I’m starting today with a short stanza from poet – Mary Oliver
“This is the first, wildest and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists,
and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness”
Attentiveness. We’ve been talking about being aware, attentive, being in the moment for quite a while.
We didn’t used to think about this, this “being present, being in the moment” when I was a young woman. We just… lived… worked… kept moving forward. A few people did think like this: poets, artists, holy men, children, but few others.
We didn’t know any different.
Still, we have a tendency to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses.
the good old days aren’t always as good as we think they were.
People sometimes say, “Oh how awesome it would be to live in the days of the early church!
If we could only return to that time of pristine purity and precious unity.”
Hmm. They must be reading a different Bible than mine!
My Bible tells of that time as filled with problems, sin, hypocrisy, doctrinal impurity, division and strife.
Paul even had to warn the Galatians not to devour and consume one another. (5:15)
But, at least we knew who was good and bad in the old days, right?
The good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats.
In that short little letter that Jerry read this morning—This 3rd John, the shortest book in the New Testament, btw,
John writes concerning a good guy with a wearing a proverbial hat, Gaious
and one villain in a black hat, Diotrephes
John knew that Gaius LIVED OUT what he professed to believe,
while Diotrephes, lived a much different life, one consumed by criticism and anger.
In Diotrephes we have a description of a person who deceives, who stirs up strife, by his very words.
What and how we communicate is important to God.
There are those who use their positions to spread strife.
This is not a good neighbor. This is not loving your neighbor, your brother or even loving your enemies.
Such a person spells only disruption.
It is slow death to any group: friends, church, or business.
John clarified their individual influence in this short letter, the difference between the white hatted Gaius and the black hatted Diotrephes. One helped, One hindered.
It’s not always that easy to tell though is it? Who is a hero and who is a villain. Maybe less so today.
Back in those rose colored old days:
In the 1960s and 1970s, there was A geochemist,
Clair Cameron Patterson, who was studying the age of the earth by measuring isotopes.
He was finding it difficult to do that anywhere, even in his laboratory,
because everything seemed contaminated by lead, even after he invented the clean room…
His research changed to working longer and harder to find where this contamination was coming from
He discovered that the lead added to gasoline was putting lead into the air, the food, plants soil, and every living thing.
When he brought his results to the fuel industry,
they responded, “ too bad, because, “that’s where the money is”
but they didn’t stop there; they tried to buy him off;
they tried to silence him in every way possible.
In all fiction there is never a hero without a villain, nor vice versa.
Real life, on the other hand, is usually more nuanced and seldom so black and white.
At the same time… there was another man, Thomas Midgley,
Oh he was lauded as a hero for many decades, yet as history bore out the truth,
he became known for his true contribution to the world,
he invented two scourges of humanity—leaded gasoline and
chloro fluoro carbons (CFCs)—One killing us quickly with lead and two, making a giant hole in the ozone layer
and here, the white hat and the black hat collide. Clair Patterson became Midgley’s great nemesis
Because of Clair’s simple telling the truth of what he’d discovered,
he was belittled, personally and publicly,
with gasoline and manufacturing giants even funding cartoons to
be published projecting him as a fool,
a chicken little who was sure the sky was falling when it wasn’t…
They accused him of fraudulent research, of over-reacting,
Yet, School children were doing worse on tests, IQ’s were going down, people were suffering symptoms no one could understand.
Many were dying.
But few listened to Clair Patterson’s warning
Lead was being found in places it should never have been, he kept trying to tell them.
It was not only in gasoline, it was in paint, in canned foods,
The lead industry was huge, and it was was poisoning us to death.
Yet, the smear campaign and refusal to hear or believe him worked.
Even his very clear evidence proof was not taken seriously
and
it wasn’t until 1996, over 20 years later, the U.S. officially banned the sale of leaded gasoline for the safety of the public.
Europe was next in the 2000s, followed by all other developing nations after that. In August 2021, 3 years ago…. the last country in the world to sell leaded gas, Algeria, banned it.
A century of leaded gasoline has taken millions of lives
and to this day leaves the soil in many cities
from New Orleans to London toxic.
The leaded gasoline story provides practical examples of
how
The past might have been less rosy than we like to think
untrustworthy People who are trusted can wreak havoc
and blind trust can be fatal
bad guys, in film and real life, when UNsuccessfully challenged and regulated – can cause serious and long-term harm.
Sometimes It takes individual leaders to ring a bell, for those willing to hear, and to create strong awareness and acceptance of the problem to counter the risks.
Yup, Most stories have a good guy and a bad guy.
The good guy is always the hero and the bad guy is always the villain.
There is a story that adds a third dimension
It might still make us uncomfortable
this is the indifferent category.
It’s about two government officials of great power and ill-repute:
Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor of Judea, and Herod Antipas the ’King’ over Galilee.
These are villains we can learn from. But sometimes we ask,
“Why did God ever allow such men to do what they did to Jesus?”
Here’s The truth is that we forget
God was in the purpose of it all
even in the face of such apparent injustice!
It is SO important to recognize that through these men God has not cursed the world, but rather given us a great gift!
