Please take a moment to read the following scripture this sermon is based on:
I’d like to start by
asking you to watch the short clip above from a movie I think you’ll recognize: Mary Poppins.
This movie is one of my
favorites – Julie Andrews and Dick VanDyke, it doesn’t get much better than
that! But you know, I always wondered
about Mary Poppins.
I’ve always wondered
what her tape measure might have said if someone else was doing the measuring? When she’s the one doing the measuring she’s “practically
perfect in every way.”
When I watch the
movie, though, I see a woman who is pretty smug, condescending, a little
disrespectful of authority, and…she lies!
Even worse, she makes the kids look like they’re making things up by
denying their adventures actually happened.
It seems like Miss Poppins is only “practically perfect” as long as
SHE’s the one holding the tape.
How we are measured depends
on who is doing the measuring.
In high
school I wrote a really great paper. It
was all about Kennedy’s assassination and why people thought there might have
been a second gunman. I did hours and
hours of research. I looked through
books at our public library that hadn’t been checked out in a decade.
My paper was close to twenty pages long –
real pages too, not the double spaced, 14 point, big margin pages you use when
your paper is supposed to be a certain number of pages and you’re running
short. It was AWESOME!
It got a D.
And looking back, I’m pretty sure my teacher
gave me a D instead of an F out of pity.
Why didn’t it get an A? It was
AWESOME!
Well, in the process of writing
the paper, I sort of kind of more or less completely forgot the actual
assignment. Specifically, I was supposed
to be writing a paper on why the person I chose to write about was
admirable.
My paper was AWESOME –
practically perfect in every way – so long as I was the one holding the
measuring tape. Unfortunately, I was NOT
the one holding the tape, my teacher was, and she was measuring something
COMPLETELY different.
My paper didn’t
measure up.
We are being measured every
day. Our bosses, our friends, our
family, the clerk at the store, complete strangers on the street – they all
measure us, and we don’t always know what measuring tape they’re using. We can fail to measure up without ever knowing
that we are being measured or what we’re being measured by.
That’s a happy thought, isn’t it?
As Christians, we are
measured by a completely different measuring tape than the one the world
uses. Very little makes that more clear
than the Beatitudes.
Unlike our
experience with the world though, God makes no secret about what His measuring
tape measures, and who’s holding it.
God tells us what he expects
from us, and He does it very clearly.
Too often I hear people talk as if there is some question about how we
are to act as Christians. Really? Read any good books lately? How about, let me think…the original Cliff’s
Notes, the most complete Study Guide ever, and the biggest cheat sheet ever
written? Not to put too fine a point on
it…read your Bible lately? This is an
open book test, so we might want to consider opening the Book.
I will admit, however, that our scripture
today – the Beatitudes, can be a little hard to understand. Luckily, God knows that we learn best when
things are repeated over and over again, in different ways.
In the Book of Micah, back in
the Old Testament, the prophet was writing to the southern nation of
Judah. He was trying to warn them that
they were not measuring up and remind them that they knew what measure God was
using.
Sounds kind of irritated,
doesn’t he? Of course, the people of
Judah have certainly given Him reason. He
has saved them, more than once. He’s
demonstrated his love for them. He’s
given them everything they needed. And
yet they still make choices that fail to measure up.
I love this scripture because I can feel the
frustration God has with us. I love that
it points out that God doesn’t expect all that much from us. Sacrifice is well and good, but what he wants
is for us to live as if we actually love Him.
To do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with Him. I suspect that means He’d like more than a
weekly courtesy visit for an hour on Sunday.
It’s simple and to the point,
and even more than just asking ourselves “What Would Jesus Do” it gives us a
basic framework to operate in.
Let’s look at Mr. Smith and
his family. Mr. Smith has to call
customer support for his laptop because it can’t find his wireless network to
get on the internet. Within mere seconds
of dialing the customer support number he’s irritated because he’s being asked
to navigate a phone tree with a series of questions that must be answered
correctly to move on.
Ancients had the
Sphinx, we have the customer support phone tree.
After successfully navigating
the phone tree, Mr. Smith finds himself subjected to bad instrumental versions
of music popular in the eighties, occasionally interrupted by a recorded
reassurance that his call is important to them but he’s welcome to try their
webpage – which of course he can’t do because he can’t get on the
internet.
After waiting on the phone,
not so patiently, he finally gets a person.
