Tag Purpose

4 8 15 16 23 42 – Blessed are the Meek #3

Todd R Leave a comment

Do you ever feel that God has appointed a task to you that you can’t see the point of?  These opening verses refer back to previous posts about Jesus asking Martha to move the stone away from the opening of Lazarus’ grave, and also to the man who was given only one talent to put to work for his Master’s benefit:
“Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” – John 11:39
“He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’” – Matthew 25:24-25

As we continue a series on the Beatitudes with the third Beatitude “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”[1] I am reminded of the mid-2000’s TV series Lost, where character Desmond Hume is trapped on a mysterious island and enters a code into a computer every 108 minutes.  He does it – even in the middle of the night – because he was told he is “saving the world” by someone he trusts.  When the code – 4 8 15 16 23 42 – is entered on time nothing happens except the re-setting of a clock to 108 minutes.  “The numbers” are referenced over and over again in the show, individually or all together, and seem to have a mystic power over events.  The number of minutes allowed to enter the code – 108 – is the sum of the six numbers.  Even fans seemed to believe “the numbers” had power – there was a boom in playing them in the lottery.

As other characters find Desmond and ask questions, the numbers and the button become a case study of faith versus reason.  Why is he doing this?  Eventually, the button isn’t pushed on two occasions and the consequences are very serious indeed, but this lesson is only learned by failing to act on faith.  While initially faith demands that Desmond enter the numbers over and over again, the two failures show that there was a reason behind Desmond’s faith even if he didn’t know it.  It wasn’t pointless after all.  However, failure isn’t always the best way to learn to be meek.

Every Talent Matters
In a story told by Jesus in Matthew 25:14-30, a man entrusts his servants with some money (the “talents” in the story were a large unit of currency, and the word later came to mean a natural or special ability): five to one servant, two to the next, and one to the last servant.  The first two servants use their “talents” to bring in more for their master, but the last buries the money in the ground to keep it safe.  This servant might have been thinking: “What’s the point?  The other guy has five talents, and with that I might be able to do something.  But with only one…Why bother?”  But if the master’s intent was to keep the talent safe, why would he give it to a servant?  It was only after some time, when the master returned from a journey, that the servant learned the consequence of his inactivity.  The servant is cast out and his talent is given to the better servant.

Waiting until we have more to offer, more to do, or a better sense of the possible consequences is like burying our talent in the sand and therefore determining for ourselves that it does not matter and there is no point.  In the words of “Shy Away” by twenty øne piløts, you “manifest a ceiling when you shy away.”  Whatever purpose God has for our talents – in their exact amounts and types – it wasn’t for us to bury them.  The meek servants who took what they had and worked for their master’s interest, were rewarded.  “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”[2]

For me personally – sometimes I put off, or want to give up, writing because it seems pointless – who reads this anyway?  But it’s what I currently feel compelled to offer.  Blogging may seem a strange thing to do, but it’s better than burying these ideas in the ground and hoping a fruit tree magically pops up.  I don’t know what will happen when I do or don’t write, but I know a refusal to be meek to our Lord has consequences.  Sometimes we aren’t sure why, but we know Who is asking.

Play Your Own Numbers
Jesus has not asked me (and probably not you) to enter “4 8 15 16 23 42” into a computer or to move a stone from a tomb, but He knows exactly what He wants us to do, to become, and how He wants to impact others through us.  There are specific needs He wants only us to meet, including our own needs for meaning and joy.  We should never just copy someone else’s “numbers,” but seek our own.  If Lost fans won the lottery with those numbers, they would have to share the prize, but if each won playing their own way their prize would be much bigger.  Likewise, I believe the eternal reward is higher when you play the numbers – and only the numbers – God gave you personally[3].

Consider God’s personal instructions to you as your own lottery ticket, or the most important treasure you will ever have:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field…
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” – Matthew 13:44-45

Being meek is not a matter of how much one has to offer but knowing who you offer it to and being faithful to that master’s interests.  It is not a matter of knowing why, but a matter of trusting the One who asks you to be meek.  He is the King of the Kingdom.

Finally, just because the consequences aren’t obvious to you doesn’t mean there aren’t any:
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” – Guardian angel Clarence Oddbody, in It’s a Wonderful Life

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

[1] Matthew 5:5
[2] Matthew 25:29
[3] Is it stretching the point to say what happened to Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10:1-3 resulted from them trying to “make up their own numbers”?

The Benevolent Incarnation – Blessed are the Meek #2

Todd R Leave a comment

“And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day.” – Deuteronomy 6:24
“I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.” – Isaiah 42:8

In part 1 on Jesus’ statement that “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), I wrote about one of my favorite movies, The Matrix, and how Agent Smith thought mankind stinks and he only wants them to obey his rules so he can be left alone.  Also in that movie, Neo fights to free mankind from rules so they can be “free” even if that freedom does nothing to address that they stink.  Agent Smith was the “malevolent incarnation,” and Neo the “ambivalent incarnation.”

