I think most of us have a love/hate relationship with crowds. Depending on how large the crowd is, it may be next to impossible to make our way to where we need to go.
I attended a large event at a stadium and after it was over, I was walking with this massive crowd of people into the parking lot. After we had walked quite a ways, I suddenly realized that I was walking the wrong direction to get to my car so I had to turn back and walk against the crowd. It was almost impossible to walk against the flow of that massive amount of people walking toward me.
And I don’t know of anybody who enjoys sitting in a long line of traffic, just one car of many going nowhere. Crowds can be frustrating.
But with all of the annoying things about being in a crowd, there are also some positives. Like, at least there is probably something special going on or there probably wouldn’t be a large crowd. This reminds me of the famous Yogi Berra quote when he said, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
Plus, crowds allow you to kind of hide in the background, right? This is especially helpful to people who are introverts and don’t want to be called out.
Penny and I visited Colonial Williamsburg, VA one year and we were in a tour group and during that tour we were in the colonial court house. There were a lot of us in that group but Penny and I were standing in the very front next to the tour guide. And as luck would have it, the tour guide said, “I need some volunteers to act out a courtroom scene.”
I tried to not make eye contact so he wouldn’t pick me, but the guide pointed at me and said, “You sir, come forward. You are going to be the defendant in this case.”
Life lesson learned: Never, ever be in the front of a crowd when someone is looking for a volunteer.
I say all of this because I find the first line of our Gospel reading very interesting. Luke tells us, “Now large crowds were traveling with him, with Jesus.”
It’s interesting that Jesus attracted large crowds and this is what we have here. Over the past several weeks during our vanity license plate sermon series, we focused on several of Jesus’ teachings in which he was creating quite a stir among the people through his life transforming teachings and healings. And because of this, Jesus was attracting a large following.
Now, what preacher doesn’t want a filled sanctuary? You would think that Jesus would have turned to them and said something like, “Hey, let’s see if we can make this crowd even bigger. Let’s have an ‘invite a friend to synagogue Sabbath’ and see if we can pack this place.”
Jesus, who obviously had never attended a church growth seminar does the exact opposite and kind of spoils the positive momentum that he has been creating by saying things we wouldn’t expect Jesus to say. Things like…
“Think twice if you believe that you are one of my disciples simply by following me at a distance. And unless you love me more than anyone else in your life, you’re really not following me at all. You need to be all in, otherwise you’re just a spectator.
And before you sign up for the next leg of this journey, just know that it’s going to be extremely costly. You’re going to have to sacrifice a lot along the way.
Instead of pumping up the crowd, it seems like Jesus is thinning out the crowds. In my world, the size of your church identifies if you are a successful pastor or not, but not so much in Jesus’ world. Jesus is more concerned with transforming the world than he is about crowd size.
Five chapters from this one, we will find Jesus with another crowd of people. Instead of seeing just a great big crowd of people, he focuses on one person who was kind of lost in that big crowd. His name was Zacchaeus, a despised tax collector.
Maybe you grew up learning this song about him:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see
And when the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree
And said, 'Zacchaeus, you come down!
For I'm going to your house today!
For I'm going to your house today!'
And as the story goes, Zacchaeus, the tax collector, the outsider, the person you would least expect, the one who was lost in the crowd, became a disciple of Jesus that day and experienced the salvation of God.
And by the way, Luke the Gospel writer is especially good at this where he highlights all of the times when Jesus noticed people who would have otherwise gone unnoticed in Jesus’ day.
Like Zacchaeus, the despised tax collector and later in Luke 15, where we find the prodigal son story, the lost sheep, and the lost coin. Jesus has an unfair advantage when he plays hide and seek because he always knows how to find us.
Luke wants us to know that nobody escapes Jesus’ attention. We can’t hide in the crowd. We can’t blend in and go unnoticed. God’s grace has a way of locating us and inviting us to become followers of Jesus.
Kind of like our Psalm reading which is one of our appointed readings on this Sunday. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you search out my path and my lying down, Even before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely.”
God knows us even better than we know ourselves.
So what does this mean for you and me whenever we find ourselves in a large crowd feeling a little lost. Like a college student who is just one of twenty thousand other students here on campus trying to chart your future direction in life. Like attending a church and trying to figure out that next step in your faith journey.
Well, maybe it all starts with remembering that God sees each one of us in the crowd. We’re not invisible to God. We don’t all just blend in. God knows each one of by name and knows everything about us as Psalm 139 reminds us.
We say that God is omniscient which means that God is all knowing. God sees us and God knows us. You are not lost in the crowd. Like a lost coin or a lost sheep, God knows where to find you.
