It'll mess up your life

It’ll mess up your life The Dover Church
January 23, 2010 – Third Sunday of Epiphany
Scripture: Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23

Let’s not beat around the bush. Following Jesus will mess up your life. Jesus walking up to two sets of fisherman-brothers and saying, “follow me,” and off they go, sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it? A bunch of brothers going fishing with Jesus is a heart warming story, sort of like Andy and Opey from the Andy Griffith Show, walking down the dirt roads of Mayberry with fishing poles over their shoulders; or Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, walking down a country road and breaking into “It’s a jolly holiday with Mary…”
But the truth of the matter is this story is one of sudden and massive disruption in the lives of Peter, Andrew, James and John. Following Jesus is going to mess up their lives. I’m sure old man Zebedee, John and James’ father has already noticed as has Peter’s wife when he didn’t come home from work that day. Yes indeed. Following will mess up your life. Let me tell you how.
First, there’s God. One of the obvious attractions of following Jesus is getting to know God and share your life with God. That was certainly the attraction for me. In following Jesus, we actually get to know God. We will not get to know what God looks like, but in reading the Gospels and living the life Jesus invites us to live, we will most definitely come face to face with the unseen God. We will know what God is up to, how God works in the world, what God likes and dislikes, and what God intended for both each of us and for all of creation. That really is quite a lot to know about someone when you think about it. It’s as much if not more than most of us know about each other. It’s just about everything we really know about anyone, except for the sensual knowledge of sight, smell, hearing, touch and so on, but now we’re getting into mysticism.
Let’s get back to messing up out lives. Right off the bat I can say from personal experience that some of your friends and neighbors are going to think your crazy when you tell them that you are into knowing God and experiencing God. You are strange, different, probably harmless but definitely out there. But once you start knowing and experiencing God in worship and prayer, in nature or in other people, you won’t mind all that much what other people think of you. You might not talk about it, but you probably don’t talk about a lot of personal stuff with folks anyways, so who cares? No, the real mess comes when the knowledge and experience of God forces you to see how far off the mark the world is from the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus, the mess we humans have made of every aspect of God’s intention. Once you’re there, it’ll get harder and harder to just accept things the way they are. Things will start jarring you, sometimes just a little, but often right to the core of your very being. You’ll find yourself viewing everything with a critical eye. You can’t be satisfied or complacent anymore, no matter how good your life really is. You see the mess I am talking about? It’s a lot easier being complacent and satisfied, isn’t it?
Then there’s mess #2: you yourself. Once you start following Jesus, you going to have to accept the fact that God loves you just the way you are. Sounds really good doesn’t it? But after a lifetime of pretending to be perfect, or at least pretty close, it’s hard to stop. It certainly took me a long time and I still backslide regularly. But once you really just fall into the grace, you will be able to stop pretending to yourself, to others, and to God of all people (as if God couldn’t see right through that?) that you are not who you really are, with all the flaws, mistakes, pain, fear, anger, bad thoughts and intentions, and all the rest of the warts that all of us have and pretend we don’t. Let me tell you from personal experience, letting go off all those masks and pretense will be a huge load off of your back.
Sounds great doesn’t it? But it’s really another mess. Once again, your friends and neighbors will think you’re crazy if you actually tell them you’re good with being a mess, sinner is the proper term, because God is on it. But like knowing and experiencing God, you’ll probably not mind all the much. The real mess starts when you are no longer pretending and you cannot help but see the difference between who you really and how you’re living and how much more God hopes for me. When I was pretending, I was already there. When I accepted who I really am, I could see the difference. My choices, opinions, actions were all so messy compared with Jesus. Sure, God loves us, but God also wants so much more for us. We love the grace, but there is hard and painful work to do, conforming ourselves to Christ, making hard and often unpopular choices, altering behavior, rooting out destructive habitual ways of being and thinking. God wants us to be free. The irony is that it is only when we accept who we really are will we be able to see how well and truly enslaved we are. Talk about messing your my life. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to personal transformation and holiness.
Then there’s community. You would think that Jesus’ new community of beloved disciples is another obvious attraction of following Jesus: a bunch of people gathered around God in Jesus Christ, everyone welcome, no exceptions, all practicing love and forgiveness, sharing their lives. But there is, unfortunately, the reality of it. You mean I have to love him? I don’t know if I can like him. You mean she is my sister? She looks sort of like an enemy to me. You mean we have to welcome them? They sort of threaten me and they’ll definitely mess up the good thing we have going here. And, of course, all of us, even the best intentioned of us, bring our own non-Jesus agendas with us, not to mention all the messiness I mentioned a moment ago, which means being church is heavy going, rarely idyllic, and often disillusioning. Your friends and neighbors will wonder, how can such a smart, successful, with-it person as you want to be part of such a mess as that? And yet, it can be as good as it gets when we manage to pull it off by the grace of God.
Now if that isn’t mess enough for you, there’s one more biggy: Jesus’ insistence that you serve your neighbor, especially your poor, hungry, imprisoned, filthy, leprous neighbor, as in the very people you don’t want to think of as neighbors. This is absolutely non-negotiable. Follow me and this is what you’re going to be doing. Ouch. As with everything else I’ve pointed out this morning, your friends and neighbors are going to think you are crazy, altruistic and nice, but definitely crazy, if you tell them that you can’t make the party because you’re going to be following Jesus down at the homeless drug rehab center, or in a prison for sex offenders, or in the abused and homeless women’s shelter, or in Haiti, or all unpleasant places you can think of. And let’s not try to make a purse out of a pig’s ear, this serving your neighbor is going to cut into your life in a big way, into your time for other things, into your wallet, into your emotional and spiritual strength and well being. What’s more, serving these folks is going to hit every one of your fears and anxieties, your prejudices and preconceived notions, and make you feel sort of bad about yourself at first if you allow it to. See what I mean? It’ll mess up your life.
But, and here’s the big BUT, serving my neighbor
God, me, community…and loving my neighbor. This is one aspect of following Jesus which most people would expect would mess up their lives. That we will find God and ourselves to the degree we pour ourselves out in love to our neighbors.