How Do You Respond to God?
In the Gospels, we essentially meet three types of people.
The first type are the blind. These are the pharisees and saducees, the romans and gentiles, and all the people who make up the mob that ultimately advocated for the death of Jesus. For whatever reason, they are blind. They cannot see who Jesus is. It doesn’t matter how many miracles he performs or how brilliant his wisdom is, they refuse to see him.
C.S. Lewis once said that the test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget yourself altogether.
But, let’s take Pontius Pilot for example, he was intimately in the presence of God but he seemingly didn’t experience either the self forgetfulness or the sense that he was small. He was spiritually blind, he had no idea who he was talking to.
How many people are there in our world today who are blind. Or, more appropriately, how often am I blind?
The second type of person is the committed. These would be the ones who, at least at first, do what Lewis says and forget themselves in the presence of God and do what he says.
You see that today in Peter, Andrew, James and John. They get in the presence of God, they have some real sense of who Jesus is and they just drop all that they’re doing and follow him, ignoring any potential consequences.
James, Andrew, John, and Peter, they’re committed. They’re all in. They don’t turn back. They don’t ask what the plan is for food and shelter, like they’re committed. Jesus says follow me and they do it.
Then there is the third group. The kinda group. These are the people who Jesus encounters who say things like, yes, Jesus I will follow you, let me just go take care of this thing over here. Or the group that’s fair-weather friends. I’ll follow you so long as you do miracles and I think you’re going to lead a revolution I’m comfortable with.
Today, you know you’re a kinda person when you say things like. Yeah, I kinda want to get in better shape, I’ll work out, just not that much. Or, I kinda want to eat healthy. I mean I don’t want to give up eating fast food and drinking soda and binge drinking from time to time but yeah I kinda want to eat healthy. Or, perhaps more tragically, yeah I kinda want to follow my dreams. I want to write a book and be known as an author but I don’t really want to wake up before the dawn to do it.
A mark of the comfortable life or at least that I am too comfortable in my life is that I end up being kinda about everything. Am I good dad, kinda. Am I an attentive husband…kinda. Do I work hard and work well…kinda. Do I follow Jesus without exception? Kinda.
What type of person are you?
If I’m honest with myself, I probably have to say, at different times, all three. I fluctuate between them. If you look at the Apostles, they did too. As they followed Jesus they went through periods of blindness, periods of kinda, and periods of total commitment.
I think part of the reason why is because we forget. We forget what’s at stake.
Deuteronomy has this absurd line in it…it has God saying: I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Therefore, choose life.”
It’s absurd, right? Like who would choose death and curse over life and blessing?
Yet that’s precisely what is at stake whenever someone is invited to follow Jesus. When we are invited to follow him in the big moments like the moment when we first hear his call…and little moments like remembering that today is the anniversary of the passing of your neighbors husband. To follow Jesus in the big moments and the small ones, when he nudges you…they are…always…always…a choice between life and death. Everytime we choose to follow Jesus…every time we choose a Holy Moment…it brings life. And every time we blindly miss a Holy Moment, or willfully choose an unholy moment, or kinda have a Holy moment, like only Holy Moments that we are comfortable with….in those moments we are choosing death and rejecting life.
The good news is, we are the people Jesus refers to in the Gospel. We are sitting in darkness with a great light coming to us. The light of Jesus. Even if we are blind or still kinda in the shadow of death…rejoice…because this great light has dawned on us.life is calling…the only question left is…how will you respond?
