Raising Hard-Headed Children

Luke 19.1-10; Habakkuk 2.1-5

Russ Dean, October 28, 2001

            One of the best things about expecting a child is wondering what that child is going to be like when she or he finally makes that grand entrance. Will he have his father’s eyes? Will she have her mother’s smile? Will he get his father’s temper or his mother’s stubbornness? Yes, one of the best things about expecting is the excitement of waiting. Wondering. Hoping. Smiling at all the wonderful possibilities.

The worst thing about being a parent, is that painful moment of truth when all that idealistic waiting comes to a crashing halt. The worst thing about being a parent is realizing that he did get his father’s temper – and his mother’s stubbornness – all rolled into one! It is quite sobering to look at your children and realize that whoever they are (whatever they are) you have absolutely no one to blame for that -- except their mother!

            A few weeks ago, Amy and I were on our back patio playing with the boys. This was one moments of “family time” at its best. As the boys played and we sat in the hammock, Jackson was riding his bicycle. He was trying to get on the bike by putting one foot on the raised pedal, and starting to ride by stepping on that pedal as he threw his other leg across the seat. But he did not have the pedal quite beyond the peak point of its rotation. So each time he tried to step on the pedal, it fell backward, applying the brake, instead of rotating forward and putting the bike into motion.

            This was more than Jackson could bear. He didn’t understand why this was happening, and, unfortunately, his DNA includes the certain genetic sequence which demands that all insignificant problems in life be solved to the accompaniment of stamping, stomping, and grunting. (The gene for throwing things sometimes weighs in as well.) I don’t want to tell you whether this little genetic surprise came bundled on Jackson’s “X” or “Y” chromosome, but I will tell you that his mother seemed to enjoy this little episode more than his father did!

            And if the genome of one of our children includes two genes determining irrational perfectionism and not even one hinting at patience, the other child got the equivalent of a genetic truckload of obstinacy. (Obstinacy is the noun form of the adjective “obstinate,” meaning “stubbornly adhering to an attitude, an opinion, or a course of action; difficult to manage, control, or subdue.” [1] The word comes to us through Middle English and ultimately from the Latin: obstinatus, which is the present participle of obstinare, to persist. Its synonyms are: stubborn, headstrong, stiff-necked, bull-headed, pigheaded, mulish, dogged, pertinacious, or, as Amy might say it… the child is hard-headed![2])

            Luke begins his gospel, also by telling about two boys, cousins, who were impatient and obstinate in their own way. In the third chapter of his story, Luke says the two boys met, at the water’s edge. John, “the Baptizer,” was a fiery preacher, who was not known for using any words that needed to be defined.

“Snakes,” he hissed. “Every one of you. Why are you here? And don’t start telling me ‘Abraham is our father.’ God could not care less. This water will mean nothing to you or to God if you do not change the way you live. God could birth an entire nation from these rocks, if God just needed to raise more hard-headed children!” (Well, I’ve paraphrased a bit, but that is basically what John said![3])

God does not care who your daddy is, what genes you inherited, how or where you were baptized or what kind of religious language you speak. All that matters to God is how you live your life. “Repent. Change your ways, you hard-headed children… or be thrown into the fire” (vs.9).

            Just when we start thinking, “Amen, preacher. Tell ‘em” Luke goes to “meddlin’.” John’s harsh message indicates that repentance will manifest itself in “fruit worthy of [that] repentance” (vs.8). And more than any other gospel writer, Luke makes it clear that the fruit of our repentance is the rightful use of our possessions.

            At least ten times in his gospel Luke speaks of the rightful use of material possessions as the key to understanding the Kingdom of God. I give only three examples[4]:

• Though Jesus, in Matthew, blesses “the poor in spirit,” Luke’s Jesus says simply, “blessed are you who are poor… and woe to you who are rich…” (6.20,24).

• Before telling the parable of the “rich fool,” Jesus warns his hearers, “…one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (12.15).

• The widow who gave her “two small copper coins” is praised over the wealthy who “contributed out of their abundance” (21.1-4)

Luke talks about money so much, you begin wonder who is really hard-headed here? He is persistent in making the point.

            Dr. Allen Culpepper says that readers of Luke:

face the temptation either to dismiss… Luke’s teachings on the dangers of wealth on the one hand, or to [make them literal and absolute] on the other… The challenge is to deal seriously with this aspect of the Gospel [as individuals and as caring communities living] in [a] materialistic… society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.[5]

            However we read Luke, we cannot deny that for him, our use of material possessions is central to his understanding of what it means to be a child of God. Like the prophet Habakkuk many centuries before him, Luke wants us to see God’s vision and to know that this vision comes to those who wait in faith (Hab. 2.3-4). Waiting in faith is more akin to waiting tables than waiting on a clock, much more related to how we use our possessions, than how we sing our praise.

