Living in 3D
Living in 3D
Luke 15:11-31 / Mark 3:1-6 / 1 Peter 2:4-12
Introduction:
Did you notice people this past week? I don’t know about you, but I saw all kinds of people this week. There were people at the store…people in cars stuck in traffic…people sitting in the restaurants I went to for lunch. All sorts of people. I’d look at them—really look at them—and say, “Okay, God … am I supposed to be feeling anything right now? Do you want me to do something here … maybe take walk…take a step of faith…reach out to someone who is far from God?” If you have felt this, than I hope you found the courage to take the walk. If you didn’t feel the prompting, maybe you will feel it soon. Because there are people all around you…and some of them are living far from God. In the gospel of Luke, we read about an occasion where the Pharisees and the teachers of the law had gathered together and were talking about Jesus and His “people” skills. They noticed the Jesus saw people in an entirely different way. One of the Pharisees commented, “This man, he welcomes sinners and even eats with them.” You see it’s one thing to stick out your arm and shack somebody’s hand, but it’s entirely different when you give them a seat at your table. It’s one thing to cordially smile and give a word of encouragement, but it’s entirely something else when you take time to listen…especially if that someone is not like you…especially if that person is living far from God.
In Luke chapter 15, Jesus describes this in terms of being lost. He starts with a big number, a big scale … he talks about a hundred sheep. But then, he narrows it down to ten coins. And then, to one son. Do you see his point taking shape? His point is that every single life matters. You probably remember these three stories. First, there are a hundred sheep with one community challenged sheep who just wanders away. The sheep just wanders off and gets itself lost. Then there are ten coins and one of them is misplaced. And then, there is a boy who asks for his inheritance from his father early, which in that society was like saying to his father, “You’re as good as dead, so I want my inheritance right now!” And what does he do once he has money in hand? He takes it out to a foreign land and blows it on wine, women, and song. Aren’t you glad that we don’t struggle with these issues of being lost and wandering away and squandering blessings today? If that were only the truth. The story of the lost son and the compassionate Father is one of the greatest stories. Let’s read it together. It comes from Luke 15:11-31. Read.
This story reflects the very heart of God. The young man who is lost becomes found. The Scripture suggests it is not the result of some great spiritual revelation. Being found does not require getting your act cleaned up and changing your life style…and then coming to God. You come to God first and then the cleaning takes place. Remember, God cleans the fish after He catches them. The turning point comes when this young man “comes to himself,” which simply suggests that he makes a wise choice. He says, “This is stupid. I don’t need to live like this. I have a home and a father.” No mystic experience here. There are two truths in the story that are very important. The first is that somehow you and I have a home in God. When we’re lost, it’s because we have strayed from the place we were meant to be. Each of us has in us a God-shaped space and nothing else will fill that space—not marriage, children, jobs, or success. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 is our story. When we left the garden, we left the presence of God and we have been homesick ever since. We were made for life at home with God. But the second exciting lesson here is that Jesus is aggressively looking for us. You will find the symbol of the shepherd in many other world religions, but only in the Gospels is the shepherd pictured as one who is actively looking for the lost sheep. It’s an extraordinary and powerful image. In His ministry Jesus sought the lost in all sorts of unlikely places. He shocked the world around Him by eating with the lost and by making an effort at friendship to those living far from God.
Developing a friendship with others and really loving others is the very heart of God. If we’re going to reflect the Father’s heart, as individuals and as a church, then we must be in continuous search mode. We’ve got to make a habit of searching for new friendships on the horizon. That is the heart of a true Christ-follower. When you operate this way—when you operate in continuous “search mode” … watching for ways to connect with people, looking for friendships in the making—I believe all of heaven holds its breath. Heaven wonders, Will you tap into the faith and courage that God has given you for this precise moment? Will you extend a hand of friendship? Will you open wide your arms of acceptance? All of heaven watches … holds its breath … waits … and then exhales a shared sigh of relief—a joyous, celebrative sigh of relief—when you dig in and do the thing that God is asking you to do. In that moment, the cheers that break out all across heaven are thunderous … raucous cheers … and intense celebration!