See,
the core issue at question here is that of authority,
Just like we talked about last week
Who is really the ultimate authority? Is it Caesar? The appointed leader of the Jewish people?
Of course not, not then, and still not.
Nobody is in charge but God.
Any time we fail to recognize that Christ is the only perfect, indisputable and final authority, we are every bit the self-absorbed, stubborn and ignorant fool that Pilate was!
The idea of a yet higher authority than Ceasar or the King, isn’t even a consideration or option, until Jesus emphatically introduces it, in His story:
In John 8: Jesus says, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Even as Abraham’s descendants, you are looking for a way to kill me, because you give no room for my word.
Remember 2 weeks ago? The lesson was, “leave room for God”
Jesus continues, speaking to the pharisees and other Jewish appointed leaders: “I am telling you the truth, this is what I have seen in the Father’s presence…
and you are doing what you have heard from your father,
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.
He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.
he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!
“If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is this not clear to you?
The lesson Jesus proposed to Pilate, and now to us, is that the real and final authority in this universe does not rest with any one man
nor is it determined by the election or appointment of any group.
Rather,
real and final authority is that which is
inherent and irreversibly
from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!!!
The Lord, the good shepherd who loves, protects, guides, and cares for His flock through all seasons
We can tell by that scripture that TRUTH IS IMPORTANT
Also in
John 18 when Pilate asks, “So you are a king?”
Jesus responded, “You say I am a king. Actually, I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
Poor Pilate’s focus was on what he had the power, and appointment to decide and to do, based on the authority of men.
By contrast, Jesus breaks His silence in order to re-frame the debate as an issue about truth.
Not just any truth.
Not one person’s idea of ’truth’ against another.
But, an absolute, universal, and unalterable Truth.
With this, Jesus gave Pilate a tremendous opportunity, an opportunity to subject his authority and ability to Him, and stake his life and position on Him, the Truth of the Ages.
But not everyone wants the truth
Sometimes it’s easier to skip the truth for the outcome.
Jesus, in His earthly life said time and time again, “I tell you the truth.” He said it nearly 70 times.
The bottom line and lesson of this encounter is that ultimately,
Pilate wants nothing to do with Jesus.
He would rather just ignore Him and leave Him for others to figure out. Pilate just wanted his own position to continue,
and wanted nothing to interrupt that.
And how about Herod, the other black hatted villain?
It makes clear in Luke 23 that Herod was excited to meet Jesus, hoping he’d perform some amazing miracle..
Herod was a man of great power too.
Among Herod’s works are the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the expansion of its base in the Western Wall.
Except when Herod met with Jesus, He didn’t give him the show Herod wanted
He didn’t perform on demand as Herod wished,
this governor’s expectations were dashed,
to Herod, this gave him enough reason to unleash his rage against Jesus.
And for many hours Jesus paid the price of torture and agony
Here it is: Both Pilate and Herod refused,
not only the ultimate truth,
but to allow it even a small glimmer into their heart,
they chose instead to cling to their own skill and authority.
How does that work out for us?
How did that work out for them?
Well
Herod went down in history, not as a Great Ruler like his father, but a mostly-forgotten buffoon.
Pilate continued to struggle in his position and, according to tradition, committed suicide himself.
So we have victim, villain and hero
these are the 3 standard responses of people to troubles.
When faced with troubles the Victim will feel unfairly singled out. The victim will think the entire world is conspiring against him.
Their conversations with others will usually come around to how no one knows how difficult his situation really is, how hard he works, how no one appreciates her….
Psychologists say that Victims,
when they can get out of the victim state,
end up becoming either a Villain or a Hero.
Yikes!
But when someone starts to get fed up with playing the victim they do often start planning actions for revenge, actions that can hurt others.
That’s when the Villain is born.
A Villain will take revenge. A villain will become aggressive, violent, and will hit back at others with whatever he can.
A more positive transition is the one from Victim to Hero.
But a Hero does not have to come out of a victim. Heroes emerge otherwise, too.
A Hero wants to save.
A hero may swoop down on a suffering victim and do all that is necessary to save her.
you may think there is nothing wrong with being a Hero.
But think again.
All that the Hero might care about is saving the Victim.
A Hero might not seek the Victim’s permission or acceptance before getting into the saving act.
She won’t empower the victim to get over or through the situation, to become skilled in this life work herself.
most people who love to swoop in and be the hero, have what psychologist call a Messiah complex
Oh don’t get me wrong; there are actual heroes and heroines,
But they act out of love, rather than show…
A hero wearing a messiah cloak
loves the acclaim more than anything else.
They don’t want to enable and teach.
They don’t want to encourage or show.
They just want to be… the hero,
And let’s face it, most of us welcome heroes with great shouts of acylation, praise, thanks and adoration.
In the Hollywood plot that I referred to earlier,
the Victim-Villain-Hero triangle is always about the Good triumphing over the Bad.
How about in the spiritual realm?
We tend to think of faith as the battle between the good and evil, with the good ultimately prevailing.
But is that all of Christianity?