Chapter 3

THE MASTER TEACHER

     Jesus was a "situational teacher." He did not transfer people from where they were to somewhere else to instruct them. If He was in a home He taught in that home. If He was in the temple He taught in the temple. But He did not teach there because it was the temple. He taught there because the people were there. For the same reason He sometimes taught while sitting on a hillside, standing in a boat at the seaside, or walking along the road.

     We have learned a lot about educational methods and techniques and we now move and manipulate people into controlled situations. We prepare everything ahead of time -the place, the lessons, the cafeteria luncheon-the whole bit. We must have a classroom with contour chairs and writing desks at just the right height and slant. The windows must be only upon one side of the room and so constructed as to admit light at the proper angle. The temperature must be regulated by thermostat. Our audio-visual materials have to be approved, assorted and arranged for the greatest impact.

     It was not that way with Jesus. He never "conducted church" or "held services." He did not teach "classes." He walked and talked and stopped and chatted. He taught while the sun bore down and the crowd swatted flies and brushed off bugs. His illustrative materials were not made to order. He never got into a dither because His "supplies" did not arrive in the Saturday mail delivery. He pointed to birds of the air, lilies of the field and gnats in a wineglass. He talked about farmers planting seed, fishermen casting nets and women making bread. When lunchtime arrived and everyone was famished and too far away from the nearest shopping mall, Jesus appropriated five hamburger buns and three sardines from an urchin who was the only one in the crowd with enough foresight to "brown bag it." Jesus never got uptight about the meagerness of what was available, so He blessed it and spread a fish fry for more people than an H. Salt Company Sea Food Galley, or an Arthur Treacher Fish and Chips Place could have fed in a month. It was a lot better than eating in the school cafeteria.

     It is possible that in our attempt to "teach religion" as we generally refer to it, we have organized, structured and regimented things until we have pressed the life out of them. Of course Jesus never taught religion or theology. He simply shared life. In order to create a proper atmosphere we must have stained-glass windows to filter flecks of light into a cool darkened interior with a ghostly influence. Here "sermons" are delivered which change no lives and alter no outlooks. Perhaps if all of us stopped thinking of the faith as a way of life and regarded it as the life of the Way we would inject Jesus into every life encounter.

     I have a friend who is one of the best formally educated men I have ever known. His degrees are from ivy-league schools and he is an instructor in one of the outstanding state universities in our land. A few years ago I asked him whom he considered to be the best teacher he had ever met. To my surprise he named an Ojibwa fishing guide in the far northern reaches of Canada. My friend had been on the verge of a nervous crackup when his doctor persuaded him to get away from it all for two weeks. He chose a remote fishing camp to which he flew in with a bush pilot.

     His guide had been born and reared in a tumble-down cabin in the deep woods. He had never gone to school or read a book. He could not write his own name. But he was surpassing wise in the lore of nature. From him my friend learned the mythology of the tribes. He listened with fascination to the account of the habits of wildlife and the ways of the wilderness. If education is the equipping of one to adjust to his surroundings and to survive within them, this illiterate Indian was educated. He knew the world in which he existed. He drew his lessons from it. And this was the way it was with Jesus the master-teacher. The world was His schoolroom!

SPIKING A FALLACY

     In our sophisticated age there is a fallacy commonly bandied about which needs to be corrected. It is frequently assumed that what Jesus said is outmoded and outdated. But truth does not deteriorate with time. It does not come with an "obsolescence factor" built in as part of the standard equipment. It is as true today as when Jesus spoke it. And man has not outgrown his need for it. Human nature has not changed. The man who boards a jet plane at Kennedy International may be the very same kind of person who boarded a mule at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. A sinner is no less sinful because he can get from one place to another with greater rapidity.

     The fact is that what Jesus said is as apropos and timely as what you read in your morning newspaper. It may even be a little more poignant because it was not subject to "the blue pencil treatment" to force it to conform to a journalistic code or an editorial policy. Jesus zeroed in on the problems that you face in your subdivision or aldermanic ward. He dealt with adultery, divorce, lawsuits, vandalism and violence. But he also faced up to problems dealing with the generation gap, as well as hatred, inner tension and isolationism. His advice has never been supplanted or superseded because He could read the thoughts and intents of hearts before they were translated into actions. He did not stretch men out on a couch and encourage them to recall emotions so He could probe them for meaning. We are told that He did not need someone to tell Him about men for "He knew what was in man." The Great Physician was not "a shrink."

     There is every indication that most of the woes of the world would have been alleviated and eliminated if the universal lordship of Jesus had been respected. There would have been no wars to make cannon fodder out of human bodies. Courts and judges and prisons would have been relegated to the past. Racial tensions accompanied by street riots and rip-offs would never have occurred. "There would have been no sectarian rivalry with its consequent train of skepticism and unbelief. Jesus did not merely have a solution. He is the solution. No wonder the message about Jesus is called the Good News!

     There is something compelling about the way Jesus lived and the things He said. I know a prominent business executive who learned this the hard way. He is head of a huge manufacturing concern with plants scattered through several southern and western states. He is the "gung-ho type" and drove himself relentlessly day and night, to increase production and to keep things booming. He did not have time for serving God because he was so occupied serving his ambitious appetite. He neglected his wife and family and tried to compensate by giving them things. He sent them on vacations and joined them for a weekend or two, flying in with an attache case of plans and documents to which he addressed himself until time to go to the air terminal and return to the city and his office.

