Walking After You

Walking After You--January 17, 2018

"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable: 'Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'" [Luke 15:1-6]

The Christ who calls never stays put.

This is a vital point if we are going to really understand what the "call" of Jesus is like.  Jesus doesn't stay put in his comfortable chair, just twiddling his thumbs hoping we'll come to him, and he doesn't just stand in place and call our names, either.   When Jesus calls, he is on the move... to reach us.

We need to be clear about this because I think a fair amount of classic Christian hymnody has given us at best an incomplete picture, and at worst a downright wrong picture.  Countless Christians, for example, have sung the lovely hymn (and it is lovely in its own way), "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling," whose refrain famously goes, "Come home... come home, you who are weary come... Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling, 'O sinner, come home'."  And for as far as that goes, that's all well and good.  But if we are picturing Jesus just sitting on the front porch calling for the cat to come in for its saucer of milk, we are missing the thrust of Jesus' way of calling.  Jesus isn't just "softly" speaking our names from the front door, unwilling or unable to go beyond the welcome mat, but actively leaves the ol' homestead to come out and find us when he calls.  He doesn't stay put, hoping that we'll come to our senses, or waiting for us to accept a good deal when it's offered, or assuming that we are well-enough to get up from the ditch and come to him.  Jesus is on the move, coming out to find us while our name is on his lips.

So let me confess to you that there is another song that comes to mind when I hear these words from Luke's Gospel, and they aren't found in any hymnals... trust me.  There's a song from the band the Foo Fighters (yes, the same band with former Nirvana drummer turned band-leader Dave Grohl... yes, a guitar-driven, loud-noise-making, post-grunge rocking band), which has the line, "If you walk out on me... I'm walking after you," over and over again. 

If you walk out--on me, I'm walking after you.  

If you walk out on me, I'm walking after you.

That's the way Jesus pictures himself calling after us.  There may well be something soft and tender about it, but it is not anemic.  Jesus is neither timid nor unwilling to cross the threshold of the house to come out looking for us as he calls.  Neither is there any sense that he is like you or me in a grudge-holding mood, indignantly crossing his messianic arms and grumbling that he might forgive us and take us back... if we'll come back first with remorsefully with our tails between our legs and do some groveling.  No, that's the way we tend to "forgive" (although it can barely be called forgiveness in that case), in some kabuki theatre performance of exaggerated sorries and stern looks. 

That's the way we talk so often, isn't it? "If HE would come back on his hands and knees and beg for another chance, maybe I'll forgive for the broken promise."  "If SHE would admit she was wrong, I would consider inviting her to the family birthday party, but I won't be the first one to make amends... I'm waiting for her to show a little initiative."  And of course, the reason we do things that way is that you get to hold onto a little more power, a little more prestige and respect if you are the one holding court and waiting for sorry and sad-faced penitents.  It is far more dignified, far more respectable, isn't it, to stay put and wait for the guilty to come to you asking for another chance.  

But that's not how Jesus describes himself.  He doesn't stay put in a position of respectability.  He decidedly does NOT say, "I will be holding office hours from a quarter past three til half past four, and if you want to make your apologies, or audition to get back on the team, or answer my call, you can come and see me then to show me you have what it takes.  Rather, Jesus' kind of calling is always on the move.  He, like the shepherd in his story, goes out to find the ones who are so lost, or caught in the ditch, or turned around, that they would never even know to come back to the shepherd, much less how to get there.

I honestly don't know if any actual shepherds in Jesus' day would have done what Jesus describes.  I have read some commentators attest that what Jesus describes was standard practice of the day, and I have read others who swear up and down that no shepherd in his right mind would risk 99% by leaving them unguarded for one wayward sheep.  And to be honest, I find that there is great wisdom in not speaking on a subject when one doesn't know one way or the other.  (I learned, years ago, from a wise lady who lamented about preachers telling farmers how sheep are supposed to be raised or fields are supposed to be planted, based on their "take" on a Bible story, when they have never gotten dirt under their fingernails from any actual farm labor.) So let's bracket out for a moment whether anybody in Jesus' day would have thought it a good idea to leave the ninety-nine sheep behind to go hunting after another.  It's not about whether anybody else would have done it--it's about what Jesus would do... and does do... and has done.

And most assuredly, Jesus does get up off his seat and actually go searching while he calls us by name.  Jesus leaves behind the decorum and dignity of sitting and waiting for us to come back to him, and instead, even when we walk out of him, there he is... walking after us.  Walking after you.  Walking after me.  

That really changes the picture of how we relate to Jesus, doesn't it?  So often, Christians have fallen for promoting (or maybe mis-promoting) the Gospel by painting this scene of approaching Jesus like the Giant Floating Head of the Wizard in the Emerald City, like Jesus from a distance calls us and we are the ones who come running, hoping that we have done enough to get our trip back to Kansas or a new heart by bringing the Witch's broomstick as proof we've done what he asked of us.  So often, we present the Gospel as an "if-then" sort of deal:  "If you come to Jesus, he will let you in...."  or "If you can find your way in, he will open the door to you..." or "If you will realize that you were lost and get yourself back home, Jesus will leave the light on for you."  But that just ain't how the real Jesus operates!

Instead of a dignified, or even awe-inspiring figure waiting for us to come to him, Jesus abandons all decorum and goes out looking for us.  That means that Christianity is very little about "finding Jesus" and much more about "finding yourself found by Jesus."  Despite the fact that plenty of religious voices over the years have insisted on asking people, "Have you found Jesus?" (although to be honest, most of them only in the last two hundred years--this isn't the way they talked back Jesus' day), Jesus insists that he was never lost.  He was never the one missing.  And for that matter, even if we lose track or lose interest in the so called "tax collector and sinner" crowd, Jesus never has.  

So often, we take this scene from the gospels and assume that the "tax collectors and sinners" are other people--not us, of course!--and that at most, Jesus will allow THOSE people to come to him if they can work their way to find him, while WE (you know, we "good people") just stay off at a distance and watch them come to Jesus.  And from there, we picture that as how church works, too--"outsiders" and "sinners" and "those people" are allowed in, we guess, as long as they come TO Jesus.  And so we figure that THEY are supposed to come TO us in church buildings.  "Invite a friend to church," we say, which is really code for, "because we sure aren't going out to bring Christ's love out there to where people actually ARE!"  But that isn't how this story goes, is it?  Jesus doesn't pick a central location and wait for people to come to him, and he doesn't insist that they have to be looking for him in order for him to be looking for them.  In fact, just the opposite is true: even when we walk out on Jesus, he's walking after us.

The calling is for you... and the calling is for everybody else you didn't think was worthy.

The seeking is for you... and the seeking is for the people who aren't already seeking for Jesus.

The walking is to find you... and Jesus is walking after every last one of us, too.  Because Jesus just won't stay put.

Lord Jesus, come and meet us, come and find us, come and bring us to your side... and lead us to rejoice with you as you draw all people to yourself, too.