I had been away from home for about three months, working in Akron, Ohio, as an engineering student. The three months were over, and it was time to go back home. I went back the way college students traveled in 1957 … not in a plane, not in a car of my own, not with my father coming to transport my stereo, my computer, and my skis along with my books and my clothes. None of that for me in 1957. I took the bus. Greyhound and I from Akron, up to Cleveland, down to Columbus, changed busses in Cincinnati, and half an eternity later, deposited in downtown Louisville.
I guess it is because the bus trip was so ghastly and so tiresome that I remember so vividly what happened next. My mother and father were waiting for me, and after we had exchanged greetings and found my luggage, they escorted me to the parking lot, where they surprised me with a brand new car with that new-car smell still in it.
No, it wasn’t for me. It was for the family. We are talking about the postman’s son in the 50’s. It was the new family car, resplendent with chrome, approximately the size of a battleship, and wearing two fins like a pair of sharks running down Broadway. Were my folks proud! And I was ecstatic, too!
I was ecstatic not only because I could ride in something more comfortable than the stale cigarette smoke of the Greyhound; ecstatic not only because I had visions of getting my hands on the wheel in a day or two; but also ecstatic because it meant that we Smiths had a new car instead of that eight-year old puddle jumper. We were keeping up with and maybe even a step ahead of the neighbors. A 57 Plymouth with fins on the fender meant status! Not a lot, maybe, as compared with the Cadillacs and Chryslers they drove in other neighborhoods, but in our neighborhood a 57 Plymouth was pretty good going.
Bigger was better, or so we thought. And it was your car that told the world who you were. Your car was your status.
Now the 50’s, bless ’em, are gone, and so, to a degree, is the bigger is better idea. In the 60’s and 70’s we even learned to say that less is more. But the association of your car with your status with stayed around. The way you travel, especially if you are the male of the species, still seems to carry a whole lot of weight. Even today men celebrate their macho machines.
Take carjacking, for example. You know what carjacking is? Someone runs up to you in the grocery store parking lot or while you are at the traffic light and forces you out of your car so that he can take off in it. It is almost always a flashy car, a muscle car, of some kind. If you drive a ten-year-old Ford Escort, you likely won’t be carjacked. In fact you could leave it at the corner of 13th and Pennsyvania Avenue with the motor running and the doors open, and they still wouldn’t steal it! If it isn’t a macho machine, they don’t want it. But watch out for men and their macho machines.
We have carjacking. And we have muscle cars. We have cars on the road whose speedometers indicate the possibility of speeds up to 150 miles an hour. That’s just criminally more than anybody needs on our highways. That’s just unnecessary muscle, designed only to let drivers show off for each other. That’s for men to show off their macho machines.
By the way, I have found out where those muscle cars are driven up to about 150. I am very sure that it is on Colesville Road every morning when I am on my way over here to the church !
Now none of this is new. None of this is peculiar to us or to our time. I am going to take you back to the year 842 BC, more than 28 centuries ago. And there, in ancient Israel, we are going to meet a man with his macho machine.
But first a word or two of caution. On this Father’s Day, this message is about men and for men; but I would suggest that women can transfer the lessons to themselves as well. There are truths here that apply to both genders. But since it is Fathers’ Day, I will be focusing pointedly on what it means to be a man, both a man and a Christian man.
And the second word of caution is that despite the word picture I am using, despite the stuff about cars ... don’t be distracted. The message isn’t about cars. The message is about how we use things ... all kinds of things .. as props. The message is about how we mask our spiritual insecurity by using things. The message is about the false strength we try to display.
Now let me provide you with some background. The year is 842 BC. That’s just a few generations after the time of the great kings David and Solomon. You’ll remember that after Solomon the nation split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
In the north in 842 the king was named Joram. Joram was the son of the notorious Ahab and his hated wife Jezebel. Joram also was thoroughly hated and mistrusted by a lot of people, including the prophet Elisha. The dangerous situation reached its peak when Elisha commissioned one of his assistants to go to an army commander named Jehu and to designate Jehu as king instead of Joram. Clearly Elisha felt that God wanted a change in Israel and that Jehu was God’s man to take the place of the idolatrous Joram.
