"Plenty of Fish in the Sea"

published on Friday, September 11, 2009 by admin

A Sermon Preached at the Closing Worship for
The Convocation on the Rural Church 2009:
“The Power of Partnership”
August 10th-12th, Myrtle Beach, SC

Luke 5: 1-11

“Jesus said to Simon, ‘Push out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so (according to your word), I will let down the nets. When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats . . .”

The crowd is pressing in on Jesus, swarming forward in a mass the way a flock of ducks will come running up when you drop bread on the ground, the way a school of fish will crowd the top of the tank or pond when you toss in the feed, the way rural United Methodist pastors crowd around poor Joe Mann and Robb Webb when there’s a grant deadline coming up.

Nearby are two empty boats, by which Simon and his fishing partners are scrubbing their nets. The fishermen are downcast and bleary-eyed. They’ve just come in from a long hard sleepless night shift where they must have cast those nets hundreds of times, but came up only with air. Nothing but nets. Looked like the Endowment’s coffers a few months back. No swarming school of fish had crowded around them. There wasn’t just one that got away; they all got away.

Think of Simon as a younger version of the fisherman Santiago in the first sentences of Earnest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”. Hemingway says of Santiago, “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” The scars on his hands were “as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” “Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”

Jesus sees Simon and the two boats as he’s teaching. Seeking refuge from the needs of the crowd, he hops into Simon’s boat. Asks Simon to push him out a little ways from shore. Improvises a little floating pulpit, making a natural amphitheater out of the water and rocks behind, getting enough distance between he and the pressing congregation that he can see them in perspective: you know, sometimes you have to step back, get a little distance, maybe go to the beach to see things in greater perspective: a few of you told me you didn’t know how tired you were until you got here. Things look different with a little different perspective. Jesus steps back in order to better share with them the word of God.

Of course, that’s an image as pregnant as my wife is right now. We know that in Scripture often a boat is an image of the church. Jesus just got in the boat, and now watch what happens. Jesus turns from the crowd to face Simon, with another request. “Push out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

With Jesus in the boat, there will be no more swimming at the shallow end of the pool. No more circling within a comfortable distance of a familiar shore-line. No more encounters that just skim the surface.

No more angling in mud puddles.

No, when Jesus hops into the boat, he invites his disciples to push out into “the deep water.”
Deep water is out there. Deep water is a place where, literally, you are out of your depth. You can’t see the bottom. The well is deep and you have no bucket. On deep water, it’s hard to tell exactly where you are, because you’ve left familiar landmarks behind. Deep water is a place of risk. Deep water is a place where you are no longer fully in control, where you feel uncomfortable, where the boat suddenly feels so small, and the sea just suddenly feels so large.

But deep water is also the place where the fish are.

Jesus invites Simon and the others to push out into deep water and there, to cast their nets.
Simon’s first response is my response, our response. “But Master, we have worked all night long and caught nothing.”

Doesn’t ministry feel that way sometimes? You work so hard and you try to do some things, you cast the net, cast the net, cast the net, and it just still comes up empty, seemingly time after time, or maybe it just comes up with a haul the equivalent of an empty beer can, a band aid, and a plastic bag. And we just get tired. And maybe we go to Annual Conference, or another Conference, or a continuing education event, and we hear someone try to inspire us about what the church can be, about all that the church can do, and we appreciate that but some part of inside is saying, “But Master, we have worked all night long and caught nothing. We’ve done what you said, we’ve tried that already, I’ve done that as best I can, and it hasn’t worked like I hoped it would. I tried it and couldn’t catch any fish, or no fish showed up.”

And maybe that mindset just becomes part of the church culture around us, where we come to feel together almost the inevitability of empty nets and declining congregations, that that’s just the way it’s going to be. And this happens to the point where it combines with our own experiences of failure to lead us to reject God’s word of promise.