Now, this is the way it should be, mind you. This is the way things ought to operate day in and day out, in the lives of Christians all across the world … friendships getting formed left and right that eventually might lead to something spiritual unfolding. Yes, this is the dynamic that we hope would play out with such frequency that the angels in heaven live in perpetual party-mode. But things don’t always pan out this way, do they? The frequency probably isn’t what is should be. I’m not sure that this is the average Christian’s focus in life. For most of us, we travel too fast through life to notice people all around us who are far from God. We run errands with one eye on the clock and the other on the to-do list, with little consideration for the needs of the clerk standing at the checkout or the person refilling our prescription. We are sort of like the couple who realized that they weren’t the best neighbors, so when they saw a moving van in front of the house across the street, they decided to change their ways. The wife prepared some homemade bread and together, with her husband, they approached the house. When someone answered the front door, she said, “Hi, we wanted to welcome you to our neighborhood. Here’s some bread for you.” The woman who answered the door said, “Thank you very much for you kindness. Uh... but this is kind of embarrassing. You see, we’re not moving in. We’re moving out. We’ve lived here for 8 years.” Maybe we need to scrutinize the rush of our activities, what may be keeping us from walk across the room people.
Developing a friendship with others and really loving others is the very heart of God. If we’re going to reflect the Father’s heart, as individuals and as a church, then we must be in continuous search mode. We’ve got to make a habit of searching for new friendships on the horizon. That is the heart of a true Christ-follower. Unfortunately, this is not world around us often see. Bill Hybels sees a dangerous trend within many evangelical churches. The trend is this – the longer person attends church, the fewer spiritual discussions they engage in with family members and friends. The longer a person is a Christian, there are fewer and fewer presentations of the life-changing plan of salvation and there are fewer invitations to events that present the message of Christ. Statistics reflect that shortly after a person makes a decision of faith, contact with people outside the Christian faith actually decreases. This is the course of the average Christian throughout their life here on earth. It is incredible to think that at the moment just before a Christ-follower meets God face-to-face, they are at their all time evangelistic low. George Barna reports most sadly, that the typical churched believer will die without leading a single person to a lifesaving relationship to Jesus Christ.
In our Scripture there are actually four lost items—a sheep, a coin, a prodigal son, and his older brother. The first three are obviously lost. Most churches spend a lot of time talking about those three. But the fourth one is equally lost and sadly…he doesn’t know it. This is the tragic one. He never strayed or broke the rules, and yet he missed out on the gift of extravagant love. He is the only one who misses the celebration in the whole chapter. The sad thing is that he was in the “far country” and he didn’t even know it. Does the far country have to be immorality and scandalous living? Of course not…the far county is any place where our heart is far from the heart of God. And God’s heart is true love. That’s what the older brother didn’t realize. Almost all of us find it easy to love some people—maybe a spouse or our parents or our kids … our friends at church. We see them and our initial reaction is love. We want to bless them. We’re filled with joy when these people come to mind. It’s true: almost every human being has a loving heart toward some people. But here’s what may not be so easy to admit. While almost every human being has a loving heart toward some people, almost every human being also has a secret list of people they don’t like to love. We don’t talk about this very often…especially in mixed company. It’s uncomfortable, isn’t it? But it remains true: many of us have a list expectations. Ask me to love some people outside of my “circle,” and things get pretty tense. “All right…all right,” we might say, “I’ll love them but they better be nice, they better not hurt me, they better be stable, they better be deserving!”
The only problem is that kind of thinking doesn’t reflect the heart of God. The book of 1 Peter tells us, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” You see as priests we are called to be friends, not the kind wears a fancy robe and performs church ceremonies, but the kind that represents a real God to real people through relationships. There are two great characteristics of the priest. A priest is one who has access to God and whose task it is to bring others to him. In the ancient world this access to God was the privilege of the professional priests, and in particular of the High Priest who alone could enter the Holiest part of the temple. Through Jesus Christ, the new and living way, access to God becomes the privilege of every Christian. The Latin word for priest is pontifex which means bridge builder. The priest is the one who builds a bridge for others to come to God. That means listening and connecting with other. It means inviting others to our table. What better way can we be “bridge builders” for God than to go out and build relationships with those who are outside of the church. We become priests for God when we walk across the room and build new friendships.
