You Don't Have to be Efficient

Texts: John 12:1-8 and Luke 9:12-17

When it comes to efficiency, America is the dream of the world. American workers are efficient and productive. We are the world's leader in productivity per person. American productivity has increased 400% since 1950. Other nations, like the Chinese, South Koreans and Japanese have tried to emulate us, and when they do, their economies prosper. Americans are, by and large, hardworking. 85.8% of all American men work more than 40 hours per week. Americans work 137 more hours per year than the Japanese, 260 more hours per year than the British, and 495 more hours than the French. 134 countries have laws setting the maximum number of hours in the work week - America does not. We are the only industrialized nation with no legally-mandated annual leave from work. In terms of the number of workers who enjoy paid vacations, we are hopelessly in last place among the industrialized nations. And when we work, we tend to work efficiently.

To be efficient is to be productive without being wasteful. Energy efficiency is the best way to combat the impact of global warming. We now own a hybrid car, and it was a joy to see the mileage on a recent trip as we drove to the East Coast hovering around 40 miles per gallon. A very efficient automobile!

We strive to be efficient people - making the best use of our time and resources. Efficient people are practical, get-it-done types. Efficient leaders are admired for their crispness in action and word, wasting neither time nor resources. They do what must be done in the quickest, most cost-effective manner. Efficient people are well-organized, getting a lot accomplished with the least amount of waste. The more efficient you are the more successful you tend to be.

When your annual work evaluation reads, "This is one of our most efficient workers," you can expect a raise in compensation because business loves efficiency. To be inefficient is to be wasteful and disorganized. It is to manage one's time and tasks poorly. It requires a lot to accomplish very little. "The American Way" is built upon a devotion to efficiency.

Maybe our challenge is that we tend to turn all of life into work, and all of our time into productive time. Howard Ikemoto once said, "When my daughter was about 7 years old, she asked me what I did at work. I told her that I worked at a college and that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me incredulously and then said, 'You mean they forgot?'" (p. 4, Alive Now, Jan/Feb, 2003)

Eugene Kennedy said years ago, "The hills are alive, not with the sound of music, but with experts trying to make the world run better. Look up 'management consultants' and you will find a long list of them. Americans have always been big on efficiency, time-motion studies, better mouse traps, higher compression ratios in their engines, ... these have been a part of our national psyche for a long time now. Search the internet and every year brings a new set of books and resources on improved methods of management. Go to conventions and you will find that what is proclaimed as new is also proclaimed as efficient." (p. 133, The Pain of Being Human, Eugene Kennedy, Thomas More Press, adapted)

As a pastor, I attend a lot of meetings, and I dislike inefficient meetings. Time is wasted, extraneous conversations go off-topic, and decisions get delayed or postponed. The truth is, I love to be efficient. I love it when someone compliments me by saying, "How did you get all that accomplished?"

Yet, there is no more inefficient time than when I prepare sermons. I've prepared very few sermons when the ideas fell efficiently into place. Those sermons tend to be weak because they reflect a lack of struggle. An easy sermon is typically a bad sermon. The sermons in which I sit with a blank stare at a biblical text, or kick myself for choosing such a ridiculous topic, or find myself deleting more than adding, those are the sermons destined to speak to people. They are created out of struggle, not ease.

Is there such a thing as being efficiently exhilarated? Is there such a thing as being efficiently imaginative? Or being efficiently in love? I suppose a person could be very efficient in a marriage. Time spent with one's spouse could be well-planned, highly structured. Couples could plan ahead for conversation, that's Thursday night, or recreation, that's next Saturday, or for romance. A person could be efficient as a friend, never wasting a moment, scheming carefully the time allotted together.

But I don't think you can be efficient with the imagination, efficient with creativity, efficient with generosity, efficient with forgiveness, efficient with romance, efficient with play, efficient with prayer, efficient with exhilaration, efficient with gratitude, efficient with grief. It could be, and often is, that time wasted with a friend turns out to be the most valuable time. Time flittered away with a spouse, the most satisfying.

Even in business, efficiency can stifle creativity. The largest corporations, those most structured for efficiency, tend to produce the fewest innovations. While smaller firms, more casual and less structured, produce the most creative innovations. It is likely more efficient to have one boss who makes all the decisions. You don't have to waste time reaching consensus or collaborating. But the Japanese have proven that their collaborative decision-making model in industry is in the long run more productive because workers feel a greater sense of loyalty and investment.

