Redefining Success

He looked at me and said, "You get all the big things right, but you suck in the things that make a success...I've learned all I can from you so I'm leaving." He was but one of the hundreds who left after we moved our church out of a cushy facility into a low performing urban school.

The tough circumstances had highlighted all of my deficiencies as a leader, which I'll be the first to admit that there are many. But I also know, through experience, that people are willing to give you all sorts of grace when you're perceived as a winner but when things go south...well it's not quite the same.

Fast forward a few years.   I'm studying the gospel of Luke with some dear friends at Chick-fil-a and I have one of those spiritual break-through moments.  You know, where there has been something there in the text that you've seen a thousand times but the Holy Spirit sharpens your focus and all of a sudden you see something with greater clarity than you have ever seen it before. Well, I was confronted with how Jesus' life seems to turn our concept of what it means to be successful on its head.

Luke's Sermon on the Mount

20 He lifted up his eyes and looked at his disciples, and said: “Blessings on the poor: God’s kingdom belongs to you! 21“Blessings on those who are hungry today: you’ll have a feast! “Blessings on those who weep today: you’ll be laughing! 22“Blessings on you, when people hate you, and shut you out, when they slander you and reject your name as if it was evil, because of the son of man. 23 Celebrate on that day! Jump for joy! Don’t you see: in heaven there is a great reward for you! That’s what their ancestors did to the prophets. (Luke 6:20-23)

I want you to picture the scene.  Jesus has just chosen his 12 disciples.  When he comes down off the mountainside with them a multitude of people come to him and he begins to pray for them and heal the sick. These people are the broken. I like to think of them as the least, the last, the lost, and the lonely.  As the rule and reign of God's kingdom begins to break forth upon them through the ministry of Jesus they begin to discover hope.  You can imagine the scene.  It was a scene of joy, victory, and possibility.  It was a scene of fresh starts, fresh hope, and the reconciling love of God flowing freely.  You can imagine the tears of joy, tears of relief, peals of laughter, gasps of astonishment, people emotionally coming undone at the manifest power of God...coming undone because God had come near.  At this moment of victory, at this moment when his disciples are thinking, "Yes!  This is what I signed up for," Jesus raises his eyes and looks straight at them and says what we just read.

Blessings on the poor - Yes, Jesus, the disciples think, we can see that happening right here before our eyes.
Blessings on the hungry  - Yes, Jesus, we have never felt more satisfied!
Blessings on those that weep - Yes, Jesus, look how their mourning has been turned to laughter.

Blessings when people hate you, shut you out, slander and reject your name as evil because of the son of man

I bet they didn't even hear these words or if they did hear these words they failed to register until the moment the Spirit brought them back to them after the resurrection.  Why? Because we fail to hear them today.  Yes, Jesus is describing the condition of the hopeless when his rule and reign breaks forth upon them, but he is also describing what his life is going to be like and what the lives of those who follow him will be like.

By the end of Jesus' ministry he will be numbered with the poor and criminal elements of the world. Jesus will be hungry and thirsty. Jesus will weep. He will be hated, shut out, slandered, rejected, and considered evil. This is the future he knows that is coming,  Not only does Jesus know this future is coming, he knows it's God's plan.  God's plan is going to look very different from how the world views success and so from the very beginning he teaches his disciples that they have to redefine success.  From the perspective of the world, at his death he will be considered a failure and foolish, but from the perspective of his Father, obedience and faith, even in the face of suffering and humiliation, is the way this broken world must be healed.   

No one on the first Good Friday considered Jesus a success.  To the world's eyes Jesus was a failure.  

The disciples watched the Kingdom of God breaking forth all around them but they only saw and heard what they wanted to.  They didn't understand.  Neither do we.  