Tony Campolo tells a story about a trip to Honolulu in the mid 80’s. Having crossed far too many time zones from Philadelphia to Hawaii, he found himself awake and needing breakfast at 3:30am local time. He ended up in a all night greasy spoon where he found a donut and a coffee. While consuming this wholesome breakfast in walks 8 or 9 prostitutes. The place is small, he is surrounded, and like most of us decides the best thing to do is to get out of there. But then he overhears one of them say, “Tomorrow is my birthday; I’ll be 39.” Somebody else tears into her. “So…whadya want me to do about it? Want me to throw you a party, bake you a cake, sing “happy birthday?” The first shot back, “Come on! Why do you have to be so mean? I’m just telling you, you don’t have to put me down. I don’t want anything. I’ve never had a birthday party my whole life, why should you give me one.” If you know Tony Campolo, you probably have an idea what happens next. He hangs around till they leave, then asks the guy who runs the place if those people come in every night. They do, so Tony asks if he can throw a party for that one prostitute. They get excited about the idea, make all the arrangements – Campolo decorates the diner, the chef bakes a cake, somebody gets the word out on the street. This is how Campolo describes the scene:
“By 3:15 every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. It was wall-to-wall prostitutes… and me! At 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner swung open and in came Agnes and her friend. I have everybody ready (after all, I was kind of the M.C. of the affair) and when they came in we all screamed, “Happy birthday!” Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted … so stunned … so shaken. Her mouth fell open. Her legs seemed to buckle a bit. Her friend grabbed her arm to steady her. As she was led to one of the stools along the counter we all sang “Happy Birthday” to her. As we came to the end of our singing with “happy birthday dear Agnes, happy birthday to you,” her eyes moistened. Then, when the cake was carried out with all the candles on it, she lost it and just openly cried.”
The crowd was stunned into silence. Not knowing what else to do, Tony said; “what do you say we pray?” And he did. He prayed for Agnes, for her salvation, for God to turn her life around. At the end, the chef turned to him with a trace of hostility in his voice and said, “You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?” Tony replied, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.’ The chef thought for a minute and then almost sneered as he answered, ‘No you don’t! There is no church like that. In fact,’ he concluded, ‘if there was, I’d join it.’” *People living far from God know something about the church. They know what our priorities are. No question, lots of us Christians are growing in knowledge, in worship, in character, in serving, in giving. All the research shows that. But are we also growing in our ability to radically accept whoever is standing on the other side of the room … no matter what? This is where living in 3D must begin. Once you are willing to view every interaction as the first step in developing a new, God-honoring friendship, you will find that some pretty interesting doors swing wide open.
Conclusion:
There’s an interesting story in Mark chapter 3 about a man with a withered hand. The text says that Jesus was preparing to teach in the temple one day when the Pharisees got an idea. They were upset with Jesus and so they started plotting for how they might catch him in the middle of a Sabbath infraction, quite a no-no in those days. You weren’t supposed to work at all on the Sabbath, remember? Which included, it seems, healing injured people. The Pharisees drag this poor guy with a withered hand into the temple and then stand back to see if Jesus will take the bait. Jesus sees these religious leaders standing in front of him and just gets irate. The text from The Message paraphrase says he was angry and “furious at their hard-nosed religion.” He couldn’t believe that they were prizing their rigid laws above showing radical love to someone desperately in need of it. Well, you can read this story for yourself this week, but essentially, Jesus makes no apologies as he asks the withered-hand man to step right up and receive his healing. He can’t not heal the guy. His whole cause is about reaching people.
And if there’s one thing I want to leave you with this morning, it is this: You have the profound privilege of reaching the people around you with the same radical love and irrepressible acceptance that Jesus himself carried with him wherever he went. The same radical love and irrepressible acceptance that was extended to you at some point along the way, if you are a follower of Christ. All of us were withered in one way or another when people around us chose to take an appropriate “next step” or two and help move closer to God. And there are withered parts all around you. People with withered hearts and withered minds and withered bodies. People with withered dreams and withered energy and withered hope. I just wonder if perhaps God will use you to help heal a few of those withered parts between now and when we meet again. A new week is about to unfold in your life and in mine. And like all new weeks, we can choose to invest it in things that glorify and satisfy us … or we can choose to invest it in things that glorify and satisfy God.