Eugene Kennedy again said, "As a matter of disquieting fact, the world seldom runs efficiently. That is why there is always a market for those who would try, in each succeeding generation, to teach the world the lessons of efficiency all over again ... Anybody be he executive, politician or pope, who thinks that he will be able to eliminate all duplication and get everything on a smooth and businesslike basis for any period of time, is bound to be frustrated if he is not ready to settle for less. That is why the battle goes on, the experts at efficiency blazing new and direct trails to the goals they can define so easily, while the jungle gradually closes in again just a few steps behind them ... Perhaps Robert Frost was right when he said, 'Nobody was ever meant to remember or invent what he did with every cent!'" (ibid, p. 133, 134, 135)

The reality is that there is much in our world that is beyond our control. It is only when we divide up human experience into manageable bits that we begin to control it. But these little chunks of reality are often not real at all. Thus, we seek to control what cannot be controlled: the forces of life, the experience of being human, the search for truth, the necessity of purpose or meaning, the nature of human hope, the surge of emotion. We try to efficiently manage our world, while recognizing in our saner moments how futile our efforts are.

We don't have to be efficient. Human efficiency might be what Christ is calling us to abandon, to stop our incessant need to use, order, produce, and plan. And calling us from the burden of efficiently managing our lives so that we can allow God to rightly order our ways.

Consider Judas' objection in the Bethany home when Mary poured the expensive oil from the alabaster jar onto Jesus' feet, filling the room with fragrance. Judas was efficiently correct in objecting. Why waste the bottle of expensive oil? Couldn't it be put to more productive use? Why not sell it to feed the hungry? I've heard this argument so often in the church: why repair the steeple or remodel the restrooms when people are hungry in our society? Judas made a good point: Jesus is setting aside social concern for the poor by his tolerance of this wasteful extravagance.

Most churches have to watch their dimes and quarters: they cannot afford to be wasteful. And yet here is what Jesus is saying to Judas, "Set aside the poor right now. Be extravagant with the expensive oil. Go on, be wildly worshipful! Pour it on my feet, even though it will do my feet no real good, and it's plainly an inefficient use of resources. Go ahead, empty the bottle. The poor you will have with you always!"

Judas, like any good church treasurer, was trying to introduce businesslike and orderly procedures into Jesus' movement. Mary, on the other hand, was ready to sit at Jesus' feet and accept his teachings for what they were, even when it called for an action that appeared to be wasteful.

Judas' Way was to say: "My plan will work. I know what's best. Let's deploy our resources in the most business-like manner." And Mary's Way was to say: "I am prepared to listen, to follow, to take risks, to step outside the box of conformity, no matter the cost."

Eugene Kennedy again said, "Maybe the Spirit can only touch us and change us when we drop the armor of efficiency and are able to let ourselves out with all the rough edges of life showing. And maybe we harden our hearts to the Spirit when we worship the cool, uncaring gods of hard-nosed efficiency." (ibid, p. 136)

The disciples made the same error. Once when they were at the far stretches of Lake Galilee, away from towns or cities, they felt responsible for the 5,000 hungry souls who came to hear Jesus. (Lk 9:12-17) The disciples had already huddled, and among themselves they likely said, "We've got a management problem here. These people are getting hungry. And poor Jesus, why, he's too wrapped up in his parables to notice the lateness of the hour. Let's be efficient and reasonable, and break up his story-hour while there's still time."

When the disciples pulled Jesus aside to express their concern, he said to them, "You're worried about the wrong things. You've focused upon the wrong issues. You want these folks to eat? Fine. Seat them in groups of 50." Now, think about that for a moment. It's a crazy solution to a hungry crowd. Can you imagine trying to seat 5,000 people in groups of 50? That's 100 groups!! And for what purpose? There's no food anywhere nearby!

The story wasn't really about the lad and his loaves and fishes. The miracle is almost beside the point. The point is what Jesus taught his disciples, "You're worried about the wrong things. We can meet physical hunger. Here, take these loaves and fishes and feed the people. Yet, the real problem is not that these people have come here hungry and wish to be fed, but that they have come here empty and want to be filled."

Jesus taught the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount: "Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or (efficiently) gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worthy much more than they? ... So, do not worry or say, 'What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How are we to be clothed?' It is pagans who set their hearts on these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first ... and all these other things will be given you as well." (Mt 6:26f)

Our need to fill our barns efficiently with harvest to see us through the winter months may make life too comfortable. We can be obsessive about efficiency, trying to achieve our own outcomes instead of relying on God's outcomes.

"What I have developed through the writing of my novels was a sense of plot, and beyond that, a sense that perhaps life itself has a plot— that the events of our lives, random and witless as they generally seem, have a shape and direction of their own, are seeking to show us something, lead us somewhere. We are always free as in a way the characters in a novel are also free—free to run away with the story, free to be what they want to be no matter how hard the author may try to make them something else - but in the midst of our freedom, we hear whispers from beyond time ... sense something hiddenly at work in all our working whose plot can make us truly and everlastingly human ... I choose to believe that, from beyond time, a saving mystery breaks into our time at odd and unforeseeable moments.... There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak—even the walk from the house to the garage that you have walked 10,000 times before, even the moments when you cannot believe there is a god who speaks at all anywhere. God speaks, I believe, and the words God speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys." (p. 95, 96, 77, The Sacred Journey, Harper and Row)

The serendipity of God breaking into our lives may not imply a passion for wastefulness or inefficiency. To be devoted to wastefulness is surely far worse than a devotion to efficiency. Jesus was sometimes efficient, sometimes not wasteful at all, and sometimes able to get much accomplished with very little.

