IT’S WORTH THE RISK
Dr. Stephen D. Jones
Second Baptist Church,
St. Louis
Sept. 30, 2007
Text: Luke 9:57-62
The biggest risk that you can take is with yourself. There are
risks to be taken with others. As an extrovert, I have certainly and frequently
suffered from foot-in-mouth disease. I have also said things to others, out of
love, that have resulted in cooling down a relationship. They weren’t careless
statements. They were said out of love, something I thought someone needed to
hear. I took a risk.
Occasionally, I’ve hit it lucky: I have said risking things to people and it was
what they needed to hear. Jan and I have beloved friends. We met when they
first started dating and we developed a lasting friendship that continues to
this day. But they dated, and they dated, and they dated. They weighed
marriage, deliberated marriage, procrastinated on marriage, and avoided
marriage. And this went on and on and on. They moved away, but returned on a
visit. And they made the mistake of spending the night in our home. Late that
night, I stayed up with them, to take a risk. We sat in our living room and I
told them that I had some things I wanted to say to them. And I hoped they would
just listen. I told them that marriage doesn’t come with life-time
guarantees. And that they were hurting their relationship because neither could
count on the other for a lasting commitment. And relationship without commitment
is superficial.
My
comments made them uncomfortable. They clearly weren’t ready for me to be so
forward, so direct. Finally, I stopped, which was followed by a long, awkward
silence. Neither wanted to speak first. But finally, they began to open up and
some months later, I was performing their joyous wedding. I took a big risk that
late night, and I’m fairly certain that our conversation played some role in
their taking their relationship to a deeper level.
That’s
a risk, but it isn’t the biggest risk. The biggest risk is the one I take with
myself. It’s the conversations I hold with myself in which I lift the veil of
pretense and artificiality. Isn’t it peculiar that we human beings play games
with ourselves? Isn’t it odd that there are realities that we know are true but
we won’t admit to ourselves?
A cab
driver picked up a nun. She got into the cab, and the cab driver wouldn’t stop
looking in the mirror at the nun. Finally, she asked him why he was staring and
he replied, “My dear sister, I have a question to ask but I don’t want to offend
you.”
The
Sister laughed, “You won’t offend me. When you’ve been a nun as long as I have,
I’ve heard it all.”
So,
the cabbie took a deep breath and then said, “Well, I’ve always had a fantasy to
kiss a nun.”
She
responded, “Well, let’s see what we can do about that. First, you’d have to be
single and second, you’d have to be Catholic.”
The
cab driver was excited and said, “Yes, Yes, I’m single and I’m Catholic!”
The
nun said, “Very well, pull over into the next alley.” He did and the nun
fulfilled his fantasy. But when they get back on the road, the cabbie started
crying.
“My
dear son,” she said. “Why are you crying?”
“Forgive me, sister, but I have sinned. I lied. I must confess. I’m married and
I’m a Baptist.”
The
nun said, “That’s OK. I’m on my way to a Halloween party. My name is Kevin.”
We may
not pretend to that extent, but we all mask our true nature, if only to protect
ourselves.
How do
you think we become addicted? We know the addiction is hurting us, possibly
killing us. But we pretend that it isn’t really a problem.
So
often, we would rather live with artificiality than authenticity in our
lives. We human beings have a relationship with ourselves. And the same
pretense, the same fabrications, the same artful dodging, that we often do with
others, we can also do with ourselves.
The
biggest risk you have to take is with yourself. If you struggle with low
self-esteem, it may sound a bit callous to say this, but you are playing a game
with yourself. You are downplaying yourself, your gifts, your possibilities. In
your heart of hearts, you know that you are better, more beautiful, more able,
than the normal opinion you hold of yourself.
And if
you struggle with inflated self-esteem, it may also sound callous to say this,
but you are playing a game with yourself. You are pretending to be something
more, something better, something other than what you actually are.
When I
was candidating in one of our churches, Jan and I were met at the airport by a
professor in the church. He was a cold and brittle man, very puffed up and
arrogant. He typically made others uncomfortable and came off very
judgmental. He asked me if I had read some obscure book of theology and
proceeded to quiz me about its contents, even when I had told him that it was a
book with which I was unfamiliar. He made me feel like two cents by the time we
reached the church. Two weeks later, I found him in my office, looking through
my library. And when he saw me he said, “I was just trying to see if you have
read anything worthwhile.”
It was
only later when I truly got to know him that I realized that his arrogance was
really a cover-up for low self-esteem. He thought so little of himself that the
only way he could conduct himself with others was to make them look worse.
