Are You Really All In?
There once was a man that lived a rather unremarkable life with his family in a trailer on the outskirts of a large metropolitan city. He had a wife and four children, one of which had passed away two months after being born. Though the man went to school until third grade as a boy, he never learned to read. As an adult, he worked for a refrigeration company assembling refrigerators and freezers to take care of his family. On Sundays, the man would drive his family to church and either drop them off and come back or sit in the car in the parking lot and wait for the service to end, so he could take his family home.
One day the pastor went outside and sat with the man in the parking lot. He wanted to talk to the man and let him know that he was always welcome inside the church. The man expressed that he knew that he was welcome. The pastor then inquired as to why the man never came inside the church. The man replied, “Pastor, I don’t know a lot of things, but I do know that making the decision to become a Christian is a very serious commitment. Once I make that decision, there is no going back. It is not something that anyone should rush into, and I am just not ready for that level of commitment yet.”
The pastor really couldn’t argue with that logic, so he went back inside the church and continued to smile and say hello to the man and remind him every now and then that he was always welcome inside the church.
Time passed and one Sunday morning the man drove his family to church and got out of the car with them and went inside. The pastor was thrilled to see the man inside the church and immediately went to him and told him how happy he was that the man had decided to come inside. The man let the pastor know that he was ready to make the commitment now, and the pastor hugged him, tears of joy streaming down his face.
From that day on, the man was at the church every time the doors opened. He attended all the Sunday services offered and the Wednesday night services as well. Because he had never learned to read, he sat on the front row drinking in every word that the pastor spoke during the services as this was the only way that he could learn what the Bible had to say. He had a hunger for the Word and was determined to satisfy it, even though he could not read it for himself.
Many times, the man could be found cleaning the church - wiping the pews, cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming the floors. When the pastor asked him why he felt like he needed to do that, the man replied, “Pastor, this is God’s house. As one of God’s children now, it is my responsibility to make sure that His house remains clean and is taken care of. So, that’s what I am going to do.”
As time went on, the man grew older and eventually got the privilege of going to meet Jesus face to face. As I said before, the man lived a pretty modest life, so aside from family, there were not many people at his funeral. The pastor stood in front of the church and teared up as he told the story of how the man used to sit in his car and wait on his family rather than coming into the church and how he had told the pastor that he knew that becoming a Christian was a very serious matter and a very big commitment. He also told the story of how the man cleaned the church without being asked because he saw it as a responsibility of his to take care of God’s house once he became a child of God. The pastor told many stories about his interactions with the man and his family and expressed his grief over the loss of such an amazing man.
After sharing all of his personal stories and scriptures verses, the pastor opened the floor for anyone that would like to say a few words about the man. An older gentleman began walking up the aisle towards the front of the church. He was wearing worn out jeans, a ragged black t shirt, and an old grey sport coat. He had long greasy black hair and hunched over a bit when he walked. He stepped in front of the microphone in the pulpit and began to speak.
“My name is John, and I am homeless. This man saw me walking on the side of the road near the trailer park where he lived, and he spoke to me. He asked me what my name was and if I would like something to drink. This man went into his house, brought me a drink, and went on to talk to me for 20 minutes that day. He spoke to me like I was a real person. He never pitied me or made me feel less than in any way. One day he saw that my shirt was falling apart, and he took the shirt right off his own back and gave it to me that day. He never asked for anything from me, and he never forgot my name. He called me by my name every time he saw me. No one had ever done that before, and no one has done it since.”
John said, “I began to hang around that trailer park more because I enjoyed my conversations with this man so much. He used to talk to me about the sermons that he heard at church and how much he loved God. I noticed that he would go around the trailer park and cut other people’s grass for them if it needed to be done. He never expected anyone to pay him for it, and he never complained about the neighbor’s that were not keeping up with their lawns. He always said that people should take pride in the neighborhoods that they live in and help each other out every chance they get. He saw their grass needing to be cut as an opportunity for him to help someone out and nothing more. This man truly changed my life, and I will miss him so much.”
