Sermon: "No Paparazzi"

4th in the "False Pictures" series.
Delivered March 25, 2007 by Rev. George Antonakos.
Other sermons in this series / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

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We are going to start with a guessing game today, just to get your attention. I want you just to feel completely comfortable and free to call out the name of the people whose pictures you are about to see on the screen. No prizes, just for fun. So here we go. (pictures projected, congregation answering) Better known as Tomcat, sure, okay. Go ahead. Jay-Lo, yeah, not just Jennifer Lopez, yeah, go ahead. Brittany Spears yeah. Lindsey Lohan, yep. Nicole Ritchie, yeah right. Paris Hilton, - (followed by a slide of George Antonakos). The shades kind of threw a few of you I know. Alright. Get that out of here, okay. I wonder what's going on with all these people whose images that we put up here besides mine? I heard that Brittany left rehab early and somehow it coincided with Kevin's 29th birthday. She should have stayed the full 30 days and I just wonder if a reunion might be in the works. Nicole Ritchie collapsed on the set of "The Simple Life". They say its hypoglycemia, but I think maybe its something else and Lindsay and her mom, what's up with them you know?

I don't want to pick on the subjects of these paparazzi pictures; they have enough hassles already with paparazzi and all, but it got me thinking who becomes the most important candidate for paparazzi pictures? Who becomes the person who paparazzi wants; I just like saying paparazzi, it's okay; that paparazzi want to get a picture of because it means money for them. I think it has something to do with a combination of two things. It's celebrity, but not all celebrities become really hot subjects. It's somehow celebrity plus self-indulgence. Somehow those two things go together. I don't think you will ever see Mother Theresa, I mean I don't think she was chased around by paparazzi, okay. She may have been on the cover of People Magazine for a different reason at a different time, but I am a little scared that you all knew their names so quickly when we put the pictures up there, you know?

But we have been studying the Book of James, and we have been talking about false pictures; pictures that the world tries to get us to subscribe to, to buy in to and I think the mother of all false pictures is being described in James, Chapter 4, because in a nutshell it's about a self-indulgent life. It's about a me first philosophy of living. The core way that Jesus would get at this in his teaching and he said it in many different contexts. He said it at many times. He said it when he was asking his disciples who people thought he was and Peter rebuked him because he said he had to do God's will. He said things like this; he said, "Those who seek their life, whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and the gospel will find it." You can find that in Mark 8:35. See this false picture that we are talking about today it's the stuff of Lent. It is what Christians are being challenged to do during this time of self-reflection in our lives. Losing our life, taking up the cross, but the false picture of the world when we think about losing our life, the world's reaction to that is are you kidding? Are you nuts? I love the mock magazine that Matt Crocken created for us. Some of these little sayings if you can read them are pretty funny. But I want you to see what James says about a me first philosophy, a me first false picture. Let's look at James, Chapter 4 and before I read the first ten versus lets ask God to help us understand it.

Lord, we thank you for your loving grace and as we have already sung this morning, we pray that your words which are filled with grace and mercy would break our stony hearts and we ask for your Holy Spirits empowering so that we might not just learn more, but we might follow you more deeply, that your spirit would help us in grace to be transformed more into your image. We ask it in your name, Amen.

Okay, here we go. James, Chapter 4, Verses 1 to 10:

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up."

What are the causes of war, of fightings, quarrels, strife? What makes people sometimes paparazzi material? It is the heat anon within us; that's what the Greek word is for the first verse where James says your desires, all this comes from your heat anon. What word do we get from that in English? Hedonism; a living for pleasure. I think we have seen our culture a new level of Hedonism today. Sometimes pleasure-seeking takes on a higher value than identity and character.

San Diego state psychology professor Jean Twang published a book last year entitled, Generation Me and she talked about or warned about narcissism on the rise; self-love in an unhealthy way on the rise. You remember Narcissus; he was transfixed by his own image when he looked in to a pond. So he was never able to enter in to a meaningful relationship with anyone else. In a related study she analyzed 16,000 college students. They took a narcistic personality inventory and she discovered through her research that, as she look at trends, and she just felt like narcissism was on the rise among younger people and when asked you know what kind of led you to this? Why did you want to do this? She said, "Why I just saw so many images in our culture. I would go on to MySpace and there is a little icon that reads, I love me." That's not all bad, but that's what kind of caught her attention. Then the slogan of YouTube is "broadcast yourself." The research center asked the younger generation what they felt their generation's most important goals were and 80%, or 8 out of 10 said 'getting rich' and only 4% responded 'becoming more spiritual.'

