Balcony People 4-27-08

One of my lesser flaws is I hate to go to the gas station and fill up the tank of my truck. I will ride that gauge as low down as I can get it. The car that Shannon drives has a light that comes on when you get too low on gas. It’s called an idiot light because, it saying to you, Hey, idiot, fill up the gas tank.

We have a propane gas grill, and I hate taking that propane tank in for a refill. There’s a little gauge on the tank, and I’ll take that thing right down to bone dry before I’ll get it refilled. Several times we’ve had people over and I go out to put the meat on the grill, thinking that I had enough propane for another couple of grill outs and I go out to turn over the burgers or whatever we’re cooking and they’re not done as far as I thought, and then this sick sort of feeling comes over me. There’s not much heat. The grills out. I try to start the grill again. It won’t start. We’re out of gas.

The reason that I mention this is: It’s not only cars and grills that have fuel tanks. People have them too. Everyone you know has a fuel tank. It’s in their inner being-in their spirit. You can read their gauges if you look them in the eyes. Some people are alive, and their eyes have fire in them. Some are just glazed over. Look at their shoulders. Some people are walking with their shoulders all squared and straight; some are all hunched over. Look at their gait. Some people are marching. Some people have energy. Some are just trudging.

You have a fuel tank. Everybody does. There are some people who, when you are with them, fill your tank. There are some people that breathe life into you. They remind you of what a good God our God is. They call you to live up to the best you can be. When you are with them, you find your anxiety going down and your hope and sense of trust and faith going up. This is an excerpt from something I read once.

It’s kind of like being at the horse races. At horse races, the spectators, intent on victory, shout to their favorites in the contest. From the balcony, they incite the rider to keener effort, urging the horses on while leaning forward and flailing the air with their outstretched hand instead of a whip. Gregory of Nyssa

There is a phrase that has been around for a long time and is used to describe this sort of person that fills our tanks. They are called “balcony people.” These are the people that are up in the stands of your life and they’re rooting you on to run the race of life. These are the people that say to you, by how they listen and act around you, “I’m watching you run the race, and I’m cheering you on.”

Some people do that for you. They are your “balcony people.” When you’re with them, they fill your tank. They bless you. Joy comes over you. It’s good to be with them.

Then you have some other people in your life. When you’re not looking, they stick a hose in your tank, take a deep breath and start siphoning the fuel out. They drain you of life. These are not balcony people, they are “Basement people,” because they bring you down.

See if this story help illustrates the point:

A man, who is a hunter, has a “basement person”- in his life. He tells his friend about the wonderful things in his life, and his friend is never impressed…never excited for him. One day, this man gets a new hunting dog. It’s a fabulous dog. It can scent things that are a mile away. It can point for an hour without moving. He takes his wonderful dog over to show his friend, but of course, the friend is not impressed.

Later the two go hunting and they shoot a duck and it lands in the pond, and he sends this marvelous dog out to get the bird. The dog actually walks on top of the water, fetches the duck and brings it back, trotting on top of the water. He turns to his friend thinking; at least now my friend will be impressed. Instead, the friend shakes his head and says, Your dog can’t swim, can he?

We have some of those folks in our lives: people who are the “joy-challenged, dream-squashing, fault-finding, slow-air leaks in the hot air balloon of your life.” We’re called to love them, but we’re to guard our hearts around them.

All of us have the potential to be “Basement People” for others. There’s a “basement person” inside each one of us. But that’s not God’s plan for human life. We all have this ability to listen only with half an ear, while we’re thinking about the story that we’re going to tell that relates to theirs.

My daughter, Hope – I was a basement person for her this week

I sometimes hear a little voice inside me now that says, You aren’t really listening to them. You’re thinking about what you’re going to say next, not about what they’re saying. This means that I don’t really care about what they’re saying, and when I’m not listening to them, it means that I don’t really care about them. When I ‘m not listening well, I’m not being a balcony person.

And when I’m not really listening. When I’m only half listening, while I’m thinking about sixteen thousand other things, sometimes I hear God say to me, You’re not loving them, and I respond with an indignant, “I am too”. But, later, I am convicted that I wasn’t loving them because I wasn’t listening and valuing them well. I was not trying to encourage them. I was not being a balcony person. If I was truly listening with all of my attention focused on the person speaking, and I would have responded when they finished with encouragement, or empathy, or maybe another question to clarify something that they said. When someone shares something with me, the conversation is not about me, it’s about them. How can I be a balcony person to them.

One of the greatest commandments is to love other people – the people we find ourselves next to – to love them as much as we love ourselves. We are called to be each others balcony people.

Matthew 22:39 (NIV) Love your neighbor as yourself.

The Golden rule tells us to do unto others as we would have them do to us.

Matthew 7:12 (NIV) So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

The “church” is not supposed to be a place where we come once a week and sit in a service, although that’s the way many people in our culture think about it. The church in the Bible is never understood as a place or an event, but a way of living life together in such a way that we bring up there down here, so that we bring heaven to earth. It’s about walking together in such a way that we begin to look like Jesus, we begin to look like the people that God created us to be

In order for us to feel good about ourselves, we need balcony people in our lives and we need to be balcony people in other people’s lives. We are called to do life together. We are called to run in the same direction. We are called to run towards heaven – to begin to live the way that we were created to be. And we cannot do that apart from other people. We cannot do that apart from God. Because if we try to do life alone, we end up empty, like my gas tank on my truck.

