So I Wonder

Luke 9:2-8

Did you ever notice how many people there are out there today offering us advice on how to live our lives?  I know there have always been experts offering advice, but it really seems like we’re living in the age of the guru.  You can barely even turn on a TV without running into some highly credentialed expert attempting to shape our lives and our focus.  Just look at how many TV shows with doctors there are: Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. Laura, Dr. Drew, Dr. G.  There’s even a show out there simply called “The Doctors.” 

And boy, they’re aggressive about being listened to!  I don’t even want to hear what they have to say half the time, but they really try to rope you in with these terrifying commercials like, “The secret that will save - could save - your life and the life of your family - later today on The Doctors.”  Or, “The once thought healthy, but now poisonous, food that could be killing you that you might be eating right now - this afternoon on Dr. Oz.”

I know there have always been gurus throughout history trying to get us to listen to them, adopt their way of thinking and most often trying to get us to buy something from them in the process.  We have our self help gurus like Steven Covey, fitness gurus like Jillian Michaels, financial gurus like Suze Orman and even religious self help gurus like Joyce Meyer. 

So there are lots of people out there to listen to.  And a lot of them do have some really valuable information.  But whose voice should rise above the others?  Whose voice should we focus on most?  Who do we listen to - especially when so-called experts say contradictory things? 

It reminds me of when I was growing up and I reached that age when I wanted to start dating and find that special someone.  In going about this, you can imagine all the different advice I heard.  Mom told me that I just needed to be the nice person I was.  My grandma told me that I needed to be well-mannered and a perfect gentleman.  But at school it was a different story.  I heard that I needed to have a nice car, or expensive clothes, or that I needed to be really funny, or (completely contradictory to Mom) that I needed to be aloof, mean and seemingly unavailable.  Some said I needed to be athletic or be good at music (I actually did take that one to heart). 

Who do we listen to?  I mean wouldn’t it be great if we had some source of true enlightenment providing us words on how to live our lives?  The good news - we do!  We have the words of Jesus to live by.  In our scripture today God says, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

So I wonder…, what would life be like for us today if we did?  I don’t mean just listen to Jesus’ words or read the words but truly sought to live out what Jesus teaches us. 

About 304 years ago, Alexander Mack, along with 7 others, founded a church taking very seriously these 3 important words “listen to him!” spoken by God in our scripture.  In fact, Alexander Mack quoted this scripture in the first official Brethren Document. 

Mack and those early Brethren believed that Jesus was the light of the world.  They imagined what it would be like to have a community of believers that lived their lives based on the teachings of Jesus.  

So I wonder… what things would be like for us if, throughout the plethora of voices out there giving us advice, we focused on Jesus’ words first; we discerned those words and their meaning, and we sought to live out Jesus’ words to us. 

What if we continually focused on the question “How can I live by Jesus’ words?”

For a time when I was growing up I really wanted to be a race car driver.  I remember watching the Indy 500 thinking how cool it would be to be like a Mario Andretti, Al Unser Jr. or Emerson Fittapaldi. 

When I got older I learned about how race car drivers train.  One of the most important things a driver needs to learn early is how to get out of a spin.  To train, they actually train in what’s called a spin car.  The driver will drive around the track while the instructor has a button that will put the car in a spin. 

The biggest fear the driver has is hitting the wall.  Before they begin, the instructor tells the driver that when he hits the spin button and the car goes into a spin, make sure you don’t look at the wall but look where you want to go, because you will inevitably steer the car in the direction you’re looking. 

So they’re ready to go and the driver says to himself, “Okay, I’m not going to stare at the wall.”  The driver starts going pretty fast around the track and all the while the instructor is just sitting there, waiting for the exact time when the diver isn’t ready so he can hit the spin button.  Sure enough, after a while the driver starts to get a little tired and just then – Bam!!!  The instructor hits the spin button and where do you think the driver’s eyes go – straight to the wall.  The instructor then literally has to push the driver’s head in the direction he needs to go - away from the wall in order to steer to safety. 

The moral of the story is that we tend to move in the direction of what we focus on.   And the interesting thing is, we move towards what we focus on even when we know what we are focusing on isn’t where we want to go. 

So I wonder… what would be the direction of our lives if we focused more on Jesus’ words on how to live? I wonder… what would our days look like if when we planned our days, we started first with Jesus’ words?  What if we started with the idea of loving our neighbors as ourselves?  This is a scripture that we all find meaningful but what if we really applied God’s words, “Listen to him,” to this scripture.

I wonder if when we were planning what to do with our resources, instead of listening to the financial gurus of today that point us to the wall of only caring about ourselves, we focused on Jesus’ teaching of loving our neighbors.    

In a world that sets up walls of division and separation, I wonder what it would be like if we focused first on Jesus’ words of loving our neighbors and even loving our enemies when dealing with others who differ from us, like those from different cultures, those with differing political views, those of different religions, those in different denominations, or those within the same denomination with differing theological views. 

I wonder…what would it be like if we focused not only on how to love our neighbor but on loving ourselves?  I wonder… what if we took literally this advice and truly loved ourselves just as we are, and didn’t listen to all those other voices that tell us that we need to look a certain way, own a certain product or be a certain way in order to love ourselves.  Sure, we should continue to strive to improve ourselves and be the best we can be, but what if we learned to love ourselves just as we are – in all our brokenness - in the process? 

I wonder… what would it be like if we truly lived by Jesus’ words to treat others as we would like to be treated?   In a world where we’re continually trying to get our voices heard, I wonder what it would be like to truly hear others… even those that really don’t want to hear us.  What if we really tried to understand those who don’t want to understand us?  We don’t have to agree and if we don’t, what if we disagree in a loving way?

I love the words to Teresa’s prayer when thinking about this idea of focusing on Jesus’ teachings….

Sing Christ be in mind
Mind – thinking
Eyes – see
Ears - Hearing
Mouth - Word
Heart – Loving
Life – moment that I live

How do we ground ourselves in listening to Jesus to avoid the wall?  We do this not just by reading or hearing Jesus’ words, but by letting them be reflected in our actions – and not just our actions as individuals but as a community.  

Chaos theory states that the smallest events can trigger major events.   Sometimes it’s called “The Butterfly effect,” stating that even something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. 

The point is that our actions can make a difference. 

Christ calls us into community.  I do believe that we are bound together and finely woven into a web of interdependence.  So I wonder…, what would happen not just in our own lives, but to all those around us if we would spend more time focusing on how Jesus calls us to live. 

Sometimes in life we feel like we’re in the car and we’re in control.   We feel like we’re the ones steering and moving in the direction we want to go.  Then there are a lot of times we can feel like somebody somewhere hit the spin button and we are just spinning out of control.  But no matter how we are feeling, I encourage you to remember not to focus on the wall or continually focus on where you don’t want to go, but to focus on where you do want to go – to focus on Jesus’ words and their meaning for us.  Let Christ be in our minds and always in our thinking and in our actions.