Have you ever been blindsided? Something happened, but
you never even saw it coming?
The snow, for instance. After several mild winters, did you
think we would be hit by repeated snowstorms? Did you see
that coming? I didn’t. I laid out seven super Sundays of
sermons on the churches of Revelation. But you only got
six! I didn’t see coming a snowstorm that would force us to
cancel worship.
Has something ever happened, and you never saw it
coming? Sometimes, it’s just a mild disruption. I went to the
dentist the other day, and was riding down the elevator
looking at the card they gave me about the next
appointment. I walked out of the elevator and right into
someone coming around the door. Just a mild bump and a
mumbled, “Excuse me”. But I never saw that coming.
Sometimes it’s more than a mild disruption. Sometimes it is
a catastrophe when you don’t see something coming.
Several of you have been in auto accidents lately. Nobody
badly hurt, but it is a financial catastrophe when your car is
damaged beyond driving. And just about every time you’ve
told me about these accidents, you’ve said, “This guy came
out of nowhere. The idiot, I never saw that coming!” (I will
not mention, of course, that the idiot has also told HIS pastor
about the moron that HE never saw coming!). Disaster
strikes; we never saw it coming.
But then there is something even deeper. When we don’t
see something coming, it can be more than a mild disruption,
and more than a catastrophe. It can be long, slow decline. It
can be deterioration and decay over weeks and months.
That may be the most dangerous thing not to see. A long,
slow deterioration. A few weeks ago I went into my study,
and noticed that part of the carpet was wet. I didn’t pay much
attention. I thought maybe I had spilled something. But I
went back to the same area the next day and found it even
more damp. I discovered that a valve had been leaking
behind the paneling and behind some bookshelves. As I
began to investigate, I found that I not only had damp carpet,
but also warped paneling, loose floor tiles, mildew on the
bookshelves, and, worst of all, some of my books were
soggy. Now you know me. Take my wallet if you wish.
Abduct one of my children if you must. But leave my books
alone! My precious books had been deteriorating from water
damage a long time, and I never even saw that coming!
But I could have! Had I looked more carefully, I could have
seen that coming. If we had read the Farmer’s Almanac,
which correctly predicted the snowstorm, we could have
seen that coming. If I had put the dental appointment card in
my pocket, I would have seen that lady approaching the
elevator door. If you who have had accidents had been
focused on your driving and not your cell phones or your CD
players, you might have seen the accident coming. And if I
had done some housekeeping, I would have seen the water
damage before it ruined my books. We could have seen
things coming, had we really been attentive. I never saw that
coming – but I could have.
I
America is being blindsided. As a nation, things are
happening that we never saw coming. But we could have.
A
We never saw 9/11 coming, but we could have. Certain
voices were warning us about the growing tide of terrorism.
It should have been no real surprise.
We never saw the stock market’s steep decline coming,
probably because we didn’t want to. We wanted to ride that
bubble as high as it would fly. I used to go to the Baptist
Annuity Board website and let it calculate how much my
retirement pay would be. I fantasized about how good it
would be to retire and get more money than what I get for
working! Well, that was then; this is now. I didn’t see the
stock market fall coming, but I could have. Lots of people
predicted the bubble could not last.
B
America is being blindsided. As a nation, things are
happening to us that we never saw coming. But we could
have.
1
We never saw massive illiteracy coming. We are astonished
that huge numbers of our children cannot read or write. We
never saw that coming, but we could have. We didn’t turn
off the TV and offer them books to read. We didn’t make
sure that they heard correct English. We didn’t sit insist that
they write something as simple as a thank-you note.
Massive illiteracy – where did that come from? We never
saw it coming. But we could have.
2
We never saw urban poverty coming. We thought that if we
would move to Washington from the countryside, we could
leave behind sharecropping and labor, we could work for the
government, maybe run our own businesses. We thought
we had left poverty behind. We were not prepared to
discover that in the nation’s capital, in the very shadow of the
places where bureaucrats spend billions for warheads and
space shuttles, people die of starvation and beg for dimes.
We never saw that coming; but we could have.
3
We never saw illiteracy coming, we never saw poverty
coming, and we never saw abused children coming. We
were taken care of when we were young, and we hope we
have taken care of our own children. But if we have not
looked carefully, we have not seen children who have been
beaten, teenage girls who have been pushed into
prostitution, or young men for whom violence is a way of life.
I talked with a man this week who told me that his earliest
childhood memories include carrying a gun – not a water
pistols or a cap gun, mind you, but the real thing was used to
settle things on his street. We didn’t see that coming, did
we? But we could have.
