Value One Another

Know thyself, the Greek philosophers would say.  All knowledge is in and through relation.  We know ourselves truly when we know ourselves in relation to God.  To know yourself is to see yourself, truly, to regard yourself, rightly, even to understand yourself—why you do what you do, think how you think, believe what you believe.  It’s not only background, not just life experience, beloved.  Who we are, now, and who we in Christ are now becoming—this is from our Father in heaven, on account of Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit.  We know ourselves rightly when we know ourselves in righteous relation with God.  Righteousness is vital relationship: grounding, sustaining, building.  All dynamic relationship is grounded upon truth.  Truth is better than lies.  Relationships flourish through truth; they wither where there is falsehood.  Maybe several of you have had experience with relationships where truth was not at the top.  Without truth, relationship cannot flourish, cannot continue.  Relation, like knowledge, relies upon and requires truth.  Ah, but what is truth, the man asked.

God wants to be worshiped, and will be worshiped, in Spirit and truth.  The Spirit opens the door to truth; truthfulness clears the way for the Spirit.  God calls for you and me to live in the truth and to share the truth, with one another and with those as yet staggering around in the dark.  Speak the truth in love.  Amen.  But that means we speak the truth and not lies: lies our culture tells us, the lies even some in the churches want to pass off as truth, and I do believe they are convinced what they are saying is the truth, even God’s own truth.  All their values, their world-outlook, depends upon their conviction that they are speaking God’s own truth.  The prophets and priests in Isaiah’s day, and Jeremiah’s day, and Ezekiel’s day believed so, too, and God sent these three to warn them.

The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth; the Spirit brings grace and pours it, lavishly, daily, upon everyone, especially believers.  Let us speak as God directs; God does not direct anyone to speak what is contrary to Scripture.  What is contrary to Scripture comes from what is contrary to God.  There are those who speak what is contrary to God’s Word as though it were God’s own Word.  There are those who will gladly receive such a gospel.  A gospel contrary to Scripture is no gospel at all.  So, we are called to speak, to show and share the love of Christ, who is perfect holiness, perfect righteousness.  Jesus is not merely all compassion, inclusive welcome.  Yes, it is vital that we be a people who welcomes in and shows compassion.  We have compassion for our common brokenness.  We welcome in those who are coming to understand, just as we are coming to understand, that God means to change us, to make us into His holy people.

Let us speak from grace, and if you’re not sure whether what you want to say is coming from a place of grace or not, then yes, it might be best not to say it, yet.  Paul’s call to live together in humility comes from grace: it is the call of grace, which is able to work most effectively when there is voluntary submission.  Perfect submission, perfectly blessed—is the old hymn singing about us or about Jesus?  Is it singing about who we can be, in Jesus, about how we may draw nearer to Christ?  The answer is yes.  Voluntary submission is not like defeat or conquest; it’s not resentful surrender.  Our seventy-plus pound Boxer/Mastiff mix, Jeaux, has a powerful set of jaws on him—that big bonehead of his is meant to lock down and hold on—yet he is a gentle dog.  He voluntarily submits, once he figures out what he’s being told to do.  He submits because he listens.  A repeated note throughout the Old Testament, certainly, is that the people do not listen—some of the worst offenders were the priests and (false) prophets.

I made the mistake once of opening the reels section on facebook; now, the algorithm is convinced I just can’t wait to hear another round of shocking things from pulpits across America, and it seems there are plenty of shocking things being said from those pulpits—not all of them PC(USA) pulpits, I might add.  The people of God have a long history of being exposed to falsehood—oh, always offered in the name of grace and love.  The people of God have a long history of accepting falsehood: just read the Bible to see for yourselves.  But the truth hasn’t changed.  God’s standard and God’s Word—these have not changed.  Neither has our common human proclivity to want to hear what we want to hear and not hear what we do not want to hear.

A robust sense of humility truly helps foster listening.  The humble person voluntarily submits.  Such humility is an ongoing project for me.  This humble submission is not groveling: it is the Spirit-granted recognition of truth; God calls us to be aligned with truth, the truth of His Word.  Paul reminds us and calls us into humility: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (12:3).  There was a man.  Those around him were convinced he had zero pride: he never got offended, never lashed out when he was insulted—that is, when people spoke to him in a way those watching and listening knew would certainly have insulted them.  What a fool he was; what a holy fool.  He had the holiness of humility.  The opinion that mattered to him was God’s opinion, and the man already knew what God thought of him: useless sinner, and loved, claimed, and being sanctified through the Holy Spirit.  God knows there’s more than enough prickly all around and to spare, quick to take offense; may there be a bit more peaceful.  May I arrive at humility like that.  Grace is no lie but the mirror in which the Spirit causes us to see ourselves at the same time we see God seeing us.  There’s nothing so apt to bring humility than to know God sees us.