Will Willimon relates how, in a lecture on "The Renewal of the Inner City Church," Sojourners editor and author Jim Wallis told a group of pastors true stories of declining inner-city churches that had, by the grace of God, rediscovered their mission and begun to thrive. Willimon says that he was inspired, but in the conversation afterwards one pastor after another criticized Wallis’s speech. They accused him of looking at the church through rose-colored glasses. One even implied that he had lied.That evening the Bishop told Wallis that he was surprised by the group’s reaction. "I wasn’t," Wallis said. "That’s the reaction I always get from so many mainline pastors. They’ve been made cynical by the struggle, and now they are amazed when God wins. Scared to death that what we believe about Easter just might, after all, be true."

Jesus knows the kind of night that Simon and the other fishermen have had. He knows the agony of empty nets. Even he wonders at one point, “When the Son of Man comes, will he even find any faith on earth?” But he doesn’t just turn to Simon and put his arm around his shoulder and say, “Well, that’s just the world we live in, it’s a tough lake out there, you gave it your best shot, and that’s all you can do, now you just need to hold on and survive until better days ahead, just take a break for awhile, get a good night’s sleep.”

No, instead Jesus says, “Push out into deep water and let down your nets. Again. Now.”

As if that wasn’t enough of a slap in the face, keep in mind that the reason Simon and the others had fished all night was because night-time was when the fishing was best. At night the water was cool, the fish were a little sluggish, and the darkness hid the nets. Fishin' in the dark. You usually weren’t going to have as much luck in the day-time. But Jesus says, “I know you’re tired. I know it didn’t work before. I know it doesn’t seem like the right or opportune time. But let down your nets. Again. This morning. Now.”

One of the greatest tragedies in life happens when someone gives up just one effort too soon. In every great struggle there comes a moment where just a little extra, one more push will get you over the hump. And it’s tragic to stop climbing when the mountaintop is just over the ridge, to let up just as your about to reach the tape so that another passes you. Simon faces a temptation of that tragedy of giving up just one time too soon. It would be tempting to give up and to say, “Rabbi, how about you keep to the teaching and I’ll look after the fishing, OK?” Or to say, “Jesus, we’ve done that and tried it, if you come up with a better plan, let me know, but I’m going to sleep.” Or maybe to get out of the fishing business altogether.

But there is something else within Simon: something in him like that something in the eyes of the fisherman Santiago, that remains cheerful and undefeated. And that will lead him to go out again. And again. And again. Maybe it was because he had seen Jesus’ power before, had seen Jesus heal his mother-in-law. Maybe it was because he knew that this time he would be consciously taking Jesus with in the boat, that he wasn’t going to do it on his own this time, that this fishing expedition was going to be a “co-mmission”. Maybe he had just learned to trust what Jesus said.

And so Simon says, “Master, we have worked all night long, but we have caught nothing. We have tried all that and come up empty. Yet if you say so, yet if you say so, the translation is “yet upon your word,” yet if you say so, I will push out into the deep water.

It is that little place within us that says, “Yet if you say so, Jesus,” that saves us. That little voice that whispers beneath our loud complaints, “Yet if you say so Lord, I will do it for you, with you. I may not see it, to me the world just looks like a place of horrors, it doesn’t look to me like your justice is coming, I barely believe any of it enough today to roll out of bed, much less wade out into deep unknown uncharted waters, Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets. Again. This morning. Now.”

That response is called, “faith.”

This time, working together with Jesus, with Jesus as his fish radar, with Jesus as his fishing buddy, when Simon lets down the nets he hits the mother lode. All of the sudden Simon’s got way more than he bargained for. There are so many fish you could walk across them on the water. The nets are straining beneath the weight like a child’s fishing pole that just caught a great big catfish.

