Attitude Up or Attitude Down

I’m beginning a little sermon series today on the practical disciplines of Christian life and in the series title you will see what is probably a new word for most of you — praxis. If you look it up in a good dictionary you will find that it comes from a Greek word meaning “to do.” Generally praxis means what it sounds like — practice. Praxis is practicing something or doing something, especially in contrast to thinking or theorizing about something. So you may wonder if praxis means practice, why not just use the more common word?

The answer is that praxis helps solve a long-standing debate throughout Christian history between an emphasis on faith vs. an emphasis on action. Is faith primary or is action? Christians have been debating that for centuries. The idea of praxis is to unify what we believe — our faith — and what we do — our action. Considering our praxis means asking the question, “how are Christians in the world?” How do we orient ourselves in life? Praxis implies that we always bring to life more than belief and more to life than action. We bring a unique blending of both, a particular posture towards life. This is our praxis.[1]

So I’m going to talk about some very nitty-gritty issues that are important in our Christian living. This week I’m going to talk about attitudes and next week about money and in subsequent weeks about some other vital issues.

A good place to turn for guidance in our praxis is a part of the New Testament known as the Pastoral Letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. They are called pastoral because they appear to be letters from Paul to individual Christians, his friends and co-workers Timothy and Titus. Next week when we have a little more time, I’ll give some more introduction to the Pastorals. Meanwhile I hope you’ll be reading them on your own. For now, let’s jump right in and read the text in 1 Timothy 1.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Somewhere you’ve read the story or seen the movie. The ancient coliseum of Rome is crowded with men and women and in the arena a gladiator stands with sword upraised above a fallen adversary. The gladiator looks to the emperor for a sign. The sign itself is very small but it makes a huge difference because it determines the fate of the fallen warrior. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Thumbs up means a live man will walk out of the bloody arena. Thumbs down means that death will flash from the gladiator’s sword and a limp form will be dragged away from the sandy arena floor. We all know the story.

We are decent folk, of course, and such bloodthirsty sport is repugnant to us. But when you’ve read the story or seen the movie, have you paused for just a moment to really feel your way into it, to put yourself in the crowd, to feel its raw emotions pulse in you? And have you looked at your own deepest soul in that moment and found perhaps in yourself the attitude of thumbs down? Away with the enemy. Away with evil doers. Away with losers. Away with the despised. The crowd is against them anyway; there is nothing one person can do. So thumbs down. Away with them.

Oh, we don’t sit in such an arena. We face different issues. But I think the contrast is not unfamiliar to us. Thumbs up or thumbs down, humanity or inhumanity, mercy or judgment. These same forces pulse in our world too. In some sense the struggle of this or any time is the conflict of these two gigantic opposites, the one powerful to drag humanity down, the other striving to spread a kindness over the world, to make humans clasp hands together in harmony. The difference is our attitude. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Here are a couple of thoughts to help us think about our attitude.

First, we live in an attitude-down world. Judgment, blame, and criticism come easily. The world loves to find fault, even when there is none, and to punish fault when it is found. Even the church does this because we influenced by the attitude-down world.

I know of a church where a few years ago a young couple was very active. They were both committed to Christ and very involved in that church’s ministry. But there were problems in their life and in their marriage. Without any question, some of the problems were their own fault. They were not blameless and they both became sexually involved with other persons. Eventually people from the church found out.

Of course, we cannot condone adultery. But in this case, only the woman was forced out of the church, branded, as it were, with a scarlet letter, never to enter that Christian fellowship again. The man was not treated so. It was fine for him to stay in the church. But with an ugly thumbs down she was judged and pushed away from body of Christ. Some said she got what she deserved. But even if she were entirely at fault, it was wrong to judge her that way. It was a thumbs-down attitude and that’s the way the world is and sometimes the church too.

The Apostle Paul could never get over that he didn’t get what he deserved. The text describes the contrast between what Paul expected to receive from God and what he did receive. The text says Paul was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. We must hear in that confession the wrenching sorrow that shook Paul to his core. For he was an exceedingly orthodox Jew. He would not even utter the name of God — so holy was it considered to be — and he certainly never literally or consciously blasphemed God. In fact, everything Paul did was to serve God and to earn the reward of being faithful.

