Ambitious Imbalance

 “Ambitious Imbalance” // Message @ JRCC – Sunday, May 8, 2011

Text: Mark  // Series: “Ambition: The Good, the bad, the Holy”

Mother’s Day

Thanks to all who led us in prayer.  I appreciate that we set aside a day to honour and pray for women… Mother’s Day here at Jericho is not just about those who have kids.  It’s about affirming and thanking those women who built into our lives and those who are currently doing the hard work of building into the lives of others.  And so sometimes in the past we’ve given away a single flower to moms or to women as a token of saying thanks for this investment.  But sometimes it feels a bit like that, doesn’t it? A token.  What can you really do with a single carnation anyway?  So this mother’s day, we decided to take a different direction.  Instead of spreading out our mother’s day budget and giving you each something smaller like a single flower or small devotional booklet, we’ve invested more resources into three gifts.  Two gift cards – one was given earlier today to a single mom who’s raising her son.  You will likely have people in your life who could take you out for lunch so this card gives them the ability to do this.  The other card was given to a member of our church family who doesn’t have kids of her own but who has parented and shaped the lives of hundreds of kids in a scholastic setting.  She’s recently experienced job transition and we wanted to say Thank You for all of the investment’s she has made.  I’m not going to point them out to you, but we just wanted you to know, Jericho, that we’re experimenting with our value of generous living meaning more than a carnation here or there.  So that’s been done on your behalf as a congregation this Mother’s Day.      

On Mother’s Day, I think it appropriate to spend time in prayer for and with moms because in many ways, particularly for those who may have kids at home, moms you function as the primary gatekeepers and the tone-setters of things in the home when it comes to every-day routines and priorities.  This isn’t to say that dad’s abdicate or are under-involved in this, but most often, the everyday things of life with kids are hands-on managed by moms.  And the powerful thing about a mother’s role is that it’s here in everyday life where we really begin to see our priorities worked out and lived out…  We can talk all we want on Sundays about how much we love Jesus, but on Monday, our priorities get put to the test in the way we spend our grocery money.  Our priorities show up in the way we organize our master calendar and where we spend our time.  Our priorities get demonstrated in the way we speak to each other when the Canucks loose.  It’s in the everyday moments of life where faith in God either shows up, or it doesn’t.

And it’s interesting to me to listen carefully as I talk with families about these moments and about how their priorities are playing themselves out. Particularly what people say versus what actually show up in their actions.  For example, probably the most common refrain that I hear in talking to people, mom’s in particular, is that their highest aim in life for their children is that they would be grow up to be well balanced or well-rounded individuals.  You’ve probably heard this, too.  Maybe even articulated it out-loud to your partner.  And it leads us here in suburbia in some very frenetic directions.  You see it on bumper stickers – you’ve probably seen of felt like “mom’s taxi service” rushing kids from soccer to school to dance class from grocery shopping straight to hockey then off to squeeze in a dentist appointments before to school and church, if we can fit it into the weekend.  What are we after here?  For some of us, we are driven by our cultural values of balance – we love balance.  We aspire towards it.  We use phrases like “work – life balance”, although some of you wish you could have a work-life balance without the work.  But in pursuit of balance, particularly in the lives of our kids, we sprinkle in a little bit of everything – athletics, art, scholastics, a little bit of religion in there, mix it all together, let it simmer for 18 years and hope to heck that what comes out is a balanced, well rounded, contributing member of society.  But is this the end-game of producing well-balanced kids who grow up to be well-rounded adults a biblically defensible idea?  What do we as examples for us in the Scripture that might give us either support for or might challenge this idea?

We’ve just started into a spring series (and we’re hoping the weather will catch up with us!), here on Sunday mornings entitled “Ambition: The Good the Bad and the Holy”.  And over the course of May and June, we’ll be looking at the two primary aspects of ambition – the positive elements of it, the things that the Bible says we should build into our lives with intention and with purpose.  And also the negative aspects of ambition – the places where the things we ambitiously strive for will take us further away from God and from each other.  So this morning, we’ll be challenging the myth of balanced living and we’ll explore together how we might want to consider being Ambitiously Imbalanced or perhaps ambitious for non-balance in certain areas of our lives in order to live more fully as fully devoted followers of Jesus.  To illustrate this, we’re going to look at the final episode of Jesus’ public teaching ministry and see what kind of ambition he affirms and what kind he sees as inappropriate.  Let’s pray together as we look into God’s Word. 

One of the things that I loved about my mom growing up is that she very commonly took advantage of what she called “teachable moments”.  We’d be in the card store, searching for that perfect mother’s day card and just as you spied it, a person would budge in, reach out and grab the last one of that card.  Which would start a heated discussion because another person was just reaching for it as well.  This would escalate until the employees would zip into the back and bring out another 50 of the exact same card.  At which point my mom would kind of pull us aside and say something like “now kids, do you see how silly it is to fight over a greeting card when there’s lots more in the back.”  Or we’d got out for mother’s day brunch as teens and we’d seriously overeat.  And she’d give us what in our house has come to be known as a ‘mini-lecture’ which is where you state the painfully obvious with a view to making a parenting point.  She would say “did you enjoy your brunch?” knowing full well that we were so sick of eggs benedict that we wouldn’t touch them again till next year.  Moms have a great way of taking the everyday moments of life and turning them into teaching opportunities.  Of observing a situation and drawing a lesson out of it for their listeners.  And many of you as moms do this with excellence. 

