The Lutheran Hour
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"Close, but No Cigar"
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Text: Mark 12:34
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Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! To all who, this Lord’s day, find themselves far from the kingdom of God, rejoice. Christ’s victory over death, devil, and humankind’s dark deeds is complete. By the blood of the crucified and living Lord, salvation is yours. Amen.
My grandfather died when I was seven, so my remembrances of him are kind of cloudy. From what I’ve gathered from family tales told around the table, he was a strict man, a good man, an honest man. When family and friends speak of him they almost always relate how he expected people to do their best… a rule he also applied to himself. He expected the best of himself when he worked, when he played, when he bowled. Yes, he was a bowler, a good bowler with a better than normal average. Of course, there was that one night that he bowled way out of his league. He realized something special was happening when he threw strikes through the first five frames. The sixth frame, strike; the seventh frame, the same. Frames eight and nine were still perfect. Finally, in the tenth frame, with the entire bowling alley hushed, he threw the last ball of the game. It was dead on; the ball curved perfectly into the pocket; pins went flying. A perfect game? Almost. One pin, no one recalls which one… was left standing. It wobbled, but it stood. A 299 game: cause for rejoicing? Not for grandpa. He was sad, mad, disappointed, and discouraged. Some say he didn’t talk to anybody for two weeks; others say they didn’t get close to him for two weeks. Either way, he was upset. Why? He had come close, but no cigar.
“Close, but no cigar. ” That’s a great expression. It comes to us from state and county fairs where, in the days before purple troll dolls and plastic tiaras, cigars were given as prizes for those who managed to master, or get lucky, at some game. If you managed to show your strength, swing the sledge and ring the gong, you won a “ceegar.” And if you swung with all your might and the bell stayed silent; well, you went away empty handed. That was “close but no cigar.” “Close but no cigar” says you almost captured the prize; you almost were a winner; you almost had succeeded. It also said you were a loser, a failure. You had come close, but no cigar.
Although cigars aren’t given out anymore, the concept of almost succeeding has been around for a good, long while. Until 2004, Red Sox fans referred to the “curse of the Bambino” to explain away their seemingly endless “close but no cigar.” I could talk about my team, the Chicago Cubs, but they not only don’t get a cigar, they generally don’t get close. “Close but no cigar.” The concept can be found in every part of our lives. For example, almost everyone knows that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. What is not as well known is that long before Bell managed to make voices go through wires, there was a German schoolteacher by the name of Reis who almost invented the telephone. Mr. Reis’s phone managed to carry the sounds of whistling and humming, but he just couldn’t get it to convey a conversation; words wouldn’t work. Many years later, Mr. Bell found Reis’s error. A little screw needed a 1,000th of an inch adjustment. Bell turned the screw and the phone was invented. One thousandth of an inch was the difference between success and failure. Reis had been close but, you guessed it, no cigar.
In Scripture there is also a case of “close but no cigar.” Mark tells us of the incident in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel that bears his name. Earlier in the week, Jesus had, to the shouts of welcoming crowds, and the objections of some sad-sack Pharisees, made His grand and glorious Palm Sunday procession into the city. The populace applauded as the Christ cleansed the temple of its sellers and their stalls, as He cleansed those who were sick of their illnesses and pains. Jesus’ enemies could not discard, nor discount the fact His popularity was increasing, His influence intensifying. The political and spiritual parties, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, who had never been able to agree on anything; agreed on this: Jesus had to be stopped. They had to try and take the Savior down a peg or two. It was on Tuesday, the last Tuesday of Jesus’ earthly ministry, that these formidable forces came together to face Jesus in the temple. You can read Mark’s telling to see how the one-sided war of wits and words went. Jesus’ opponents asked their questions, submitted hypothetical situations, laid down traps for which there seemed to be no proper, or politically correct answer. In each instance, Jesus turned the tables and replied with God’s answer. It wasn’t something they had expected.
As the debates and discussions continued, a fair number of spectators came to see the show. One of these watchers was a Scribe. Now, in case you’ve never met a Scribe nor read the job description of one, let me tell you about these fellows. Scribes were men who spent their lives copying, studying, and teaching the laws of God. They were, according to all accounts, some pretty serious scholars (see Ezra 7:6, 10-12; Nehemiah 8:1,4,9,13). When they completed copying a section of Scripture, they actually counted the letters to make sure they hadn’t missed a single one. Indeed, one of the reasons the Bible, through repeated copyings, has come down to us as pure as it has, can be attributed to the fierce faithfulness of the Scribes. Even so, some Scribes got carried away. Not content to study and teach God’s laws, these Scribes came up with more than a few laws of their own (see Matthew 23), and thereby created a confrontation between themselves and Jesus, and, eventually, His apostles.
