A Chance to See Jesus

When my son Tyler was 19 years old, he and I had the joy of experiencing a summer trip together to Europe. Early on we had an entire day – a Sunday, it turned out – to explore London on our own. We left our hotel about noon and took a thirty-minute trip on the London Underground subway system in the general direction of the British Museum.

Halfway to our stop it was obvious that Tyler, out of the blue, suddenly wasn’t feeling very good. He began to assume the color of this page. We exited the Underground and found ourselves in the middle of a busy and stiflingly hot downtown street, in a city not known for its air conditioning.

All I wanted to do was get Tyler into some shade. At that moment we were hit by a blast of cold air. I looked up and noticed that it was coming from the wide open doors of the Dominion Theater. All that summer the Dominion Theater was performing a tribute to the rock group Queen. This didn’t seem to be a very optimistic scenario, but without hesitation we stepped inside.

Immediately a young man greeted us warmly. “Do you need a place to sit down?” he asked. “Can I get anything for your son? If you’d like, you’ll find a place to relax at the top of those stairs.” We were total strangers, with no interest in seeing a performance. But he was incredibly kind. As we walked up the steps I noticed a table brimming with Christian books. Then it hit me. We had stumbled into a church that was using the theater this one day of the week.

In fact, this was the Hillsong Church, a remarkable congregation that began in Australia but now has planted itself in downtown Paris and London. Every Sunday in the Dominion Theater, Jesus the King was replacing Queen.

Tyler worsened by the minute. We didn’t know it at the time but he had a severe case of food poisoning and would ultimately spend the coming night in a London hospital. What I did know for sure is that we had better find a bathroom, and find one fast. But it was too late. Tyler was already down on his hands and knees throwing up into the plush carpet of the Dominion Theater. If lead singer Freddy Mercury were still alive, I’m sure that Queen would have been singing,Another One Bites the Dust.

We were now a major challenge for this church. What did we have to offer them? Nothing. We were first-time visitors who would never come back. We weren’t going to make a contribution to some capital campaign. We weren’t going to volunteer for the doughnut ministry. We had just wrecked an area of the carpet, for which Hillsong Church was responsible.

But all they did was care for us. They loved us. For that first hour, when Tyler could hardly get up on his feet, they watched over us. They made sure that we had a cab to get back to our hotel and provided words of blessing and encouragement. We were in dire straits in the middle of a big city and had been led to the Body of Christ – right when we needed them.

Jesus says something fascinating in one of his parables. In the story of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-45), he indicates that his future followers will be able to “see” him in the lives and contexts of seriously needy people. He goes on to announce that the ultimate indicator of whether or not we have had an authentic relationship with him will be the degree to which we have responded to those needs.

Our final exam will not concern ministry experience, reputation, or spiritual books that we read – even though some of us excel at such things and are hanging on to the hope that Jesus might be willing to change his mind. Instead, the great divide will concern how we served Jesus when we encountered him in those we might label “the least of these.”

Jesus declares that his own followers will be surprised about that. “Lord, we spent our whole lives trying to see you. We went on retreats, we pursued multi-year Bible study plans, and we sang the same praise choruses over and over and over again just to get a glimpse of you. Lord, when exactly did we see you?”

And he will tell us that every time we encountered the poor, the vulnerable, the rejected, and the abandoned, we were actually relating to him. Mother Teresa said it beautifully – that whenever she looked into the eyes of the diseased and the poor on the streets of Calcutta what she saw was “Jesus in his distressing disguise.”

So who is the “least of these” for you? It may be a co-worker or fellow student whose performance or attitude disgusts you. It may be a physically challenged person whom you’ve never met, but whose needs have forced you to make expensive facility adjustments. It may be someone who has sinned her way off your dinner party guest list.

It may be someone with a sexually transmitted disease. It may be an underemployed family that can’t pay its bills this month. It may be someone concerning whom you can hardly muster the energy to sustain a relationship, even though they seem eager to hang around you. It may be one of the 2.8 billion people on planet Earth who live on less than two American dollars per day – a sum that can’t even buy a Happy Meal. It may be a college-age kid who ate some bad mayonnaise and is now ruining a carpet that is your responsibility.

