Scripture: Luke 24:13-18 Series: 2022
The final sermon in the ‘How to Build a Car’ Formula One series, preached on Luke 24:13-18 (the Emmaus road). The ‘part without which there is no car’ is the driver. Using illustrations from self-driving-car liability, the invented crime of jaywalking, MADD, and F1 driver development, Wilson argues the world’s arrangements are chosen rather than inevitable, and the Christian faith is not a self-driving car. Like the Emmaus disciples who failed to recognize the risen Jesus walking beside them, the church must pay attention to where and who Jesus is. People leave the faith through accumulated apathy, not deep doubt. The church no longer holds its old place of cultural privilege; it is in winter, not spring, and must drive differently, neither resenting the next generation nor coasting on past expectations. The call is to active discipleship: volunteering for children’s, youth, nursery, and VBS ministries and inviting others to Christ, so the congregation can train the next generation of drivers rather than be driven by the culture.
Illustrations: self-driving-car-liability, midgard-serpent-tail-risk, invention-of-jaywalking, madd-drunk-driving-laws, mitch-hedberg-escalator-joke, f1-driver-development, mercedes-constructors-championship, driving-on-ice-vs-spring, last-years-model, eighty-twenty-principle, worship-not-ted-talk
May 22
The Driver
On that same day, two disciples were traveling to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking to each other about everything that had happened. While they were discussing these things, Jesus himself arrived and joined them on their journey. They were prevented from recognizing him. He said to them, “What are you talking about as you walk along?” They stopped, their faces downcast.
The one named Cleopas replied, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?” Luke 24:13-18
Self-Driving cars have been the next big thing for a long time. The technology has improved a lot over the years, and some of you probably have cars that have self-driving modes where you can take your hands off the wheel for a little bit. It’s amazing what cars can sense nowadays, how they can stay in a lane or know what other things are around or follow directions. It’s really phenomenal. But the next step that will have to be taken in order to actually allow us to be chauffeured by artificial intelligence is not a technological step. It is a legal question of liability: who is responsible when accidents happen? Who’s responsible for the unplanned contingency? Is it the person who owns the car? That doesn’t seem fair. They didn’t design the software. The manufacturer did. Manufacturers probably should be liable, but they don’t want that enormous tail risk. It is the Midgard Serpent of Tail Risks. No company is excited about excessive liability, especially when the question of wrongful death comes in. It’s to the point that there’s probably going to be a longterm truce on this issue: the technology will advance, but there’s always going to be the possibility of accidents and errors that will keep drivers in the front of the car.
Now, a hundred years ago, there were some cars on the streets, but automobiles were still more of an upper-class phenomenon. Once the automobile moved beyond simply replacing wagons and started to bring new people to the market, a problem quickly arose that we have been dealing with ever since: traffic. Traffic started getting in the way. Cities were crowded with buildings. There was no need for parking because people didn’t have cars. Cities were designed around rivers and railroads. There were no traffic laws because people didn’t have cars. Streets were public space used for pedestrians and tented carts and all sorts of lively things. As cars became more popular, people wanted to go through cities because that’s where the people were, but there were too many people in the way, and you couldn’t just run them over to get where you were going. You had to wait for the crowds to move. A hundred years ago, there was no such thing as jaywalking. If you wanted to cross the street, you crossed the street. Sure, horses and carriages were super dangerous, but they were rare and didn’t travel all the time. The actual crime of jaywalking was created through a concerted lobbying effort of automobile companies in the 1920s. It wasn’t designed for safety. It was designed to shift liability from the driver to the person in the street. They created crosswalks to make it illegal to be in the streets so that the automobile could rule supreme.
This helps me remember that the way the world is isn’t the way it has to be. Specific choices have been made to make the world as it is, even the way we drive. We don’t just drive because that is how people should drive. Fifty years ago, drinking and driving was a very common occurrence. There were a lot more crashes because of alcohol. Many people were killed, but there wasn’t a law about it. Who wants to take away the fun of a scotch and soda behind the wheel? But then one of the most influential and powerful political campaigns started in the seventies, MADD (mothers against drunk driving) that really impacted the laws across the country, and then made it’s way across the world. It was now illegal to drink and drive. Cars need to be driven and you have to be in the right frame of mind to safely drive.
My friends, we’re finishing our series on How to Build a Car, following this book by the same name, on Formula One and its development, as well as by looking at the church, not as it is or should be or what it could be, but the church at its best. Formula One cars are designed to be the best. We talked about the chassis as the foundation of the church, and that this is found in hearing the word of God and putting it into practice: doing it. We talked about how Formula One cars and the church are designed to be aerodynamic, to limit the drag of the Holy Spirit, and to receive the downforce of the Holy Spirit, to handle the twists and turns of life. Last week, we talked about the Power unit and how our power unit is Scripture, especially studying the scriptures together. Today we’re talking about a part that isn’t in the car, but without which there is no car: the driver, You can build the greatest car in the history of the world, but if there’s no one there to drive it, it can’t go in anywhere. It’s like an old Mitch Hedburg joke: what do you call a broken escalator? … Stairs. As well, to drive you have to pay attention to where you are, to what is around you, and to where you are going.
In this passage, from the gospel of Luke, after the resurrection, we have these two followers of Jesus who were having a conversation. Another man walks up to them and they don’t recognize this stranger. They’re talking about Jesus, but when Jesus comes to them, they don’t know what to say. They make assumptions about who this new person is and what he’s doing. They include him in their story, but they don’t realize that he is the heart of the story and he is right there, in front of them, walking with them.