It was one of these Scribes who came to watch the conflict between Jesus and His detractors. At first the man was fascinated by the feud; then he was impressed by the powerful and pointed counters made by the Christ. Eventually, he asked a question of his own: “Jesus, which commandment is the most important?” It was not, at least to his way of thinking, an entirely foolish question. The religious leaders had added up the laws of God and come up with a total exceeding 600. The man wanted to know which of those laws was the most important. Jesus gave him a straight answer. Quoting from the most basic and foundational of Israel’s laws, Jesus replied: “The most important (law) is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘ You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
In saying that God’s law is best served when His people love the one, true God with every fiber of their being, and love their neighbors as themselves, Jesus summarized the true spirit of all of God’s laws. The total, absolute love of God is to be behind our every thought, every action, every word. When love of the only God is complete, it will show itself in love which is directed to our neighbors. Jesus’ reply was wonderfully, beautiful simple. The Scribe, who knew truth when he heard it, could only agree. He could offer no confrontation or correction, no explanation or evaluation of Jesus’ words. He found himself replying, “You are right, Teacher.” Savior and Scribe had come together. Together they agreed on the quintessence of Israel’s faith; together they had enunciated God’s greatest law; and it seemed as if nothing more could be, or needed to be said. But one more thing was said. Mark records, “And when Jesus saw that (the Scribe) answered wisely, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God ‘”(Mark 12:34).
I heard one man, who, as he tried to revise, rephrase, and revamp Jesus’ comment, suggested a proper wording might be: “Not bad… not bad at all, My friend. You’re on the right track.” Indeed, many people who have examined this interaction between Savior and Scribe might agree with that paraphrase. It does seem the man is pretty close to getting salvation right. I mean, after all, don’t many preachers preach, and many scholars teach, that as long as we live circumspect lives and try to do the very best we can, God is compelled to accept us? Isn’t a person pretty close to being saved if they love God and their neighbors as rigorously and relentlessly as they can?
Yes, that is what some scholars suggest. And I disagree with them. Jesus wasn’t saying, “At last, I’ve got a guy here who’s got it all figured out.” Jesus didn’t jump up, run over to the man, clasp him to His bosom in a giant bear hug and say, “I guess My work here on earth is done. Buddy, I want you to teach everybody what you’ve just said. You teach them that, and they’re gonna’ be OK.” Jesus said nothing of the sort. He said, “Mister, you’re not far from the kingdom of God.” That means the man was still on the outside looking in. That means the man hadn’t reached the final destination. Jesus was saying, “A miss is as good as a mile;” He was saying, “Close, but no cigar.” Jesus knew that it doesn’t matter if you drown a thousand miles off shore, or if you drown with your feet only inches off the bottom of a small and shallow lake, either way, you are dead. You might have been close to being saved, but no cigar.
You see, it’s a wonderful thing to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. It’s a magnificent matter to love your neighbor as yourself. God asked nothing more of Adam and Eve as they lived in the perfection of the Garden of Eden. It was the simple requirement that He passed down to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. It’s what He wrote down on two slabs of stone on Mount Sinai. It’s what He asked of the Children of Israel in their wanderings; what He expected when they were brought into the Promised Land; it’s what He asks of you and me today. Love the Lord with every fiber of your being; love your neighbor as yourself. If you do that, you’re going to be saved.
And now the great difficulty is, the great problem is, you can’t do it. You can’t love the Lord with all your heart, your mind, your soul. You cannot love your neighbor like you do yourself. I’m not putting you down here. I’m just stating a fact. Do you want a practical demonstration? OK. Here it is. It will only take a minute. I want you to think of Jesus’ empty tomb. It is a beautiful sight. I want you to clear your mind of all other thoughts. Just think of that empty tomb where His resurrection was reality and sin, death, and devil were defeated. It should be an easy place to think of, for it ought to be, of all places on earth, the most precious to you. I want you to think of that empty tomb for the next 30 seconds. I don’t want you to think of anything other than that empty tomb. Do you have that picture in your mind? Good. Only 20 seconds more. Are you still with me? Good. Fifteen seconds more. I don’t want you to think of pink elephants. Don’t, for a moment, think of pink elephants.