But when Paul encountered Jesus Christ everything about his faith and life was turned upside down. He saw that instead of serving God, he was opposing God. He saw that instead of being rewarded for his faithfulness, he deserved to be judged for his sinfulness. Paul viciously persecuted the early Christian church and thought he was serving God by doing so. But when his life became centered in Jesus Christ, he saw that all his zeal was totally contrary to the will of God. Paul was moving exactly opposite the way God was moving in the world.

And then the most unexpected thing happened. God blessed him and called him to be an apostle, to be one of the very chosen of the chosen. Paul never got over that. He did what deserved death and God gave him life. He was a sinner but God loved him. Paul expected to receive thumbs down because that’s the way the world is. He received instead thumbs up because that’s the way God is. So Paul says he was an example. If God can save his mixed up, violent life, God can save anyone.

Paul learned that an attitude-down, judgmental spirit leads to destruction and despair. But that’s the way the world operates and even godly people like Paul can get caught up in it.

A second thought today is that we are called to be an attitude-up people. We may live in an attitude-down world but we are called by God to be an attitude-up people. The reason we are so called is because we are sinners. There are sinners in this church. In fact, we are a church of sinners. You and I are still getting to know each other. But were you to poke around inside my life, it wouldn’t take you very long to find sin. Were I to poke around inside any of your lives, I would find sin pretty quickly too. There is sin in our lives and this side of heaven that will always be so. There are sinners in this church and that’s why we’re called to be an attitude-up people.

Maybe we should put a sign up outside — a big sign, maybe a neon sign! — that flashes “Sinners Welcome Here.” I want this church to be bursting with sinners because only those who know they are sinners also know they need the grace of God. Only those who know they are sinners also know they are not superior to others in God’s eyes. Only those who know they are sinners cannot turn thumbs down on people who are hurting and who need forgiveness because God has not turned thumbs down on them. In Christ God says to sinners, “Life to you, not death. Life to you and peace and joy and hope.” Thumbs up.

So sinners like you and me can come here without being judged to learn and grow and serve and worship. We’re not all in the same place in our walk with Christ. We all have strengths and weaknesses. But in our life together we can come to know the grace of God that heals and gives hope and power and joy even in the midst of sin and struggle. By the grace of God we in the church must not turn thumbs down on people because they are sinners. That’s what we are, too, and God has not turned thumbs down on us. Is it too much to ask that we do for others what Christ has done for us?

Don’t ever believe your attitude doesn’t make a big difference to other people. Early in my ministry a couple came to me because they wanted to get married. Both of them had been divorced and they had been turned away by a couple of other churches. About the same time I met that couple I was sitting at the dinner table of a presbytery meeting and I heard a fellow minister saying — almost bragging — how he would never marry anyone who was divorced unless they could prove to him by being born again Christians that such a thing could never happen again. It hurt me to hear him talking that way because now I had sitting in my office a couple who was angry at God, frightened of the church, and on the verge of abandoning the faith because of such an attitude.

I married them. And that started them down a road not only of marriage but of a very active life in the church. Not my church. They found a different one to be more suitable for them. But before long they were teaching Sunday school and completely involved in the fellowship of believers. I didn’t do any great thing. But a thumbs-up attitude can make all the difference. Oh, I know that lots of couples come to me to be married and don’t give a hoot about anything religious. They just need someone to do a “nice” ceremony and sign the marriage license. I know that. But I would rather be exploited myself than to have any couple turn away from God because I had judged them thumbs down.

Paul found the mercy of God when he expected just the opposite. So have we and we are called by God to be a thumbs-up people in a thumbs-down world.

At the end of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens there is a very moving scene. The carts are rumbling through the crowded streets of Paris to the guillotine. In one of the carts were two prisoners: a brave man who had once lost his soul but had found it again and was now giving his life for a friend, and beside him a girl — little more than a child. She had seen him in prison and had observed the gentleness and courage of his face. “If I may ride with you,” she asked, thinking of that last frightening journey, “will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.”

So as they rode together now, her hand was in his; and even when they had reached the place of execution, there was no fear at all in her eyes. She looked at the quiet, composed face of the man beside her and said, “I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”[2]

Can we find that attitude in ourselves and not judge? Can we see that we were sent from heaven to hold the hand of those who are hurting so that even in the midst of struggle and pain they can find courage and faith? Can we do this because it is precisely what Jesus Christ has done for us? I pray we can. For this is our praxis — the unity of faith and action — to which we are called.

[1] Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973) 7.

[2] Quoted from James S. Stewart in The Minister’s Manual, 1986, 194.