Out Our Way: The Gospel According to Goliath: 'Get back up!'

Once again Jesus went outside beside the lake. As he walked along he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. 'Follow me,' Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. Later Jesus had dinner at Levi's house and many tax collectors and 'sinners' were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with the 'sinners' and tax collectors, they asked his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?'  On hearing this, Jesus said to them: 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.' - Mark 2:13–17

Out our way, like many others, I have learned to ride the hard way: by trial and error (especially error). As many of you know, despite having as gentle and easy going a horse as any in Montana, I have managed to get dumped more than a few times. Galloping up a hill, Goliath lost his footing and I went sailing. Another time he spooked and I was once against launched ("Houston, we have a problem!")  Once, at full tilt, he got a sudden hitch in his giddy-up and kicked out and again it was off we go into the wild blue yonder again. Even Babe, who has gaits so smooth you could sip tea and read the paper even at the trot, let alone the canter or gallop, has managed to send me sailing or even, once, lost her footing and fallen with me still in the saddle.

I have been thrown, stepped on, squashed, tossed onto hard ground, tossed into the cactu, and mushed into the mud. But the real-deal cowboys just smile and tell me, "That's part of the life. If you ride it isn't a question if whether you'll get dumped, but when." Even highly experienced and extremely able riders have had their shares of "wrecks." If you are going to ride horses - especially working horses in open country and in some rough country - you are going to get dumped now and again.  

But old hand or green horn, there is one rule that we all follow: never quit! If you get "launched," it's up to you to get back up and get back in the saddle and keep riding.

Now the Pharisees, both ancient and modern, never could quite grasp this is true with God as it is with cowboying.  Even the best hand is capable of being thrown by sin - having a spiritual "wreck" and ending up "in the secular cactus." Great saints as well as pretty fouled up sinners have all ended up eating dirt in their time. The difference between the saint and the sinner is often only that the saint will get back up and try again. 

I confess I am not much of a cowboy - just as I must also confess I am not much of a saint. But I have not quit and although I "ain't much," I am a lot more than I was when I just lay there in the dirt hurting and wanting to give up. I may have been dusted more times than I can count, but I still choose to step up and sit in the saddle rather than stay down, sunning my moccasins.

This is what Jesus taught us sinners, us folks that have been tossed, bucked off or even just fell off: get back up and try again. God doesn't condemn or reject the sinner who gets back up and tries again - but he condemns those who say if you get knocked down you have to stay down.

The Pharisees didn't get that. They never will. But those who listen to Jesus hear His call and encouragement: "Follow me! And if you fall off along the way, get back up and try again! Just don't quit and you will discover that you will fall less often, ride more skillfully, eventually not fall at all."

That is the Good News of the Gospel: in Christ we are enabled and encourage to keep trying.  Like Levi, in time even the worst sinner can become a true disciple - provided we have the courage to not give up and quit.

God didn't give up on Levi, and Levi didn't quit on himself. That is how Levi became Matthew, the author of the first Gospel. There is hope for even the rankest tenderfoot in God's outfit. And He's hiring!

(John Bruington, Goliath and Scout can be reached at [email protected]. Sermons and columns are also available at http://www.havrepres.org, and the book, "Out Our Way: Theology Under Saddle," is available at Amazon.com.)