Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17
Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun …
So the Eggebeens would sing at the start of a family vacation … everyone piled into the car, seatbelts fastened, ready to go …
And then we’d play a Willie Nelson song:
On the road again
Just can't wait to get on the road again
The life I love is making music with my friends
Off we go … to see something of God’s grand and glorious world, to see old friends, visit family, take some time off from work and school … a splendid adventure.
I think of the conversation between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of The Hobbit:
Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.
Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them….
Gandalf: You’ll have a tale or two to tell when you come back.
Bilbo: You can promise that I’ll come back?
Gandalf: No. And if you do, you will not be the same.
There is much to life that meets the eye … and even more that doesn’t …
Things hidden … things mysterious and wonderful … things strange and odd and fearful and fascinating, even dangerous …
The mysteries of life … birth and death … gain and loss … joy and sorrow … laughter and lament … these are the realities of life … the clock ticks and the clock tocks … things come and things go … we live and we love, and we do the best we can, and sometimes, with clear intent, we don’t.
These are the realities …
Part of what it means to follow Christ is to deal with our realities … to live in the reality of world, the world of time and hope, disappointment and grief.
This is the only world in which we can live, and to live in this world, consciously, thoughtfully, is to live with God …
Our consumer culture is on a mission, however.
Our consumer culture prefers us not to think too deeply … but to get out there and buy a few things … and stay in debt.
Frederick Buechner says:
To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive."
William Barclay wrote: There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.
When we think deeply, we’re praying … prayer is nothing less, and nothing more, than thinking deeply: who am I? where am going? what do I value? … and God? God is always woven into the those kinds of questions … probe, push, ponder … sooner or later we end up on the boundary of the infinite.
Prayer is deep thinking … wondering … stepping back for a moment or two to look at the big picture … or at least as big as we can take it in …
Infants and children take it all in … When a child is born, all the windows are open … everything pours in like an avalanche … but in time, the brain begins to sort things out, and windows begin to close.
A person couldn’t spend a lifetime with all the windows open; there’d be too much of everything. So we sort things out, close a few windows, most of the windows actually, maybe too many.
When we engage in prayer, when we try to take in the big picture, we have to pry open some of the windows, windows long shut and painted over … the paint has to be chipped away … with a little hammering and some screwdriver work, we soon have an open window.
In the ancient language of faith, it’s called conversion … windows of the soul opened to the love and wonder of God … the mind changes … the soul grows larger, in sense and sensibility …
This was the experience of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road … a bright light blinded him … this man who thought he could see everything, quickly realized that he could see nothing … he was spiritually blind … he believed in God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind … but he had it all wrong …
History is full of such stories - zealous and pious people get it wrong … time and again.
Some of the most dangerous people I’ve ever known have been the fully-convinced … the “true believers,” as Eric Hoffer calls them …
Dangerous, because they have small minds … the windows of the soul have been slammed shut and painted over by dogma and creed … they become people of small sympathies and harsh judgments.
As Hoffer notes: Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
The Damascus Road for Paul - he came face-to-face face with his spiritual blindness … this man, with the keenest of minds, had to learn that he had it wrong … he had to start all over again.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind but now I see
Jesus comes to be one with us … to heal the wounds and bind up the broken hearted … to recast the vision of life … to help us pray, pray deeply, to live in the deeps rather than the shallows … to be less driven by consumerism, and more devoted to the things of God … less about getting, more about giving.
Jesus comes to us with an adventure: to engage in the great ideas and works of justice and peace … to plunge into the world … to be one with God, in God’s purpose … one with others, in their dreams and their sorrows … to follow Christ where’er he lead.
Gandalf was looking for someone to share an adventure … at first, Bilbo wanted nothing to do with it … he wanted only to stay in his burrow … but in time, the allure of Gandalf won the day, and off went Mr. Baggins on the adventure of a lifetime …
And so it is for us … even now, here, in this place and time, Christ is looking for someone to share an adventure … like Mr. Baggins, we want to stay in our burrow, close the windows, bar the door …
But our soul cries out and begs us to go … there is so much more to life than meets the eye …
Here I am LORD … here. I. am!
Hallelujah and Amen!
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