Why Following Jesus Is Difficult
Hard working young marrieds moved into Green Acres, she a teacher, he an assistant city clerk.
Unfortunately, selfish neighbors lived next door. After-midnight music blared, grass wasn't mowed, leaves weren't raked, complaints were rudely ignored.
The selfish neighbors did not use garbage cans. On trash day animals ate through plastic bags strewing garbage everywhere. Police came. After the rude neighbors were ticketed mysterious scratches appeared on the young married’s cars, tire tracks burned into the lawn. Nothing was proven but everyone knew.
One day a home remodeling application from the rude neighbors appeared in the young neighbor's city office. Time for revenge? Deny or endlessly delay... What to do...
At dinner the young marrieds decided the application should be approved. Their faith said so. But, boy was it difficult.
This is often why people leave Jesus. It's difficult.
Tempted to retaliate, we forgive.
Tempted to worry, we hope.
Tempted toward selfishness, we share.
Tempted to being cold and closed, we risk love.
A few weeks later a knock at the door. His rude neighbor held out the application. He knew. The nastiness subsided, peace came, then friendship.
This is a happy ending, most aren’t. But the only way to make an enemy a friend is to love them. Period.
Let's Do This
The Paradox of our time is that our city, Detroit, is dying, at the same time it's coming back to life.
And so we live with these very active voices is going through our heads.
One tells us to cut bait, to move out, and to move on, because the future here is not very bright.
The another voice, says things are just starting to get interesting. It tells us that there is something rumbling underneath the surface, just beginning to explode with a power of potential that we may have no ability to quantify much less contain.
And yet it's a third voice that seems to leave the biggest impression, the one that we tend to follow too often, which is a voice of mediocrity, hesitation, and timidness. It does not fully embrace the negativity about Detroit nor does it fully embrace the possibility of Detroit.
It's as if everyday we are asked to go “ all-in" on one side or the other, yet we can't make up our minds, so we follow the third voice.
In church this weekend, you and I will hear Jesus addressing a similar paradigm, confronted with the group of people who can't decide if they should go all-in or all-out.
“Are you the one? Or is there somebody else we should be waiting for? “
They too seem to be unsatisfied with their constant hesitation, straddling the line, unable to commit to one voice or the other. So Jesus comes to them with a clear and graceful invitation to see things as he sees them: our lives teeming with possibility, brimming with potential, urging them not to take the broad gate of negativity, that everybody seems to be going through, and to take the narrow gate of possibility, hope, and imagination.
Friends, there's certainly something going on in each one of our lives in which we are also straddling some sort of fence. And God comes along side us with the same invitation: to take the difficult road, the risky road, the challenging road.
After all we are always more resilient, more capable, more up to the task than we suspect.
After all we are always more resilient, more capable, more up to the task than we suspect.
The world is waiting for us to make a move, take a step, put ourselves out there.
Urged on by the saints and our savior, let's do it.
