PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The Question that Never Get Asked-or Answered!”
By: Ron Woodrum
I recently heard Ravi Zacharias talking about Jesus dodging entrapment by the Pharisees. The story is recorded in Luke 20:24. A Pharisee asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay tribute/taxes to Tiberius Caesar. Jesus asked for a denarius. He asked whose image was stamped on that coin? He was told Caesar’s image. Jesus then told him to “render-i.e. give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s…and then add and render-i.e. give unto God what belongs to God!”. Jesus did not follow up with another question, but inferred it, “who’s image is on you?” The answer would be “the image of God”. That being so, the Pharisee was admittedly ingenious for not asking-“what should we be rendering-i.e. giving to God?” But that is the question he did not ask. That is the question that we do not ask. That is the question we never ask nor answer. But we must! After all it is that image, imprinted on us, that haunts us and reminds us of a more fulfilling Divine intent for us.
Frederick Buechner has a way of saying things in writing that makes you say “I wish I’d said that!” He also points out things that make you say, “I know exactly what he is talking about”. In his book A Room Called Remember, a book of uncollected pieces that he had written, which he called a veritable “grab bag”, chapter one, which bears the name of the book, is worth the price of the book. He writes:
“Every once in a while, if you’re like me, you have a dream that wakes you up. Sometimes it’s a bad dream-a dream in which the shadows become so menacing that your heart skips a beat and you come awake to the knowledge that not even the actual darkness of night is as fearsome as the dreamed darkness, not even the shadows without, as formidable as the shadows within. Sometimes it is a sad dream-a dream sad enough to bring real tears to your sleeping eyes, so that it is your tears that you wake up by, wake up to. Or …there are dreams that take such a turn so absurd that you wake laughing-as if you need to be awake to savor the richness of the comedy. Rarest of all is the dream that wakes you with what I can only call its truth. Deep out of where dreams come from, something rises up that shakes you to your foundations…for an instant it is as if you glimpse a truth truer than any you knew, that you knew if only a truth about yourself. It is too much truth for the dream to hold and the dream breaks.
Several years ago I had such a dream, and it is still extraordinarily fresh in my mind. I dreamt I was staying in a hotel somewhere and that the room I was given was a room that I loved. I no longer had a clear picture what the room looked like, and in the dream it wasn’t really what the room looked like that pleased me, but was the way it made me feel. It was a room where I felt happy and at peace, where everything seemed the way it should be, and everything around me seemed the way it should be too. Then as the dream went on, I wandered off…always returning to the same hotel again. Only this time I was given a different room which I didn’t feel comfortable in at all. It seemed dark and cramped, and I felt dark and cramped in it. So I made my way down to the man at the desk and told him my problem…I said, I had this room which was just right for me in every way, and I would like that room again. The trouble …was I hadn’t kept track of where the room was, and didn’t know how to find or ask for it.
The clerk was very understanding. He knew exactly what room I meant and that I could have it any time I wanted. All I had to do was ask for it by its name. I asked him the name. He said the name of the room was Remember. The name of the room I wanted again was Remember. That was what woke me. It shocked me awake, and the shock of it, the dazzling unexpectedness of it, is so vivid to me still. I knew I had a good dream, and I felt in some unfathomable way, it was also a true dream. The fact that I did not understand its truth did not keep it from being in some sense also a blessed dream, a healing dream, because you do not need to understand healing to be healed, or know anything about blessing to be blessed. The sense of peace that filled me in that room. The knowledge that it could return whenever I wanted it to or needed it to-that was where the healing and the blessing came from; that was at the heart of the healing, though I did not understand why. The name of the room was Remember”.
The Divine Image that is upon us is like the Room Called Remember, that Buechner had dreamed about. That image is a reminder of a state we no longer have, but until we surrender to His sovereignty and give to God what Is rightfully His, we will spend sleepless nights remembering more glorious days, and living spiritually frustrated days. Since God’s image is upon us, and we must submit willingly to His sovereignty, what is it we should be giving to Him? I believe it can be summed up in three things. One He deserves our Worship-that is surrender. He deserves our Walk-that is service. He deserves our Witness. That is our stand!
Because we bear the image of God, (Deo Imago), He has laid His claim to us. To our Worship. We cannot live lives of fulfillment if our lives exclude the Worship He deserves. That is why Augustine said, “We are Restless Until We Find Our Rest in Thee Oh God!”. That begins with our Worship. The best definition I have ever heard of worship is one by William Temple. He writes, “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of our mind with His truth; the purifying of our imagination by His beauty; the opening of our heart to His love; the surrender of our will to His purpose-all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.”
The second thing we owe God, whose image is stamped upon us, is to walk in His Ways– Be a follower of His Son- Following in His steps honors Him. If we seek to imitate Him, and let His Spirit incarnate Him in us, that is service that will transform us. Jesus told the Devil that “We should only Worship the Lord our God, and Him only serve”. Listening to any other voice; following the direction of any other steps is not service in direct response to our worship. Worship directs our Walk.
The third thing we owe God, whose image is stamped upon us, is our Witness. Jesus warned, “if you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father who is in heaven. If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father in heaven”. (Luke 12:8). Confessing Jesus before men is bearing witness to the one whose image we bear. We owe Him that! There are three words for witness in the New Testament. One is the word -“apoptomai” (apo- “from the side of” and optomai-“to behold”). The sense is to stand beside and behold. It was used of those who were in the inner circle with Jesus on the Mt. of Transfiguration. They beheld His glory and were called upon to testify to that glory! Witness is our shining opportunity to reflect our encounter with Him. Moses, descending from Mt. Sinai has nothing on us. It is this kind of encounter that Paul referred to as “beholding Jesus with an unveiled face, and being transformed from glory to glory”. (II Corithians 3:8). The second word used for witness is the word “autoptomai”- (word from which we get autopsy. It is made up of auto-“self” and optomai–‘to behold for yourself”. This is a term used only by Luke. In the first chapter of his Gospel about Jesus he states that he structured his narrative about Jesus by piece-by-piece life-changing testimony about encounters with Jesus. His Gospel witness became an autopsy of truth about Jesus. The third word is the word “martus”. from which we get the word “martyr”. The etymology of this word focuses on testimony of an accurate memory. Originally it referred to bearing testimony to facts you knew by experience and memory to be true. It was a legal term describing one who gives testimony to stand up in a court of law. The O.T. law required that the truth of a matter be established in the mouth of the minimum of two witnesses. So when we add our testimony to the words of Jesus, or the words of His Father, the truth is then established in the mouth of two or three, and those who hear will be without excuse in the day of Judgment! Render to God those three things that reflect His glory in the image He has placed on you. Finally spend some time in that “Room Called Remember”.