Life Through Different Eyes: Eyes for Others Phil. 1.27-2.11 egm 8.11.02
Life through different eyes. Bill looked at life through one set of eyes, Raymond through another. Now when you hear Raymond talk he really feels like a set up doesn’t he. He looks at life through the eyes of what he could get out of it, he looks at others through the eyes of what he can get out of them, eyes that tried to figure out how he could end up on top, indeed his whole world is set up that way, even at his funeral another salesman is angling to get his old customers. The whole thing, looking at life through those eyes feels a bit like a set up.
Until we open our eyes and see the truth. That there are a lot of people out there who go through life looking at life with exactly his eyes. They want their rights, they want to get what they want even if others get hurt in the process. And so you have Enron executives urging their employees to buy more stock even as they unload theirs as fast as they can. The employees lose it all, the executives walk away with millions. And so you have Worldcom CFO hiding billions of dollars in liabilities and taking them off the corporate books, falsely inflating the companies cash flow and by the way it didn’t hurt his cash flow either, but investors are now paying the price.
A lot of people go through life looking at life with Raymond’s eyes. This past week I was listening to a commentary on NPR talking about the Russian Mafia’s influence in the recent Olympics, buying off judges so that the Russians would win some ice skating competition. Americans have heard about it and we profess shock, disbelief, anger—but then, the commentator pointed out, that we should not be shocked at all, because we do the very same thing in America on an even grander scale. College sports is filled with people who pay to get athletes to come to their school, there is all kind of illegal stuff going on in sports all so that we can end up on top. In other words, we have seen the one who has gone down the path of pushing to be on top and it’s not nearly so much the Russians as it is us.
It’s us, it’s not nearly so much the people at Worldcom or Enron, it’s us. Truth is we look at the world through Raymond’s eye’s on a daily basis. We grab the remote and make sure we get to watch the television program we want to watch. We cut someone off in traffic because our schedule us obviously more important than theirs. We demand that our child be put on that team or play a certain position. We push our kids to get the best grades because that’s how they are going to get ahead in this world. We want things to go our way at church and we manipulate things to get our way, we lobby people to support our way of thinking. We demand our rights, whatever those rights might be—because we look at the world and we say—I’m owed this, I have this coming and no one can take it away from me, I deserve to get my way, I’m right. We do this in a multitude of small ways all of the time and sometimes we do it in a big way or two, maybe we cook the books or have an affair, or have an abortion, or cheat a customer, or trash someone’s reputation but hardly even notice it because we look at life through the eyes of Raymond. Eyes that say, what does it take to get my way, to end up on top, whatever my top happens to be.
But then along comes an Enron, along comes a Worldcom and we see again the destruction that looking at life through these eyes can cause. We see it on a grand scale and if we are honest about it and look at it, we know that a similar kind of destruction happens in our own world, in our own relationships, in our own business, in our own family when we live looking through those eyes.
God comes along at those moments when we get some clarity on the destruction that living life looking through Raymond’s has on us and others and says to us. What’s say we look at life through some different eyes. Kind of like the eyes you see in Bill, eyes that look out for the needs and interests of others. Here’s how God puts it in Philippians 2 Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion. Philippians 2.4-8 The Message
Here’s what Paul is saying—Jesus uses the power he has, the power of God himself to give rather than get. Jesus could have come to earth, demanded all the rights that come with being the greatest being in the universe, he could have demanded that people bow down as he went by, he could have demanded that they run this way and that to fulfill his every whim. But he doesn’t do that at all. Instead he says, I’ve got all this power, I have all this ability what I’m going to do it use it to serve people, I’m going to set aside my rights and I’m going to serve. This is how Jesus talks about the whole deal when he has to deal with his own disciples who were busy looking at the world through Raymond’s eyes, “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.” Mark 10.42-45 The Message
Jesus has rights, he has power, he could demand his rights, he could use his power for his advantage, but he says, “That’s not what I’m about, I about using my divine power to serve. I’m not about getting my way, in fact, I’m so far from that—I’m about promoting the good of other people even though it costs me, I’m about promoting the good of others at personal expense.
