The power and the passion
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
“In America, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women” the immortal words of Tony Montanna, the main character in the movie Scarface. Tony Montanna is a Cuban immigrant who climbs his way to the top of the cocaine trade in Florida, eventually dominating the whole thing. But as Tony becomes more and more successful, he becomes less and less human, more and more consumed by the very drugs he is selling, more and more disconnected from the people around him until by the final scene he is literally shooting at anyone who approaches him.
What Scarface was trying to say is that the dream of the good life, of success, wealth, happiness can actually become a nightmare. Chasing succes and power at all costs with cost you. And in the years since we’ve had so many other explorations of the pitfalls of power in all its forms from Lord of the Rings through to the documentary Nemesis - about the most recent Coalition government.
And yet, the very fact that this theme comes up again and again suggests that human beings have a very hard time learning the lesson. Perhaps we think - oh yes, drug barons, Dark Lords, or Australian Prime Ministers - they all fall for the trap don’t they...
In our passage today there aren’t any drug lords, or fantasy characters. There’s no political bigwigs. All the same, Jesus will show that it’s not just the ‘bad guys’ or ‘big guys’ of this world who need him to point them to life. We’ll see that upstanding religious people can just as easily fall into the trap of thinking that money, sex and power can satisfy us. Jesus in his kindness wants to show us where we can find a life that truly satisfies and just like last week, it’s not in the places we normally look.
Places like the top of the greasy pole.
1. If you want to be great, give someone else your seat
1. If you want to be great, give someone else your seat
Show
for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
Explain
This is now the second time that Jesus has told them he has to die. The way he puts it makes it sound like he’s saying ‘I’ve come to hand myself over to human beings.’
It’s just as confusing as the first time he says he’s going to die but the disciples have at least learned not to directly rebuke Jesus for it!
Even though Jesus had told them, the only way to find God is by taking up the cross, giving up your life, they’re still squabbling about who is the greatest. In one sense you can understand right? They’re insiders. They’ve got priviledged information. Jesus chose them, and not others.
That must mean they’re important people. And surely if Jesus has talked about kingdom of God come with power, wouldn’t it be useful to seek more of it.
But Jesus says, that’s just more human thinking.
Show
He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Again Jesus says down in Mark 10:15
Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
It seems silly doesn’t it? I mean you feel like saying, Jesus don’t see the state of the world? Satan is powerful. He’s running amok. The world is broken. And if we feel like that, the disciples had just as much reason to feel it. In Mark there are demons everywhere. Herod is on ruling the country with a bloody iron fist. What good is it if we start hanging out with children?
Children are great. But they’re not exactly movers and shakers are they? They can’t open doors for you. They only table they can get you a seat at is ankle high and covered in crayons.
Sure Jesus, I get that being power obsessed and holding onto it for grim death is a problem, but surely the answer is for good people to be in power isn’t it? Surely the point of life is to be as strong and powerful as you can be, and use that strength to benefit others?
Illustrate
In Lord of the Rings, don’t you think it’s strange that Hobbits are the heroes? Of all the characters that could’ve Tolkein could’ve chosen to win the day, why Hobbits? He could’ve chosen Gandalf the Wizard with his wisdom and magic, or Gimly the Dwarf, as strong and stubborn as an Ox, or Legolas, able to move silently, see for miles, fires a bow and arrow as if it were a machine gun. Or Aragorn. Noble, courageous, skillful. But none of them are chosen. Hobbits are the only ones who can resist the corrupting power of the ring. Hobbits, unasuming, childlike in their love of nothing more than a good meal and some fireworks. Hobbits who for the entire history of Middle Earth have kept out of the politics and jostling for position. Hobbits are the ones who free Middle Earth from the tyranny of Sauron and the ring of power.
Tolkein is saying, you cannot destroy the power of power by attacking it with yet more power. To put it another way, the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s work.
The only way the world - from Presidents and PMs all the way down to school prefects - will be freed from it’s addiction to power, and all of the ugliness, the hatred, the backstabbing, the resentments and collateral damage is to give up on power.
To become like a child. To take the lowest place.
Apply
This is counter to every instinct we have. That’s what the image in verses 42-49 are about - losing limbs, losing eyes, losing feet. It being better to be maimed and enter the kingdom of God than holding onto your limbs and being thrown into Gehenna. For some of us, the thought of having our work go uncredited, and our options become limited, will feel like someone is chopping off your arm.
But Jesus loves us, and longs for us to experience the freedom of living securely in the knowledge that our worth, our value as people don’t come from our position on some ladder. It doesn’t come from how many letters we have after our name, or who we can name drop, or which inner circle we belong to.
More than that, as we saw last week, our ability to do good, to join him Jesus in working for the kingdom of God, our service of him does not require us to chase power. There are plenty of times in church history where people have said, we just need to get into the halls of power, we just need a Christian at the top, we just need to be more influential, then we can get the world back on track.
