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My roots are in Western
Wisconsin—the land that flows with milk and cheese, the land
where cows roam peaceably across green pastures, the land
where people listen to both kinds of music, Country and
Western. Let me tell you a little something about my people.
The men in my family are tough men, farming men, and they
all have tough, farmer names. My grandfathers’ names are
Virgil and Orville. I had great uncles with farmer names
like Marv, Hank and Cletus. And yes, I had a great uncle
named Gurney. (Needless to say, my wife has made it clear
that if we have sons, they will not get any of those
names!!) Whenever there was a family gathering, these men,
these tough farmer men, would gather together and argue. You
would see them sitting around in their circle, and you would
hear the volume slowly rise as the gentle banter turned into
heated discussions.
What would cause the debate each
time these men got together? Was it sports? No. Was it
politics? No. Was it religion? No. It was routes. That’s
right, it was routes. When these men got together, the most
heated discussions were always around the best way to get
from point A to point B. If you wanted to get these guys
going, you could walk into this circle of my grandfathers
and great uncles and ask what appeared to be an innocent
question, like: “How do I get to Fall Creek from here?”
My Grandfather Orville would
jump right in and say, “That’s easy. You just take Highway
27 and cut across on Highway 12 and you’ll be there.” You’d
think that would be the end of the discussion…but oh, no.
My Grandfather Virgil would pipe
in, “You can do that, but it’s not how I would do it.
You’ll want to take County Road Q until you come to Caddot
and then you’ll bypass Highway 29, get off there and turn
right on Country Road MM which will swing you right into
Fall Creek.”
But before I could even register
what had been said, one of my great uncles would chime in,
“You want to get to Fall Creek? I’ll tell you how to get to
Fall Creek. Take 27 over to Cornell, then hop on 178 through
Chippewa Falls, from there grab 12 south through Altoona and
the next stop will be Fall Creek. That is how you get from
here to there!!”
I am not kidding, these men
could spend hours debating which route was the best. Never
mind that each of these routes eventually got them to the
same place. Each of these men was convinced that their way
was not only the best way, they were convinced that their
way was the only way to get there.
A preoccupation with routes. I
always found it so ironic that the men of my family could
spend an entire family gathering arguing about who had taken
the right route to get to the family gathering. They
would talk so much about how they got “there” that they
often missed the obvious fact: they had all gotten
“there.” A preoccupation with routes—it seemed like the men
of my family were more concerned about the route to a place
than the place where their routes were leading.
Friends, I worry that we, the
Church of Jesus Christ, sometimes have the same
preoccupation with routes. I worry that sometimes when the
Church gets together, we spend too much of our time
embroiled in debates about routes. I worry that when it
comes to the issues of our faith, like the men in my family,
we sometimes think the road we arrived on is the only
road.
You know the route debates. The
Church is riddled with them. Is the best way to love your
neighbor “to save them” or “to serve them”? Save your
neighbor! Serve your neighbor! Is it to tell them of about
the Bread of Life so that their souls may be filled, or is
it better to give them bread for life to fill their bellies?
Some of us believe our main purpose is to lead our neighbors
into the Lord’s house, while others are sure our calling is
to take a hammer and build our neighbor their own house. So,
which route is it? Save your neighbor? Serve your neighbor?
Which route is the church supposed to take?
There are so many other debates
about the route people of faith should take. Traditional
worship or contemporary worship, which way is the right way?
Should the church be conservative or liberal? Which route is
right for us to travel? Scripture: literal or metaphorical?
Which road is the right road? Personal holiness or social
justice? Which path is God calling us to take?
Fundamentalist or pluralist, which road should the church
choose?
In our scripture lesson today,
we find the disciples in the midst of a debate about routes.
One day, while Jesus was walking with his disciples, the
disciples got into an argument. “What is all the fussing
about back there?” Jesus asked. They were silent. They had
been found out. They had been arguing about who was the
greatest among them, arguing (I imagine) about who had the
clearest understanding of who Jesus was and what this
Kingdom of God ministry he kept mentioning was all about.
