Do you know the famous story of The Hare and the Tortoise? The hare was fast but easily distracted. The tortoise was slow but unshakably disciplined. In the end, the tortoise won the race. The story is an allegory teaching us that the quickest solution isn't always the most effective. Sometimes, the reality is that the more haste, the less speed.
I'm not sure whether Jesus ever heard that fable. Still, I'm very sure that he would have been in agreement with it. Jesus had a race of his own to run. As the Messiah, the goal before Jesus was nothing less than to change the world. Jesus came to change each of our lives individually into all God that created them to be. And, he came to bring this entire present evil age we are in to an end and to inaugurate the sovereign rule of God into all creation. When God rules fully, everything about us and our world will be right.
It's hard to imagine a more radical mission. The Apostle Paul would even refer to it as a "new creation." Even if Jesus had designed to take the world apart atom by atom and reconstruct its constituent elements, he could hardly have spoken of a more seismic upheaval. Why do I say that? It's because the roots of our human resistance to God's authority over our lives go deep, right back in fact to the earliest days of human origins. Evil isn't a superficial rust that adheres to the surface of our beings. Sin cannot be easily eliminated. Evil is an intractable virus imbedded in the genes that shape our human nature. The big question Jesus-followers have always had is this: How will Jesus ever be able to bring about this total shift in the entire cosmos, taking us from being under the rule of evil to being under the rule of God?
If you and I had been given such a formidable Messianic mission, I suspect that we would have adopted the strategy of the hare. After all, there are a lot of people on this planet. There is no way we will ever reach them all if we go slowly. Anyone who wants to change the world must be sure to have an impact on the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. In other words, if you want to change the world, convert the masses.
But, today, we see Jesus pull away from the masses simply to be with a few people. This is something Jesus seemed to do quite often. But, how is this policy of withdrawing from the crowds in any way consistent with his calling to change the world? CEOs might say that this was an awful business strategy. But, significantly, it seems that Jesus thought that this would be effective. What we see is that Jesus chose to invest his time and energy by making an investment in a few people and then sending them out.
He does the same today.
To His Glory,
Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor