As we do this new series on the road less traveled, I can relate because I am in a season of being the weary road warrior. The United Methodist Church has been caught up in my book; Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus, so the whole denomination is naming the weekend of April 24/25 as a Change the World event. We are asking Christians in our churches, to serve outside the church, in a relevant way, in our communities during the weekend of April 24. Can you imagine 11 million United Methodist Christians serving in the world? We have churches signing up from the Philippines, Africa, Korea, Asia and more. Sunday, April 25 is world malaria day, and our youth group is going to sleep outside under malaria nets. Do you know one child dies every 30 seconds of malaria? And paying only $10 for a malaria net can prevent that. So you will see our youth groups sleeping out under malaria nets when you come to the church that weekend. Let’s be praying about this.

I can relate to this road less traveled: it’s not an easy road. A couple of Friday nights ago I got back to the Cincinnati airport about 9 p.m.  You know when you are out all week; you cannot wait to get home. I have it timed. If I get in at the Cincinnati airport at 9 p.m. Friday night, and it usually takes me one hour and 20 minutes to get home. That’s with no traffic, or, supposedly no traffic! One hour and 20 minutes from the airport to my front door, which then gives me about an hour to chill and to talk to Carolyn? One night I made it to Lebanon/Monroe, in 30 minutes only to have traffic come to a dead stop for the next hour and a half. You know how you inch forward and then sit for five minutes? You have to put it into park so your foot doesn’t get so tired and you don’t glide into the bumper in front of you. That night I finally arrived home three hours later. An hour and a half into the trip home, I noticed police lights and the police directing all the traffic through one narrow lane on interstate 75 going north. I also saw a group of cars that were disabled against the cement barricade and assumed it was an accident.

When I got home, Carolyn was already in bed since it was after midnight. Normally she’d be asking me how I was but this time I just tried not to make too much noise so I didn’t wake her up. The next day I got up and read in the paper there had been a pot hole that was inadequately repaired and it had become a sink hole. Approximately 8 to 10 cars had hit it and broken their axles. I thought it was a great analogy to our faith.  While on our faith journey, we will encounter potholes in our life that will either delay our journey or totally disrupt it. So, let’s take a look at a passage of scripture today that is used during the Lenten season, Mark 8:27. Before we read it, I would like you to bow your head in silent prayer and open yourself to the Spirit of God and what God wants to say to you. God wants to do far more through us than what we can ask or imagine.

Open our eyes, Lord, to see what we are not seeing. To hear what we are not hearing so we can be used by You to meet the needs of those around us in the world. It is in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Let’s look at Mark 8:27-35. Jesus just performed a couple of miracles: he fed 4000 people with bread and healed a blind man in Bethesda. Jesus’ disciples had been traveling with him for some time so he posed a question to them - a question that every single person must deal with in their life. It’s the most important question you will ever be asked. Mark 8:27 The first question was “who do people say I am?” But, here’s ultimately what the question becomes in our lives; “who do you say I am?” Most of us have worked through a process and our understanding of Jesus has come from others, or what others have said. And if you didn’t grow up in a religious family then you probably heard bits and pieces about Jesus. Maybe you heard his name used in a cursing kind of way. It amazes me that even in Africa, Muslims say, “Jesus” when they stub their toe or something. I have never figured this out, how his name has become a universal curse word. I think God is doing a subliminal thing to get Jesus’ name out there. Some of you were probably like me; I heard about Jesus mostly through my grandparents who were Baptists. We were nominal every week Methodist Church attendee’s. Do you know how you can be a nominal every week church attendant? We didn’t talk about Jesus, we talked about God... And nominal every week church attendance meant we didn’t even pray during the week. We only prayed on Sunday afternoons when my grandparents were there for a meal and my grandfather led us in prayer. So did any of you grow up in a nominal every week church family? Church and praying were not part of your every day life.

But I heard about Jesus from my grandparents, and like everyone else, from world history. You can’t study western civilization apart from Jesus’ impact as a historical figure. There is no such thing as western civilization apart from Jesus’ influence and Christianity. But there comes a time when you have all these ideas and philosophies about who Jesus is and you have made a commitment to this journey and that question becomes personal. It is not what you heard, it is not what you studied, it’s “who do you say I am.”

