Life can seem like endless repetition. Routines become ruts, and the years begin to fly by. Can you relate to this feeling? Jesus offers an attractive alternative that few Christians ever experience.
He flooded authorities with hundreds of bogus emergency calls: his daughter had stopped breathing, he’d been shot on his motorcyle. 20-year-old Mason Seckar was finally tracked down and arrested and this was his explanation: "I was bored."
swell
Charles Morris, Haven Today, a program called “Don’t Waste Your Life Being Bored” . . .
Mason Seckar is just one of a generation of bored young people who create chaos just to make life interesting. Remember the Aum cult who’s members released sarin nerve-gas in a Tokyo subway a few years ago? 12 were left dead and thousands sickened. Why did it happen? Why in Japan? Shinji Miyadai teaches sociology at Tokyo Metropolitan University and since the attack he’s been digging for answers. In an article this month he said it can all be explained in one word – boredom.
But this is even more revealing – other young Japanese said they empathized with the cult members — they felt deep boredom themselves and they could see how it might drive you to do terrible things.
Miyadai says that when advanced nations attained material wealth in the late 1970s they entered an era of stable prosperity where things are no longer emerging, where there’s no sense of forward momentum, no anticipation of growth and change. There are no horizons beckoning and – consequently -- the generation born into that society is afflicted with a deep sense of boredom.
But it’s not just young people who understand boredom. Psychologists at the University of Oregon, developed a chronic boredom scale and they found that chronic boredom affects every age group and that it leads to drug abuse, gambling, depression, and risk-seeking.
Of course, a lot of bored people never go to such extremes. They just keep going through the motions, hoping for a little change in their routine on the weekends, filling the emptiness with recreation or entertainment.
So who can break us out of this chonic boredom? Who can save us from wasting our lives being bored?
Jesus can! Jesus is not bored. He doesn’t want us to be bored. And he gave us the answer to boredom in a parable he told about the Kingdom of Heaven.
OPENING SONG - What Life Would Be Like – Big Daddy Weave
Matthew 20.1-16 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These men who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Did you catch that? Jesus understands boredom. These people are just standing around and the landowner goes up to them and says, “Why have you been standing around all day doing nothing. Why are you wasting your lives being bored?” It’s the perfect picture of an un-engaged, unmotivated, life. And in the parable Jesus puts an answer into their mouths for why they’re living this way – an answer that shows he understands their boredom. They say, “It’s because no one has hired us.” No one has employed us. No one has engaged us in anything worth doing.
Listen, all you bored people out there – Jesus will employ you – he will give you something to do that’s really worth doing. He says to you, “You also go and work in my vineyard.”
The main point of Jesus’ parable is not boredom – it’s that the last will be first. The landowner pays those who worked a few hours the same as those who worked all day. God’s rewards are based on his generosity and grace not on how hard or long we work. He reserves the right to reward those who came in late and only worked a few hours the same as those who worked all day. To be able to work for him is grace. To be rewarded for it is grace.
But there’s a secondary point to the parable. It shows how deeply Jesus understands boredom and in it he gives the cure to boredom – it’s being employed in the kingdom of God. To be called, to hear Jesus say, “You also go and work in my vineyard.”
Jesus says this to each and every believer. We’re all called to believe and receive salvation, we’re al called to be sons and daughters of God, and we’re all called to join with the Father and the Son in the work of the vineyard. And it’s exciting work because it’s going somewhere, it’s not meaningless, it’s what God is doing in the world by the power of his Spirit. He says to each one of us, “Why are you standing around? Why are you wasting your life being bored? You also go and work in my vineyard.”
While Janet and I were waiting to get on a plane last week, we were watching a young father. He was holding his one- year-old up to the window and saying, “Look! What do you see, honey?” “Do you see a plane? What do you see?” She wouldn’t answer, she just kept shrugging her shoulders. No matter what he said or how much enthusiasm he put into his voice, she just kept shrugging.
Jesus gives us the cure for the shrug. He holds us up and says, “Look!” In Ecclesiastes the author was bored to death because there’s nothing new happening – nothing new under the sun. Everything was meaningless – a chasing after the wind. But Jesus gives us a new worldview. God has broken into his world. The world is his vineyard and he’s actively at work in it through his Son. He’s doing a new thing and Jesus says, “Look!”
Isaiah 43:18-21 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. LOOK, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.”
This is the cure for boredom. This is what makes life exciting. Learning to see the world through the eyes of Jesus. Jesus looked out on the world and he was excited. He said to his disciples, “Look! The fields are white for harvest.” Look, do you see what I see? I see a world full of people waiting to be claimed – a world ripe with people ready to be brought into his kingdom -- ripe with loneliness and boredom and grief and shame -- ready to be harvested by my transforming love and forgiveness.
“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. So pray for workers. “
Let me just add two things about his Kingdom that make it worth getting excited about:
1. The Kingdom comes with power.
We’re at a stage in history where it seems like all the revolutionary ideologies that might have changed the world have played themselves out. Young people are blowing themselves up to have one final violent impact on the world and still the world doesn’t change.
But Jesus’ kingdom comes with power – real power. When Jesus employs you in his kingdom, he’s not just offering an ideology. He’s calling you to take part in a work that he’s accomplishing in the world with the power of his Spirit. I was in China last xxx? meeting with believers who listen to our broadcast (you might want to say more about this, Chas)
Do you know that when Mao pulled down the bamboo curtain, he kicked out all the missionaries, killed or imprisoned the Christians, and predicted that Christianity would be wiped out in a single generation? There were one million Christians in China at the time—today the estimates exceed hundred million. God is on the move, calling people into his kingdom, into the realm of redeeming love. The church is exploding and energized with zeal to see the Gospel going forth. Christ is a power at work in the world – and he’s working in and through his people.
2. The Kingdom comes with great reward.
In Jesus’ parable, the landowner calls all his workers together at the end of the day and pays them – he pays the last one’s hired the same as the first ones because he’s not handing out paychecks that are actually earned. He doesn’t owe us anything. Jesus laid down his life in love for us -- to redeem us out of our wasted lives and to bring us into his kingdom. So there can be no question of payment for services rendered. The debt is all on our side.
But still there is great reward.
The end of the day will come; the culmination of history will arrive. If you’re longing for an apocalyptic change in the world, it will come. And on that day, Jesus will reward his people. Jesus will say to them, “Well done.” And then he’ll open the doors to glory and give us permanent employment in his culminated kingdom. Don’t worry that we’ll going to be bored because there’s nothing left to do. We’ll be fully engaged in life and our boredom will all have been left at the door.
Let me end by playing you a clip of Dr. John Piper.
(Track # 5 at 3:34 “Philippians 1: 20 it is my eager” through to tract # 6 :52 –“is as nothing by comparison.”)
John Piper is not bored. Neither will you be when you have sold out for the sake of displaying Christ as the one supremely valuable thing in life. Don’t waste your life being bored.
CLOSING SONG – Days of Elijah - Haven
