May 21, 2006
Discovering or creating a meaningful lifestyle is of great importance to
many youth and young adults today, especially those who are wishing thinking
about being productive leaders in our society.
So I wonder, who are the examples, who are the teachers who are emulated and
provide lessons today?
The sources drawn from in modeling lifestyle are varied. They range from
political leaders…any examples there? Business leaders…any examples there?
Religious leaders….any examples there?
Dartmouth College is about to graduate over 1,000 students. I wonder in what
course or what class students here or anywhere around the country are learning
about ethics, about morals, about values. Where are people learning their
character? Where are people learning the lessons of justice, of peace, of hope,
of possibility?
Are there opportunities that are created in academic communities or in
families or in places of worship that point to a lifestyle that values and
honors the dignity of all people?
In our contemporary society, could it be all summed up in the understanding
of the golden rule? And if we look to the Golden Rule, which says, “Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you,” is that a nice benchmark for a
lifestyle?
Buddhists would put it, “Hurt no others in ways you yourself would find
hurtful.” Christianity would say, “In everything, do to others as you would
have them do to you, for this is the Law of the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12).
Hindus would say, “This is the sum of duty: do not do unto others that which
would cause you pain if done to you.” Judaism would say, “A man should wander
about, treating all creatures as he himself would be treated.”
Native Americans would say, “Respect for all life is the foundation, the
great law of peace.” Islam would say, “Not one of you is a believer until he
loves for his brother as he loves for himself.”
Several years ago, the Passion of the Christ came out people walked
out of that movie shaken because they had seen so much blood. Is that the
Lifestyle of Jesus?
If we personify that lifestyle, does that mean that you and I are to stand
in the vanguard and be persecuted for saying we want to be a follower of
Jesus?
So what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus? People may say that they
want to emulate Jesus, or learn to live the lifestyle of Jesus, but struggle
with the part where it comes to crucifixion. We do celebrate the crucifixion,
but are we willing to suffer and understand our lifestyle as being
crucified?
And if we were to do that, what would that mean for our daily choices? Would
we be wrapped up in political correctness or would be begin to tell the truth
about the things we feel, knowing we could be persecuted? Would we open our
mouths and tell the truth?
The truth sometimes hurts; the truth sometimes causes people to want to turn
their backs on you. Is that what it means to connected to the lifestyle of
Jesus? Because no matter what I think today, the lifestyle of Jesus ultimately
means that there is a crucifixion, there is death, there is pain, there is
agony, there is a moment when we are confronted with darkness..
We get stuck in the crucifixion. Crucifixion means that (as one of the great
Philadelphia Preachers said), Sunday Morning is a-comin’! Meaning that wherever
there is darkness, wherever there is pain, wherever there is agony, wherever
there is an eruption of the soul, Sunday Morning is Coming!
Resurrection is to come; a new opportunity for the lifestyle of Jesus
convenes.
You and I have to make some different choices. You and I have to experience
pain more than we have experienced. The Lifestyle of Jesus means that we may
have to give a critique of the war and say that war at any cost at any level is
wrong!
We may have to say, “Mr. President, we understand that you have to wrestle
with the concepts of life and death and wrestle with us going to war. But let’s
not forget no matter why we go, or how we go, it’s still not the right way to
go.”
We may have to look at health care and say, “Mr. President, (or our
political leaders) the way we are distributing and confronting and addressing
the needs of those who are without and those who are sick in our country
without universal health care, we are not close to understanding what Jesus
would want.”
Because there is a Scripture that says, “When I was hungry did you feed me?
When I was naked did you clothe me, when I was out, did you bring me in?”
To live better means to live a lifestyle and live a way that we reach to
those who are down. Do we want to clothe the naked? Do we want to feed the
hungry? And do we want to set the captives free?
Mark begins his gospel at the point where Jesus is about to announce His
ministry. At this point, and beyond his life, Jesus has no permanent house, He
is not attached to any family, He does what the spirit leads him to do.
We read that his mother and sister and brothers are looking for him often.
He is quoted as saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Looking around at
those at those who sat around Him, He said, “Here are my mother and my
brothers. Whoever does the Word of God is my brother and sister and my
mother.”
All who do God’s Word are welcome.
The Lifestyle Question is about inclusivity.
II.
Jesus stands up in the synagogue and says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me.” He has a need to preach good news.
Here He says in the Gospel of Luke, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, the recovering
of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the
acceptable year of the Lord.”
He closed the book; He sat down and the eyes of all them that were in the
synagogue were fastened on Him, and he began to say unto them, “The day the
Scripture is fulfilled in your eyes.” And all began to wonder and witness at
His words.
So the Lifestyle Question is that He came to preach the gospel to the poor.
So who is preaching the gospel to the poor today? Who is ministering to the
needs of the poor today? What examples do we have in our modern society?
He came to heal the brokenhearted. There are many brokenhearted people in
our society today. America uses its power to create more broken hearts in the
world through our might and through our power. Who is healing and bringing hope
to the broken hearted?
And who is our society is helping to deliver those who are captive and those
who are bruised and those who are in our jails, and those who need to be set at
liberty? Why are we bruising young minds in our society?
America, what would it look like to wrestle with the Lifestyle of Jesus
Question? The question of hope, dignity, pride, love. The question that asks,
“Can we and will we and do we have the possibility and the hope and the desire
to value all human beings?”
The Lifestyle Question is, as I want to say to everyone who graduates this
year, “Use your education to serve humanity.” Education for humanity is
education to change our destiny.