Jesus was a consummate master of this technique…  Of observing life and using it as a teaching moment.  And so here in Mark 12, Jesus is teaching in the temple courts, this is his last public teaching ministry that is recorded in the Gospel of Mark and he takes the opportunity to contrast two unlikely individuals: His first group would be considered by society to be well balanced, contribut9ing members of culture.  The second, someone on the margins who exhibits all of the marks of radical discipleship and is commended for it. 

In Mark 12:38, Jesus says “beware the teachers of religious law” (scribes).  In Jesus’ day, the scribes were not raised in homes of privilege and wealth.  You had to earn your way to being a scribe.  Your parents had to sacrifice in order for you to go to a good school.  But once you got there, it was a good gig.  You got to be an expert – a knowledge specialist in the Law of Moses.  You got to teach others and request money or property for it.  The laws and customs of the day said that “when a scribe walked down the street, or passed through a marketplace, everyone (with the exception of labourers) was expected to rise before hi.  Such position and privilege fostered the desire to make an impression” (Edwards, 378).  But behind this pretense of a societally well-positioned person lurked some huge character deficiencies, which is why Jesus says “beware” or watch out!  Specifically he says ‘watch out for their pride’ – they love to be first, to be known and to take the best seats in places of importance in society. BUT behind the scenes, Jesus says, there’s something dark going on in their hearts.  They may be able to recite and interpret the Mosaic Law or pray really well in public, but they certainly aren’t practicing what they preach.  They may look balanced and well-adjusted but Jesus says “these dudes, they devour widow’s homes – they cheat them out of their property”.  Jesus may be refereeing here to a very high profile case during this time period of a scribe who “succeeded in persuading a high standing woman [in Rome[ named Fulvia to make substantial gifts to the temple in Jerusalem.  The bequest was embezzled, however, and Rome – from Emperor Tiberius” down to the common person – was outraged at how a religious person who seemed so respectable from the outside could do such incredible financial harm to a widow.  Jesus is very harsh on people who work hard at external optics – particularly religious people – but who’s everyday lives don’t substantiate their piety.  They talk the talk.  They don’t walk the walk.

But then in Mark 12:41 the scene shifts…  Jesus is still in the temple, observing the crowd but he observes a teachable moment with his disciples which is in stark contrast to the warning he just gave.  Look with me at Mark 12:41-44  [two slides]

So here we have this widow, who is putting in her two cents.  She drops two of the smallest coins in circulation in.  In our day and age, except if you life in the EU or New Zealand, we think in terms of the penny.  Now the temple was the centre of Jewish religious observance.  And as such, there was a financial element to things.  Those who worked in the temple drew their living from the collection of offerings in the temple.  And some of this had gotten  corrupted as well.  Much of giving was announced publically.  The priest or Levite would check over your gift (this was before cheques or automatic withdrawal from your account was possible, of course!) and they would make a pronouncement: “Matthew of Galilee has just made a generous deposit of $2,000 denarii”  Thank you for your generosity.  So you can see how rich people would LOVE to put in large amounts – they would get noticed and announced publically.  Just like the scribes loved. So this is going on and then a widow comes and puts in two pennies.  It didn’t make the 6 o’clock news.  It likely didn’t even get announced.  It was just too insignificant of a gift.  The contrast is palpable – Mark’s description of the scene accentuates the poverty and the insignificance of the widow’s gift.  The scribes, wealthy and ostentatious. The crowds in the temple – rich and extravagant in their gifts.  And then one poor widow with two small coins. 

No one notices her input.  No one that is, except for Jesus.  And so Jesus uses this as a teaching moment for his followers, including us.  Jesus calls his disciples over from the noise and distractions – the public proclamations of who is looking like a well-adjusted member of society by the way they look or by their socio-economic status and Jesus says “I want you to understand something…  In purely financial terms, the value of her offering is negligible.    But in the divine exchange rate, things look differently.  Everything about this woman has been described in terms of less, but to Jesus, the value of the gift is not the amount given.  But rather the cost to the giver.  Jesus says “she has given everything she has.  All she has to live on”.  She lays down her whole life. 

Now back to our question of balance as the capstone of suburban parenting and life…  If you knew somebody who was down to $100 to live on for this month and they told you “I’m going to give $50 away to charity” you would likely say  “give your head a shake, friend!  You need that money!  You’re likely the object of charity – don’t go giving to one!”  And if they told you “I’ve got $600 this month to pay for a roof over my head, to eat and to get around but I’m planning on giving $500 to feed kids in Africa” you’d likely say “what are you, stupid?!?  Let other people pick up that slack – you need to think of yourself!”  Sometimes biblical scholars get all carried away trying to figure out the contemporary equivalent of the amount that the widow gave – was it two pennies?  It was 2/64^th of a days’ wages for a labourer so what is minimum wage then figure out work minus EI, CPP, is 1/32 equal to a dollar or dime or ten dollars?  This misses the point completely.  The thing that struck me this week as I read this passage was that the widow put in TWO coins.  Balanced living would suggest that in her socio-economic state, she should keep them both for her own needs.  Or, if she wanted to be crazy generous, she should toss one in the temple treasury and keep one for herself.  After all, none of the rich people were giving 50% of what they had to live on.  Balance would suggest that this lady is crazy.  But she actively and purposefully willingly chooses radical faith.  And Jesus commends her for it. 

Jesus holds up the things which the culture values as noble and worthy pursuits – the things that impressed others – and he says “meh”.  You want to see something impressive?  Take a look at this woman

Ambitious Imbalance

• Discipleship almost always looks like imbalance to those steeped in western suburban values
• What elements of your life might look like imbalance to others but would receive commendation by Jesus?