Mind Readers
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: March 22, 2009
Mind readers. Some of you know mind readers. (Wraps cloth around head like a turban) Now, if I can get this right you’ll know what I’m trying to do here. Mind readers. Now I have become a famous mind reader that some of you probably know, right? Who have I become? The Great Karnak. I’m channeling The Great Karnak this morning. The Great Karnak you know was a great mind reader and The Great Karnak did something like this. His partner, whose mind he was reading because he was so attuned to his partner…his partner would say something like this. “Joan Rivers” and The Great Karnak would say, “I’m getting it. What celebrity has had the most face lifts?” Mind reading.
This morning I need to give you just a few definitions as we venture into the text this morning, and I want to start off with a definition of the word “spirituality.” When I went to my dictionary, the definition for spirituality, one of them anyway, was “spiritual character, quality of, or nature.” So if I start out with spirituality I get to the word “spiritual in character” and I want to look up the word “spiritual.” So I looked up “spiritual” and my definition says “characterized by the ascendancy of the spirit, showing much refinement of thought or feeling.” Now let’s go a little farther. Let’s get to the word spirit itself. What does “spirit” mean? “A pervading, animating principle, an essential or characteristic quality” oh, now we’re getting to the heart of things “or a prevailing tendency or attitude, a divine animating influence or inspiration.” You got that?
Now, Paul says, “But we have the mind of Christ.” What does this mean? I think it helps us to understand Jesus as God’s son. Now, bear with me. I’m just going to work with a couple more words and then we’ll move on, okay? In Koine Greek, the Greek that the New Testament was written in, there are two words used for son. First of all, the more generic word teknon and then a more specific word called uios and the definition of teknon literally is this. A teknon is a child through descent or posterity so we are all (males) teknon and we are all (females) tekna, children through descent and posterity. Literally that means that we have an inheritance by just virtue of our birth. In other words, I am my father’s son because of his DNA.
Now this other word that’s used in the New Testament for the word son….uios, it literally means a child in respect of membership, service, resemblance, manifestation, and destiny. In other words, I am like my father because I reflect his spirit. So uios shares this quality of the spirit. Uios is an essential or characteristic quality, prevailing tendency or attitude. You are children of your parents…teknon and tekna....strictly by virtue of the biological processes that occurred for you to be so. But more importantly, you are children of your parents because you reflect who they are. You reflect their value system. You may reflect the way they look at the world. Or you may have changed at one point in time from that. When Jesus is called “Son of God” by others in the Bible the word being used is teknon. But when God says “My Son” in the Bible, whenever God is speaking, the word being used is uios.
Let me kind of put this in English now, teknon and uios. When I was a child and I was a good boy, my mom was happy with me, she would say something like this, “That’s my son.” I was being uios there, but if I got in trouble she would say to my father, “Do something about your son.” You ever notice that? Suddenly she wants to disown ownership in this situation, right? She wants to distance herself from me because she’s not happy with me. In that case I’m a teknon to her so you see how this is working. Now I know that hasn’t happened to any of you people.
Who do you think Paul is addressing in this passage? Who is Paul addressing in this passage? Give it a go. The majority of people, okay, that’s a pretty good answer. Anybody else? What did you say? Ooh, that’s good, non-believers, okay, that’s pretty good. Anybody else? Yes? Jews, okay, yes, there were some. You know, actually, Paul is talking about….he’s using “we” language in here….and actually he’s addressing believers and he’s probably addressing a lot of them, but he’s addressing a conflicted church, the church in Corinth had gone on with all kinds of dissention. He’s reminding them of who they are. To be a mind reader, Paul says, requires a mind of Christ, requires being uios, in other words implying a connection in respect of resemblance to the Father, manifestation, destiny.
The subjects of this passage are those who are spiritual. The object of this passage, though, is wisdom. Okay, what’s wisdom? I went to my dictionary. I wanted to see what it had to say. Wisdom: quality of being wise, the power of judging rightly, and following the soundest course of action based on knowledge, experience and understanding. Then Paul writes, “Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God created for the ages for our glory.” Paul is, in fact, speaking about wisdom personified in the figure of Jesus Christ. Paul is speaking of two types of wisdom here, wisdom of this age and God’s wisdom. Now what is the difference here? The wisdom of this age is something like a middle school teacher who craves adult contact after the school day is over but has spent so much time in the company of 8th grade boys they begin to think and talk and even act like 8th grade boys. They become uiostic if you will. Now God’s wisdom is like a soldier in the military who jumps on a grenade to save their fellow soldiers from dying when they could just as soon run back to a wife and a child that awaits them. From the world’s perspective is this a wise thing to do? No. You get it.
