Success???

How do you measure success? Is it in what you have? How many kids you have? What title you have? In the church context it is easy to judge success in terms of numbers attending, amount of programmes being run or even the amount of people that agree with you. But these are just surface level things. They are feel good factors and say more about our desire to be popular than it does about success.

This morning we focused on Matthew 5 where Jesus calls us to turn the other cheek. Now this verse can be seen as the victim scenario in which Jesus calls us to be a door mat. I don't see that in this verse. In this verse Jesus is playing on the honour and shame culture that existed in his time. Smacking someone on the right cheek showed power, whilst the left was dishonorable for the person in power. You can imagine how awkward the person would feel watching the person strip in front of them and all they wanted was a shirt. Even the idea of asking a person to carry your bags for more than a kilometer went against Roman law.

These verses show how Jesus is playing on the idea of power. Those who assume they have all the power can find themselves totally flabbergasted by the grace of others. Turning the cheek doesn't involve being a doormat nor does it call us to respond not with an eye for an eye rather, it asks us to respond gracefully. It shows the powerless have power.

Back to success. Today I realised I am making a difference in our community. We were doing this lesson of how God asks us to respond to acts of power against us and a twelve year old blew me away with her answer. Her response to this was:

"In a society where politicians have all the power, where we feel as if we have no response
to the situation, we can change the world by doing good deeds to those around us"

BOOM!!! KNOCK OUT!!! In that moment it was if heaven smashed into earth. The kingdom of God became something you could see and taste. She got what Jesus meant.

That is success. When we experience the kingdom of God in the words and actions of others.