The Son of Man

The title that Jesus used most often when he referred to himself was the "Son of Man".  The "Son of Man" was a title dripping with messianic significance to first century Jews.  Listen to how N.T. Wright, the leading biblical scholar of our age, describes it:

In the New Testament the phrase is frequently linked to Daniel 7:13, where ‘one like a son of man’ is brought on the clouds of heaven to ‘the Ancient of Days’, being vindicated after a period of suffering, and is given kingly power...by the first century some Jews understood it as a messianic promise. Jesus developed this in his own way in certain key sayings which are best understood as promises that God would vindicate him, and judge those who had opposed him, after his own suffering (e.g. Mark 14:62). Jesus was thus able to use the phrase as a cryptic self-designation, hinting at his coming suffering, his vindication, and his God-given authority.  

- Wright, T. (2008). Acts for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-12 (p. 210). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

You see the book of Daniel describes the Son of Man as one sent by God who suffers at the hand of the satanically inspired systems and governmental structures of this world which are depicted as monsters.  After his suffering at their hands he is vindicated by God and given great authority to judge evil and set things to right.  This is how Jesus saw himself.  He saw himself as the one who had come to suffer and that God would vindicate that suffering.

Not only did he see himself in that light but he also saw that this was the way forward for those who would follow after him.  That's what he's telling them when he says they will be blessed when people do all sorts of mean and cruel things to them.  He's teaching them an important lesson about the Christian life.  He's teaching them that victory must pass through defeat.  He's teaching them that our success is not measured through worldly standards of success, but through obedience.  He's letting them know that faithfulness to God and the world's view of success are often very different things.

The disciples heard his words.  They witnessed the Kingdom of God breaking forth all around them but they didn't understand...Neither do we.

The Jesus Bell Curve

The life of Jesus would be interesting to map out on a bell curve measuring success by worldly standards. He began his life at the bottom of the bell curve, The son of two teenage peasants with questions surrounding whether he was the legitimate child of his earthly Father Joseph.  Born in a stable, hunted by Herod, living his first several years in hiding in the land Egypt.  Scary times; this was the bottom of the bell curve.

After Herod dies things began to look up, he has a normal life when they return to Nazareth after their sojourn in Egypt.  We get a few glimpses of his potential as he is questioned by scholars of the law in Temple.  The line of the bell curve begins moving in an upward trajectory.  When he is in his thirties he bursts on to the scene like a rock star and has a meteoric rise to success in the worlds eyes.  He is healer and says pointed things to the establishment.  People think he's a rebel and that he wants to shake up the power structures of the world.  This is when he tops the bell curve and thousands are following him.

But they begin to listen to what he is saying.  Many realize he has no intention of taking on Rome in a military manner, others hear his critique of the compromised temple system, and his actions and words seem to undermine the whole foundation of what it means to be the chosen people.  People begin to grumble.  People begin to leave.  The bell curve begins it's decline.  Yet Jesus doesn't seem to care.  He says harder and harder things.  People become more and more angry and disillusioned.

In one story Jesus tells his followers that unless they eat of his flesh and drink of his blood they will have no part in his Kingdom.  He doesn't qualify this statement in any way.  People are grossed out, people wonder if he is calling them to be cannibals.  His followers drop like flies.  So many leave that Jesus turns to the 12 and say's what about you guys are you gonna leave too?  They say no...but they are wondering.

On the night that he is betrayed he begins by saying one of you tonight will betray me and the disciples response to the last one of them is, "Is it I Lord, Is I?". By the time the night is over all of them but John will have scattered like sheep.  On Golgotha, the place of crucifixion, outside the city gates of Jerusalem , Jesus dies almost utterly alone.  Only his Mom, a few women, and his best friend are there to witness the passion of Jesus.  The absolute bottom of the success bell curve.  Jesus had said this was the way to the blessed life but...  

His disciples didn't get it. The Kingdom of God was breaking forward into the world with a cosmos altering deliverance, but they didn't understand.  Neither do we.

