You Don’t Have To Trust The Mailman

I would never go skydiving. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the somewhat unnatural act of casting oneself from a perfectly safe aircraft for no good reason. However, one of the main reasons why I would never jump out of an airplane is that, from what I understand, you must pack your own parachute. Now I am well aware that how a parachute is packed may well mean the difference between life and death. I am also well aware of how well I make a bed. If I were to pack a parachute with the same deft skill as that which I use to make a bed, then I am doomed for certain. Of course, I am not sure I would trust anybody else to pack my parachute either. It is not easy to put your life in the hands of another human being. It’s not easy to trust.

I know that I often hear a close friend complain of one thing or another, back pain, for instance. And I will tell them that of all the remedies I have tried, acupuncture seems to work the best. Then they usually give me some story about being afraid of needles, or preferring to use traditional approaches, and both of us being polite and well mannered, the subject is dropped. Then, some months later, they will tell me that they were advised by a complete stranger to try acupuncture, so they did, and now they are much better. And once upon a time, I might have pointed out that I had made the same suggestions some months ago, at which they scoffed. But I know it will do no good. There seems to be something about us that doesn’t trust those who are closest to us. Perhaps we know them too well. We know our friends and all their faults all too well. We prefer to trust people we don’t know so well. We haven’t had the opportunity yet to see their failures.

A real estate tycoon by the name of Robert Ringer used to use this side of human nature to great advantage. He would never try to sell a building in his own city. He always traveled into a different city where he was unknown and behaved like the “expert from afar”. And since he behaved like an expert, and since nobody knew anything about him, they naturally believed in him. So in the end, he always ended up talking people into selling their multi-million dollar buildings, for which, Mr. Ringer would earn massive commissions.

Jesus ran into the same problem. According to Luke, right after Jesus is baptized and is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he walks into the synagogue in his hometown. When it is time for the reading, Jesus rises and goes to the front, and opens the scroll to read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Literally, in the original Greek, these words could just as well be translated as “I feel moved by that creative spirit, I am compelled, to bring good news to those who feel beaten down, to let you know that you don’t have to fight anymore. I come to open your eyes and raise up all those of you who feel broken and crushed by depression, and to tell you all how important today is.” These were the words of the prophet Isaiah. Then Jesus looked out upon the people in the synagogue and said, “Today, as you hear these words, they have come to pass.” And then everybody looked at him. Some people were really impressed by what he had to say. But there were others, who looked at each other, and then at Jesus, and said, “Wait a minute…isn’t this Jesus, the son of our neighbor, Joseph the carpenter?” And they sort of wrote him off.

They knew him too well. They looked at him and they assumed that he couldn’t have anything important to offer them. Hadn’t they known him their entire lives? How could he have anything special to offer? They had seen him as a child. They had watched him grow up, many of them. They put the messenger ahead of the message. We do the same thing. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I write these Sunday blogs. A lot of people have seen the sort of people who talk about the bible and about Jesus, and want nothing to do with Christianity. And let’s face it, if Jesus called upon us to be more like Pat Robertson, Jim Baker, Billy Graham, or even the Pope, you’d have to be nuts to follow his teachings. Luckily, he didn’t. That’s why I try to write about the things he DID say, so that people can forget about the teachings of the church, and listen to the teachings of Jesus. A lot of people look at the violent actions of a minority of extremist Muslims, and assume that there is something wrong with the teachings of Mohammed. But I say, look at the words of the prophet (and sometimes they may well be written on subway walls and tenement halls), look into the face of the prophet, and you will see the truth. One thing I have learned from these twenty plus years of teaching elementary school, is that sometimes, I am wrong, and a ten year old child is right.

Luke moves this event to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Mark’s gospel placed it towards the end, just before Jesus goes to Jerusalem. Mark points out in his version, that Jesus was unable to heal anybody, raise any dead, work any miracles at all there because of the people’s lack of faith. And I always like to point out that it is faith in the message that matters, not faith in the person. Those people could not believe in the message because it was Jesus who spoke it, as if that had anything to do with the truth contained therein. Why is it we think that someone we don’t know is any wiser than someone we do?

Luke was trying to make this event, in which Jesus is rejected by his hometown, a foreshadowing of his eventual rejection and death at the hands of the people of Israel. Although it seems to me that it was really the leaders of the people who rejected him, more than the people themselves. Luke was writing to Christians, some of them second and third generation. So Luke puts more stress on the rejection, and less on the reasons for the rejection.

And as I mentioned earlier, for some reason, we place the opinions and thoughts of some people above those of others. But all people have something to offer. We all have something to teach. Paul, the apostle, said that we are all parts of one body, and no part of the body is any more important than any other part of the body. He said that the eye cannot say to the hand, you are not part of the body. The hand needs the eye. The eye needs the hand. We all need each other. And God, or whatever you want to call that power, is a part of the body too. We need God, and S/He needs us too. The Buddhists go further, and say that all living things are a part of the body, not just humans. As such, we can learn from all living things, can see the truth in all living things. The Native Americans, the Indians, go further than that. They say the earth itself, the entire universe, is part of the body, and that we can learn from all things.

And as much as we need to look and listen to all things, all parts of the body, it is important to remember that the truth, the answers we seek, are within each of us. The truth is contained deep in our hearts. We only have to look within, but then of course, without a mirror, he must look to your face to understand my own. When I have lost something, the car keys, for example, I always look for them where I would expect them to be, and I never find them there (for if they were there, they would not be lost, would they?). I only find them after I finally open my mind and allow myself to look in places where I would not expect them to be. And so it is with any answer. Often it is found where you don’t expect it to be.

So it’s important to listen to what other people have to say. And sometimes, even though we know our friends might be full of shit, they still might have some good advice also. It’s the message that matters, not the person bringing it. I wouldn’t ignore a letter because I didn’t think much of the mailman. The message was that there was good news. You don’t have to stay beaten down; you are free, if you want to be. God, or whatever you want to call God, is always with you. Those were the words written down in the book. They were not the words of Jesus. They came long before him. If only those people had listened to the words.

Whenever I do find my car keys, or cell phone, or whatever it is I’ve lost, I usually find it in some surprising place I would have never thought to look. The same is true of great truths. Sometimes you hear it from someone or some place you would never expect, perhaps in a song, or in a comic strip, in a blog, or perhaps even from the poor son of a carpenter.