How
many of us have met someone with a gruff exterior, but inside, they are teddy
bears? How many of us have met someone who is gregarious and friendly, and yet
underneath is scheming and conniving? How many of us have had someone say,
“Let’s be friends,” when you discover later that they are using you for their
own purpose? How many of us have met people who seem not to know themselves, who
seem to present themselves one way but in fact are really quite different? Or
those who appear to have no idea how they are coming across to others?
Of
course, all of us have our public side and our private side. We act differently
in our homes than we do in public. Sometimes, the friendliest people in public
are the most judgmental in private. And we are all multi-faceted, multi-layered
personalities.
There
are so many ways that we humans can disconnect with reality. We can live with
lies. We convince ourselves of their truth.
The
biggest risk you can take is with yourself. Sometimes, the biggest risk we can
take is to allow others to see us for what we are. Or the biggest risk might be
to allow others to tell us what we need to hear.
We are
racist or sexist, and often won’t admit it. We have prejudices and stereotypes
that we refuse to see.
No one
is fully genuine. No one is wholly authentic. And no one fully knows herself or
himself. We look incredulously at the young girl who is bulimic. She is so
skinny as to be unhealthy and yet she has convinced herself that she is fat. It
is easy for us to see the reality. But she cannot and will not see it.
She is
an extreme example of the disconnect with which we can live in relationship to
ourselves. The biggest risk you can take is with yourself.
But
maybe, that isn’t quite true. It could be that the greatest risk you can take is
with God. The rest of us can never fully know you. I have been married to Janice
Eberhart Jones for 37 years, and she continues to surprise me. I continue “not
to get it” when it comes to her needs, her likes and dislikes, her inmost
aspirations. I can never fully know you, nor you me.
But
there is One who can. There is One for whom pretense and deception are not
relevant. God is the Most Authentic, the Most Genuine, the Deepest Reality that
we can know. There is nothing fake, nothing incongruent, about God. This is what
Tillich meant when he called God “The Ground of All Being,”
Being-Itself. Authenticity- itself. Deception is Un-being. God is Being. God is
the Ultimate Reality.
When
God says, “I know you,” it is to the core of your being. When God says, “I love
you,” there is no game being played. There is no hidden agenda. There is nothing
held back. God holds nothing back. We can never fully know God, but God is
utterly revealing. That is a paradox. God is ready to fully disclose Godself to
us even though we have no idea what to make of it.
The
best way to describe the incarnation is God revealing Godself to us through
Jesus. Jesus grew into a Whole Person. I don’t happen to think he was born that
way. But he followed God’s invitation to the wholeness of life. He became
Real. He became Genuine. And he fully disclosed the Otherness of God in human
form. If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus. If you want to know
what God’s love is like, look to Jesus dying on the cross, for you and for
me. That is Real. That is Genuine.
Moses
said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your
ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I
say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus
you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:13-14).
The name, LORD, when spelled with capital letters stands for the divine name
Yahweh (YHWH) and it is connected with the Hebrew word (hayah), “to be”.
God
is Being, the most profound Being. Not a Being. But Being Itself. There isn’t
anything more Real than God. No human being could exist apart from the Ground
of all Being. We live and breathe in the Ground of our Being. We are in God, of
God, and have no other destination in life but to return to God. Everything else
is a fabrication. Everything else is deception. But God is Truth. God is Real.
So
perhaps the greatest risk we can take is with God. For if we open up ourselves
to God, if we crack open the door of faith, we encounter the Ground of Our
Being. We encounter our Most Real Nature and perhaps all the more frightening,
all the more risking, it is as if we peer into a mirror and see ourselves, the
most Authentic nature of ourselves.
How
can we play games with God? How, with God, can we pretend to be something other
than what we actually are? Is it any wonder that we avoid God? Is it a surprise
that we can go days, weeks, months, years, a life-time, and never turn to God?
Never meet God? Never encounter the Ground of our Being? Never encounter the
One who calls us to our most authentic self? The One who calls us to reality?
You
talk about taking a risk? Now, that’s the risk. We are afraid to look deeply
into God because we will see who we really are, we will see the deepest reality
of our lives.
You
can’t play games with God. You can a lot of games with religion. Churches can be
full of gamesmanship. But you can’t play games with God. As your new pastor, I
will not always be real with you. I will play games, because, I too, get
frightened. I too pull away from the truth. I too cannot always gaze that deeply
into your hearts or into the heart of God for fear that I will see myself. I
wish it were otherwise, but it is not.
