Standing Firm in Your Life's Rapids - Pentecost
John 14:1-27 - June 5th, 2022
The Lord Be With You.
A parable on our Gospel …
There once was a seasoned, professional kayaker who paddled a race one day. He started out with many other kayakers but, as the course grew long and arduous, many of them fell behind, took a different route along the course or even dropped out. Unbeknownst to this kayaker, until he was well on his way, the stream before him split into two different directions but both ended up eventually at the same finish line, albeit one path took a lot longer than the other. One was a smooth, calm stream that was a safe bet and the kayaker witnessed that almost all his competitors chose it. The other was much more treacherous with rapids and rocks and minor falls but it was the shortest distance to the finish line. The kayaker had to make a quick decision as to which one to take. Does he play it safe, go down the path with no treacherous impediments and depend on his own strength to overcome any competitors that might take a lead or does he go for it and take the route less traveled, more dangerous, more exciting but shorter. Which would you take? Both sides were safe for kayakers after all. Would you depend on the safety of just what you can touch, see or feel or do you rely on your own surety to wade into waters that might be more treacherous? It really all depends on how much confidence you have in yourself, your belief, your future.
Here ends the parable.
Verse 1 says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” and that gets paired with verse 6, which says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” and it sums up everything Jesus said and did throughout His ministry and what you and me gotta finally come to understand. Some look at the statements He made and turn away because it would seem to be exclusionary. That it’s some kind of club. That it’s just not open to everyone of every persuasion. Of every lifestyle. Of every way of thinking. And it is – to a degree.
When the words of Jesus gets watered down in order to fit the times, in order to be inclusive, in order to be accommodating then those that want to do that, in order to get God to be what they want Him to be, end up being on the short end of the stick when they have to stand in front of the Father. However, I just don’t know how to interpret the words Jesus said except in the light that He said them. All roads do not lead to heaven. Only those paths that lead through Jesus gets you in front of the Father. You can’t get into heaven unless you go through the Father first. There ain’t no side street. You do not pass go. You do not get to decide if what Jesus is saying is true or not. There ain’t no safe spaces. You just gotta get over yourself and finally accept that without Jesus, you’re out of luck. Period. Sorry if that hurts some folk’s feelings. It’s just the way it is.
All these folks that flatly deny that there really is God and that there is only one path though Jesus reminds me of a supposed true case. You may have already heard about it but here it is …
In Florida, an atheist created a case against Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination class action case against all Christians and Jews and observances of their Holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.
The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, “Case Dismissed!”
The lawyer immediately stood and objected to the ruling saying, “Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and other days. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all others atheists have no such holidays.”
The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, “But you do. Your client, counselor, is woefully ignorant.” The lawyer said, “You honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for any atheist.”
The judge said, “Psalm 14:1 states, ‘The fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ The calendar says April 1st is April Fool’s Day. Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned.”
You think this short story is just a made up story? Look to Detroit. There, a few blocks from the Detroit River, is the Satanic Temple. It has chapters in Florida, Finland, Italy and in Minneapolis. Its headquarters is in New York City. It’s taught at Harvard. It’s literally everywhere and is promoted by the group, Freedom from Religion. God is not God to them. And there is no God above all other parts of creation.
You know, Jesus never lied. He told only the truth. Jesus lived out the prophecies because it was through them that a person, at that time, could come to the understanding that the prophet, the real prophet, had finally come. Jesus turned the status quo on its head and that becomes a dangerous thing. It was dangerous then and it still is today.
There’s so much packed in the very first two verses that points to each of us that tells us that we just gotta stop and relook at what and why and how we believe. In who we trust. The very first verse exhorts the disciples to stand firm in the face of Jesus’ departure when it may look as though evil and death are going to win. Peter’s denial in chapter 13 can be seen as an illustration of how all the disciples will act if they surrender to the narrative of the day. We can too. You see, evil is all around us.
Way up here, in the north, we’re kind of shielded but evil has a way of going into places previously considered safe. And when I read posts about what’s going on in the schools, in the streets, person against person, elected people doing what feels good to them rather than what they were sent there to do, when I read these post and look at the news, then I have to come to the conclusion that nowhere is safe and I have to grab ahold of the hand of Jesus even more. Be on the lookout with enough oil in my lampstand to let it shine the light of truth to closed ears. Stand strong against all those that want to cancel others out because they have become offended by the truth.
I’ve called this message, “Standing Firm in Your Life’s Rapids” because the world is swirling right now around your feet and you’re either gonna stand firm or your gonna be swept away in the current of whatever is going on around you. Stand firm despite what the world wants you to do. Wants you to believe. Remember, evil will never win. Jesus is telling His disciples, and you and me, that this is the bottom line. No one gets to the Father except through Him. John writes earlier in chapter 5 that Jesus has already told His followers to be true to themselves. Understand that He came from the Father to testify about the Father.
