Losers Finders, Keepers Weepers

Luke 17: 20-36

 

 

          There’s a great routine that Abbott and Costello used to do. Abbott and Costello, by the way, are a comedy team who were famous in the 1950’s.  Many of you have seen the baseball skit. It’s a routine about a baseball team called “Who’s on First?” In the skit, all the ballplayers are named pronouns. Who is on first, What is on second, I Don’t Know is on third. Costello keeps asking for the names of the players and Abbott keeps telling him these pronouns. It drives Costello crazy trying to figure it out.

          Sometimes when you read Luke’s gospel, you might feel the same way Lou Costello did. Luke starts a scene with Jesus talking to the Pharisees, and before you know it, he has turned and is addressing the disciples. It’s easy to miss that segway. When you do, the passage doesn’t make as much sense. You need to know Jesus’ audience, and Luke switches around at will. It can be hard to keep up.  He does it in our passage today when, at the end of the 17^th chapter, Jesus talks about the coming of the kingdom.

          The Pharisees want to know when the kingdom of God will come. Don’t we all!  Jesus says that it won’t come with any signs.  People will not look up in the sky and say Oh wow, there’s the kingdom of God coming down! Then, Jesus says, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. Some translations say “within” or “inside” you. Some say “among” you. The Greek word is entos (εντος), which can mean any and all of those translations. Is the kingdom of God within you? Is the kingdom of God among you? It would seem that context is important here to figure out what Jesus is saying. Without context, it could be either one.

          The coming of Jesus certainly heralded the Messianic Age and, by definition, that was the beginning of the end times. The resurrection and ascension of Christ prompted the arrival of the promised Holy Spirit, beginning with Pentecost. So in that sense, the kingdom of God can certainly be said to be within us to some degree or another, as we experience the presence of the Holy Spirit.

          But Jesus was talking to the Pharisees. If anybody had a lack of Holy Spirit and a poor prognosis for getting a good dose of it, that would be the Pharisees. So when we look at context, and the context here is that Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, then what I think I see is Jesus saying that the kingdom of God is among you. In other words, Jesus looked at those Pharisees and said to them: You wanna see the kingdom of God? Look no further. Here I stand. God incarnate. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, provided you can see.

          But the Pharisees couldn’t see. Nor could they hear. They were looking for God on their terms and he wasn’t interested in their terms. Now of course we don’t do that. We are much wiser than the Pharisees. We don’t want God to be a Sunday at 11 God, do we? We don’t want God to be a Presbyterian God, do we? We don’t want God to be an American God, do we? We wouldn’t want God to be neatly packaged and available on request, now would we? Of course not. We would never do such a thing.

          So Jesus turns to his disciples. Now that’s much more like an affinity group for Jesus. They are his followers.  They get it when he talks, right. And he says to them: The days are coming when you would like to see me again, but you won’t. But when I do come, it will be like lightning. What Jesus meant was a sort of now you don’t see me, now you do thing.  Like Noah, there was the dryness and then there was the flood. No overcast days. Just a flood. Like Lot’s wife, there were all those good times, then get out and don’t look back. But she did look back. We know the end of that story. And Jesus says to his disciples: “Remember Lot’s wife.” When the kingdom of God comes once for all, there will be no warning. Don’t come down from your work. Don’t turn back for anything. It will be too late for that.

          Well, does it help to be a disciple rather than a Pharisee? Do you think the disciples knew what Jesus meant? We know now. I’m not so sure they knew then. What did Jesus mean?

          Jesus says in verse 33 that “Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.” He also said as much in Matthew and Mark’s gospels. What does Jesus mean? In the ninth chapter of this same gospel, Jesus is talking to the twelve disciples after feeding the five thousand, and he says something very similar about losing and finding oneself. And then he follows it with this thought: “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”

          What, indeed! What if I win the race, or pass the test, or obtain the degree, or get the promotion, but I cheated to get there? What if I spend my life getting and spending, only to have to decide in an eye blink whether to hold on to my stuff, my way of life, or to give it all up for a chance at the kingdom of God? What if, what if? I have to go bury my father, said the young man. I have to check on my friends, my livestock, my real estate, my bank account. What if in an attempt to sustain my way of life, my sense of self, my traditions, I ally myself with something or someone who violates all that is sacred to me for the hope that somehow, some way, my lifestyle will be preserved. That’s what Jesus is challenging us to look at.

          There’s an old saying all of us are familiar with. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Think about that. I found it, so it’s mine. No matter what the equities are. There’s a similar saying that even permeates legal thinking. Possession is nine tenths of the law. These old saws say a lot about us and the way we come at life. There’s nothing unselfish about these sayings. They are our attempts to justify what we have, what we want. They cut to the heart of self-preservation. It’s mine. I found it. I’ve got it. Losers weepers!

          Jesus suggests that to employ such a lifestyle is to guarantee the loss of all that really counts. What does it profit you to gain the whole world if in the process the person you were made to be disappears? Do you really want what remains? Jesus suggests a different set of priorities. How about Losers Finders, Keepers Weepers? If you want to find the real meaning of your life, then give yourself to others. Lose yourself, your selfishness—and you will find the person that God created. If you instead choose to keep what you have created for yourself, you can only lose in the end. And that will make you weep when you realize what you have lost.

          Both the Pharisees and the disciples want to know about the end. What happens at the end? We want to know too! And Jesus himself tells us here in this passage. It will come in the blink of an eye. It will be swift and decisive.  There will be no time to modify our behavior or change our priorities. Life as we know it will end. The kingdom of God will arrive forever. Our lives will end here on earth, but our lives will not end. Life never ends. It just changes addresses.

          Jesus said, remember Lot’s wife. He was referring to a person who was warned, given a chance to get out. She was warned not to look back. But she was so selfish, so concerned with what she had accumulated, that she had to see for herself. It cost her everything.

You can’t take it with you; all that stuff you fought so hard to preserve. If you try, you too will be lost. Ask a survivor of Hurricane Matthew. Over and over and over, survivors who have lost everything they own are interviewed, and what do they say? Thank God. Here I stand. I can start over because I was spared.

          Don’t wait until a hurricane or some other disaster comes calling. The time for change is not when you are out of time. It’s now. Right now. Losers finders. Be a finder. Give your life, all of it, to Jesus. He’ll give it right back to you, in a new, improved model that will never wear out.