X

“A New Vision of Success”

Isaiah  50:4-9a ?Matthew 21:1-11 ? Luke 23, selections

The Prophet Isaiah speaks the words in a Scripture lesson that time did not allow us to read:  “The Lord God helps me…; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; for he who vindicates me is near.”  [Isaiah 50:7-8a]

Let us pray. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen. 

I.

Politics never fails to give us good stories about human nature.  And that was surely the case this past week, with the resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer – preceded by the announcement that he had been caught up in a federal investigation of an interstate prostitution ring.  He was the infamous “client #9” in the ring’s own books, and had spent tens of thousands of dollars, over the years, hiring high-end prostitutes for his personal pleasure. 

Well, the State of New York and Americans everywhere were shocked to hear about Spitzer; and the news media couldn’t seem to get enough of him.  Although, let me be just a bit cynical here and say that I suspect all the interest by the news media had to do more with the fact that sex was involved than anything else; because, as they say in advertising, “sex sells.”

And yet, I would propose to you this morning that the real story was not about sex but about success; not about personal moral failure, but about ethical faithlessness.  Or at least that is the story that really seems to me to matter.

Because Eliot Spitzer was not just any old unfortunate “john” who got caught up in some periodic sting operation.  Rather, Eliot Spitzer was the former Attorney General of New York who had gone after white-collar lawbreakers on Wall Street and organized crime with a vengeance.  In fact, he was elected largely on a platform of thorough going ethical reform in New York state.  It was his promise, on coming to the governor’s office, to bring ethics back into state government and into the state’s institutions. 

So, Spitzer may indeed have exhibited personal moral flaws, and may have brought tragedy into his family’s life.  But I would contend that that is not the big deal in it all – however wrong Spitzer may have been. 

The big deal is not Spitzer’s faithfulness or lack of it to his wife.  Rather, as I see things, the big deal is Spitzer’s lack of faithfulness to the principles he espoused.  As I see things, the big deal is Spitzer’s evidently distorted view of success.  Evidently, he imagined that success was simply a matter of getting elected.   But ethics of any sort – and especially Christian ethics – would surely say that success lay, instead, in his faithfulness to the principles he claimed to stand for as he was running for office.

Well, thankfully for the prospect of any future he may have, Spitzer seems to have realized the same thing.  In his brief statement to the press, he included these telling and candid words:  “I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.”[1]

II.

Faithfulness to one’s principles and standards….  It’s not an extraneous thing to talk about on Palm/Passion Sunday.  Instead, it’s at the very heart and core of what this Sunday is all about.  Because, in spite of the happy images, today is not all about the children who flocked around Jesus and ran ahead of him; today is not all about the palms that jubilant supporters threw on the road before him; today is not all about the the beloved donkey that we love to have in our processions; today is not even all about the loud “hosannas” that thousands cried out, as Jesus proceeded into the Holy City of Jerusalem. 

Today is not really all about all those things at all.  Instead, today is really all about that little snippet from Isaiah in the Scripture we didn’t have time to read the whole of – how he said in prophetic testimony, some seven hundred years before Christ, “The Lord God helps me…; therefore I have set my face like a  flint….”[2]

That’s because today is not a day in and unto itself.  Rather, Palm/Passion Sunday is the day that sets in motion all the events of Holy Week – including the crucifixion on Good Friday, and the resurrection on Easter Sunday.  Although many Christians would seem to want it, given historic church attendance patterns during this week, there is no such thing as skipping from the giddy heights of today’s hosannas and palms directly to the lily-bedecked glory of Easter.  But the hosannas are part and parcel of a week that also includes the betrayal on Thursday; and the pure, white, happy lilies are inextricably connected with the ugly, dirty excruciating pain of the crucifixion.  You can’t have one without the other – or, at least, you can’t have one without the other without hypocrisy.

And that was just the challenge for Jesus, as the world’s first Holy Week began.  Would he bask in the glory of the hosannas, but then hypocritically and quietly duck out of the city when the going got tough?  Would he set in motion the events of the world’s salvation, and then let you and me slide into hell’s oblivion by rescuing himself?  In short, Would he be faithful to what he increasingly had come to recognize as God’s own will for his life – or would he seek his success, instead, in some other way? 

We all know the answer, of course.  The prophet Isaiah had it right:  Jesus set his face like a flint.  He would seek no other vision of success than the cross.  In short, success for Jesus would not be measured by whether he could sustain the upbeat mood of those singing “hosanna” on Sunday; but success for Jesus would be measured by his faithfulness to the will of God that he knew would center in the cross on which he would be hung on Friday.

