Lost And Found

Have any of you ever tried to put an injured cat into a carrying case to take it to the vet? How many of you got scratched for your pains?

It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? All you’re trying to do is help. Animals are supposed to be so intuitive; many people claim they can actually smell whether or not you’re friendly, or afraid, or whatever. Why don’t they recognize that what you’re doing is for their own good?

But no, of course they don’t - that’s not the way it works. Even with people. Maybe especially with people. Any police officer will tell you that domestic violence calls can be some of most dangerous ones they get. The battling couple often take time out from pounding on each other to take a swing at the helpful cop.

You get the same sort of reaction with evangelism, too. Oftentimes the more people need the gospel, the more they resist it. The old hymn charges us to “Rescue the Perishing,” but it’s not that easy. Why don’t people realize, when you try to share the gospel with them, that you’re motivated by a desire to help, for their own good? So many people nowadays seem to take it as a threat, if not an actual personal attack. And I understand where they’re coming from. In my pre-Christian days I was pretty hostile and defensive, too.

Not everybody who is dying wants to be saved.

Not everybody who is lost wants to be found. Because most of the time people don’t know they’re lost. People are like bees, as C.S. Lewis said, that “boom against the windowpane for hours, thinking that way to reach the laden flowers.”

We all want to have the good things in life - however you define them... love, wealth, family, professional accomplishment - and make the choices we think will get us there. But what looks like the shortest way leads nowhere at all. Lewis’ poem ends, “left to her own will, she would have died upon the window-sill.”

God catches us however he can, intending to release us to eternal life, but we of-ten struggle, don’t we, like the cat trapped in the carrying case. We’re usually not ready to hear it at the beginning of the journey.

If I had known at the beginning where God was going to lead me.... I think that if God had laid it out in front of me and said, “Forget husband and children and successful career, I’m going to give you a 50% pay cut and the gift of celibacy” I would have said “Not today, thank you.”

I needed to have my consciousness raised first, so to speak.

God starts where you’re at. But don’t expect him to leave you there.

The disciples had been caught by the dream of Messiah. They didn’t have much more clue than the crowds did of what the Messiah actually was going to have to do, but they knew one thing. They knew Jesus was IT, they knew Jesus was THE ONE, they knew Jesus was THEIRS, even if they didn’t really understand where he was going.

There are three separate stories in today’s text. Each by itself has a half dozen sermons in it. But today I’m taking them as a set, a sequence of teachings that lay out for us what the life of disciple-ship looks like.

The first step is attachment. The second step is understanding. And the third step is imitation.

Attachment. Understanding. Imitation.

Feeling, thinking, and doing.

All of these are necessary for discipleship. They don’t come in the same order for each one of us, as a matter of fact most of us tend to keep going round and round, first concentrating on one angle, then switching to another. But attachment is - even if not always the first - always the most important, because attachment keeps us holding on to Jesus even when we don’t understand, even when we’re tired, or scared. And attachment is another word for love. It is an attitude of recognition, response, and commitment.

"Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say that I am?' They answered, 'John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.' He said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered, 'The Messiah of God.' He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone." [Lk 9:18-21]

The first light had dawned. The disciples had figured the most important thing out. They followed Jesus in the first place because there was something special about him, to be sure; but what exactly was it? There must have been as many reasons as there were followers. Some followed him because he called them, because he saw them and spoke to them and wanted them. Some came because they wanted to know more about God, and Jesus was a holy man, one who taught with authority. Some came because he had healed them, either physically or spiritually. They all had hopes and expectations; some even had particular personal agendas. Remember the way they argued over who would get positions of power in the kingdom? But at the beginning, they weren’t sure exactly who he was. They just knew that this was where they wanted to be, this was who they wanted to be with. Their commitment was to Jesus first, and because of that, even when their expectations were shaken, their love for him remained. When it comes to God, the personal is primary.