Luke 18:9-14
Information or Good News?
James Sledge October
27, 2013
When
I first looked at the gospel reading appointed for today, the day when we make
our financial commitments to God, I wondered if divine providence might be at
work. Tithing figures prominently in many church stewardship campaigns, and I
think it a central spiritual discipline. Yet in today’s parable, the tither
doesn’t come off so well, even though he’s an ideal church member, a regular worshipper who engages in
significant spiritual disciplines and is serious about living an ethical, moral
life. Where can we get some more folks like him? But Jesus holds him up as a
bad example, saying that a sleazy tax collector is right in the eyes of God rather
than this fellow most churches would love as a member.
If you’ve read very much in the gospels,
you’ve surely noticed that the Pharisees have a hard time embracing Jesus.
There’s been a tendency over the years to think of these Pharisees as evil, bad
guys, but in reality, they were the dedicated church folk of their day. They
were a reform movement with much in common with our Protestant reformers of 500
years ago. They opposed what they saw as corrupt, priestly Judaism and its
focus on ritual and sacrifice. They urged believers to get back to the scriptures
and follow them. Some of their teachings were very similar to those of Jesus.
So why did they end up in conflict with him? Why didn’t his good news sound good
to them?
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Some
decades ago, I encountered an essay by the great southern writer, Walker Percy.
“The Message in the Bottle” is part of a book by the same name containing
essays about language and the human
condition. This particular essay describes a fellow who is shipwrecked on an
island with no memories of his life before he washed up there. This island has
a quite advanced society, and the castaway is welcomed and cared for. He goes
to school, gets married, has a family, and becomes a contributing member of society.
Being a curious and educated fellow, he is intrigued by the large number of bottles
he discovers washing up on the shore, each with a single, one sentence message
corked inside.
These
messages say all sorts of things. “Lead melts at 330 degrees. 2 + 2 = 4… The
British are coming… The market for eggs in Bora Bora [a neighboring island] is
very good… The pressure of a gas is a function of heat and volume… A war party
is approaching from Bora Bora… Truth is beauty,”[1]
and so on.
This
scenario forms the basis of a long discussion about language and how we
understand and make sense of all the information we receive. Percy discusses
various ways we might classify and organize these messages, and how we might judge
what’s true, important, or significant. But he says that many such schemes may
not work for our castaway because they fail to acknowledge the difference
between “a piece of knowledge and a piece of news.”
In
terms of knowledge, statements about the melting point of lead or the factors
influencing the pressure of a gas are true, verifiable, and quite significant from
a scientific point of view. Statements about the egg market in Bora Bora seem
rather trivial. But if our castaway makes a living selling eggs, the news about
the egg market may be critically important to him, along with the news of a war
party approaching from Bora Bora.
If
our castaway’s island has a severe water shortage, the message, “There is fresh
water in the next cove,” may be life-saving news, even if it’s insignificant to
you or me. But what if our castaway isn’t worried about his thirst? More to the
point, what if our castaway is dying of thirst but does not know that water is
the solution to his problem? Will that message about fresh water now simply be
one more bit of trivial information?
One
of the problems Christian faith faces in our age is that it is a message about
life-saving water to people who may not realize they are thirsty. By and large,
contemporary Americans do not imagine we need “saving.” We may need a bit more
of this or that: money, possessions, experiences, faith, spirituality, etc. but
we don’t need saving.
It
is also common to think of Christian faith in terms of information we receive. And
so faith problems are about not knowing or understanding church teachings, the
Bible, etc. But in his essay, Percy insists that this confuses knowledge with
news. Faith is not information we accept but rather a response to news, like a
thirsty castaway running to that cove he has learned has fresh water. But Pharisees,
and a lot of other good, religious folks, have a hard time hearing Jesus’
message as the life-saving, good news Jesus seems to think it is.
The
problem with the Pharisee in our parable is not that he tithes or fasts or
prays. Each is commendable in its own way. The problem is that all this allows
him to think he does not need good news; he does not need fresh water; he does
not need saving.
I
wonder how often I miss the depth of God’s love and grace because I imagine
that I don’t really need them. Not that I think they are bad things. They are
nice, like icing on a cake, but I could survive without icing.
If this parable is to be trusted, then
it seems that one of the biggest obstacles to hearing Jesus’ message as news, to
being healed, made whole, saved, transformed, or becoming a new creation, is
realizing the depths of our thirst and hunger when Jesus offers us living water
and invites us to his banquet table.
____________________________________________________________________________
I
was recently introduced to a quote from John Calvin via Facebook. I’ve seen it
reposted regularly, and it says, “There is no worse screen to block out the
Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.” That
sounds to me quite similar to the Pharisee in our parable except he places his
confidence in own his religious prowess. But Jesus and countless spiritual
teachers tell us that those things we are proud of often get in the way.
Wealth, success, great accomplishments – even of the religious sort – may help
us think we can do it ourselves. We don’t really need help, or others, or God.
And whatever it is that lets us feel that way, it turns Jesus’ life-saving,
good news into just some more religious information.
But some of us, maybe most of us, have
an emptiness, a hole somewhere within us. Our culture tells us to fill this
hole with more, more things, more knowledge, more information, more skill, more
experiences, more accomplishments, more spiritualities, but that never quite
works. And we may grow suspicious that there is a more serious, more
fundamental problem… with us, with our world? There is a hunger that cannot be
satisfied, a thirst that cannot be quenched. Some may even despair and feel
lost. But that may well create the chance to be found. For it is at precisely
such moments that Jesus ceases to be a
peddler of more religious information
and teachings. He becomes the one with living water, with the bread of life and
the cup of salvation.
And then, our worship, our financial
offerings, our very lives are transformed. They are no longer religious or
spiritual things we do, well or poorly. Instead they become joyful,
grace-filled, thankful, exuberant, Spirit-drenched, pell-mell running toward
the one who has and who is wonderful, life-changing, life-saving, good news.
Thanks be to God.
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