Many of you heard this story at Annual Conference, but I will never get tired of telling this story about what happened up in North Wilkesboro last year, so you’re going to have to hear it again. Donald Hayes was fishing in a pond with his little granddaughter Alyssa one afternoon when she had to run in and potty, so Donald was left holding her 2 and a ½ foot hot pink Barbie Doll rod and reel. The next thing he knew, he felt a tug, and on the other end was that monster. More than he bargained for. “Shucks,” he thought, “I’ll never hold this.” But something in his eye remained cheerful and undefeated. He struggled with it for 25 minutes: his granddaughter kept yelling at him, “Papa, you’re going to break my fishing rod!” But it would be a shame to give up just one more pull from reeling in a dream, so he kept fighting it, and finally hauled the thing in, Santiago and the Marlin: Donald and a state record 21-pound channel catfish. I love the fact the previous record catfish was caught by a man using deep sea gear, including a 100-pound test line, cut eel as bait, a Shimano 6500 Bait Runner reel, and a Tsunami rod. My guess is it wasn’t hot pink. Afterward, the previous record-holder was quoted as saying, “If you use smaller gear, you’ll never get a big catfish to the boat.”

Nobody told Donald that.

Simon, like Donald, gets more than he bargained for: so much more that he learns another lesson. So much more that he sees there is too much work for his boat alone. There are too many fish to fit into his boat alone. He does not have enough resources, enough capacity, to reel in the catch on his own. Simon needs partners. Thankfully, from the beginning, Simon and his boat had not gone out alone: they had gone out in the company of another boat. We are not alone, we are surrounded by other boats, other pastors, laity, churches, foundations, organizations, conference resources, that are there to help us. Our boat does not have to sink, by itself, under the weight, if we will just seek partners, and stop the lone ranger silo mentality of doing it alone. I hope we’re all thinking, after these days we’ve had: who is with me, who can I ask partner with me, who might I join forces with to more greatly advance the kingdom?

Luke says Simon did this: “So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them.”

Probably not many of you are Carolina basketball fans, but back in the days when Dean Smith was coach (I think that was several national championships ago), one thing that he pioneered was the “raised fist” sign. If a Carolina player became too tired or fatigued on the court, he would raise his fist, and that was a signal for someone else to come in and pick up for them. And Smith also drilled his players in another sign, that they were to point any teammate who had just thrown them a great pass.

I wish sometimes we could do this in the church, especially around other clergy. Give one another the point whenever we’ve seen someone do something that has inspired us. And maybe, sometimes in some of the things we face, that we would signal to our partners: raise the fist, say, “Hey I need help with this. I’m tired.” Or, “Look, this fish that’s coming in is too big for my boat, come over here and help me.”

That’s what Simon does: he signals to the other boat: and then, with the multiplier effect of both their nets together, the two boats haul in so many fish that it nearly swamps both of them. This is the definition of that term the business world uses called “synergy”, of what happens when multiple parties work together and then discover that in some mysterious win-win equation they receive a result greater than the sum of their parts, that two plus two just equaled five. I lamented one time to a colleague that we didn’t have a Christian word for that phenomenon “synergy,” for how the Spirit multiplies our coming together. He told me, “But Jeremy, “synergy” is a Christian word: synergy comes from the Greek word “synergo”, which is the word Paul uses all the time in talking about his co-workers or fellow laborers, Silas and Timothy and Titus and Urbanus and Epaphrus. The world borrowed that term from us.”

The synergy of those two boats working together results in so many fish that BOTH boats are almost swamped. And do you notice this, there are plenty of fish in the sea for both boats. This is not a competition here: there is plenty of work to go around, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

The great catch of fish that Simon reels in makes him feel unworthy of this calling. He doesn’t deserve this. None of us do. And yet Jesus, in the boat with him, tells Simon, We all do. “Do not be afraid; you are going to do something greater: you are going to catch people.”

It’s not an invitation, it’s a pronouncement: you are going to catch people

The exact translation of the term is “catch people alive”, or net people.

Now, that doesn’t mean we trap people, or coerce people or trick people into the kingdom: we don’t catch people on a dangerous hook and then put them on ice.

No, if this is catching, it’s catch and release: to be caught by God is the truest freedom.

The mystic Meister Eckhart wrote once: “God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love, and that love is like a fisherman’s hook . . . He or she who is caught by (love) is held by the strongest of bonds, and yet the stress is pleasant; he who takes this sweet burden upon himself gets further, and comes nearer to what he aims at, than he would by means of any harsh ordinance ever devised by man or woman. . . When one has found this way, he or looks for no other. To hang on this hook is to be so completely captured that feet and hands, and mouth and eyes, the heart, and all a man is and has, become God’s own.

