Hipster Jesus : Coffee Shop Faith

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Good morning and welcome to another week here at Making Waves! We are back with our second week of the new Hipster Jesus series. For those of you unable to join us last week, here’s a quick recap (although you can always read the other blog post on this site), we talked about how Jesus was a hipster during His day and age. What is a hipster? A hipster is one who doesn’t follow the cultural trends of the day and age. Now, while I’m not implying that Jesus follows or agrees with the practices of the hippie movement of the 70s or the hipster movement of today, I do believe that during His time on Earth, Jesus definitely fought the norm of society and he certainly broke the norms of religion. Anyway, before we get too deep into that, let’s dive into the Word. Today we will be reading from the gospel of Matthew, beginning in chapter 9, starting at verse 35 and going until verse 38. I’ll be posting from the NRSV.

³⁵ Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸ therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

                                                                                    – Matthew 9:35-38

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be glorifying in Your presence. You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Let me tell you a little story, do you ever have one of those days that just doesn’t work out no matter how hard you try? One of those days that just can’t seem to go quite right? Let me take you back to last Wednesday. Logan and I had just had an amazing couple of days at Oak Island, NC; we had taken a fling trip on Sunday after church, and the weather had been ideal. We are both about to begin school, so this was our last real chance to have a get-away. It couldn’t have been a better trip. We spent time with loved ones; we had long hours on the sand; we each read a new novel; it was really perfect. Then Wednesday came. We knew that we would have to come home and return to reality soon, and we mutually decided that Wednesday was when we would chop the proverbial lifeline. So, Wednesday became a nightmare. We got up early and neither of us got our coffee, which was a big mistake. The four-hour drive became a five-hour drive. We discovered we were out of food, so we had to go grocery shopping. But, of course, things couldn’t be so easy. We pull into the Aldi and hear a crack and a snap as the sky lets loose a heavenly-size flood. We are both drenched as we get our food, and finally we return home for a quick supper before I head out for the evening to go to our weekly bible study here at Pelham. We started a study two weeks ago called, “I Am Second,” in which we study and discuss a video posted online by a celebrity of some nature about their faith and experience with God. But, of course, this was the Wednesday of all Wednesdays. So, what’s next in this story? The Internet was down, of course. So, bible stud begins at 7, and it’s 6:57 and we have no study, no lesson, no game plan. So, I grab my pad of paper, and sit with the group and explain the situation. I then explain that we are going to dive deeper into the message from last Sunday and talk about evangelism. Little did I know how powerful this would be. Over the next hour, we would talk about the deepest concerns that these people have for the future of Christianity. The struggle with sharing our faith. The struggle with reaching the people of today. It was real, honest conversation. Those 60 minutes made the entire rest of the nightmare day totally worth it.

So, this got me thinking about our next week of Hipster Jesus. Last week we tackled a pretty huge first step to becoming a better evangelist. I may have been a bit overzealous and bit off more than I can chew. Before we are able to just stand up and DO the work of Christ, we have to be in a place where we can even know who Jesus is or who we are.

How many of you have been in a Starbucks? I would consider myself a bit of an aficionado on the subject. I have likely been in a Starbucks longer than I have been in school, hours-wise. I’m ashamed to admit this, but what I truly love about the Starbucks is following the norm. What does the standard person look like in a Starbucks? Quiet, solemn, bearded; MacBook in hand. Starbucks is where I go to unwind and be quiet. I pop open my Mac and sit for hours, just surfing the net, listening to music, writing, thinking, reading. But we aren’t talking about the standard person this morning; we are talking about hipsters, about the norm-breakers.

Every now and again I have one of these norm-breakers bust down the doors of the Starbucks. Usually they have a hand in their pockets, the other hand flailing around. No one in the store is anywhere near as happy as he or she is to be there. This person is looking for one thing and one thing only: conversation. He or she didn’t bring a computer and likely won’t drink the coffee; he only wants to talk to everyone in the Starbucks. He or she might ask others for advice on their favorite drinks, talk loudly above the acoustic tunes playing through the speakers, etc.

