River Road Church Baptist

February 5, 2006
Dr. Michael J. Clingenpeel

“A Kingdom-Driven Life ”

At the base of the Irasu volcano in central valley of Costa Rica lies the city of Cartago. There in 1635 a native girl announced that she had seen the image of the Virgin Mary in a piece of carved wood. It was an epiphany. A church, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Angels, was erected on the spot where the vision occurred. At the left of the altar and down a curving flight of stairs is a rock that is said to be the spot on which the girl was seated when she saw the Blessed Virgin. It is a place that people believe has healing power.

So from across Central America they come limping, leaning on crutches, blind, deaf, sick, clutching in their hands charms made out of wood or pewter or silver shaped like legs, arms, feet, ears, heads and torsos. They stand in long lines, light a candle, attach their tiny symbol to the wall, touch the rock and pray for a miracle. I do not treat their devotion lightly because their need is great and their faith strong.

A similar scene played itself out just outside the home of Simon and Andrew in Capernaum long ago. Jesus’ ministry, you recall, began in obscurity, but now his fame as a teacher and as a healer had preceded him. Already that day in the synagogue Jesus had delivered a demon from a man. Later he had gone to the home of Simon where he healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Sundown came, once again the people could move about because it was the end of the Sabbath. Now they came to find Jesus - the lame, the blind, the deaf, the sick, the possessed – “Until”, Mark writes, “the entire city gathered outside the door”.

One of my favorite philosophers, athlete, scholar, war hero, businessman, Forest Gump, said that “life is like a bowl of chocolates.” I like the image. But let me give you another image today: life is like a cup of cola. Everyone sticks in a straw and takes a tiny sip out of your life. Your boss, wife, husband, ex, significant other, son, daughter, Little League, Garden Club, foursome, Sunday School, deacon care group, choir, the whatchamacallit committee at church. No one draws out all of your resources at once, but the cumulative effect of a tiny sip here and another sip there is that you are drained dry.

So it was for Jesus that night at Simon Peter’s. Early the next morning Jesus woke up and quietly, careful not to wake up his friends, he walked into the hills outside of Capernaum to be alone and to pray. Later, in the gospel of Mark, we are told the content of Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. But for now Mark does not begin to suggest the content of Jesus’ prayers out on the hillside by himself. Was it for direction or for strength? Was he praying for the disciples or was he praying for the faces in the crowd? Was he praying to resist temptation? We do not know. The gospel does not tell us. But we know that the disciples hunted him down. That’s what the text says literally – they hunted him down. They are so well meaning. Jesus is popular. They want to ride the crest of public opinion. They don’t want to forfeit the momentum Jesus has gained already. “Everyone”, they said, “is searching for you”.

Then Jesus does something that to me is strange. He decides to move on, to leave the place of his popularity, Capernaum. Why? Why not capitalize on that popularity? How can we explain Jesus’ reticence to accept the public acclaim now coming to him? Jesus gives a clue: “Let us go into the neighboring towns”, says Jesus, “so I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came to do”.

Jesus knew what he came to do. Jesus had an agenda, a mission. It wasn’t given to him by the disciples or his peers or the culture or the crowd. It was given to him by God. The disciples had a vision only for Capernaum, a tiny, narrow vision. Jesus had an agenda that was infinitely greater. Jesus could not afford to be mired down in that which was good and miss that which was great.

There’s a lesson here that we need to learn, especially on this Superbowl XL day. You and I are easily distracted by the agenda of others, of our peers, of our culture. It is not always an evil agenda. Sometimes it’s a good agenda. But it’s often a substitute for the best.

I think we understand this intuitively. What does it say that the most popular book in America over the last eighteen months or so is entitled The Purpose DrivenLife? It has sold millions of copies, is studied by millions of people in groups. It says that there is a distress signal emanating from deep within our culture. We want our lives to have purpose, meaning, significance beyond the moment.

But it is not enough for your life and mine simply to have purpose, because a purpose can be a good purpose or a bad purpose. The person who stole my car several years ago outside the Richmond Baptist Association had a purpose. His purpose was to steal cars. The officer who investigated the situation said that the thief was trying to find a ride to see his girlfriend across town, so he stole my car. It’s a purpose.

Jesus was guided by something more than just a purpose. Jesus was guided by an unseen inner compass that pointed him unerringly to the agenda of God. It was an inner compass that kept him focused on the mission of God rather than just on the mission of the culture around him or of the mission of his peers. Jesus was more than purpose-driven, Jesus was kingdom-driven. He resisted the temptation to settle for any purpose less than God’s kingdom.

How did Jesus do it? How did he manage to stay on message? Well our text reveals a wonderful pattern in the life of Jesus that I believe is the secret that allowed Jesus to remain kingdom-driven. It can become the secret that will allow you to do the same.

The pattern here was first suggested to me in a book by Leonard Griffith entitled We Have This Ministry. He spoke about the pendulum principle of faith. Jesus’ life moved between time with God and time with people, between private devotion and public service, between withdrawal and return, retreat and work. The private moments alone with God supplied the fuel for the public hours spent with people. It was in these private moments, pouring out his heart before God in prayer, that Jesus found his empty cup would be filled.

Your life of prayer and mine is what keeps us from the temptation to be lured by the agenda of everyone and everything else around us and allows us to remain focused on the agenda of the kingdom. Last year, Phyllis Tickle wrote a book entitled Prayer is a Place. It has, in my estimation, one of the most eloquent definitions of prayer I have read. “Prayer”, she writes, “is a non-geographic space that one enters at one’s own peril, for it houses God during those few moments of one’s presence there, and what is there will most surely change everything that comes into it. Prayer, its opal walls polished by the centuries of hands that have touched them, is the tabernacle realized and the wayside chapel utilized. Ever-traveling as we travel, moving as we move, prayers grips like home until the heart belongs no where else and the body can scarcely function from them both. Prayer is dangerous and it is the way to wholeness.”

For Jesus, prayer became the tabernacle realized, the wayside chapel utilized. It became the way that Jesus gripped home, and it became the dangerous way to wholeness. And it is that same process of giving ourselves over to God in prayer that keeps us from being driven by anything less than the kingdom of God.

May we pray: Forgive us, O God, when we are weak to the point of distraction and when we miss the agenda that you set for us. Enable us to have our empty cups filled so that we would keep the larger vision of your grandeur and mystery and of your kingdom ever before us. Through Christ we pray. Amen.


MC; lmk, mt