But that’s not what Jesus says. Just the opposite, working for the kingdom of God doesn’t mean we need to acquire more power, it means we need to give it up.
That’s why he says life isn’t found at the top of the greasy pole. It’s found at the foot of the cross.
Transition
But this is a very hard lesson to learn, and while the disciples continue to struggle with it in theory, wondering what it will be like to be big people in Jesus’ kingdom, at the end of our passage we encounter someone who has already ‘made it’. And what we see this guy struggling with reveals just how true Jesus words really are.
2. If you want to be happy, give someone else your toys
2. If you want to be happy, give someone else your toys
Illustration
When I was at school there was this guy called Ben Simpson. Ben was super smart, he ended up Dux of the school. He was good looking. He was a great cricketer. He was from a pretty wealthy family too. But the worst thing was - he was a really nice guy! You just felt bad envying him.
And this is the kind of guy we’re talking about.
Look at how he’s described
He’s rich. He’s young. He’s successful. This is a guy who has it all. And unlike some very wealthy people, his conscience is clear - he hasn’t gained his wealth by exploiting people, he tells Jesus he’s kept all the commandments since he was a boy and Jesus accepts his answer.
That’s the rich young man. This is no mobster who murdered his rivals in order to get ahead. This is an upstanding young man.
And yet, he asks Jesus this question in verse 17
Show
As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Explain
It’s not a question you would ask if you trusted your circumstances. Plenty of people would’ve pointed to him and said - that guy must’ve done something right, look at how God has blessed him. He’s won at life. He’s got it all together. That’s why the disciples are so shocked by Jesus words in verses 23-26 - how could someone so good, so righteous, so obviously approved by God miss out on God’s kingdom.
But no one who had it all together would ask the question
“what must I do to inherit eternal life”.
Any faithful Jew could’ve told you - obey God.
But every successful wealthy person can tell you, accomplishments and success and money can’t be trusted for ultimate meaning and happiness. How can you ever know if you’re successful enough? How can you ever know if you have been good enough?
As Jim Carey, one of the most successful actors and comedians said, “I wish everyone could be rich and famous for a day so that they would realise it’s not the answer”
But look at what Jesus says,
Mark 10:21 (NRSV)
“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
At the heart of what is going on here is a worship problem.
Explain
Those commandments that the man kept, what do they all have in common? They all have to do with how we treat other people. Jesus summarises it all as love your neighbour And this guy has done well. He’s a good guy. But there are 4 other commandments. And they are really about how we relate to God. Jesus summarises it as loving God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And pointedly, he doesn’t ask the man about them. But their absence is crying out. And the reason is that while God is this man’s boss, he’s not this man’s love.
Show
When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Why is he grieving? Because he likes his stuff? Sure. He probably has some really nice things. But to grieve over the idea of losing them means they aren’t just things. They’re ultimate things. Jesus has told him to let go of his god. Jesus has told him the reason you have that uneasy feeling, like something is missing, like for all the success you have, for all of the things you’ve been able to do, for all of the accolades you’ve got, you still feel empty. And that’s telling you something - your success and wealth and moral performance cannot hold the weight of your soul. But the man can’t imagine it. Because letting go of his money, would mean letting go of his life, his entire identity, his ultimate hope.
But Jesus loved him. And Jesus loves us.
And as Tim Keller says, Jesus does call us to repent of our sins. But he also calls us to repent of the way we’ve used the good things in our life to fill the place where God should be. If you want to be happy, truly happy, if you want to finally get over that nagging sense that something is missing, it will mean letting go of whatever it is that we’ve substituted for him. It will mean instead, pursuing him with the same energy and drive and effort that we applied to our success and wealth.
Or in other words, it will mean loving him with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.
Because only he can bear the weight of our heart, soul, mind and strength!
Application
How can we tell if we’ve replaced God with money? How would we know if wealth has gone from a good thing a tool, to an ultimate thing? Ask yourself, could I give large amounts of it away? Could I imagine voluntarily lowering my standard of living? Would I be ok? Or does the idea so threaten me that I’m scared? How do I feel when I see people who are more successful than me, especially when I think that I’ve worked harder than them?
Conclusion
Conclusion
Jesus is the ultimate winner. Jesus existed in the highest glory for an eternity before entering our world. He was top of the tree. The pinnacle of all. And he was far richer than you or I could possibly image. But he chose to let go of all of it for our sake. He chose to give up far more than we will ever accumulate, so that we could find true life and satisfaction and joy in him.
When we grasp this, when we understand just what he has done for us, we will be free. We we will find that status, and achievement, wealth, power, all of the good things in life become just that - good things. Not ultimate things. We will find that they no longer direct us, hold us, or define us. We’ll find ourselves asking how much we can I give, not how much we I give. We’ll find ourselves asking, what would they like, not what would I like. We’ll find ourselves asking, how can I honour them, not how can I serve myself.
Because that’s exactly what Jesus did for us.