Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13) (first published 8 February 2004)
In 1916, Alfonso Ovando, a Guatemalan peasant, was exploring the jungle in the Yucatan Peninsula, collecting sap from which chewing gum is made, when he came across the ruins of an ancient city. Six years later he encountered an archaeologist, Sylvanus Morley of the Carnegie Institution, and told him about the lost city. Morley began an investigation of the site, which he named Naachtun; he was the first of many archaeologists to visit the site over the next several years. Naachtun was an ancient Mayan city that flourished for several hundred years during the Classical Period (about 250-900 C.E.), before it was abandoned, seemingly at the height of its political power. The prophet Isaiah was given a message to deliver to a people whom God said would not listen. They would ignore the prophet's message, and ignore the rising tide of devastation around them, until it was too late. Then all that would remain would be cities lying waste without inhabitants, houses without people, and an utterly desolate land. Those of us who live in the industrialized world are in danger of just such a fate. We use petroleum products at a rate that suggests that we think the world's oil supplies are infinite, though we know they aren't. We enact policies in the Middle East, where most of the oil is, that are designed to maintain our control over the oil supply but are doomed to fail, because we alienate the people who live there. Our machines emit greenhouse gases that are melting the polar ice caps and raising average worldwide temperatures. We are destroying the rainforests, and we're driving species of plants and animals to extinction at a clip that far exceeds the normal "background rate." In short, we are living in a dangerous world, made more dangerous by our greed and shortsightedness. Do we hear the voice of today's Isaiahs, calling us to repent and turn back to God? Will we heed the words of people like President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who call for the creation of an "Axis of Good" to fight poverty? Will we listen to the pleas of Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Queen Noor, Coretta Scott King, Muhammad Ali, and many others to work toward complete nuclear disarmament? Or will we continue on our merry way, polluting the environment, wreaking havoc in economically depressed countries, and ignoring the future implications of today's actions? Unless we want New York, Los Angeles, and London to become tomorrow's Naachtun, we must listen to today's prophets--or become prophets ourselves.
The nation got a little bit of good economic news this week: the
unemployment rate for January dipped from 10% to 9.7%. However, the
news is not as good as it sounds. The dip in unemployment is only the
so-called U3 rate, which counts people who are actively looking for
jobs. A different calculation, called the U6 rate, includes all the
people looking for jobs, those who would like to work but have become
discouraged from looking, and those who are working part-time but would
like to work full-time. The U6 rate for January was 16.5%, a decrease
from the previous month, but still a large number, and it doesn't
include people who have taken jobs for which they're not really suited
or are overqualified, just because they needed a job, any job. There
are many discouraged people in our workforce today, even among those who
are employed. What hope is there for those who have worked hard all
their lives to achieve their dreams, yet find themselves on the outside
looking in? Where is God in all this? Does my life really have any
meaning? The psalmist provides us with an answer. "Though I walk in
the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies;
you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me. The LORD
will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures
forever." In tough times, it's easy to concentrate on the here and now,
which is bad. When we take a longer look, things are generally much
better. We remember other difficult times in our life, and we think of
how God brought us through them. God's faithfulness in the past can
give us courage to live in the present. But can we know for sure that
everything will work out? Unfortunately, the answer is no. We can't
know that life will go the way we want it to. However, as this psalm
suggests, we can have confidence that God is faithful to us and is in
control of the situation. Maybe our life won't turn out as we'd like it
to, but it we don't lose heart, it can still turn out the way God wants
it to in the mystery of God's wisdom. The psalm ends on a note of hope.
"Do not forsake the work of your hands," the psalmist asks. When we
find ourselves in tough situations, that's all we can ask of God. The
good thing is, we can be confident that God will not forsake us. Just
consider what God has done in the past, for us and for others.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 (first published 8 February 2004)
On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig stood before the fans at Yankee Stadium and
proclaimed, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth." He had been diagnosed two weeks earlier with the disease
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known in the U.S. as Lou Gehrig's
Disease, yet he was optimistic. He had had a stellar career--playing in
2130 straight games, a lifetime batting average of .340, and a lifetime
slugging percentage of .632--yet he was humble. The way he played
baseball made him a marvel. The way he faced death made him an
inspiration. When Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthian church that we
call 1 Corinthians, he had plenty of reasons to boast. He had
successfully carried the gospel into Europe. He had started numerous
churches. He had become known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. Yet he
remained humble. Rather than glorying in the revelation of Jesus to him
on the Damascus road, he merely said, "Last of all, as to one untimely
born, he appeared also to me." Paul had the qualifications to claim great
things about himself, but instead he remembered his past mistakes: "I am
the least of the apostles, unfit to be called as apostle, because I
persecuted the church of God." Though few of us can identify with Paul's
successes, all of us can remember many times when we've failed God. It's
a human tendency to want to magnify our successes and minimize our
failures, and from a psychological standpoint, emphasizing the positive is
not bad. However, we sometimes want to claim that our achievements were
greater than they actually were. We like the attention, the acclaim, the
adulation. At times like those, when we find ourselves focusing too much
on our own accomplishments, it's good to remember Paul's attribution of
his success to God: "By the grace of God I am what I am." False humility
is no better than bragging, and Paul avoided both. He recognized that he
had some accomplishments that were praiseworthy, but he also knew that he
couldn't take the credit for his successes. His miraculous conversion and
his incredible ministry had been made possible only by the grace of God.
Are you above average in intelligence, athleticism, or skill? Then thank
God for blessing you, and pray for guidance to live up to your potential.
Perhaps academics isn't your strong suit, or maybe you're not a good
public speaker. Still thank God for God's blessings. Whether we have the
natural ability of Lou Gehrig or of Forrest Gump, we can accomplish
whatever God leads us to do. And after we achieve great things, remember
to give God the credit. "By the grace of God I am what I am." That would
make a good bumper sticker!
Luke 5:1-11 (first published 8 February 2004)
A man wanted to start a new company, so he began poring over resume after resume. He selected ten people with great qualifications, hired them, and put them to work. He could tell pretty quickly, however, that his company wasn't going to succeed. Two of the people he hired were always arguing about the right way to market their product. Three others spent all their time devising strategies but had no idea how to implement their plans. The others bickered with one another over product placement, accounting techniques, and goals and objectives. The man fired all of his employees and decided to start over. This time he looked for qualified people who could work together as a team. This time his business prospered. When Jesus began recruiting disciples, he looked in rather unlikely places. Instead of in the synagogues, he looked in boats along the seashore. Instead of in the inner court of the temple, he recruited from the tax collector's booth in the outer courtyard. Instead of in the cultural center of Judaism, the city of Jerusalem, he looked in the backwoods province of Galilee, derided as "Galilee of the Gentiles" by many of his contemporaries. The ragtag group of fisherman, tax collectors, political zealots, and others became a team of committed followers. Sure, they were skeptical at first. No one leaves a reliable job to pursue the poorly defined scheme of a wild-eyed madman. But they soon learned that Jesus was more than he seemed at the outset. He spoke about forgiveness and acceptance to tax collectors, he answered the questions of skeptics, and he directed fisherman so that they could make a great catch of fish. Having won them over, he promised them greater accomplishments. When we encounter Jesus in our own lives, maybe we sometimes wonder why we were chosen. Surely there are others who could do the job better than I can. Certainly there are more persuasive speakers or better athletes or smarter people! But Jesus didn't look for followers among the socially elite, because his ministry was primarily among the common people. Jesus' success as a recruiter is exemplified by the fact that today, two thousand years later, the spiritual descendants of those twelve have grown into a huge multitude, two billion strong by some counts.