It can be pretty easy to fall into a trance of sorts, to go on what some of my friends and I like to call, “autopilot.” It’s a sad condition one slips into when they’re not careful that is characterized by, “just going with the flow.” You just do whatever it is your supposed to do without ever putting any thought into it. It’s a habit of showing up to usual places without knowing why, performing duties that used to be powerful without passion, and going through life without realizing that it’s passing you by.
It can be a sad place to be.
For whatever reason, I think people tend to get to this place in winter. Blame it on the lack of sunlight. Whatever the cause is, I’ve been noticing it in people a lot recently. They say things like, “I just don’t feel the same as I used to.” Or, “I’m just doing it because it’s expected of me.” There seems to have been a loss of purpose somewhere. When we start to go on autopilot-in other words, when we start to do things without knowing why-it’s generally because we’ve lost sight of our vision and purpose. We’re like a plane without a destination. We’re moving, but we’re not aiming at anything.
Jesus always knew what his purpose was. As a leader, as a person, as the Messiah, he knew what was demanded of him. In Luke, there’s a story where Jesus calls a tax collector-a despised person in society for pocketing people’s money-to follow him, to be his disciple. The text reads that “Levi got up, left everything and followed him.” After this, Levi decides to throw Jesus a huge party. It was a banquet, in fact. One so large that the Pharisees and teachers of the Jewish law noticed that most of the party guests were fellow tax collectors, and they weren’t happy with it.
See, Jesus always knew that he was to be a friend of sinners, of those who were sick, far from God, and yet desired to be close to him. He knew that it was those who knew they were sick, who had problems that needed to be fixed, it was those people that Jesus knew he needed to go to. So he did. And he was clear about it. He kept it at the front of his, and everyone else’s, mind. He even says at one point, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
He knew where he was headed.
He knew who needed him.
So that is what he aimed for.
The thing of it is, our aim isn’t too different from that of Jesus. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that we are Christ’s ambassadors-his representatives-and that he is making an appeal through us. The appeal is, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:20b-21).
Just last night I watched a video of Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S.-Raymond Joseph-relay to Americans and the rest of the world the devastation that is facing his country. He had to speak clearly about their needs, the future, and what needs to be done. He was speaking on behalf the entire country to relay this story. He was their messenger.
God wants to be doing the same through Christians everywhere. We are his ambassadors, telling people everywhere what God’s message is to the world. That “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). We are called to the sick, those that need a doctor. We cannot lose sight of that as a Church. Going on autopilot would mean forgetting this very import aim.