Invitation to Get Lost
Revelation
21:1-6
Acts 11:1-8
John 13:31-35
I had originally titled this sermon “Get Lost,” but decided that really wouldn’t be a good message to have on our sign out there.
This passage from Revelation is at the same time one of the most comforting verses imaginable, and one of the most frightening.
It begins, “See the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them and be their God, he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more.”
What more could anybody ask for? This is the best news possible. That’s where we want to be. Living with God right here by our side. No more pain, no tears, no death. I want what this guy is selling. You got this, and you don’t need anything else.
Then comes the kicker. “Behold, I am making all things new.”
That’s the scary part. How do we get to this wonderful place? This vision of heaven comes to pass only as a result of God making all things new. That may sound harmless and inviting, in a churchy sort of way. Maybe even refreshing. Especially if you see yourself in a bad place—where change is not only better but can actually be lifesaving.
But if you’re in a comfortable place, any mention of change makes you queasy. Especially regarding the church. This goes way beyond trying a few new wrinkles or innovations; in Revelation, God says, “I am making all things new.”
Can you imagine if you walked into this sanctuary today to find that all things were new? What if absolutely nothing about this service was familiar? I don’t think you’d stay long.
I’ve been reading a book called Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales, a study of what makes people survive or not survive dangerous encounters with nature. One chapter deals with people who become lost in the wilderness.
According to psychologists, the way we make sense of our world is by creating and carrying with us mental maps of what we perceive our surroundings to be. As long as our surroundings match what our mental map says it should be, we’re ok. The definition of being lost is simple: when reality no longer matches the map that you carry in your head, you are lost. In other words, having all things new means you are lost. This explains why people are so uncomfortable with change and why too much change is devastating. When all things are new, you don’t know where you are or where you are going.
Maybe you’ve been there. I remember when I was five years old attending the Minnesota State Fair with my family. I became fascinated watching an enormous sturgeon swimming around in a tank. Biggest fish I’d ever seen. I was so fascinated that by the time I was ready to leave and go on to something else, my family had moved on. They were gone. Suddenly, I found myself in a world where all things were new. The people were all new, the place was new. Nothing fit any of the maps of reality that I carried in my head. Because everything was new, I didn’t know where I was, or where to go. It is a terrifying, paralyzing experience, that was only resolved when finally something old and familiar, my dad, reappeared.
Revelation says God is making all things new. And if God is doing that, then God is creating a reality that doesn’t match our mental maps. That means that when we enter into God’s world, we are instantly lost.
Why would God want to put us in that situation? Well, it’s not that God wants us to be lost. It has to do with the reality that we as humans have created. The problem is not with God’s world, but with those mental maps we have created of reality.
We have created a world in which self-interest reigns supreme. A world in which, first and foremost, we are all looking out for ourselves. We have created a mental map of this world that we carry around with us. This is the way the world is; this is the way it has to be for us to function.
In this world of self-interest, pain is a given. Poverty is taken for granted. Hunger is assumed. Greed, anger, impatience, hatred, pride, arrogance, violence, distrust, destruction; they are all part of the fixed landscape--the mental map we have created of what reality is. We don’t necessarily like it; but that’s reality. We learn to exist in that environment. You do what you have to do because that’s the way the world is, that’s the way were are, as we see it.
All those things, however, are not part of the reality that God has in mind.God’s world is a world of peace, of relationship, of sharing, of joy and laughter. God’s world is a place where love reigns supreme.
In John’s Gospel, and Peter’s story in Acts, and in the vision of Revelation, Jesus invites the disciples to move out of their world and into God’s world. It’s an act of saving grace. Come here, to this world and enter into the joy of your maker.
It’s the transition that is the problem. What happens when we move into God’s world where everything is new? We find that the mental maps of reality that we carry with us do not match what is around us. We become lost. Everyone who ventures into God’s world becomes lost. The question for all Christians is not, will we lose our way? It is how do we find our way again.
Deep Survival offers some insight. It outlines five steps that all people who become lost go through.
First is denial. You deny that you are lost. You try very hard to make your mental map fit what you see.
Rationalizing is a way to try and make it fit. Turning the other cheek? Sounds noble but not really practical. Doesn’t fit the map. Forgiveness? Well, yeah, to a point. Giving to the poor? Fine, as long as we’re set for life first. Devoting ourselves to the cause of peace and justice? Speaking well of those with whom we disagree? Jesus didn’t really expect us to go too far with that.
