This season of Lent that we're in, one of the things I love
about Lent is, is that it's in so many ways different from
Christmas. Now, don't get me wrong, I love
Christmas. I love Christmas a lot.
Christmas is big. It's loud, it's bold, it's
bright, it's full of lights and colors in their movies and TV
shows and music and, and, and it's hard to be anywhere in the
world right now and not know it's Christmas time when it's
Christmas time. Lent is very different.
Lent is much quieter. Chances are, at least in the
United States, if you don't, if you aren't part of a church that
celebrates and remembers Lent, you might not even know what it
is, much less that it's happening.
But it is these 40 days, not counting Sundays before Easter,
and it's a time that we remember Jesus's 40 days of temptation in
the wilderness. He went out of the wilderness.
He separated himself from all of his attachments, from all sorts
of resources, including food and water, to simply focus on God,
listening to God, surrendering himself to God.
And that's what lint is like. It's a time not for bigness and
boldness and brightness, but for quietness, for stepping back,
for stepping away, for listening, for reflecting, for
trying to hear more clearly what God is asking of us.
Whether to pick up a new thing or to let go of a thing, to to
say a thing or to stop saying a thing, To invest in something
with our time, energy and resources, or perhaps to
withdraw from something, our time, energy and resources.
But this is what the season of Lent is about.
And it's a it is a good time of year for us to reflect and
remember and consider the status of our relationship with God.
And during this season of Lent, I'm asking everyone to reflect
on this question of how can we be faithful to God in a system
that's stacked against us? And, and make no mistake about
it, we live amongst powerful influential systems over which
we have little to no power. Political systems, economic
systems, ideological systems, philosophical systems, social
systems, educational systems, all sorts of systems that are
out there that are vast in nature, vast in scope, vast in
influence, and we have very, very little power influence over
them. It's good to vote.
I love voting, vote whenever I get a chance to vote.
But simple truth is, is in a statewide or national election,
my vote does not make much difference.
And and who I really want to be in charge.
Yeah, no one really asks. I tell some people anyway, but
no one really asks how do we live lives faithful to God in
that kind of situation? Particularly since these systems
by and large push us against faithfulness to God.
They push back against that. They make it harder to be
faithful to God rather than easier to be faithful to God.
One system that it's easy to see that dynamic in is economic
systems. We live in a a largely
capitalist economic system here in the West, in the United
States. And I'm not here to hate on
capitalism. I'm not here to praise
capitalism. The the simple fact is,
capitalism is the worst sort of economic system there is, except
for all the others that we've tried, you know, none of them
that's perfect. They all have their flaws.
And capitalism has its flaws. And one of the flaws of
capitalism is that it fosters, encourages and promotes greed.
Capitalism thrives on people that are greedy because greedy
people produce more. And producing more not only
benefits the greedy person, in some ways it benefits other
people too. That's why we had folks like
Ivan Boesky in the movie Wall Street that back in the 1980s
when the stock market was booming at that particular
period, proudly proclaiming that greed is good.
Encouraging people to be greedy, encouraging people to, to spend,
spend, spend, spend and acquire, acquire and build up wealth and
build up wealth and build up wealth and get as much as you
can, which is the opposite of what Jesus teaches.
Rather than devoting ourselves to the pursuit of wealth to
devote ourselves to the service of God and the love of other
people, The political, economic, philosophical system, social
systems that we're in right now definitely push us against God.
You know that the, the, the, the social systems we're in right
now, the, the general consensus seems to be that the loudest
voice wins that, that the goal is to shame and obliterate and
destroy your opponents, rage bait them into doing something
embarrassing so that you can destroy them and humiliate them
in public and shame them and disgrace them so no one will
listen to them anymore. Don't listen, don't respect.
Just react and shout and and and judge and condemn and shame and
humiliate and destroy. The opposite of what Jesus calls
us to do, who has told us that love builds up, it doesn't tear
down. So how can we be faithful in
these systems in which we live over which we have so little
power? To answer that question, I want
us to consider this question of strategy versus tactics.
And, and I learned this from Emmanuel Katangale.
He wrote a book a number of years ago called The Mirror to
the Church. And he is a, a native of Rwanda
and his family left Rwanda before the genocide.
And he did a, a good chunk of his growing up in Africa,
neighboring country to Rwanda, another country in Africa, and,
and now resides in the United States where he's a professor,
seminary theology, that sort of thing.