Mr. Smith is still not happy because the person he’s speaking with is
definitely NOT in the United States, and Mr. Smith is pretty sure his name isn’t Bob, even
though that’s how he introduced himself.
Several minutes into the
phone call, Mr. Smith is even more irritated and frustrated. “Bob” doesn’t seem to be making any progress
in solving his problem, and his accent means that Mr. Smith has to listen very
closely to understand anything “Bob” asks him to do.
Before long, Mr. Smith’s voice is raised,
he’s making sarcastic little comments, and cutting “Bob” off before he can
finish his instructions. Eventually, the
problem is solved and Mr. Smith is off the phone and still irritated. Every conversation he has for the next week
is peppered with disparaging comments about Indian customer support people who
don’t know how to do their job.
By the world’s measure, Mr.
Smith may not qualify for the nicest guy award, but at the same time it’s what you
have to do to get what you need, right? In
our society, when we get aggravated we have the right to express it, don’t
we? The meek may inherit the earth, but
they don’t get their problems solved in any kind of good time.
What if we look at the
measuring tape described in Micah? Mr.
Smith isn’t thinking about the person on the other end of the line. He’s focused completely on his own
aggravation.
Having been the tech
support person on the other end, I can tell you he probably doubled the time he
spent on the phone. Being humble, and
following directions, assuming the tech knows what they are doing rather than
assuming they don’t – in my experience all of those things makes the process go much more smoothly.
Lord knows I was
less likely to hit the HOLD button for a little peace when the person I was
trying to help practiced a little kindness!
We go to church. We’ve heard the Beatitudes. We’ve talked about the Golden Rule and
all the other ways God has tried to tell us what He expects of us. Yet when we go out into the world, into our
workplaces, into our grocery stores and neighborhoods, things don’t seem so
clear cut.
It’s easy to justify behavior
based on what the world tells us is acceptable, to tell ourselves and others
that we don’t really know how to apply all of those messages to our lives. We tell ourselves that we’re not as bad as
the next guy, or that it’s just business.
The problem is, God knows
us. He’s had plenty of experience with
the little word games we like to play.
He repeats the same message over and over, in different ways. If the Beatitudes aren’t clear, and Micah
seems directed at a bygone era with it’s talk of sacrificing a calf, then we can try Psalm 15.
That lays it out pretty
clearly, doesn’t it? Maybe a little too
clearly, since I think most of us fail to measure up at least some of the time.
Let’s check back in with Mr.
Smith and his family.
On Sunday Mr.
Smith goes to church with his family and sits in their pew, three-quarters of
the way to the back of the church. He
sings the hymns, listens to the sermon about the Beatitudes, and prays for God’s
guidance in his life.
As the last song
ends, Mrs. Smith makes her way to the back of the church to talk with a couple
of her friends. They are avidly
discussing an acquaintance who is divorcing her husband. Mrs. Smith makes an unkind, but technically
true remark, and when her friends lightly scold her for doing it in CHURCH,
Mrs. Smith says, “You know it’s true.”
Mrs. Smith confirms the date for a service project they’re working on
together, and then collects her family to head out.
Mr. Smith and his family jump
in their car and make their way to their local theater for a matinee. At the theatre, he asks for two adult tickets
and two children’s tickets, even though his oldest is thirteen and should be an
adult ticket.
Once the family arrives at
home, Mr. Smith realizes that he promised to help his neighbor clear his
gutters out. The problem is that he also
has several hours of work he brought home that has to be done before Monday
morning.
If he spends a couple of hours
helping his neighbor, he’ll have to spend half the night getting his work
done. Mr. Smith goes to his neighbor’s
house and explains that he won’t be able to keep his promise this weekend, and
his neighbor graciously accepts his apology.
So we have Mrs. Smith
speaking the truth…but not exactly from her heart, and if the woman she’s
talking about is her friend – well, she may not be doing her evil, but she’s
definitely not doing her any good!
Mr.
Smith is lying about his child’s age to save a couple dollars at the theater –
in front of the child, so there’s a nice example – which probably doesn’t
measure up on walking blamelessly. Then
he fails to keep his promise because it would cause him some problems.
Honestly, most of what the
Smiths are up to doesn’t sound all that bad.
We can look at it all put together and recognize that they aren’t
measuring up to Psalm 15, or Micah, or the Beatitudes. But really, except for being a little snotty
and self-absorbed, are they hurting anyone?
Well, yes. When we’re honest with ourselves, we
recognize that not measuring up has an effect on our lives.