By now you probably anticipated that Jesus is the “benevolent incarnation,” but to show what that means we return to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead (last discussed in detail here).  A messenger came to Jesus telling Him that Lazarus was ill, but instead of returning to Bethany immediately to help, Jesus intentionally delayed in coming until Lazarus had been dead for four days.  Jesus knew all along that He would immediately raise Lazarus, but nobody else knew that and He found everyone in mourning.  Martha heard Jesus’ hints but thought Lazarus would have a future “resurrection on the last day.”[1]

Then, one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” – John 11:39

In this one exchange we see the contrast of Jesus to both Agent Smith and to Neo:

  • The odor does not keep Jesus from loving His people.  He does not even comment on it but responds “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”[2]  He did not become human to tell us we stink and how he can’t stand being with us, as Agent Smith did.  He was willing to live among us in order to bring us to a better place, to be with Him.
  • His rule is for the good of Lazarus, Martha, all the witnesses to this event, and everyone hearing the story today.  When Jesus tells Martha to move the stone, He isn’t bullying her or oppressing her, but He is giving her a command.  For Lazarus to come out of the tomb the stone needs to be moved, and Jesus is asking her to participate in a good work.  Likewise, Jesus asks us to do many things, some listed explicitly in the Bible and others spoken to our conscience.  All these rules are there to generate good works, as all His rules are expressions of “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[3]  Therefore He is being neither malevolent nor ambivalent.  As a benevolent God, Jesus cares about what we do because He knows what is good and bad for us.  Unless we agree with what He knows is good and bad, we are actively rejecting the cure for our odor, the Christ who is “the resurrection and the life.”[4]
  • His rule brings Him glory, and Him alone.  Jesus delayed in coming to raise Lazarus specifically “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it”[5]  The entire situation was set up to deliver the lesson that as our Creator and Lord, He deserves all the credit.

In the opening verses, we see that His rules are “for our good always” (Deuteronomy 6:24), and also that He says, “my glory I give to no other” (Isaiah 42:8).  In my church, prayers often end with “for our good and your glory, Amen.”  I find that it’s often harder to give up the glory than it is to realize which path is the right one.  But as I wrote in the last post of the series, “the value of meekness depends on who or what you are meek towards.”  So giving Him the glory is just awareness that we are meek because He is worthy of our meekness.

Winning the Lottery
I’ll close with one illustration: Would you rather have someone deliver tomorrow’s newspaper to you with the winning lottery numbers, or would you rather work eternally on a system to try and predict them but never win?  Rejecting God’s truth and trying to make our own is like choosing the second option.  I too often would rather get credit for losing than win but not get credit for it, and I suspect I’m not the only one.  Picking the second option has replaced God in the hearts of many, from the inscription across the Pantheon in Rome, a temple to the many gods they claimed to serve (“M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIVM FECIT”, which loosely means “Marcus Agrippa built this”[6]) to Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My Way” or Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life.”

If we accept that Jesus is our God, that He is benevolent and that His rule is for our good and His glory, then we win the best prize every time – eternal life in a perfect world.  Every sacrifice we make is worth it, and we end up being the person we were created to be, full of joy and peace and love.  If we choose a malevolent or ambivalent lord to follow, not only do we lose the prize, but we have to take the credit for losing it.  These ‘lords’ often don’t even claim to have the prize, just abstractions like “freedom” or “order.”  In Jesus, the winning lottery ticket has been offered to us all along, but we didn’t want to admit where we got it from, or that its prize was more important than what we thought we wanted.

This post continues a series on the Beatitudes. To start at the beginning, click here, and for the next post click here

[1] John 11:24
[2] John 11:40
[3] From Matthew 22:37 and 39
[4] John 11:25
[5] John 11:4b
[6] When I visited Rome in 2003, I learned that the Catholic Church, when building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, removed the gold from above the entrance to the Parthenon and used it in the Basilica.  Only exposed, rotten wood planks remain where the gold was removed.  While St. Peter’s drive the Protestant Reformation since it was largely funded with the ‘indulgences’ that launched Martin Luther’s protest, the transfer of this gold was an obvious rebuke to the pantheism of the old Roman Empire.

Love is the Dance of Eternity

Todd R Leave a comment

Tonight I’ll be at the Warner Theatre to see the progressive metal band Dream Theater! I like lots of music that might be called “rock”, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Imagine Dragons and even twenty one pilots, but this is the only band in this genre I like.

Why am I posting this? Only one of my friends likes this band, and I’m going to the show with him! This post might get 0 “likes.” As much as I want to get “likes” on my social media posts, life is more than that. Everyone reading this is a Creation of a Benevolent Creator, and an individual work of craftsmanship. None of us are an accident. Therefore, like what you like, but also be encouraged to put more craft into your daily life, at work and home. Because you yourself are a craft, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). Seek to be what you were made to be. Don’t just “play it safe.” Define success differently.

So, what does Dream Theater sound like?

I considered posting the most “accessible” song by them I could find, but that wouldn’t fit the point. Instead, here is their instrumental “Dance of Eternity” which changes time signatures 108 times in just over 6 minutes. Oddly, the original drummer (and co-writer) on this song was in a Beatles cover band for a while.

Nearly all of you will hate this song, but this band does what they do and inspire some to also pursue their idea of “excellence” in spite of the outcome for their Facebook “likes”.

If this song is too much, the video for “Pull Me Under,” their only song that got any radio play is linked here. Tonight I’m wearing the T-shirt from that tour in 1992. The show was at Pier 6 in Baltimore during a heavy thunderstorm. For those that haven’t been to Pier 6, it’s basically a stage in front of seating under a big tent, open on 3 sides. It was a great show.