And, and he talks in this book about the difference between
strategy and tactics and, and what that means for the church.
And this is what he says about strategy.
Strategy is how people in power plan the way they want things to
work. Strategy is always realistic,
even when it is ambitious. It lays out a step by step
process for moving with predictable results from where
we are to where we want to be. Strategy is the posture of the
powerful. It sets goals and commits to
measurable outcomes. It is not comfortable with
uncertainties, but always count accounts for them as a
predictable variable. Strategy is for boardrooms.
Strategy is for political bigwigs.
Strategy is for, you know, sports teams that that are are
have the resources and the determination to beat their
opponents. You control variables, you
predict outcomes, you make decisions based on what you can
control, and you try to control as much as you can.
Strategy is the posture of the powerful.
The problem is, in this world in which we live, followers of
Jesus are seldom the powerful or the most powerful voices in the
room. And this is what Katangale has
to say about that. He says On the other hand,
tactics are tools for the weak, the wisdom of the weak about how
to survive in a world they do not own.
Tactics assume that the system we live in cannot be reformed or
reorganized in its entirety. Instead of instead tactics plot
to subvert reignings, the reigning system at those places
where it is weak. Tactics are worked out on the
fly and passed on in the jungle under the cover of night.
Like strategy, they are realistic.
But tactics do not pretend to know for certain what will
happen in the future. Tactics depend on the art of
improvisation. When situations change, tactics
change with them, Katangale says.
And I agree with him that the church is called to tactical
thinking rather than strategic thinking that we seldom are in
power. In times when the church has had
great power in the world, things have gone badly.
We don't handle power well. And Jesus, when he left earth,
did not leave behind a strategic plan for the church to bring
about the Kingdom of God on earth.
That's why Jesus came. Jesus came proclaiming the
arrival of the Kingdom of God, still in process, that has still
not been fulfilled. But he did not leave behind a
grand strategic plan for us to establish the Kingdom of God on
this earth. Instead, Jesus left us with
tactics to live out principles of the Kingdom of God, even in
situations, perhaps especially in situations where we are weak,
where we lack power, Jesus gives us tactics for attacking and
undermining weak spots in the world systems.
And that's what we're going to be talking about throughout Lent
here as well as we're looking at this question of how are we
faithful and systems stacked against us?
Another way to frame that is to say, what are the tactics that
we can use to live faithful to God in these systems that are
stacked against us? So we're going to start by
talking about Jacob's tactics. Jacob had a problem and Jacob
was out of power. Jacob was not the power broker
in this encounter that John has already read a little bit of
today. Jacob was returning home where
his older brother Esau was, and nearly everything in the
cultural system, political system that was around him gave
greater power to Esau than it did to Jacob.
Jacob, first of all, had dishonored his father Isaac.
He'd lied to and deceived his father to steal the blessing
from his father that his father was intending to give to his
brother Esau, and he dishonored his father.
And dishonouring your father, particularly when your father is
the patriarch of your clan as Isaac was, is an egregious
violation of custom and tradition and social norms that
put Jacob on the wrong side of custom and tradition out of
power. Second thing was that Esau was
the older brother. They were twins, but Esau was
born 1st and again, custom and tradition said that means Esau
will inherit the lion's share of the father's wealth and estate
and in fortune and influence, and the younger brother will
serve the older brother, is what custom and tradition said.
But Jacob once again subverted custom and tradition, not just
when he stole his father's blessing that placed him in
power and authority over his older brother, but also when he
gypped Esau out of his birthright and manipulated him
into giving up his birthright. Jacob had wronged his father.
Jacob had wronged his brother. The last word he had heard from
his brother was I am going to kill you.
He got out of town and he spent 20 years out of town.
And now God said go back. And Jacob is afraid because
Jacob is in the weaker position. He has become wealthy, but he
doesn't have near the power that his brother has.
And so when he sends word ahead and a gift ahead to his brother
that he's coming back and his servants return and say, your
brother's coming to meet you and he's got 400 men with him, and
Jacob doesn't know how his brother's going to respond.
It's possible that at that point, Esau didn't know how he
was going to respond, that it might depend on Jacob's attitude
toward him of whether he came in peace or with violence.
We've seen some of Jacob's tactics.
I'm going to read a little more of the story, and then we're
going to talk about the tactics a little more fully here.
