Me, Lord? (Maundy Thursday)

"Me, Lord?"
Matthew 26:17-30

        “Me, Lord?”
"Surely, you don't mean me, Lord?"

Me?  Good old me?  I know I'm not perfect.  Nobody is.  But, me?  Me, Lord?  Do you really think it's me?  You know I'd never do such a thing.  Don't you?  I mean, I've been one of your troopers.  You know how many church committees I've served on.  You know how I taught at CREW night.  You know how much I read in the Bible.  You know how many years I've been your man.  You know what I gave up for you.  Right?  What I continue to give up to follow you?  You know that, right?  You know everything I do for you, don't you.  I know you've got to realize that.  Me?  Really; me?


Why would you have to ask this question if you knew the answer, either way?  Either you know for sure you are the one.  Or, you know for sure you aren't.  So, why did they all—every disciple—ask that question?

What was going on in their own heart of hearts?  What was on each of their minds.  What were they thinking about that made them feel at least semi-guilty enough to wonder if Jesus knew something they only held in their heart and minds?

So, be honest with yourself.  Imagine Jesus is sitting here.  He suddenly stands up and says, "One of you is going to betray me."  Why would you ask the responding question, "Surely, you don't mean me, Lord?"

What is it you have been carrying around that makes you feel like a betrayer?  What do you think Jesus knows about you, that others don't, that fits the betrayal category?

What does betrayal mean, and how might something about you fit that definition?

Betray:
—to be disloyal
—to be unfaithful in guarding a trust
—to disappoint the hopes or expectations of another
—to breach a confidence
—to deceive or misguide
—to desert
—to go against your beliefs or principles

Looking at these definitions, you should be able to find at least one of those that fits you.  We are all betrayers on one level or another.

You may have been disloyal to a spouse.  You may have thrown another person under the bus to protect your own fragile ego and artificial reputation.

You may have been entrusted with other's secrets, and holding those secrets gave you a sense of fake power, and telling those secrets made you feel even more powerful.  But in fact, your desire for that power betrayed another's trust and fragile vulnerability.

You may have seen the hopes and expectations for you in the eyes of your children, and betrayed those hopes time and time again, for what?

You may have tried to instill confidence in others concerning your abilities to handle a certain situation.  And then performed in a lame and lackluster way.

You may have been unwilling to own up to the times you fell on your face, but instead denied, deceived, blamed, and deflected others from the truth about you, in order to protect your fragile ego.

You may have abandoned your post, whatever that position was, in order to do it your way.

You may have touted your high personal standards but never saw the huge gap that lay between your touted beliefs and the actual way you were living and behaving.

Those are all forms of one kind of betrayal or another.  I'm sure you can think of more.  We are all guilty of being a betrayer.  Own it.  It may make you hang your head in shame.  But own it, nonetheless.  It is who we are.  Me, Lord?  Yes.


But Jesus' statement moves this confrontation from the general to the personal:  "One of you is going to betray me…"  Jesus isn't saying, "One of you is going to be a betrayer, generally."  It is a more precise statement.  "One of you is going to betray me."

And I think we also have to ask, Why wasn’t Jesus even more specific?  Why didn’t Jesus say, “Judas, you are going to betray me”?  Why did Jesus make it a bit more general than that, not just calling Judas out, but making them all feel the guilty possibility that all of them had something about them that was a betrayal to Jesus.

So we have to think in the particular to Jesus' statement.  And we have to think personally.  What if we were in that room?  For what reason would we ask the question, “Me, Lord?”  Using the definitions I have listed, how are you betraying Jesus?  When we look down that list, which of them makes us ask the question, "Surely, you don't mean me, Lord?"

How have you been disloyal—to Jesus?
How have you been unfaithful and untrustworthy—to Jesus?
How have you disappointed the hopes and expectations—of Jesus?
How have you breached a confidence—with Jesus?
How have you been deceptive and misguiding—to Jesus?
How have you deserted—Jesus?
How have you gone against your beliefs and principles—in Jesus?

How have you betrayed Jesus?

Me, Lord?


What is of great comfort to me is what happened after Jesus dropped this bomb on the disciples.  Jesus convicted all the disciples, and all of us followers of Jesus ever since.  All of us.  Jesus made all believers answer to his statement:  One of you will betray me?  Jesus pricked all of our consciences so that we ask, "Me, Lord?"  Jesus made us all face reality and hang our heads.

