When Jesus wanted to make a point about something he would use what is called a parable; which has kind of gained its own definition in our culture, but it literally means 'to throw alongside'. You take something; an idea, a thought, a picture of the world, and you throw it alongside something that people already know and understand. Basically, parables are stories that reveal something bigger about the world by saying, "It is kind of like this."
Because sometimes stories just work better.
So we see Jesus all the time saying, "To what can God's Kingdom be compared to? Well, it is kind of like this...that thing is kind of like this thing...this is kind of like that..." and he leaves you with some mind blowing picture where the only thing you can do is sit there at the end saying, "Dang..."
Jesus was good like that.
Today, we have a lot to learn from how Jesus taught. Because we would understand the world a little better if we would start 'throwing alongside' a little more.
So to what can living in God's Kingdom today be compared to?
It is kind of like a gardener who planted seeds in a bucket.
Everyday the gardener would lightly water the seeds, check their soil, and adjust the sunlight as necessary. After several days the seeds began to sprout out of the soil and their leaves began to show. The plants were still young, just in the beginning phases of being a seedling, so the gardener continued to water, making sure to maintain the proper level of moisture in the dirt.
Eventually all of the seeds the gardener had sown began to sprout, entering into the beginning stages of being a plant and creating a patch of green in the middle of the bucket.
However after about a week, the gardener noticed that the seedlings stopped growing. He checked the soil and saw that it had the right amount of moisture, they were getting enough sunlight, and the fertilizer levels were at their maximum. So the gardener waited a few more days, checking the plants all the while and still nothing had happened. Frustrated, the gardener watered some more and added more fertilizer in a last effort to promote growth of the patch of plants in the middle of the bucket.
The next day, the gardener came out to check his seedlings only to find that they had all wilted and died.
Because it is possible to have too many seedlings.
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This is a common occurrence for many people starting seeds in containers and it all comes down to the natural human intuition to waste nothing. You typically plant several seeds together because there is always the chance that seeds can fail. While it would be nice to just plant one seed with guaranteed success, it doesn't quite work like that. So you plant your seeds, keep the soil moist, and wait to see a sprout, but often at least two or three of the seeds will sprout and turn into seedlings.
And this is what causes the problem.
It is a problem because you planted those. You worked to keep them alive and you put yourself into them. And there it is...little leaves on their way to becoming a plant...yet you aren't going to be able to keep them all. You planted several just as insurance that at least one would produce and now there are two or three and the initial instinct is, "I'll keep them all" because you want to be as efficient as possible and don't want anything to go to waste.
But you have to get rid of them.
Because what happens is the roots will get bigger and bigger and fight for space and get tangled with one another and if they are too close they will stunt each other's growth and they won't be able to sustain themselves and eventually you will be left with nothing.
Rather, what actually needs to happen is that once you plant the seeds you need to give them a few days and when they sprout, you keep the strongest one and get rid of the rest; which is obviously something you hate to do. It isn't easy to just pluck up something that you have put a couple weeks into caring for especially knowing that it has the potential to become a productive plant. It is counter intuitive to the human instinct to not waste perfectly good plants. But if you don't, if you try to have too many plants growing together, you will end up with nothing.
The reality is that if you want seeds to grow, you have to know what to get rid of.
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Yet, we happen to live in a world where we think that the only way to move forward is with more, fulfillment is measured by how much you have, and being busy is the normal state of existence.
But apparently some things don't work like that.
In early Christianity there was a man named Luke who wanted to write his version of the Jesus story. Which meant he had a particular agenda that he thought needed to be put out into the world. So as you read you notice all sorts of little twists that Luke puts in and details that he either adds, deletes, or changes to make his writing different from the other stories of Jesus' life. But there is one trait in particular that is completely unique to Luke's writing. Let me just throw these out there and see if you can pick up on it.
Luke starts by introducing Jesus and we find Jesus doing some healing and some teaching, his own village then tries to kill him, and he gets in trouble with some religious leaders. But then in chapter 9 we get this:
"As the time approached for him to be taken into heaven,
Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem."
So apparently Jesus is on his way to this city. And it doesn't say that Jesus nonchalantly heads in the general direction of Jerusalem, it is a resolute 'mind completely focused on with all his energy' sort of direction. Something that we need to pay attention to. Because it is only chapter 9 and apparently Jesus is starting the part of his journey that is supposed to be the last part. There is still 15 chapters left. Meaning there is a good chance that Jesus is going to go to some other places first, but Luke doesn't tell us that. Luke says that everything Jesus does from here on out is part of his journey to a single city a couple hundred miles away. Obviously Luke is up to something here.
