There is this old story that’s been going around for years.  Lately, I’ve had more than one of you send it to me which makes me wonder if there’s a subtle message involved.  There are differing versions, but it goes something like this.  There were two men stranded on an uninhabited South Pacific island after their private plane crashed.  There was no food and no fresh water.  The situation looked pretty grim.  The pilot of the plane began panicking and went on and on, “We’re dead!  No one will ever find us out here!  It’s hopeless!”  The other man, who had been his passenger, stayed calm the entire time until the pilot finally got angry at him.  “How can you be so calm?  Didn’t you hear what I said?  We’re going to die!  No one will ever find us out here in the middle of nowhere!”  Finally, the man broke his silence and said, “I’m not worried one bit.  We’re going to be alright.”  “How can you possibly say we’re going to be alright?” the pilot screamed.  “I know we’re going to be just fine,” he said, “because I make $1 million a year and I tithe.  My pastor will find me.”

Assuming you don’t ever have to find out the hard way, may I be so bold this morning as to ask, what keeps you connected?  Connected to the church, to God, to whatever you believe to be his will for your life.  Keeps you connected year in and year out no matter how your life changes.  Who finds you when you get lost?  Who or what brings you back and keeps bringing you back?

This past Monday when Nancy and I went to Abilene we had lunch with three other couples I’ve known for some twenty or thirty years.  It was something like a ninety-minute reunion; it turned out to be quite interesting.  I had not seen some of these people in nearly ten years.  A lot more has changed in all of our lives than the fact that we’re all finally beginning to show our age and that we’re living proof that no diet works forever.  At first, there were a lot of laughs and the retelling of old stories we’ve told every time we’ve ever gotten together.  These are people, all my age, who have been as active and involved in church as any people I’ve ever known, until now. 

With the exception of only one or two at the table, they expressed a real disinterest in what their churches are doing now and what those churches mean to their day-to-day lives.  Again, these are people I consider to have been some of the most faithful and active church members I’ve ever known.  Except now, the church means less to them than it ever has and, slowly but surely, they’re drifting away.

In case you’re interested, some of the comments made at the table included these, edited somewhat but close to verbatim.  “I’m tired of hearing the same old stories and things moving at a snail’s pace.”  “We were active until the church lost touch with our youngest son.”  “Now that all of our kids are gone from home, we kind of enjoy not having to be at church every time the doors open.”  It gets better.  “I’m not interested any longer in being a part of a church that is only going to use my money to keep building bigger and bigger buildings just so more and more people like us will come to our church instead of someone else’s.”  “I don’t believe my minister when he tells me that giving money to refurbish our sanctuary is going to glorify God.” 

There were others but those capture the essence of the conversation.  I haven’t been able to get those words out of my head all week.  “Same old stories . . . snail’s pace . . . I don’t believe my minister.”  In essence, my friends were saying that what once kept them connected to the church, a kind of blind loyalty to institutional religion, isn’t working anymore because it is increasingly impersonal and radically disconnected from their real needs and true values. 

Over the next several weeks we’re going to take a walk with Jesus.  Something kept him connected, something far more than blind loyalty to institutional religion and, in fact, something that caused him to challenge institutional religion and even revolt against it.  It’s easy to think that Jesus didn’t have a choice.  We’re going to discover that’s not true.  He did.  He didn’t have to walk the road of faithfulness he did.  A road that led to a gruesome death and plenty of loneliness and humiliation.  I’m interested in whatever it was that got Jesus from the manger to the grave and kept him connected all the way.  We may be in for some surprises, if we’re willing to take a fresh and honest look at what we find.  I can promise you this much.  As far as it is within my power, I am going to lead us over this next several weeks to let the scriptures ask us the tough questions, maybe the toughest we’ve ever faced as a church and as individuals. 