But then Jesus led the disciples into what we now call the Lord's Supper, or the Last Supper.  Judgment, then Grace.  Driving us into a dead end, and then plowing a road through it.  Making us hang our heads, but then putting a hand under our chins and lifting our faces.  Making us look at ourselves in a way we'd have rather not, and then making us look at Jesus in a way we rather would.  Making us drip tears from realizing our own selfish truth, and then transforming them into tears of realizing Jesus' forgiving truth.  Sensing the angelic choir pointing their fingers at us in unison:  "You!  You!  You!"  And then hearing the angelic choir rejoicing in song over the forgiveness of one repentant sinner.

Is it me, Lord?  Yes it is.  We all have to be honest with Jesus and say, It is me who is guilty of betraying him.  But, yes, it is us Jesus has come to forgive, despite that betrayal.  It is that personal confession that gains our place at this table:  “It is me, Lord.”  Jesus wants us—his betrayers—at this table with him.  It is us Jesus wants to eat this bread with.  It is us Jesus wants to drink from this cup with him.  It is us Jesus wants, more than anyone, to see the great love He is demonstrating here.  Yes, it is us.  Yes, it is all for us.

Giving Up A Safe Jesus

“Giving Up A Safe Jesus”
Matthew 21:12-13

Here are some pictures of Jesus. 

There's a lot I don't like about this picture.  He's a total white guy, with blue eyes with a face as long as a horse's.  Plus there are those weird hand gestures, one of which is in the two finger salute, and the other is pointing to the picture of the heart with one valve.  It looks more like a hot water bottle than a heart.  Just too weird.

Here's the next one.

As with a lot of pictures of Jesus I looked up, this guy looks like he just came out of the beauty salon with perfectly coifed hair and the immaculately trimmed beard.  And what's up with the two pronged chin beard?  This one is also wearing some kind of feminine blouse, and has just too much of a girly-man look about him to relate to too many people.

The third one also has the secret sign language going on.  Also the split chin beard.  But the expression on his face has too much of the deer-in-the-headlights look to it.  Or maybe like he just smoked some peyote and isn't sure which plane of existence he's on.

The fourth picture is kind of endearing. 

Jesus with a child.  Awwwww.  How can you get anymore cute than that?  And Jesus is catching butterflies on his finger while teaching the child all the names of the flowers.  Isn’t that sweet?  His hair is also perfectly blow-dried and feathered back.  Certainly Jesus can't be seen looking unkempt.  There isn't anything wrong with the baby-holding Jesus, but Jesus is much more than that.

What's wrong with most of these pictures that can be found in an interweb search is that they show a white-guy Jesus, who wouldn't swat a fly.  Most of the pictures also show a Jesus who is a bit androgynous and it's hard to tell what gender he actually is.

I did find a picture that showed Jesus as a total he-man. 

Here's Jesus with his bristling biceps, ripping the cross apart.  You can just picture him, jumping down from the busted up cross, banging the heads of the Roman soldiers, and then with a Hungarian accent saying, "I'll be back!"  But this, too, is, for me, an unsatisfying depiction of Jesus.

I found one picture of Jesus I kind of liked.

No beauty salon hair here.  No androgynous Jesus.  No sneaky hand signals.  No flower sniffing Jesus.  In fact, he looks kind of dangerous.  He has that look in his eyes that shows he's a person of determination, who's willing to take a risk with God.  There's even a bit of a look in his face along the lines of a semi-deranged schemer who is not quite safe to be around.  His expression seems to be saying, "I am totally committed, and if you aren't, get out of my way."

Maybe you liked some of those pictures of a pasty white Jesus with perfect hair.  With a lot of the stories about Jesus in the gospels, it's hard to get a picture of what Jesus really looked like.  And what I'm getting at here is not exactly his Jewish, middle eastern look, but his visage, his expression, his body language, his demeanor.  What was it like to encounter Jesus' personna?

One of the stories that gives us a glimpse of that is this story that is in all four gospels—of Jesus clearing out the temple.

Let's get a picture of what's going on in this story.