This is catch, but it’s catch and release: be caught and be released from all that keeps you from being who you were made to be. It’s a wonderful thing to be caught by God. I read somewhere that another way to read Jesus’ pronouncement that we will catch people is that we will “captivate people.” It is to be “captivated,” in the best sense of that word, in the way that a beautiful moment is captivating. You don’t want to leave. That people will be captivated by our lives of love, and swallow it hook, line, and sinker, because that love is the deepest need of the human heart. That we would captivate people.

Half of the rural, the really rural communities I know of have a little store in them, and nearly all of them have a little sign somewhere that reads, “Live Bait.”

When it comes to the kingdom of God and our lives of love, we are live bait.

Simon is going to realize this. When he and his partners come ashore, they leave the boats behind. They’re after bigger fish now, a more meaningful life. They’re on a co-mission.

And in that new mission all of the lessons they learned are going to be repeated: that when the nets are empty, “yet, if you say so,” you go out again.

That this is too big a job to handle alone.

That there are plenty of fish in the sea.

That they have a new partner now, in Jesus.

And that they are about to discover the power of partnership.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

0 comments | Add a comment

"Love Song"

published on Friday, September 4, 2009 by admin

(A Sermon Preached in Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School on September 3rd, 2009)

Song of Songs 2: 8-13

“The voice of my beloved (my lover)! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved (lover) speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom, they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . . My beloved (lover) is mine and I am his.”

Just when we’re trying our best to hold a respectable and staid worship service, focusing our minds on the ethereal that we think is “spiritual,” here comes the Song of Songs sashaying into church wearing a short cocktail dress with a plunging neckline, high heeled shoes, and too much makeup; or strutting around in a speedo showing off its washboard abs.

Just when we’re trying to dance with God while keeping a safe distance, doing the slow box step turn at arm’s length (must see daylight between, room for the Holy Spirit, they said at the middle school dances), just then Song of Songs swoops in, lifts us off our feet, twirls us around, and leads us in a sultry hip-to-hip tango.

Just after we’ve changed out of the black goth attire of Ecclesiastes and are girding ourselves to don the itchy sackcloth and ashes of the prophets, the Song of Songs surprises us by climbing up to our window wearing silk underwear or lacy lingerie. (Wearing this . . . wearing only this.)

The Song of Songs is the dream text of biblical scholars with an English major bent, who can see the symbolism of the love between God and Israel in every lovingly-described hill and valley, as well as of horny 8th grade teenagers at the back of the bus, who read the hills and valleys as something else entirely.

Perhaps both are right. On one hand, I can tell you that I will never look at pomegranates the same way again after re-reading the Song the Songs – and I’m pretty sure that the fruit of the garden here isn’t corn and okra. This is the one book of the Bible where precise exegesis may benefit from a slightly dirty mind. At the same time, there is more going on here than just the sensual flirtation of two soon-to-be newly-weds, as beautiful and as rich as this courtship is. The Song works just a little too hard to include the symbolism of Israel for that. Instead, it seems as if the love and desire and equality and beauty shared between this woman and this man, as real as it is, is also, at the same time, in a kind of two way mirror, being offered as a glimpse into the relationship between us and God as well, each relationship shedding light upon the other. In the Song of Songs, sexy love poetry can be read as revealing something of God; and the relationship between God and God’s people can be read as revealing to us what we need to know about sexy love poetry. You could call the book Song Within a Song: it is like a Russian nesting doll, the love song of God heard within the love song of maiden and mate, or, better, the lovers song uncovered within the overarching love song of God and human beings.

What emerges as we peer through the lattice, as we gaze through the clefts of the rock in the Song of Songs, is the suggestive image of a God who is our lover.

Our lover.

This is the part where I blush, and you are allowed to squirm uncomfortably in your seats.

We know God as Father, we know God as Creator, God as Almighty, God as judge, God as Good Shepherd, even God as Friend.

