A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to worship at Sligo Church in the Washington DC area. Visiting church there opened up a ton of memories for me.
During my college years I had the opportunity to be a taskforce student volunteer work at Sligo, a 3,500-member church just outside our nation’s capital. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, the opportunity to spend a year in D.C. had been absolutely awesome. If you’ve ever spent more than two weeks in D.C. you can appreciate the electrifying experience of living this city … the museums, the music, the history, the government complexes, the foreign embassies, the visits of heads of state, the sports. I had absorbed myself in all of these. But there remained one aspect about D.C. that I hadn’t experienced yet and that was a protest march.
So I found myself on a subway train … heading to a march sponsored by a group called the All Peoples Congress. The radio had said it was expected to draw 300,000 people. All people with a beef would be there! I didn’t have a beef, but I had an opinion or two and sense of adventure, so to the All Peoples Congress event I went.
My first task upon arriving at the park where the march would begin was to buy a sign. You have to have a sign to march! Mine was the All Peoples Congress sign and read, “Feed the People, Not the Pentagon.” Being we were in the midst of the Reagan Administration’s trickle down and arm up economy, the sign made sense to me. Out went two bucks and on went the sign. Shortly after noon, we began to march. Leaders with bullhorns led us in our chants … hey, hey, ho, ho Reaganomics got to go. Or the age old Hell no we won’t go we won’t fight for Texaco.
Now at the start of the march, there were reporters, TV stations and the like. But soon, on this weekend day, there was no one but us … 80,000 thousand or so … marching down the streets of the city with absolutely nobody listening to our chants … our belief that we should feed the people not the pentagon.
We marched on and on for several blocks and several streets. Nothing but us and our noise bouncing off of buildings. And then we turned onto different street. There was still no one to hear us. Oh, there was the occasional pedestrian who must have been amused. But no crowds, no reporters. Just concrete walls. But on this street, a life lesson was about to unfold for me. About five minutes into the walk on this street, it dawned on me where we were. We were two blocks away from the street where a major community of homeless people in D.C. lived. And the profoundness of the moment struck. 80,000 people screaming, yelling, chanting that money was being spent on armaments, not food. No one taking food to the hungry that were just two blocks away. We were a collective fraud. I was a fraud. The dagger of the message went into my heart and twisted. If you want to protest hunger, it said, carry a sandwich, not a sign.
We soon came upon the Metro station near the Justice Department. I slipped out of the march, down the escalator and somberly headed home. I couldn’t march anymore. I had just discovered something very deeply disturbing about myself. I realized as never before how shallow I was. How quickly I was to mouth off. And how slow I was to actually do something. I imagine to some degree, I was a living example of what the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians as a resounding gong or a clanging symbol … a lot of noise minus love. It wasn’t what I did; it’s what I didn’t do.
Through the years, I’ve thought a lot about that march. I thought about it again as I sat in church at Sligo last month. And one thing I’m convinced of is that Jesus would not have been on that march. His actions throughout his life would suggest otherwise. Jesus didn’t talk about how much the lepers were suffering and how much they needed healing. He healed them.
He didn’t talk about the people needed a health message and that a poor diet was the cause of the people’s illness … he healed them.
He didn’t focus on their vileness of their sinfulness; he forgave them and restored them.
He didn’t care about us from heaven; he came as a babe and died.
What I have continually learned from that march day is that lip-service Christianity is not what Jesus wants. In fact, his wish list is quite the opposite. Turn with me to Matthew 25 versus 31 to 46.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
What is striking about this passage is the surprise of those on the left. It’s not what they did that drew Jesus attention; it’s what they didn’t do. George Buttrick in his classic book “The Parables of Jesus” notes the profoundness of this surprise. When had they been unjust? They were not charged with theft, adultery or murder. They had not violated respectability. They had in fact been respectable, upstanding citizens. Good, everyday church members. Had they ever recognized the beggar at their gate or the homeless person as royalty, they would have instantly helped. Of course they would, it was their gain. Therein, Buttrick notes, was their crime: they had lived their lives with an inward-turning eye and in turning their back on humanity, had turned their back on Jesus himself. Their actions revealed their heart. There was no need to prove their guilt; they had provided the evidence themselves. They had the feeling of a man at Christmas, who just gave the wrong gift … but even worse, they thought they had the right gift.
What Jesus wants us to understand, is that the sins of omission – what we didn’t do,– reveal more about our relationship with him than the sins of commission do – when we know where we have wronged. And that makes them doubly important for us.
Because the fulcrum of Jesus teaching and of this life and what he requires of us is to genuinely love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. If that motive of love is not in you, if the lack of genuine love … love that goes much deeper than writing a check to salve your conscience or chanting a protest to pretend you care …if that lack of genuine love is revealed by what you aren’t doing, you’re on the outside of the Kingdom looking wishfully in. Jesus makes it crystal clear. You may be going through the antics and gestures of an upright life, living a church going, morals keeping, culturally valued life, but the reality of life is gone. You are lost.