God has given to each of us a package of gifts, including faith.  We’re learning, together, to use these gifts—we’re learning what gifts we have been given to use.  It does no good to think that we can sort of peer over each others’ shoulders to see how this one’s gift compares to that one’s.  Why compare?  Is there better and worse?  Oh.  You got that gift.  I’m sorry.  Are we going to be angry with one another?  How come you got more than me?!  Why did I get this one when I really wanted that one?!  There are days when I am heartily glad I have not been given ten talents, or even five!  I seem barely able to do anything profitable with the one God gave.  He wasn’t stingy!  He knows my limitations and shows beautiful grace.

The faith God gives, as we actively practice it, helps us, empowers us, blesses us, with sober judgment of ourselves.  Faith is a bit like seeing things God’s way.  When I was just a little guy, I had a blue bear.  I’ve seen pictures from my first Christmas, when it was given to me.  Well, I have no memories of that beautiful, perfect, shiny new bear.  My memories are of a worn out, torn wreck of what used to be a new bear: the blue, shiny, velvety fur worn off, some dangling thread where a button eye used to be.  These memories are so clear because the bear was nearly always with me, close.  Faith is a bit like seeing things God’s way.  Remember?  Do not look on the outward appearance?  Others would have looked and said it was past time for that blasted bear to be tossed in the trash.  I looked and saw the beloved.  I look at myself, with what I pray is judgment that by grace is becoming sober: I know where I belong; I see what I am, and I rejoice that God sees me, in Christ, and has other plans for me.  He means to hold on to me!  We’re all bears who have seen better days, and we are loved.

Connection, attention—these blessings are at the heart of a flourishing, robust, vital community.  There was a film in 2009: A Simple Man; the details don’t matter so much; I’m thinking of one scene.  A Jewish college professor is having something of a midlife crisis.  He does what a good Jewish boy does—no, he doesn’t go to his mother—he goes to see the rabbi.  The film gives it the feel of trying to get in to see a specialist, or maybe like the president.  Small chance.  Well, the poor professor needed some advice, some wise, helpful word, and came to see the rabbi.  After a long moment, as if she had heard it all before, the rabbi’s secretary goes in to tell the rabbi.  She then makes the long walk back out to the poor, hopeful, anxious professor.  The rabbi, his secretary tells the professor, was busy.  Now, the door had been open just enough for the professor to have seen the rabbi, way back there in his study, just . . . sitting.  So, sort of desperate, feeling like the door was closing in his face, the professor says the rabbi, “didn’t look busy,” to which the secretary, never breaking eye contact, blandly replies, “He’s thinking.”

The underlying message was something like “I haven’t got time for you” or “go away, don’t bother me.”  In what I read to you today, Paul is reminding us that a Christian never tells another person—whether Christian or not—“I haven’t got time for you.”  (Telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen, of course, being the exceptions.)  We make time for one another; we value one another.  Love looks like something.  Love stops for the one.  In the churches, as in society, Paul had encountered attitudes of superiority, but he isn’t cautioning us only against a sense of superiority.  He is urging us to make a conscientious habit of approaching one another, making ourselves available for one another: our loving sacrifice of time, attention, and concern.  We can all of us, yes, including me, be at work on that.

Christ made a practice of being available, of “inconveniencing himself” for others.  We do not care to be inconvenienced.  Let us be open to learning that blessing comes when we choose to be “inconvenienced” for the sake of another.  We know how precious the gift of time is: give it, generously, graciously.  Make room for one more.  Make time for one more.  Notice one another; notice new people.  Let us continue to learn to value one another.  We don’t all of us make that so easy.  We have varied personalities, sometimes difficult personalities, God knows!  We have different temperaments, different political commitments, histories we are working through, hurts, faults, victories, and gifts.

Seeing and sensing one another’s faults, we graciously choose to overlook them, entrusting one another to the Spirit, and choosing with the Spirit to upbuild one another in our different gifts from the one giver.  When we honor the gifts of others, honor the gifts as gifts, gifts from the giver, we experience God’s grace in a fuller measure and begin to experience in fuller measure what this life in Christ looks like, feels like, what it’s all about.  Life in Christ is not really about driving out the heretics; it’s not about being super-saints.  Life in Christ is about a patient, long term commitment to be there for one another, warts and all, wounds, nasty scars and all, and not to abandon our fellowship with one another, not to walk away when our dominant sin begins to feel again as if it might get the better of us.  It is just then that you and I need above all to get on our knees, even with one another, pray with and for one another, and tether one another to Christ.  We’re not here together just to sit in the same space.