People who commit themselves to a life of following Jesus tend to daydream: “What would it have been like to be one of those first disciples who actually saw him?” Jesus himself seems intent on dispelling that mystery. He invites us to open our eyes and serve the neediest people around us.

Quite simply, to love them is to love him. 

The Price of Unpreparedness

Last month I took off on a journey that I had dreamed about for the better part of one year, ever since I received an invitation to speak at a church in the eastern Pennsylvania town of Chambersburg.

Chambersburg just happens to be up the road from a small village that for three days in 1863 became the epicenter of American history: Gettysburg. More than a decade ago I had explored what Abraham Lincoln had called “this hallowed ground,” slowly traversing such legendary sites as the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, and Little Round Top. Now I had the chance to fly early to the state capital of Harrisburg, rent a car, drive down the road on a beautiful October day, and spend at least six more hours in and around the famous battleground.

It’s hard to overstate how exhilarated I felt as I buckled myself into my airplane seat. Then, quite without warning, I remembered something. It was something overwhelmingly important. My driver’s license was expired. One part of my brain actually knew that. That’s why I had brought a separate picture ID to board the plane. But how could I have forgotten that you need a driver’s license to rent a car?

I felt like a moose that had wandered into Sarah Palin’s yard. This was not going to turn out well.

We landed in Harrisburg. Maybe the guy at the rental counter wouldn’t notice that my license was expired. “Um, Mr. McDonald, we have a problem here.” Certainly he would make an exception in my case – you know, because he would recognize that I’m such an amazingly nice guy. “I’m sorry, sir, but no one in the state of Pennsylvania will rent you a car without an license.” Maybe he would break the rules and risk his own job and a couple of nights in jail because I was now stranded an hour away from Chambersburg, and I so deserved that extra adventure in Gettysburg. “My suggestion is that you try to find some form of public transportation.”

My heart sank. My mind simultaneously descended into a bit of irrational darkness. Who’s responsible for this? Someone should have to pay for such a grave disappointment. Who could I scapegoat? Who could I blame? The truth was both stark and obvious, of course. One and only one person was responsible. I had subverted my own long-awaited trip by failing to be prepared.

In the end I took a cab, which wasn’t exactly the way I had pictured this mid-autumn excursion. It cost a mere $139 for a one-way trip to beautiful downtown Chambersburg. Ouch.

As a pastor I routinely have the opportunity to hear people’s dreams about their own lives. They want to know God. They want to please God. Followers of Jesus yearn to embark on history-changing journeys of radical faith. They will step out of their comfort zones, bind up the broken-hearted, confront systemic evil, and stand tall for the truth. These are beautiful dreams, and they never fail to move me.

But they seldom come true. That’s because something is often wrong from the get-go. These earnest men and women aren’t prepared for a life of radical trust in God because they have failed to give themselves to the God they so want to serve.

I’d love to be more patient. I’d like to be as patient as Jesus, as a matter of fact. But that won’t happen “in the moment,” when extraordinary patience is actually required, just because I intend to be a person of exceptional forbearance. Long before that moment I will have to have spent much time in God’s presence, gradually allowing God’s character to supplant my own.

The same thing is true with regard to humility. And having the power to extend forgiveness. And being able to relinquish control to God in the midst of chaos or uncertainty. Long before the challenging moment arrives, I will have to have practiced surrendering control to the Lord as an actual way of life. In other words, I will need to be spiritually prepared.

Otherwise I will find myself saying (or praying), “Why is this happening to me? Where are all those blessings that were supposed to come my way because I am following Christ? Who is responsible for this?” Well, that would be me. I cannot experience a transforming journey with God if I have failed to undertake – with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength – the essential preparation that is required for that journey.

Take it from a guy who has seen rural Pennsylvania from the back seat of a cab. There’s a real price to pay to be prepared. But it’s worth it.