“Moving Forward in Christ: Adjusting to Life on a Different Scale”
When I was a little boy, I had two train sets. One was a Lionel and the other was a Tyco. They were each built to a different scale. The Tyco was much smaller than the Lionel, and that bothered me. In my world, Matchbox cars could not be mixed into adventures that included Tonka trucks, nor could houses built with Legos be allowed to inhabit the same neighborhood as those built with Lincoln Logs. I was willing, though, on occasion, to concede that my GI Joe could speak with Barbie – but only because he thought she was a babe!
When it came to trains, I liked each of them. But I knew that I could never allow myself to play with both of them together. Either one was too big or the other was too small. You see, they came from different worlds, from different scales of life, and I could never figure out how to make them mesh. That being the case, the smaller Tyco and the larger Lionel never mixed in my railroad adventures.
The funny thing about life – especially as we grow older – is that we often try to mesh things together that don’t belong together. When we find ourselves at transitional points in our lives we try to make our past fit into our future – or vice versa. We rack our brains to make it happen, only to find out that our past was built to a different scale than our future. It’s like trying to combine centimeters and inches, or work boots and dress shoes, or Led Zeppelin and Mozart. Sooner or later, you realize that you just can’t get there from here!
And probably each of us in this Chapel has been through something like this. It’s the kind of crisis point we talked about last Sunday, when we’re confronted with two mutually exclusive realities. We know that to live and to grow and to flourish we have to move forward. But we also know that the past was so very comfortable, so familiar, and oh so reliable. No, it may not have been the best, or even the happiest – in fact it may have been down-right miserable. But, “better the enemy we do know than the one we don’t.” And so, we try to figure out a way to cobble together a future that doesn’t require any risk or suffering or sacrifice – even if the reward for stepping out in faith is a fantastic promise.
I can’t help but think of the vision that the Lord is giving Israel in today’s Old Testament lesson. From the beginning of chapter forty-three, he’s telling Israel that there’s no price that he will not pay to see them brought home and restored in the Promised Land. This is one of my favorite chapters in all of sacred Scripture. So I’d like to read verses one through seven to you. Just listen to this and picture the immensity of what God is telling his people: “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up,’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth – everyone who is called by my Name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.’”
WOW!!! Do you see the grand scale of life that God is offering them? Can you see immensity of his promise, the breadth and depth of what he’s willing to do to regain his chosen people?! There’s nothing lacking in God’s power to make this happen. Nothing, indeed! The only thing that could gum up this promise is found in the hearts of his people: Are they willing to adjust to life on a different scale? Or, are they going to do that most human of all things: Are they going to proceed into God’s promises with unnecessary caution? In verses eighteen and nineteen of chapter forty-three, God says, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
That really is the question, though, isn’t it? Do they – do we – perceive the different scale of life that God is offering us? And even more importantly, are we willing to hear the one request he’s making of us in the midst of all these promises? Can we – will we – forget the former things, the things of old? Well, I guess it depends on what those things are, doesn’t it? If it’s our trials and tribulations, our heartaches, our sorrows, then yes, I suppose we’d forget them right away. But it goes deeper than that. He wants us to forget the causes of so many of our trials and tribulations, heartaches and sorrows – he wants us to forget our sinfulness. But it’s really deeper than that, too. He wants us to be so focused on him, so busy in loving and fellowshipping with him, so filled with him, with his character that we actually forget how to sin! He wants our total – our TOTAL – devotion.
Why should he ask that of us? Why should he come to us and say, “I want you to forget all your old ways. I want you to undergo the kind of suffering that comes from detaching yourselves from the false realities you’ve created.” Why? Is it, perhaps, because the sacrifice he’s asking us to make pales in comparison with the sacrifice he actually made? Jesus tells us a parable today about some wicked tenants and their landlord. He tells how the landlord attempted, through messengers, to collect what was owed to him. The tenants brutalize the messengers – the three of them – and send them back to the landlord. Finally, the landlord sends his own son to them, to show them what is right. They kill him. The tenants are, of course, Israel. The messengers are the prophets, and the son of the landlord is Jesus himself. And the life of God is sacrificed for the sins and the stubborn memories of his people.
The future that God offers us in exchange for our measly past is of such a different scale that we often do what those tenants did: We insist on staying put, no matter the cost. I’ve seen it happen in my own life. You’ve seen it happen in yours. We see it happening all around us. There’s a deep-seated fear involved with letting go of the past in favor of an unknown future. Ironically, we in the Church seem to have a much more difficult time embracing the future than those who are not in the body of Christ. We know the One who holds the future in his hands. We should be the ones walking confidently into the unknown. But we’re not. We’re continually squabbling with him and each other about how much we prefer the old way.
The story’s told of a priest who went to his bishop, perplexed as to how to deal with a troublesome new person attending worship in his parish. The priest wasn’t sure how exactly to help the man understand that living as a Christian meant certain changes in his life. The bishop chuckled and offered some wisdom with which every pastor is familiar. He said, “If you really want to be rid of the problem, just baptize him and you’ll never see him again.” It’s sad, but all too true. In our lives as individual believers and in our common life as the Church, whenever we approach the portals of life on a different scale we tend to run away. It’s because we know intuitively that some level of suffering will be involved, but it’s also because we fail to balance that intuition with the promise of God’s blessing. It’s as simple as that.
Paul tells us this morning all about his own encounter with this very problem. What’s more important, he tells us how he resolved it! He says, “More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake” (listen closely to the words he uses here) “I have suffered the loss of all things,” (the past is gone in his life) “and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” Oh yes, he’s heard God’s call – on the Damascus Road and elsewhere – to mourn and to remember, to examine himself, to allow God to speak truth into his life, and when he came to his own crisis moment – in which he realized what the truth is – he was will to do whatever God asked. And now, he’s telling us that it all comes down to weighing the suffering of surrendering the past against the promise of “[gaining] Christ and [being] found in him.”
What’s more, he tells us that this shift in his life could not come about by pursuing God’s promises as he did in the past – remember, he was trying to keep the Old Testament law. He knew that a difficult, but necessary, surrender had to take place. This surrender of his former ways of pursuing God was so important because, as he says, “I [wanted] to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his” (yes, here’s that word again) “sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Once he had seen the power behind God’s promises, he wanted ALL of what God has for him – not just the easier parts.
As we stand near the threshold of holy week – and another portal to life on a different scale – a beloved phrase comes to my mind: “Totus tuus, Iesus Christus.” It’s Latin for “Totally yours, Jesus Christ.” Between now and next Sunday we need to ponder what Paul’s laying before us in his testimony of embracing God’s gift of life on a different scale. Listen, one last time, to what he says. He says: “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it” (the new scale of life being offered to him) “my own; but this one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” That’s his expression of “Totus tuus, Iesus Christus.” May it be ours as well as we continue to move forward in Christ.
In the Name of the + Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let us pray.
Father, you have brought us, in this Lenten season, to the threshold of a bright promise. We don’t quite know how to step forward into that promise, but we declare our trust in you; that you will lead us, that you will help us, that you will guide us. We declare to you, “Totus tuus, Iesus Christus.” Amen.