Holy Interruptions

SUMMARY

In this sermon titled "Holy Interruptions," Dr. Jeremy Smith explores the idea that God often works through unexpected interruptions in our lives. He begins by sharing a personal anecdote about his dogs interrupting his work, which leads to meaningful moments of reflection. Dr. Smith then delves into how Jesus' ministry was largely shaped by interruptions, citing numerous examples from the Gospels where Jesus responded to unexpected needs and requests.

The speaker emphasizes that while we often resist interruptions, they can be opportunities for God to work in and through us. He references Mark 5, where Jesus stops to heal a bleeding woman while on His way to save a dying girl, as a powerful example of how God's priorities may differ from our own. Dr. Smith also discusses how the Apostle Paul's plans were redirected by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6-10), reminding us that even our well-intentioned plans may not align with God's will.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Good morning everybody. I'm glad to be with you today. What a good service so far. I think that was Gary's way of telling me to speed up and make sure I don't go too long. Give me subtly but good service.

Start off with the baptism. I had said whenever I heard that we were going to do baptisms, I was like, oh, you should put them at the end of my lesson. That way it seems like it was a good lesson. And Gary said, Gary was like, ah, we should probably do it beforehand in case they changed their mind because of your sermon. So he's probably right.

Good idea. Good lesson and good service so far. It's probably going to be all downhill from here. So glad you're with us though. Carl, like Gary said, is in Pepperdine right now doing a lectureship and he asked me to preach for him.

And when he asked me to preach, I did not realize it was Mother's Day when I agreed to this. Mother's Day is a big day to be up here on stage preaching. And so I don't know if I would have said yes had I known that, but it was too late. He got me. That's what he gets for planning way ahead.

And so I'm the college minister. I am not the normal preacher. But I realized when I was creating my lesson that there are two types of sermons you can do on Mother's Day. The first type of sermon is that you can stand up here and you can fully lean into the Mother's Day theme and you can talk all about how great moms are and how awesome they are and you can pull out some really cool things from Proverbs and you can talk about Mary and being the ultimate mother and all these things. And then the other thing you can do is you can stand up here and you can say, happy Mother's Day, and then teach a completely normal regular sermon.

Happy Mother's Day. Today I want to talk about a title that I'm calling Holy Interruptions. And I want to tell you a story about my dogs. So these are my dogs. This is Hazel and Blue.

Blue is this little black one right here. And Hazel is the green. She's wearing the green Atlas shirt, but she's the brown one. And my dogs are really, really clever. They are four years old now and they're starting to get really, really smart.

Too smart for their own good, especially the black one. She is very clever. And Lee and I, over the past year have been getting more and more busy with just some of the different things that we've been doing. So Lee is currently working on her PhD at Tech in Fine Arts. And I'm doing Atlas.

And I'm also. I've been helping with the building committee. And both of us work with Vocati at LCU. And so we have lots of different things that we're doing. And so over the past year, it's become kind of this habit where.

Where often we will work from home, we'll bring our computers home. Sometimes it late at night, we'll be working on our computers and our dogs do not like this. And Blue has gotten really clever at finding ways to interrupt what we're doing. I will be sitting there working on my computer. In fact, actually, while I was writing this sermon, I was sitting at my desk writing this lesson.

And she'll come over and she'll jump up and she'll put her paws in my lap and I'll give her, you know, some pets and then I'll push her away. And about two minutes later, she'll come back and do it again. And after a while of this, it gets really annoying because if you're in the middle of, like, writing a sermon or something, then you are all about trying to figure out, like your mind's going, you're thinking about all these different references, you're studying scripture. And she's constantly jumping up in our face. So eventually I'll get frustrated with her and I'll push her down and I'll tell her no.

Now she has learned that no does not actually mean no. It means go even more. And so what she started doing is as I start to tell her no, and I get more and more exasperated, she starts to nuzzle her head in my face. And as I tell her no more and more and more, she'll actually jump up into my lap. And I kid you not, this past week, she jumped up onto the table and stood between me and my computer.

She was not taking no for an answer. She wanted attention. And what our dogs want is for us to go outside and watch them bark at nothing. That's what they want. They want us to go outside and sit with them.

