Beyond the Patio

It is Time to Act with Abandon
Luke 13:31-35

Opposition is rising against Jesus. Now Jesus is told that Herod is wanting to kill him. The road ahead is dangerous. Jesus knows that to keep going means risk, suffering and possibly death. Yet, he keeps going. He says, “Listen, I’m casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work…” . How is he able to do this? What compels him to go on in the face of such opposition and danger?

Jesus had a higher purpose

I believe that it is because he has such a sense of purpose that nothing can stop him. When one has a purpose you can overcome amazing obstacles in life.

A few years ago, football player Jerry Kramer, former Green Bay Packers guard, wrote a book called “Instant replay: the Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer”. He remembers the legendary coach Vince Lombardy telling his backs one day: “This is a game of abandon. You run with complete abandon. You care nothing for anybody or anything, and when you get close to the goal line your abandon intensifies. Nothing, not a tank, nor a wall, no eleven shall stop you from getting across that goal line.

His players did play with such abandon with that one goal in mind. Now if they could do that in a game, how much more is Jesus is able to move with such abandon for a much higher purpose. For Jesus’ purpose was God’s purpose and that was to care for people, to invest his life for people, to serve people, to show the world the power of love and the triumph of love. It should be a stronger word than “purpose”. It was a “passion”. Every day of his life he chose service over self-interest. He knew that humanity was always at the crossroads of moving toward the darkness of destructive selfishness or toward the light of creative altruism. In every decision he was determined showed the world that to choose the light was the way of true fulfillment as human beings – the purpose for which we were all created. It was the hope of the world. On the other hand to choose the darkness of self interest means the eventual demise of the world. At this point in his ministry Jesus could see the “goal line” and it was a time for his abandon to intensify. There wasn’t any thing that could stand in his way, not even the sly fox Herod, and all the threats of suffering and death.

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A lot of us don’t have that sense of purpose. We don’t have that passion . We just go with the crowd and we are moved this way and that way. Sam Keen in his book, Hymns to An Unknown God, Awakening of the Spirit in Everyday Life says:

“We exist in a media-created environment in which we are besieged by competing truth claims. It is as if we were locked in a room with a hundred secular evangelists shouting at us, bombarding us with images of the good life….we grow more cynical because we know that our opinions are manipulated by sound bites and attractive images. What can we believe?”

(Sam Keen Hymns to A Unknown God, Bantam Books, 1995 New York p. 98)

Because Jesus knew what he was doing and where he was going , he was able to walk through such “minefields” without being distracted by the many voices telling him what he ought to do and what he ought to be. He knew who he was and he moved forward with boldness .

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The sense of higher purpose can overcome suffering

Jesus also knew that wherever his purpose would take him he would have to face danger head on. This is, of course, the only way to deal with danger. Otherwise it hangs over us like a black cloud and follows us wherever we go. We spend enormous amount of time and energy trying to remove it from our lives, and we are never quite successful because there is no way that we can remove risk from our lives. If we are to be free we need to capture the Chinese Proverb: “Go straight to the heart of danger, for there you will find safety.” During the sixties some ministers went to their bishop and told him they wanted to take a firm stand for racial equality in their communities but wanted him to guarantee that they would be protected from possible opposition in the churches they served. They reminded the Bishop of the importance of the prophetic ministry. The Bishop affirmed their intention but wisely added, “I do not remember any of the prophets getting a safe conduct guarantee, or even wanting it.”

When you act with abandon you don’t think of safety. Compare the attitude of playing safe with the words of the civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr.:

We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering… Be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double Wvictory.

(Martin Luther King Jr, Strength to Love, Harper, New York, 1963, p. 40)

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You can capture the passion of Jesus

Through the Spirit of God you can capture the Spirit of Jesus.

The first thing that you have to do is to decide that his way is going to be your way.

The next thing that you must do is to pray daily for the Spirit’s guidance . So many of our prayers are to do with asking for things for ourselves. Prayer is more than that. Prayer is often without words but looking for the signs, indicators and opportunities that God reveals to you after you have made your request to show you where to serve.

Then you have to begin to act. This is so important. It is said that Christian church is full of people trying to continue something that they never really began. But if were to follow the purpose of Jesus, we have to move from thoughts to action.

There can be many distractions that keep us from acting. We can actually become immobilized by a preoccupation with “doing it right”. I was involved with Tai Chi for a long time . There are so many things to think about. such as where your feet should be, what your hands should be doing, how one hand should be moving when the other is moving in a certain direction. You have to concerned with how you hold your body. You have to think about balance. There’s no way that you can keep your mind on all those details and still act. There comes a time you just have to do the movements and trust that you have integrated your learning into your way of acting. Otherwise you become like the centipede in the poem:

The Centipede was happy, quite
Until the frog in fun
said, pray, which leg comes after which?
This set his mind in such a pitch
He lay distracted in the ditch
Figuring how to run.

When you capture the passion of Jesus, there comes a time that you just have to act, trusting that what you have learned of Jesus’ way will be an integral part of your actions.

The game of true life is a game of abandon and when we are willing to act with that same singleness of purpose that Jesus acted on, with the same determination in “casting out demons and performing cures” in the lives of people as Jesus did, we will catch that sense of abandon that Jesus had. That sense of abandon will intensify as you catch a vision of the goal line. You will, in fact, be re-enacting the Gospel.