It was the time of the Passover Festival in Jerusalem.  It was at this festival the Jewish people celebrated the Exodus from Egypt.  You will remember that at that time of the Exodus, the people were instructed by Moses to kill a lamb and smear its blood over the outer doorways of their homes.  This would protect them when the angel of the Lord moved across Egypt and killed the firstborn in every house where there was no blood on the door.

Part of the Passover Festival was the reenactment of that time, and lambs were sacrificed on the altar in the temple.  It was a symbolic way the people remembered how God spared, and continues to spare them from death and the powers of darkness.

But they had to be perfect lambs without blemish.  People would bring a lamb of their own.  The temple inspectors would look the lamb over.  And they would, more often than not, find what they called a blemish.

What was really going on was the family of Annas, the high priest, began renting out space in the outer court of the temple to specific merchants who sold supposedly unblemished lambs for the sacrifice.  At inflated prices, of course.  For which, the high priest would get a kick-back for each lamb sold.  The inspectors, the merchants, and of course the high priest, were all in on the scam, perpetrating one big swindle.

But wait.  There is more!  If you wanted to buy a lamb (or had to buy a lamb because of the inspectors), you had to use the coinage of the temple.  Which meant a person had to exchange their Roman money for the temple coins.

This monetary exchange business was a booming one, also under the protective and ambitious eye of the high priest's mafia.  There was a fee that was charged for simply exchanging your coinage to the temple equivalent, so you could then buy your unblemished lamb at more than twice the cost.  The money exchangers were making literally thousands of dollars a year at these festivals from the fee they charged.  And of course, the high priest would get a percentage of that.

But wait.  That is not all!  There was one additional side of this institutionalized criminal activity.  The outer court was the only place in the temple in which Gentiles were allowed to worship.  If you were a Gentile convert, you were not allowed to go into the second court of the temple to worship.  If you wanted to come and say your prayers, to sing your praises to God, to discuss your spiritual life, and you were a Gentile, you had to do that in the outer court—with all the sheep and religious hucksters.  This outer court is where Jesus wanted to pray.

But how could you worship with all the bleating going on?  Imagine, it would be like we Christians were only allowed to worship in Allen Fieldhouse on the KU campus; or in the Octagon of Doom at KState.  But every time we were allowed to worship in one of those two venues, a basketball game was going on at the same time.  There we are, trying to sing, and pray, and listen to God's Word, trying to keep our attention on what we are there for, but with all the crowd noise and shoving going on from the basketball game.

So, Jesus is standing there, in the entry leading into the outer court of the temple, watching this big business in action, which is taking advantage of the large crowds of pilgrims swelling the population of Jerusalem during the celebration of Passover.  Jesus, from his vantage point is also keeping an eye on the priests and high priest, who are all on a second level, looking down with greedy eyes upon the din.

Which Jesus, in the pictures I showed you at the start of this message, would you want looking over this scene in the outer courtyard?  Which Jesus do you think could handle this institutionalized menagerie?

What would each of those pictures of Jesus be thinking as he looked on?  What would be going through his mind?  Most of those Jesus' from the pictures I showed would probably be thinking, "What can I do?  It's just the way it is.  Guess I should just get used to it, like everyone else has."

The outer courtyard of the temple, where all this was going on, was a very large area.  It would have had the capacity to hold several hundred sheep.  And money changers.  And T-shirt selling booths with t-shirts that might read:  "I survived Passover!"; or, "Baaaaa!  Humbug!"  And souvenir salesman.  And fast food trucks.  And entertainers—jugglers and fire eaters.  All of these apparently competing with one another, but all actually working for the same godfather, the high priest.

Which Jesus could take that all on?  And once he did, did he clear out the whole courtyard?  Or did he only go for a corner of it, trying to make a big statement with only a small example?

Which of these Jesus' would go into attack mode?  Maybe the last two—the cross busting Jesus, or the Jesus with a bit of a wild look in his eyes.  But not the first four.  They wouldn't take the chance to get their hair mussed up.  It would be a Jesus who would take the chance, even though that chance may not have any kind of lasting effect.  But at least he would be doing something.

Because what do you think the outer courtyard was like the next day?  Or even the next hour?  Business as usual.  Though it was dramatic and stirred things up a bit for an hour or so, wasn't Jesus' action too little, too late?