Let me give you a different example, maybe one more close to home. Probably like many of you, once in a while I come across some money on the ground. Oh wow! You know if I see a quarter on the ground that makes me happy. Even a dime I like. I was standing in Albertson’s a few weeks ago and I was in the self-check out line waiting my turn and there was a woman ahead of me one station. She did her transaction and she left. So I came up to that station and I started doing my transaction and all of a sudden I just kind of, I mean, I never do this, I just kind of looked down and there in the change delivery slot was a five dollar bill. Now let me tell you, I have never…if I find a buck I think I’m in heaven. I’ve never found anything larger than that. There’s a five dollar bill. Man….five bucks! Yeah! So I pick up that five dollar bill and I’m holding it in my hands for maybe two seconds and all of a sudden I thought….oh oh….. and I ran out to the parking lot to see if she was still around. She was gone. I don’t know if that five dollars was hers.
So, I’ve got this five dollar bill and I put it in my wallet and I carry it around for a while. Now my first inkling is to….I’m roladexing ….man, what am I going to do with this five buck bill. Man, I’m just going to spend it somewhere on something like restaurant coffees, whatever. I’m going to blow this five dollar bill because God just put this nice little windfall fortune right in front of me. So I had it in my wallet for about two weeks. During that time as I am aware of that five dollar bill is always right here the feeling came over me that whatever was going to be the fate of this five dollar bill I wasn’t going to use it on myself. I just had this feeling that I was just like a bank for this five buck bill. I was just going to hold to it as security for awhile and see what happens. So it was in my wallet for two weeks. So a man came into the office who had been in earlier for a food box. Phyllis had gone home, the door was still unlocked, I was in the office by myself. This guy comes in and he’s clearly upset. “Have you found a ten dollar bill lying around here?” I said, “No, but you’re free to look. I didn’t find a ten dollar bill.” And, you know, I could tell it was like he seemed he really needed that ten dollar bill so he was really downcast as he went out to his car. Now, I head back to continue working on my sermon in the office and all of a sudden it was, like, snap, and I ran out to the parking lot. His car was just backing out. I ran up, waving. He rolled down his window and I said, “Look, I don’t have your ten; I haven’t found it, but here, take half of it.” He said, “Aw, you don’t have to do that” and I said, “No, no, you don’t understand. I found this. It’s not mine, I don’t know whose it is but it’s not mine so here.”
So, the wisdom of this age, friends, suggests that….the wisdom of this age suggests that I gave him the money because it makes me feel good about myself or because he needs it. I don’t know, man, maybe the guy went to the ole Big Tobacco down the street and bought five dollars worth of smokes. I don’t know. The wisdom of this age suggests that I give him the money because it makes me feel good about myself or because he needs it, but here’s the trick. God’s wisdom says that I give it to him because it’s not mine. It never was. Giving away money at all goes contrary to the wisdom of this age does it not? But, you see, money is God’s and the spirit of God let me know that I was just to safeguard God’s money until the proper time. Such is what it means to be God’s steward. Such is what it means to be plumbed by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which reveals that to know that nothing is ours, belonging to us, but God’s, belonging to God, even our lives and those of our loved ones. But only those who have the mind of the spirit can appreciate and comprehend this.
Now, everyone can have the mind of the spirit. We can all be mind readers for Jesus. But, no bones about it, it takes deep diving into the scriptures on a daily basis. It takes prayer on a daily basis. It takes devotional practice of some kind on a daily basis. Emphasis on the word “practice.” And regular fasting doesn’t hurt. If not, friends, we’ll always just be playing church as children rather that being church as adults, amen? Mind readers can read minds because they know their partners and their spouses and their friends so well, so intimately, so uios. They’re on the same wave length precisely because they’re so attuned to each other like the teknon and uios.
Last night in our 30 hour famine I was playing a card game with a couple of partners. And my partner in this card game was Kevin, actually. We were so attuned to each other’s strategy that I knew what he would throw. Like close friends and partners and spouses, this is what it means to be the Bride of Christ. That’s what that means, that we are the uios of Christ, and because we are the uios we know his mind so well and he knows ours so well that we are a reflection of him because you are all teknon, all of you
These words I give you this morning I speak to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, and our Bride, Jesus Christ. Amen.