We have this little doggy window. It's like a doggie door, but you actually put it in your window and it's got this doghouse right outside. So as they jump out the window, they can sit on that. And when all of that doesn't work, she'll go and she'll lay outside and she'll pat at the window and it'll just make this Constant noise of just thunk, thunk, thunk. And she'll just sit there and pat at it until you go outside and sit with her.

And I've ended up almost every night now sitting on the back porch with my dogs, because they are. They are incessant about this, about us going outside with them. And it's actually become kind of this meaningful moment because now I end every day just about sitting on my back porch with the sun setting, the stars coming out, the birds singing, and it's become this really beautiful moment. All because my dogs don't want me to be constantly looking at my screens. They want me to be outside and interacting with them.

Today we're talking about holy interruptions. And we do not like to be interrupted. Nobody likes to be interrupted. Now, moms in the room, you know this as kids, just constantly will sit there and say, mom, mom, mom, watch this, mom, look at this, mom, check this out. And then when you finally go, what?

They do something that's completely stupid, and it's like, I don't know. I don't even know what you're doing, but they just run off and hurt themselves is typically what they do. We do not like to be interrupted. We don't like it. It drives us crazy.

We have actually built entire systems around the idea of not being interrupted. We have modes on our phone that are do not disturb mode. We can silence notifications. If you have ever sent a text message and been left on red, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That happens to me all the time, and I don't really know why being left on red.

And sometimes our churches can even become this way where we try to gear everything around not being interrupted. Everything's got to be planned completely, perfectly. Everything's got to go really, really well. And, oh, man, God forbid that a child starts crying in the middle of service and actually interrupt stuff. A few weeks ago, I was doing communion, and as I was up here talking, I noticed little Ellie Athanasiou, who sits right in front of us.

She saw me up here, and she started making her way down the aisle. And she got about halfway down the aisle before Jenna was able to grab her. She was going to come all the way up on stage, and I was like, you should have letter, because you probably don't remember anything about my communion talk. But I guarantee you, if Ellie had walked up here on stage, you would remember that. We remember this.

And I think having kids in our service is a really good example. One of the things that they teach us is not to take our lives too seriously. Not to take our spiritual lives too seriously. Because when we look at Jesus and we look at who he was and what he did, Jesus was constantly interrupted. He allowed interruptions.

In fact, his entire around. It's estimated that around 60 to 70% of the gospel happens because Jesus is interrupted. Think about this. Think about the stories that pop out when you read the gospel stories. A woman reaching out to touch his cloak.

The blind crying out from the roadside. A leper calling out from a distance. The disciples arguing about who's the greatest. A sinful woman anointing his feet with perfume. Parents bringing their children to him for a blessing.

A Canaanite woman pleading for her daughter. A man in the crowd asking Jesus to settle a family dispute. A woman in the crowd blessing his mother aloud. Martha complaining about Mary not helping the disciples waking him up during a storm. The crowd following him when he's trying to go to a solitary place.

A funeral procession passing by. Zacchaeus climbing a tree just to see him. The synagogue leaders asking him to heal his daughter. A demon possessed man crying out from the tombs. The crowd meeting with him while he's grieving John the Baptist's death.

A Roman centurion asking for healing for his servant. The Pharisees bringing a woman caught in adultery. Four friends lowering a man through the roof during teaching. Soldiers arriving to arrest him in the garden. The gospel story is framed around Jesus being interrupted.

And I don't know about you, but I don't know if I would have responded the same way that Jesus does. If I'm getting off the boat into a foreign nation and a naked guy comes running at me from a graveyard saying, we are legion. I'm probably going to be like, I don't know what you're selling, but I'm not having it. Like, I'm going to get back on. I'm going to go away, right?

At Atlas, we used to have a guy, we called him tree guy. He used to come and he would climb up in our trees at Atlas. And we actually, instead of, like, being like, oh, I'm gonna go eat at your house today, we were like, I’m gonna issue a no trespass because we don't want you to fall and break your ankle and then sue us. Like, that was our immediate thought. I don't know if I would have responded the same way as Jesus does.

Especially in moments of grief and especially in moments of exhaustion. We can even be doing good things. Really, really good things. Oftentimes we are doing good things and we don't want to stop those good things in order to pay attention to these things that are these interruptions. In fact, actually this morning, that happened to me.

