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I am Worthy or Am I Worthy

November 6, 2013

Jesus is surrounded by people. This usually happens to him after he had performed many miracles of healing and had taught with such authority. His attention is disrupted by a delegation of Jews from another village. Seems that there is a Roman Centurion who has a request for healing for a servant.

“He is worthy,” said the delegation.

They said this to convince Jesus to come to his aid. This is actually shocking. The Centurion was Roman, not Jewish. Jesus was seen as a rabbi, a teacher in the Jewish tradition. Most Jews had as little interaction with non-Jews as possible. Especially if they were the religious ones.

This group said that the Roman was worthy of Jesus’ attention. So, Jesus turned his attention on the problem of the servant. He started to go to the home of the Roman, thinking as they all were that his physical presence was required.

But the Centurion sent another messenger. “I am not worthy.”

Huh? He is worthy. He is not worthy. This also is a strange comment, that an important Roman leader would say that he is not worthy of a visit by an itinerant Jewish teacher and healer. Is the world turning upside down?

“I understand authority,” the Centurion continued. He accepts commands from his superiors in the army and he issues commands to those whom he leads. And all those orders are obeyed.

He expects the same from Jesus in the spiritual realm. He sees Jesus as under authority from God and having authority over the spirits that were ailing his servants. “Just say the word, and he will be healed.” And Jesus did, and he was.

Jesus used this as an example of faith that he had not even seen from Jewish people.

I’m interested in the concept of being worthy in this story from Luke 7. The Roman had many Jewish friends and he had even contributed to their causes. The friends were afraid that Jesus would shun a non-Jew. They didn’t yet understand that Jesus’ message was for everyone. Non-Jews. Women, even.

For the Roman to say he was not worthy of a personal visit is a remarkable admission. We in the US, some in Western Europe and I think increasingly around the world are living in a time of self-absorption. We have been raising kids to think they are always worthy of everything.

But, we are all under the authority of God whether we realize it or not. And if we do, we can say we are not worthy, but please use your authority to bring us to wholeness (a sense of the word to heal). To say we are not worthy does not mean that we psychologically unhealthy in a low self-esteem way. It just means that we recognize the chain of authority and where we fit.

I believe this is a most misunderstood concept. To be humble does not mean to be docile.

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Where Is Your Heart On Your Sabbath

October 24, 2013

I grew up a little confused about the Sabbath. My parents took me to a Methodist church in our local town. The big church in town was Lutheran (most people in the town of 1,000 were of Germanic heritage). So, we went to church on Sunday. My mother’s mother’s family was Welsh and attended a Seventh-Day Baptist church. In fact, two of mom’s brothers were Seventh-Day Baptist clergy. They, of course, worshiped on the Sabbath–the seventh day just as it says in Exodus. That would be Saturday.

Last week part of my reading took me through a few chapters of Exodus where God is giving Moses instructions about how to organize his people. Part of those instructions dealt with working six days and setting aside one day for rest. I think later it became a worship day.

The idea of Sabbath and rest occurs in curious ways. There is rest for the land. There is a Sabbath year where debts are forgiven. And Jesus talks a little about the Sabbath.

Men began to think (way too much) about what it meant to keep the Sabbath and not work on that day. They began to draw up lists of rules that specifically detailed what was work and what wasn’t. Even today in Israel if you ride an elevator in a hotel on the Sabbath, don’t get on the Sabbath elevator. It is programmed to stop at every floor so that observant Jews don’t have to work by pushing a button.

Many of God’s original laws seemed to have as much practical sense as they did religious. Keeping a day set apart certainly also keeps the followers set apart from other peoples. But taking a rest periodically is as good for the body as it is for the soul.

Referring back to Monday’s post on meditation, that is something akin to a daily Sabbath–part of a day set aside to rest. You need part of a week set aside for rest. You also need part of a year set aside for rest.

When Jesus teaches on the Sabbath as recorded by Luke, he expands on rest but short-circuits the multitude of picky laws defining work. Jesus was most concerned with where your heart is. Keeping the Sabbath with your heart in the wrong place is not really keeping the Sabbath. I think that Moses agreed.

Sabbath is not only about rest, it’s also about adjusting your heart back to where it belongs.

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Motivating Yourself Toward Emotional Intelligence

August 7, 2013

I thought I’d just continue down the Emotional Intelligence path for a couple of days. This was triggered by the airport incident I talked about yesterday where a little emotional intelligence would have been a great thing.

In their book, Lennick & Kiel discussed five areas under emotional intelligence and then four under moral intelligence. We talked a little about knowing your own emotions and then managing your emotions. We’ll add to that today with some thoughts on motivating yourself.

Seems to fit that I’m in Austin, Texas for a conference put on by a company called National Instruments. This is a pretty high technology conference. But everything they do pretty much boils down to measuring things, analyzing things and then doing something with that knowledge gained. There are almost 4,000 people here who were motivated to pay the conference fee, pay for travel and a hotel, and take a week away from family and work to learn how to do this better.

The first step toward emotional intelligence is to know your emotional state. That’s the measure stage of using this technology. We may not have a measurement grade, but we can relate  emotional state to temperature. There’s normal. Then there’s too cool–as in depression. Then there’s too hot–as in anger. You can calculate the many different emotions similarly.

When we know what the state is, if it is out of balance, we can work to restore balance. We need that motivation to study what is going on and maybe how other people have managed emotions in order to grow.

I have found that certain spiritual practices are of great help in this process. Especially meditation and prayer. These practices slow you down. They help put a gap between emotion and response. I wish I could say they work perfectly. But even so, given time you will notice a change.

The motivation comes from many sources. But mostly it comes from a recognition that “I am this sort of person” but “I’d like to be that sort of person.” I want to change who I am. I see myself as calm and calming.

Interestingly, toward the end of my soccer referee instructor training last weekend, we were just chatting and I related something to teaching Yoga. One of the guys said, “I can totally see you teaching Yoga.” That is another calming practice. I had no idea I came across that way, but obviously I’ve started becoming the person I set out to be.

But the journey is far from over.

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Carrying Preconceived Ideas Into Analysis

July 26, 2013

I’ve become a fan of the new Sherlock Holmes movies and TV series that have appeared over the past few years.

Holmes gathered facts and used deductive reasoning to come to brilliant conclusions.

It doesn’t matter if I’m studying Scripture or anything else, or if I’m studying my body’s response to stimuli. I like facts. Google’s founders are driven to manage through data, not guesswork.

I’m recently into a discussion with a doctor as to whether a situation is environmental/behavioral or structural. He prefers the latter and thoroughly discounts the former. But he can treat the latter. You know, like the old proverb if the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails.

I, on the other hand, being closer to the situation, tend to look at all the food I eat and other behavioral or environmental stresses or inputs and then evaluate their effect on the body.

To get practical for a minute–watch what you eat. There is a play on words in German (playing on “ist” for “is” and “isst” for “eats”) that translated into English goes, “Man is what he eats.”

If you want to be alert and ready to think during your study, prayer, meditation or celebration, watch eating/drinking sugar and caffeine, for example. Some foods just seem to weigh you down. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables are good.

I also have found through observation and deduction which foods affect me in which different ways. It may be a little different for you. But what annoys me is when I make poor choices. I know better than reach for the Pepsi, but I do anyway.

And that all goes directly toward one of the core themes I think about. Patterns of choices. And how we make bad ones even knowing the good ones.

 

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