The Greatest Virtue (New Beginnings UMC)

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.