What if? Oh, what's the Point?!

This evening I was wondering what would have happened if Jesus had got to the Garden of Gethsemane, and then decided it was all too hard - and gone back home to his old job of being a builder.

After all he was meeting a lot of resistance. Most people seemed to prefer the old way of doing things. After all - that way had been good enough for generations. Why change things now?

It would have been a lot easier to give up this Messiah lark and go back to being a builder. After all being a builder was the job he had been trained for. That's what he was good at. This dying business - it takes a bit of getting used to.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with giving up and going back. The problem was that there was no way back. He had burned his boats. Everyone knew who he was. Everyone knew who he claimed to be. He had nailed his colours to the mast. He couldn't go back to being a builder. Too many people wanted him to go on to be their Messiah. And too many people wanted him dead.

Sometimes preachers have to preach a difficult message from the pulpit. A hard message. The kind of message that people don't like to hear. It's Good News alright - but only if you want to hear it. It's Bad News if you don't want to hear it.

I wonder what would happen if a Preacher told people that the old way of doing things wasn't good enough anymore. In fact, it had never been good enough. Doing things the old way was exactly how we had got into the mess that we are in. The mess where hardly anyone comes to hear the message because they think it's Bad News.

And when you tell the people inside that we have to find better ways of telling the Good News - they say, "Well the old way was good enough for us." In other words, what you're saying is Bad News to everyone!

Perhaps that Preacher would get some criticism. Especially if he carried on telling the insiders that the Old Ways were history. God is doing a New Thing (as he does, you know). Jesus isn't standing still. That's why he told his disciples they were to Follow Him. Standing around wasn't going to work. They would get left behind. In the Old Days. In the Dark Ages. In the Ways that didn't work anymore.

If you're not moving then you are not following. And if you're not following then you're not a disciple. You've got to change. Step out in faith. Get out of the boat and walk on the water. Jesus is calling 'Come'. If you won't go - you won't get.

That's dangerous talk that is. It could get you crucified - well in the olden days it could anyway! Nowadays, well I don't know what would happen. Crucifixion is not legal anymore - and just as well!

Perhaps the Preacher would get the sack. Or perhaps the Preacher would get moved - so that the people would get a new Preacher that would not stir up so much trouble. Perhaps the Preacher would just go back home and return to the building trade, or whatever.

The guy that wrote Ecclesiastes was pretty disillusioned at times of his life. We were reading about it at the Bible Study tonight. That's what sparked off my wondering above. This guy had tried everything to get happy - pleasure, drink, women, fine building projects, cynicism, despair. Nothing worked. It all seemed so pointless.

And he was the King. The people owed him happiness. He had inherited it.

But it was not so. Although there was a Time for Everything under the Sun - that didn't include Happiness - unless you chose to obey the commands of God - and follow his ways.

There's that little word 'follow' again. It's inescapable. There is no happiness without God. And if we stay stuck in the past - God will leave us behind. Isaiah preached to his people. He told them God was saying, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Is.43:19).