I have only ever gotten one speeding ticket in my life.  It was while I was in college during Spring Break.  A few friends and I piled into a car and drove down to Ft. Lauderdale,  from Ohio, Miami University.  The other famous person from Miami University, of course, is Ben Roethlisberger.  Anyway, we took off for Florida, and took turns driving, and I was the one who was driving in the middle of the night.  And I was a pretty fast driver back then.  I’m much slower now.  Since I turned 40, which has been a while ago at this point, I think I’ve slowed down about five miles an hour for each year over 40 that I am.  By my next birthday I’ll be going backwards.  But back then I was pretty fast, and I remember driving through Georgia in the middle of the night going 85, 90 miles an hour.  And I took a wrong turn.  Somewhere around Atlanta, I got on the wrong interstate.  Have you ever driven through Atlanta with all the different interstates going off in every direction?  So I took a wrong turn, and I had to get off at the next exit and turn around and go back.  And as I was going back to try to get on the right road I was going even faster.  And it was then that I got pulled over.  There were the flashing lights and the siren, and so I pulled over, and out gets this big, beefy, good old boy, his nickname, or perhaps even his given name, was probably Bubba or Billy Bubba.  I probably ought to be careful here, since some of you have greeted us with a southern accent.  He looked a little like Jackie Gleason in the movie “Smokey and the Bandit”.  So the spitting image of Sheriff Buford T. Justice comes up to my car window and says, “Boy I’ve been sitting here waiting for you all day.”  And I just couldn’t resist, so I said, “Well officer, I got here just as fast as I could.”           

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you go faster, sometimes you actually go faster, not just out there on the interstate but with your life, you actually go faster sometimes when you’re lost or going the wrong way?           

There’s this old story of Thomas Huxley, who lived in 19^th century England and was a famous public speaker.  He was a famous atheist, which is ironic, I think, given how this story turns out.  But one day Huxley had finished one speaking engagement and was soon supposed to be at his next engagement, so he rushed out the door to the horse drawn carriage that was hired for him, and he just assumed that the driver knew where to go, which was not the case.  So Huxley jumped into the carriage and yelled up at the driver and said, “I’m late!  I’m late!  Drive very fast!”  So the driver of the carriage just took off.  And after a while Huxley looked out the window, and nothing looked familiar, so he yelled up at the driver, “Say do you know where you’re going?”  And the driver yelled back, “I have no idea where I’m going.  But I am driving very fast!”           

The question is: Have you found what you’re looking for?  Have you found it?  Do you know where you’re going?  Or are you still looking?  Are you still searching?  To some extent, of course, we all are still searching, and we will continue to search and look and ask questions right up to the very last moment.  You don’t want to get so comfortable and play it so safe in life in what you know or in what you think you know that there is no longer any inner restlessness in you.  Someone has said that it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.           

Rudyard Kipling had this poem, “The Explorer”, part of which says this: 

There’s no sense of going further – it’s the edge of cultivation.

So they said, and I believed it. 

Till a voice, as clear as Conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated -- so: 

Something hidden.  Go and find it.  Go and look behind the Ranges –

Something lost behind the Ranges.  Lost and waiting for you.  Go! 

So we’re still searching in many ways, we’ll always be searching, we’re restless; there are things out there for us to find.  And yet we can know, we do know, whether or not we’re making progress, whether we’re headed in the right direction, whether we’re getting anywhere.  You know, you just know, whether the direction you’re going in life is healthy or unhealthy, whether it’s right or wrong, whether it answers the deep question of life or it doesn’t. 

There is this one commercial, I only saw it a few times and this was maybe a year ago or so, and I don’t remember what it was advertising, but I remember the commercial.  There’s a man who is bragging about all that he owns.  He owns this mansion of a house and this fancy fleet of cars and a swimming pool and just all kinds of things.  And then he asks, “And how do I afford all this?”  And the answer is, he says, “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.”  And then he goes on to say, “Someone please help me.”  And I don’t mean to be harsh about this, but I wonder if this is not an example of how we lose our way.  No one sets out to be in debt up to your eyeballs, surely.  No one sets out to be stressed out over how you’re going to pay for it all.  You have to be lost almost really, don’t you, in order to get yourself into that kind of fix, lost, or going the wrong way.  As I heard someone say, we can spend our whole lives acquiring all the material possessions in the world only to discover that all the material possessions in the world simply will not do.  Our souls long for something more. 