To drive, we’ve got to pay attention to what is going on. We have to pay attention to where Jesus is. We have to pay attention to who Jesus is. We cannot just sit back and press the button and let something else drive us. We can make the choice that we don’t want to be part of it anymore, where we can step back. I think that when most people stop going to church, stop practicing the faith, it’s not because of a profound or deep moment of doubt. It is rather a number of moments of apathy. Maybe they hear one thing that sounds off and think they don’t need it anymore. Maybe they miss a few Sundays and think, ‘gosh, it is nice to have my Sundays to myself. I mean, do we really need to get up early on Sunday? Do we really need to talk to that person? Have that same conversation again, Listen to the same songs. To be the church, we can’t just assume people are going to come to us or want to stick around forever. We can’t even assume that we’re always going to know where Jesus is. Even still, we know what we should do. We should do the things of God, we should respond to the Holy Spirit. We should return to our source of power in Scripture. We need to remember that Jesus is with us and still, we have to drive the car. For the Formula One racing teams, they all have fairly sophisticated driver development programs. They have drivers they use and different levels of racing around the world. There are different divisions (formula two, formula three, formula E). There are also reserve drivers and test drivers. As well, each driver goes through hours of sophisticated simulation in million dollar simulators that reveal all the details of the tracks that they are going to race. So the drivers will know the tracks well. They will know when the apex of a turn is, that is the optimul moment of a turn which has the shortest radius or speed and from which acceleration can begin again. The drivers are going to know when to start breaking, when to stop breaking. The feel of the car is a consistent process of learning. As well, your car is not always going to be good. Some years, the cars are good. Some years, the cars are not good. For the last eight years, Mercedes has won the constructors championship, which meant that they had the most points at the end of the season. They are not going to win it this year. When you’re used to driving the best, it takes a different skill to drive a sub-optimal vehicle. For a long time, in this country, the church has had a place of privilege in society. There has been an assumption about the goodness of the things we do as a church. Preachers have been held up as model citizens at different points in society. But the church doesn’t occupy the same cultural space as it once did. This doesn’t mean what Jesus says is untrue. It just means that we’re in a different season. We may not be in spring. We may be in winter, and you have to drive differently on ice than you would on a nice spring day. And in this season, we need to drive as the church In a different way. We shouldn’t drive from a position of assumptions about our authority, or a position of resentment. If we resent people because they don’t go to church as much, or because our kids don’t go to church as much, that’s not offering them Jesus. We’re trying to drive last year’s model. We’re trying to drive something that’s not equipped for these roads. Jesus is not dated. The radical truth of resurrection is timeless. We humans are dated. So as the church, as we’re seeking to both drive and be driven by Christ, we’re stuck between this rock of a Self-driving future, where people think they don’t need God, and the hard place of an outdated past, where the church has more to do with social conventions than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nothing we do as a church should make sense without the resurrection. Being a Christian is not just adding the label “Christian” to things we would have done anyway. Being Christian is not about wearing a cross or a t-shirt but following Jesus and driving the car of faith, the car of the church we have been given.
May we not yearn for the past, but may we seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus is still here. He has always been here. Church may not look the exact same. You may not recognize the presence of Jesus as quickly as you once did. Like the disciples on the Emmaus road, he is here with us even when we don’t recognize him. So for us to be at the church, we’ve got to drive the car. We’ve got to do the things of the church. We have to be the church. We have to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We have to live into what God has called us to do.
I try to be edifying and entertaining in my sermons, but worship is not a weekly TED talk surrounded by music. I can’t drive the church. The Christian faith is not a self-driving car. God meets us where we are, even on the Emmaus road, but God does not leave us there. As a church, we either move with the spirit, or we are left behind. A lot of churches function with the 80/20 principle. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. And we cannot be the church at its best if we follow suit. If we think someone else will take care of it. If we think someone else should volunteer. If we think someone else should invite people to worship.
God meets us and forgives us but God hopes for us to share this. When we are happy with the minimum, when worship is about convenience and evangelism, that is inviting others to share in Christ’s love, when that is always for other people, we will never be the church at its best. We will be like a formula one car with a bad driver who crashes it again and again.
Whatever our past decisions and past expectations, God is offering us something new this day. A new encounter with Jesus. A new encounter with mercy.
Today, God is offering us himself so that we can offer Jesus to the world, so that we can offer life to the world, so that we can offer truth to the world, so that we can offer it to our children, to our friends, so we can train the next generation of drivers. And if we want to do that, we need to commit to it. We need to want to have a new generation. We need to be willing to sacrifice for it, to come and offer ourselves for it, to volunteer. It is not about how you like to spend your time, but what kind of world do you want to share? This means volunteering is not just about other people. volunteer for our children’s and youth ministry, volunteer for VBS, volunteering for the nursery is not about other people but about you. Do we want a church where we pass the faith on or do we want a church that lives in past expectations? Do we want to a church that engages the next generation, or do we want to church that resents it? Do we want to drive what God has offered for us or do we want to just be driven by the culture and by what other people say we should do?
Let us, my brothers and sisters, respond boldly to God. Let us be a church. Let us be a people that offers hope and joy in this broken place. Let us be a location where transformation takes place. Let us be a people that offers Christ to this world.
Let us pray. Heavenly father. We thank you for the gift of calling us together to be one body, Help us to earnestly strive for your kingdom here and now and call others to be a part of it. As the church, may we be willing to go the extra step To teach the faith, to share the faith, to live the faith in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.