We rationalize what doesn’t fit our mental map. In the human world, people do not consistently put the welfare of others ahead of themselves. So religious teachings are seen as idealistic sentiments that serve a good purpose--they call us to our better natures--but they have to be tempered with a dose of reality that matches our mental maps. We enter into God’s presence trying to make God’s world conform to our old mental map.
Step two is panic as the realization sets in that we are lost. That what we see around us does not fit our mental map. That it is all new.
In the spiritual world that means that we recognize that as individuals, as a church, as a nation, and as humanity, we have fallen way short of what God intended for this creation. Our old map isn’t even close to what we see in the world God has prepared for us.
In this state of panic, according to Deep Survival, clear thought is impossible, actions are often frantic and unproductive. People in this state are especially drawn to fringe and bizarre religious sects and cults. Or they blame God. Or they dive headlong into works righteousness. Or they look to magic, miracles, and superstition. Or they become fanatics and take up holy war. All frantic, wasted energy that leads them closer to death.
At this stage, say the experts, your chances of survival are greatest if you can accept the situation. I am lost. The survival technique we use in the Lutheran church is the confession and the Kyrie. I am lost. Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
In step three, panic wears off and the lost person forms strategies to find a place in this unfamiliar environment that matches their mental map. The lost engage in a desperate but rational search for something familiar.
How do you go about looking for something familiar from our world in God’s new world? Is there some form of pride or selfishness that exists in God’s world? Can we find it by grafting our own pride and selfishness on to God’s righteousness? By making ourselves, if not perfect, at least better than others? By setting ourselves apart from others and shining ourselves up so that, in comparison to others, we will look a bargain to God?
By setting our group or our denomination or our religion apart so we’re superior to others?
The story from Acts today shows Peter and the early Christians
engaged in that strategy. You can’t blame them; they were in stage 3, acting
on their mental map and trying to find some place in the
Step four is physical and mental deterioration as the strategy fails.
All strategies to get to a place in God’s world that matches our mental map fail. Just look at all the problems and hardships we have created with this world. Our world does not seem to be getting any safer, any more compassionate, and more just and equitable despite all our efforts to find the world we know in the realm of God. In fact, things may have taken a turn for the worse. There are more intensely devout religious people on earth than at any time in our history, and they are often the very people most endangering the earth.
We deteriorate as the strategy fails.
Step five is the final stage of being lost in the wilderness. As you run out of options and energy, you come to the place where you will either live or die. The key to survival is to accept reality and locate yourself in it. If can start over and make a new map in your head that clearly corresponds to the new reality, you will likely survive. If you cannot, you will die.
Deep Survival tells us
that rigid people, who cling to their old maps, are in the greatest danger
in crisis situations. Survivors are people like Peter. When Peter stepped
into God’s world, he discovered that excluding others, in this case
Gentiles, from God’s grace was not a part of the new reality of God’s world.
That road led to death. Peter got rid of his old map, looked around, saw
what the
The final stage of survival is either the end, or it is a new beginning. That’s what makes the message of Revelation at once so frightening and so wonderful. God invites us to leave the troubled reality we have created and step into a new, fabulous world that he has created for us through the power of his son, Jesus Christ. God does that knowing that we will become lost in this world where everything is new. That we will have to struggle through all the stages of being lost.
And so God has provided us with a survival tip to help us in this struggle. In the Gospel of John that we read today, Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It is a commandment that will keep you alive when you’re lost. Deep Survival notes that one of the most important factors in surviving a catastrophe in the wilderness is forgetting the self and thinking of others. Lost people who have weak or injured people in their care are more likely to survive than those who are only concerned with saving themselves. Lost people often survive against severe odds simply by thinking about someone whom they love or who loves them, and staying alive for that person. In survival terms, love = life.
A number of rescuers have noted an interesting reaction from very tiny children who have been lost. Often they will deny having ever been lost. “I wasn’t lost,” they will say, “I was right here.”
Many people have tried to use the book of Revelation as a map of the future, a map of what will happen in the end times. They try to make different verses match all kinds of landmarks that they carry with them in their mental maps. And ultimately, they get lost. Because Revelation takes us into a place where all things are new. And it repeats three times that Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Which means if you want to know what the end is going to be like, get rid of your map. The end is not a time or a place. It is a person.
All of the readings today tell us that the incredible reign of God is at hand. We are being welcomed into a place where God lives side by side with us, where death, tears, and pain will be no more. Getting lost in that world where all things are new, forces us to get rid of the old maps in our heads, in only in doing so, do we look around and see what God really has planned for us, and realize that we never were lost, because Jesus was right here all along.