Do we know God as lover?

Do we know that this relationship we have with God is not just child to heavenly parent, not just servant to Lord, not just a legal transaction guaranteeing a heavenly inheritance, but do we know it’s also a passionate, torrid, breathtaking love affair? That knowing God is like being intoxicated by the scent of her perfume, getting lost in the brown depths of his eyes, that knowing God feels for all the world, like falling in love?

It’s a thought that makes many of us uncomfortable, that God could be that close to us, that we could be that close to God, that life with God could contain such passionate intensity and emotion. Just hearing that love song in the Song of Songs is uncomfortable because of the over-the-top gushing and naked intimacy of these words. You feel like you’ve just peeked in a bedroom window, like you’ve just overheard on your phone the midnight conversation between two love-struck teenagers, or heard through the wall of our hotel room the lovey-dovey pillow talk of two honeymooners.

And yet this is an image of what relationship with this God looks like: of what it means to love and be loved by this passionate God who is a beautiful lover and a love-sick fool.

“The voice of my lover!” the Song says. “Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.” “My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag,” she says, declaiming love poetry in phrases that depicts her lover’s comeliness and beauty.

St. Augustine wrote his own love poetry to God, where he sang of God’s “Beauty so ancient and so new . . .” He said, “Christ is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in His parents’ arms, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful in His sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up His life and beautiful in taking it up again; He is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendor of His beauty.”

This God, this lover, is infinitely attractive, desirable, beautiful – spiritually sexy in the truest sense of that term. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendor of His beauty.

In the Song next we read of this beautiful and mysterious lover standing there just outside the house, just behind the wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice, tantalizingly close. Romeo at the foot of Juliet’s balcony. And soon the lover begins singing his own love song:

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom, they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . .

It is wonderful to sing “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” it is great to hum the music of “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” but apparently sometimes the music God has more in mind for our rendevous is Marvin Gaye, John Legend, the Righteous Brothers, or Celine Dion. God’s song is a love song, some mood music: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . .”

The image in the lyrics of the love song is of someone huddled down inside four walls, just trying to wait out all of the bad, cold, wet, miserable weather outside, feeling trapped by life as it is - and then this song comes as good news, as gospel, and as invitation. The song names the person inside, “my love, my fair one” and tells them that a new world, a new life is open to them, spring has come, there is no need to hide inside anymore, so arise, my love, my fair one, and come away to something better.

There is a scene in the musical “Man of La Mancha” where Don Quixote meets a dirty, ill-used serving girl and part-time prostitute name Aldonza. Don Quixote is lovestruck: he calls her by a different name, he calls her “Dulcinea,” the little sweet one, and he woos her by singing a love song that praises her beauty and goodness and purity. “Dulcinea, Dulcinea, I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea. And thy name is like a prayer an angel whispers, Dulcinea . . . Dulcinea.” Aldonza is annoyed, and can’t believe it, doesn’t know what to make of it. She basically tells him to stop singing, “I’m just a tramp.” But Don Quixote keeps wooing. He keeps singing that love song, “You are Dulcinea, you are yet my lady.” “My love, my fair one . . .” By the end of the musical that love song has become Aldonza’s destiny. She becomes Dulcinea, comes away to a new life, something better, spring has come.

“My song is love unkown, my Savior’s love to me. Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be.” The love song of God.

Teresa of Avila heard that love song of God calling for her, as it calls for all. She wrote,

“A thousand souls hear His call every second, but most every one then looks into their life’s mirrorand says, ‘I am not worthy to leave this sadness.’

She goes on,

"When I first heard His courting song,I too looked at all I had done in my life and said,‘How can I gaze into His eyes?’ I spoke those words with all my heart,but then He sang again, a song even sweeter,and when I tried to shame myself once more from His presence God showed me His compassion and spoke a divine truth, ‘I made you, dear, and all I make is good. Please come close, for I desire you.”

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. I desire you.” The love song of God.

The love song of God is the one song, the one most beautiful song, the song of all songs, amid any other song that could be sung.

