Our Search for Authenticity
Mark 13:1-8
Have
you heard of the latest way you can better yourself? It’s called life coaching.[1] For $400 per month you can talk to someone
four times a month on the phone and they will email you periodically to check
in on your progress. Life coaches boast
of being able to help you uncover your true goals and desires. If you are stuck in life, and you can’t get
going again, you might need a coach!
This sounded very interesting to me and since the first phone call to a
life coach is free, I decided to give one a call. Now I want to preface all this by saying that the phone number I
called did not have a 900 prefix, nor was palm reading or star constellations
part of the deal.
The
woman I talked to was in Tampa, Florida.
She told me she spent seven years in a monastery and she can just “feel”
when things are right with a person.
She told me she had a lot of skills for self-perception but she never
really told me what any of those skills were.
By the way, she said she could “feel” things were right in our
conversation and she hoped I’d be one of her clients. I thought, “Yeah, I’ll bet you hope so for $400 per month!”
After
talking with this life coach for a while, and she shared with me some stories
of what she does I thought, “You know, this sounds a little bit like what I
do!” I thought about asking the
Personnel Committee if we could change my job title to “Life Coach.” There’s about a hundred of you here today
and you take that times $400 per person per month and I think I could live on
$40,000 a month! Couldn’t you? I’ll even personally take care of our 2006
giving deficit as an added bonus. What
do you think?
I
can tell by many of your reactions that you aren’t any more impressed with this
version of life coaching than I was.
There’s some merit to the idea though, but many of the things that
you’re supposed to get from a life coach are what you should give and
receive from friends, family, your church, and yes, your pastor. And you don’t have to pay $400 per month for
it!
If
life coaching does not impress you, then what does? A fancy car? A million
dollar church budget? A big paycheck? A lot of education? A college football bowl bid? A buck with a ten-point rack? A close-knit family? A church that’s full every week? An “A” on a test? You may or may not be impressed with any of these things I’ve
listed but you’re impressed with something.
We all are. What impresses you?
As
Jesus as his disciples were leaving the Temple complex, one of his disciples was
very impressed with the Temple. It was
a magnificent structure. The stones
that made up the walls of the temple were 25 cubits in length, 8 in height, and
12 in width.[2] Don’t know what a cubit is? Well, this translates into stones that were
about 41 feet long, 13 feet high, and 20 feet wide. That’s impressive! At
least it was to the disciples, but Jesus wasn’t impressed.
This story is a lot like last week’s
call to worship where Jesus wasn’t impressed with the rich people giving out of
their abundance. He was impressed with
the one widow who put in two insignificant coins. Here, Jesus wasn’t impressed with the structure of the Temple. And we don’t really know from this passage
what impresses Jesus. In this account,
Jesus made a prediction that the Temple walls would be destroyed and that’s
what happened in AD 70.[3] The Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed
the Temple.
Later in our passage as Jesus was
sitting with his disciples on the Mount of Olives, and as they were questioning
him about the destruction of the temple, one of the things I believe Jesus was
trying to get across to his followers was that they were impressed with the
wrong things. They saw the Temple and
its furnishings and were like kids at Disney World. Their faces were filled with amazement. Now, the disciples had undoubtedly seen the Temple before but each
time they were near it, its importance, symbolism, and status in Jewish life
became another awe-inspiring experience.
But Jesus seems to be steering them away from this lofty impression
because it sidetracks them from what Jesus sees as really impressive.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we
are sometimes impressed with the wrong things too. We may not be impressed with life coaching, but we are impressed
with things that are just as much a scam as this I think this life coach in
Florida is trying to pull off. We are
impressed with the tangibles when Jesus wants us to look at the intangibles. We are impressed with how things appear on
the outside rather than what’s in the heart.
We are impressed with the bottom line when need to remember that giving
ourselves to others is rarely about being in the black. We are impressed with activity and motion
when Jesus calls us to enter into his rest.
As you make a list of what impresses you this morning, put your list to
the “Jesus test” and see, based on your knowledge of the Gospels, if Jesus
would be impressed with the things you are.
If you find that some of what
impresses you wouldn’t really be all that impressive to Jesus, then I would
point you to one word: authenticity.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus constantly points people toward authentic
worship, authentic relationships, and seeing him as the authentic Messiah. Author George Eliot wrote a fictional story
about life in a small English village.
The book is called Adam Bede and it’s a story about common people
and uncommon heroics. There’s one line
from the story that I find extremely profound: “Falsehood is so easy, truth is
so difficult.”[4] Are you authentic? Do you live an authentic life?
That’s one of the calls Jesus issues to us – the call to
authenticity.
A few years ago, there was a
television show on Saturday night called The Pretender. In the show, a genius named Jared,
assumes the role of so many different people and professions in a quest to find
out about his family. Jared might be a
doctor, or a racecar driver, a stunt man, or an artist. Each week he assumes another role so he can
find out who he truly is. In many ways,
we are like Jared. We assume roles to
find out who we really are. We want to
be authentic but it’s hard isn’t it?
And that’s why we need Jesus, because he models for us what being
authentic is all about. He also warns
us about the influence of inauthentic people.
In our passage, Jesus warned the
disciples to beware of pretenders and those who would try and lead them
astray. He warned them that many may
come saying they have the answers but they don’t. He warned them that many may want to be your life coach but there
is really only one authentic life coach – Jesus. I believe Jesus was warning people about following pretenders but
also was challenging the disciples to remain authentic in their spiritual
lives.
That same challenge comes to
us. We’re quickly moving into the
holiday season. Many will tell us what
an authentic Christmas is all about.
You’ve got have honey-baked ham or a new digital camera to capture all
those treasured memories. We’ve got to
go to this or do that. The ideas we
hear may impress us. But we should
remember who the true source of authenticity is shouldn’t we? Because we know who this is don’t we? It’s our one true life coach – Jesus.
The disciples wanted Jesus to tell
them what the signs would be for the destruction of the Temple because they
wanted to be prepared. I think Jesus
was telling them in this passage that the sign is: a true authentic
relationship with Jesus. That’s what’s
impressive. Amen.
[1] My information on life coaching came from: http://www.artofbeingreal.com/#Development. I used much of this information for a sermon
I did in 2000. For this sermon, I have
updated the info and modified some areas.
[2] The historian Josephus states: “the temple was built
of hard, white stones, each of which was about 25 cubits in length, 8 in
height, and 12 in width” (Antiquities, XV. xi. 3).
[3] The Roman Emperor Titus destroyed the Temple after
he sacked Jerusalem. He burned the
Temple complex and after that, ordered that the stones be destroyed.
[4] George Eliot, Adam Bede (New York: Penguin
Books, 1961), p. 176.