Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised! The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens! Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord! Psalm 113

            A famous slogan was making the rounds among us a few years ago and every once in a while you still hear it or even see it occasionally on a bumper sticker on the car ahead of you.  It is just two words.  But in so many ways it speaks for our entire culture and an entire generation of Americans, namely my own.  The phrase is: “Question Authority”.  I suppose it came about in the 1960s where my entire generation learned to mistrust the government, the schools, and especially our parents.  But it is not just my generation.  It is still around today as almost the defining mindset of all Americans:  Question Authority!

            Nobody is going to tell me what to do.  Where does that attitude come from?  It comes from a sinful heart because at the root of that independent attitude is a belief that none of us would ever say out loud but in our hearts we hold it to be true:  Nobody is going to tell me what to do because I am the only one that matters.  The things I do I do for selfish gain.  Sometimes we do some noble things and we volunteer our time for a cause.  Those things are good.  But a lot of times we do it because we feel guilty over the rest of the time when we live only for ourselves.  And each lesson on the bulletin cover today in some way deals with a facet of the attitude that all things revolve around ourselves.  Then in contrast is the Psalm for today which shows us how the Lord God has an entirely different perspective on others and how He treats them.  And at last we have the question of whether God can change our hearts so that we begin to see the world through His eyes, the eyes of Jesus Christ, our Savior.

            That passage for Amos speaks so dramatically about the poor in the world and those who do not have what we have.  And it ends by reflecting on the common way we think of those people in our hearts:  “Who cares?  Who cares about the poor?  I worked hard to get where I am today and if they weren’t so lazy they could get out of their problems too!”  But sometimes the only reason we are so blessed in life is because a gracious and kind God let you and me be born in America rather than Kenya or some other third world nation.  He has by grace given you and me numerous opportunities to succeed which other people simply do not have.  And we despise them for it and tell ourselves that it all happened because of our own greatness and our own abilities, forgetting that God not only gave us the opportunity to succeed but even the ability itself to get there.

            The Timothy passage reminds us of how often our very prayers are self-centered.  We are quick to pray for something we want and something we need.  But do we pray for others like the president or others in authority over us like St. Paul urges us to do in this passage?  Or do we just make fun of President Bush and put down the governor and criticize our elected officials?  And yet we never look at our own behavior and question it with the same attitude we do others.  Even when we read that famous passage from Timothy about women in the Church we all know how those words Paul used can make our teeth grind. And why?  We all know that this passage does not imply that women have no role in the life of the Church nor that they have any right to voice an opinion or even be a leader.  But when anyone, even God, puts a limit on your and my behavior and says that some things and some positions are off limits to us we rebel and question it.  How dare anyone tell me that I cannot be this or do that?  To simply be content with who we are and to enjoy life as God has given it no matter what the circumstances are is a lost art in our world. 

The other day I came home and I saw someone I care about deeply simply sitting at the kitchen table.  You know what she was doing?  She was just sitting there holding a cup of tea in her hands and staring out the window.  She does that a lot.  When I asked her why she did it and why she repeats it day after day she simply replied that she was more than content just to watch the birds and listen to the wind outside and have warm hands around a cup of tea.  “Well what in the world is wrong with her?” I asked.  You’re going to get nowhere with that attitude- and yet who had the heart attack because he was driven to go 100 miles an hour all the time?

            The parable of the Luke passage today is at first mysterious when we read it.  It is mysterious because this dishonest manager basically rips off his master by altering the financial records to make friends after he loses his job.  And in the end the master commends the dishonest steward and Jesus in His comments appears to be doing the same.  I suppose there are a number of ways to interpret the parable but as I read it the fact of the matter is not that the Lord God approves of dishonesty.  But what would most of us do if we found ourselves in a similar situation in life as this manager?  We would throw a big pity party and feel sorry for ourselves and complain about how the entire world is against us and why me, why me?  At least this dishonest slob did something about his problem even if it meant reaching out to other people rather than just throw a hissy fit and wallow in a pool of self-pity!.... the way a lot of us do when bad things happen to us.

            Yet in the midst of self-indulgent focus in life comes the voice of the Lord.  Amos tells us that the poor of the world and the outcasts of the world matter to God because every person matters to God.  In 1 Timothy we read how God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  In the Gospel reading He bluntly asks each and every one of whether making a buck is all that life is supposed to be, or does the condition of our heart, as Luke finishes off the passage, mean a little bit more in the long run?

            Psalm 113 begins today by reminding us how praiseworthy God is and how His name is blessed now and forevermore.  He is high above all the nations and his glory is above the heavens. No one in all of creation and in all of eternity is like Him and He is seated on high.  But He looks down with compassion and love on the poor.  He raises the poor from the dust and lifts up the needy.  His hand stretches all the way from heaven to lift you and me up to reign with Christ as if we were princes and princesses.  He takes the barren woman, Psalm 113 says, and gives her a home and makes her the joyous mother of children.  That is the way of the Lord.  That is the way of Jesus.

            Jesus had all of heaven at His beck and call.  The angels sang their praises to Him from the first moment of their creation.  He had all that glory.  But He gave it up for you to be born in a manger.  He never lived in a palace;  instead He worked for thirty years in a carpenter shop.  He then spent three years trying to show us another way to live our lives.  But in the end all He got from it was a cross and a crown of thorns and nails in His hands and feet.  The reward for His compassion on you and me was all of our sins which brought Him total forsakenness from God His father.  Just so He could save you and me.  And even then His eyes were filled with compassion as He prayed to God for you, “Father, forgive them.”  Even then.

            You are His child and You are the ones He died for.  Is it possible that as He raised you up to a new eternal life that He could give you His eyes to see the world in a different way, to see others in a different way?  I can tell you how He might do it.  Is there a bigger picture than the one we have been looking at from our perspective which so often has said even to Him, “Nobody is going to tell me what to do or how to live my life?”

            He opened my eyes when He sent me to Kenya a few years back.  I for the first time saw what He meant when He said, “God so loved the world,” as I looked upon another side to this world in which we live.  I saw people who had nothing at all compared to what I have—and yet they had joy and happiness and they loved the Savior like I do. 

            I tell you all of a sudden it happens when you have a life threatening illness.  All of a sudden when you are laying in that emergency room having a heart attack that all the earthly successes you crave just don’t mean as much.  To have cancer and perhaps to be told one day, “You are healed”.  Somehow that news from a Savior Who healed you means a whole lot more to you than getting ahead of the next guy or the fact that some slob cut you off on the highway or didn’t drive fast enough for you.  When you find out that newborn is fighting for his little life and it is your child or your grandchild, somehow it doesn’t matter whether it is all about you anymore.  You would just do anything to know that little one is going to be OK.  911 changed our country… for a while.  For a while we learned that there are some things more important than being number one and being the biggest consumers on the planet and that gasoline prices are too high when I fill the tank. We went to Church as a nation.  We prayed as a nation.  Have we forgotten?  When was the last time you allowed God to open your eyes and change your perspective?  Does it need to happen again?

            It can when we go to the cross and see the world through the eyes of Jesus.  When we see others as those for whom Jesus shed His precious blood and gave His precious life it happens.  When we stop thinking only about ourselves and see the world as Psalm 113 reminds us of how God sees the world it can happen.  And it begins with a repentant heart and the forgiveness that the Lord offers us today with the hands He stretched out on the cross for you and me.  Let Him open your eyes.  Let Him bring you real joy and honest contentment and let Him put a thankful heart within you that simply rejoices in the life He has given you that is now and forevermore.  That is how the words come true for each of us:  “I once was lost but now am found…. Was blind….. but now I see.”  Amen.