Three key tactics that Jacob had.
This is what happened when Jacob and Esau meet.
Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him.
He threw his arms around his neck and kissed him, and they
wept. Then Esau looked up and saw the
women and children. Who are these with you?
He asked, and Jacob answered. They are the children God Grace
has graciously given to your servant.
Then the female servants and their children approached and
bowed down. Next Leah and Hill, her
children, came and bowed down, and last of all came Joseph and
Rachel, and they too bowed down. Esau asked.
What's the meaning of all of these flocks and herds I met?
To find favor in your eyes, my Lord, Jacob said.
But Esau said, I already have plenty, my brother, keep what
you have for yourself. No, please, said Jacob, if I
have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me, for to
see your face is like seeing the face of God.
Now that you have received me favorably, please accept the
present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me
and I have all I need. And because Jacob insisted, Esau
accepted it. We see in the two passages the
one John read earlier when I just read three key tactics that
Jacob and his position of weakness used in coming back and
seeking to reconcile with his brother.
The first tactic was he divided his assets.
This was Plan B. This was the worst case scenario
plan. This was if everything goes as
wrong as it can go, this is, this is what we've got to do.
He divided his assets, thinking I'll put half of my stuff and
half of my family in one place, the other half of my stuff and
the other half of my family in another place and hopefully at
least half will survive even if the other half is destroyed.
Plan B, the backup if things go very wrong.
Second tactic was generosity. He sent gifts ahead to Esau,
very extravagant gifts, very generous gifts.
These two things alone are not going to be enough to engender
goodwill with his brother, whom he has wronged so grievously.
Because when when you've been wronged as badly as Esau was
wrong, you don't going to be content to be bought off,
particularly if you're already wealthy.
And Esau was already wealthy. Jacob was having a marginal
impact on Esau's wealthier at best.
And nobody likes to be bought off.
Nobody when they've been really, really hurt, when they've been
really humiliated and offended and humbled.
No one wants to just take money from a rich guy in exchange for
that because that's no real punishment to the rich guy for
the wrong that they've done. So I think without the third
tactic, the third tactic is by far the most important.
It is the key and that's humility.
Jacob came back to his brother with humility.
It was not. Jacob did not come back
asserting his God-given rights of authority over his brother.
He had his father's blessing that gave him authority over his
brother. He had God's word to his mother
that gave him authority over his brother.
He did not come back demanding and asserting his God-given
rights. He did not come back trying to
browbeat and bludgeon and manipulate his brother to force
him into a position of subservience.
He didn't do that. He didn't raise up an army of
his own. He didn't.
We see nothing about him arming his servants.
He's got male and female servants.
We hear nothing about his arming his servants.
He came back with humility. It was my Lord this and my Lord
that, and your servant this and your servant that.
And here, Lord, see my family, bow down to you, submitting to
your authority, humbling ourselves before you.
It was the humility that made all the difference here.
Not demanding and asserting his rights, not grasping power and
position and privilege, but humbling himself and giving
generously. Humility was the greatest of
these, and it made all the difference.
Humility in a system stacked against you.
Humility is your greatest virtue.
It's the greatest virtue you can have to approach that system
with humility. Again, the exact opposite of
what our culture is calling us to do.
Our culture calls us to arrogance.
To loud, assertive arrogance in which we state our truth at the
top of our lungs and shout others into silence, or protest
others into silence, or violently push others into
silence, or shame others into silence.
Rage. Bait others into embarrassing
situations. That's what the world says.
But Jesus says when you're in a position of weakness, humility,
humility is your greatest resource.
This is the example Jesus gave us.
Paul reminds us of that in the book of Philippi, in his letter
to the church in Philippi, the book of Philippians, when he
said Jesus have the same mind, think the same way that our Lord
and our Savior Jesus thought, have the same mindset he had.
He was God, He was equal with God, but he didn't grasp and
cling to that. He didn't come asserting the
power and authority of God over us.
Jesus, Paul says he humbled himself and made himself a
servant. The word is really slave.
Jesus gave up power, he gave up privilege and he came humbly
among his people. And Paul said this is how we
need to think as well. And Paul understood what it was
to be in the weak position. Everywhere he went, Paul sharing
the good news of Jesus Christ, there were large numbers of
people that believed and there were large numbers of people
that tried to kill him. And the people that tried to
kill him always seemed to outnumber and have power over
the people that believed. And over and over again he was
whipped. Over and over again he was
stoned. Over and over again he was
imprisoned. Over and over again he was
abused. Over and over again he was
kicked out. He did not come in with the
power. He came in with humility.