Redefining Success

Jesus lived his life to an audience of one.  He was not trying to please men but God who tests our hearts. His first priority in life was being faithful to God.  It wasn't keeping up appearances, he wasn't being thought of as the world's greatest leader, or being considered a success in the world's eyes.  His heart was set on being obedient to God through self-giving, self-sacrificing love.  He trusted God even as he hung on the cross dying.  I love the fact that he quotes Psalm 22 while he hangs on the cross.  He cries out "My God, My God Why have you forsaken me".  That Psalm is amazing because it describes the crucifixion scene.  Yet the Psalm ends with an affirmation of the goodness of God and how he has power to vindicate the one who suffers.  This psalm was on Jesus mind moments before he died.  He trusted that God was going to redeem his humiliation, suffering, and defeat and turn it into a beautiful victory.

For the follower of Jesus, success is not found in numbers, money, physical beauty, popularity, admiration or any of the other things the world puts forward to us as signs of success.  For the follower of Jesus, success is found in being obedient to the will of God no matter what the outcome.  Sometimes, many times, success is going to look like the cross.  

It is so important that we understand this concept so that we are not deceived.  If we don't understand this idea that is central to the Christian faith then we will be tempted to take the easy path.  We will look at situations that don't look like success from the worldly perspective and we will run thinking God could not possibly be found there, when that might be the exact place where we should expect to find Him.

In a society that values entertainment, comfort, and ease above all things, in a society that worships success and celebrity, Jesus' redefinition of success will seem foreign, counter-intuitive, and simply wrong.  But that is because our way of doing life has blinded us to the truth.

Jesus first disciples had a very hard time grasping this concept, and it wasn't until they saw the cross through the lens of the resurrection does victory through defeat begin to make sense.  Only through the lens of the resurrection can we begin to have the courage to live like Jesus lives.  This was hard for the first disciples; it's going to be hard for us.        

We Must Tell New Stories

Maybe we celebrate the wrong things.  For several years I was on the church planting team for the Southeast Region of Vineyard USA; I even headed it up for a couple of years.  When you are in the position of coaching church planters you get to hear all their dreams and hopes for the church God has placed in them. They all believe their church is going to be that one that explodes.  Their church will go from zero to a thousand in a year.  Why? Because those are the success stories we tell, those are the things we celebrate.

You might not be a pastor, but we tell the same stories no matter what line we are in.  We love our get rich quick schemes and business start-ups, and self-made men and women.  We love numbers, we love money, we love celebrity, we love beauty, we love power. 

But how do the stories we tell line up with the greatest story ever told?  How does our picture of success line up with the Kingdom view of success?

I kinda think the stories that will be celebrated when Jesus' kingdom breaks forth in all its fullness will be the story of the little guys and gals, those who faced great opposition but were faithful.  They will be stories we have never heard because the world doesn't care about their obedience.  No one celebrates the pastor who faithfully shepherds a hundred or so people all of his or her life.  No one celebrates the people who never give up and never give in.  No one celebrates people who live lives of simple self-giving, self-sacrificing love every day.  Nobody celebrates the person who risks everything for the sake of the Kingdom doing what's right, only to end up looking foolish or like a failure.  But part of the crazy message of Jesus is that God sees all these things.  The scriptures even state that we are not trying to please men but God who tests our heart. And this God, who has revealed himself to us in Jesus, sees all these things that the world ignores.  He cherishes them in his heart, and his promise to us, which is as strong as the resurrection and ascension of Jesus is that what we have done in secret, what the world does not celebrate, will be celebrated and vindicated by God.

Maybe we need to tell more stories about people whose lives looks like Jesus.  People who are willing to look foolish for God.  John Wimber, the founder of The Vineyard Movement, liked to say, "I'm a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?"    

Maybe the Kingdom is breaking out all around us through thousands upon thousands of unheralded acts of obedience every day.... maybe we have a choice, through obedience, to join in with that Kingdom movement. It might mean we look like a fool in the eyes of the world. Jesus certainly did.

Early one Sunday morning at a tomb where the stone was rolled away it all began to make sense.  The followers of Jesus began to see the world in a different way; hopefully...so will we.