I am not picking on any generation or pointing fingers at the younger generation; I am just saying that I think that the false picture of self-indulgence is more vivid in our culture today. But selfishness has always been a challenge. Why else would James have written these words 2,000 years ago? It's always been part of our human nature. He says these desires that battle within you, that's really the cause of so much strife and so much difficulty in the word and in your relationships. He goes on to say that you want something, but you don't get it. That word want can better be translated crave. There is a craving that you have and, in fact in 1st Peter, Chapter 2, if you just look over a chapter, 1st Peter is the next book after James, in 1st Peter 2:2 he says in a positive sense,

"Crave the pure spiritual milk of the word"; just a like a baby who is hungry, who is craving nourishment. "Crave the word of God so that you might be able to grow."

But in a negative sense the word is used in Mark, Chapter 6 in that account when Salome danced before King Herod and because she captured his fancy so much he said, "I will give you half of my kingdom, whatever you want. I swear on oath before my guest." She goes to her mother and she says, "What do you want to ask?" She said, "Ask for the head of John the Baptist on a platter." One of the holiest men that lived in that day. And so she comes back and if you read it right in the text, Mark 6:35 it says, "I want right now" that is they way it is translated. That same word craving; this wanting, that's when it used when she says, "I want right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter." And because King Herod had to look good as well; he couldn't disappoint his guests, he capitulated.

All of these desires within, these cravings to indulge ourselves, James refers to in two ways. One, he calls it adultery before God, picking up an Old Testament image of how the people of Israel in their idol worship were compared to adulterers, that they were not being faithful to their relationship with God and then he also calls it friendship with the world. He says when you have this in your life, this adulterous heart and this friendship with the world, it leaves no place for God in your heart. He is talking to Christians.

The world in which James was writing to be a friend with someone meant to have a spiritual unity with them; to have a shared unity, a shared nature. A person who is 'a friend of the world' places his or her personal pleasure above doing the will of God. Paul had a friend and a co-worker who would travel with him and who would go on missionary journeys with him and this friend is mentioned all through Paul's writings, but at the end of his writings, at the end of 2nd Timothy, Chapter 4, probably the last thing that Paul probably wrote he says to Timothy and it's so poignant, it's so powerful of a sentence, he thinks back over his life of ministry and he is thinking of the pluses and the minuses and the people who are with him and all and he says about his friend Demas on a negative side, he says, "Demas, having loved this present world deserted me." I think he was just making a statement of fact. He wasn't doing anything other than that, but it just put in to relief as he was thinking about people who had been faithful with him and he says, "and Demas having loved this present world deserted me."

Verse 4 highlights that this thing of being adulterous before God and having a friendship with the world is hatred toward God. It's so strong. It's not that God hates us. It's almost that we are saying, I am choosing this over love for God. And he goes on to say that this is a choice. He says, "Anyone who chooses to be a friend of God or the friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." It's a choice. It's why he refers to the worldliness as spiritual adultery. It's a choice to turn your back on somebody to whom you have made vows.

I think adolescent boys can do this. I think in my growing up and I think in your growing up maybe you can relate to this when boys are just starting to notice girls and they are starting to feel a certain infinity and I think of a scene where maybe a guy and a gal may be 13 or 14 or whatever standing in the hallways in front of the lockers and nobody else is around and there is a little pleasant exchange and they are acting friendly and before you know it, just a couple of years ago they were talking about how girls had cooties and then here is somebody now and all of a sudden all this gang of guys come around the corner and walks down the hall. In that moment where this young man is trying to figure out where his infinities lie, he starts to act differently than he did just a minute before. He starts to maybe pull away. He starts to act aloof. Sometimes he will even act rejecting to show that his identity is with the crowd, more than understanding what he really cares about.

Proverbs tells us that if you are going to be a friend, you are going to be a friend all the time. "A friend loves at all times," that is what it says. We know that Proverb. I think the way that adolescence or pre-adolescence can be with each other, I think sometimes if the truth be told and if we are really honest, that is sort of the way we are with God in two different contexts. Now we can be pretty friendly and seeming friendly and having a positive experience and then we get in to the hallways of the world and it may not be overt, but maybe just very subtle, maybe only you know it in yourself and we just kind of step back and we don't affirm our deepest friendship with God. The text says that this is a choice and believe it or not it's based on pride, because that's where he goes. Actually if you look at Verse 5, it's a hard verse to interpret. Some people interpret it with God as the subject, that God is jealously desiring us, but other people interpret it as the way it appears in The New International Version or do you think the scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely. He is basically saying who we are in our proud self; we just are this way. We covet and we enviously desire things more than God. And that all stems from pride and it says that God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We in our envious lust want to come off looking good in the world. We want our achievements to impress, our success to impress, our status to be something.

You know its funny when Peter and Jesus were having this conversation about what was really important, Jesus said to him, "Peter you have your mind set on the things of human beings instead of the things of God." Here is the main point of Verse 6 and all these verses leading up to Verse 6, that a proud, deliberate, me-first choice is basically the best way to cut yourself off from God's favor. You can never cut yourself off from God, because he holds on to us, but the best way to probably feel an opposition in this life is to live in that me-first philosophy. I don't know some of you may be going through life and you may feel like you are being opposed. Now that doesn't always mean that you are not experiencing God's favor, believe me. There is all kinds of struggles that we encounter.

