Are you still learning from Jesus, or do you think you already know everything?
I recall hearing about a pastor who once told one of his parishioners, “There’s nothing in the Bible I can’t understand!” Maybe he was that smart about the Bible, but I believe there is still something even the most brilliant minds can still learn from the living Christ.
Recently on NBC the Today Show took a Vacation. Literally, the stars of the Today show went to various American vacation spots to televise. One of the spots was Key West. While there they began to interview, Sean Fisher, grandson of the legendary treasure hunter, Mel Fisher.
As they told the very remarkable story of how Mel Fisher spent much of his life looking for sunken treasure and telling his family, partners and workers each day, “Today’s the day”, until 1985, it literally was the day. Mel Fisher found the so called, sunken 16th century Spainish ship known as the “Bank of Spain” and uncovered a treasure of a half a billion dollars. What caught my attention was what came out of the reporter’s mouth next. Right after reporting how wealthy Mel Fisher became upon finding his treasure, the reporter's very next words were: “…Of course, Mel’s gone now...” Only 12 years after spending 16 long years looking for treasure under the ocean, Mel’s life was over.
Here’s the point: Its one thing to spend your life looking for earthly treasure, but it’s quite another thing to realize that all the treasures gained in this life will soon be past. Jesus pointed to this reality and the wisdom to be gain from it. One of his most important spiritual teachings was about“not storing up treasures on earth, where rust and moth consume and where thieves break in and steal….” With a keen, spiritual insight, Jesus recommended “storing up treasures in heaven…”and “seeking first the kingdom, because, “where your treasure it, there your heart will be also” (NRSV, Matthew 6: 19-21).
What we can still learn from Jesus is a spirit-empowering perspective of life. More than anything else, says one scholar, “Jesus was a spirit person.” (See Marcu Borg’s, Seeing Jesus Again for the First Time (HarperSanFrancico, 1994, p. 33ff.). His alternative wisdom and view of life and its other-worldly, spiritual dimension of reality is what we get from Jesus throughout his entire ministry. This was the authority that went beyond that of the Scribes or the Pharisees. This was the kind of man that led people to ask themselves: “What manner of man is this?” It is this dynamic, encompassing spiritual view of life that still enables people not only to see things differently, but to become very different and even much better people.
But there is something else we can learn from Jesus. Through his death and resurrection, and by his Spirit, Jesus not only calls us to a new way of seeing, but he calls forth an alternative way of community and life together.
As we’ve watched the current financial crisis unfold before us and around the world, hasn’t it become clearer, how little we really understand about what it means to live in community with each other and for the world? As the world gets smaller, in that we realize more how connected we are with each other, and as the world also get’s larger, in that it is far more complex and uncontrollable than we’ve realized, don’t you think we’ve all got some very important things to learn so that we can all live life on this planet in ways that are constructive, redemptive, caring and compassionate?
The late Texas congressman Mickey Leland is a prime example of what it means to live a life for others. Leland died in a plane crash on August 7, 1989 while on a famine-relief mission in Africa. As chairperson on the House Select Committee on Hunger, he visited Ethiopia and Sudan at least six times in six years. When he was criticized for spending time away his home district, he replied by saying, “I am as much a citizen of this world, as a citizen of this country.” It was no mere coincidence that among those who died with him in his final mission on behalf of the “least of these” were African Americans, whites, seven Ethiopians, Christians, and Ivan Tilliem, a Jewish philanthrophist and anti-hunger advocate. Mickey Leland died just as he lived, as not just a congressman from Texas, but a citizen of this world (From a Sermon by Zan W. Holmes, Jr, entitled “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in a book entitled, When Trouble Comes, CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio, 1998).
Whether you realize it or not, this is what Christian discipleship is about. It’s about not only seeing things from a heavenly, other-worldly perspective, but it is also about seeing the needs of this world more clearly and learning how we should respond in love and compassion. I pity those who can't see further than the nose on their own faces. We are to live not just a life to gain and gather “treasures” for ourselves in this life, but we are to live a life that is both with and for others and to share even greater “treasure in heaven”. True Christian Discipleship in the way of Jesus can help you see and become so much more. Are you willing and ready to learn?
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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