Following Jesus V: "Absolute Joy"
Why glorifying God is more meaningful than glorifying ourselves.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Text: Luke 10:17-24
The great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, tells a magnificent, insightful, and somewhat humbling story, of a man known as Pahom. Pahom was a peasant who had a great desire to make something of his life. He wanted to accumulate and become successful and powerful.
One day, this character was given the opportunity to do so. For the simple price of 1,000 rubles he was given the chance to possess a great deal of land. But to obtain this land, he had to go out at daybreak and walk as far as he could and return by sundown to the point at which he began, and whatever land he covered in the span of that day would be his for 1,000 rubles.
And so this character set off in the morning. He walked a long way, and was starting to get tired by about the middle of the day. He looked back on all the land that was behind him, that was now his, but he became full of greed. He decided that he wanted to set out yet again and obtain even more. And so he went farther and farther and farther, all the while accumulating more land. But then he realized that he had to go all the way back before sundown. He realized he had probably gone too far.
He therefore picked up his pace and began to run, and to perspire, and to sweat and his heart to pound. He ran faster and faster. He realized that the place that he had to return to was still a long way away. The sun was setting in the sky and he was becoming desperate. He would lose his 1,000 rubles. He would lose the land that he thought he had accumulated. Finally, as the sun was going down, he crossed the line. He had made it. All that land was going to be his. But just as he finally crossed the line and realized that he had made it, his heart began to fibrillate. He collapsed on the ground and blood poured out of his mouth and he died.
In this tragic story, entitled "How Much Land Does a Man Need?," Tolstoy argues that when this man's grave was finished, all the man really needed was six feet - from the tip of his head to his heels.
You see, the problem with this man was that he had been so consumed by greed, so desirous to accumulate everything that he could, that he killed himself. All the man really needed was what he handle, but his passion for more had caused him, out of such greed, to lose everything.
Mark Elliot, the theologian at Wheaton College in Illinois, says that some years ago he visited two tombs in Russia. The first was the tomb of the great Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the revolution. Lenin's tomb in Moscow is splendid and glorious. It is large, and it is full of stone. It is there for everyone to see.
But then Elliott traveled to the village of Yasnaya Polyana, to the place where Tolstoy is buried. All you see there is a mound of earth and a simple marker to remember this great writer. Elliot says that there is a humility with Tolstoy that you don't find in a man like Lenin; that the world remembers Lenin but often does not remember a simple, humble man like Tolstoy.
Now, Elliot is not trying to suggest that Tolstoy is the world's greatest theologian, or the world's greatest writer, or that he understood Jesus completely; on the contrary, he doesn't argue that at all. He is simply saying that there is a power in humility; that there is a power in service. It's not always just what the eye sees or what you try and possess that matters: There is something far, far more important.
We see this in the story of Jesus, as he is once again preparing his disciples for the end of his life. In this, the fifth of a series on Following Jesus Today, we have Jesus seeing the disciples come back after a triumphant time where they have driven out demons and performed great spiritual things. He takes them to one side and he reminds them of what is important, and he humbles them.
You see, the problem is whether someone is famous or infamous. So many human beings in our culture spend their lives in self-aggrandizement, trying to create recognition without ever really thinking about the deeper things of life, the things that really are important. The famous love to have their names in lights, love the prospect of big monuments and mausolea in their memory, of posthumous recognition of their lives and of their accomplishments, love to have their names engraved where others can see them. The famous do that. Many people, I think, in their lives, even ordinary people, want to follow the famous and be remembered by others, and have their names are immortalized.
So, too, as we have found in the tragedy of the past week, even the infamous want to have their names immortalized. Who could have not followed the terrible shootings in the District of Columbia and Maryland and Virginia and not be moved with great sympathy for those who have died? But here is the irony: The names of those who died will soon be forgotten in the annals of human history, but John Allen Muhammad, who shot them, will probably be remembered in infamy. His name will be remembered.
Whether it was Sirhan Sirhan who, as someone reminded me this morning, after he had shot Robert Kennedy said that Kennedy had had his whole life to be recognized, but "They can gas me, but I am famous. I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do."
The Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, did what he did because he wanted to be remembered, never mind what for, but that he wanted to be immortalized. He wanted to be remembered and in his greed, and in his avarice, and in his sickness, he was known.
Adolf Hitler wanted monuments built to his name. Even Richard Nixon, former president of the United States was driven by this sense of wanting to be remembered. So whether it is fame or infamy, this desire to be remembered, to have one's name recorded, not simply to have existed in this life but to be recognized, is so powerful and so strong.
Jesus, on the other hand, talks about disciples. Disciples are not to be like that. Disciples are to do what they do to the glory of God. Where their names need to be remembered is not in the councils of men but in the council of Heaven. That is where real recognition takes place and is of greater virtue.
And so I want to look this morning at two aspects of this as they relate, not to the negative side, but to the positive; to the absolute joy of knowing that our lives, our commitment, our convictions have been for God.
The first reality is the reality of the joy of our own accomplishments. Jesus does not, despite what a lot of people say, believe that we shouldn't accomplish things, or that there shouldn't be joy in accomplishment. On the contrary, Jesus praised accomplishments. For example, if we work hard and graduate from an academic program, there is worth to that work that has been done and that sacrifice that has been made. That is an accomplishment that is worthy. When we have done a good deed by helping someone in need and we get that glorious feeling that we have done some good, this is a worthy thing.
Just this past month I went and renewed my licence sticker at the Ministry of Transportation. When I went in, in front of me was an 80-year-old gentleman. The 80-year-old gentleman's hands were shaking and he was trying desperately to read a book about the laws of the road and his eyes were shaking along with the book. He looked absolutely terrified. He went up to the clerk and looked in the big machine to see if his eyes still worked and then he was whisked away to this little room evidently to answer some questions for - I didn't realize this - 80-year-olds have to reapply for their driver's licences. He was evidently terrified at this prospect.
A few minutes later, this man came out absolutely ecstatic, three inches off the ground, high-fiving the clerk on his way out, jumping up in the air. I thought he was going to hug me and he didn't even know me, he was so happy. Here was a man who had a great accomplishment: He could drive for another year or two and he was happy. This was a joyful moment.
Jesus celebrates in our moments of joy. Of course he does. Look at his parables. The parable of the talents is about using what God has given us for accomplishment and for glory. The 10 virgins were to multiply their lamps. There is this sense in Jesus of an ebullience and a joy in accomplishment. Jesus does not suppress that. But what Jesus is concerned about is motivation: what motivates us to strive for good things, what motivates us to do good. Where Jesus comes down very heavily is when we do good things for our own glory and recognition.
There is a delightful Indian story of two doves and a frog. The two doves and the frog live on a pond and when the pond is full of water, the doves alight and drink out of it and the frog bounces around and they live in complete harmony. But one day, the water dries up and the doves realize that there is a problem. They are going to have to fly away. They look at one another and say: "But what about the frog? He'll never be able to make it to the nearest pond."
And so the two doves come up with an idea. They will get a stick. The frog will be able to bite the stick and the doves will each hold one end, and the frog and the two doves will fly to another pond. And so they get up into the sky and the frog is biting on the stick and the two doves are soaring towards the pond when suddenly they see a man down below. The man looks up and he sees the doves and the frog and he thinks this is a wonderful thing and he says: "Whose idea was this?"
The frog says: "It was mine."
Thus ends the story of the frog.
You see, when we try and grasp things, when we try and take credit for things ourselves, when we strive for things in a way that is lacking in humility and not recognizing the contribution of God or of others, then in fact, like that frog and that man in Tolstoy's story, we die.
When the 70 came back and they said to Jesus: "Oh, we have driven Satan out in your name. We have done glorious things in your name," Jesus rebukes them. He rebukes them because of their spiritual pride. He rebukes them because they are caught up with themselves. There are many religious people who do that and there are many people who possess great spiritual power, who will use that spiritual power for their own glory. They think that they are the authors of the healings they do, or that they are the ones responsible for the other great things that they do, and they forget that it is God.
Jesus says to them: "I saw Satan fall from Heaven."