I’m particularly interested in this journey for two reasons.  One is because I’ve seen other people come and go over the years.  In every church I’ve ever served, I’ve looked up one day only to suddenly realize that someone who has been there for years is just gone.  They’re not dead and they haven’t joined another church.  They haven’t moved.  They’re just gone, for no identifiable reason.  They just didn’t stay connected.  The other reason I’m interested is purely personal.  I wonder if I have what it takes.  What it takes to go the distance with Jesus, to follow him all the way to my grave, no matter what may come in between now and then. 

What should be more than obvious to all of us by now is that the institutional form of religion that got most us to this point isn’t working anymore in effectively reaching the unreached, getting them connected to the Kingdom of God and helping them become long term disciples of Jesus.  Depending on what statistics you choose to believe, the most conservative estimates tell that eighty-five to ninety percent or more of mainline denominational churches in the United States are plateaued or declining in membership.  That means that not only are the unreached staying unreached, those already reached aren’t staying connected.  In other words, in most churches the back door is as busy or busier than the front door.  Why is it that most people who start walking with Jesus don’t stay connected to the church as we know it?  What is it about staying connected to the church that costs more than they are willing to pay?

The only thing that amazes me more than the brazen silliness of Brittney Spears’ Las Vegas wedding this past week and the subsequent annulment less than two days later was how much media attention it got.  What the media is able to actually profit from broadcasting to America ought to trouble us every bit as much as weapons of mass destruction.  Talk about Fear Factor!  It reminds me of the title of Bill Cosby’s latest book, I Am What I Ate . . . And I’m Frightened!!!.  If we are going to eventually be no more than we have intellectually consumed via the standard diet of American media, we ought to be frightened, too, just as though we’d never eaten anything more than chili cheese dogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I digress.  Let me progress.  The reasons given in the application for annulment submitted by Spears’ attorney included the fact that the couple had failed to fully assess all that marriage to each other would mean.  Welcome to American marriage 101!

Jesus himself actually said something about counting the cost of walking with him before we started the journey.  “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.  And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.  Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?  For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish (Luke 14:25-30, NIV).’’”

I look at the teachings of Jesus and I find them hard to swallow.  I love his promises about life after death and grace and mercy peace and hope and I’m literally banking on them to be absolutely true.  I squirm uncomfortably, however, at his commands because I know the truth about how much distance there is between what he demands and what I produce.  Dallas Willard’s words say it well.  “The most telling thing about the contemporary Christian,” he writes, “is that he or she simply has no compelling sense that understanding of and conformity with the clear teachings of Christ are of any vital importance to his or her life, and certainly not that it is in any way essential.  We . . . still manage to feel guilty with reference to those teachings, with a nervous laugh and a knowing look.  But more often than not . . . such obedience is regarded as just out of the question or impossible (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, Harper, 1998, p. xv).”

So, just how seriously should we take Jesus when he says things like these?  “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24, NIV).”  “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But, if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:14-15, NIV).”  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:21, NIV).”  Most especially, these words are troublesome.  At the end of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash (Matthew 6:27, NIV).” 

Jesus stretches our definition of believing, doesn’t he?  He stretches it way beyond a simple “profession of faith” at age eight or nine that, by the time we’re thirty or forty or fifty is no more relevant to our daily life than the clothes we wore then would be to us now. 

Even a cursory view of Jesus’ life proves that he never asked of us more than he was willing to give himself.  He denied himself and took up his cross.  He forgave those who sinned against him.  His faith was more than just an empty promise; he literally built his house on the bedrock of obedience to God in the deeds of his day-to-day life.  He then said that anyone who wants to take a walk with him must do the same.  If we take a walk with Jesus this next few weeks, where is it likely to lead us?  Are we willing to find out?

The first step of Jesus’ walk began when he put his toe into the waters of baptism.  Shouldn’t our walk with Jesus should begin there, too?  For some of us, that will mean that we need to go back and recall the meaning of our baptism, our first step with Jesus.  For others, it will mean taking that first step now.  Any person serious about taking a walk with Jesus will begin that journey with baptism. 

