| "Judging A Book By Its Cover” Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – July 8, 2012 Centenary United Proverbs 9:1-12; Mark 6:1-6
In Mark’s Gospel today, we have a glimpse
into Jesus’ response when people in his hometown judged
a book by its cover. Jesus had
entered his personal place of worship and began to teach.
Initially, people were amazed at how insightful he was while
instructing them in the art of living.
They said to each other, “We had no idea he was this good. How
did he get so wise all of a sudden?
Where did he get all the amazing abilities that he displays?”
What happened next illustrates how quickly we can sabotage the
source of our own spiritual guidance.
Eugene
Peterson’s translation of this passage captures the attitude of many in
Jesus’ community once they discovered his identity:
“He’s just a carpenter – Mary’s boy.
We’ve all known him since he was a kid.
We know his brothers and sisters. Who does he think he is?”
Once they realized that Jesus was a
villager, they rejected everything he was teaching. Peterson translated
Jesus’ response in this manner, “A prophet has little honor in his
hometown, among his relatives and on the streets where he grew up as a
child.” (Mark 6:4) What this may be saying is that
truth holds a much greater appeal and value for people because of
the vehicle through which it comes.
Try
to imagine how this one judgment has the power to narrow the sources
from which we receive guidance.
It has taken me years to conquer this temptation. There was a time when the titles that people had attached to their names gave authority to what they wrote or said. We tend to put MDs and PhDs on pedestals. We might think, “If an individual has written a number of books they must be an authority on the subject.” Of course, we are judging a book by its cover. Somewhere in our backgrounds, each of us was taught never to do that. For most of us, making such judgments is almost an automatic response. We are also aware that if God has
something to say to us, nothing can prevent that from happening. We can
point to a number of examples in the Scriptures where God did so.
There was the experience of Moses at the burning bush. There was
the experience of Jesus at his baptism.
We could reference Saul of Tarsus when he was in the midst of
persecuting Christians. Yet, in spite of these examples quite
often our responses are quite similar to those listening to Jesus, “He’s
just a carpenter – Mary’s boy.
We’ve known him since he was a kid.
Who does he think he is?”
If God can communicate to people with
great ease as we may imagine, why is it that millions of people live
their lives totally out of control?
People’s values are all over the
ethical landscape.
Could it be that while God’s
love is a one-way street, meaningful communication must always be a
two-way street? Each of us has to
recognize that “this is God talking to me.” It was the attitude of
the crowd about the messenger that caused their inability to absorb the
message. If we give God a narrow window through which to communicate to us, we may not
receive much guidance. For
example, if we hope to find guidance through a church service, we must
be paying attention and eagerly listening for it.
BUT, suppose we find ourselves hoping that Stetler will finish
the service early to allow us to get home for the Cricket match at 12:30
p.m. Perhaps we tuned into Joel Olsteen, John
Haggi or reruns of Billy
Graham’s crusades and actually heard a very inspiring message.
In fact, we felt the message was so insightful that we wish a
half-dozen of our friends had heard it. When
are we open to internalizing what God is communicating to us from
the world of spirit? One of the things that make humans quite
distinctive is that we have different preferences and different tastes when it comes to
addressing what comes up for us in life.
In many respects we are the same, but the part of us that
interprets life’s events, the part that governs our attitudes is where
our differences are revealed. I recall reading an article some years
ago that described the differences of a set of identical triplets. It
featured three young women in their early twenties that were absolutely
identical. They were so much
alike that their parents had their daughters fitted with bracelets that
were only removed at bath time.
Each child had the bathtub to themselves.
Such births are so rare that it
happens only once in every half million sets of triplets. As the article continued, it was
fascinating to read that each woman had a very different personality and
spirit. During their teen
years when the girls often triple dated, they often tried to fool their
guys by switching places during the course of the evening.
The guys only became suspicious when the personalities of the
girls showed up in conversation. The young men had fun sorting out which
one was their date. It was
not that difficult because the girls had different tastes in music. They
had not read the same books or seen the same movies.
Following graduation from their respective universities, one
became a corporate accountant.
Following medical school, the second one became a psychiatrist.
The third one taught in an elementary school.
My point is that the identical nature of
these three women stopped at their physical features.
They each possessed a different set of listening skills.
