Empty as a Bubble

There was a man outside the church yesterday evening who was hovering in and out of consciousness.  I walked out the side door to see if he was ok, and quickly noticed that he was holding a cannister up to his mouth, and appeared to be ingesting something from the cannister.  Upon closer observation, he wasn't ingesting, he was inhaling.  I also noticed an empty cannister on the bench next to him. 

I grabbed the empty cannister and read the label.  It was one of those pressurized air cannisters that you use to dust your computer keyboard.  I'm not sure why, but I realized that this man was engaged in something called "huffing", a practice that is often used to achieve an alcohol or drug-like intoxication, typically accompanied by intense euphoria and hallucinations.  I had heard of this before, but had never seen it in action.  I was horrified by what I witnessed.

The young man was bobbing back and forth like a cork in the water, and seemed incapable of focusing his attention on his surroundings.  His eyes were sad and hollow, and he looked as if he could understand what I was saying to him, but lacked the ability to respond.  He slumped several times into the bench, but would intermittently sit up at attention.  It was a disturbing spectacle. 

I tried to talk to him, but he was a blank stare.  Concerned for his life, I approached him and told him that I was going to take the cannister away from him.  I said, "I am going to take this cannister away from you, but if you try to touch me or fight me in any way, I'm going to punch you in the face."  I'm not sure if I really would have punched him, but he needed to know that I wasn't going to take any chances.  I knew that I was approaching the personal space of a man who was sick, but potentially dangerous.  It was as if I was taking human flesh from a zombie.

The only thing I could think to do was to call the police.  It was clear to me that this man's life was in danger.  In a very real way, he already looked dead.  So I called the cops, and they came and picked the man up.  At least he was off the streets and no longer in a life threatening situation. 

I can't stop thinking about this man.  How heartbroken he must be to stoop to such depths.  How depraved he must be to resort to getting high off of a can of compressed air.  But the thought that has been dominant in my mind is that there is someone out there who loves this young man.  Someone cares deeply for him.  He's somebody's child, or brother, or dad or husband.  He's someone's friend. Even though I only saw him for a few moments, I felt a love for him. God has a plan for him, and he almost certainly doesn't even know it, or can't accept it or is blind to it. 

A life without the hope that Christ brings is so desperately sad, and it seems to me that this young man came to a very logical conclusion: Life without hope isn't life at all... It's walking death.  He was simply living the outward manifestation of an inward hopelessness.  He was taking the despair of a life without Christ to its only logical conclusion. 

Jesus said in John 15:5, "I am the vine; you are the branches.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." It's the part about "you can do nothing" that really gets my attention.  When I saw this young man, I saw those words in human form.  In a heart breaking twist of fate, he was staking his hopes on a can of air.  Literally, a can of nothing. 

Apart from Christ, hope is a vapor, and huffing that vapor will never bring meaning.  But with Christ, hope finds its source and substance. 

I wish I could tell you that this young man came to his senses, or that I was able to meet with him later and lead him to Christ.  That didn't happen.  But sometimes we need to see that people are hopeless.  Sometimes we need to come face to face with the ugly, horrifying truth that life without Jesus is terribly empty.  Like canned air, life is full of wind and fury, but empty as a bubble. If we knew that more profoundly and personally, we might be more prone to actually share the love of God with the people around us.  He has a plan for them, and even if they don't know it, we do.  Perhaps we should tell them.  Maybe it would change everything.   

Your Kingdom Come

I've been preaching through The Lord's Prayer lately, and I'm to the part where Jesus tells his disciples to pray, "Thy Kingdom come."  That's a HUGE prayer.  Most of the time we pray things like, "God, please help me stay calm with my children", or "Help me do the right thing when the annoying person in my life starts to grate on my nerves."  Those situations are certainly prayer worthy, but Jesus, in a strikingly simple phrase, tells his disciples to leave the small stuff at the door and ask for the biggest, hairyest, most audacious request in the universe.  And just think about the way He told them to pray.

He didn't say, "When you pray, say this: 'Our Father in heaven, holy is your name.  Please come and get us and take us to your far away kingdom.'"  Nope, He said, "Our Father in heaven, holy is your name.  Your kingdom come."  We could properly translate it "Come, Your kingdom."  It literally means, "God, I want you to bring your kingdom to me.  I want the purpose, meaning and goal of history to be a reality in the here and now."  We have the tendency of thinking that God wants to establish His kingdom somewhere else, but, according to the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, He wants His kingdom to come... Here.

So what does that look like, and how does it play out in our lives?  Well, I think there are two aspects to this phrase that must be identified.  First of all, I believe this phrase has tremendous future implications.  One day in the future, God will fully establish a kingdom on earth, and it will be awesome!  I can't wait!!  As Frederick Beuchner writes, "The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it.”  I know I am!  I am longing for the future kingdom of God, where all things will be made new, and the lion and the lamb will peacefully coexist. 

But the second aspect of this phrase pertains to the present, and that's the sense, it seems to me, in which Jesus is instructing his disciples to pray.  If he were instructing them in the future sense of the kingdom, he would have told them to pray, "Take us to Thy kingdom."  Instead, he is teaching them (and us) that the present sense of the kingdom is to become a reality in us.  The kingdom is to "come".  A future kingdom will one day be established, but in the meantime, God is establishing a present kingdom in the hearts of his people.  N.T. Wright summarizes this beautifully when he writes:

“What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.” 

So, the next time you pray, "Thy Kingdom come", don't glaze over and lose yourself in pie in the sky dreams of heaven.  Instead, know that when you utter that phrase you are literally asking God to build His kingdom in you.  You are not sitting in a bubble bath exhaustedly proclaiming, "Calgon, take me away!"  You are conversely going on the offensive as a freedom fighter against the vile aspects of the kingdom of darkness.  You are proclaiming, "Come, kingdom of God, in every aspect of my life so that as I live out my kingdom citizenry, the goodness of God might shine bright in a dark world."

Now, that's a BIG prayer!


You can listen to Part 1 of my sermon on "Thy Kingdom Come" by clicking here.