Sunday Sermon: More by Its Confidence than Its Competence
|
Text: Luke 11:11-13
Series: “The Church Your New Pastor Deserves”
I have often heard it said that there’s a very thin line between confidence and conceit, though I’ve never heard anyone offer a surefire way of how one might measure that thin line. I guess it’s just one of those things that you know it when you see it.
For example, you’ve surely noticed how truly conceited people are impossible to be around for any length of time. They make everything about themselves – how good they are, how important they are, how successful they are. And because they sound those self-centered notes so blaringly, you can’t help but wonder if their boasting isn’t some defense mechanism designed to hide their insecurity. But on the other hand, confident people don’t feel the need to promote themselves in any way. They are content to let their actions represent their ability, and so they are much easier to be around because of how they always carry themselves with an unmistakable sense of calmness and control.
For many of us, the question becomes, “How do I get to such a place where I can live with such confidence so that my witness to the world doesn’t come off as conceited?” And the answer to that very important question lies in your willingness to locate your confidence in the power Jesus promises through God the Father’s gift of the Holy Spirit.
We see such a truth in the brief teaching that’s before us this morning from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus has been speaking to his disciples about prayer and the importance of trusting in God’s willingness to meet our needs and provide us with all that is necessary to do His good will. Indeed, the present tense in which Jesus urges his disciple to pray suggests continual petition: “Keep asking and it will be given to you. Keep seeking and you will find. Keep knocking and the door will be open unto you.”
And then as a way to assure his disciples that God will respond to their prayers in ways that are best for them to know, he calls attention to God’s loving nature and all God makes possible, which goes beyond what might be reasonably expected. Moving from a lesser example, which all of his disciples would know to be true, Jesus then moves to a greater one. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” There’s no question what a reasonable father would do. Even though fish and snakes bear a resemblance, both being slimy, even as do eggs and scorpions, both being round, no father would ever think of providing something potentially poisonous to one of his children, something which would jeopardize their future. “No,” Jesus says, “so that if you, who though evil (which in this instance means finite and limited and prone to mistakes) know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”
What Jesus is assuring us is that if as human parents who with all our limitations nonetheless respond as quickly and as best we can to the requests of our children, how much more will God respond to the prayers of His children, even to the point of granting to them the best gift of all, which is the gift of His powerful Holy Spirit?
Do you see what this means for each of us who claim to be a part of the family of God through our faith in Jesus Christ? It means that no matter what God sends our way in response to our prayers, we can be confident that it is in the end ultimately in our best interest.
Why, then, do so many today live with such a deep sense of defeat? Might it be that it’s because too many of us have overestimated our abilities so that we only think we need to call upon God when we bump up to challenges that are too much for us to handle in own power? So, how do you think that attitude stacks up against this teaching of Jesus where he tells his disciples that they must constantly be asking and constantly be seeking and constantly be knocking? Not very well, wouldn’t you say?
If there’s anything worse than someone overestimating their abilities and calling upon God only when there are no other options, it’s when you get a group of people together who pool their conceit and believe that there is such strength in their numbers that God is only necessary as a last-ditch resource. It pains me to say it, but there are far too many churches who base their security in what they feel they are capable of doing more than their confidence in what God can do through them?
Fortunately, Mountain Brook Baptist Church has never been that kind of people. You would think that might be a strong temptation for a group from a community like ours that is populated by the best and the brightest, with more resources available to them than most towns put together. But when this church came together in 1944, the people who constituted Mountain Brook Baptist Church knew that in spite of the scores of people who were moving from over the mountain, the future of this fellowship could only flourish in proportion to the openness of this body to the work of the Holy Spirit. From day one, the confidence of this church was not in its own competence but in that of God’s Presence in their midst.
I understand that as this church ponders the future, it will be important that we emphasize responsibility and due diligence and that we be prepared to leverage every asset in fulfilling God’s mission. There’s nothing inherently wrong, evil, or faithless in any of that. But because our competencies, as great as they may be, still have their limits, to be the church we yearn to be in the coming days will require that we always be careful to locate our confidence beyond ourselves in the power of God’s Holy Spirit, whose presence in our midst will activate our imaginations, empower us to resist self-focused spiritualities, and allow us to look ahead with every measure of anticipation and promise.
Kurt Vonnegut was a famous American writer who had some of his works adapted for the big screen. One of his most famous ones was Slaughterhouse Five, a book that in truth was not at all kind to Christian faith, which he thought conceitedly dealt with life’s complexities through an attachment to callous providence. From that novel came a phrase that quickly became attached to Vonnegut: “So it goes.” “So it goes.” The phrase is repeated in the book each time a death is recorded and it represents Vonnegut’s sense of both fatalism and stoicism, and his conviction that no good comes from our tendency to shrink away when something bad has happened. “So it goes.”
And that is why as reviewers who interviewed him toward the end of his life were stunned by how he had begun signing off his conversations. It wasn’t “so it goes.” No, Vonnegut began signing off his conversations in this way: “Go with God.” “Go with God” (James Atlas, “The Literary Life,” New Yorker, October 6, 1997, p.43).
There’s a big difference between “So it goes” and “Go with God.” One is detached. The other is committed. One is unimaginative. The other is inspired. One is uncertain. The other is secure. And if you don’t know how to tell the difference, you’re leaning on your power and you have yet to give yourself fully to God.
Yes, the line is very thin between confidence and conceit, and because it’s so hard to measure, any of us can easily wander across it. The only way not to is to embrace God’s gift of the Holy Spirit and to go with Him, knowing that wherever He takes us in the days ahead will be a direction full of immeasurable joy and everlasting peace. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.