Made for More: 'Perspective'

The following is a message (abridged and edited) preached by Pastor Ryan Peterson (pictured above) at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C., on July 20, 2014.  

“We look at the trash on people, when God looks at the treasure underneath.”

“For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7b ESV).

Jesus told his disciples to follow him. Jesus let children come to him. “Become as a child,” Jesus said.

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled. Jesus said, “The greatest is the servant.”

God looks at the heart. Luke 7:36-50 ESV, following:

One of the Pharisees asked him [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.

And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.”

And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet.  You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.  Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”

And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?”

And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (end of Scripture reading).

The Pharisees told about stuff to do, but they didn’t do a lot of it.

It’s all about your perspective.

In the Pharisee’s house, they reclined at the table. A woman came in and washed Jesus’ feet. Simon, the Pharisee said to himself (maybe even mumbling), “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”

Jesus hears hypocrisy and judgment a lot louder than a whisper. The Pharisee’s heart was exposed.

The woman was “of the city” (perhaps a prostitute). The Pharisee saw her as a sinner. We would hope to be Jesus in the story, but often we are not.

Jesus used “money” to tell Simon the Pharisee a story. The story is about forgiveness, not money.

Jesus asked Simon, “Do you see this woman?” Do you really see her, past the trash?

Simon the Pharisee had not been hospitable. (He had not washed Jesus’ feet when Jesus arrived.) Pharisees are deeply self-centered. Jesus, on the opposite end of the spectrum is selfless. Others saw the woman as a sinner. Jesus saw her as forgiven, because she had come to him.

“She has loved much,” Jesus said. Those who are forgiven little love little.

The Apostle Paul said this:

“But he [Jesus] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ [Because Jesus said that, Paul said] Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9 ESV).

Do we see the depth of our trash before God? Experience that and experience grace. Come to him; come to his feet, weeping. The depth of my weakness is the depth of God’s grace.

The Kingdom of God doesn’t operate the way the earth does. Do you see the trash in people, or do you start to see glimmers of treasure?

We like the ability, courage, and boldness to be transparent. What we truly desire is a perspective change. A change in perspective is good, if it’s “done under the Lord.”

Let me share with you the story of Arthur Stace [abridged from wesleymission.org]:

Arthur Malcolm Stace was born in 1884, in Balmain, just west of central Sydney. His mother and father, his two brothers and two sisters were alcoholics; his sisters, brothel operators.

Stace grew up in poverty, looking after himself and stealing as needed. At twelve he was made a ward of the state, but received no great education. At fourteen he found his first job, in a coalmine, and at fifteen he was in jail for the first of many visits.

In his twenties he lived in Surry Hills in Sydney's inner south, running liquor between pubs and brothels, connected with gambling and housebreaking, until the start of World War One. He served in France, returning partially blinded in one eye, and suffering the effects of poison gas. From then until the middle of the Great Depression he slid further down into alcoholism, until he was drinking methylated spirits at sixpence a bottle and living on handouts.

On August 6, 1930, he attended a meeting for men at "Barney’s," as St. Barnabas' Church on Broadway is generally known. Most were there, for the food, but there was a message first.

Noticing six tidily dressed people near the front (in marked contrast to the bulk of those attending), Stace asked the man sitting next to him, a well-known criminal: "Who are they?"

"I'd reckon they'd be Christians," the man replied.

Stace said: "Well look at them and look at us. I'm having a go at what they have got," -- and he slipped down on his knees and prayed.

Hardly a remarkable event, on the surface of it, but Stace found he was subsequently able to give up drinking. He said, "As I got back my self respect, people were more decent to me." And he was also able to find steady employment.

Some months later in the Burton Street Baptist Church in Darlinghurst, of which he was later a member for many years, he heard the Rev. John Ridley speak, or rather shout: "I wish I could shout ‘ETERNITY’ through all the streets of Sydney!"

Stace, recalling the day, said: "He repeated himself and kept shouting 'ETERNITY, ETERNITY' and his words were ringing through my brain as I left the church. Suddenly I began crying, and I felt a powerful call from the Lord to write ‘ETERNITY.’ I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and I bent down there and wrote it."

Stace, whose limited education had left him barely able to write his own name legibly, found that he could write “Eternity,” quite elegantly, two foot wide on the pavement.

He would get up in the early hours of the morning, and leave his home in Pyrmont at 5:00 or 5:30 a.m., after praying an hour or so. He would go where he believed God directed him and write every hundred meters or so on the pavement (sidewalk), as it seemed most visible: “Eternity.” And he'd be home by ten that morning.

He went all over: Wynyard, Glebe, Paddington, Randwick, Central Station. He was a very slight figure, 5'3", grey-haired. He experimented with variations at times, but in the end he finished as he had begun – writing “Eternity.”

Others claimed responsibility for the messages, for those messages were the object of prolonged, public curiosity, the subject of columnists' reviews and speculations. But Stace did not come forward. He saw his mission as evangelistic but didn't want publicity for himself; it was a thing between him and God.

It wasn't until 1956 that the puzzle was solved. Stace was the cleaner (janitor) and a prayer leader at the Burton Street Baptist Church, where the Rev. Lisle M. Thompson was the minister. Lisle one day saw Arthur writing “Eternity” on the pavement (sidewalk), not knowing he was being seen.

Thompson asked him: "Are you ‘Mr. Eternity’?"

Arthur replied, "Guilty, your honor."

When, on the 21 June 1956, the Sunday Telegraph published an interview with Arthur Stace, it was all out in the open. Arthur, though, continued as he always had, leaving his now slightly less enigmatic message all over the city just as before.

Stace died of a stroke on July 30, 1967, in a nursing home, aged 83, and left his body to Sydney University, so that the proceeds could be given to charity.

But "his word,” as one paper referred to it, “Eternity,” persisted in the public mind.

… Two years after he died, the Sydney poet Douglas Stewart published the following lines about the graffiti artist: 

"That shy mysterious poet Arthur Stace / Whose work was just one single mighty word / Walked in the utmost depths of time and space / And there his word was spoken and he heard / ETERNITY, ETERNITY, it banged him like a bell / Dulcet [“pleasing to the ear”] from heaven sounding, sombre [“gloomily dark”] from hell."

The police in Sydney confronted Stace 24 times about his writing “Eternity” on sidewalks. He came up with this statement to them: “I have permission from a higher source.” Some say he wrote over half a million times in Australia this word: “Eternity.” His writing gave people a change of perspective.

“What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops” (Matthew 10:27 ESV).

What you write [or say] may fade away, bit it may stay with people and change their perspectives.

(After Pastor Peterson's message, pieces of chalk were given out at the Grace Church Welcome Desk.)