They were arguing about routes. Can’t you just hear them?
Peter, I am sure, was the first
to sound off. “I am Peter. I am the man. The Rock. It’s all
about theology. It’s about having the right answers to the
right questions. Remember when Jesus asked, ‘Who do you say
that I am?’ I got it right. ‘You are the Christ, the
Messiah, the chosen One of God.’ Theology is the right
route!”
To which I am sure John
responded. “Sit down, Pete. You want to know the right route
when it comes to all this Jesus stuff? It is all about love.
That’s all he ever talks about. Love your neighbor. Love
your enemy…yada, yada, yada. It’s about love, and everyone
knows that I am the disciple Jesus loves. That’s the only
route that matters.”
To which I am sure Andrew
responded, “Give it a rest, you two. All your theology
stuff, Rockhead, is fine and dandy, and that love
stuff sure is all touchy feely there, John boy, but
when it comes to the real business of Jesus, it is clearly
about evangelism. You can have all your right answers and
you can have the lovey-dovey stuff, but if you don’t go out
and bring people to Jesus, then what’s the use? It is about
evangelism. And everyone knows that I am the one who was
always introducing people to Jesus. It is about evangelism,
boys. It is the only road worth taking.”
But before anyone could respond,
Philip chimed in: “Hey, has anyone noticed that there are
literally thousands of people in this world who don’t have
enough to food to eat? It is about mission. It is about
feeding real people real food. People can’t eat your
theology, Pete. Can we really love them if we aren’t feeding
them, John? And will they ever be interested in Jesus if
they don’t know where their next meal is coming from, Andy?
Remember when all those people didn’t have anything to eat?
I think there were about five thousand of them. It was good
old Philip who gathered the loaves and fish for Jesus to
multiply. This Jesus thing is about mission. That is the
road we should be traveling.”
And just when you thought you
had heard it all, there was a word from the finance guy.
Judas said: “All this talk about programs. All this talk
about missions. All this talk about caring ministries and
evangelistic strategies. Who’s going to pay for all this?
You can’t have a church without the money to do it. It’s
about fiscal responsibility. You want to know what route we
need to take? It’s my route: sound fiscal responsibility.”
It’s all about theology. No,
it’s all about love. No, it’s about missions. No, it’s about
evangelism. No, it’s about money. Sound familiar? It sounds
like some of the Annual Conference sessions I’ve attended,
I’ll tell you.
It is into this argument about
routes, into this never-ending debate about who has it
right, that Jesus sits his disciples down in hopes of
helping them understand where each and every road, where
every spiritual path, must eventually take us. (Perhaps this
was the very first come-to-Jesus meeting.) It is to this
contentious and divided group of followers that Jesus offers
one of the greatest paradoxes of our faith. “Whoever wants
to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Each
road we walk must eventually lead us to this place, to the
place of servanthood, to the place called compassion.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant
of all.”
Compassion. Fredrick Buechner
describes compassion like this: “Compassion is that
sometimes- fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to
live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that
there can never really be any peace and joy for me until
there is peace and joy finally for you, too.” Every route we
choose to take, every theological doctrine we espouse or
teach, every prayer we pray, every hymn we sing, every
invitation we make, every mission trip we organize and every
dollar we drop in the collection plate must eventually bring
us to this place called compassion. If it doesn’t—if it
makes us more suspicious, more judgmental, more spiteful,
more self-righteous—then perhaps we should consider a
different route. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of
all and servant of all.” Now, that’s a route worth taking.
If the men in my family would
have listened to each other with compassion, they soon would
have realized why they each took different routes. For
Grandpa Orville, the best route was always the quickest
route, the straightest shot, the most easily traversed, the
route that made the most sense and had the fewest surprises.
For Grandpa Virgil, the best route was always the most
scenic route. He preferred back roads to paved roads,
winding routes to straight paths, and detours that brought
you alongside the riverbanks or through an apple orchard.
