A week or so ago, Bill Peterson told me about four guys riding along in a car. They were up on Interstate 40, halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. One was from Idaho, another from Kansas, another from Michigan, and the other - of course - from the great state of Tennessee.

As these four drove along, the fellow from Idaho all of a sudden rolled down his window and threw out a whole basket full of potatoes. When the others asked him what he was doing, he answered, "Well, you know I'm from Idaho. In Idaho we have Idaho potatoes. All my life I've planted, grown, harvested and eaten Idaho potatoes. I'm sick and tired of Idaho potatoes. I never want to see another Idaho potato as long as I live." The other guys understood.

A little while later, the guy from Kansas rolled down his window, and threw out a whole bushel of corn. "I am so sick and tired of corn!" he said. "In Kansas, you wake up in the morning and see corn. At noontime, all you see is corn. You go to bed at night, you dream about corn. Corn is EVERWHERE in Kansas, and I'm sick and tired of it. I'll be happy if I never see another ear of corn again!" The other guys understood.

A short while later…the guy from Tennessee rolled down the window…and threw out the guy from Michigan.

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Now, I tell you this story about Idaho potatoes, Kansas corn, and - unappreciated people from Michigan - as a lead-in to our Scripture story for the day. It’s a very important story. It has to do with looking at other people - especially broken people - not as withered crops to be discarded, but as ripened fruit ready for God's harvest. It’s a story about the dangerous and destructive way the world sees things contrasted with the healing and hopeful way Jesus sees the world.

Jesus is in the middle of a campaign swing through the tiny villages and small cities of Galilee. Along the way, he introduces himself to multitudes of people who can only be described as sinners. They are a motley assortment of tax collecting Roman collaborators, limb-missing lepers, demon-possessed loners, blind people, deaf people, mute people, adulterers, prostitutes, crooks, poor people, homeless people, and ordinary people like you and me who find that life is sometimes really hard to understand let alone to live.

And as Jesus steps into the lives of these pitiful people, the question we want to ask today is, "What does Jesus see?"

Some of our young people wear these little bracelets and necklaces that broadcast the initials W.W.J.D. - meaning, "What would Jesus do?" The idea is to be able to look out at situations that come along in life and ask yourself, "What WOULD Jesus do in this situation?" And then you'd go and do it.

This is a good thing. But it has a major weakness. Before you can ever know what Jesus would do in a given situation, you really have to come to a clear understanding of W.W.J.S. - what would Jesus SEE - as he looks out at the real world - and the real people - around us.

And if we would ask that question - "What would Jesus see?" - we'd discover that Jesus sees things differently than we do. As this story in Matthew reveals.

You know how it goes. Jesus comes into town. A big crowd forms. And this is how Matthew describes it: "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

Most of us have probably heard these words enough times in the course of our Christian lives that we have become almost immune to them. To many people, they convey only a sappy kind of sentimentality about the way Jesus looked at people. Sheep without a shepherd. Jesus is the good shepherd. Let's all follow Jesus, and some kind of order will come into our lives.

Only trouble is, it's not as easy as it sounds. And besides, that's not really what the passage is about. I wonder if you'll come and explore these verses with me today?

Jesus makes three important observations about the people he encounters as he enters the villages and towns of Galilee. First, Jesus observes, they are harassed people. Second, he sees, they are helpless people. And third, he notes with sadness, they are sheep without a shepherd people.

Harassed. Helpless. Sheep without a shepherd.

I was studying this passage a while ago, and I found myself asking some questions I'd never thought of before: "If these people were being harassed, WHO WAS IT that was doing the harassing? If these people were rendered helpless, WHAT WAS IT that was making them so? And if they were sheep without a shepherd, WHO WAS THE SHEPHERD that had abandoned them?"

Now, you don't have to go any further than the periphery of the crowd to find the answer. Can you see them, standing there, in all their theological wonder? Scribes. Pharisees. The religious in-crowd.

Who was harassing the pitiful people of Galilee? Why, religious people were harassing them. "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? If he knew what kind of woman this was, he'd NEVER spend time with her." Do you notice the tone?

I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but church people do have a way of harassing people. A friend of mine is a single mother. She's not single by choice. Her husband abandoned her and her children. She works hard to make ends meet and to provide a decent home for her kids. Without day care, she and her kids wouldn't make it. So one day, she goes to church. The preacher's in the pulpit, waxing eloquent about the fact that the problem with kids today is that women have abandoned them to day care in order to pursue careers. He trashes the feminist movement, and the churches that provide day care. He says they are enablers of sin, and encouragers of women to not be submissive to their husbands as the Scriptures teach. He rails on about these uppity women who think they can raise kids without a father. And then he sits down to the Hallelujahs of the congregation. Probably never even realizing that out there in his flock is at least one young woman who has just been subject to twenty-minutes of in-your-face condemnation by the Church of Jesus Christ. She, like those frail human beings long ago, was harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd.