So far so good. But the story which unfolds in Second Kings is a story of a man who takes his manliness too far. And the story of Jehu’s mistaken manliness is presented as the way the man used his macho machine.
I begin reading as Jehu starts his moves against Joram, king of Israel. There are some other characters and a whole lot of names in the story; don’t be distracted by them. Just listen for Jehu, the man with the macho machine.
II Kings 9:14-28 (Comment after v. 20 .. isn’t the Scripture amazingly contemporary? How often have you said that somebody drives like a maniac? Well, here it is right in the Bible!)
I
Chariots all over the place, right?! This rough and ready story from the Bible shows us that men will use their macho machines to support their claims to manliness. Men use things ... all kinds of things … as status symbols, as props, to make themselves feel more masculine, to give themselves an image of leadership.
Here is Jehu, out to claim the throne of Israel. How does he establish his claim? He gets in his chariot and drives like a maniac! He hops into four-on-the-floor and kicks up a cloud of dust to wheel up to Jezreel, where his rival was lying wounded. If Jehu is going to stage a coup and take over the kingdom, he wants to look manly from the start. And so he chooses to make a statement with his macho machine and his bravado driving.
And, as if that were not enough, King Joram gets up off his sick bed, harnesses up his chariot, and then he and his ally King Ahaziah of Judah drive out to meet Jehu, each on a chariot! They assume that you cannot look weak, you have to meet strength with strength and pose with pose! So obsessed are we men with the notion that you can be somebody if you have the right things supporting you. We men have to have our macho machines. We believe that things make us look like we are somebody.
I heard a banquet speaker a couple of years ago. She thought she was being clever, but actually she was being prophetic. Speaking to a group of young adults just finishing college, she congratulated them on getting all these degrees ... you know, their BA’s, their BS’s, their MA’s, their PHD’s, and of course, their BMW’s! We use the macho machine to tell us we are somebodies.
But I like, just in passing, what one of the automobile manufacturers now says in an advertisement: "If you are buying a new car to make a statement to your friends; you don’t need a new car, you need some new friends!"
The need to look masculine leads us to use cars and clothes and weapons, all sorts of things to bolster our images. I_have to ask what kind of message about masculinity are we leaving for the next generation? Maybe we should not be surprised if even young boys go out and take from others just to have things. If we men are tied to our macho machines, our things, aren’t we teaching the next generation that men are not real unless they have their toys to play with?
Jehu drives like a maniac .. showing off and playing a macho game. He thinks that things will mask his deep insecurity. He supposes that the macho machine will make you believe he is a leader, a king in the making.
II
But let’s go a little deeper. The story of Jehu and his chariot shows us also that men use their macho machines to gain power over others. Men use things to influence others and control others. It’s bad enough that we use our possessions as a way of making power statements about ourselves. It’s far worse that we also use our things as a way of controlling others.
What a fascinating vignette is presented in this chapter! Twice King Joram sends out messengers to find out what Jehu intends. They are to ride out to Jehu and ask, "Is it peace?" "Is it peace, Jehu? Do you come in friendship, or. do you come to make war? Jehu, is it peace?"
Twice messengers go out, and twice Jehu says to the messengers, "What have you to do with peace? You fall in with me." You come on over to my side. Jehu used the trappings of power to seduce others to leave their first loyalties and fall in with him. The rebel Jehu was, sad to say, a master at power psychology. He knew that success breeds success. that money makes money, that those who do not quite know who they are can be led astray by the trappings of power.
Men, on this Father’s Day, somebody is looking at how you live your life. Somebody is observing the things that you value. Some small boy. even if you have no sons, is learning what it is to be a man from you. And it is perilously easy to communicate the wrong things. It is terribly easy to communicate that real men love things and use people. It is dangerously easy to draw a young person into a style of life that is nothing more than the accumulation of possessions. And it is unbelievably easy to use things to control people.
