Finding the Love of Your Life
04/04/2004 - Room for One More
One of the most difficult parts of my recent trip to Ghana was not being able to communicate with my family. While we were way up north, far from what I knew to be civilization, I went over a week without talking to Jennifer and the kids. And that was the longest stretch I've ever gone without talking to my family and it was tearing me up inside.
Almost everyday I tried to find a phone that would connect me from Navrongo to Collegeville just to make sure that everything was okay and to let them know that I was okay. At one point I finally got connected. I heard the phone ringing and then the faint voice of Jennifer on the other end saying, "Hello. Hello. Hello." And I'm shouting "Honey. Honey. It's me. It's Bruce." Then "click," the phone went dead and we couldn't make another connection. It was so frustrating.
So when we finally got back to Accra the first thing I did was find a phone and call home. And I got through on the first try. I got the answering machine! "Hello. This is the Carter's. We can't answer the phone now. But if you leave a message we'll be sure to get back to you." Yeah right! Do you how frustrating that is after going more than a week not talking to the ones you love?
Another thing I wanted to do when I got back to the big city was to find out what was going on in the world. So I picked up a newspaper and checked out the really important stuff, like did St. Joe's finish their basketball season undefeated and did the Eagles sign a new wide receiver and how's Jim Thome's broken finger doing. You know, the news that really impacts our world!
But the article that got my attention was this one, "Man dies at desk and no one notices for five days." Did you see that one?! Apparently, 51 year-old George Turklebaum, who for thirty years had worked as a proofreader of medical textbooks, suffered a massive heart attack in a Manhattan office that he shared with 23 other workers. He passed away on a Monday morning and sat, slumped over in his chair, for five days until somebody finally noticed on Friday night.
A co-worker who asked not to be identified said she "noticed a peculiar odor and some kind of fluid" around George's desk on Thursday and Friday but decided "something in his trash can was leaking or maybe he hadn't bathed that morning." She said, "All I could think was, 'How can people let their personal hygiene go like that?'"
A supervisor added, "George was a loner for sure. He didn't have a wife, a girlfriend, any family, or even any friends that I'm aware of. So nobody on the outside would have noticed that he was missing."
To top it all off the story concluded by saying that the chapter in the medical book that George was reading when he had the heart attack was "CPR Revisited: Reviving the Stopped Heart."
Now is that bizarre or what? If the story weren't true we'd have to laugh. And maybe we can laugh, because I'm not sure it is true. I read something on the Internet this week that claims it's a hoax, but then goes on to say that whoever wrote the story does understand the plight of so many workers today in corporate America who feel alone, isolated, unimportant and that no one cares what happens to them.
That's why we're doing this series on community called Finding the Love of Your Life. We don't want any of you dying at your desk and sitting there for five days until somebody finally smells you. I told Tim that if he sees me like that for three days come on over and tap me on the shoulder!
Poor George was all alone and God says it's not good to be alone. It's not good to live such an isolated life that we could be missing for five days and not have anybody notice. It's not good because we were created to live in community with one another. That's why it tore my heart out to go a week without talking to the ones I love the most.
But the kind of community that God wants us to enjoy as a church is a community of inclusion, a community that breaks down walls, a community that invites a guy like George Turklebaum in, a community that always says there's room for one more. And that's the title of today's teaching, "Room for One More."
In his book Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them , John Ortberg says that one of the challenges for any church, Valley View included, is to maintain an attitude of inclusion because deep inside each one of us is the tendency to exclude people, to keep others out, to divide up the world between "us" and "them." Every Christian community needs to make a choice between exclusion and embrace.
One of the greatest joys in life is the feeling of being wanted, included, and embraced. One of the greatest hurts in life is the feeling of being excluded, left out, and rejected.
Ortberg refers to a brilliant essay that C. S. Lewis once wrote called "The Inner Ring." In it Lewis says that in every society, every school, every church, every workplace, there are little groups of people who are on the "inside." And you can tell because they use nicknames and have inside jokes and get invited to certain events. And then there are those who are on the outside, those who don't get chosen at recess or invited to the dance or who get voted off the island. And all of us have the desire to be on the inside and the fear of being left on the outside.
The existence of these rings, Lewis says, isn't necessarily bad. We're all limited and can only maintain so many relationships. But the desire to gain status by being part of a high-status Inner Ring is a deeply dangerous one. It can lead us to constantly compare ourselves with others, to feel anguish when we're left out, and deeper anguish when someone close to us gets ushered in. It can make us compromise and do things that make us look good to those who are deeper in and higher up.
But the Inner Ring turns out to be like an onion. Once we make it to a certain circle, we discover there is another circle, and another one after that. And beside no inner circle can give us the worth that we want so badly to find, because inside each circle we discover that we're still the same person.
Jesus' disciples wrestled with this desire to be on the inside. Two of them, James and John, actually approached Jesus and asked if they could be in the Inner Ring when they got to heaven. They even had their mom lobbying for them. And when the other ten heard about it they flipped out, because if that happened that would mean, that even though they were apostles too, they wouldn't be on the inside. And Jesus just shook his head and wondered when these guys would finally get it that God's desire is to invite everyone into the Inner Ring. His church is not to be a community of exclusion, but a community of embrace.
One of the most penetrating stories about who's in and who's out is told by Matthew. If you have a Bible turn to Matthew 15:21-28. Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
For a long time this story really bothered me. It looks like Jesus is being mean to this poor woman. First, he ignores her request then he seems to agree with the disciples to send her away. Maybe Jesus is having a bad day. But when we take a closer look we actually see that Jesus is having a good day and that this story is all about God's desire not to exclude anyone from his community, but to bring everyone who will allow him into his embrace.