Stories this morning. Stories to help us understand this whole deal, this whole deal of look at life through different eyes, eyes for others. Of promoting the good of others at personal expense. Stories. Jesus is at a wedding in Cana. It’s a wedding for a poor couple, but poor or not they want to celebrate and they want to join others to celebrate with them. Jesus and his mom are invited to be a part of the celebration, but poverty does impose it’s limits and part of the way through the celebration they run out of wine.
In Jesus’ day to run out of wine at the wedding celebration is a disaster of epic proportions, but what can a poor couple do, you can’t run off to the local grocery store and pick up and a bunch more wine whether by carton or bottle, when the budget is blown, it’s blown. Jesus’ mom apparently knows what it’s like to be poor, she certainly knows what it’s like to be embarrassed before your friends—after all, when you belly starts to swell before the wedding, even if you say it was the Holy Spirit who did it, tongues will wag—she knows what it’s like to be poor and to be embarrassed and so she goes to her son, to the one who swelled her belly some 30 years before and she says—they’re out of wine, she goes to him because she knows her son’s heart, she knows that it breaks over such things and she knows that he will do something, so sure is she that she tells those who are serving at the wedding—do whatever he tells you.
One might ask, what advantage is it to God to provide wine, if anything these people should be stomping grapes and bringing wine to Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t see it that way, he sees the bride, the groom, he sees their poverty, he sees their embarrassment, and he responds in a huge way, he makes 120 gallons of wine out of water and he makes the best wine imaginable. He makes it because he came to serve and perhaps most surprisingly to many people, his first act of service, his first miraculous sign as John says, is to help the poor and to help in human gladness. And as you see Jesus do this, as you see him serve in this way, you can feel a connection with something that Jesus will say later, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Luke 14.12-14 NIV
Stories—stories of what it looks like to have eyes for others, for the poor who are throwing a party, for the poor who need to be invited to a party, of promoting their good even though it costs us. Stories. Jimmy Carter—when he left office in 1980 after being defeated by Ronald Regan he was named in some polls as the worst president ever. Carter could have worked hard to restore his reputation, he could have withdrawn from the whole scene and declared he was the victim of an ungrateful America, he could have found ways to get even who had caused him grief while he was president, he could have, as many former presidents have done enjoyed golf or cashed in on his status and done the speaker circuit thing. He did none of those things. Instead, quietly, humbly he began the Carter Center in Atlanta to promote causes that he felt were vital to the well-being of others. He began a democracy project that monitors elections all over the world, to make sure they are fair and to seek to make them safe so people can vote without fear. He got involved in Habitat for Humanity, not just by being a spokesman, but by swinging his own hammer, helping to build the homes. His foundation has targeted a handful of major diseases that attack and destroy the poor in many nations—the result, both guinea worm and river blindness have been almost completely wiped out.
But it wasn’t just out there, his heart also expresses itself close to home. Every Sunday he is home he continues to teach his Sunday School class—a class that in a church of about 300, can draw as many as 1000 to hear Carter teach. Philip Yancy in his article Servant in Chief writes, “On the hot summer day I visiting Maranatha Church, soldiers from 21 countries, in training at nearby Fort Benning, showed up. ‘Tell me, if you were back home, would you be in church today?’ my wife asked a carload of these soldiers. The Swedish driver didn’t hesitate: ‘If Jimmy Carter were preaching we would!’” If you ever sit in Maranatha Church and turn over the offering plates you will find the initials JC carved in the bottom—the former President made them in his wood shop, just as he made the TV cabinet that sits in the Sunday School room. And every other month he takes his turn cutting the grass at the church while his wife Rosalyn cleans the toilets inside.
And when it comes to using the power he does have around town, throwing his weight around if you will, he is a former President after all and as such he does have a bit of power—well when Millard Fuller of Habitat for Humanity boasted of eliminating all substandard housing in Sumter County, Jimmy Carter got on the phone and told him about Josephine, who lived in a house with holes in its siding plugged with rags. When a young woman in the church began adulthood with a face badly deformed from a genetic defect, Carter called the head of Emory Hospital in Atlanta and arranged for plastic surgery.
