The Tension of Average

[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/average-tension.mp3[/podcast] We’re pretty much halfway done with the year. Can you believe it? I felt like I just blinked and it was already June. This month, in preparation for the second half of the year and for the coming retreat that lies before us, I want to talk to you about “Average.” More than that, I want to talk about the tension many of us have to be anything but average. For the next three weeks, I want to talk about the various types of tensions we have in being anything but average. As for today, well, let’s about the idea of being more than average in light of being part of a community where you are the average of all other sums. Here’s the idea I want to start at. The idea was created by a guy named Jim Rohn. He was a motivational speaker and a personal development coach who influenced a lot of leaders and a lot of self-help authors. But he says this about life:

It seems that every life form on this planet strives toward its maximum potential … except human beings. A tree does not grow to half its potential size and then say, “I guess that will do.” A tree will drive its roots as deep as possible. It will soak up as much nourishment as it can, stretch as high and as wide as nature will allow, and then look down as if to remind us of how much each of us could become if we would only do all that we can. Jim Rohn — Five Major Pieces To the Life Puzzle

In saying that, he also coined this idea that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” When we look at these two quotes side-by-side we get the feeling that the more we strive toward being anything but average, the more we are drawn to it. Me: I remember the empty school yard at my junior high. I had stayed behind that day. I can’t remember whether it was raining or snowing or just bitterly cold. But all my friends had left school that day in eager anticipation of telling their parents the good news. I knew there was nothing for me to share with my parents. I was left behind to be an average student and I had nothing to show for it. I wasn’t even cool enough to be cool. It was clear that I wasn’t smart enough to be going to high school the next year either. It was pretty clear then that I would be headed toward mediocrity. It scared me to be average after excelling academically. I looked for excuses. I didn’t try hard enough. My friends were smarter than I was. My parents didn’t send me to fancy prep schools. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was there alone and I was forgotten and lost as average. I didn’t matter. I gave a silent critique of the people I kept around me. I was judgmental and downright ruthless, but understanding how their success and their influence on me was critically detrimental to my success. As a person, I had too much at stake to let this go unaddressed. They moved on ahead and into their various worlds and communities and I sunk deep into myself, vowing never to allow someone to bring me down to average. I effectively reduced them to the periphery of my life. I know it sounds mean, but I want you to keep that in mind in light of the passage we’re about to read from the Book of 1 Corinthians because that’s what we do to keep from being average. The sad thing is that we’re still the average and nothing will change that unless we find a way to bring up that average in the lives of the very people we dismissed. Let’s open our Bibles to chapter 12, verse 12.

¹² For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:12-13 ESV)

Remember what I said? We’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. This is the body of Christ. We spend a lot of time together practicing our spiritual lives. You are the spiritual average of the five people you are sitting closest to in this room. What does that tell you about your faith? It tells us that reason some of us only occasionally have the spirit of God move in us because there are others that we’re spiritually close to that don’t experience the Spirit of God move in them at all. Low blow! I know! But look at what the Bible says about us because when we really look at ourselves and our average and where we are, unfortunately that is the tension that we’re in, we are setting ourselves up to be spit out.

¹⁵ “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. ¹⁷ For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. (Revelations 3:15-18 ESV)

We are one body, and together, we are lukewarm. This is unacceptable in light of what Jesus did for us on the cross. He has given us a second chance at life so that we can be better than average. The sum of all us should amount to most than lukewarm. It’s not going to happen by one of us becoming hot or cold, but all of us moving as an average sum of parts, together moving to become burning hot like the Spirit of God upon us. Let’s go back to our passage in the Corinthians, verse 14.

¹⁴ For the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵ If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶ And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷ If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? ¹⁸ But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹ If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰ As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. (1 Corinthians 12:14-19 ESV)

I want you to understand this truth: even though all of us are the average of each other, we are not the same. We need to push each other in a direction greater than we are to be together as a community. The reason we have these differences in opinions and vision is because we were created differently to bring the average up for the person next us in a way they can’t for themselves. The tension between being average and how to set ourselves apart from each is eased only when we are working to better the people around us with the unique set of gifting and vision we have. It sounds so simple but it’s so difficult. You can’t be better than you are now without the people around you being better. But the problem is that the people around you can’t be better without you striving for better. You are one body with each other. Your neighbor’s detrimental personality defects, are just an average of the detrimental personality defects in your own life. Eat those words, there is nobody you can blame for hating your neighbor except the defect within yourself. Yet, it is here where there is beauty in Christ’s salvific work in us. When Christ died on the cross for our shame, and invited him as our personal savior, we became the average of himself—perfection so long as He is one of the five people we are spending incredible amounts of time with. I mean, have you ever wondered why people say we need to spend more time with Jesus? It’s not because we’re going to start spitting holy water. It is simply because the more time we spend with Him, the more like Him we become because we are the average of the people we spend the most time with. If you want to be perfect, spend more time with your personal savior. He is the head of our body. You belong to Him even if you don’t do what He does because you were created for something. Your experiences, your feelings, your thoughts, your vision, it is for a specific purpose. You see that we don’t always agree or do the same things because we weren’t created to be facsimiles of each but averages of what we do together as one body. I want to keep going, verse 21.

²¹ The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²² On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³ and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, ²⁴ which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, ²⁵ that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶ If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. ²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:21-27 ESV)

This is a point I want to make that I think we need to heed if we get nothing else from today’s message. There is no such thing as weakness. There is no such thing as “bringing me down.” I say this in light of faith in Jesus. I’m going to tell you right now that if there is somebody in your life committing crimes then bringing it to your attention and telling you to keep it quiet, he or she will bring you down when he or she crashes and burns. It will be a spectacular fire that will burn with furious rage. That’s not what I’m talking about. When we get so frustrated and angered by people and their perceived weaknesses through our own eyes. We don’t even see them at average to us, but we see them by looking down on them. We are no better than they are. Heck, that IS us when we stop for five seconds and breathe. Those annoying things that these people do against us, we do those same things—they are our average. The Apostle Paul is saying that these people who seem lessor averages of us, we need to bring their average up. Instead of thinking ill of these people behind their backs, because we all know we’re too polite and ill-contempt to do it to their face, we need to take MORE time to do right by them and bring them up. They are part of our body. We are them. I love how it’s written here in verse 26 and 27 — ²⁶ If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. ²⁷ Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.  The tension of being average is in how we go about bringing up the average without being dragged down by it? Moreover, how do live a life where we can be more and more an average of the person of Jesus Christ. What would that mean for us as a society? Forget society, what would that mean for us as a church? I believe it would change the operations of this church. It would change how we treat each other. It would change how we view the mistakes and annoyances we have against each other. It would change our reactions. I’m not saying that it would be utopian perfection. I am saying that it would be closer to heaven than we’ve been experiencing. Let’s pray.