And for Great Uncle Gurney, the best route was one that took
you past some relative’s or friend’s place. He would always
plan to stop in to see someone on the way to or on the way
back from any given destination. For him, it was the people
you could see on the way that made the best route.
Different routes, different reasons for taking them, but
with compassion we can all still arrive at the same
destination.
That is true about our faith
journey, as well. Different routes, different reasons, but
compassion says we can all still arrive at the same
destination. Some of us like the rational stuff of faith.
Make it plain. Boil it down. Give us reasons and proofs.
Give us four spiritual laws and a five- line prayer (which
is how I came back into the faith, by the way). For others,
it is the scenic route that got them here—the arts, the
music, the poetry, the pageantry of the liturgy. And for
others, it is the people they get to see and the people they
get to serve that brings them here. The amazing thing is
that all of these different routes have the potential to
bring us to the same destination. And what is that
destination? The God made known to us in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
And to make his disciples
understand the cost of a community divided by endless
debates over routes, Jesus went out and found a child. He
put this child right in the center of this circle of grown
men who had been fighting with each other about which one of
them had it all right, and then he said to them, “Whoever
welcomes this child…welcomes me.”
It was as if Jesus was saying to
them, “In spite of all your theologizing, all your
strategizing, all your scheming and arguing and debating…if
none of these routes you are fighting about bring you into a
relationship with a child like this, if your routes don’t
make a difference to him, if they don’t help you to see him
and hear him and want to reach out to him, then all your
arguments about routes probably don’t have anything to do
with me.” I think Jesus stood in that circle of folks
preoccupied with their routes, arm around this young boy,
and said, “I don’t care how you get here! As long as you get
here!”
Sometimes when I am at Annual
Conference and a room full of almost a thousand Christians
is choosing up sides to argue about routes—to argue that
they, and only they, have the right way for the church—I
wish someone would do what Jesus did. I wish someone would
go out and find a kid and bring him right up front and say,
“At the end of day, what decisions are we going to make here
today that will make any difference in the life of this kid?
If they don’t, then maybe you should all close up shop and
just go back home.” That is why I am so excited about the
tutoring program that Church and Society is launching in
Pontiac. It gives us a chance to really put our faith in a
place where our presence is so needed. It makes sure the
path we are walking leads to the place called compassion,
the One who proclaimed it with his life, death and
resurrection. If you have an hour a week to spare, I
encourage you to consider joining us in this effort.
Friends, I worry that to the
world that surrounds us, the church’s preoccupation with
routes makes us look like a bunch of old men at a family
gathering who can’t stop fighting about routes long enough
to appreciate the fact that the different routes each of us
took got us to the feet of the same Lord, who stands there
with his arm around one of the kids and reminds us the world
is full of children, God’s children, who need the Church to
be far more than a debating society. The world needs the
Church to be the Church—the loving, saving, serving place
where God’s Spirit is active and alive.
If we have the ears to hear,
maybe we will hear the world cry out to us, the Church: “We
don’t care how you get here. Just get here.”
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23 million Africans infected
with HIV/AIDS cry out to the Church, “We don’t care how
you get here. Just get here.”
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Elementary students in Pontiac who need tutors cry out
to the Church, “We don’t care how you get here. Just get
here.”
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Those
in cancer wards, nursing homes and behind the bars of
our jails cry out to the Church, “We don’t care how you
get here. Just get here.”
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Those
suffering from the isolation of job loss, the
desperation of divorce, the shame of addiction cry out
to the Church, “We don’t care how you get here. Just get
here.”
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The war torn places, the
hurricane and earthquake ravaged places, all the
forgotten and lonely places of our world cry out to the
Church, “We don’t care how you get here. Just get here.”
So take the quickest route, the
scenic route, the mission route, the service route, the
“saving” route, the rummage route, the roundabout route, the
conservative route, the liberal route, the traditional
route, the contemporary route…whatever route it takes to
bring you to the compassionate arms of our loving Savior.
Let me say to you one more time, “I don’t care how you get
there. For the sake of the gospel, just get there!”
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