Know Thyself

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 122 and Mark 6: 1-29 Sermon Title: Know Thyself Preached on July 12, 2020 Just before sitting down to really study this passage from the Gospel of Mark I was giving our children a lecture on self-esteem. Now that I’m home all the time, they suffer through a lot of my diatribes on any number of subjects. What inspired this one was Hamilton, the Broadway sensation now available on Disney-Plus. I was so excited about it that we watched it the day it was released. It seemed like everyone was talking about it, and Sara was telling us how the creator and star, Len Manual Miranda, was interviewed the same day by Terry Gross on NPR. “What was he like?” I asked. “A little arrogant,” she said. You might say that he has a right to be. After all the soundtrack which he wrote has been listened to more than 4 billion times. In 2016 the play won the Pulitzer Price as well as 16 Tony Awards, and Len Manual Miranda not only wrote it all, but he stars in it, both singing and dancing. He’s incredible and the show is incredible. However, to Sara, the right thing to say after being interviewed by Terry Gross is, “It’s truly been an honor,” while Len Manual Miranda ended the show by saying, “thanks, bye,” which is the way you hang up the phone with a telemarketer and is not the way you leave a Terry Gross interview. So, I understood why Sara thought he was arrogant, but our kids didn’t. “What is arrogant,” our children asked. That’s when I launched into my lecture. “Arrogance is thinking too highly of yourself. Arrogant people think they’re more important or more wonderful than they actually are,” I said. Then I nuanced this lecture they weren’t paying any attention to by saying, “Thinking you’re less important or less wonderful than you actually are can be just as bad. The best thing is having a good, solid, understanding of yourself. That way when you hear criticism it doesn’t crush you, but neither do you ignore it thinking you’re already perfect and can’t improve. What life takes is not low or high self-esteem, but knowing yourself, and you two are both absolutely wonderful.” That was my speech. Maybe they didn’t hear it all, but I hope they will sooner or later, because I don’t want them to let criticism or rejection crush them, nor do I want them to go foolishly through life as the president of their own fan club, for what life demands is that we know ourselves well enough to keep going. I remember well one teenage summer several years ago. My friend Dave Elliot and I decided to launch our own lawn service. We made flyers. It was very professional. And we walked all around his neighborhood placing these flyers in everyone’s mailbox. I remember his mother suggested we not put our names on the flyer for we didn’t have the best reputation. We were mostly known as teenage vagrants, and we only got one inquiry. It was from Jim and Flora Speed. Our pastor called and asked us to watch the dog while they were out of town, which we did faithfully, I think. Regardless, this was a short-lived business venture and we never tried anything like that again. One customer didn’t seem like success, so we quit trying. You won’t make it through life that way. Those who learn from experience and persevere on the other hand will. For example: Mormon missionaries. Do you remember back when Mitt Romney was running for president and the news was so interested in Mormonism? I remember these great news stories on the religion. One person asked, “Why are Mormons so successful in business?” And the expert, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints himself, said, “Well, if you had to leave home as a teenager and go knocking on dozens of doors a day, 99% of which were slammed in your face, you’d quickly learn what it takes to make it in this world.” In this lesson from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples to “get out there and keep going!” He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts… He said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them” and keep going. That’s what it takes. You can’t let the rejections keep you down. You keep going. You keep testifying. You keep learning and getting better. You keep doing good even if it seems like the evil in the world is going to drown it out. That’s true of Discipleship and that’s true of life. This long reading from the Gospel of Mark started with Jesus in his hometown. They didn’t listen to him either. To them, he was just the carpenter’s son, but did he allow their perception of him to diminish his self-perception? Did he rethink his mission or his ministry? Did he hear them and say to himself, “You know what, maybe I’m not really the Son of God after all?” No he didn’t. That’s not what Jesus did. That’s what we do. Jesus is different. Jesus knows he’s a prophet even if his hometown doesn’t recognize it, but Herodias won’t feel like a queen until John the Baptist is dead. Our long Second Scripture Lesson could be divided up into three acts which work together to teach us an important lesson: In Act 1 Jesus is rejected by the citizens of his hometown, and he speaks that noteworthy phrase, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown.” In Act 2 the twelve disciples are sent out to minister far and wide and Jesus warns them not to let those who won’t listen get them down. Then in Act 3 we see what happens to those who don’t know themselves and who can’t accept themselves just as they are, but entertain foolish dreams of grandiosity. Who live and die according to public opinion. Who make bad choices, then work to silence the critics rather than learn something. For years now we’ve been warned of the dangers of low self-esteem, but here in the Gospel of Mark we see that those with a fragile sense of self, a bloated ego that can’t handle criticism in a healthy way, is so dangerous a person as to have the head of her critic served on a platter. That’s how dangerous a person who hides from the truth is. Herodias is dangerous because she has to kill someone to be OK with herself. Jesus isn’t like that. His hometown doesn’t recognize him for what and who he is. That’s OK. He tells his followers, “don’t expect everyone to listen to you. If they don’t like what you have to say, keep going! Their reaction cannot nullify the truth which is within you.” You see, Jesus is like John the Baptist, who speaks the truth, even though it might get him killed, because if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And you will. John the Baptist always tells the truth. He can’t help it. He’s like your bathroom scale. According to Jenn Hobby, resident of Cobb County and featured personality on Star 94 FM, 76% of Americans have gained at least 16 pounds during the quarantine. Today you stand on it and it tells you how much you weigh. If you don’t like what it has to say you can kill your bathroom scale, that’s what Herodias did, but killing your scale won’t change your weight. That’s how the truth works. We don’t always like it, but it’s still the truth. Likewise, I don’t want the CORONA Virus to completely derail my life. I’m tired of it, but my options are: accept the limitations and precautions and get on with it or ignore everyone who tells me what I don’t want to hear but ignoring the truth won’t keep me from getting sick. We’re living in this very uncomfortable place right now. Everything’s hard. Life is hard. Everything has changed. Life is changing. What are we going to do about it? I’ll tell you what Herodias would do, but what about Jesus? Last week our neighbors told us that every time they are on a town hall meeting where the leaders are talking about all the changes which reopening demands, they play a drinking game. Every time someone says the word: pivot, they take a drink. The constant change and uncertainty is so overwhelming. There’s no question that the reality of our life currently is getting us all down, but it can’t keep up from living and moving and growing. What the Disciples learned as they went out into the world preaching the Gospel is that they didn’t have to control every outcome. They didn’t have to convince every sinner. They didn’t have to win every soul. They didn’t have to know what was going to happen every step of the way. You know why? Because that’s God’s job. And life today requires that we acknowledge who is God and who is not. What’s required of us today is not high self-esteem so that we think we’re the Queen of Israel or low self-esteem so that the weight of the world crushes us like a bug on the soul of my shoe. What we must possess today in this strange world is enough confidence to keep going and enough humility to let God work His purpose out. We don’t have to do that for Him. We couldn’t do it even if we tried. Let us simply run the race set before us. Let us walk without growing faint. Let us trust Him with all our tomorrows. And let us rejoice in His provision while there is breath in our lungs to praise His name. For His hometown might have mistaken him for a small-town boy, but I know who he is. You know who he is. He is almighty. He is redeeming this world even as we speak. He is standing in the breach and saving this world from sin. Now and forever more. Trust in him today, my friends. For his is worthy. Amen.