We know it’s true, as Paul reminded the faithful so long ago: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us” (12:6).  And they are gifts—that’s also part of what Paul wants us to bear in mind.  A really great toolbox isn’t that drawer with the five tools you nearly always use, useful as that certainly is.  A really great toolbox is the one that also includes those special tools that, while you may not need them often, are such a blessing to have when you do.  A keyhole saw.  A cold chisel.  A nail finisher.  There are ways to get a drain out without a drain wrench, but oh, how much easier the job becomes, with one.  It’s good to remember that such tools are there, ready.  There are many gifts in Bethel’s toolbox: passion for justice, anger over injustice; the treasure of a positive attitude, a humorous outlook on life; the gift of encouraging guidance, sensing how to bring better out of others; the gift of labor; the gift of quietness, quiet prayerfulness born of deep, abiding faith; the gift of energetic optimism; the gift of wise counsel and gentle candor; the gift of steady commitment; the gift of patient endurance; the gift of immovable doctrinal faith; the gift of compassionate charity; the gift of telling it like it is; the gifts of generosity, tolerance, and humility; the gift of zeal for service, rallying to mission; the gift of steadfastness; the gifts of loyalty and devotion; the gift of hospitality; the gift of presence; the gift of knowing there’s so much more to learn, and eagerness to learn; the gift of wanting to give; the gift of helping people to see and know they also have something to give and helping them to know that what they have to give is valued.

Gifts for prophecy, for service, for teaching—these are upbuilding gifts, beloved, not destructive—sometimes critical, yes, as needed—truthful!—but gentle, timely, and wise criticism to diagnose, to redirect, to restore.  What Paul speaks of as prophecy we might speak of as calling people to the Word, back to the Word, to hold to the Word for dear life: “Your words to me are life and health.” Blessing comes proportionally to the time we make to be in company with the Word.  If we make no time for the Bible, no time for prayer . . . what time are we specially devoting to God for His work in us?

Paul speaks of encouraging one another; we can’t do that to any good purpose if we aren’t encouraging one another just as we are called to love one another, in Spirit and truth.  We know from our own experience that truth is a powerful medicine, sometimes rather bitter to the taste, that must be administered in careful, measured doses.  And if we don’t administer that medicine?  Falsehood is a cancer.

As for the other gifts Paul lists, I find the adverbs sum it up: be the family of God toward one another generously, diligently, and cheerfully.  Sporadic discipleship is like those fireworks to which we were treated last month: brilliant, loud, and all too brief.  Bitterness, I have discovered, is much more common than I had imagined.  We each of us carry hurts and wounds; we all bear scars: some visible and those we cover very carefully.  Yet I have also found this: where there is bitterness, there is often also generosity.  The wounded know they are wounded.  The wounded know that their sorrow, as it were, scents the air about them.  They are pained to know it is so: this is not how they want to live, not how they want to live in and for Jesus.  So, they tend to practice generosity, even sacrifice, as best as they can in their brokenness.  Let us all learn to look to God to balance the scales; they will not be balanced in this life: we are not given a balance; we are given grace.  Among us, grace has at least two dimensions: restraint and generosity.  We govern our tongues, we offer our hands.

A boy was at his birthday party: excitement and happiness were high; he was looking forward to the gifts, the cake and candles.  He was surrounded by family and friends.  It was a bright, happy day.  It came time to open gifts.  He got new shoes, the most popular brand, some new games for his gaming console—including a couple games he had asked for.  Grandma got him a rather busy button-up shirt one size too small.  Then his father took him out to the garage and showed him his gift to his son: a well-used bicycle, covered in dust, mud, and oily grime, flat, cracked tires, ripped up seat, broken chain, slack brake lines, a missing pedal.  The father was smiling, as if this was the best gift, or as if he knew something that hadn’t occurred to his child.  The son knew he was supposed to say thanks, but his sense of disappointment, confusion, and surprise were hard to hide.  His father knew and wasn’t surprised or hurt; he was still smiling.  “Yes, it’s not a new bike, but it’s a good bike, and you and I, working together, will make it better.  I’ll teach you how.  I’ll even let you use my tools.”  Years later, the boy, now a man, a father himself, liked to share that story of his (in hindsight) happiest birthday.