This morning I was working on my. I was going over my lesson. I got up to Atlas a little bit early and I printed off my notes and I was working on my lesson, and the phone started ringing. And I don't typically answer the phone, and especially on Sundays, we cannot let it go to voicemail. And we wait till the weekday in order to deal with all whatever's coming in.

And oftentimes it's spam calls anyway, so I didn't answer the phone. And so I'm trying to go over my lesson, I'm trying to think a little bit more about it, and it kept ringing and it kept interrupting me. And finally I went to voicemail. And so I started again. And then it rang a second time and I let it ring and then it rang a third time.

And by this time I was so scattered with my lesson that I finally was like, you know what? I'm going to go and answer it because it's probably some telemarketer. I'm going be like, why are you calling on a Sunday to a church? I answer it, and it was a guy from Abilene saying, hey, my grandma's moving up to Lubbock. She's going to be moving to assistant living center.

And I was wondering if there's any churches out there that could help her move. And my initial reaction was, yeah, we could probably talk about that, but could you call back tomorrow? Because this is, you know, we're in the middle, we're getting ready for service and everything. And then he said, oh, yeah, that's no problem. And then I hung up the phone and I went back and I was like, oh, and we should allow interruptions in our life.

Going back to my sermon, I was like, like, hit me. Like, it's so easy for us when we're doing good things to not realize that maybe God is putting things in our path. But this is what Jesus does. Jesus allows interruptions. One of the most amazing stories in all of the gospel is Mark, chapter five, where Jesus meets the woman who is suffering from bleeding and heals her.

Do you remember the context of this story? Do you remember what Jesus is doing? Jesus is out teaching, and a man approaches him and says, my daughter is dying. Please come to my house and heal her. And Jesus says, ok, I'll come to your house and I'll heal your daughter.

And on the way to going to heal their daughter. He stops and starts talking to a woman who has been bleeding. Actually, he was walking through the crowd, pushing through on the way, and he stops and he says, oh, somebody touched me. And the disciples are like, are you out? Like, everybody's touching you.

We're in a crowded space. That's just what happens whenever you walk through crowds. And he stops and he has this whole long conversation with this lady. Now imagine you're the father and your daughter's about to die, and you hear about this miracle worker who can heal people, and you go and get them, and this guy stops on the way to come heal your daughter who's actively dying. How mad and frustrated you must be.

Imagine calling, like, the ambulance whenever your kid gets hurt and be like, hey, I need you to come right away. My son's hurt. He fell out of a tree, did something. He's hurt. Come as quick as possible.

And they're like, oh, yeah, we're on our way. And then they take a long time and they show up and they've got Starbucks and donuts, and they're like, oh, yeah, we just pulled off all the way. You get to get some lunch and stuff like that. That's what is going through my mind. And actually, while Jesus is having this conversation with this woman, he about healing her, the daughter dies.

Can you imagine that? We've got a short amount of time to go heal my daughter who is dying. And because you stopped to interact with somebody else, she dies. Jesus allows interruptions, constantly allows interruptions. Even Paul.

Luke goes on to talk about this with Paul's actions as he's trying to preach the gospel. In this passage that was read for us, I think it's so interesting that Paul and his companions are trying to do something really, really good. They are trying to preach the gospel in Asia. And it says. Did you catch what it says?

The Spirit, the Holy Spirit is actually preventing them from preaching the Word in Asia. And the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. And it brings up a question for us. How often do we think we're doing something that's really good, that we make plans and we have ideas about what we should be doing, only to find out that God doesn't want that to happen. I mean, why would God not want us to go preach the gospel?

I mean, that is not what you hear missionaries say. They will say, oh, all we have to do is have faith and God will help us. God will guide us. But there might actually be times whenever we have this idea about what God wants, we have all of these plans. We've done all of this preparation.

We feel like we've been called to go to a certain area. And all the while God is going, no, actually, I want you somewhere else. I want you doing something else. And he moves us somewhere else. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, said that we must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed by the man who had fallen among thieves, referencing the Good Samaritan, perhaps even reading his Bible. When we do that, we pass by the visible sign of the cross raised in our path to show us that not our way, but God's way must be done. We must allow interruptions. Bonhoeffer wasn't writing this during a peaceful time.