But part of what Jesus was trying to accomplish was hit the high priest where it hurt—in his wallet.  In effect, what Jesus was courageously doing was shouting out-loud to the pilgrims, the everyday people, "Hey!  Guess what!?  All those sheep in there, all that sacrifice stuff—it doesn't matter anymore.  You don't have to buy any more sheep.  You don't have to be preyed upon by a religious establishment that has lost its spiritual center.  In a few days there will be one Sacrifice that will take care of all sacrifices forever.  So forget about them in there!  Their notion of the practice of personal piety has become distorted and perverted."

After hearing that, the people were ecstatic.  They can't believe their ears.  As the Bible story says, "…all the people kept listening to Jesus, not wanting to miss a single word."

Slowly, but surely, the sheep and shekel business' in the temple begin to dry up.  Jesus is able to to reach into the hearts of the people with the message of what God really desires from people:  no more with the smoke screens of religious sacrificial hoo-doo, and meaningless traditions.  No more being a good company man to a religion that is bad company.  No more being a part of an institution that doesn't know, nor does it teach what the essence of God is all about.  No more going through the motions of "proper" religiosity, yet never knowing how to pray.  No more swimming atop the surface of creedalism, yet never diving deep into the mysterious presence of God.  No more with the stroking and building up of layer upon layer of institutionalized religion, with all the proper committees, but no trace of worship.  No more marketplace religion where salvation is bought and sold.  No more prostitution of church economics.  No more manipulation of the gospel.  No more corruption at the very core of the church's fellowship.

Which of those Jesus pictures do you see leading such a transformation?

What that Jesus is telling the people is that the true purpose of the temple, of any place of worship, is to gain a glimpse of the mysterious presence of God.  What that Jesus is doing is taking those who have been hurt and bilked by the religious system, who go away saying, "If that's religion, I want nothing to do with it," and telling and demonstrating to them what true worship is all about.  What that Jesus is effectively doing is courageously leaving the religious marketeers with lots of supply and no demand.

Which of those Jesus pictures do you see freeing people to actually becoming the people of God?

If we're going to answer the question of this Lenten series ("Who do I want to be in the future?  What kind of person do I want to become?  And, what am I willing to give up to become that person?) we need to pay attention to this story.  Because the kind of person who makes things happen has to have a certain wildness in their eyes and heart.  They have to courageously take risks.  They have to be people who aren't good for religious business, but are exceptional at devotion, motivating worship, and a prayerful life that turns over tables and starts a revolution.

Giving Up Santa Claus Prayers

”Giving Up Santa Claus Prayers”
Matthew 26:36-42

One little girl wrote to Santa,

Dear Santa,

I better get my pony this year (and then in small print underneath that) or there will be consequences.

Another wrote:

Dear Santa,

If you can’t buy what I want, take it easy on yourself.  Just give me tens and ones of money.

And another:

Dear Santa,

How are you?  Well, enough chit-chat.  Let’s get down to business.  This year I (and the I was huge) want:

1. A big space LEGO set
2. Some jelly beans
3. A Sharks jacket and hat
4. An AK-47 assault rifle
5. Any Nintendo game

We laugh at these kids letters to Santa.  There are 100’s of them on the World Wide Interweb.  Some are clever.  Some are poignant.  A majority of them will make you smile.  Until you realize that many of your prayers to God are along the same vein:  Give me what I want.  Or there will be consequences.

Or you sit down and pretend you intend to chit-chat with God, but quickly give that up and end up “getting down to business” with your list of demands.

It’s too easy in our culture, in the ways that we pray, to get God and Santa mixed up.  We assume that we can address both of them the same way.

But that would be a major mistake in our relationship with God.  Here’s one of the main differences between our conversations with God vs. our conversations with Santa.  When we ask Santa for something, we’re telling Santa what we want.  We aren’t asking Santa to tell us what he thinks we should receive.  We are making demands, and we completely expect Santa to comply.  That’s Santa’s job.

On the other hand, listen to Jesus’ prayer to God in Gethsemane:

But let what you want be done, not what I want.  (vs. 39)

But if I must drink (from this cup), may what you want be done.  (vs. 42)

Jesus is not telling God what he wants done, nor is Jesus making demands.  Jesus wants to know what God desires, but not just for knowledge’s sake.  He wants to know so he can do what God wants.