However, we would do well to remember that there are two ways to respond to Jesus:

There was Judas' way, convinced that he could efficiently manage and organize God's way. And there was Mary's way, who felt no need to be in control or to manage her life, but rather to let go and let God do something more wonderful through her.

Let us not be devoted to efficiency, but rather liberated to follow Jesus' way no matter where it leads.

You Don't Have to be Consistent

Text: Luke 18:9-14

Can't everyone agree? Consistency is a good thing. Students, children, partners and friends are caught off guard when we say one thing and do another. There's nothing more disconcerting than to be with someone who is totally unpredictable. It is difficult to teach or mentor if we are not consistent in our guidance or example. Being consistent is a valuable and laudable human behavior.

Yet, Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall." (Self-Reliance)

Some may find it difficult to accept, but Jesus wasn't always consistent. He tended to be spontaneous as to make his life difficult to summarize or formulate. To one person he healed, he said, "Go back home and report all that God has done for you!" (Lk 8:39), yet to most of the others he "... ordered them not to tell anyone what happened." (Lk 8:56 and 9:21) He healed many people of unclean spirits, yet he once said that when an unclean spirit goes out of a person, it comes back with seven other wicked spirits "... so that the man ends up worse than before!" (Lk 11:24f.) Even if you are Jesus, you can't have it both ways: if on the one hand you call the Pharisees "blind guides," "hypocrites," "fools," can you on the other hand talk about loving your enemies?

At one time, Jesus protected the Temple from destruction by running out the money-changers (Lk 19:45f), yet in the next moment he prophesied the Temple's destruction (Lk 21:5f). Once he urged his disciples not to watch for signs of the end of time for no one can know this. At another point, he describes to the disciples the signs of the end of time (Lk 21:25f). In one unusual passage, Jesus tells his disciples, "If you have no sword, sell your cloak and buy one ..." "Lord," they said, "there are two swords here now." And he said to them, "That is enough." (Lk 22:35) Yet, twelve verses later, one of the disciples pulled his sword to use against one who had come to arrest Jesus. And Jesus responded, "Put up your sword, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Mt 26:53) Again, in his Beatitudes, Jesus said, "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God." (Lk 6:20) And in his statement of ministry, he said, "The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." (Lk 4:18) Yet when confronted with what was likely the most valuable gift given him, he rejects the idea to sell the fragrant oil and give the money to the poor saying, "The poor you have with you always."

Is this a criticism to point out Jesus' inconsistencies? The truth is, he responded to each situation creatively. In forcing Jesus to the test of consistency, we put two situations of a different kind up against each other. Jesus saw no need to make all things consistent, whether he left a parable unexplained and obviously misunderstood, or whether he unveiled to his disciples his true destiny.

Ernest Campbell has said, "Jesus didn't reduce the mysteries of life to problems and then proceed to offer solutions. He allowed the mysteries to stand—such mysteries as life and death and time and evil and suffering and joy. He didn't offer answers; he made responses." (Seeds Magazine) And John A.T. Robinson adds, the public marks of the Christian life "... are mostly marks of paradox—of losing one's soul to save it, of identity through identification, freedom through service, resurrection through crucifixion." (p. 31, The Difference in Being a Christian Today, Westminster)

The gospel is full of contradictions, such as those Paul described when he said that Christians are "... sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, yet possessing everything." (2 Cor 6:8b-10) Carlyle Marney once wrote, "... had you not noticed how all the Gospel narratives feature a set of built-in surges? There is a series of careening lunges from left to right. There is a wild sequence of cascades - he's up - he's down. The Gospel is split by a mighty contradiction. It's as if we have two irreconcilables in the same bucket. Confessed as Lord, he says immediately, using a different name for himself, that the Son of Man goes up to Jerusalem to die. 'Christ is Lord,' they say. He says, 'Tell nobody!' He feeds the five thousand, then takes a boat overnight to escape the kingdom they wish to thrust upon him ... The Teacher dines with an aristocrat but talks to a harlot who had wandered by. Born to be king, he has the air of a peasant. To his coronation, he rides a donkey." (p. 72-73, The Carpenter's Son, Abingdon). The Gospel, Jesus' story, seems to be at ease with contradiction.

In insisting upon consistency, we may fail being faithful to God's Word. For even if we were once on God's path, God has now veered to the right or left, and we have plunged on straight-ahead, consistent, but wrong. If the Bible teaches anything, it is that the kingdom of God isn't predictable. It takes us by surprise. It emerges at the least predictable times and places. It isn't under our control at all.