There is the battle with the world, the flesh and the devil, but sometimes in our lives that opposition can very much be because we are proudly resisting some way. We are not yielding to what God's agenda is in our life and the surest way to feel that opposition is to just keep in a self-oriented way. It's really with the heart of the temptation narrative when the devil said to Jesus first of all, "Make these stones in to bread." Jesus says, "I reject self-sufficiency." Okay then take a swan dive off the temple. "I reject testing God and misusing his word." Oh okay, "Well here is all the kingdoms of the world, all the glitter, all everything, you can have it all if you will just bow down and worship me." "I reject worshipping anything other than the Lord God Almighty. I reject buying into the lie of wealth, power and status." And when God's grace works these responses in us, it happens because we humble ourselves, we lower ourselves.

Here is this opposition, here is this force of wind, the same force, the same spirit that can oppose us when we are standing up straight head high and the gale force wind is coming at us, if we will change our posture, almost like a bird, the same force can lift us like a kite, it will lift us up. It's a paradox. We lower ourselves in God's wind; the thing that was just opposing us lifts us up when we take the low place. That is what the scripture says. It just doesn't say he gives us grace, it says he gives us more grace when we humble ourselves. More grace and so, therefore, he says submit yourselves then to God. This was used in military parlance; enlist before God. Come under his authority in order to follow Jesus. And you can do this is small ways or great ways. You can be humbling yourself before God walking down the street and nobody even knows it because you are saying yes to something that God is telling you to say yes to and you are saying no to something to what God is saying no to. Every time you listen you humble yourself, you receive his word, God gives you grace and you get lifted up.

An amazing thing happened on a golf course three weeks ago. 32-year-old pro golfer Mark Wilson had never won a PGA tournament in 110 previous attempts. Each year, I guess he started playing golf in his early 20s, each year for 10 years he went to qualifying school just to be able to play on the PGA tour and I understand from reading stuff that that's really a grind; that's hard to keep at that ten years, one year after the next, but he kept at it. 110 tries and now he is in his 111 tournament three weeks ago in Palm Gardens, Florida. He was a math major at UNC and when he was coming out of school he had a habit of putting his goals down on paper and the top goal that he had was to win a PGA tournament. So he is playing three weeks ago in the Honda Classic down in Florida and he has a tremendous first round on Thursday and on Friday on the 5th hole, they are coming to this hole, I think he hit the ball and then the other guy that he is playing with makes a remark about saying I wonder what club Wilson used and Wilson's caddy overheard the remark and he blurts out, "It's an 18 degree" speaking about a club in Wilson's bag.

Now, you may not know, I play golf and I didn't know this, to offer advice to another player is a two-stroke penalty. Now the guy is playing the golf of his life and so he summons an official at the next hole. The only people were just right there. So he summons an official on the next hole and he says, "My caddy said this" and he gets docked two strokes. After Friday nights round the caddy is talking to reporters and he is in tears because he is thinking I might have just caused this guy the tournament. And then, what eventually happened was Mark Wilson got in to a four-way playoff on Sunday. It ended in darkness and then on Monday he was just one other guy that he was still on a playoff with and on the final playoff hole he sinks a 30-foot putt and wins the tournament. On Monday the caddy is talking to reporters again and he is still crying, okay? And he said that when the incident happened Mark Wilson put his arm around the caddy and he said, "Look, it's okay. It's okay. Let just go play some golf." And then he just relaxed and he played the best golf of his life.

Now some of you are saying, could we please have other illustrations rather than sports illustrations, but here is what I am trying to get across, okay? You know some people are saying what's golf, you know? How many people, how many of us in that position would have reported ourselves? I mean if it was me, I would have said, "I didn't hear anything. I think he said it was 80 degrees out here. I think that is what he said." I mean, come on, it's a one million dollar payoff for the winner. It means I get exempted from playing in the Master's. I don't have to go back to qualifying school. I am not saying humble yourself and you will win golf tournaments. I am saying that a guy who saw his goal at the top of his list for ten years in reach didn't let what he wanted seduce him and compromise his character and his integrity. I think only God can help a person do that kind of thing. And God's greater grace pours in when we actually do say yes and no at the right time. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

I learned a new word this past week and you who understand the world of biology or ecology will know it probably. It's ecotone. Ecotone. An ecotone is a place where two ecosystems come together. It's a place where two communities, two systems meet and join and blend in to each other, like the Chesapeake Bay, the current of the Chesapeake Bay going out and meeting the tide of the Atlantic and creating a different level of salt water in the ecotone, which creates the possibility of different life or when you are riding or flying across the middle of the country, Kansas or Nebraska, and you come to the Rockies where the plains and the mountains meet, that's an ecotone. Ecotonic space is inheritably unstable. It's shifting. It's fragile, but it's also fertile and diverse and fluent. It's a place of risk and it can even be a place of danger. I say all that to say this; what James I think is saying is that the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of our God are like an ecotone.