The second way that we can move from being lost in a crowd toward a more growing faith is by responding to Jesus’ call to move into a deeper faith and trust in Him. And this is why Jesus stops along his journey and offers a challenge to the large crowd that has been following him.
Jesus wants them to know that it’s not just about being followers in a crowd. It’s about each person responding to Jesus by living out our faith in our everyday lives and not just when we’re in the crowd.
This past June, I officiated at a wedding in Columbus. It was a large wedding with almost three hundred people in attendance. After the ceremony, a couple came up to me and said, “Pastor Robert, do you remember us?”
This was a couple who attended my previous church. It was a fairly large church so I didn’t get to know them personally, but they were regular attenders at one of our worship services. This was one of those moments where only by the grace of God, their names immediately popped into my head! “Hi Frank and Amy! It’s great to see you!”
The first thing I asked them was how they knew the bride since the groom was from out of state. They said that when they first moved into the community, the bride’s parents invited them to attend our church. They said that if it wasn’t for them, they probably wouldn’t have attended any church.
They went on to tell me all the ways they are involved in the church and what a difference it has made in their lives. They have become good friends with other church members and they are growing in their faith.
I keep thinking about that conversation with this couple and how wonderful it was that a simple invitation to attend church, led to this friendship in which they were invited to that wedding. But even more importantly, how this couple has moved from being in the crowd, to actively growing in their faith together through that church.
I always think of late August and early September as a new beginning. It’s the beginning of the school year. Many of us are into more of a routine following the summer months. I think that this is also a time of year when we are more open to a deeper faith and a more meaningful relationship with God.
Our church’s way of helping with this renewed time of spiritual growth is by encouraging each and every person to have a loving faith, a learning faith, and a living faith. This is what helps us to move from being in the crowd to a more personal walk with God.
Our Loving Faith ministries are to help us love God and each other. These include Sunday worship gatherings like we’re doing now, small groups where we can discuss our faith with each other by focusing on the previous Sunday’s worship theme, and our prayer ministry where we share our joys and concerns together on a weekly basis.
Our Learning Faith ministries are to help us grow in our understanding of God and our faith. These include our Sunday School classes for all ages which begins next Sunday and I’m beginning a four-week pastor’s bible study Monday evenings on the topic, “How the Bible Actually Works.” We also have many other Learning Faith opportunities offered through our church.
Our Living Faith ministries are to help us live out our faith through service. There are so many ways to serve in and through the church, like serving as a greeter or an usher, helping set up our Sunday morning Connect Time, helping in the nursery, working with children, folding bulletins, volunteering at our weekly Monday Lunch community meal, serving through our monthly Athens First Saturday to bless our community which was held yesterday morning, and the list of possible ministries goes on and on.
Vickie Buck, our new Ministries Coordinator will be offering a Spiritual Gifts class to help us identify our gifts and how we might use those gifts in specific ways through the ministries of our church.
This week, I invite us to think about the question, “in what ways might God be calling me from out of the crowd so that I can have a more loving faith, a more learning faith, and a more living faith?”
That’s a perfect question for us to think about especially as we begin a new series next Sunday called “Faith Builders.” We’ll be looking at how we can build our faith through praying, reading, worshipping, sharing, giving, and serving.
Jesus knows how easy it is for us to get lost in a crowd, but the good news is that he always knows how to find us.
Found in a Crowd
Sermon Discussion Questions
Luke 14:25-33 & Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
September 8, 2019
In our Gospel reading from Luke, we are told that a large crowd of people was following Jesus.
What are the positives and the negatives of being part of a crowd?
Luke’s Gospel is known for the many times that Jesus was able to notice someone in a crowd like Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Jesus also talked about the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son as a way of describing how God can always find us. Our Psalm for today refers to God searching us and knowing everything about us.
Share a time when you felt lost in your faith.
In the sermon, Pastor Robert shared two ways that can help us when we feel lost in our faith.
#1 - Remember that Jesus sees you in the crowd. You are not lost. God knows you! What can help you to remember that God knows you and sees you in the crowd?
#2 - Respond to Jesus’ invitation in having a loving faith, a learning faith, and living faith.
How is God calling you to respond to having a more loving faith? Weekly worship? Daily time with God? Prayer ministry? Join one of our small groups?
How is God calling you to respond to having a more learning faith? Sunday School? Pastor’s Bible Study? Other?
How is God calling you to respond to having a more living faith? Serving as a Greeter or Usher? Helping with Our Children’s Program? Folding Bulletins? Our monthly Athens First Saturday Community Involvement? Serving at Monday Lunch? Other Service Opportunities?
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