4
And, brothers and sisters in Christ, we never saw lostness
coming, either, did we? We never saw, and maybe still do
not see, what it means for someone to spend eternity without
Christ. It is not only that in this present life you are stripped
of meaning if you are not in Christ. It is also that out there in
the not yet there is hell if you are not in Christ. But some of
us are walking along our merry way and are not seeing that
either. We never saw lostness coming. But we could have.
It’s in the book!
II
America is being blindsided. We are experiencing things that
we never saw coming. Interesting that the Bible anticipates
this. In Jesus’ powerful passage about the last judgment, He
says that we didn’t see reality around us. He speaks of
those on His right hand, who fed the hungry, clothed the
naked, visited the sick and the imprisoned, but they didn’t
see something. What did they not see? They didn’t see
Jesus Himself in all those situations. And then He speaks of
those on His left hand, who failed to feed the hungry, who
brushed off clothing the naked, who never got around to
visiting the sick and the imprisoned, but, guess what? They
didn’t see either! They didn’t see Jesus in any of those
situations. Neither one saw deeply enough into what was
coming! Some did what they could to help, and that’s good.
Simple human compassion is a great thing. But they didn’t
see all there was to see. They didn’t Jesus in those they
were serving. Others did nothing, and I’m afraid that’s just
the way human sin operates. Doing nothing is our favorite
sin. But the issue is that whether they helped or whether
they did not help, everybody failed to see Jesus! Nobody
saw reality! Nobody really saw the whole issue!
Let me suggest a few things we might see if we look deeper
and see Jesus in those I like to call the last, the least, the
lost, and the lonely.
A
If we look carefully, and see Jesus in America’s needs, we
will learn that there is something more than spirituality AND
that there is something more than religiosity. We will learn to
be whole persons.
Stay with me now. This is important to understand. I meet
two kinds of people who fail to see Jesus in the needs of
others. Some of them are very spiritual; and some of them
are very religious. Those are not the same things. But
whether you be spiritual or whether you be religious you may
be missing the truth!
Some folks are very spiritual. They speak of being spiritual
without being religious. They mean that they are interested
in feelings. They get a buzz from singing or from hearing
uplifting music. They appreciate the beauty of a sunset.
They read inspiring meditations. They get all warm and
fuzzy. They say they are spiritual. But don’t give me that
“church” stuff. Don’t want to get involved in church politics,
can’t deal with committees, not about to fuss with
procedures, don’t want to give money – oh, that’s what
churches always want, money – so just let me be spiritual
without being religious. But that misses reality. You won’t
see real people if you are just spiritual, out there in the ether
somewhere.
However, other folks are religious without being spiritual!
Other folks give themselves to committees and policies,
budgets and buildings, all the hardware that goes into
running an institution. They show up like clockwork on
Sundays and sit through worship dutifully. They read the
rule books to figure out why not to do something new. They
are religious to a fault. But ask them to pray? Ask them to
study the Bible? Take on a ministry? Sit with a lonely
person? Hear the heartbeat of a desperate soul? No way!
That’s for the pastor, isn’t it? Some of us are religious but
not spiritual. But if that’s you, you won’t see reality, any
more than the guy who is spiritual without being religious.
Jesus taught us that we need to serve human needs, and we
need to see Him in all things. We need to be practical and
we need to be spiritual. If you look at Jesus in others, you
will become a whole person.
B
Second, if we look deeper and see Jesus in the last, the
least, the lost, and the lonely, it will teach us to identify with
people in need and not to distance ourselves. If we learn to
see Jesus in those who are struggling, it will teach us that if
we expect to make a difference, we need to be where they
are, we need to feel what they feel.
I am persuaded that much that is wrong with America is that
we are still practicing segregation. You know about
segregation. But I am not talking about the old thing of legal
segregation. I’m speaking of everyday life segregation. And
not so much racial segregation, although that is still with us,
but social segregation. We separate ourselves into ghettoes
where we can live without seeing others who are not like us.
Some of us don’t know any poor people. We don’t live
where they live, and, even if we do, we avoid dealing with
them. We segregate ourselves from harsh human needs.
We ride the subway to work, and it goes underground! You
won’t see poor people there! We hunt for freeways that will
whisk us to our destinations without our driving through
desperate communities where young angry people hang out
or tired, old-before-their-time men stand around. We pull our
children out of the public schools because we want them to
have superior opportunities, but it means that other children
don’t have the benefit of learning from our children. It is
segregation, and we have chosen it!