Our
text today could be very simple. It’s right over there (the Beatitude window of
the sanctuary): “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt.
5:3) Getting real with yourself, you will be real with God. Getting real with
God, you will be real with yourself. Pure of heart, without deception, you will
enter purely into God’s Realm.
Most
of us can be real in part. Most of us, some of the time, can see the truth in
ourselves. In God, we can find the path to genuineness. We can become more
real. But it’s a huge risk because it calls us to choose God rather than
Deception, choose God rather than Deceit, choose fullness of being rather than
some partial, jagged reality. And there are people who do this better than
others. And there are people who can be our mentors in becoming more real.
One of
my favorite children’s stories is The Velveteen Rabbit
(Marjorie Williams, Doubleday). The
Velveteen rabbit is a toy made of sawdust, satin ears and thread whiskers. It is
in a little boy’s playroom, but the little boy has more expensive toys. The
mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon everyone else; they
were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The Skin Horse had
lived in the nursery longer than any other. One day, the Rabbit asked the Skin
Horse, “What is Real? Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a
stick-out handle?
The
Skin Horse responded, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens
to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but
REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does
it hurt?”, asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are
Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
"Does
it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It
doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long
time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to those who break easily, or have
sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are
Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get
loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all,
because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to those who don’t
understand.”
One
evening when the Boy was going to bed, he couldn’t find the china dog that
always slept with him. Nana was in a hurry, so she simply looked about her and
said, “Here, take your old Bunny. He’ll go to sleep with you.” And she dragged
the Rabbit out by one ear and put him into the Boy’s arms. That night, and for
many nights after, the Velveteen Rabbit slept in the Boy’s bed. Soon, wherever
the Boy went, the Rabbit went, too. One night, the Rabbit was left out on the
lawn and Nana had to come and look for him with a candle because the Boy
couldn’t go to sleep unless he was there.
“You
must have your old Bunny!” she said. “Fancy all that fuss for a toy!”
The
Boy sat up in his bed and stretched out his hands. “Give me my Bunny!” he
insisted. “You mustn’t say that. He isn’t a toy. He’s REAL!”
Perhaps we also are made of sawdust and we become real by the way we are loved,
not all at once, but through a lifetime.
Jesus
was real. The Most Real Human Being. And he turned people to see the reality of
their lives. He turned Zaccheaus, the tax collector, to help him see that he was
ruining peoples’ lives with his unjust practices. He turned the woman at the
well, to help her see that her ruinous romantic entanglements were preventing
her from drinking from the well of eternal life. And when the woman left Jesus,
she raced down the hill to her village exclaiming, “He told me everything about
myself” (John 4:39). Jesus was Real. He turned Legion, possessed of demons, and
helped him become calm and in his right mind. He turned Andrew and Peter around,
turning from their careers on the Sea of Galilee into two who went fishing for
people, to join Jesus in helping people get real. He was the most Real Human
Being. He said such real things to people, even passersby. One man exclaimed
brashly, without counting the cost, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And
instead of gushing with joy, Jesus said something real to him, “Foxes have
holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
his head.” And to another Jesus issued an invitation “to get real” with his
life. And the man said, “Let me first go and bury my father.” It was the most
honorable duty a son could fulfill. And yet Jesus said to him, “Come to your
senses. God is the Reality beyond life and beyond death. Spread the good news
about God.” And another said to him, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first
say farewell to my family.” And Jesus said, “Never look back, but put your hand
to the plow, and look instead to God.” Everywhere he went, he was the Most
Real, Most Authentic Person and everywhere he went, he turned People to God, the
Ground of all Being, the Source of Life.
And he
continues on that journey with you and with me. And everywhere Jesus is
encountered today, he is the Most Real, the Most Authentic Presence, and
everywhere today, he turns people to God, the Ground of their Being.
And
that is the ultimate risk, the greatest risk, to meet Jesus and in so doing, to
meet Authenticity itself, and to see ourselves for what we truly are.
And he
promises to take our sawdust innards and to love us into something very
Real. This is the risk of life. And it is as much a risk for preachers as for
any other sinners. There is no greater Gateway than the Gateway that leads to
truth.
Sin is pretense. Sin is un-being. Sin is
fakery. Sin is taking away reality from others. Risk is turning to Life. Risk is
turning to Reality. The whole of the Gospel can be summarized in two words: “Get
real.” And
it’s worth the risk. Amen.
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