            The poet, Kahlil Gibran says a rich man asked about giving, and was told:

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?… And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?[6]

            The giving of our possessions is only the beginning of stewardship. But we must begin somewhere.

            In the chapter preceding the story of Zacchaeus, a man asks Jesus how to receive the kingdom of God. Jesus says, “give what you have to the poor,” and this rich man goes away in the poverty of a clinched fist and an empty soul. Jesus announces to the crowd that a camel could sooner go through the eye of a needle than a rich man get into heaven. Luke then tells the story of a poor man, a beggar in the street, who cries out for Jesus, and by his faith is saved. How rich is his reward!?

            On the heels of these two paradoxical stories (the rich was poor and the poor was rich), Luke sends in the wee little, Zacchaeus, to knock on our hard heads once again. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, which meant that he was a Jew who collected taxes from Jews for the Roman government. Tax collectors were not popular. Most had cheated their way to great fortune. The New Testament places them in the category with prostitutes and other sinners who were regarded as being beyond the pale of God’s grace.

            We normally read Zacchaeus as just such a rich, corrupt, sinful tax collector who runs to see Jesus, and is granted salvation because of his dramatic repentance. We read verse eight, just as our NRSV translates it, “Look half of my possessions, I will give to the poor…” But, the two verbs originally used here are given in the present tense, not the future tense. The Greek does not say “half of my possessions I will give to the poor.” The text says, “half of my possessions I give to the poor… if I defraud anyone, I pay back four times as much” (as if to say “I already do this!”).[7]

            I wonder if Zacchaeus has gotten a bad rap all these years. Maybe Luke tells this story, intentionally connecting these two references to being “children of Abraham” to teach us, today, that God does not need children who are “baptized” and still as hard-headed as ever, but children like Zacchaeus who can stand up and say, “already I am giving…” Baptism is the ordination of those who have claimed repentance. And in repentance, our salvation is made evident, just as Zacchaeus’s was, not by securing our souls for heaven, but by the rightful use of our possessions. Salvation means social, emotional, cultural, practical, and ethical change – and these changes are what make salvation spiritual as well.

            On Wednesday night, Ken Godwin was leading a discussion about our world situation since September 11^th. In talking about our nation’s relationship with the Middle East, especially the Arab countries, Ken made the point that though many of us consider America to be generous, we actually give less than 1% of our “Gross Domestic Product” in international aid. Why such a small percentage? The only answer is that Americans are not willing to let go of any more of it than that. And he framed the question in terms of happiness. “Are you any happier today than you were in the 1960’s?” he said. No one could answer “yes” even though our standard of living has quadrupled since then.

            Augustine once said, “find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder which you do not require is needed by others.”[8]

            If anyone ever asks you if you are “saved,” I hope that you will think about what you did here this morning, and about your other charitable giving, before you answer that question. Amy and I believe in giving, because we believe that salvation is not about taking hold of something, but about learning to let of that to which we most fiercely cling. Salvation is losing life that we might find it again, in God.

            Children of Abraham, children of the Living God, has salvation come to your house today? Don’t be so hard-headed!

            May it be so. Amen!

Pastoral Prayer

O God of great blessing,

   one of the first, instinctual response of infants

      is the instinct to grab, to hang on, to cling for dear life.

   We place a finger in a baby’s tiny palm,

      and they claim it as their first “possession.”

   Are we such hard-headed children

      O God, our Father,

         that we have not learned even those most important

               lessons of our childhood,

         that sharing, taking turns, and playing fair

               are the most important things in life?

      Can we learn these truths, today?

   Teach us, in Christ,

      that possessing true life

         means letting go

               even of all the good things,

                  lest they possess us;

Teach us, in Christ

   that abundant life does not come

      in dying with the most toys[9]

            but in dying to ourselves

               that you might have space

                  to live in us

God, who in Christ,

   let go of everything that the world deems good,

      soften our hearts of stone

         and give us hearts of flesh that beat for you;[10]

      speak to our hard-headedness

         that we might be stubborn

               only in loving with all that we are

                  and all that we have.

Train us up, rear us, raise us today,

   O God our mother,

      possess us that we might become mature,

      full-grown children

         who are free to love.