It’s an interesting word, baptism.  From the original language it means “to immerse.”  When we baptize, as you have seen, we submerge people in the baptismal waters, from head to toe.  It represents what we believe we experience in salvation, that we are submerged in God’s saving grace, that we are cleansed, that we die to one way of life and are born again to a new one.  According to John the original Baptist, if you will, it means even more.  Listen again to what he said of the Jesus he was about to baptize.  “‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.’”

John was saying that those who choose to enter into a relationship with God are going to get more than a membership card into a new club and learn the secret handshake.  Jesus, John said, would “‘baptize’” those who followed him “‘with the Holy Spirit and fire.’”  Jesus would later refer to the Holy Spirit as the paraclete, the Comforter, one called to walk alongside.  We who choose to walk with Jesus would be “immersed,” head to toe, in the very of life God in the person of the Spirit in our daily walks and lives.  Head to toe in God, he said.  Fire to purify from sin.  Spirit for enlightenment and empowerment.  The capacity to see which way to walk and the power to take the next step and even companionship for the journey.  That’s the Holy Spirit.  Everything we need for a walk with Jesus.  That’s a promise for far more than stumbling along in blind loyalty to institutional religion.

While I was feasting on the best America’s media has to offer the other night, I saw Madonna interviewed by Jay Leno.  The material girl let it slip that she has gained new interest in spirituality.  Leno followed up with a question about her religion.  Madonna said that she was spiritual, not religious.  “Religion,” she said, “only has to do with rules about what you can and can’t do and why you’re going to hell and I’m not interested in that.”  Finally, I found something Madonna and I agree on.  I’m not interested in going to hell, either.  And, I’ve never been interested in just giving my money to build bigger buildings so more people just exactly like me will come to hear a bunch of rules about what they can and can’t do.  And, I’ve never been interested in materialistic pretentiousness that masquerades itself as glorifying God. 

But, one thing I am interested in is staying connected to God, and his church, in such a vital, powerful and personal way that absolutely no area of my remains untouched by his presence.  I want God in the big middle of all of my life, my dreams, my hopes, my fears, my sins, my successes and failures, my bad habits, my laziness, my family, my money.  I want to ask the tough questions and I want to find God in the answers or at least the opportunity to worship and study and pray with people who aren’t afraid of asking them, too, even if we search the rest of our lives without answers.  I want God right smack dab in the middle of what makes me ashamed of him at times so I can face that fear head on and watch it die before it kills me.  I want to be so full of Spirit-born joy that inviting people to believe in Jesus with me is as natural as taking the next breath.  You name it, that’s where I want to meet God in my life.  I want to be immersed, head to toe, in God.  How about you?

Alfred Pugh died this past Wednesday in Bay Pines, VA, just ten days shy of his 109^th birthday.  Pugh was the last known combat-wounded U.S. veteran of World War I!  He raised sixteen foster children, he loved football and baseball and played the organ well past 100 years of age.  He loved to tell people that the key to a long life was to just “‘keep breathing (Associated Press, “Last known combat-wounded WWI vet,” Dallas Morning News, Saturday, January 10, 2004, p. 5B).’”

You remember the song?  “Breathe on me, breathe on me.  Holy Spirit, breathe on me.  Take Thou my heart, cleanse every part.  Holy Spirit, breathe on me (Edwin Hatch, Broadman Press, 1937).”  Just after his resurrection, Jesus found the disciples locked away in fear.  They didn’t know what their walk with Jesus might cost them.  Suddenly, Jesus appeared among them and this is what he said.  “‘Peace be with you!  As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’  And, with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:20-22, NIV).’” 

Maybe Alfred Pugh is right.  The key to a long life is to just keep breathing.  But, the key to a long, as in eternally long and well-connected life, is not to just take the next breath, but to receive the very breath of God into ourselves, his very Holy Spirit.  Whether you took your first step with Jesus longer ago than you can remember or you’re contemplating taking your very first step this morning, would you pray with me?

“Breathe on me, dear God.  Immerse me, head to toe, in your grace, your power, your love, your truth, your very presence in my life.  I want to walk with Jesus.  Show me the next step to take today.  Amen.”