Don't Miss Jesus Due to Preconceptions

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Hello, and welcome to Let's do Lunch with Lamar, a twice weekly lunch and devotional time with the pastor of First United Methodist church of West Monroe, Louisiana. I'm so glad you joined us today. Our hope and prayer is that these few minutes will allow you to come up for air and take a breath in the midst of what is a crazy season of life for us all.

I want to get right down to it today. Scripture is from Matthew's gospel, the 14th chapter verses 22 through 27, which are as follows. "Immediately, he that is Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up to the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time, the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning, he came walking toward them on the sea, but when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, 'It is a ghost.' And they cried out in fear, but immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, 'Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.'"

As we read this story, that's coming right after Matthew's account of Jesus feeding 5,000, not including women and children, with just a few small loaves of bread and a few small fish, I'm reminded of how Jesus is coming off this high and then immediately he and his disciples encounter a storm. But in between the story of the feeding and the story of the storm is something I think sometimes we often overlook, and that is Jesus took time to go off by himself and to pray. The first thing I want to ask us in the midst of the storm of COVID-19 is [inaudible 00:02:14]. Yes, Jesus was gone. A storm came up and the disciples had a rough night, to say the least. Jesus came walking toward them [inaudible 00:02:28] the morning after the storm, and they didn't recognize him. They said he was a ghost.

I think another question this passage begs of us, especially in times like this, is for whom do we look in the storms of life? Right now, there's so many that have lost jobs, have lost money, can't find toilet paper, can't find diapers, can't find hand sanitizers, or have had major issues and rescheduling things in life. There's lots of uncertainty going on. I know for so many, we just want some stability, somewhere, some part of our life to be stable. I wonder how often we allow ourselves to overlook the one constant that is throughout life in the highest highs and the lowest lows, and that's the abiding presence of Jesus Christ. For whom do we look in these times of trouble?

But Jesus was coming to them and they didn't recognize him. They thought he was a ghost. I think one of the reasons why they missed who it was wasn't that he looked like a ghost, but because their mind had never thought about the fact that Jesus could come to them in this way. How is Jesus approaching you, and yet you're missing him because you're not expecting him to come in that direction? You're not expecting him to come in that way. I submit to you that what we tell our children in Bible school and in Sunday school is absolutely true. It's the same thing jesus told his disciples in the last words of Matthew, when he said, "And I will be with you always to the end of the age." We learn that as children so often in church. Jesus said it to his disciples and yet our behaviors belie that. How often and how long are we going to struggle through looking for certainty in so many other ways, because we fail to heed that which we have learned? And that is Jesus' promise that he is with us always.

My friends, Jesus is here and he is with us. Don't miss him because you have preconceived notions of from where Jesus will appear, how he will appear, and what will he look like. Money comes, money goes, jobs come jobs go, crises come, crises go, but God's love stays with us forever. I know it's desperate right now for many, and I'm not dismissing that, but let us remember to cling to and hold fast to Christ our Lord. Let us be sure that if we don't believe we're seeing him, let us be sure to be humble enough to ask God for help by the Holy Spirit to show us what we cannot see on our own, the abiding presence of Christ our Lord. This, my friends, is the word that I shared with you today in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.