He wrote this book, it's called Life Together, about how we live as a church. He wrote this when he was leading an underground seminary in Nazi Germany, and he was training students how to live in a community that's constantly under threats. And in this chapter, this chapter was titled the Ministry, what It Means for a Church to Do Ministry. And in this section, he's talking about the ministry of helpfulness, a simple, humble readiness to serve others even when it's inconvenient. See, Bonhoeffer criticizes this idea that our own spiritual goals or routines, even something as important as studying the Bible, give us an excuse to avoid people in need.

His point is that true Christian living is always relational. It's always open to the unexpected person and our path. And it's precisely because Jesus allowed himself to be interrupted, that the paralytic walks, that the bleeding woman was restored, that the blind saw again, that a girl was raised from the dead, that a widow got her son back from the dead, a sinful woman found forgiveness. Even in moments of exhaustion or grief, when most of us would have turned inward to take care of ourselves, Jesus opens himself to others. And the most amazing point of all of these stories is that they're not just little side stories to the larger picture.

They're not footnotes in our Bible. These interruptions form the very heart of the Gospel story. They reveal the kind of kingdom that Jesus is bringing, a kingdom that makes space for the desperate and the overlooked and the inconvenient. It's because Jesus allowed himself to be interrupted that we can believe that God truly sees us, not just in our most faithful moments, but in our need and in our weakness. If Jesus had stuck to just the plan that he had, he would have accomplished some really great things, but he would have missed the people right in front of him.

But that's not the God that we have. That's not who we see in Jesus. He stopped again and again. The interruptions weren't just distractions for him. They were mission.

They were the heart of his mission. In every cry for help and every unexpected question and every broken person who stepped in his way, Jesus showed us that God's work often happens when our plans are put aside. And this is precisely what the Bible teaches us. Isaiah reminds us that as God says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, and neither are my ways, your ways. And Proverbs will say that in their heart, humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.

It's a reminder that sometimes we may think we know what God wants, but God oftentimes we are not in sync with what he's actually doing. That we may plan and coordinate and be very diligent to what God wants, but he will actually determine how we step, where we go. He will lay out our path before us. And so we have to be open to the fact that maybe we're wrong, that maybe what we thought was the right thing wasn't the right thing. That we may plan to do some sort of good work, but God might be calling us to something completely different.

That's what we see.

But all of these things might be inconvenient to us. But the Christian life should be inconvenient to you. Interruption should happen because your life, left completely uninterrupted by God, will lead you straight to hell. That's the truth. You may not realize it, but helping others, like maybe volunteering in the children's ministry to teach children the Bible, or helping serve a meal to someone in need, or taking time to show kindness to the person who stops you in the parking lot, might end up leading to the very salvation of your souls.

Not because you earned it through some sort of good work, but because by repeating these actions over and over again, the fruit of the Spirit is able to truly take root in you, culminating and growing into the life of salvation.

Our world is full of holy interruptions. Every day we pass burning bushes and we walk on holy ground and we hear cries of help from the roadside. These are not just stories that happen in scripture. They are stories of the gospel that is still unfolding today in our midst. Jesus made room for interruptions.

So should we. My encouragement to you today is to look closely at your day, for it will be filled with people reaching, calling, questioning and needing. Don't rush past them. Don't see them as obstacles to your ministry. They may be the very place where God is inviting you to live out your Christ likeness.

Practice sacred availability. Create space in your heart and in your schedule for God to disrupt your plans. Because it's often in those moments unplanned, inconvenient and ordinary that the love of Christ is most clearly seen. May we be a church that is open to what God is doing in our midst. Let's pray.

God, we confess to you that we are often very distracted, that we are very preoccupied sometimes with things that are very, very good things, sometimes with things that we believe are a part of your ministry and your mission. And when people cry out to us and when people ask us for help and we ignore them, God, we ask for your forgiveness. Give us open eyes to see. Give us hearts that are in tune with what your spirit is doing. Guide us in the way of salvation as we interact with other people in our lives.

Lord. Help us to see people not as distractions, God, but actually as true, full embodiments of your love, your image created in them, God. And to help us to treat them with the respect that they deserve, God to see them, to respond to them. We pray all of this to you in your son's name. Amen.