Anyone here have redeye problems?

If you have allergies, or if you like "weepies" (movies that make you cry), or if you cry easily, you have redeye problems.

If you like a shot of espresso in your morning coffee, you order a redeye If you like two shots of espresso in your morning coffee (like I do), you order a black-eye. Anything more than two shots is a zombie, which is when you REALLY have a redeye problem.

If you need to get from the West Coast to the East Coast in a hurry, you have the bleary-eyed pleasure of taking a redeye. You also know that the longest hours of your redeye flight are those spent waiting around for the flight to leave in the all-but-deserted airport.

You don't dare fall asleep, for fear of missing your departure or having someone liberate your personal belongings. But by 9 PM all those shamelessly overpriced airport restaurants have closed. Even Starbucks has pulled the plug on its coffee pots.

For redeye flights the only sleep-fighting food to be found (sugar and caffeine) is spit out by vending machines those always-temperamental vending machines. Inevitably about half of the ones located in whatever satellite of the airport you are waiting sport the dreaded out-of-order sign.

There you are starving, sleepy, stressed-out and all you can do is stare longingly at all the Goo-Goo Clusters, peanut butter and cheese crackers, and instant bad-breath nacho chips tempting you from behind two inches of unbreakable safety glass. No amount of change, no amount of jostling, kicking, glass-thumping, or swearing will convince those out-of-order machines to give up their empty, fat-laden calories. The goodies seem within easy reach. But the goodies are totally inaccessible.

How many people do you know who have all sorts of goodies, all kinds of goodness locked inside them, but you can't get to it because they are out of order? Something has gone wrong in their insides and all those Goo-Goo Clusters and other goodies are within reach but impossible to get at?

What renders us out of order? What happens to our insides that locks our best inside and leaves our friends and family in the lurch?

We're stressed, depressed, and self-obsessed.

Like most redeye travelers, we're stressed, depressed, and self-obsessed.

We stress over arrival times, departure times, luggage destinations, security checkpoints, terrorist threats, thunderstorms, ice-storms, seat assignments, and connecting flights.

We get depressed over time lost, long and lonely flights, the shrinking seat sizes (which may indicate some growth on our part), the mounting cost of travel, the growing sense of fear and insecurity that comes with increased security precautions.

We are self-obsessed to the point of seeing only ourselves being inconvenienced by schedule delays. We grouse about a flight canceled due to severe weather without ever considering those people and communities caught in the middle of those dangerous conditions. We complain about the security precautions now in effect without acknowledging the risks taken by those who search for weapons, explosives or violent individuals.

Let's look back at some first-century travelers. Let's take a look at those disciples who journeyed and jostled along with Jesus as he walked the length and breadth of the land. What do you see? Those selfsame characteristics stressed, depressed, self-obsessed are still evident.

Stressed: With all the anxious, ill, exhausted crowds of people pressing for cures and compassion, Jesus recognized that he and his disciples were prime candidates for stress. Jesus' solution to come away to a deserted place by yourselves and rest awhile (verse 31) was his cure for stress 2000 years ago. It's still the best cure for stress today. Harmonizing hustle and bustle with intentional down time, harmonizing activism with quiet periods of prayer and reflection kept Jesus' arms open to the crowds, his heart open to their needs. Because he was not stressed Jesus could get off his boat and face the throngs with heartfelt compassion instead of a short-temper. The disciples are another story. They were . . . stressed about where their next meal was coming from, stressed about the cost of keeping all these people around them, stressed about getting away from shore and getting back to shore.

Even their downtime, the serenity of a boat trip along the lake, was spent stressing out about where they were going instead of considering who they were with.

Depressed: Then there was the endless sea of needy, sick, poor, crippled, confused and hopeless people who approached Jesus and the disciples. Every person the disciples met offered good reason for sliding into depression. Everywhere the disciples and Jesus disembarked, every new village or town they reached, the same desperate crowds pressed in upon them. No matter how long Jesus stayed, no matter how many astounding miracles he performed, there was always more, more, more: more people in need, more ills to cure, more desperate situations to address.

For Jesus compassion checked and checkmated depression. Compassion [or in Greek splangnizesthai] overrode any paralyzing feeling of depression. Compassion meant action, healing, teaching, feeding, comforting, loving. There was so much to do, there was no time for moodiness and broodiness. The disciples, however, with their inability to see the big picture, their confusion over Jesus' identity, their fixation on their preconceived messianic images and expectations, were easy prey for depressive thoughts and feelings.

Reunited with their master, plunged into the midst of a crowd eager for Jesus' message and touch, the disciples gloomily fret over where their next meal will come from. In 6:52, the text immediately preceding Mark's conclusion in verses 53-56, the disciples refuse to open their hearts and souls to the truth of Jesus' identity to such an extent that despite witnessing Jesus walking on the water their hearts were hardened and they did not understand.

Now that's depressing!

Self-Obsessed: But where the disciples really excelled was in being self-obsessed. As soon as they returned from their long mission journey and rejoined Jesus, they burst with news. But according to Mark's gospel these Jesus-appointed, Jesus-empowered apostles did not marvel over the work of God. They didn't rant and rave about the movement of the spirit. They didn't celebrate the power of Jesus' name. They proudly boasted to Jesus of all that they had done and taught (verse 30).

Did you catch that? Instead of celebrating God's activity among the people, the disciples could only rerun their own words and actions while on mission. Later, when Jesus commands these oh-so-successful disciples to solve the problem of the hungry multitudes "You give them something to eat" his self-obsessed apostles can only whine, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?" (verse 37) Isn't it interesting how their own pocketbooks, not the stomachs of the hungry, decided how much these disciples would care, how much commitment they would make?

Jesus never blinked when others stood before him in need. And Jesus calls us not to blink when people stand before us in need.

Despite the wearying crowds, despite his own need for prayer and spiritual refueling, when Jesus escaped to what he had hoped would be a deserted place and was confronted with a crowd that had reached that deserted place before him, his response was compassion, not exasperation. When Jesus looked at desperate, needy, redeye people, Jesus saw them as sheep in need of a shepherd, not bothersome hangers-on in need of a swift kick.

Instead of mouthing platitudes or miraculously producing platters of food for a party, Jesus' first response was to give of himself, to teach them many things, filling their needs with his words and wisdom. Only when he had personally addressed the spiritual hungers of these peripatetic crowds did he turn the people and their hungry stomachs over to his disciples.

Is your soul wrung with anxiety, grief, and pain this morning?

Are you stressed, depressed, self-obsessed?

Are you Out of Order in more ways than one?

Jesus is here to feed you. Jesus is here to free you from what's wrecking your insides and locking you up. There's a key that can take the handcuffs off your heart, the shackles off your soul. That key is a relationship with Christ.