Because Luke does this again in chapter 13v22:
"Then Jesus went through the towns and villages,
teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem."
We are then given some more teachings and a whole bunch of parables and we then arrive at chapter 17v11:
"Now, on his way to Jerusalem..."
By now as we are reading we are finding that Luke has begun giving some locational markers showing us that Jesus is getting pretty close to Jerusalem. In one of those places nearby Jerusalem, some controversial stuff goes down with the religious authorities and then we read this in 18v31:
"Jesus took the twelve aside and told them,
'We are going up to Jerusalem.'"
About a chapter later in 19v28:
"After Jesus had said this,
he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem."
So by chapter 19, I'm guessing you have a pretty good idea of where Jesus is going.
Over and over and over again Luke tells us Jesus is going to Jerusalem. Even when Jesus is back at the beginning of his journey and he is going through all of these different cities, Luke keeps reminding us about Jerusalem. The entire time Jesus is traveling around this part of the Middle East he has one destination that he puts his entire life and energy and focus into no matter where he is and what he is doing.
Jerusalem.
In Mark's version of Jesus' life we are told a story about Jesus being in this town where he had done some healing and different miracles. And so the next day his disciples wake up and find Jesus off by himself praying and when they see him they come running up to him yelling, "Hey, there is this huge crowd of people waiting for you back in town because they want to be healed." Which on the surface is assumably a good thing. Generally speaking, less sickness, disease, pain, and demons is beneficial for the world. But Jesus looks at his disciples, doesn't even acknowledge what they just told him and says, "Let's go to the next place."
All of these people find out this Jesus guy is in town and he is a healer. So naturally if you have a town full of sick and hurting and messed up people, you would want him to stick around for a couple days and clean things up.
But he doesn't.
He leaves.
Doesn't Jesus realize all of the good he could do? He has an opportunity to help all of these people and he doesn't do it. He says no to them.
Which is the same thing happening in Luke's version of the story. Jesus stops at all of these cities and I'm assuming that in one of the most hospitable cultures known in history, they would have offered and begged him to stick around, especially if he was going to be fixing things. So for Jesus to constantly leave town after town to make his way to Jerusalem he would have had to say no to quite a few people.
Jesus has a priority. There is one thing that takes precedence over everything else happening around him.
What we see is that if Jesus wants to get to Jerusalem, he will be forced to navigate the rest of the world based on this one thing that he has already resolutely set out for.
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There is evidently a pattern here.
To say yes to one thing means saying no to lots of other things. Jesus has given himself to Jerusalem...so he can't get caught up in everything else or he will miss the thing he set out for in the first place. For something to grow and work and flourish and be fulfilling, there's going to be things that you are going to have to get rid of.
Which is a bit difficult to do in a world where you need more and more things on your resume, where saying you are busy means you are important, and where efficiency and deadlines and stress are what tells us we are abiding by the rules of our culture.
Yet in direct contradiction to that is this way the world works that we can find all over the place, but that somehow always happens to get thrown aside as unrealistic.
Because I'm willing to guess that if someone were to be writing down our stories today, I doubt they would be able to find a Jerusalem to refer to.
Because rarely do you find someone who has a beautiful direction that stands out above everything else. Rarely do you find someone who has said yes to something. Instead you find people trying to go in multiple, often contradictory, directions all at the same time and in saying yes to lots of things, aren't actually saying yes to any of them.
We hear this all the time:
"I'm busy."
"I've got a lot going on."
"I don't have time for that."
"Maybe next week."
When I was in college I had a pretty big tendency to 'go' all the time. I was teaching every Sunday at a church, going to school full time, and working two jobs. And those were just the 'tasks'. Because beyond that I was engaged, learning what it meant to be a husband to this woman and preparing ourselves for our own family. I had a community that I was supposedly dedicated to, that needed my presence while I needed theirs. And I also owed myself a rhythm of rest. Because a lot of people forget that they aren't a machine and that their constant going is actually just a very slow way of killing themselves.
But in the midst of all of these things, I was pretending to have lots of Jerusalems and was never really moving closer to any of them. It makes sense that people use the metaphor of 'juggling their schedules'. Because when you are juggling, you never actually get to hold and engage any of the balls...you just touch it for a split second and continue to get rid of it, throwing it up in the air in anticipation of what is next.
Which is what I was doing.
I was juggling.
I would get one thing, touch it for a brief second, never establish anything meaningful, never make any part of it significant, and then just throw it back up in the air ready to passively neglect whatever was next on the list.
But this is just the way the world works right?