My Grandpa, my balcony person.

My Daughter, Faith – I was her balcony person this week

Everybody here is running the race of his or her life, and we are to be in the “balcony” cheering on our brothers and sisters in this race, because we’ve only got this one race-this is it-and we need “Balcony People” to cheer us on. When that happens, that’s real life. Encouragement, correctly understood, is the language of the New Testament. The word “to encourage” is used more than 100 times in the New Testament. One of the great characters in the entire Bible-and possibly the patron saint of “Balcony People”-is a man named Barnabas. We find out most about him in the Book of Acts.

We’re going to look at him and dream about what kind of people you and I can be. We meet Barnabas for the first time in the fourth chapter of Acts. Here’s how his story starts: Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 4:36)

Joseph was an Israelite, but he and his family, during one of the wars in the land, had been taken as slaves to another land that was Greek speaking. Joseph was an Israelite who was born overseas. They were regarded as foreigners. They did not speak Aramaic, which native-born Israelites did. They were considered to have picked up sinful foreign ways.

We know from Acts 6 that there was a lot of hostility between native-born Israelites and the Greek speaking Israelites, We might expect him to be kind of sour about being treated second rate, but Joe’s a “Balcony Guy.” He becomes part of this new community, and he sees a need. He sees poverty. He says, I’ve got some property. I could sell some of my stuff and help some people out with it. He’s the first recorded donor in this new community.

He doesn’t do it to be a big shot. The text says that he put the money at the apostles’ feet. The idea that is being expressed in that phrase is that he said, You’ll know what to do with it. No strings attached. You don’t have to build a building with my name on it. Just use it to bless people.

When I was in seminary, we were poor as I’ve told you before. We didn’t have two extra pennies to rub together. That year for Christmas, we didn’t know what we were going to do, because we didn’t have enough money to buy our kids Christmas presents. One day, a few weeks before Christmas, my mom called me and said that someone had stopped at their house and before they could see who it was, they had driven away. They had left a card on my folks’ front steps with our names on it. I told my mom to open it and when she did, she found a little note with a hundred dollars in the envelope. The note said, I thought things might be a little tight this year, so here’s some money to make your Christmas a bit more joyous. These people were balcony people in our lives. I don’t know who they were, I still don’t know who they are, but they’re our balcony people. No strings attached.

I can still remember what a cool thing it was that someone thought of us. They didn’t want any recognition for it. There was nothing in it for them. We never found out who it was that gave us the card. Some of you here know that joy-the joy of simply giving-the joy of encouraging the people around you.

Jackie Robinson was the first black person to play major league baseball. While breaking baseball’s color barrier, he faced jeering crowds in every stadium.

While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he committed an error. His own fans began to ridicule him. He stood at second base, humiliated, while the fans jeered.

Then shortstop, “Pee Wee” Reese came over and stood next to Jackie. He put his arm around Jackie Robinson’s shoulder and faced the jeering crowd. The fans grew quiet. Robinson later said that arm round his shoulder saved his career.

Being generous puts us in touch with deeper realities of the Kingdom rather than money. People who give, even though they have less money, worry less about their money than people who never give. You’d think they would worry more. Something happens. When giving begins, you never know what will happen. You put yourself in the flow of a reality that is much bigger than you are.

The man named Joseph does this. It’s the spirit that he gave in that is infectious. Some of you already know that, and some of you could experience it. The disciples say, Joe is not an adequate name for this guy! We’re going to call him by a new name. We’re going to call him Barnabas, Son of Encouragement-”Balcony Boy.” From then on, whenever he hears his name, he thinks, That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. He encourages the community, and the community encourages him, and the encouragement spirals up. That’s how encouragement works. That’s how giving works.

That’s what encouragement is, isn’t it? Encouragement is giving. Sometimes it’s financial as it was for us when I was in seminary. We didn’t know it but we had people who were in the stands cheering us on. Sometimes it’s like my grandpa, who listened real well and asked questions and always wanted to play catch with me. What child or children are you a balcony person for? Encouragement is giving of yourself, of your stuff. It is Love. Love your neighbor, love God, be a balcony person.

The only way that our lives can overflow in a positive way into other people’s lives is when we have been filled up with God’s love and blessings. It doesn’t mean that we are perfect and it doesn’t mean that we don’t have issues and problems in our lives, but in spite of all those things, God somehow gives us enough goodness in our lives that we have the ability to encourage and root on other people in our lives. God in his abundance gives us enough fuel in our tanks so that we can give to others so that they can be filled up too.

God calls us to love our neighbor as our self because when we do that, we are people’s balcony people rooting them on and helping them to become all that God created them to be. When we love those around us and do acts of kindness for people around us, it fills their tank.

What kind of person are you? Are you a balcony person or a basement person? Are you someone who fills people up or are you someone who sticks a hose in the tank of other people and begins to suck the life out? Every conversation, every act that we do around other people, we have the ability to fill someone up or suck the life right out of them.

If people were to give you a name, would it be Son of encouragement or daughter of encouragement? Would they call you a basement person or a balcony person? Maybe a bit of both. Ask God, the giver of unbelievable gifts – ask him to help you become a balcony person and if you don’t yet have a few balcony people in your life, then ask you Father in Heaven to raise up some balcony people in your life to fill you up.