Just a bit of the story of Jimmy and Rosalyn, there is more—but for now just one other part of the story. One that we don’t want to miss, because when we think about looking at life through different eyes we worry about this part, we worry that if we use our place, our power, our privilege like Jesus did to serve others even though it cost him, if we hear the story of Jimmy Carter and think about using our life for others, what will happen to us, will life be what we want it to be, what we hope it to be? Jimmy Carter was being interviewed by Barbara Walters and she caught him off guard with one question. She asked him to reflect on his life, from farmer, to governor, to president and to tell her which time he enjoyed the most—he tough for a minute and then came that classic smile and the response: Now.
Stories—stories of what it looks like to have eyes for others, for the poor who are throwing a party, for the poor who need to be invited to a party, of promoting their good even though it costs us. The story of a life that is marked by serving others, of using your power to promote the good of others and even ignoring your status to do the menial tasks of life in order to serve. Stories. Ruby Bridges. Six years old, first black child to attend an all-while public school in New Orleans. To say it was ugly is to put it mildly. Day by day screaming crowds lined the way to the school, speaking shouting obscenities and cruel words that should not escape the lips of a good people toward anyone, much less a six year old. Every day Ruby had to walk to school with federal marshals to protect her. Watch a bit of Ruby’s story.
Stories, the words of Ruby’s mom, telling Ruby to pray for her enemies, to bless them, not to curse them—that bit of the story remind us of something, that to look at the world through different eyes, to look at the world with eyes for others doesn’t just happen. This is the kind of life that is nurtured, grown, built over years. And it is most often grown and nurtured in the home. It is in our homes that our kids learn how to look at the world with eyes for others. Researcher George Barna writes, “More than many people want to admit, how we train our children determines their values, views, and behavior as adults.”
If we are going to have adults who are going to look at life through different eyes, adults who are going to look at the world with eyes for others, we have to teach our children to see that way. How do we do that. Two suggestions this morning. Suggestion one: live and encourage your children to live a life less ordinary. We know what an ordinary life looks like in our culture. It’s about getting a good education to get ahead. It’s about making sure that all we want we get. It’s about having a good retirement account and making sure that our future is secure and then if there is anything left over to look to what others might need.
But what if you teach your child a life less ordinary. What if you tell your children that really they don’t need the best of everything or even the second best of everything? What if you teach your children they are getting an education to so that they can serve others to the best of their ability. What if you teach your children that good grades, while helping to get them into a good college, are less about getting into a good college and more about learning well so they can serve well. What if from time to time when your family is thinking about buying something, maybe even has the money to buy something, that you say to your kids, “you know, we could buy that, but just because we could buy it, even though there is nothing wrong with buying it, we’re not going to do that—because part of our living a life that’s less ordinary, is that we choose to give up what we may rightfully do so others can have what they need. So this time, we are going to take this money and help build a house for another family, or we are going to use the money to help those famine victims we read about, or we are going to use this money to send that family who rarely goes on vacation because they can’t afford it, on that vacation. What if from time to time you would talk to your kids seriously about where your family is investing it’s time and you decide that living a life less ordinary means giving up some of the typical middle class things we purse with our time and instead use that time to serve other as a family?
A life less ordinary, we all know what an ordinary life looks like, what’s expected of us in a middle class suburb, but what if we seek to teach our kids a life less ordinary, where they have eyes for others? Can that kind of teaching really have any impact? Let’s go back to Ruby and see what kind of impact her mom’s word had on her.
Stories, the story of a six year old who prays for her enemies, of a President who serves, of God who comes in human form and serves the poor. Stories of promoting the good of others even though it costs us. Stories. Out of these stories comes something Paul tells us in the book of Philippians. Out of these stories comes people who begin to follow Jesus themselves as they are amazed at a people who look at life through different eyes. Out of these stories comes unity in the church as people are more concerned about serving than being served and as they are, they are brought together in unity.
Out of these stories comes a society that we want to live in—where Enron’s and Worldcoms are extremely rare, and so is being ripped off by a merchant or a robber, after all, this is a place where people have eyes for others. And then one more thing—something Jesus said—that out of this kind of life, out of looking through the eyes of those who have eyes for others comes life. For whoever loses his life for the sake of God’s way of life will find life.
Stories. What does the story of your life look like? When people look at you through their eyes, when people one day look at your life with your eyes closed for the last time will they see Bill or will they see Raymond, and as they look will Bill’s last words ring in your heart. “Regret it?” Stories. What story will you write this week? What story will your kids write.
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