Action

A friend of mine loaned me a book the other day. It is called “Under the Overpass.” I have read the first couple of chapters and I am convinced that it is going to be a great read. Now, you must understand that I don’t mean that it is a masterpiece of American fiction like “Geek Love,” but it is turning out to be very amazing book for my understanding of who Jesus is and what He wants from me.

Basically, the book is about a young man who decided to take his pastor’s sermon seriously. The sermon was about being content with nothing, so he decided he would spend some time living homeless. I am a bit concerned that I am going to realize that faith is more than just attending church once a week. Faith may actually mean action.

It is funny, but as I was reading the first two chapters of this book I kept thinking about Jesus feeding the 5,000. Here is why. You see, Jesus looked out on the crowd and was concerned about all of those hungry people, right? So he decides that they need to be fed. Here is where I need to chase a rabbit for just a moment.

A while back I heard a religious person say that Jesus did not really feed this large crowd with just few loaves and fishes. Actually, He just got the disciples off their lazy butts and had them go and take care of something that they thought was too big a job to be done. He said that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was just getting people to tackle jobs bigger than they thought they could handle. Frankly, my dear…

You see two huge points keep jumping out at me. The first one is this. In this account you see that just a few verses later most of these people fall out on Jesus when they realize that they are not going to get a free meal from then on. Actually, they leave when Jesus says that who ever would follow him must eat his body and drink his blood. “Whoa there Savior dude!” was what they said. Well, maybe not exactly, but that is sort of what was going on. Anyway, the scripture says that many of these guys quit Jesus then and there.

Okay, here is my problem. Jesus is like omniscient, right? Thought so. So, if Jesus knew that all of these guys were going to bail, why did he work a miracle for their benefit? I don’t know. I suspect, however, that if the church were omniscient like Christ we would make sure we did not work our social miracles for those who were going to bail pretty soon. Oh, sorry, do we already do that? Hmmmm.

The second point seems to be in line with the rabbit I had to chase a minute ago. There was a huge benefit in this miracle for the disciples. Maybe that religious dude was partly right. Maybe it is a giant miracle to get us off of our lazy butts and do something when we see a problem. Maybe the when a Christian sees a problem they are then and therefore commissioned to step out on faith to do something about it, even if it won’t result in a larger Sunday School role.
I am afraid that this may be the lesson I learn as I read “Under the Overpass.” Maybe my suspicion that someone will bail on Jesus does not grant me license to deny them my Christian service. Hmmmm.