Hebrews 2:1-4: "Asleep at the Wheel"

Introduction

I want to begin this morning by talking about a phenomenon that I’m sure most of us will be familiar with, for better or for worse. By show of hands, how many of you have been to my house or know roughly where we live? In the case that you haven’t or don’t, we live in Rosemont off of between the Watt and Bradshaw exits right off of Kiefer. Before I worked on the Sac State campus, I used to work up in north Sacramento in the Del Paso Heights area at a trucking company off of Norwood and 80 called Norcal Kenworth. My hours were fairly flexible, but I settled into a rhythm of showing up to work around 7, which means that I had to leave my house betweem 6:20 and 6:30. If I left five minutes later than that, I would show up to work fifteen minutes late, but if I left five minutes earlier earlier than that, I would show up to work twenty minutes early, which is just the weird way that traffic works. So let me walk you through my commute. Every morning, I would get into my car and turn on Kiefer Blvd. Kiefer intersects with a long run that runs north and south called, what? Watt, yes, that’s that I said. I would turn right on Kiefer and drive all the way up past the entrance to 50, up through Arden and past the entrance onto 80 East over the overpass and enter onto 80 West. From there, I’d take 80 West a few exits until I got to Norwood. Then I would exit, turn left onto Norwood, left onto Harris right at the Dollar General store and arrive at a cluster of buildings where I worked. I mapped it out while preparing for this, and even though it was 13 miles, I really only had two major turns, one going right on Watt and one going right from Watt onto 80 West which took up 11.5 miles of my drive. So let me paint a picture for you: Here I am, 6:35 in the morning, still waking up, driving down the long stretch of Watt, and somewhere between after I turned on Watt and 11 miles later as I’m exiting 80 East at Norwood, this crazy thing happened every morning. I’m almost positive this is happened to you as well. I entered the Twilight Zone, or experienced what some researchers call “Highway hypnosis,” or “Cognitive Dissociation,” or “Zoning Out,” or “White-Line Fever” which are all different names for this phenomenon you get into when you’re behind the wheel of a car, reacting appropriately to the traffic conditions around you and yet mentally you’re completely in another multiverse galaxies far, far away. And at some point every morning, I would snap back to reality completely unaware of how I got to where I am, confused and maybe even a little disoriented. It’s that feeling you get when you arrive at your destination and can’t remember the turns you took to get there because you’ve drive that road to the point that it has become all-too-familiar and muscle memory to you to keep your attention and focus. By show of hands, how many of you have experienced this? I’m sure most or all of us have at some point. There’s actually science behind why this happen. Researchers say that it’s sometimes brought on by sleepiness or monotonous roads, or brain inattention which is where your brain decreases its reliance on what you’re seeing and goes into a standby mode like your computer. And it’s somewhat frightening when you think that there are hundreds and thousands of people making their daily commute every morning, hurtling these metal capsules that weigh over a ton at high speeds merely inches away from each other, and are in this dreamlike zone. However, researches say that it’s avoidable by making sure you get enough sleep, listening to music or a podcast or an audiobook, avoiding overeating and alcohol (which is probably just best to avoid entirely if you’re planning on driving, period), drink water, eat a snack, etc. You have to take intentional steps and precautions to stay alert, stay focused, and pay attention to driving. Unfortunately, the cost could be fatal.

Hook

Let’s step back and think about this from a broader perspective because this phenomenon doesn’t just happen when we’re driving. It also happens when we check out of our lives as well. Sometimes you get into a season of mundanity or laziness—get up, go to work, come home, watch TV, go to bed—or that could even be brought on by a season of extreme busyness where you have zero time for anything other than sleeping, eating, and working. If we’re not careful, we can get stuck in routines or complacent with who we are and who we’re becoming, such as giving up on our personal goals, becoming less disciplined and self-controlled, or even living with a mentality that everything in life is difficult and we need to comfort ourselves with oversleeping or overindulging in Netflix or unhealthy food. Even our diet and how much physical exercise we get can contribute to this, making us feel lethargic and robbing us of our energy and passion. And it all builds up into our relationship with Jesus where showing up to church just to listen to a sermon and sing a few songs without committing to being known in community can become routine, or lacking direction and passion in our relationships with the Lord because it’s all too familiar and mundane and we’ve heard it all before. Even serving can become another thing on a list that we check off in our boring, unexciting lives. Just like most of us have experienced highway hypnosis, I would venture a pretty confident guess that all of us have experienced this spiritual type of hypnosis as well, where on the surface everything appears in order but our hearts, our souls, and our minds have checked out and gone on autopilot. The author of Hebrews acknowledges this exact phenomenon. This morning, we’re going to encouraged to wake up, to snap out of it, to pay attention to Jesus, lest we drift away.

Body