And that’s what Palm/Passion Sunday is really all about, at bottom:  it’s all about a new vision of success; it’s all about faithfulness to the principles and standards that we hold.

III.

Mother Teresa knew all about that kind of faithfulness.  As all the newspapers seemed to be shocked to report last year, Mother Teresa endured the last several years of her life without any evidence she could point to of the living reality of God in or near her life.  But she remained faithful anyway to what she understood as God’s will for her life:  day after day, she lived in poverty and gave all she had – just so the poor and the dying of Calcutta might have a touch of love and care in their last hours of life.  Yet, again, she did so, for the last forty or so years of her life without any sense of God’s presence blessing it all. 

And yet who can forget here the call of Christ from the cross:  “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”  Like her Master, Mother Teresa also felt forsaken.  But she also continued to feel the reality of her earlier call, when she had heard and accepted God’s will for her life; and no suffering, no discouragement would make her relent.   She sought her success in faithfulness – and surely found it there, too, regardless of the feigned shock of news media throughout the world, when they heard of how she experienced God’s absence from her life.  But again it was the same absence experienced by the very One she followed and worshipped. 

Indeed, that’s what faithfulness implies.  Faithfulness hardly can be measured, if everything is always hunky dory.  Rather, faithfulness is only really measured through life’s ups and downs, through life’s hills and valleys; faithfulness is only really measured, when all the incentive for good action is taken away, and all you have left is the remembered grace of God and your commitment.

There is an old story about an aged Scottish pastor, who was approached by one of his elders.  “Pastor,” the elder began, “something must be wrong with your preaching.  There’s been only one person added to the church in a whole year, and he’s just a boy.”

The old minister listened intently, with his eyes glistening and his thin hand trembling.  “I feel it all, myself” he replied, “but God knows I’ve tried to do my duty.”  But his heart was heavy, and he struggled daily with the inclination simply to resign.

But, soon afterward, the boy who had joined the church came up to talk too.  He asked if the old minister thought he had it in him to become a minister and maybe even a missionary.  “Yes, Robert” the paster said to the boy, “I think you will become a minister.” 

Years afterward, an aged missionary returned from Africa.  His name was spoken with reverence; nobles invited him to their homes; and to this day his memory is revered.  One of the most famous Presbyterian missionaries of all time, he had opened mission stations in the interior of South Africa, translated the Bible into the language of the Bechuanas, and wrote two missionary books on South Africa.  What’s more, his oldest daughter Mary, became the wife of David Livingstone, the great medical missionary, who opened up the heart of Africa. 

The missionary’s name who began all this was Robert Moffat.  He was that same boy who talked with the old Scottish minister who was having doubts about his ministry.  Yet, had the old man not been faithful to his calling and persevered, all the good from Moffat and Livingstone surely would never have occurred.  His success was not to be measured in numbers won to Christ, but in faithfulness instead.

IV.

Do you remember the rock opera, Jesus Christ, Superstar?  One of my favorite lines is that of the crowd, when Jesus comes into Jerusalem on the first Palm/Passion Sunday:

Christ you know I love you. Did you see I waved?
I believe in you and God, So tell me that I'm saved.

Christ, you know I love you.  Did you see I waved?  Waving at Jesus is what most of us are ready to do; it’s what many of us may hope Jesus has in mind for us – what we may imagine will pass for success in living a life acceptable to God. 

But, as we move on down the week from this Palm/Passion Sunday, we find that waving to Jesus is not enough; and that passing good thoughts are not at all what makes life acceptable to God – not at all what God will define as “success.” 

What makes life acceptable to God, successful in God’s eyes, is precisely what we see as Good Friday looms into view.  It is the flint-set face that remains faithful, even when tested by the horrible measure of a cross.

What is your vision of success?  What is mine?  Our challenge, as Holy Week begins, is to let a new vision of success fill our minds and inform our lives.  Our challenge, as Holy Week begins, is to get in touch with what we really believe and be true to it – to be true to it even when the going gets tough.  Our challenge, as Holy Week begins, is to let our vision of success be that same faithfulness that took our Lord all the way to the cross – yet that took him, ultimately, to the heights of glory as well. 

May that vision be yours.  May that vision be mine, today.

X

Now, unto Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the Power at work within us, unto Him be glory in the church through Christ Jesus, unto the Ages of Ages.  Amen. 

X