Early in Jesus’ ministry, He called the twelve together and they became His
good friends, His close friends, friends from all different backgrounds. They
came from backgrounds as fishermen, as tax collectors, as city workers, from
cities, they are quiet, they are modest, they are revolutionary they are
conservative – A Diversity of Friends. Very human friends. Jesus in
relationship with twelve, experienced both the joys and pains of relationships
and hopes and disappointments of community.
He experienced the denial of one, betrayal by another, and in His betrayal,
what did He do? He practiced and showed them that with his last words, His
style of friendship was one that was full of forgiveness.
The Lifestyle Question is about community.
III.
Jesus had convictions of faith and trust in God. He had direct connection to
God. He was not satisfied with the way we were going about carrying out our
faith. He had serious criticisms about the religious institutions of His day,
against the religious establishment. However, this dislike and criticism by
Him, was not used by Him as an excuse to abandon the faith – to pull out, to
quit, to stop growing
Jesus had faith; He says, “All things are possible with God.” (Mark 10:27)
He believed it; He lived. He believed that God is loving. He believed that God
is ready to welcome back all, even the most prodigal.
Furthermore, Jesus had a dream; He called it the Kingdom of God. A time, a
state of being, a Divine human possibility when God and humanity would be in a
right relationship.
Whether at one point he describes the Kingdom as like a mustard seed, a very
small insignificant seed, yet when planted and nurtured, it becomes finally an
unusually large growth and that means time and labor and patience and
perseverance, through hard times as well as good days. (Mark 4:30-32)
You see, as I understand it, this was the life goal that shaped His
Lifestyle. We see – the Lifestyle Question. The Lifestyle Question has to do
with the Kingdom of God and how we would carry it out.
Now that is a risky kind of faith: trust, dream, message, style of life.
There were times He offended those who held on to other dreams and messages.
There were times when He was laughed at, considered mad. There were times when
His faith caused Him to disrupt the status quo, such as driving the
moneychangers out of the Temple.
The Lifestyle Question is about integrity.
IV.
Jesus’ Lifestyle is open to all kinds of persons. He eats with sinners, He
rebuked tax collectors. Eating together was a most intimate type of sharing a
relationship in Jesus’ thinking. He helped outsiders, foreigners, Gentiles. He
makes hated Samaritans the heroes of one of His stories.
As one who heals others, the deaf, lame, blind lepers, sick - Jesus
consistently opens up new life possibilities to people. The Lifestyle Question.
For me, the most imperative miracle occurs when Jesus gives hope to the lepers,
faith to the downtrodden, strength to the weak, courage to the fearful, life to
the empty, purpose to the aimless and on and on. The Lifestyle Question.
And that’s why Mother Theresa was so able to approach life as a gift and
could nurture that life and do everything possible to honor that life. The
Lifestyle Question.
And that’s why Martin Luther King had a dream that one day this world would
change, and that his four little children would not live in a world where
they’d be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their
character. The Lifestyle Question.
With Pope John Paul people felt as if he was talking directly to them. The
whole country stood and felt as if religion was unwrapped and unpackaged in
front of our eyes when he died.
Rev. Coffin. When you spoke to him you knew you were the most valuable
person at that moment. When he was talking to you, the stars lined up and you
mattered, but you were being challenged and being held as if as if you knew you
were special. The Lifestyle Question.
Perhaps the key to Jesus’ Lifestyle is that he places the importance of
persons over rules, while at the same time maintaining the significance of
rules within a secondary condition. On the one hand, Jesus honored the
traditions of observing the Sabbath; on the other hand when the interpreters of
the traditions held that Jesus could not heal a man on the Sabbath, He healed
the man.
Likewise, Jesus honored the traditions of clean hands and clean food. But
when the outward symbol of cleanliness is not met by inner purity, such as
right thoughts and right feelings, which bring about loving actions, then Jesus
would adjust the rules, because the intent had been lost.
The challenges of the rule promoted is, you lead the commandment of God, and
hold fast to the tradition of man.
The Lifestyle Question. It is one thing to profess a lifestyle, it is
another thing to live it with integrity, with wholeness. Jesus does not
separate the word from the deed in His living. In fact, it is His doing that
gives real impact to teaching. So, if we want to look at the lifestyle
question, we must understand Jesus was a teacher.
Let’s look at the kind of teacher and the kind of lesson.
Jesus said, “If any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his
cross, and follow me.”
The teacher humbles himself, kneels down and washes feet and gives us a
lesson about service. This says if anyone wishes to be great, if any one wants
to be honored, Let him deny himself, pick up the cross and follow Jesus. If you
are to be exalted, and if you are to be praised, do it by serving others.
All we have to do is look at the Beatitudes to understand the Lifestyle
Question.
They say, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are
the peacemakers for they shall called the sons of God. Blessed are the meek for
they shall inherit the earth.”
In my opinion, the Lifestyle of Jesus is challenging. It calls for an honest
response from those of us who hold the title Christian.
Thus, the Lifestyle Question is one that challenges us to act as he acted.
The Lifestyle Question calls each of us to live a life where we accept the call
to serve others, where we value people above all, where we help those in need
of help, and where we humble ourselves to exalt someone else.
The Lifestyle Question is about humility.
In summary:
The Lifestyle Question is about inclusivity
The Lifestyle Question is about community.
The Lifestyle Question is about integrity.
The Lifestyle Question is about humility.
The Lifestyle Question waits to be answered in the daily actions of each one
of us in this room.
What will your life show that you valued?
How will you answer the Lifestyle Question?
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