It’s a strange thing when God starts speaking to you. Things that would have never bothered you before now bother you, I remember going on a trip when I was 16 or 17, being in a restroom and reading graffiti on the wall that said Jesus saves all who want him. It made an impression because “saved” is the way the Baptists talk. You begin to realize this spiritual questioning is going on inside of you and you don’t realize that it is God calling your name. It is kind of like Samuel, the boy Samuel in the Bible. God started speaking to Samuel, but Samuel didn’t know God so he thought it was his mentor Elijah. Sometimes God will use a mentor in your life to get your attention. For me it was a transition to college when that question became my personal confession. My commitment was that Jesus is Messiah. That is the point of your faith, confession or conversion when faith in Jesus becomes the guiding center or the core of your life.

Many in the room have had the experience where Jesus became your guiding center or the core of your life.  But, for all of us, there will be a time or times when your faith is challenged. Now look at Mark 8:31-33. Your faith is challenged when your expectation of who Jesus is does not align with your life experience in that moment in time. Notice what happens. Peter just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah. Now Jesus began to teach them the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priest and the teachers of the law and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. Now Peter is saying wait a minute, what is this about? What is this talk about suffering, rejection, and death? Before I signed up for this thing I should have known about that. Now Jesus also mentioned resurrection but you notice that it did not compute. Peter did not hear that because resurrection is the great unknown in our life. Peter is thinking, “Wait a minute, this is not the expectation I had of who you were, Jesus, or what you were going to bring into my life.” So now Peter’s expectation was not aligning with his life experience.

When I was a kid there was one NFL pro team in Ohio. The Cleveland Browns, right? So in the 1950’s, what put the NFL on the map was a running back called Jim Brown. Jim Brown was to the NFL what Michael Jordan was for professional basketball. And it was amazing. On Sunday afternoon when our moms and grandmothers would call us to the table to eat, our grandfathers and dads would say, “Hey, no, we are watching the Cleveland Browns, and Jimmie Brown is on T.V.” As a matter of fact, until after I was in college, I thought the Cleveland Browns were named after Jim Brown. It is amazing because he didn’t play many seasons, maybe six seasons or so but he held the NFL rushing record all the way up to Walter Peyton. It was amazing what that guy did before he went off to play Hollywood. But what Jim Brown did for me was give me this idealized version of what football was all about. So I had certain expectations.

 When I started 7^th grade it was announced on the intercom that there were sign ups for 7^th grade football.  So I went down to the equipment room to see Coach Morris. Coach Moore was also a 7^th grade science teacher. The 7^th and 8^th graders used to get all of the used equipment that the varsity had about four or five generations ago. Here it is like 1963, and we get the leather helmets from 1947. The varsity team at North College Hill hadn’t been using leather helmets since the late 40’s. You know…the helmets where the ear flaps were bigger than the top part? So here I was at the first practice. I hadn’t hit puberty yet so I weighed 76 lbs, and I’ve got this old varsity uniform on that is way too big.  I don’t know why Coach Morris did this, but he put me at defensive end. First of all, here I am this 7^th grade kid with all this awkward equipment on, he is teaching me the finger stand and I’m trying to learn it. Greg Butler is in against us as the running back. Now Greg Butler, another 7^th grader, is already sporting a beard. He eventually went on to become a start university football player. So here comes Greg Butler. busting around my side. So I do what I was supposed to do and get in front of him to tackle him. He hit me like a truck. The next thing I know, I wake up seeing stars. I thought I was in a place like Narnia where beavers are talking to me, colors are more vibrant and reds are more red - which was really the blood coming from my nose. Needless to say my football career lasted one practice because my experience did not align with my expectations.

The same thing happens in our life. People get married with the expectation they will never be lonely again, but then three months into the marriage there is still a void that no human being can fill. Or you feel that when you get married the criticism you experienced in your parents’ home would end. See this wasn’t the Messiah that Peter was expecting. Peter was expecting a conquering Messiah.  A Messiah that would make all wrongs right. A Messiah who would overthrow the Roman oppressors. I mean how could a real Messiah become the victim of the victimizer? How could the Messiah, the all powerful Son of God, be subject to the same humiliation as the oppressed? And how could this Messiah that Isaiah talked about years before be defeated in death? Now can you see what Peter’s thinking? “Hold on a minute, this isn’t what I expected. Man we put our behinds on the line for you and if they can do this to you what is going to happen to us? Now you’re asking us to follow the same path.” Jesus said “If anyone wants to come after me you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow me.” “Hold on, Jesus, this isn’t what I expected when I signed up for this thing.”