     Then it happened! He developed a pain in his upper chest which would not go away. He could not raise his arm to shave because of the hurt. He could not bend to tie his shoes. When he called his physician he was whisked away in an ambulance to the intensive care ward where the monitor measured the raggedness of his heart pulsations. When he was finally removed to a private room the doctor gave strict orders that he was not to see any of his business associates or discuss financial affairs. Only his family was admitted and they were restricted to the regular visiting hours.

     He found himself eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife and teen age children. He dreaded to see them go. The television set bored him and the newspaper did not satisfy him. The afternoon of the third day he took the Bible out of the drawer of the bedside stand. He opened it casually and began to read the account of Jesus as given by Luke. In spite of the heavy catalog of names in the family tree of the thirty-year old Jesus, by the time he arrived at the statement of Jesus to the devil that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God," he was hooked. Later, he said that as he read on, he had the sensation of being a corpse looking at himself in a mirror. He realized that, measured by the criteria of God, he had never really lived at all, but Jesus was revealing him to himself "warts and all."

     By the time he left the hospital he was a completely changed man. He now believes that God knocked him down so He could lift him up. As he puts it, "God used a physical heart attack to attack my spiritual heart." One of his associates said, "He is a Bible junkie, as high on the Word as an addict on heroin." He presents a copy of the Bible to every new employee. He teaches a thirty-minute noonday Bible study every Monday in the courtesy room of a Savings and Loan Association of which he is one of the directors. But, best of all, he has time for his wife and children and it is apparent that all of them have entered into a whole new dimension of love. No preacher persuaded the man to commit his life. The words of Jesus penetrated his consciousness, stripped him naked, showed him to himself in his true light and pointed him in the right direction.

     Of course Jesus does not just "zap" business executives with the Message. I can testify to that because I know what happened to a construction worker in one of the states of the Great Northwest. He dropped out of school when he was in the sixth grade and "went on the lam." Being a great big overgrown, red-haired, freckle-faced kid, he lied about his age, and got jobs at manual labor in any area to which he drifted. He could not even remember the names of all the towns where he had bedded down. He had worked in beet fields, turkey processing plants, service stations, lumber mills and truck terminals. Somewhere along the way he had developed an insatiable thirst for liquor, and by the time I met him he had become a disreputable, unshaven, tattered tramp who stayed on the job only long enough to get enough money to become tanked and get glassy-eyed drunk.

     What I am going to say will sound as incredible to you as it seemed to me at the time. Two men who were formerly "rounders" by their own testimony came to the conclusion that God had called them to work among humanity's flotsam and jetsam, to salvage the human driftwood cast up by the tide of life. When they first saw the man of whom I speak, he was stoned and sleeping on a park bench. They put him into their car and took him to their quarters to sober him up. Gently they told him what Jesus had done for them and how they had been rescued from the pit of hell. At first the man was suspicious and belligerent. But they never gave up and when they began to read the Bible to him he developed a hunger for the truth. When I saw him he was clean and back on the job. He was making good money and using it to help all kinds of needy cases. He told me that he could not resist the teaching about Jesus. He particularly liked the version called Good News for Modern Man, and carried a copy with him to read on the job. He showed me the book and it was underlined on almost every page.

LOVE LETTERS FROM JESUS

     The Bible is not a cold and concise code of laws. Jesus did not come to make us great lawyers but good lovers. There is a difference between the state statutes and a love letter from a dear friend. It is at this point many are turned away before they hardly begin to know Jesus. They have been subjected to debates, arguments and hassles over the meaning of this point or that until Jesus is lost in the sectarian shuffle. Reading the Bible is like studying mathematics to many. It is made a methodical, calculating experience, but it is hard to fall in love with a calculator, even if it gives you all the right answers.

     It is axiomatic that when you truly love a person you want to please the object of your affection. There is a loyalty about love that expresses itself in devotion and constancy. One who loves Jesus wants to be like Him. Under no circumstances would he deliberately offend Him or bring sadness to Him. But we are subjected to so many pressure groups in our day which seek to use Jesus as a gimmick that it is difficult to truly know Him. Cults and sects pour Jesus into their theological moulds and make plastic reproductions of Him. Sometimes quite literally. The danger is that, almost without thinking, we substitute loyalty to the group for love for Jesus.

     Of course we must realize that even while we deplore such misuse and abuse there is in it a subtle but effective tribute to Him. Men realize that Jesus has such power and appeal that you cannot leave Him out of a religious movement and get it off the ground. One may hate to see the face of his favorite football hero on T-shirts, toys and tricycles, but it would not be there if he were not famous. I do not recall seeing a rear bumper sticker with the caption "One Way-Confucius!!" Our task is to separate the real Jesus from the distorted images, so we will not go galloping off over the hill following a phantom. It is for this reason we have the Bible and we should immerse ourselves in its revelation, not because it is good literature, although it is, but because it contains the secret of life-eternal life.

Contents

Next Chapter: 4. In Times Like These