And he invites us to do the same, to have that same kind of
tactic. And So what is humility?
If we need to come in, if we need to have humility like Jesus
had humility. Too often we think of humility
as thinking less of ourselves. Like, I'm a worm, I'm awful.
I'm a terrible person. You know, if bad things happen
to me or if these people do bad things to me, that's OK because
I'm a bad person and I really deserve it anyway.
That is not humility. That is humiliation.
It is a different thing. Humility is not thinking less of
ourselves. Humility is thinking of
ourselves less. It's getting ourselves off
center stage. It's realizing we're not the
star of our own life, was it? Shakespeare said.
You know, life is a stage, something like that.
I was never good at Shakespeare. We're not the star, you and I.
We're in the chorus, we're in the ensemble.
We're not the star. We get off center stage and we
help other people shine in the spotlight.
Instead of making sure that we're getting everything the way
we want it, we make sure other people are getting what they
need. Instead of making sure we have
the power and position to to to make sure we're taken care of,
we make sure that others are taken care of.
It's not thinking less of ourselves, it's thinking of
ourselves less. And it's still not despising
ourselves. It's thinking rightly about
yourself, the strengths and the weaknesses, the good and the
bad, the warts and the beautiful things there.
It's all important. Because very often the way that
we are most able to be a blessing to other people is with
the things that we have that are good and strong.
So often that's the thing we got.
You know, you do not want my help doing your taxes.
You don't. If you're struggling to get your
taxes, you do. I will never be able to bless
anyone by helping them with their taxes.
I might help you go to jail. Might can't help you with your
taxes. You want help with taxes, talk
to Amy. You want to help with public
speaking, you come talk to me. We can work on that.
I can tell you how to sit down and talk to someone, maybe do a
little negotiating. I got some strength and some
skill in that department. I can be a blessing that way.
I'm not going to bless anyone with my singing.
I'm not going to bless anyone with my dancing, Not going to
bless anyone with my taxing. The things that you're good at
are often the very things that God wants to use in you and
wants you to use to be a blessing to others.
So it's important to recognize what those things are too, and
lean into those things to think rightly about ourselves and then
to put other folks center stage so that we can bless them.
That's the that's the best thing we can do when we're in that
position of weakness. Maybe the greatest example of
this is history. When Paul and Silas, when they
were in jail, I think it was in Philippi, I think it was in
Philippi. They were in jail being
tortured, and there was an earthquake that came, and the
doors of the jail burst open and the chains that were chaining
them to the floor were broken, released, and they were free.
And if they had been the center of their own story, they would
have gotten out of Dodge as quickly as possible.
We're gone. We're free, we're leaving, we're
out. But they made the jailer the
center of the story. And they knew that if they left,
the jailer would get their punishment.
And so they stayed in jail to love and serve and show
compassion to their jailer, the one who had been torturing them.
And he repented and his whole family with him.
That's the mindset Jesus calls us to have.
That's humility. That's the greatest asset we can
have, the greatest virtue we can have when we're trying to be
faithful in a system stacked against us.
But there's another piece to this, the other side of the
coin. In a system stacked against you,
relationships are your most valuable resource.
Humility is your greatest asset, but your greatest virtue.
But relationships are your most valuable resource.
It took Jacob 20 years to learn this.
When Jacob left home, relationship didn't matter to
him. He was happy to sacrifice
relationship with his brother in order to cheat him out of his
birthright. He was happy to sacrifice his
relationship with his father in order to steal his father's
blessing. He was happy to sacrifice his
relationship with his brother in order to get from his father the
blessing meant for his brother. He was happy to The
relationships to him were just a means to an end.
The people were tools to increase his power, his position
and his wealth. And that's how the world says
should act. Use people to get power and
wealth and position for ourselves.
Use people to make ourselves better.
But Jacob learned after 20 years of working for someone just like
him, Laban, who lied and cheated and stole and ripped him off,
Jacob learned the importance of relationship.
I kind of think having two wives, 2 concubines, and 11 kids
probably taught him a thing or two about the importance of
relationship too. And by the time he came back to
Esau, rather than using people to gain wealth, he was now using
his wealth to gain people to build relationships.