Did you see what happened? If you are like, well like everybody, for a brief second, the picture of a pink elephant flashed through your brain. You couldn’t help it. It was there. You couldn’t think of the empty tomb for even half a minute. Now, if I can get you off track so easily, think of what the world with all its temptations, and what the devil, with all of his experience, can do. You, who were conceived in sin, who entered this world in sin, don’t have a chance. You can’t love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself. That is a fact that the Bible frequently and faithfully puts forth. Where? The Bible says so in passages like Galatians 3:11: “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.” Another passage, this one also in Galatians says, “We know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). The book of Romans says the same. Let me give you just one example, from Romans 3:28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Do you understand? If not, let me explain. We are sinners and as sinners we can’t do what is right. God’s laws have many uses; but, practically, you can’t keep them perfectly enough to earn your forgiveness, merit your salvation. Unbelievably, that is exactly what many of the world’s great religions teach. Try hard enough; work long enough; struggle faithfully enough; you might, maybe, possibly make it to God. How sad it is to watch their struggles and their strivings. You’ve seen them. You’ve seen the fanatic who feels his surest way into his god’s good grace is to blow himself up and take some innocent bystanders with him. You’ve seen the agonized soul pushing hooks through his flesh to appease his bloodthirsty god. You’ve seen films of pilgrims crawling, mile after mile, on a dusty, rock-strewn path to please their deity. Still, when they are done, which of them can say, “It is enough.” Which of them can say, even after their sufferings, “I have loved the Lord with all my heart, soul, and mind”? They are left with the nagging belief that they are “close, but no cigar.”
Of course, you may be among those who have adopted a more pragmatic outlook on the laws of God. Maybe you are among those who feel your sins are little, acceptable, so small they’re hardly worthy of criticism. You may think, if big sinners like Hitler and Mao deserve the punishment of hell, your sins, may, at most, be deserving of a small, easily removed splinter in your little finger. Maybe you’ve found some pathetic and pitiful peace in the belief that your sin is no sin at all. You know how the logic goes: I’m not perfect, but I’m not bad, either. I don’t commit adultery; I don’t do violence; I don’t drink and drive; I don’t have a bad fashion sense. I shouldn’t have to worry. I have a disorder, a disease; I’m the product of home and heredity; the result of poor schools, poor parents, and poor playmates. I’ve avoided the really bad sins, and, anyway, everybody else is doing worse than I am. And, besides, God can’t send everybody to hell. Have you been telling yourself, again and again, that the worst of sins is being narrow-minded, being unenlightened, intolerant, and legalistic? Do you believe that? I hope you don’t, because if you do, you’re not even close, and you’re certainly not going to get a cigar.
Don’t get me wrong here. If you love God, that’s a good thing; if you treat all those around you with respect and understanding, that, too, is a good thing. But those things aren’t going to save you. Trusting in yourself alone, you’re not going to get into heaven. Believing in yourself alone, you’re not going to go through the pearly gates. The best you can do is get close, but always, always, on your own you will get no cigar.
Which is why you need somebody to do what you can’t do for yourself. It is why you need a Savior. Look within your heart for a moment, won’t you? What do you see there? Do you see moments of anger of which you are ashamed? Do you see desires which, if revealed would cause endless embarrassment? Do you see selfishness and pride; days filled with bitterness and envy? I do. All of us do. We dress up; we try to adopt manners; we try to be civilized, but it’s all a sham. We’re fakes, failures, forgeries. We need a Savior. We need a Savior whose heart harbored no blackness or perversion; we need a Savior whose life showed a purity and love which transcends our own. We need a Savior whose suffering, death, and resurrection are an acceptable substitute for our sins and shortcomings, our flaws and failures.
To be that Savior, to be our substitute, is why Jesus was born. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, Jesus came into this world. In fulfillment of a promise of redemption made to our first parents, Jesus came to take our place. Read His story. Read Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John. It doesn’t take long. Those four Gospels contain fewer paragraphs than the Sunday edition of the New York Times. As you read you will see a Savior who was hated; but He endured that hatred so you might know the Father’s love. In those chapters, you will find a Savior who was tempted, but He resisted every temptation, so you could live an eternity at peace in heaven. In those verses of inspired Scripture, you will see a Savior who walked a path of pain so that your path might lead directly to paradise.
See your Savior. See Him deserted by His friends; betrayed by one of those closest to Him; condemned by leaders in His own church; crucified by a government that ignored the truth, ignored its conscience and forgot justice. See Jesus who was whipped so your pains might be taken away; who was crucified so you might live. This He did for you. All this He did, and more, so that you would, on Judgment Day, be in heaven and not just close to it. Jesus is your Savior. When, by God’s grace, you are led to faith in Him, you will find that you are no longer close to having forgiveness; God gives it as one of His many gifts. You will not just be close to the peace of God; it will permeate every one of your days. To show the world that all I have said is true; to show His sacrifice has been accepted, Jesus, your Savior, did that which is humanly impossible: He rose from the dead. Now He, your living Lord, your risen Lord, your loving and ever-present Lord, lets you know that heaven is no longer a hope; it is not just close; it is yours: a wonderful, blood-bought, grace-given reality.