We might be willing to pray what Jesus prays, if we know exactly what God wants done by us.  We could at least weigh in the balance what we want compared to what God wants, and then make our decision.  But even then, we are still weighing our own wants against God’s.

But what if we have no idea what God wants for us in a particular situation?  Are we willing to totally put our own desires aside, giving way to God, not knowing what that way actually is?

Again, as in another sermon in this series, this is a matter of ego.  Because, part of what Jesus is setting aside—maybe a large part—is ego.  Ego says, “I know best what is best for me”; or, “I’m the boss of me”; or, more subtly, “God gave me a brain to use, and I’ll use it in this situation, rather than choosing to go in a direction blindly—even if that direction has to do with God.”  Ego/self will attempt to sabotage the mysterious ways of God every time.

And note, this is something huge Jesus is sweating blood over in prayer.  This is not just trying to decide between the navy blue or off-white toga.  This is about giving in to one’s destiny whatever that may be.  Of choosing to be obedient to God even though that meant, for Jesus, ending up in a horrible death.

So, how does a person choose or pursue their destiny?  Even if that destiny is a big mystery?  Do I get a say in what direction my life will take, or what my destiny will be?  Or, as Jesus did, do I completely kneel to the will of God, no matter what?

This is a hard choice.  And this is a huge decision.  It seems to me, talking to Santa about something like this is highly dangerous.  The reason that is so is because Santa is a big, fat embodiment of our ego.  It’s asking only our self what our self should do.

When Jesus went through his temptations in the wilderness, Satan was playing the role of Santa (isn’t it weird that Santa and Satan have the same letters) in the temptation of Jesus.

“Let’s make bread so you can eat something.  Go ahead and satisfy yourself.  Nothing wrong with that.”  How does Jesus respond to that taunt?  He tells Satan, “A person doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Do you get that?  It’s what God says, not what I may want that matters.

“Here’s the kingdoms of the world—I’ll give them all to you!”  And what does Jesus say to this?  “Begone Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”  Did you get that?  We live to serve God, not the other way around.

So, in this prayer in the Garden, concerning his destiny, Jesus is rejecting the Santa/Satan/self prayer.  That prayer is, “Don’t make me go through this.”  Instead Jesus accepted the egoless prayer:  “Let what you want be done.”  As in the temptations in the wilderness, and here in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is faced with giving God his destiny rather than clinging to an ego-filled, self-chosen destiny.

Next, notice Jesus’ emotional state when he was praying:  “sad and troubled.”  It is when we are sad and troubled that we are most tempted to look for the easy—Santa—way out.  “What can I do to quickly and with the least amount of effort, move out of this sadness and trouble?”  Or, as Jesus prayed, “...if it is possible, take this cup of suffering away from me.”

When we’re sad and troubled we want the easy way, the least painful way.  We are already in pain—we don’t want any more; and we especially don’t want to know the road we are headed down is going to lead to something really bad.

That’s what we expect from Santa.  We ask for any outlandish gift we want, and Santa is supposed to deliver—right?  Give me what I want.  Santa asks no questions about our requests.  Like, “What are you willing to give up if I give you what you asked for?”  Santa never asks those kinds questions.  We just say to Santa, “Give me, give me, give me,” and then expect Santa to reply, “Yes, yes, yes.”

But that’s not how it is when we pray to God.  We may try the, “give me, give me, give me,” approach with God, but how does that go usually?  God doesn’t like being used as Santa, no matter how well intentioned your Santa prayers are.  God wants to know if we are in tune with him, not just in tune with ourselves.  Our asking prayers can’t just be asking for asking sake—which is what Santa prayers are.

And our Santa prayers are usually in the form of a long list.  Usually when we pray out of the self, the prayers—the requests—are selfish and many.  Selfishness breeds more selfishness.  But our authentic God prayers are singular—just one thing is prayed:  “Not what I want, but what you want.”  We pray that singular prayer every Sunday—it’s the first petition in the Lord’s Prayer that sets up everything that follows in that prayer:  “Thy will be done.”

As we get closer and closer to Easter, this prayer, “Thy will be done,” will become more and more important.  Remember the question that got me thinking about this whole sermon series.  It was Alan’s question:  What is your future/What kind of person do you want to be, and what are you willing to give up to make that happen?  “Thy will be done,” is one of the main prayer/answers to that question.