Who was doing the harassing? Why, religious people were doing the harassing. We church folks are - you know - highly skilled at reminding people just how awful they are. Not too long ago, I heard a church leader say that Christians should respond to sinful people by hating the sin, but loving the sinner. I think that's one of those stupid sayings that only makes sense to religious people who've lost touch with both reality and their own humanity. The truth is that, when we see and relate with people in terms of their sin, we give up the very means of loving them. We strip them of their worth and dignity as beloved children of the living God. And that's not love. That's not even close to love.

They were harassed.

The second question is "What was making the people helpless?" A close look will reveal that it was the religious system itself that was making people helpless. "Doesn't he know it's not lawful to heal on the Sabbath? He casts out demons by the ruler of demons. Who can forgive sin but God alone? Whose sin made this man blind - his parents', or his own?"

Religious systems can easily corrupt themselves with laws and doctrines that are one way streets to nowhere.

I was visiting with someone a while ago who was raised in a particular church. He was baptized, confirmed, and married there. His kids were baptized too. But then, in the seventeenth year of his marriage, some very painful things of the sort that happen to human beings occurred. He and his wife divorced. The church ministered to this tremendous emotional and spiritual injury by giving him the gift of excommunication. I know some of you have been given that gift, too. Congratulations.

What is so outrageous about this is that some churches believe the Sacraments are the very means of grace. To be excommunicated means to be denied access to the very grace that saves us. So no matter what this man does, thinks, believes or prays, he is excluded from the only thing that can heal him, give him hope, and send him on to a new beginning!! That looks like religion-induced helplessness to me.

What makes people helpless? Man-made religious laws and doctrines often make people helpless.

You may remember one of our national religious figures a while ago declaring with great certainty that God goes not hear the prayers of the Jews. What he doesn't realize, I'm sure, is that this is nothing more than a doctrine of hopelessness. What a terrible gift to give to the world in Jesus' name!

They were harassed and helpless.

And they were like sheep without a shepherd.

What kind of shepherd would abandon his sheep when they wander and get lost? Why, it was the religious establishment that dropped them like a hot potato. Because, you see, that's what churches do with sinners. We abandon them to their sin. We give them up to their wounds and injuries and doubts. We keep them at arms length because - you know - one bad apple will spoil the whole barrel. And so the very people God sends us to care for, are usually the first people the church discards.

What does Jesus see as he looks out upon the crowd that day?

Oh, he sees multitudes of people who are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

But even more than that, Jesus sees the danger and destructiveness of religion that's lost its soul.

Can you see it, too?

It may be that the Christian Church in America today has lost its soul. We must admit that the Church sponsors widespread spiritual harassment of all kinds, relating to broken people more often by way of tongue-lashing than foot-washing. The Church holds conventions and conferences for the sole purpose of developing policies and doctrines designed to do nothing more than find reasons to exclude people from its care. The Church takes upon itself no responsibility whatsoever to be the good shepherd to anyone other than those who are institutionally acceptable, morally whole, and doctrinally pure.

I believe the Church in America has become blind to what Jesus sees as he looks out at the people of our nation and world.

Dallas Willard, in a wonderful book called, "The Divine Conspiracy" dares us to look and see what Jesus saw. You may look at the world through the lens of CNN, or the columns of The New York Times, or the mere experience of your own limited vision. As you look through those filters, I'm sure the world must look like a very scary place.

To Jesus' eyes, Dallas Willard says, "this is a God-bathed, and God-permeated world." Don't you just love that description? God-bathed! God-permeated! Can't you see it all around you?

"It is a world filled with a glorious reality," Willard continues, "where every component is within the range of God's direct knowledge and control - though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices."

And this is the picture Matthew gives us! Jesus looks at the people around him and takes delight in them! They make him smile, and laugh and rejoice! He does not love them without liking them as the Church's view of Christian love tries to do. Rather, God cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. In Jesus, we see God's fondness for people, his endearment, his unwavering affection for the smallest and the greatest

Jesus looks at them all - all of these broken down, faulty, seemingly spiritual zeros - and sees them as God-bathed, God-permeated, God-loved, and God-valued persons among whom God has already established open doors to his presence.

And then Jesus laughs and shouts, "The kingdom of God is as close as your hand. Come on in, and rejoice!"

And all these harassed people - all these helpless people - all these sheep-no-one-wants-to-be-the-shepherd-of people - come running to Jesus.

And Matthew says he cures their diseases and every sickness. And then Jesus leaves us with a final thought.

All these rotten Idaho potatoes, and all these mottled ears of Kansas corn, and all these unappreciated people from Michigan - and beyond - are not at all what they seem to be.

They are not chaff, destined for the oven.

They are golden waves of grain, ripe for God's harvest!

If only someone will love them enough to tell them, and gently lead the way.

And then the story ends, but not without a prayer. A prayer that God will send more people to work the God-bathed and God-permeated fields of life. People who learn to see the world as Jesus sees it.

May you be an answer to Jesus' harvest prayer!