Maybe we’re not as happy as we could be, not
as blessed. We recognize it, and we work
on doing better when we think about it, but we can also console ourselves that
we aren’t hurting anyone else most of the time.
OK, maybe we might hurt someone’s feelings, but it’s not like we’re
killing people here.
No, but we might be
putting roadblocks in front of people who need God in their lives – and we
don’t even know it.
I spent two and half years working at a large home improvement store on nights and
weekends. I’ve had Mr. and Mrs. Smith in
my checkout line. I’ve also seen him,
and Mrs. Smith, around and about at WalMart, the grocery store, the
pharmacy. They get around! I could always tell which customers had been
to church on Sunday morning because they were usually still wearing their
church clothes when they came in. Some
of them were even carrying Bibles!
There were times when I
wanted to reassure my co-workers that not all church people act that ugly on
Sunday morning. That’s sad, I
think. Particularly because so many
church people on Sunday morning were great examples of God’s grace and mercy,
and yet all it took was one person dressed in church clothes, lacking in
patience, with a nasty or sarcastic comment to ruin the impression.
Most of the people I worked with didn’t go to
church, and it’s not because they only got one Sunday out of four off. I’ve seen perfectly nice church-going people
make a nasty comment to a clerk, then walk away justifying it – “If they don’t
like it maybe they’ll work harder next time.”
Oh…sorry, I misunderstood. Here I
thought they were being mean-spirited and spiteful, when in REALITY they were
teaching a lesson!
I was reading some comments on
a news story online this last week, and I was amazed at the number of people
who very clearly stated that while they believed in God and tried to live a
good life, they never intended to go to church because people who go to church
are hypocrites.
That’s a very broad
brush you and I are being painted with, and unfortunately sometimes we deserve
it.
In the 2011 January/February
edition of the Upper Room, there’s a story that illustrates the importance of living your faith in public. In the
reading for January second, Mr. Riley (who lives in New York), talks about an
encounter he had in his apartment complex.
One of the maintenance crew stopped him.
He said he had been in Mr. Riley’s apartment to repair something, and
had noticed all the Christian books in the bookcase. He asked Mr. Riley if he was a Christian and
Mr. Riley said yes. The man said he’d
like to be a Christian too, and Mr. Riley was able to talk to him about his
faith.
Now, what if Mr. Riley had
met this person earlier? What if this
person had come to Mr. Riley’s apartment and done a poor job on fixing his
sink, and Mr. Riley – justifiably irritated – had let the man have it, and
threatened to have him fired if he didn’t do it right? Would the man have approached him about
becoming a Christian? I wouldn’t
have. If that’s how a Christian acts
then I’m not interested!
I said in the beginning that
we are always being measured, and that we don’t always know what we’re being
measured against, but in the case of living as Christians, as members of a
community of faith, we DO know what the measure is.
If you ask any person on the street what God
expects from those who love him and claim to live a Christian life, they can
tell you: real Christians are honest,
loving, kind, generous, forgiving, patient, peace-loving. Real Christians are supposed to help people
who need it without judging them. Real
Christians don’t hurt other people in the pursuit of what they want or think
they need. Real Christians don’t say
ugly, nasty things about people.
It
doesn’t matter if they’ve never been in a church, they KNOW how God is
measuring us.
Now if you ask that same
person if they know anyone who REALLY acts like a real Christian. What answer are you going to get? Some of them, some of the time?
When you go into the world on Sunday morning,
the people you encounter are probably going to know you were at church this
morning. The people you meet
may not be able to quote the Beatitudes, or Micah, or Psalms, but they do know
what measuring tape God uses for his people.
They know when we don’t measure up.
So do we.
The good news is that God
does not measure us once and then cast us aside when we don’t measure up. We don’t have to be “practically perfect in
every way.”
Adam Savage, from the
television show “Mythbusters,” likes to say, “Failure is always an
option.” It is!
People are going to see
us fail to measure up. What they need to
see is that while we may fail, we keep trying.
They need to see that we do not accept the world’s measure of what is
acceptable. They need to see that we
don’t just talk about measuring up on Sunday, but that we live our lives by
God’s measure every day, in every situation.
You can get tiny little
measuring tapes at craft stores and home improvement stores for less than a
dollar. Try picking one up and carrying
it in your pocket as a physical reminder that you are being measured. Let’s see if we can’t stretch ourselves tall, and measure up on God’s measuring tape.