The relationships were the key thing.
Remember this what he said, if I have found favor in your eyes,
he said to Esau, accept this gift from me.
For to see your face is like seeing the face of God now that
you have received me favorably. Before he was using his brother
to get rich. Now he's using his riches to
reconcile to his brother. And that's the difference
between night and day. It's the difference between
heaven and hell. This is what Jesus taught us.
Remember, he said, he said, I tell you, use worldly wealth to
gain friends for yourself, so that when the wealth is gone,
you'll be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Capitalism tells us to use people to get rich.
Our social systems tell us to use people to get cliques to get
famous. Another way of getting rich.
Jesus says use your riches to get people because one day the
riches are going to be gone. I've been to a lot of funerals.
I've officiated a lot of funerals over the years.
One thing I have never seen as a hearse pulling a U-Haul, not
even once. I want some point in your life.
Every material bit of wealth that you have will become
utterly meaningless. Who will be welcoming and
receiving you into the eternal dwellings may depend on how you
use that wealth that you have in this life, however much or
little it might be. Jesus said you can't serve both
God and money. If you want to serve, if you're,
if money is what you're after, if money is your goal, you're
going to serve money, which means you're going to, you're
going to despise God. And if you're going to despise
God, you're going to despise the people created in his image.
You'll use the people to get the money, but if you serve God,
then you can use the money to get the people.
You can use the money to get the people.
That line, Jacob said, seeing you.
Yeah. Jacob left 20 years earlier, a
knucklehead who thought power and wealth were more important
than relationships. He came back a man who
understood that relationships were more important than power
and wealth. And he humbled himself before
his brother and offered his service to his brother.
And that that in in that reconciliation that he had with
his brother, Jacob saw the face of God.
I think it's what Jesus was talking about when he said
later, hundreds of years after this, and he told his followers,
look, if you're coming to worship, if you're coming to
church, you're going to make your offerings and your worship
to God before you ever do that. If you've got a brother or
sister out there with anything against you, you go and be
reconciled to them before you come and try to be reconciled to
me. And Jacob was living that out,
seeing the face of God and the reconciliation he had with his
brother after wronging his brother so grievously.
I don't know if that line from Jacob is what inspired the
lyricist for Les Miserables. I, I, I, I, I should have
checked that out. I didn't.
I probably will eventually. Or maybe one of you already know
and you can tell me. But at the end of the musical
Les Miserables, the main character, Jean Valjean sings To
know to love another person is to see the face of God.
We live in a world in which people are very skeptical about
God. In the existence of God, how Can
you believe in someone you cannot see?
But Jesus has told us how to see God face to face.
He said it. He said at the end of times,
it's going to be like this. It's going to be like God's
dividing all the peoples of the world up into two groups, the
sheep and the goats. He's going to say to the sheep,
come join me in my eternal rest. For when I was hungry, you gave
me something to eat. When I was naked, you clothed
me. When I was.
When I was sick and in prison, you visited me.
When I was homeless, you sheltered me.
But you, you goats over here, depart from me forever because
when I was hungry, you didn't feed me.
When I was naked, you didn't clothe me.
When I was sick and in prison, you didn't visit me.
When I was homeless, you didn't give me shelter.
And they said to him, when did we see you and do this?
When did we not see you and fail to do that?
Or when did we see you and fail to do this?
And Jesus said, whatever you have done or whatever you have
failed to do, for the least of these brothers and sisters of
mine, you have done or failed to do with me.
If we want to see the face of God, we just need to find a
desperate person and love them. Find a person in great need and
give to them, put them in the spotlight in a good way.
Honor them, build them up, encourage them, provide them the
thing that they need, and then we get to see the face of God
right there in front of us. To do that requires humility,
and it requires seeing relationships as more important
than power and wealth. So our greatest virtue, as we're
trying to be faithful in this world that's stacked against us,
our greatest virtue is humility. Not our God-given rights, not
our power, not our wealth, not our assertiveness, not our
talented, not our greatest virtuous.
Humility. And our greatest resource are
the people around us. We need each other.
We need the family of God. We need the people in this
community around us, even the ones that are not a part of this
church. We need these relationships.
That's where we're going to see the face of God.
That's where we're going to find love when we need love, as we
give ourselves to Christ and to others in humility, in Jesus
name, Amen.