Saying Yes and Saying No

The third in a series entitled, “The Creative Tensions of Christian Discipleship”
preached by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, March 3, 2002

Text: Mark 1: 9-13

Paul Duke tells the story of a woman who, in the midst of a busy shopping day, stopped to get a little cup of tea at a coffee and tea shop.  It was busy, so when she got her tea and her little bag of cookies she had to look for a place to sit.  She spotted one, it was right across from a gentleman she had never seen before.  She asked if she could sit there and he said yes.  “I’m a stranger in this part of the world, I’m a tourist, I’m from Jamaica.”  She said fine, went to hang her coat up, came back and was startled to see that her little sack of cookies was opened.  She sat down, reached in and took a cookie out whereupon he reached in and took a cookie out.  She was confused but the next time that happened she became perturbed and when there was one cookie left and he reached in, took it out, broke it in half, handed her half and he kept the other half, that was enough.  She got up, got her coat, rushed out of the door.  She was mad.  She’s going to the corner where she will catch the bus, she is trying to find the right fare in her purse when her fingers feel something.  She opens up her purse and there is her bag of cookies. 

I wonder how many times in life, maybe every day, maybe every week we make wrong assumptions.  We make wrong assumptions about this passage.  We make wrong assumptions about ourselves.  Somebody is apt to say to us “we are what we are.”  You’ve heard me use Popeye:  “I yam what I yam.”  I think the Scripture would say no, no, no, no.  You are what you are chosen to be but the second side of that is what you choose to say yes to and what you choose to say no to.  It is our yeses that determine what we do.  It is our no’s that most of the time, give us who we are. 

Show me a person who has had a real struggle with a yes and another real struggle with a no and I will tell you much about them.  We become what we say no to.  We tend to do what we say yes to.  But there is a no involved in every yes and a yes involved in every no and you see it so clearly with the Savior. 

The scripture says:  “At that time Jesus went from Nazareth.”  Nazareth, his home, his roots, the environment in which he was comfortable.  The place he had known from his earliest memory.  We all have a Nazareth.  A Nazareth is a place for us where we feel comfortable.  It is the place where our security zone is in place.  We know the boundaries, we feel secure.  Since September 11 we’re trying to make the United States a Nazareth again. 

Jesus went out from his Nazareth.  I’m sure there were pressures on all sides to stay. “Jesus, you’re the very best carpenter around here.  Look Jesus, you’re secure, you have a set salary, you’re family needs you, you don’t want to get caught up in all of that religious stuff down in Jerusalem.  There are always prophets going around preaching, stay here.”  And Jesus went up out of Nazareth.  His yes and his no.  For to leave and follow the call he felt God had upon his life meant saying no to everything he had known.

The second yes he had to salute was not to go to Jerusalem but to go get baptized by John the Baptist.  John the Baptist was his cousin but I doubt they’d seen each other much lately because John the Baptist was doing his work on the other side of Jerusalem, down toward the Dead Sea.  It’s about 80 to 90 miles to where Nazareth was.  Jesus made the trek.  You see there is something within us that when we make a new step we have to say yes publicly somehow.  Everything begins with a yes, even for Jesus.  And baptism is the great yes. 

And on that day I see John the Baptist taking his hand and walking out into that muddy water because they were probably rather close to the Dead Sea in a little pool there that would serve as a baptism point.  And when he came up out of the water two things happened that had never happened before and never since.  A dove came as the Holy Spirit, rested on his shoulder.  The other was the heavens opened and the voice said:  “This is my Son, I love him.  I am well pleased with him.”  The affirmation of heaven. 

If I had been on the baptism committee that day I’d of rushed out with my towel and I’d of wrapped it around Jesus and I’d have said, “Wow, I kind of suspected there was something special about you.  And now I know it.  Listen, Jesus, I got ready for this just in case and I have your bags packed right over here.  I got a bag just like would fit a Messiah.  It even has wheels on it so when we get to Jericho we can go down the paved streets and you can pull it.  Oh, oh and Jesus, I put a palm pilot in it so we can keep your schedule.  You know messiahs have busy schedules and we’ll just have to handle that the best we can.  Meanwhile I got to put towels on these other people, you just wait for me and I’ll be right with you.”  While I’m going to put towels on the other people I think, “wonder if I put all of that on the palm pilot.  Let’s see know he, he’s got a wedding to attend with his mother and he’s got some recruiting to do of disciples.  Simon Peter, yea, he wants Jesus to go see his mother-in-law, busy schedule ahead, hope it’s all there.”  I turn around, where is he?  He’s gone.  “Jesus, where’d you go?  Jesus, messiahs have things to do and places to go.”

At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert.  Why the desert?  Why turn him loose for Satan to tempt him?  See, we assume that after high spiritual hours things get easier.  We assume that once we have really had a breakthrough with God all of that temptation stuff and all of that testing stuff is put aside.  Not so.  But it’s like muscles, you see if you don’t have any testing of a muscle, if there’s never any pressure there it never builds.  As a matter of fact it gets flabby.  But if the tension is there, if the tightness is there, if the pressure is there the muscle builds and out of the muscle the bone gets stronger.  That’s the way with the Spirit.  As we are tested something happens deep within us that gets us stronger.  We get more secure regardless of what’s going on outside of us.