When John finished speaking, he walked down the aisle and right out the doors of the church. No one else got up to speak about the man. The pastor got back up and finished the funeral service, and then the man’s body was taken to the cemetery and lowered into the ground.
That man was my uncle and what I learned about him at his funeral that day rocked me to my core.
I had never been close to that uncle. I had never taken the time to talk to him or get to know him better at family reunions. Of all his siblings, my dad was closest to his younger sister so that is who we typically stayed with when we would visit, and I was most familiar with her and her children. As I sat in the pew during his funeral that day, I realized that God had placed an incredible gift right in front of me all those years, and I had completely ignored it. I cried as I realized how much I had missed out on by not taking the time to get to know my uncle and learn his story. He truly was an amazing man, and I could have learned so much from him about what it means to have a relationship with God.
Jesus tells a parable in the book of Luke about a Pharisee and a tax collector. They both go to the temple to pray. The Pharisee basically prays a prayer thanking God that he is better than others and then reminds God of everything that he does that is above and beyond the call of duty. The tax collector on the other hand, won’t even go all the way into the temple to pray his prayer or lift his eyes towards heaven. In contrast to the Pharisee’s prayer, the tax collector admits that he is a sinner and asks God for mercy. Jesus ends this parable by saying that the tax collector was the only one that went home justified that day.
The tax collector in this story got it. He understood that he needed God’s mercy. He had accepted and understood his place. He understood the relationship just like my uncle understood the relationship. There was no comparing himself to others to make himself look better before God. It didn’t matter what other people were or were not doing. It didn’t matter what he was doing or had done in the past. He knew that no matter what he did, he would fall short. He knew that his responsibilities as a child of God did not change based on what others were or were not doing. My uncle understood the intensity and importance of the commitment, and he took it seriously. Oh, that we all would take the commitment to become a Christian as seriously as my uncle did; I can only imagine what the world would look like.
I was humbled in a mighty way that day at my uncle’s funeral. I left his funeral asking myself some pretty hard questions and staring at some difficult truths about myself. God began a good work in me that day that I know He will see through to fruition in His time. That’s the thing about God, He is always ready to begin a good work in each and every one of us, but we have to be willing to ask the hard questions and stare at the difficult truths about ourselves. You see, nothing was going to change in the life of the Pharisee in that parable until he was willing to take a good hard look at himself and see himself for who he really was rather than the person that he wanted the world to see.
My uncle knew that he wasn’t ready to confront those difficult truths about himself for a number of years, but when he finally did, God began an amazing work in him that overflowed onto the people around him. He never saw anyone as less than. He never considered himself to be above anyone else. He never thought that he was too good to do the hard work or the dirty work that others didn’t want to do. He didn’t chase after the easy, glamourous life that many people associate with Christianity. He chose instead to be a humble servant and in doing so, he changed the life of one of the least of these.
I left my uncle’s funeral knowing that if I died tomorrow, no homeless person was going to get up and speak at my funeral about how I had changed his or her life. I left that day asking myself what I was doing for the least of these in God’s kingdom. My uncle was not famous. In fact, many of his own extended family barely knew him at all, but what a treasure he must have built up for himself in heaven.
There is a question that I began to ask myself that day, and I would encourage you to ask yourself the same question periodically…what kind of life would I need to be living to have a homeless person stand up and speak at my funeral? Then take that question a step further and ask yourself this question, how is the life that I am currently living different from that? Take it one more final step forward and ask God, what do I need to do to make it so?
We serve a mighty and powerful God capable of things that we could never even imagine. He is just waiting to be invited into those parts of our lives that are the hardest to face and most difficult to change. He has plans for us that are beyond our comprehension. All we have to do is be willing to let Him come in and do the work, and He will use us to change the world, one person at a time.