That is what I came so profoundly to realize in the mirror of my mind on that march that May Day in Washington. The true me was revealed. And it wasn’t reflecting a heart fully committed to Jesus, a heart that automatically knew what gift to bring my King.
So what do you do when you look in the mirror and see a goat staring back? Or chant in a protest only to discover that you are what is wrong and what needs changed? What do you do when the stark realization hits that your Christian walk is lukewarm at best?
Today, I would like to encourage three action points.
Step one – Evaluate Yourself.
Take time this week to make a list of all the things you care about. Take out a piece of paper. On the left side write out your list. Put everything on it because everything in your mind is to some degree a part of your life. Next, on the right hand side list what you do about the things you care about. When you do this exercise honestly, it will tell you something about yourself. You will learn what you really care about and what you are just giving lip service to. And you may discover that the way you are living your life, is not the way your heart tells you you want to live your life.
We worship a God whose not impressed about what we say we care about. He’s impressed by what we do about what we care about.
Step two – Assess Yourself
God has given each of us unique gifts and unique opportunities to serve him. When we fight those gifts or try to use a gift we don’t have, we become ineffective. When we understand those spiritual gifts and use those gifts for him, we naturally serve him. I’ll use my profound gardening skills as an example. If I set to grow food in response to world hunger, things would only get worse. When God handed out talents, my thumb was the polar opposite of green. I even worked in a greenhouse between my eighth grade and ninth grade years. A lot of my work was swinging a pickaxe and forming up walk areas for cement. That I could do. But they made the mistake of having me water the crop of tomatoes each morning. I faithfully performed the task at 6:30 each day. Just watering and pinching off a few suckers. But at the end of the growing season, the whole crop had to be thrown away because the skins were too thick. They all set around scratching their heads about what went wrong. But even at that age I knew. Don’t ask me to farm. Everything goes wrong. Yet God has given me other gifts, quality gifts. I can’t plant a seed in the ground but I can plant one through a written word or through teaching. And I can carry a sandwich to someone in need.
When you are using the spiritual gifts that are natural for you, you will only grow in love and service for Jesus. It will become your motivation.
So again Step one is examine yourself and step two is assess yourself. Both lead to step three, which is to
Change yourself.
In the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus is saying to us, don’t change the way you act … change the way you are. If your day-to-day actions are not motivated by genuine desire to serve Jesus Christ, they are nothing but a clanging gong, or unheard words in a protest march. In Luke 6:45 Jesus tells us, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart.” It’s a natural outflow when you change the way you are.
And a stark contrast to just changing the way we act. When we just change the way we act, we conform to a culture, to the expectations of those we worship with. We place our whole focus on a list of things we must do to make sure there’s nothing we didn’t do, and we quickly slip into a vile form of legalism. As Richard Foster says in his profound book The Celebration of Discipline to attempt to arrange an outward lifestyle without an inward reality leads to deadly legalism.
Mark Twain put it in another perspective. Twain encountered a ruthless businessman from Boston during his travels who boasted that nobody ever got in his way once he determined to do something. He said, “before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I’m gonna climb Mount Sinai. And when I’m up there I’m gonna read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top of my voice!” Unimpressed, Twain responded, “I got a better idea. Stay in Boston and keep ‘em.”
Jesus ultimately says in his parable, know me, love me, serve me. And the rest takes care of itself.
As I close today, I’ve chosen a country and western song from artist Steve Wariner that I hope at least a few of you are old enough to remember.
When the song first came out several years ago, it instantly went to the top of my charts. And it’s a song I’ve never forgotten because it brings me back to the lesson I must continually learn from my protest march. The song stands out because it is a contrast. Many country songs are about things people did … an unfaithful spouse … a love wronged. Acts of commission. Not this one. In this one no sin is committed … its about a man, mourning his wife’s leaving him because he was so caught up in daily responsibility that he lost his focus on what he should have been doing. And had no clue. But this song could just as well be a song, about you and me, having lost the focus of our relationship with Jesus Christ and what gifts he desires from us. It goes like this:
I didn't cheat, I didn't lie so her leaving took me by surprise
Just a note on the table, saying we're through
At first I went crazy so it took me some time
But I finally read between the lines
It's not what I did; it's what I didn't do
I didn't tell her each day I loved her
I took it for granted, somehow she knew
I didn't hold her when she needed a shoulder
It's not what I did; it's what I didn't do
Now it's easy to see why her love died
She was planning her nights by the TV-guide
She needed me with her, more then I knew
I was too busy working, getting ahead
While I should have been home loving her instead
It's not what I did; it's what I didn't do
1 John 3:18 states “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth.” May that be our goal this and every week.