Fit Guy and seeing Christ in all peoples

Back in 2009 I was in probably the best shape I had been in since I was in my twenties when I played pickup basketball pretty much every day in the summer.

We’d play for hours.

I wasn’t very good, but I was quick and would run up and down the court as if it was nothing.

Were I to do that nowadays, I’m pretty sure I would make it to half court, set up a lawn chair, pour myself some iced tea, and retire from the game I loved.

But that’s neither here nor there.

We’re talking about 2009, when I was a bit older.

I had two young kids.

I was busy.

And I was just not living a healthy lifestyle.

Too many calories, pizza is delicious.

So I decided it was time to get back on track, slim down, start getting healthier, eating more salads and such.

And part of my routine at that time was going to the gym at the local Y.

I would come home from work, eat some dinner, get changed, and head off to work on myself for an hour or so.

At that gym was this one guy.

He was fit, like, really, really, fit.

He was a runner.

He worked the weight machines.

Maybe two ounces of fat on his entire body.

And to be honest, I was kind of jealous.

I had let myself go.

I had more than 2 ounces of fat on my left arm, you get the idea.

And I’d see him around town, too.

He’d be out with his girlfriend, soon to be wife, and they’d be sittin at the bar eating dinner.

He with a salad and a sensible glass of wine.

Me with a 16 ounce steak, no not the 12 ounce, because there would be leftovers and what else would I be eating at 2 am in front of the fridge with the door open, the light shining on my gluttony?

So after a while, I stopped going to the gym, but I’d still see Fit Guy around town.

That’s what we’re going to call him, Fit Guy.

The Apple Harvest Festival Road Race goes by my house and wouldn’t you know it?

There’s Fit Guy toward the head of the pack.

Another time, there goes Fit Guy walking his dogs.

All the while, I haven’t been to the gym in ages, I am less out of shape than I was when I started working out.

So while never seething, that bit of jealousy grows a little with every Fit Guy sighting.

Until one day, I see him.

He’s walking by the house again, only now he’s pushing a baby stroller, and a stroller with twins at that.

And I think back to when my kids were that age and how my daughter would karate chop our cat while shouting “Hi Ya!” and we’d have to say, “Don’t Hi-Ya George, Honey.”

Or my son was practically feral, just inches away from donning a loin cloth and setting fires in the kitchen like some suburban Lord of the Flies character.

I watched Fit Guy approach.

I was working in the garden.

I look up to say hello.

And I noticed that along with the kids, Fit Guy is growing a bit of a paunch, a bit of a belly.

I look down at the evidence of my lack of gym time and taking a furtive glance back at now Formerly Fit Guy, I think to myself in the most human terms possible and in the most un-Christ like way:

“Good.”

So why bring this up?

Why introduce Formerly Fit Guy into the conversation?

Well, we see Jesus appearing to a number of folks following the resurrection and it seems as if he has changed.

People don’t recognize him immediately.

Perhaps he too is pushing a baby stroller down the street with a bit of a paunch, but I don’t think that’s the case.

There must be something there.

Perhaps it’s just rational belief.

Why would anybody think the person before them is the person they’ve thought to be dead?

And still, it seems as if he is not the guy they worked with, travelled with, lived with for three years.

There was something that caused Mary to mistake him for a gardener.

There was something masking the eyes of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

And now Peter and the rest of the gang don’t recognize Jesus at first when he offers help to their fishing expedition.

Saul asks the question, "Who are you, Lord?"

And yet, when Jesus reveals himself, people are transformed.

Mary becomes the first evangelist, telling of Jesus’ return.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus too felt their hearts burning inside them with the fervor of their love for the Lord.

Peter, formerly inept fisherman, becomes the leader of this movement whose followers would call, the Way; you and I know it as Christianity.

And Saul, Saul he who was charged with persecuting followers of the Way all over and around Jerusalem, became one of its most faithful adherents.

It becomes clear that Jesus is transforming people.

Unrecognizable at first, Jesus is changing people.

Peter went back to fishing, perhaps doubtful of what Mary had said about the risen Lord, Peter went back to doing what he knew best.

I wonder about the conversations they must have had on that night of bad fishing, Peter, with Thomas, Nathanael, the sons of Zebedee, and two others other disciples.

Under the starry skies of an arid place, as they drifted on the sea, did they talk about their days in the sun with Jesus, tell stories of his healings, retell the jokes they told on the road?

There must have been a real longing there, a longing to go back to the days when they were twelve following the Son of Man, hearing him preach, watching him perform miracles, just being together, twelve plus one away from the crowds around a fire to keep them warm.

Or Saul, before his conversion he was a persecutor.

Following his experience on the road to Damascus, did he carry regret; wake to the daylight rubbing his eyes trying to clear the memory of his past away?

And once they recognized Jesus, they were changed.

Changed by Jesus.

Changed by their love for Jesus.

"Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Feed my lambs."

"Simon son of John, do you love me?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Tend my sheep."

"Simon son of John, do you love me?"

"Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you."

"Feed my sheep.”

And he did.

Peter loved the Lord and he tended God’s flock until his own demise.

Saul, later Paul, would go on to proclaim the word of God to followers all over Israel, Turkey, Greece, Rome.

All because they came to recognize Jesus, these people changed the world.

Knowing this fact, acknowledging it then, it becomes incumbent on us to recognize Jesus, to peel the scales off our own eyes and truly recognize Jesus and the love God has for all of us.

We did not walk with the Jesus across Galilee as the disciples did, but we are in some ways, no different than those disciples for we too are called to tend God’s sheep.

We are to recognize Jesus in perhaps even a more difficult way, for now is not the time of Christ’s return, but the time when we must find Him in our neighbor.

And we must love our neighbor.

Even through very human, sometimes jealous, eyes, we must love our neighbor.

For when we love our neighbor, we are recognizing Jesus in that neighbor, Jesus who is the very essence of love.

And when we love our neighbor, and we recognize Jesus in that neighbor, we are recognizing too that Christ is never truly far from us and remains to this day, in our lives.

We are called to love for that is the condition God wants for all of us.

Love each other.

It is commanded in Leviticus; it is commanded in the gospels.

Love must be our default.

Also, I tend to think that we are called to love each other so that we might understand, might realize but one scintilla the love God has for all of us.

Realize that love and we will recognize Jesus.

He may not call us from the shoreline in person, but Christ is still calling.

He may not bring us to the ground on our individual roads to Damascus, but Jesus is still asking us to share His word.

We may not see him in our back garden, still Jesus is asking us to tell of his resurrection to a skeptical world.

And on our roads, in our cars on the highways and byways of our daily lives, Jesus will set our hearts on fire if only we allow ourselves to be transformed by His word, by His love.

Amen.