Ken Bailey points out that in order to understand this story we have to realize that Jesus is giving a test to two sets of people. He's testing his disciples and he's testing the woman. And against that backdrop it makes sense.
We also need to understand that this story takes place in enemy territory. Jesus is on foreign soil far north of Israel. In fact, this is the only time we have any record that Jesus ever left Israel during his entire ministry. But he had to to teach this lesson.
Tyre and Sidon were two Phoenician cities located on the Mediterranean coast in what is now called Lebanon. In Jesus day it was called Syria and it was a pagan place infested with Gentiles. And the Jews had a name for Gentiles. They called them "dogs," not cute, playful pets like Cuddles, but dirty, mean, diseased scavengers that roamed the streets. That's what dogs were in Jesus' day and they weren't fit for the kingdom of God.
Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, wrote that "the people of Tyre are our bitterest enemy." The Jews despised the people who lived there and no good Jew would dare go anywhere near Tyre and Sidon for fear of being contaminated.
And if that weren't enough, the woman in this story is also a Canaanite. The Canaanites were age-old enemies of the Israelites. It was the Canaanites that had to be driven out of the Promised Land under Joshua's leadership. Centuries of racial tension had caused deep hatred between the Israelites and the Canaanites, very much like the hatred that exists in places today between Arabs and Israelis.
This woman had three strikes against her. She was Gentile. She was a Canaanite. And she was a woman, definitely not a candidate for anybody's Inner Ring. That's why the disciples said, "Get her out of here, Jesus, she's a loser!"
Yet, she comes to Jesus with the cry of a beggar and three times calls him "Lord. Lord. Lord." She also calls Jesus "Son of David," which was remarkable because it showed that she knew something about the Jewish promise of a Messiah. So in her desperation she takes a huge risk crossing ethnic and social and gender barriers that were unthinkable.
But she's a mom. And her little girl is sick, suffering terribly. She's being demonized, the text says. Yet, at first Jesus acts like he doesn't even hear her. He's silent. He appears indifferent. He just keeps walking and the thought flashes through her head, "Oh no. Not him too. He's just like every one else. He's no different." This is the test for the woman. She could give up and walk away or she could stay at it and keep pleading with Jesus.
Then he gives the disciples a test. They're not surprised that he doesn't talk with her. What rabbi would? She's a Gentile. She's a Canaanite. She's a woman. The rabbis had a saying at the time that "he who talks with womankind brings evil on himself, neglects the study of the law, and at the last will inherit hell." Not a great motivator to dialogue with the opposite sex!
So Jesus deliberately ignores the woman to see what his disciples will do. Do they get it? Do they understand what he's all about? No. Instead, they say, "Get her out of here. Send her away. She's making a scene, Jesus." You see, the disciples thought they knew the kind of people Jesus did and didn't have time for. They thought they knew who was invited into the Inner Ring and it certainly wouldn't be her. But really they were clueless.
So Jesus continues the exam by answering in verse 24, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." Now why does Jesus say that when in so many other places he says that he came for the whole world so that no one would perish?
He says that because again he's testing his disciples to see if they really understand the scope of his mission. Great teachers, like Jesus, don't just give lectures they also give tests to see if their followers are really getting it. These are the same disciples that tried to chase the kids away, that didn't have time for the Samaritan woman, that wanted Jesus to send the hungry crowds home. But in every case Jesus said, "No. Let them come. Let them all come to me." Has it hit them yet that he's come for everybody? No. Not yet. They don't challenge his statement at all. And so they fail the test. But how does the woman do?
Look at verse 25, The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.
This desperate woman won't be denied. She doesn't walk away. Instead, she keeps pursuing Jesus with more courage and confidence then he's ever seen. He says, "It's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." When he says "the children" he means Israel and when he says "their dogs" he means the Gentiles, but he doesn't use the same derogatory term for dogs that the Jews used. Instead, he softens it by using a word for "little dogs," like puppies. It's an endearing term.
So she comes right back and says, "Yes, Lord, but even the little dogs eat the little crumbs (literally) from their master's table!"
To which Jesus says, "Touché! Great comeback! This woman gets it! You've got mega faith." That's literally the Greek word here for "great." "You've got mega faith, woman. Your request is granted. Did you hear that Peter, James and John and the rest of you disciples? You failed your test. But she got an A+. So learn a lesson from this woman about who is welcome into the Inner Ring, the very people that you want to keep out."
When this woman first approached the disciples they put their noses up in the air. "Get this woman out of here!" They thought it would be condescending just to listen to her, let alone learn something from her. But then the tables turn and she becomes their teacher because she understands Jesus' mission more than they do that the doors to the Inner Ring are wide open to everybody.
Ortberg writes at the end of this chapter, "The woman understands what they do not. That the most desirable society in the universe turns out also to be the humblest and the least exclusive ... Wherever the spirit of exclusion reigns, it marks those farthest from the Fellowship of the Trinity ... The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are determined that the circle of love they share from all eternity should be ceaselessly, shamelessly inclusive. It is not full yet. They invite all who will to join them. No one is left out except those who refuse to enter."
That's why Valley View Community Church must always be an open, inclusive community, inviting others into fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As soon as we stop embracing and start excluding we will begin to die.
Last Saturday afternoon when we were over at Sunnyside Community Church we had a very special time of prayer with their leadership team. We formed a circle, held hands and committed this whole, amazing opportunity to the Lord.
But at one point, Tim suggested that we turn around and face outside the circle and pray for the hundreds of homes that need to hear the gospel and be invited into the Inner Ring. And we did. And we must never stop being an inclusive community, inviting those into embrace of God.