In the business world there is a concept called "The Law of Two Thirds" that basically states there are three elements and drives to business: quality, price, and speed...choose two. So take a restaurant. The restaurant can choose quality and price, but they will lose speed. They can chose quality and speed, but lose price. Or they can go what seems to be the common route and choose price and speed and lose quality. You only get to pick two of the three. It is just the reality of how things work. Because you can't properly manage all of them at the same time and if you try to, you will lose them.
Our lives pretty much work the exact same way except with a lot more options to choose from and with a lot less ability to choose those options. Because when you start making choices and priorities, you immediately also start choosing what you aren't going to do as well. And if you try to choose them all...you set yourself up to not actually get anything.
This is what we do when we try to 'juggle'. In order to keep things moving and entertain all of the different elements of our worlds, we never actually choose anything. None of them actually find a place in our hands.
So one day, I had gone from working to class, tried to catch up with some people, and then started working on my teaching for that Sunday. Which essentially meant my fiance and our relationship was being thrown back up into the air while I continued to juggle everything else...just like I had done the previous day and the day before that and countless other times over the past few months.
That night, though, I was confronted by a very chilling reality that I didn't realize my juggling had caused. Because as we sat together in her dorm room late that night when I had finally finished working and was left only with a glazed look on my tired face, this woman who I had supposedly given myself to sat by my side and with eyes of sorrow and hurt and with the pressure of disappointment she calmly said, "If this is the way you are going to do things, this isn't going to work."
And sadly, a lot of our culture would confront her and say, "No, no, no. You have to support your future husband. You have to learn how to work with his schedule. That is what it means to be a good wife."
Which is garbage.
Because she was exactly right.
Juggling doesn't work. If I wasn't ever going to fully give her myself then a marriage wasn't going to work...she was just pointing out the obvious that so many people seem to miss. Because there are hundreds of options, all sorts of directions to go in, but we all know that you can only really properly make a few choices at once and if you want to get to Jerusalem then you have to learn how to say no.
If your family or your community is important and essential and something you want to give yourself to, then you have to be up front about all the other things you have to say no to.
If your rest and health and being able to stop and enjoy the world around you instead of constantly running through it is a priority, then you have some choices to make.
There is a very real intentionally to it.
So I had to choose. I had to learn how to stop spreading myself thin and to put things down that needed to be put down.
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Our culture has created a fictitious 'normal' that the rest of the world has bought into. How many people do you know that struggle to find an ounce of free time in their week? Or live by the idea that if you do have free time then you aren't working hard enough or involved in enough things or going to enough places. You aren't efficient, you aren't productive, you aren't taking advantage of the hours in the day.
But how many people are in so many places at once
that they aren't actually anywhere at all?
How many people wear so many hats and are involved in so many things and have so many responsibilities and places to be that it is almost like they aren't actually going anywhere. Because if you don't know how to say no then you will never get to Jerusalem. You'll just keep getting stuck in all the different cities and all the different directions and despite expending an enormous amount of effort, you won't be making any real progress.
Despite the way many of us live, this is actually the reality of the world.
That if you try to choose millions of options and juggle and don't resolutely set out for Jerusalem.
Then you'll never get there.
If you don't pull up the extra seedlings then nothing is going to grow.
A lot of people who follow Jesus tend to claim that their rest and health and being able to slow down for themselves and their families and their friends is a priority. But they never really seem to do it do they? They are so caught up in going and going and going and being busy and being stressed where there is always another email to answer, another thing to add to the list, and the ringtone of their cell phone is the soundtrack of their lives and it is like they have too many roots growing in the same spot and eventually they are going to stop growing, wilt, and die.
Because there are too many seedlings.
And it has to be a priority. You have to be intentional about whatever it is. You have to stop and say, "This is the most important thing to me." I had to be willing to put work and tasks and deadlines and meetings and roles aside so that I could actually be a living, breathing human being who had real and genuine interaction with the world around me. Which means instead of investing my energy and my focus all over the place, I had to put it on my Jerusalem. I had to grab ahold of it and direct it exactly where it need to go.
What my wife Vanessa showed me that night sitting in her dorm room was that if I was going to truly say yes to something, then there was a lot that I had to learn to say no to.
Because this is just how the world works.
We need to become the kind of people who know what to get rid of, when to say no, and that being scattered with a full schedule taking you all over the place means you aren't actually getting anywhere...
And this will involve calling out some of the things that our culture thinks is normal. It will involve un-learning how to juggle and being ok with less. It will involve a lot more saying no than we are used to.
Kind of like finding the extra seedlings and being ok with pulling them up.
Which makes our lives a lot like the gardener who planted seeds in a bucket.
