Goodbye Tommy

"But his disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring any food, so there was only one loaf of bread with them in the boat.  As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, 'Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.'  They decided he was saying this because they hadn't brought any bread.  Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he said, 'Why are you so worried about having no food?  Won't you ever learn or understand?  Are your hearts too hard to take it in?  You have eyes, can't you see?  You have ears - can't you hear?  Don't you remember anything at all?  What about the five thousand men I fed with five loaves of bread?  How many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?'  'Twelve,' they said.  'And when I fed the four thousand with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?'  'Seven,' they said.  'Don't you understand even yet?' he asked them." Mark 8:14-21

I have a ninth-grade student in one of my classes at school that misbehaves nearly every day.  I'll call him Tommy.  One day Tommy will bring a magazine to class and start reading it in the middle of my lesson.  I will take the magazine away and tell him to get back to work.  The next day he will bring in a book.  I confiscate this too.  But the next day he will bring something in like a miniature skate board and play with it on his desk instead of doing his work.  In addition to this, he will take the worksheets I give him and tear pieces off of them.  Also, he puts his feet on his desk, tilts his chair back, and generally does everything he is not supposed to do on a daily basis.  After each infraction I have taken steps to correct his misbehavior.  I have verbally corrected him; sent him to the hall; called his parents; given him essays to write; and once I even sent him to the office.  His grade has plummeted to an "F" and stayed there almost the entire semester.  His other teachers struggle with him too.  He has been suspended no less than four times this year and is flunking nearly every class he is in.

Right now you are probably shaking your head and wondering what today's students are coming to.  But do you know what?  There is a little "Tommy" in all of us.  We can become just as preoccupied with ourselves as Tommy is with himself.  We can focus on all the wrong things, just like he does.  We become preoccupied with bills and debts, pushing out the still small voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We become preoccupied with sex and sexuality, closing our eyes to the spiritual needs of others around us.  We focus on the faults of others rather than seeing the good in them or attempting to understand why they might be acting or talking the way they do.  We dwell on how others treat us, instead of how we treat others.  We focus on the media and let them set our mental agenda, rather than focusing on the Bible and prayer and letting God set our agenda. 

We can be just like Tommy - preoccupied with ourselves and all the wrong things.  That's the way it was for Jesus' disciples.

Time and again Jesus performed miracles before his disciples' eyes.  They had watched him heal thousands of sick people; witnessed him turn water into wine; seen him walk on water and calm hurricane force storms; and  even looked on as he raised people from the dead.  They had most recently seen him feed thousands of people on two separate occasions with a few loaves of bread. 

Still they did not believe.  Still they did not trust.  Still they did not think in the spiritual realm.  Still they were preoccupied with themselves and their need for food.  So when Jesus mentioned the "yeast" of the Pharisees, they immediately thought of bread.  But Jesus wasn't talking about food.  The yeast he mentioned represented the evil in the Pharisees and Herod that was always expanding to defile others, just like yeast expands and fills a lump of dough.  If they had been thinking in the spiritual realm, they would have grasped this.

Do we think in the spiritual realm or are preoccupied with ourselves like the disciples were?  Are we focused on God or focused on all the wrong things like Tommy?  Will we ever learn? 

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