Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Go there
Luke 10:3
Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.
I am writing this devotional from my favourite sofa. The CEO of the store from which this sofa was bought some years ago said that sitting on it would be like sitting on a cloud. He was right, and I am pretty comfortable.
Jesus seems to want to disrupt my comfort, He seems to want me to leave and go someplace. But not just anyplace, someplace dangerous, someplace with “wolves” where I am like a “lamb” among them. Doesn’t seem inviting, doesn’t seem like the place I’d want to be. I’d rather be here in my sofa writing about it only.
In 2014 CNN launched a brand campaign titled “CNN. Go There.” CNN said at the time that “the new brand campaign signifies a commitment to what CNN can and will be. With an unmatched global footprint, CNN has the capabilities to go where no one else can.” That is amazing stuff.
My favourite CNN promotional video from that brand campaign features journalist Hala Gorani. She starts out saying “What does it mean to ‘go there?’ It doesn’t mean reading about it, it means packing a bag and going there and talking to the people.” Gorani’s voice over is covered with video of her talking to activists and others in secret, underground in tough places like Damascus in the middle of protest and war, and also talking with marginalised people and groups. The video ends with her saying. “that is why I go there, to get the story first hand.”
I like Hala Gorani’s work. She is a tough lady in a tough business, doing it in the toughest parts of the world. I get to sit on my sofa and watch her work. I like that. I don’t have to take the long arduous and dangerous journeys into these places. I don’t have to hear the gunfire or run when the bombs drop. And, I don’t have to see the bleeding bodies, or the rotting corpses, or the children’s frightened faces. Just a few seconds on the nice screen at home and I’ve had my dose.
But there are other sides to CNN’s “Go There.” It’s not all blood and gore. There is Anthony Bourdain, for example, with his compelling and successful “Parts Unknown.” Bourdain, a chef and travel writer, goes to places in the world where most of us will never ever get to. He eats and drinks with people of all kinds at all levels of those societies and cultures. While he is doing this, and enjoying the food and drink, we get to watch and see those people and cultures in ways we never did before, without tasting the food of course.
I find the CNN campaign and ‘Go There’ philosophy compelling. The CNN International channel is the place to really experience this, not the regular CNN that is America focused. Apart from news CNN International exposes a world that is little known outside of the narrowness of our own countries and cultures in which we are immersed.
Jesus called us to be a people who engage with the world. Our world, and the wider world. He wants us to leave our comfort zone, our community, our culture, and our cherished sofa to engage. He said “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations,” and also said, “you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
In the passage, Luke 10:1-9, we get to see some of this at work. Jesus while He spent most of His life and active ministry within Palestine, didn’t confine Himself to one village or city. He even ventured into Samaritan country which was technically off limit to Jews.
Jesus, as we read here, called His larger team together and selected 70 for some advanced work ahead of His big road tour. He told them to go ahead of Him to the 35 cities and places that he planned on visiting. But He also challenged them to take risks on the trip, “Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals;” Luke 10:4. Jesus urged them to challenge and taste the community, “Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you.” Luke 10:8.
The real point is that we could sit down in our living rooms for as long as we want and criticize this generation, that community, the other race of people and so on; but we could never influence or effect real change from our living rooms (even though with this piece I am trying to influence change from my living room.) Real change requires engagement.
We have to be prepared to explain Pythagoras Theorem to a 14-year-old boy outside of our home who is struggling at school and whose parents never got to high school. We have to promise the pregnant teenager that after this baby we’ll help her enrol in the programme at the community centre so she’ll get to write the examinations. We have to hug the weeping mother and give her strength for the remaining children. We have to tell granny that it’s not her fault and she will have to embrace mothering again so that the grandchildren will make it.
We have to get up off the sofa and hug somebody, touch somebody, talk to somebody. Tell them that we don’t understand either, but we know Jesus, He does. Let them know the comfort that He brings through our embrace. Let them hope again, but this time in Him.
I know all of those people above, my eyes are watering, and my sofa isn’t feeling so comfortable anymore. Never mind the wolves. Let’s Go There!
Think on these things:
- When last did you hug someone who just needed it badly?
- Have you shed a tear with someone who wasn’t your relative?
- How do you reach out to those in need?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would get up and get out to a world that needs Jesus.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