Now, what he is saying is not only that God is the ultimate victor, that God is the ultimate good and through the gift of His ministry evil is defeated, but he is also saying something else and it's found in the Old Testament, namely that when Satan falls, Satan represents pride. When pride comes crashing to the ground, people are humbled.
In Isaiah 14:12, the prophet Isaiah has a similar vision of the people soaring on wings, full of their own glory, but being brought down because of their pride. They had taken joy in their own accomplishments. Jesus said we are not to do that: Our joy is in what God does.
Even religious people, people who really should know better, even ministers - sometimes we become full of pride and we forget the source of the power in the first place.
A rabbi friend told me a story and I thought it most fitting since we have put in the new sound system. It's the story of a rabbi who gets up and says: "Can you people at the back hear me?"
The people respond: "Yes, we can, but we can move."
Jesus is saying to those disciples: "Oh, you're full of your own glory, but God can soon take away that which you have unless you use it for him."
"I saw Satan fall," said Jesus. Pride comes crashing down.
But there is also the joy in God's accomplishment.
C.S. Lewis in his great book "Surprised by Joy" says that there is power in our hands to gain pleasure. There is power in our hands to make pleasure for ourselves and to do things, but joy is a gift. He says that anyone who really knows joy would gladly sell every power that gives pleasure for the sake of that joy; because for C.S. Lewis, joy is found in God. Joy is found in God.
Jesus, in taking these disciples to one side, is giving them a couple of reasons for rejoicing. The first of these is that their names will be recorded in the Book of Life.
Now, this is a passage that goes back right to the times of Daniel. You see it repeated in the Psalms and you find it in the Book of Revelation. It is not that there is a literal book in Heaven where God writes down our names, nothing crude like that, but that God understands and God knows those who truly love Him and serve Him; that God knows us by name. There is no need for us to spend our lives immortalizing ourselves in stone when in fact we are immortalized by the very heart and the grace of God. This is not something that we strive after as if it is by virtue of our own ability. This is a response to the grace of God.
This last week as I was driving down Highway 404 from the north, a van went by me with this extremely big graphic on the back. I have no idea why they have it on there and I don't know what business the driver was in, but I couldn't resist it. It said (and please, professional people, take no umbrage at this): "Professionals designed the Titanic but an amateur designed the Ark."
I have thought about that graphic because the building of the Kingdom of Heaven is not something that we do by virtue of our own activity but, like Noah and the Ark, it really is a matter of grace and of God's guidance. The real joy in life comes from doing that.
But then there is a lovely moment when Luke tells us that Jesus had a moment of joy himself, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: "This is the joy that I have, the joy of the Spirit." Joy for Jesus was in doing God's will. The joy was, as one writer once put it, in knowing that what matters is not what we possess, but who possesses us. Jesus so filled with the Spirit that he had this overwhelming sense of joy. As the disciples came back, for all their victories and all the great things that they had done, Jesus' simple communion with the Holy Spirit was enough to give him joy. Remember, Jesus needed that, for he was on his way to Jerusalem and to the cross.
Some years ago in a small town outside Boston, Massachusetts I was invited to visit the elderly mother of a friend. This woman was in a hospice and had very few days left and very little joy in her life, and a great deal of pain and misery. I must admit, the prospect of spending a Saturday afternoon in the spring with a lady in this hospice was not high on my agenda, but for my friend I felt I should do it. I went in and I saw her and we had afternoon tea and we sat and we talked and even in the midst of all her pain she laughed. She was so overjoyed by being surrounded by friends, by actually having the chance to pray and have a minister visit. It meant the world to her. I asked her how, in these long days that she was spending in pain, she could find some joy and she quoted to me a line from Robert Frost, a New England poet. Robert Frost said: Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
For that woman, absolute joy was in being surrounded by people who loved her, by being surrounded by people who prayed with her, by experiencing the grace of God's Holy Spirit.
That, my friends, is absolute joy. We can wander around our fields and we can try and accumulate all that we want; we can be full of our religious pride and we can be immortalized in stone; but to be recorded in the Book of Life, to let one's life be of service to God, to be filled with God's Spirit, therein lies absolute joy. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.