Maybe I’m drawing false connections here, but I think the religious community of today is a lot like the Starbucks. We are quiet. We keep to ourselves about our faith. We want to sit still right where we are. Keep our eyes on the prize, right? Just like my Mac, we just want to stay focused on our life and what is going on directly in front of us. We are just fine with the personal introspection that faith requires. We sit there on Sundays, we think, we write, we read, we pray. Some of us even take it a step further and study on Wednesdays, too, or three days a week, or even more. But ultimately, the community at large is lucky to be there more than once a week. And even when we are present, we are still only surface level, focused on our goal at hand.

Then we have our norm-breaking hipster: Jesus. He comes in with His loud voice, one hand in a pocket, talking to all the people in the courtyard. Look to the passage above, when Jesus came to town, He really came to town. People knew when Jesus was around. He sees the crowds of people wandering around hopelessly and aimlessly, and His heart pours out with compassion. Then He coins this brilliant phrase that sounds like a CEO speaking to his Board of Executives, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” We then read on to Matthew chapter 28, where all of a sudden Jesus does a role-reversal on us. Spoiler Alert: He calls US to be those laborers. Whoa, right? Not only does Jesus break the norms of religion, but then He has the gall to ask us to do the same.

So, how on Earth do we go out and tell others about Jesus? How do we tell them of the love that He has for them? How are we supposed to have any idea what to tell them? Well, we step back and look at the word that occurs in each of those questions: TELL.

Let’s start with “T.” The first and foremost thing that we have to do is acknowledge the truth to ourselves. Obviously, we need to believe before we go out and spread the Word. So, we first accept Jesus in our life. We acknowledge His presence and the reality of His love and passion for us. Maybe this comes through baptism; perhaps through a public affirmation of faith, just first understand who Christ is in YOUR life.

Then, we move on to the letter “E.” Once we acknowledge Jesus’ presence, we then learn how to explain His purpose and call. Now, many would argue that this would never be completely and totally possible. But, hear this, I am not saying that we have to understand everything that Jesus ever did or has done. In fact, we don’t have to understand any of it. God’s grace is far beyond our greatest understanding. But, I’m sure you can read a few Facebook articles and learn that there are many out there who are distorting the mission of Jesus into a money-making scheme or a scare tactic. So, learn to combat that by studying the one true resource: the Holy Bible. His Word. We enter a life on counsel through prayer and study through the Word and we try to understand what people are misunderstanding and help them to see Christ more clearly.

Third, we address the first “L.” Now that we’ve studied the life of Christ and the things He calls us to do, we must live in the way we are called. If there is one word thrown around with the word “Christian” in today’s society, it is the word “Hypocrite.” Now, I don’t honestly believe that we will be able to seriously combat this issue, because we most certainly ARE broken, imperfect hypocrites. But, we are striving towards a life of the one person who has ever NOT been a hypocrite: Jesus Christ. We might not be able to live each and every moment in a way that would make Christ proud, but if we want to go and make disciples we cannot one moment live like Christ and the very next moment be surfing pornography, drinking belligerently, or abusing our loved ones.

After this, we look to the second “L.” Once our lives are mirrored to the life of Christ (as best as we can), we are called in the commission to lead and to be the laborers in the field of a bountiful harvest. If I’ve said it once on this site, I’ve said it a million times: we are called to be ministers in this world. Not just me in the pulpit, but each and every one of us as Christ-followers.

So, finally, Christ has called us towards a life of making disciples of this world. He gives us the tools to do this, we just have to get them and use them. We have to learn to TELL the world about Him, by acknowledging the truth of Jesus in our lives, learning to explain the right from wrong, beginning to live our lives as Christ did, and finally taking the torch and leading as Christ has called us to do. I firmly believe that, if we do these things, we can change this world and be a part of the Jesus Hipster movement of today.

Please feel free to post any comments for discussion, I will try my best to respond. As always, if you have any private needs or prayers concerns, feel free to contact me personally at nathan@makingwaves.cc.