said, "Take this not and give it to your father."
The boy had problems with school. He didn't pay attention. His grades
were poor. Whatever the note said, he knew it wasn't good. When
his father got home, he handed him the envelope. Opening it, he
read the note that was a single sentence long. It read: "It
does not matter what your son does-he will never amount to anything."
No one remembers
the teacher. They remember the boy he declared would amount to nothing
-- Albert Einstein.
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