The Christian life is an ecotone and later in Chapter 4 we didn't read it, he starts to hint a little bit more about the brevity of this life. It's what caused Paul in 1st Corinthians 7 to say some very strange words to people; that if you took those words out of biblical context you would say, "What does that mean?" He said to his friends in Corinth, he said, "The time is short." James later in Chapter 4 says, "Your life is a vapor." And then he goes on and says things like this, "Those who have wives let them be as though they did not have wives." That verse won't make it to the next marriage seminar that we do I am sure, but he is trying to make a point. He goes on to say, "Those of you who are weeping, don't weep." And then he says this, "Those of you who buy, who engage in the worlds system, those of you who buy, act as though you didn't possess anything." What's he saying? He is saying live in to the ecotone of the kingdom where the kingdom in the world meet as though you did not live in the world. The false picture is believing that there is no other world to be concerned about and so that this world and all that it offers is paramount so you might as well grab what you can, as long as you can. But the true picture is submitting ourselves to the values of a kingdom that will last forever.

I don't usually end with clips per say, but we are going to kind of let this movie clip do a little more driving home of the point. How many people have seen the movie, "The Devil Wears Prada"? You've seen it, okay about half. So for you, you are going to recognize this scene. For the rest of you we are going to ruin the movie for you. Because this is at the end of the film and if you don't want to watch it, its okay you can leave. It's alright. But anyway, Miranda Priestly played by Meryl Streep is the high priestess of the fashion industry. She is the go-to person when it comes to fashion, when it comes to living in a way that understands the worlds system and her personal assistant played by Anne Hathaway, her name is Andy Sachs, all through the movie she has fought the awardment of buying in to that system. In fact, when you first see her in the movie she is kind of, she is a real contrast to all the glitz and glamour of the magazine that she goes to work for, but she finally gets hired and all through the movie you see this struggle, this tug of war in her about what value system is she really going to live in to and also all throughout the movie there are many times when she is inconvenienced by a phone call from Meryl Streep's character and just has to jump as soon as she gets that call. And so, this scene at the end of the movie; they are in a limousine and the conversation is about certain people being causalities in the wake of business politics and hard decisions that kind of left people kind of strewn all over the place, not being true to them because of self indulgence. And so, try to pick up the sense of this as you watch this and then we will have an invitation to some response of prayer, okay?

Miranda Priestly: I never thought I would say this Andrea, but I really, I see a great deal of myself in you. You can see beyond what people want and what they need and you can choose for yourself.

Andy Sachs: I don't think I am like that. I couldn't do what you did to Nigel, Miranda, I couldn't do something like that.

Miranda Priestly: You already did; to Emily.

Andy Sachs: That was different. I didn't have a choice.

Miranda Priestly: Oh no, you chose to get ahead. You want this life those choices are necessary.

Andy Sachs: But what if this isn't what I want? I mean what if I don't want to live the way you live?

Miranda Priestly: Oh don't be ridiculous Andrea, everybody wants this. Everybody wants to be us."

Earlier in the movie when the younger woman is talking to her boyfriend who really is also frustrated by her choices he says a line to her; he says, "All those calls that you take all the time, that's the relationship you are in." And so as we come to this point in our service the question is, what is it that God wants you to toss? To just let go of? Or on the other side of the ledger, what might he want you to embrace? That he is calling you to? I would like to invite you to a time of repentance and humility. When Martin Luther put the 95 theses on the Wittenburg Door, number one was when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he willed that the entire life a believer be one of repentance. So let's enter in to a time of silence in answering that question, what does God want me to toss? What does God want me to embrace? And after that silence I will close us in a prayer of confession that you can participate in to.

Let's pray: Lord thank you for hearing our prayers. You know our hearts that we many times are caught in between; many times we are as James says double-minded. Sometimes we forget to ask you for things and when we do at other times, its very self oriented and so we confess, we confess the times that we have shut out your spirits voice and we have taken and paid attention to things that really are not the things of God. And so our selfish desires push you to the margins of our living. Lord, forgive us when we follow the world's example instead of being an example to the world. Restore in us the sense of your ultimate claim upon our lives so that our thoughts, and speech and behavior might glorify you alone. Help us in the throws of our decision making in the mix of our relationships to humble ourselves under your mighty hand and receive that grace that you promised because of the life of Jesus Christ flowing through us, the life of Jesus Christ available to all who will turn to you and humble themselves and receive you and the gift of your life for them; through your grace and mercy cleanse us again; through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. George Antonakos
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org