Why, we even have churches now that are pulling out of the
District and carving out lovely campuses in the green fields
of Prince George’s County, where, if you don’t have a car to
get you there, Lord help you if you want to go to the church!
We are resegregating.
But looking at people and seeing Jesus at work in them will
teach us to identify, to be there with them. I listened to one
of the missionaries whose work we are asked to support
through our missions offering. She said that she and her
husband had decided to live, with their children, on the
Lower East Side of New York, where their mission center is,
so that they would have to see the prostitutes plying their
trade, so that they would have to hear the police sirens all
night long, so that they would be there when somebody got
shot. They identified. They saw Jesus in that suffering.
Maybe that’s not for you. But I tell you, if you at least get to
know somebody on the edge, and see Jesus in the last, the
least, the lost, and the lonely, you will never be caught not
seeing it coming.
C
In fact, if we look deeper and see Jesus in the last, the least,
the lost, and the lonely, it will not only teach us to become
whole persons. It will not only teach us to understand that
they are just like us and we like them. But seeing the needs
of America and seeing Jesus there will also teach us that if
we are going to deal with needy people, we have to deal with
them both physically and spiritually. We have to recognize
the whole range of their needs and be there for them where it
counts the most.
What do you hear when I use my pet phrase, the last, the
least, the LOST, and the lonely? That word, the LOST. Do
you think I am talking about some child who can’t find his
way through the streets? Do you think I mean some
Alzheimer’s patient who no longer knows his address? No, I
am talking about spiritual lostness. I am talking about what it
means to be outside of Christ. I am saying that if you really
want to help somebody, help everything about that
somebody. If you want to see them as Jesus sees them,
then see not only their physical condition. See their spiritual
condition. Fundamentally men and women are spiritual
beings, and their brokenness traces back to being alienated
from God. If you do not see that, you do not see the whole
truth. If you do not deal with that, you will never solve their
problems. You will only be blindsided. You will never see
their real destiny.
Raise a child, give that child food and shelter, education and
attention, but never speak a word about the Lord, never pray
for and with that child? Are we really surprised when he
turns out to be a spoiled brat who indulges himself with every
plaything that money can buy?
Support with our silence a media culture that is obsessed
with sexiness – can you believe that the same company that
gave us Mickey Mouse is now giving us “Who’s Hot in
America?” Support with our silence that sex-obsessed
media, but never show our young people the joy of Christian
relationships? And then we don’t see it coming when
sexually-transmitted diseases threaten to take away an
entire generation?
Permit Maryland’s new governor to ignore the state’s sordid
history and pay for legitimate needs with thousands of slot
machines? Can we not see coming the plague of
racketeering, to say nothing of money being wasted by those
who can least afford it?
Brothers and sisters, I am saying that unless we start seeing
things spiritually, we will be blindsided and will never even
see coming some of the deterioration that America is facing.
It is our task to see Jesus, see what He wants to do, and
witness to that. Fail to do that, and we will have forfeited this
nation. And it will decline and decay, slowly but surely.
III
So what do we do? What is the answer? How do we keep
from being blindsided? How do we avoid never seeing what
is coming?
We get involved. We get involved with hurting people. We
plunge in feet first with the whole gospel. We feed people’s
bodies, and we feed their souls. We cloth people’s
nakedness, and we offer them the robes of righteousness.
We do whatever we find we can do to make a difference in
what a man needs today, but we do not forget about
tomorrow and most of all, we do not forget about eternity.
Our church has made a start. We have seen a few things. I
am sure we have not seen them all. Likely there are some
things coming that we have not yet seen. But, by the grace
of God, we have seen a few things, and we have responded.
Today you can get involved. Yes, next week we are going to
receive a missions offering, and you can give some dollars to
support missionaries. I hope you will, and I hope it will be
generous. That’s important. But it is also the easiest thing
to do, and as such, it’s not enough.
Today you can get involved by signing on to one of our
ongoing ministries. Or you can tell us that you have seen
Jesus in some other need that we haven’t thought of yet.
Today you can begin to make a difference with somebody
who is last or least; today you can focus on somebody who is
lonely; today, and for eternity, you can reclaim somebody
who is lost. All it takes is for you to see this community, this
city, this nation, and see Jesus, with all He has to offer.
Otherwise, things will happen, and you will never see them
coming.
Maybe, in fact, that is the meaning of this Table. Hidden
under this bread is the bread of life, and you may not see
that. Obscured in this cup of wine is the elixir of life eternal,
and you may not have discerned that. But He says we are to
eat this bread and drink this cup “until He comes”. Until He
comes -- maybe the point is that until we learn to see Him in
the needs of people we will never see Him coming.