When they took personality tests, each scored as the individual
they had become. Had the
three of them been listening to Jesus, they could have easily had three
distinct interpretations of what he said. Everything from our communication skills
to what inspires and motivates us can be different for each of us.
Add to these differences the variables that often affect our
faith journey, i.e., how we understand the nature of God and how God
interacts with us, and we have the recipe for very complex differences
between people. It is nothing short of miraculous that
people get along and communicate with each other as well as they do.
Think how our lives would be motivated to achieve a greater
sense of maturity if we understood every experience as
a book filled with guidance to
enhance our futures. There was a time in
my life when I was seriously thinking of leaving the ministry. I was in
a very different place theologically from most of my colleagues and I
realized that I could no longer deliver to people what had been handed
down for centuries as truth.
We cannot imagine physicians
practicing medicine that is based on 2000 year-old assumptions and
protocols. A number of job
opportunities came out of no where during this uncertain period replete
with eye-popping salary packages that were beyond anything I could earn
in the ministry. I had to decide
whether these opportunities
were coming as guidance that would lead me into another vocational
field, or as guidance that
would cause me to develop a greater resolve to communicate my point of
view within the healing profession I was in.
While all this drama
was taking place, I received a call from a sobbing friend who wanted me
to talk to her husband. He
was exhibiting very bizarre behavior that was frightening her. She
handed him the telephone. When he started to talk to me, his speech was
slurred, rapid and disconnected.
He could not communicate anything that made sense.
In the middle of his
garbled ranting he said very clearly, “Dick, I heard that you are
thinking of leaving the ministry.
Listen to me! That
would be a big mistake.
Don’t do it! Your
message is different but there are people around you that need to
hear that difference.” That was it.
After his moment of lucidity, he slid back into verbalizing in an
unintelligible manner. His
words, however, scored a direct
hit on my confusion producing clarity to the decision I made.
When his wife picked
up the phone again, I urged her to take him immediately to the emergency
room. She did that.
Later on the cause of his
behavior surfaced. He was
having a severe allergic reaction
to a medication he was taking. I learned a valuable lesson in that
experience.
Guidance can
come from anywhere and assume any form.
There are countless experiences
circulating in and out of our lives that will not give up the lessons we
could easily learn because we have pre-judged the source.
This is precisely what judging
a book by its cover means.
Sometimes that book appears as a moment of
frustration when we are being taught that having patience is far greater
asset than the self-torture that anger produces. Sometimes that
book is disguised as hurt feelings when the lesson we need to learn
is never to elevate someone else’s opinion of us above our own.
Sometimes while being treated very rudely by someone, that
book is offering us a moment
when we can broaden our communication skills by choosing the exact words
to diffuse a potentially difficult situation. Frequently, what
blocks our ability to receive guidance from these books are thoughts very similar to
“Wait a minute!
He’s just a carpenter – Mary’s boy.
We’ve known him since he was a kid.
Who does he think he is?”
Our
resistance to being open to guidance is identical to the attitude of
those in Jesus’ home town. We have judged
a book by its cover. When we went home to There was a
three-inch section of wood at the bottom of a door jamb that showed
signs of decay. After
receiving an absolutely impeccable house at a very reasonable price, all
the free furniture and carpets that looked like new, the family wanted
our friends to fix that decay. They agreed to do so and had to pay an
additional $900 to replace the door jamb. The response they
had was typical of where both of them are spiritually in their lives.
They allowed the new buyers to be exactly who they are without making
any judgment of them. The
treasure of our friends is
anchored in who they have become and not in their substantial
negotiating skills that could have easily threatened to use a door jamb
as deal-breaker. Looking for and listening to guidance is
much easier when our emotional wills have the same goal as our spirits –
evolving into the likeness of God.
Both can be as different as the
triplets we discussed earlier. Part
of us clamors for justice, fairness, respect and needing our world to be
exactly the way we want it to be.
Another part of us quietly sows its seeds without any fanfare or
recognition, knowing that we march to the drumbeat of a different
musician. We all need helpful guidance. Books filled with lessons for our spiritual growth automatically come to us every day through our experiences. They are nothing more than guidance coming in a form that may not be easily recognized. If we are looking for something to take with us this morning, why not try allowing all our books to reveal their contents before we decide whether or not their guidance is of value. |