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JUST CALL ME LONNIE, I GUESS

Would you agree that when a person becomes a born-again Christian, certain words ought to come out of their vocabulary? That’s a reasonable observation — and unfortunately, many of us still have in a back-room file drawer of our brain the particular words we’ve tried to retire. But today I have a stunner for you. According to the teachings of Jesus, there are three words we should all stop saying. One of them is “Rabbi,” the second one is “Teacher,” and the third one — now brace yourself — the third one is “Dad.” That’s right. All followers of Jesus should drop those three words: “Rabbi,” “Teacher,” or “Father” — “Dad.”

And you say: “Oh, come on, Pastor Melashenko.” Then immediately wonder if maybe the label “pastor” has just been sent down to the minor leagues as well.

We’ve spent two weeks discussing together some of the difficult-to-comprehend statements Jesus made while here on earth. And here in our final segment comes just one more, where Jesus seems to take “sir,” “madam,” “Your Honor,” “professor,” and even “Dad” off the list. What’s going on?

First of all, here’s the verbatim Bible passage. Matthew 23, verses 8-10:

“But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and He is in heaven. Nor are you to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, the Christ.” Obviously referring to Himself at that point.

And there it is. Don’t call anyone “Rabbi,” don’t call them “Teacher,” don’t call them “Father.” And of course, reasonable people everywhere do all three of those things 365 days a year, in the religious world and in our secular lives as well. We call our dads “Dad” and we call our teachers “Teacher,” and never give it a second thought. When we watch M*A*S*H reruns on Nick at Night, Hawkeye and B.J. and Major Houlihan sit in the mess tent next to Father Mulcahy, played by wonderful actor William Christopher, and this denunciation by Jesus doesn’t seem to fit: “Do not call anyone on earth ‘father.’”

Well, friend, again, let’s take a deep breath and survey the spiritual landscape. What is Jesus telling us? What is the warning? Clearly, heaven isn’t telling the citizens of earth not to call our own biological dads “Dad” or “Father”; even the fifth commandment, found in Exodus 20, says to honor your FATHER and your mother. Here in the New Testament Jesus concurred about respecting your earthly father, talked about a man leaving his father and cleaving to his wife. He had the prodigal son say, “I will arise and go to my father.”

It’s the same with the other two words. Over in his first letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul, writing under inspiration, unabashedly calls himself “a herald and an apostle and a TEACHER of the true faith to the Gentiles.” Back in Ephesians four, in the beautiful “gifts” passage, Paul again writes:

“It was He [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and TEACHERS, to prepare God’s people for works of service.”

And in one of His parables, recorded in Mark 13, Jesus uses the expression “master of the house” 2000 years before it became famous in the great Les Miz musical. Several times — speaking of hard sayings — Paul tells servants (and slaves, even) to be obedient to — “subject to” — their masters.

So there surely IS a common usage of these three words that Christ Himself employed in His own ministry. Well, then, what is this strange injunction really about?
There’s one helpful lesson I hope these past two weeks have taught us; I know it’s indelibly etched in MY brain by now! And that’s to take a hard passage and immediately take a thorough trip through the surrounding countryside. In other words, examine the landscape. What problems was He addressing?

Let’s go right there, then — Matthew 23. Jesus was teaching a large group of people that day, and the topic under discussion was the religious hierarchy. “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees do such-and-such” is how Jesus begins. And it’s a rather prickly lecture, to be sure; in fact, the NIV Bible has this heading: “Seven Woes.” “Woe unto you teachers for THIS; woe unto you for THAT.” Etc. And the essence of what Jesus warns about is this: these holy men, who sat “in the seat of Moses,” were, first of all, hypocrites. They made the common people do things THEY didn’t do. “They don’t lift a finger,” Jesus scolded. Plus: these rulers and Pharisees were heavily into show, into pomp and circumstance, into bowing and scraping. That’s bowing and scraping just one-way, you understand — all coming their direction. They wanted the best seats at banquets and the highest thrones in the synagogues and the most lavish greetings in the marketplace.

We’ve shared a presidential anecdote before, coming out of the Nixon White House years. Former Watergater and now born-again Christian Chuck Colson tells how Nixon got it in his head one night that he wanted to go over to the Lincoln Center and just drop in — see what was playing. Well, field trips like that weren’t as easy as just going down to a local Dairy Queen, but Colson got the Secret Service all wound up, got a limo ready, got agents to help cover the nuclear “football,” got the protocol all in place. And just as they entered the performance theater, Nixon whispered to Colson, trying to sound casual, like he didn’t really care much, but ohpleaseohpleaseohplease: “Uh, Chuck, did you manage to arrange for the band to play . . . well, you know?” And Colson had to go sprinting down a maze of hallways and try to line up getting the Marine Corp band to strike up “Hail to the Chief” without any rehearsal or warning.

And what Jesus is talking about here, in warning about calling other people “Master” or “Teacher” or “Father,” is this DESIRE to want those titles, to want the band to play and the crowds to cheer and the spiritually common people to bow and obey. I remember a not-so-subtle cartoon by Rob Portlock in Leadership magazine where a preacher had etched into the glass pane on the door to his pastor’s study: “Pastor William S. Smith III / B.A., Th.D., M.Div., Ph.D., D.D., D.Lit, and your humble servant.”

In the Message paraphrase Bible, which we’ve found to be very helpful in this series, Eugene Peterson goes right to this self-exaltation syndrome we all fight on a daily basis:

“Don’t let people do that to YOU, put you on a pedestal like that,” he writes. “You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let HIM tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have one Father, and He’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them — Christ.”

There are several important points in this one paragraph. First of all, Jesus clearly teaches what we call “the priesthood of all believers.” We’re all the same at the foot of the cross. Every man and woman and child on this planet is in equal need of a Savior. Every person who breathes the air of earth has exactly the same access to Calvary’s river of grace, to God’s throne room of mercy, to the storehouses of answered prayer. You and I don’t need a “Father” before we can talk to the Father; we can take our sins and our confessions and the innermost cries of our heart and go straight to the Dad who sits on heaven’s highest throne.

In his Tyndale New Testament commentary for Matthew, author R. T. France reminds us that Jesus does claim for HIMSELF the title of Master and Teacher. It’s all right to call Jesus those things because He IS those things. Here’s the quote:

“Jesus . . . asserts His own unique authority,” France writes. “He has the only true claim to ‘Moses’ seat.’ Over against that unique authority His disciples must avoid the use of honorific titles for one another” — (something Christian writer P. Bonnard calls “Christian rabbinism) — “an exhortation which today’s church could profitably take more seriously, not only in relation to formal ecclesiastical titles (‘Most Rev.’, ‘my Lord Bishop,’ etc.) but more significantly in its excessive deference to academic qualifications or to authoritative status in the churches.”

Do you remember that Jim Jones, head of the People’s Temple cult, taught his disciples that he was “the incarnation of Christ and of God”? He wanted his one thousand followers to call him “Dad” and “Father”? That was dangerous, wasn’t it? And when “Dad” said to drink, they drank; when he said to die, they did that too. This is what Jesus is warning about: misplaced authority where we let another human being stand in the place of God for us.

The great reformer, Martin Luther, on the most challenging, dangerous day of his life, was a gracious, humble defendant. “Most serene emperor! illustrious princes! gracious lords! august highnesses!” is how he began his defense at the Diet of Worms. But no longer would he let a false hierarchy or a mortal man occupy God’s place in his life. He already had a Father in heaven, and a Teacher and Master named Jesus. They were enough of a safe-conduct pass for him, and they’ll do for us as well.

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