OUTSIDE IN TO BE INSIDE OUT

Mark 12: 13-17

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

July 1, 2007

It is my favorite story to tell from my ministry. I imagine, some days, that I will gather all of these stories together and publish them in a book. I already have the title chosen, Parish the Thought. Anyways, this happened in the early years of my ministry in Quincy, Michigan.

I’d been serving that congregation for a couple of months. I went to visit a woman who’d been sick and homebound for a few Sundays. I knocked on the door and she came to the door. The conversation began well enough, but I could tell there was some growing hesitation in her voice as I asked some personal questions. Finally, she said, “I know that I should know you, but who are you?”

When I said I was Pastor Shearier, the new pastor at Prince of Peace, her face flashed with recognition. “Oh, Pastor,” she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on!”

She of course was used to seeing me with my alb on Sunday mornings. She defined her expectations of me by her experience of me. We knew each other from Sunday mornings at church and knew what to expect of each other from that experience.

This is a very human being thing to do. You do it, too. If I show up in a flannel shirt and blue jeans and a cap in an unexpected place, sometimes folks don’t recognize me right away. You find yourself at a ball game or at the movie looking intently at someone, convinced you know them from somewhere. Just before you go up and ask the relationship, you remember that you know them from the bank or the grocery store. They’re in a different context—a different experience of their “outside” self than we expect.

Last week, we talked about integrity. We sought a definition of integrity. Is this what we’re about when we speak of integrity—defining ourselves (or others) on the basis of expectations, morals—to get the outside right with the inside? I think we’d like to say, yes, this is what integrity’s about. We get to be in charge, then, of the definitions. Integrity comes from the inside and expresses itself in public—our “outside” self and we try to have these aligned to be counted as honest or fair.

Jesus throws something of a monkey wrench into our happily-running integrity machine. Normally, we hear these words of Jesus that Mark records and hear Jesus speak about living as Christians in the two realms—of the world and of the Kingdom of God. We hear Jesus say, “Render to Caesar” and talk about paying taxes, voting and other obligations of citizenship and living with our fellow Americans. That’s not wrong; today we can hear Jesus addressing integrity: He addresses the proper place to begin the discussion—with God.

We spoke earlier of beginning on our inside—in our hearts—and moving to the public or our “outside” selves, and having those be aligned. That’s where the Herodians and the Pharisees who came to test Jesus began. That’s really where all the folks who would judge Jesus begin—with their expectations and rules and definitions. Those who ask, “If God is loving, then why….?” have a definition of love working they impose of God. The Pharisees and Herodians did, too.

They come (and we come) with expectations and definitions and Jesus asks questions about images and inscriptions. Caesar’s image and inscription are on the coins, so give him what’s his. However, God’s image and inscription are on you. What’s Jesus talking about?

We hear in Genesis that man was created in God’s image. Does that mean we look like Him? No, it means that we were created by Him, we’re His. It means that originally “in His image” meant in His righteousness—we were “right” with Him and the beautiful picture of God coming down to the Garden in the cool of the evening haunts us still. We could be like Him, reflecting back to Him what He gave us.

Remember, we got into trouble taking “being like Him” into our own hands. Now, if this “image of God” is some kind of pattern or mold into which our lives and selves are to fit in order to qualify somehow to belong to God, you and I are in trouble. There is much about us that won’t fit into that pattern or mold—we don’t really want to be like God, we want to be like ourselves, the way we want to live.

That selfishness and sin wants it all to be about ourselves. Where Paul would declare, “For me to live is Christ; to die is gain,” these things in us obscure God’s image with our own and would say, “No, for me to live is mine!” I want my expectations and definitions to run the day. This began with Adam—Luther calls it our “old Adam.” That’s why we spend time in our worship services confessing our sin.

We say it out loud. Not because we like to wallow in our guilt—that would be pointing to ourselves again—but because we want to let God break the power of that sin in our lives. A few weeks ago, on vacation we worshiped at my parent’s church in Wisconsin. The pastors let us off the hook, they confessed our sins for us—we didn’t have to own up to a thing. Confession lets us own up to those things—lay them out before God and asks Him to kill those things in us with His Word of Law. This so He can breathe again His Spirit and make us alive—recreate us through the Gospel. That sin and self-made image was crucified with Christ on His cross. Jesus’ death breaks the power of those things to obscure and ruin God’s image and recreates us, by His resurrection, with a new life. A life that can agree with Paul and say, “For me to live is Christ.”

This all happens outside of us. It’s God’s doing. God’s image isn’t a pattern or mold He imposes on us, to cut away the excesses and call us “good.” God’s image began as His gift in Genesis. God’s image is still His gift in Baptism and to faith. His image is not an expectation He has of us; His image is His gift—what He rescues and recreates you and me to have.

Jesus talks about God’s image and His inscription being on us. He’s recreated us to be like Him—to be forgiven and to reflect His love back to Him. He’s written His name upon us—we’re baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We’re His, so give to God what is God’s—not because we have to, but because we can. His grace is working to make it possible.

He breathes His Spirit into you. His Spirit changes you on the inside. No longer are we concerned to give to Self what we expect, claim, demand or define; we are changed to give to God what is His. Now alignment can happen. Jesus has added a third “self” to our definition of integrity. We’d defined integrity as getting our outside self aligned with our inside self. That’s where the Pharisees lived.

Jesus has redefined integrity for us. We don’t begin inside of ourselves—we begin outside of ourselves with God. Integrity begins outside—with God’s heart and action—of us and goes inside so that it can be lived outside of us. There is this three-fold alignment. The person God has recreated you to be in His image that God breathes into your heart, changing you so that the person you are on the inside is this person. Then, that person by God’s Spirit and Word expresses His love outwardly into the lives of people around you. Outside in to be inside out.

So, we’re aligned by God. We can say—by His grace and Spirit—with Paul, “For me to live is Christ.” This alignment becomes the axis we spoke of last week around which everything orbits. What was previously an axis defined by our wants and expectations and experiences has been moved to be an axis that is Christ. As axis that has its origin outside of ourselves. To what end?

What does it mean that our axis is Christ? What does it mean to give to God what is God’s?

Behind these questions is still the original question: why am I still here? How will Christ as my axis answer that question? Next week, we’ll seek God’s Word on moving from success in the world to significance in the Kingdom—this axis living itself out in public. Then we will ask the Lord to let His Word speak to us about our becoming available to the Lord—giving to God what is God’s. This is His doing, we’ll count on Him to lead us to His answers.