I have a good friend, his name is Rob Weber. He owns a boot company in Cincinnati. He went to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and then went onto seminary because he thought that every Christian should. So he spent three years in seminary before he went to work at Totes.  Then from Totes he went on to open his own boot company. When he was in seminary he went to India. While he was in Calcutta, he thought he was going to meet Mother Teresa. Now that is huge. On a whim he thought he’d try to meet Mother Teresa at the Sisters of Charity House. He didn’t even know if she was in the country. Now this would be like me trying to meet Don Cheadle. I really like him because Don Cheadle was very involved as an activist in Darfur. It would be like me being in Hollywood and saying I am going over to Don Cheadle’s house, knock on the door and introduce myself. He doesn’t even know me, even though he sent me a signed poster thanking me for being involved in Darfur. But, he probably forgot all about that.

So Rob hires one of those little - I call them tap taps - motorcycle taxis that are all over India. He stops by this house, knocks on the door, and he says, “Can I meet Mother Teresa?” to a little nun that came to the door. The nun ushered him into a really sparse sitting room or living room with wood furniture.  The nun gives him tea, and he is just sitting there waiting. About 15 minutes later this little lady came into the room and sat there for 20 minutes drinking tea and talking with him. He got up to leave and he said “Mother Teresa I just have one question to ask. Do you have any advice for a young seminary student?” And she said “Follow Jesus, the real Jesus, the true Jesus, the resurrected Jesus and not the Jesus of your imagination.” See, so many of us have been programmed by this consumer-marketed environment and culture we live that we are expecting a Jesus of our imagination. A Santa Claus Jesus and not the real Jesus, the true Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, and the Lord of the Universe. I just read that you and I are bombarded by about 3000 marketing messages a day. Now all of these messages are: if you have a problem, buy this product. If you can’t sleep take Ambien, and if you are fat you and want to lose weight, take this fat burning pill. Read the instructions on that fat-burning pill. It says the weight loss is based on a healthy exercise and diet program. Then why take the pill? But everything from vitamins to Viagra promises that whatever need you have that particular product will solve your problem. So we look for a magic pill Messiah. You know Jesus said, “You don’t seek me for who I really am, you seek me because I give you bread.” You know kind of like all we are going to end up with is our own personalized Panera Bread factory.

So you see, when we don’t get what we expect we begin to question God’s promises. We begin to question God’s purpose. We begin to question if Jesus is really the Messiah. So why does God allow these potholes and pains in our life? What are the purpose of potholes and pains? Folks in this lifetime, remember we are created for eternity. In this lifetime God is more concerned with our character than our comfort. Did you hear what I said? God is more concerned with our character in this lifetime than concerned with our comfort. See growth takes place in tension. If you are living in equilibrium and everything is staying the same there is no motivation for growth or change. You know when Carolyn quit nagging at me and said “Hey, I am serious now. You’ve got six months to get your behind to the counselor so we can work this out or I am leaving.” So all of a sudden, the pain and discomfort increased to the point that I became proactive in seeking a solution. Are we on the same page?

It is the same with everything. If you have addictive behavior going on in your life, you know the pain and discomfort has to increase to the point where you become proactive in seeking recovery. It is the same with debt. You see the pain and discomfort has to increase to the point where you become proactive in seeking a solution. Look at America and the mess we are in right now economically. Do you know that Miami County where I live has about a 14% unemployment rate? I was working with people in Detroit yesterday, and we were talking about a 25% unemployment rate there. By 2005 Americans had hit a negative savings rate. From 2005 to 2008 Americans were spending $1.22 for every $1.00 they earned. Guess what? By 2009 we were no longer in a negative saving rate. Americans no longer spent more than they earned. What had to happen? Pain and discomfort had to increase to the point that we became proactive in seeking a solution. See God uses pain to challenge and change. That is why the cross, not the dollar sign, is central to the journey of faith.

