Marilu Thomas, Take a Chance on Me

A man, his wife and his mother-in-law went on a vacation to Israel. While there, the mother-in-law died. The local church offered two options: he could fly his mother-in-law home for $5000 or bury her in Israel for $150. The man chose to fly the mother-in-law home. The pastor in Israel asked, “Why would you spend all that money to fly her home?” The man answered, “Well, two thousand years ago, a man died here in Jerusalem and three days later was resurrected. I just can’t take that chance.” Ask yourself, can you take the chance that Jesus was resurrected? Like the Swedish pop group Abba sang, “Take a chance on me. If you put me to the test, take a chance on me.”

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus sees “the people harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” We have three concepts here to think about—being harassed, feeling helpless, and wandering like sheep.  When we think of feeling harassed, it is us being harassed by others. Your boss is harassing you to do more work. Your kids are harassing you to buy more stuff. Your spouse is harassing you to do your share of the workload at home. Your friends are harassing you to be more fun like you used to be before you had kids, a mortgage, and a stressful job to pay for it all. You feel harassed to spend your off time with extended family when what you really want to do is stay home. The dog harasses you to go outside, come back in, then go back out. The definition of harass is ‘to demand.’ We hear demands all around us to measure up, do the right thing, say the right thing, not be lazy and not mess up. 

But the most incessant demands come from within us, within our own minds and hearts. We want to be understood, have people love us and be on our side. The boss starts your annual review with ‘an opportunity for growth,’ but you hear that you’re about to be fired. The spouse sighs when you mention a holiday with your side of the family, and your heart clenches with anxiety. A simple text can start up a narrative in your thoughts of hurt and blame. You spend more than you know you should or drink more than you shold, and the guilt starts. Our minds loop with the constant demand for a more perfectly performing version of ourselves. The one who won’t mess up, won’t feel afraid, won’t feel anxious, won’t overreact, or underreact, won’t misread the situation, in other words, the one who has it all together and everyone likes. There is a powerful force at work here- the power of the law. We are helpless in the face of the power of the demands of life to be invincible, self-sufficient, and invulnerable. 

Under the great weight of these demands, our thoughts become like skittish sheep—following after anything that comes along. Rambling down rabbit holes and sinkholes without a guardrail. If you think this is baloney, try to listen to your thoughts for two minutes. You will note that your own personal color commentary will be like puppy chasing squirrels, rarely including thoughts of anyone else. People new to meditation practice are told this is called “Monkey Mind,” which is unsettled, restless and confused. Paul Zahl wrote, “What Jesus did on the Cross moved the monkey off our backs.” And I would add changes the monkey chatter in our minds. 

What does the chatter sounds like? Matt Damon starred in The Informant, about Mark Whitacre,  an ADM executive who embezzled 9 million dollars while simultaneously being an FBI corporate fraud whistleblower. The most fascinating part of the movie is the voiceover of the Mark sharing his thoughts in stream of consciousness. Hearing him think out loud is hilarious and fascinating because it feels spot on. Here’s an example of what he is thinking as the FBI agents are briefing him about covert operations: 

I like my hands. I think they are my favorite part of my body. If I can get people focused on my hands, I can get a good result in the meeting. Eye contact is important, too... When polar bears hunt, they crouch down by a hole in the ice and wait for a seal to pop up. They keep one paw over their nose, so they blend in because they’ve got those black noses. They would blend in perfectly if not for the nose. So how do they know their noses are black? From looking at other polar bears? Do they see their reflections in the water and think, “I’d be invisible if not for that? That seems like a lot of thinking for a bear.”

Speaking of sheep—you are now thinking of either your hands or polar bears. See how malleable we are? Mark's thoughts, like ours, are like sheep looking for a shepherd, wandering about without direction or purpose. When Jesus looks out and sees the people, harassed and made helpless, he has compassion on them. He loves them. He asks his disciples to preach the Gospel to them. What is the gospel and how will it help the harassed and helpless? 

In Martin Luther’s Preface to the Book of Romans, he wrote, “God judges according to what is at the bottom of the heart, and for this reason, His law makes its demands on the inmost heart.” The demands and harassment we feel in the world are a reverberation of the fear at the bottom of our hearts that we are not enough, that we have been judged inadequate.

And guess what-it’s true. You are not enough. Without Christ, you are not enough to withstand the demands and vagaries of this life. That is why the thought “I am not enough” terrorizes us—because it’s true. Without trust in God as your creator, Savior, and friend—you are not enough. Despite your fierce desire for complete independence, you are eternally dependent on God and not self-sufficient. We are harassed and helpless because we want to ‘do it ourselves’ instead of surrendering our minds and hearts to Christ. This passage from Matthew assures us that Christ sees the helpless, the wanderers, and the lost with great love and reaches out to us through the cross with compassion. 

I want to close with a message to a friend who asked me a few weeks ago. “I believe in God and all that—but I don’t understand why Jesus had to die on the cross in such a horrific way. Why did that have to happen? What’s the point of all that?” Here’s my reply: Throughout history, there have been gods and idols who have claimed that a person can get to a more spiritual level by being good. Aristotle claimed that to know what is right is equivalent to being able to do it, that a human being becomes good by doing good deeds. The Buddha said, “Life is suffering” and described the suffering in detail, but did not experience suffering. No spiritual leader surrendered to suffering as a sign of solidarity and love with us other than God come to us as the Christ, God with us. Jesus Christ suffered on the cross so that you would know you are never alone in your suffering. You have a suffering servant in Christ who meets you in any hardship, at the depths of your helplessness, in the middle of your painful wandering, in your acute need for forgiveness and redemption. Martin Luther wrote, “Man is pronounced good by God only when he comes to the end of his failed efforts, that the whole point of Christianity is God’s forgiveness of our failures not his approval of our successes.” Being loved is not about being good—but about the one who loves being faithful. When you are unconditionally loved, the demands and harassment can be faced and fade into the background. When you know that there are no missteps big enough or pitfalls deep enough where love can’t find you, you are safe to love. Jesus suffered to lead you like a lamb out of the quicksand of helplessness and hopelessness into acceptance and belonging.  Call on Him from the rabbit hole of your mind and you will find the peace that passes all thoughts, all demands, and all understanding. Like Abba sang, can you put Christ to the test and take a chance on Him to love you? He took the biggest chance of all to love you. Amen