Giving Up the Idea the World is a Safe Place

”Giving Up the Idea the World Is A Safe Place”
Matthew 10:16-23

In Boston, last Saturday, a 22-year-old woman was studying and doing work at a table in the Winchester Public Library’s reading room.  Then, apparently for no reason, 23-year-old Jeffrey Yao attacked her with a 10-inch knife. The woman suffered numerous slash and stab wounds to her head and upper torso, and later died of her wounds.  Several people tried to help her, including a 77-year-old man who was stabbed in the arm.  He was treated and released.

Stories like this get lost in the horrific news of mass shootings like the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 851 injured; or, in Orlando, Florida where a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 58 others in a nightclub; and, the latest where 17 were killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  Not to mention the shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where the gunman killed 26 and injured 20 others.

It seems like every week we are cast into the middle of the most recent mass shooting in large cities and small towns alike.

And then there are natural disasters such as hurricanes, and earthquakes, and the possibility that Yellowstone National Park will erupt into a super volcano; not to mention tornados like the one that nearly destroyed Greensburg, 30 miles down the road.

And then there are world leaders, including our own, who are posturing and bragging about how big their nuclear buttons are, and how close they are to pushing them.

Here in our town, we recently had a handful of bike riding thieves terrorizing people, and doors were being double-locked and surveillance systems were being bought and installed.

Do you feel safe?  Just because we live in a small, south central Kansas town, does that make us immune to the tragedies that happen in the world every day?   It doesn’t matter where or who you are.  It certainly is enough to make you look over your shoulder while you’re checking out books at the library, in case some whack job walks in with a hunting knife and starts stabbing people.

It is a crazy world.

One of the things I remember from my studies in Sociology is what’s called “the law of mutual predictability.”  What the law of mutual predictability is, is that when we are dealing with others in social situations, or just every day situations, we can mutually predict how the other is going to behave.  It’s based on how we have all agreed to abide by certain mutually predictable behaviors, so we don’t have to be guessing all the time about how others are going to behave.

An example might be, when you’re walking down the sidewalk, and someone is walking toward you from the opposite direction, you can mutually predict you will pass each other without altercation.  You can predict that that other person isn’t going to suddenly stick their foot out and trip you onto our face on the sidewalk for no reason.  That’s just not the unspoken social agreement we have with others who share the sidewalk.

But it’s these very random acts of misbehavior, that break that law of mutual predictability, that make our world so bizarre and dangerous.  Because they aren’t just some socially mischievous person trying to trip you on the sidewalk.  It’s someone cutting a hole in their upper floor motel window so they can slide a high power rifle through that hole and try to shoot you.  That’s just not supposed to happen.

I should be able to expect that I can go to the public library and read a book in solitude and quiet without someone trying to stab me to death.  I should be able to go to school and see my friends, and have a crush on some girl who doesn’t know I exist, and get homework assignments I can groan about; not, hide under my desk and have someone randomly walk up to me and shoot me.

None of those people in the events I listed at the outset of this message, got up that morning and said to themselves as they looked in the mirror, “I predict I’m going to get shot today; or stabbed; or tripped on the sidewalk by some idiot and break my nose.”  No.  They looked in the mirror and said, “This is going to be such a great day!  I’m going to a concert tonight;” or, “I’m finally going to ask that girl out,”; or, “I’m looking forward to going to the library and get some research done.”

You just never know, anymore.  And that’s why our world is such a messed up place.  There is no, total, mutual predictability anymore.

Now here’s the hardest thing about all that.  Right here in the Bible, right here in the verses Deb read, it tells us that’s the very world Jesus sends us out into.  And Jesus has to tell us, as we are being sent out into that world, to, “stay alert,” or as the NIrV has it, “Watch out!”

Yeah, I guess so, since Jesus describes the world out there as a wolf pack:  I’m sending you out as sheep among wolves.”  Thanks a lot.  To the Wolfpack world, we look like lamb chops on four legs.  Great.

But it’s not just the way of the world that gets me in this statement of Jesus.  It isn’t just about the hazards of the world.  The “wolf pack” is an aptly descriptive term for the hazards and dangers of the world as it is.