What’s the oldest book in the Old Testament, do any of you know? Job is the first book. What is the book of Job about? That God doesn’t remove pain and suffering but that we are to find God in it. Do you know the New Testament never promises that Jesus will make everything better in our lifetime? There is no promise of that. I remember when I became a Christian there was all of this false marketing going on. Let me show you something. Turn to 2 Corinthians 11. The Apostle Paul before his conversion, in today’s terms would be the dean of a theological school, very comfortable living, and sitting in his well-apportioned office with leather furniture wearing a tweed jacket and a pipe. Spiritual authority. Now he is converted. Read this scripture like it is Paul’s’ marketing campaign on why you need to try Jesus. Here is what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11:24  “Five times I received from the Jews the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked. Try Jesus.” Can you imagine watching this on TV? Paul continues, “I spent a night and a day in the open sea, and I have been constantly on the move.” Wow, it would be easier to stay home and watch Gray’s Anatomy. “I have been in danger from rivers, danger from bandits and danger from my own people, and danger from the Gentiles. Why don’t you try Jesus?” This is a different kind of marketing campaign, isn’t it? Paul goes on, “And danger in the city, danger in the country, danger at sea and danger from false believers. I have labored in toil and have often gone without sleep.” That is what you are signing up for, sisters and brothers, when you say yes to Jesus. Well, then why follow Jesus? I mean what is the resolution to this thing when we follow Jesus but can actually get into more pain and hurt than if we were just hanging out and doing our own thing?

Look at John 6:60.  Many of Jesus’ disciples had said and I am quoting a scripture, “This is too hard,” and they ceased to follow him.” Well I am going to be straight up honest with you. The way of Jesus is hard. It is a lot harder than just staying where you are. So Jesus turned to the 12 disciples and he said “Are you going to leave me too?” Now here’s why Jesus left Peter in charge of this movement.  It wasn’t because Peter never messed up or Peter never talked back but what Peter said: “Lord, we would like to get off this road but if we get off this road what are the alternatives. I mean where are we going to turn, for you alone have the words of eternal life.” In other words, Jesus, you’ve got us on the true road. The resolution is that every morning you have to get up and recommit to getting back on this road less traveled, not because it is the easy road, but because it is the true road sisters and brothers. Peter asks, “What’s the alternative to this?” Do you want to live easy, or do you want to live true? Not only is it the true road, sisters and brothers, it is where you find life.

Two weeks ago Friday night I had just returned from South Korea where I had led a pastors’ conference. I had flown back to Seoul and didn’t get back to my hotel until after 10 p.m. I hadn’t eaten since morning, so I went down to the lounge. It was the only place to get some food by that time so, I went down there to get a sandwich. I was sitting in the lounge listening to a couple singing, and it occurred to me that back in January, Sam Dixon, who was the head of United Methodist Community on Relief, was in the Montana Hotel in Port au Prince Haiti, doing the same thing (he was in the hotel lounge) when the hotel collapsed. Sam died. Sam was a friend of mine, and we worked closely together on projects in Darfur. I was sitting in this lounge eating and thinking about Sam. I was thinking when we are out on mission we open ourselves to a lot of this kind of stuff. It is easier to stay home and watch Ghost Whispers on Friday night. Sam was in Haiti to check on humanitarian projects and had been in the hotel lounge for only five minutes when the quake started. When I got home a few days later and kissed my wife, I wanted to talk to her about my feelings about Sam being on mission when he died.  I said to Carolyn, “You know Sam was three years older than I am now” - he was like 61 years old. I said, “Carolyn, you know what is so neat is that Sam died with his boots on. Sam died on mission. You know if I don’t ever come home, it is okay because I want to die with my boots on.” You know you can either die with your boots on or you can die watching Grey’s Anatomy. Not only is this road the true road, it is the life road, sisters and brothers. I mean we are all going to die so why not live? You know what my prayer is? I woke up yesterday morning in Michigan, and I am tired. I spoke to a full house and chairs were even set up outside the auditorium. But do you know how I began yesterday morning? I said, “God, I am your servant and my only prayer is that you use me to serve you and honor you today.” Then I got up, drove five hours home last night and arrived at 10 p.m.  I got up 5 a.m. this morning, had my coffee and prayed to God, “You know this day I give to you and my only prayer is that when I die you, use me all the way up, that I don’t leave anything here.” Folks, you can take the easy road and you can use agnosticism or anything to excuse why you are on the easy road. You know there’s pain, there’s failure, and there are agnostic moments in all of our lives. But you can also be like Peter and say “Well, Lord, I would like to jump off this path but as I look around the world I don’t see a better alternative than what you are offering or a better truth.” Everyday I just make a commitment to keep showing up on this road less traveled because it is the true way and it is the only to live our lives.

Will you bow your head and pray with me: Jesus, my only request this morning is that when I die You have used me totally up for Your purpose. We pray this together in Jesus’ name. Amen