Have you heard yourself saying, "As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do what I say." "As long as I’m paying your tuition bill, you’ll take the courses I want you to take." "As long as your feet stay under my table, you’ll conform to my expectations."
And worst of all, we use things to keep women under control. Some of us keep our wives totally in the dark about money. We say it’s a man’s job. But it’s about control, and it’s deadly. I have a friend whose father-in-law died, and the wife had never ever even written a check or paid a bill. She had no idea whether they were rich or poor. He had just said, "I’ll take care of it." It sounded like a man in charge~ but it was really a woman under control, and it disempowered her.
Men, we have sent the message that things are to be used, money is to be used, as a weapon to keep others in line. We have told our children that possessions are more important than they are. And we have said to them, "Men control others." "Men hold others back" We have taught them that men and their macho machines are instruments of disempowerment.
Poor Jehu! Jehu could have told the king’s messenger that he did come in peace. Jehu, as God’s man in this hour, could have been a statesman on this occasion. But poor Jehu chose to use his macho machines, his things, to control and influence others.
III
Read the rest of the story of Jehu and you will see what happens when a man goes too far. You will see what happens when macho takes over and a man drives too hard, too fast, too far with his spiritual insecurity. The story unfolds with a bloodbath. Jehu first unleashes his arrows from his famous chariot and kills the kings of both Israel and Judah. (I guess this is history’s first drive-by shooting). Later he has the queen mother, Jezebel, thrown from her window, he slaughters all the other relatives of Joram, he even ambushes more than forty people from the neighboring Kingdom of Judah. Chariot fights abound all over this section of the Scriptures, and the last chariot we see is a hearse taking a royal body back to its burial. It is a perfectly horrible example of manliness gone wrong. It is masculinity totally misunderstood. It is a picture of the sad issue of men and their macho machines.
Jehu may have been anointed by God’s prophet, but he is no example for Fathers’ Day. Jehu may have succeeded to the throne of Israel, but he does not teach us what it is to be a man for all seasons.
And so I invite you this morning to meet someone else. I invite you to meet the manliest of men. I invite you this morning to take your cues about masculinity from one who needed no macho machine to tell himself who he was. I urge you to get to know a man so fully manly that instead of racing into town in a speeding chariot; he chose to enter the city sitting on the lowliest of the beasts of burden.
For this man, appearances were important, but it was not to appear regal or macho or arrogant that was important to him. It was rather to appear humble and compassionate and tender. I want you to meet this man, who can show us what it is really like to be a man and a man’s man at that.
I want you to meet this man, who in fact was higher than the highest high, but who laid it all aside. I want you to know someone who had all the riches, the power, the glory, but who set it all aside. He accepted poverty and low station. He had no place to lay his head, and when he died, he had to be laid to rest in a borrowed grave.
But I tell you he is no weakling. He is no patsy. He chose to make himself of no reputation and take on himself the form of a servant. He even chose death, the most humiliating death possible.
I invite you to meet him.
Matthew 21:1-2, 6-11
Again I tell you he is no weakling. He is no patsy. He is a man among men. For immediately after Jesus the Christ enters the city on the lowliest of beasts of burden, immediately he does the manliest of things.
Matthew 21:12-13
Striding across the face of the city like a Colossus, this Jesus is the terminator of injustice, He is the terror of the cynical and the dishonest. Yet he is the friend of sinners and a haven for children.
This Jesus is the man for all seasons. He needs no macho machines. He needs nothing to support his claims. He makes no disempowering bargains. He is there for us, he chooses the life of the servant. And he uses his strength only to destroy the wrong.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
And blessed is the man whose manliness is the master’s kind of masculinity. Blessed is the man who needs no macho machine to mask who he is. Blessed is the man whose strength is mustered only against injustice. Blessed the man who can be like Jesus.