One of the ways Christians have tried to cope with the wolf pack world is to live outside of it, in closed communities, cloistered away, cut off from the world.  Or, like the Christian monks who became hermits—the so-called desert fathers and mothers—who tried to escape from the world by isolating themselves, trying to be faithful in that way.

But that’s not the way Jesus wanted his believers and followers to respond to the dangerous world.  In fact, Jesus’ way is the direct opposite:  “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves...”. Jesus is not telling his followers to avoid the wolf pack world, but to throw themselves into the middle of it.

I have spent a certain amount of time in Benedictine monasteries during study leave.  It’s nice, even safe, to be in those places for a week or two at a time.  Everything is quiet.  Everyone smiles.  Conversation is easy.  Books are plentiful.  The law of mutual predictability is as thick as maple syrup.  As nice as that is, it’s not what Jesus told us to do.

By contrast, there are a group of Jesuits in a monastery in Hollywood, who do things a bit differently.  Even though they all live in the monastery, they all have secular jobs out in the real world of Hollywood and other parts of greater LA.  They are out there, trying to make their Christian lives work in the unsafe, secular, wolf-eat-wolf world.  I find that very intriguing.  That’s, at least, closer to what Jesus is asking us to do in these verses.

So certainly we might be asking ourselves, Why would Jesus do that?  Why would Jesus nearly demand that we put ourselves as believers in harms way?

Yet, God did that with Jesus—His own Son—by plunking him down in the world.  Being a Christian doesn’t automatically or magically keep you safe.  Because we aren’t asked to live in a safe place.  Being a Christian doesn’t give you a pass card from the horrors of the world.  Instead, apparently, being a Christian puts us in the middle of a horrifying wolf pack.

Thus, learning and growing into being a Christian is not learning how to avoid the wolf pack world.  Instead it is learning how to live in the midst of that wolf pack world and surviving.

How does Jesus describe this wolf pack world?  What can we expect will be some of the various behaviors that will be unleashed upon us in this unsafe world?

First, Jesus said, “Some people will impugn your motives...”. In other words, people are going to attack your faith and try to get you to doubt why you believe the way you do, and why you act the way you do as followers of Jesus.  They will try to get you to second guess this whole Jesus thing, and why you would ever want to be Jesus’ disciple.

So, in order to protect yourself from such wolffish attacks, you have to know what your motives are in the first place for wanting to be a disciple.  You have to know why you believe what you do, and why you act the way you do.  If you don’t, when the wolves attack, you won’t be able to defend yourselves.  Because you won’t know yourselves.

Secondly, Jesus said the wolves will try to smear your reputation.  Everyone has a reputation.  It’s just a matter if it’s a good one or bad one.  I guess a person can rest easy if they have a bad reputation—there’s nothing to smear that isn’t all dirty anyway.

But if you have a good reputation, that will be one of the first places the wolves will attack.  Because if they can get you to trip up, and besmirch your reputation, then they’ve got you.  The assumption here, in Jesus’ statement, is that you have a reputation to smear.  So the best way to protect yourself is to build a great personal reputation, and work hard to keep it sparkling.

Thirdly, Jesus said the wolves will haul you before the authorities.  This is doubly scary, because it says, first that the wolves have the power to do so.  And secondly, and probably more scary, it says the authorities are as corrupt as the wolves.  The wolves wouldn’t want to haul you before authorities who are just and fair and righteous.  The wolves want to get you in front of authorities who are corrupt, who have sacrificed their sparkling reputations already, and don’t care at all for those of us who are followers of Jesus.

And fourthly, and most sad of all, the wolves may be members of our own families.  There may be family members who don’t get Jesus, let alone being one of his followers.  And they will do everything they can to sabotage your relationship with Jesus, and the reasons you are following Him.

Family members may feel judged by being around you, even though that’s not your intention.  They want the family to be like it was before you became all religious.  So they may play the part of the wolves, trying to get you to compromise your faith, so you can again become like them—for the sake of the family.  Like I said, it’s hard to fathom how even our families can become a part of the unsafe, and wolffish world.

There’s a lot of howling going on out there in the world.  Just having to hear that can make us timid and afraid and want to hide out somewhere.  But Jesus isn’t giving us that option.  Instead, Jesus is asking us to be courageous enough in our faith in him to walk out into that wolffish world, where all the howling is going on, and be his faithful sheep.