May it be yours this day and always. And if you need to know more how the Lord wants to bring you closer, call us at The Lutheran Hour. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for November 5, 2006
TOPIC: How will I change if I became a Christian?ANNOUNCER: And we’re back with Pastor Ken Klaus. I’m Mark Eischer. For several weeks now, we’ve been answering some of the most frequently asked questions that come from the congregational workshop called, Equipping to Share, sponsored by Lutheran Hour Ministries.
KLAUS: We want you to have ready answers to the real questions people ask about the Christian faith.
ANNOUNCER: And if you are among those asking questions, we want to help you, the listener, as well.
KLAUS: And today we thought we were coming to the end of that list, but we’ve actually generated a few more questions. Mark, what is our question for today?
ANNOUNCER: The question for today: How will I change if I become a Christian?
KLAUS: You know, that’s really one of the hardest questions we’ve had in the last two months.
ANNOUNCER: Why do you say that?
KLAUS: Well, because there is no single answer! In some ways, the answer would be different from one person to the next. Do you become a different person when you become a Christian? Well, yes you do; and well, no you’re still the same individual. You know, when you become a Christian, lots of things change, lots of things remain the same. A Christian is, at the same time, both a saint and a sinner. And if the question becomes, “How do I have to change when I become a Christian?” the response becomes even more difficult.
ANNOUNCER: Why?
KLAUS: It’s this way. When you become a Christian, the Lord doesn’t lay all kinds of burdens on you.
ANNOUNCER: Because, basically Christianity is all about how God took the burden off us and put it on Christ instead.
KLAUS: That’s right. Christ took upon Himself the punishment our sins deserved; He gives us the credit for His perfect life of obedience. God declares us righteous on account of Jesus. He doesn’t all of a sudden give you a halo and a harp and tell you to fly around and go out and behave really “religious.”
When the early church met together in what might be considered its first convention, the subject of what Gentile converts had to do, and what they had to avoid was a big part of the discussion. They concluded they “should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God” (Acts 15:19). Then the church leaders gave a few rather obvious instructions for Christian living. That was it.
ANNOUNCER: But some may still wonder: when you join a church, don’t you have to learn all kinds of rules; like, in the service, when to stand up, when to sit down? Don’t you have to dress a certain way, give a certain amount of money? Don’t you have to do all of that kind of stuff when you become a Christian? I think perhaps these kinds of considerations keep people away from the church because they’re afraid they’ll mess up.
KLAUS: I know they are afraid. Let’s answer it this way: When a guy falls in love with a girl, what does he have to do? Does he have to spend time with her?
ANNOUNCER: Well, no, he wants to do that.
KLAUS: Does he have to buy her a gift on her birthday, Christmas, their anniversary? Does he have to treat her with respect, to love her, to protect her? He does all those things because he wants to, out of love for her.
It’s the same way when you become a Christian. If you have to be told to go to church, there’s something wrong. You should want to be with other believers; you should want to hear God’s Word and receive the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of your sins. You should want to help support the work of the kingdom.
ANNOUNCER: And we should point out that the Holy Spirit enables us both to will and to do all of these things as He works through God’s Word and Sacraments. How then would you describe what the Christian life is like?
KLAUS: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s that simple. And for each person, that’s going to be reflected in a different way. If you have, through faith, received all the benefits of Jesus’ life, His sacrifice, suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection, you want to share what He is done. You want others to receive God’s gift. Your life is a continuous thanksgiving in response to what Jesus has done for you.
ANNOUNCER: So, maybe that’s why the shepherds, that first Christmas when they had visited the newborn Savior, they immediately went back into Bethlehem and told everybody what they had heard and seen.
KLAUS: And, maybe, that’s why our coworkers at Lutheran Hour Ministries are doing congregational workshops like Equipping to Share, helping us learn how to share God’s Good News of great joy for all people.
ANNOUNCER: OK. Now for our listeners, giving you a heads-up, we are going to be returning fairly soon to questions submitted by you, the listeners. And these are real questions from real people. So, if you have a question or comment about anything we’ve talked about, we’d love to hear from you. The phone number is 1-800-876-9880. This has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by John Leavitt. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“Before the Throne of God Above” by Charles L. deChenez and Vernon Griffiths (© 1971 Faber Music, Ltd.)
“Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices” arranged by Chris Loemker. Concordia Publishing House/SESAC
“Sine Nomine” by Ralph Vaughan-Williams and Earl Rosenberg, arr. Bruce Houseknecht. From Be Thou My Vision by the Concordia University Wind Symphony (© 2003 Concordia University-Chicago)