Amelia Earhart was a famous female aviation pioneer in the 1930s.  She was the first woman ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, the first woman to fly from Hawaii to California, and unfortunately she was the first woman to attempt to fly solo around the world.  She was last heard from somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.  The last words she ever transmitted were these, “Position Doubtful.”  Position doubtful; I’m lost, I don’t know where I am.  And then she was just gone, and we still don’t know where she went down.  But it makes me wonder how many there are who might transmit the same message: Position doubtful – I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. 

If we were daring enough to stop people right in the middle of whatever it is they’re doing, if we were just to stop people, maybe we should even stop ourselves sometimes, and ask, “Now where are you going?  Where in the world do you think you’re going?  Where is your life taking you?”  If we were to ask this of people, if we were to ask this of ourselves, I wonder what we might hear?  I wonder how many might say, “Well you know, I don’t really know where I’m going.  I never really gave it much thought.  I just assumed that this is what I was supposed to do with my life.  I have no idea at all what it all means.” 

I read this recently in a book by Brian McLaren, a man who is becoming a fairly famous preacher and writer.  He writes this, “As individuals and as societies and civilizations, we know we are living at an unsustainable pace, turning the human race into a rat race, reducing ourselves to consumers, all in a sprint toward a finish line that we haven’t even chosen.  We think we can overcome violence with violence, hatred with hatred, vengeance with revenge, greed with greed – even though it hasn’t worked so far, we keep doing the same things hoping for different results.  Like the proverbial addict, we think more of what’s destroying us will finally make us happy – another drink of prosperity, another dose of power, another shot of pleasure, another bottle of bigger/faster/more, another hit of hurry.” 

I heard a cute story about a mother and father who were driving along with their little three-year-old son.  The father was a pretty aggressive driver apparently, but he always denied it.  But they were driving along and came to a stop light, and the mother thought this might be a nice teaching moment for their three-year-old.  So she asked, “Now what does a red light mean?”  And the little boy said, “A red light means stop.”  “And what does a green light mean?”  “A green light means go,” he said.  “And what does a yellow light mean?” she asked.  And the little three-year-old boy, imitating the voice of his father, said, “A yellow light means hang on!” 

It may be that when we see a yellow light, a warning sign in our lives, we shouldn’t just charge ahead into whatever it is and announce, “Hang on!”  It may be that we should stop and think about this.  Every first year law student knows that when you come to a railroad crossing the requirement is that you stop and look and listen.  Maybe we should even turn around and go in the opposite direction.  It may be that we should repent of something, get something out of our lives that shouldn’t be there, stop leading ourselves as if we know best, we know what we’re doing and where we’re going.  Maybe we should stop and let God take over for a while. 

There is that famous old, apocryphal story of this man who was driving along, and he got lost and so he stopped and asked an old farmer for directions, and the farmer said, “Well, if you keep going the way you’re going, it’s about 25,000 miles, you’ll never get there.  But if you turn around and go in the opposite direction, it’s only about a mile or so down the road.” 

We need to find something that will save us.  No, no, wait a minute, that’s wrong, we’ve spent our whole lives looking for some thing, thinking that some thing will save us.  We need to find someone who will save us. 

In our story this morning from the gospel of John, Jesus has been preaching, and men and women who are called disciples in the text have been following after him.  His preaching is exciting and he offers the promise of such wonderful things.  But then his teaching begins to be a bit difficult.  How does one begin to conform one’s life to the teachings of Jesus?  And so these disciples, these followers of Jesus, begin to leave.  And so Jesus turns to the Twelve, and it must have been such a tender moment, and Jesus asks, “Are you going to leave me too?”  And it’s Peter who speaks up, it’s Peter, although I think I can almost hear my own voice faintly in there somewhere, or your voice, it’s Peter who says, “Lord, to whom can we go, where would we go?  You have the words, you have the words of eternal life.”