Barbara Taylor decided she would go out in the desert and find out what it was like to be there.  First thing she discovered was how quiet it was.  She was all by herself way out in the desert.  She said, as she wrote later, “Did you know that you can get quiet enough you can actually hear the hum of your own electricity?”  I’ve never been that quiet.  It makes about as much noise as the motor on a small electric clock only most of us never hear it because we’ve never been that quiet before.  In the desert you can hear it.  I think probably she has better ears than I do, too. 

The second thing she noticed was how fast she got lonely.  She realized how big the desert was and how small and perishable she was and she remembered those words from dust we came and to dust we will return and she became fragile and vulnerable and thought to herself how much in the spiritual life we do feel fragile and vulnerable. 

The third thing she noticed was the flies.  She wrote there “There I was in the desert trying to communicate with Jesus and all I could think about was the fly buzzing around my head, trying to crawl up my nose.”  She adds that flies are the perfect tool of the devil.  The devil says, “huh, so you think you’re spiritual, well try one of these on for size.”  She said that on a scale of 1 to 100, if Jesus’ temptation was 100, hers was probably .25. But she learned something out of that that was invaluable:  if you’re going to do something special with God and if he wants to do something special with you it’s going to take a little bit of time by yourself. 

When Jesus, in the temptation of the desert, says no he defines who he is.  He chips out the kind of Messiah he’s going to be.  It’s like a sculptor taking a huge block of marble and chipping away at the parts that aren’t supposed to be there and saying no to them so that the parts that are supposed to be there will be there. 

The first temptation was the temptation to use his power as magic, to wave a magic wand, make the stones into eggs Benedict with coffee and sweet rolls and fruit on the side.  And Jesus said no, the Messiah will not resort to magic.  He will not use his power to make things easier nor briefer.  Second temptation was as the Satan comes to him, top of the temple, “jump down because the Scripture says the angels will keep you from hurting yourself.  Right before you hit the cobblestone, whew, if you don’t think that won’t be a publicity stunt.  Fact is, if you will just give me permission I’ll call the media and they’ll be there.”  And Jesus says no, there’ll be no special protection for the Messiah.  The Messiah will have the same pressures as everybody else I came to save.  The third one, if you will just bow down and worship me I’ll give you everything.  What a shortcut, all the kingdoms of the world in one little action, bow down, worship the Devil. 

Jesus would have none of it.  Two reasons that I can think of: one is we become what or who we worship.  Whatever Jesus did not want to do was to become like the Devil.   Secondly, you see, we wouldn’t have had any say in it.  None.  It would all have been decided at the top level, at the corporate level.  It would have been like Enron and the little folks would all have been left out.  And whatever Jesus said in that temptation he said this:  I’m going to do it not from the top down but from the bottom up.  I’ll do it one person at a time.  I’ll do it, I’ll do it one day at a time, one struggle at a time, one sin at a time, one salvation at a time but I won’t do it your way, Devil.  And every once in a while something happens and we see it fleshed out. 

Do you know the name John Newton? Last Wednesday night I shared with the group that was there his story.  He’s the one who wrote the words to “Amazing Grace.”  Born in a home that lacked everything, at 11 years of age already put out to sea.  When he was 18 he was forced to serve in a war ship.  He ran away, deserted.  They caught him, brought him back to the ship and he was put on a slave vessel.  Slave vessel on the way to Africa.  That slave vessel, they would sail from Britain down to Africa and there they would take the best of the slaves.  After they had gotten all of the bartering done they would put them below deck so that there could be no suicides they would chain them.  And then they would put them like cord wood until it was known that 600 hundred put down side by side by side.  If somebody got sick they threw them over.  They sailed for the Americas where they were sold.  Some of them wound up here in Richmond.  After they had gotten rid of their cargo back to England with another store of goods where they would sell it again.  They called it the Slavery Triangle. 

John was able to become so good at it they made him a captain of a slave ship and one day he came across a book called The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas A’ kempis. It sowed the seeds for what he would become, and during a storm he gave his life to Christ and it was real, it took.  And Christ living within him began to bother him.  He saw things that he hadn’t seen.  He realized what he was saying yes to and what he was saying no to and he couldn’t stand it anymore and one trip at the end he walked away from the ship and never went on the sea again. 

He worked as a surveyor through seminary and for 43 years he was pastor of the Anglican Church at Oney, England.  I was there this summer, stood behind the pulpit from which he preached.  And out behind where he is buried there are these words: John Newton once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.  At 82 Newton said my memory is nearly gone but I remember two things that I am a very great sinner but that Christ is an even greater Savior. 

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.  I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. 

What is it you need to say yes to?  What is it you need to say no to?