But, even if you can’t get your head around this whole Jesus and God thing, even if you thought that the writers and contributors of the New Testament were on some magic mushroom trip for 200 hundred or so years and they made the whole thing up, even if you looked at all the subsequent believers who laid down their lives for the last 2,000 plus years, even if you latched on to this insanity, you’d still have to ignore the eye witness accounts, the legal scholars and rulers, the very real history. All attributing the man at the well being able to walk as well as others. Lazarus coming back to life. Feeding 5,000 and then 4,000 plus people. Making people see again and curing diseases like leprosy. Hundreds of other miracles that we don’t even know about. And then not believing would make you blind as a bat. Not believing should really make you question your own ability to even know what the truth, any truth, really is. But evil does cloud minds, doesn’t it?
Folks, I’ve looked back over the last four years and I’m convinced that if we can get people to hear the Good News, see the community that is this house that God built, be a visible point of light for those that are wandering around in their own life’s rapids, then we can make a difference in many lives. Things take time. We are busy. Many just don’t know what to do or say. We all have our own troubled waters to wade through. But, imagine if you were living back in Jesus’ time and were faced with those kinds of problems. Each of those disciples had two or more paths to go down. They could have chosen the calm quite waters of their existence but, thankfully, they didn’t and chose, instead, to take the one that had the most rapids, the most rocks, the more dangerous one. Thankfully they did or it’s possible that you and me wouldn’t be here this morning.
But we can get turned around and it’s only when we come back to the Gospel that we can get on the right path. Sometimes, though, what someone says to us might lead us in the wrong direction. It’s like the two Georgia hunters who were dragging their dead deer back to their car. A South Carolina hunter approached pulling his along too. “Hey, I don’t want to tell you fellows what to do, but I can tell you that it’s easier if you drag the deer by the hooves. Then the antlers won’t dig into the ground.”
After that third hunter left, the two decided to try it and switched. A little while later one hunter said to the other, “You know, that guy was right. This is a lot easier!” “Yeah,” the other added, “but we’re getting farther away from the truck!”
The man in the parable had to come to grips with just what he thought about himself when he was faced with an uncertain future. It really comes down to trust. But just who, or in whom, do we ultimately trust? God? Jesus? The Holy Spirit? Ourselves? Our family? Our neighbors? Just who do we really put our trust in to carry us through the day? It’s a hard question that we really don’t pay much attention to. I mean, we really don’t wake up in the morning and make a decision on what’s gonna come next. We really aren’t conscious about our trust that the car will start. Right?
But Jesus was very specific. He says trust in God; trust also in Him. It’s pretty clear. The kayaker could’ve taken the route that was easy. That would’ve gotten him to his final destination, albeit, maybe behind some others who had already gone that way. But, he would have gotten there never the less without much trouble. The kayaker could also have taken the other route. The one with the most to lose. The one with so many obstacles. The one that held the biggest barriers to even finishing. So can we!
We can choose the easy route or the hard one. Each one of our roads will get us to the final, final end after all. The ending where we all have to stand in front of the Father. Not in heaven, in front of the Father. He is the final gatekeeper after all. He is the one that decides if we’re gonna be cast into the lake of fire or be welcomed into the glorious kingdom that has no end as spelled out in Matthew 25. He is the one with whom we gotta account for what we did here on this earth with what He gave us to do and what He gave us to do it with. We gotta trust that what we believe that we have been given will be enough. We gotta trust that the words His Son spoke about were the real truth. We gotta trust like the kayaker had to trust.
Yes, it’s true that once we have witnessed Jesus we have seen His Father. We know that because Jesus said so and nothing that has come out of His mouth has ever been a lie. But we gotta choose which path we’ll travel down ourselves too just like the kayaker. We gotta choose whether we’re gonna hear what we hear each Sunday and just leave it there. We gotta choose whether we can stand up to the evils of this world in order to let everyone know that Jesus did come back just like He said He would and He really is the one and only way to the Father. Just like He said. Yea, we gotta choose. Or not. It’s your choice after all. Choose wisely. Something to think about! Something to pray about?
Can we pray? …
Father, we ask that you help us through our own turbulent waters of our lives. We look for those calming words that take away the sins of this world and renew our quest to always be in your sight. We pray that our words can relay the truth and mercy that you gave to us through your Son, Jesus. We hope that we can trust in your words so that we can stand before you as blameless people that followed your commandments. Sometimes we wonder where you are at in all the confusion and untruth that exist around us. That we have to face each day. That we have to wade through. We pray that your Holy Spirit be on us so that we can face our futures with the confidence that you are with us. We pray for peace. For grace. For mercy. We pray these things and more in the name of your Son, Jesus the Christ.
And all God’s people said – Amen?!
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