When he was in seminary, Martin Luther King preached a sermon titled “How a Christian Overcomes Evil” that was, in its own way, about the love song of God. King used an illustration from Greek mythology: he told about the sirens who used to sing seductive songs that lured sailors to come close to them and then crash their ships on the rocks. Only two ships navigated safely the siren’s shoals. One was piloted by Ulysses, who stuffed wax in the ears of his sailors and strapped himself to the mast so that by ignorance and willpower they might not hear what the siren’s sang. In some ways, what Ulysses did was like the Pharisees’ approach to uncleanness in the Gospel: make sure the bad can’t get in, wash your hands, keep it away.
But there was another sailor, Orpheus, who took a very different tack. Instead of stuffing wax in their ears, Orpheus simply pulled out his lute and began to play a more beautiful song than the song of the sirens. So that those in his boat would listen to that song, the more beautiful song, that song of songs, and that it would guide them instead.

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . “ The love song of God is the most beautiful song. Singing it for the world brings salvation. Hearing it makes siren songs succumb.

And listening to that song has led many of us to this place. It has led some of us here to be student pastors, to be serving in the church while we undertake our studies. It’s a rewarding life, being a student pastor: connecting study and service so immediately and intimately. I had one faculty member tell me that they think student pastors ask the best questions, because of this. It can also be a challenging life. You feel sometimes like there are all these different beautiful competing songs in your ear. When you are at school, you hear the song of these people God has entrusted in your care singing, “Arise, come away to me . . .” And when you are making your rounds of visitation you hear the stack of books on your desk singing, “Arise, come away to me . . .” And in both you hear the love song of your family or friends or loved ones saying, “Arise, my love, come away to me . . .” None of those are sirens, they are all beautiful songs, so it can make you feel divided, split, all these different songs: which one to listen to, when?

Until you realize that they are all part of one and the same song. That there is one song that unifies them: one song of songs heard in them all: the love song of God, singing of the beauty of rightly loving for God, neighbor, and self, through study, through service, through our family lives, one Song to unite them all.

That love song of God, it is the love song that sings out from the blessings in our lives, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

It is the love song marriage proposal that the Hebrew slaves heard above the cracks of Pharoah’s whip: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for the now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. I shall be your God, and you shall be my people.”

It is the love song heard by Israel in the honeymoon camping trip of the wilderness: “Arise my love, my fair one, and come away. Let me kiss you with the kisses of my mouth, let me share my word with you.”

It is a love song that God’s people would try to sing on their harps with lumps in their throats by the rivers of Babylon, whenever their exile captors asked for music. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard again in our land.”

It is the song that Mary heard in response to her “let it be,” when the Holy Spirit came upon her, when the power of the Most High overshadowed her: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . . the fig tree puts forth its figs, the vines are in blossom.”

It is ultimately the one and the same love song that echoed forth from an Easter empty tomb, as the lover said to the beloved Jesus, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.”

It is the love song that God sings to us today, calling us from our cramped, dank cells offear, guilt, regret, and ego into a new life, a new day of passionate relationship with God:
“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away . . . All that I make is good: come close to me, I desire you.”

It is the love song of God, the most beautiful song, the song of all songs that calls us forth to Communion today ant that will one day call us forth from our own empty tombs to the feast of heaven as well.

It’s said that as St. John of the Cross, that passionate lover of God, was lying in bed near death around midnight, remarkably weak, suddenly he wanted to fix his bed as if someone important were coming to visit. He then asked someone to read to him from the Bible: but he didn’t ask for Psalm 23, he didn’t ask for John 14 with its talk of many dwelling places. He asked to be read to from Song of Songs. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone . . .”

While he was listening, suddenly, it is said, John exclaimed, “So beautiful are the flowers!” – and then he died.

Or maybe he’d just heard the love song of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

0 comments | Add a comment

“Knock”

published on Friday, September 4, 2009 by admin

“Ask,
and it will be given you;
search,
and you will find;
knock,
and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone
who asks
receives,
and everyone
who searches
finds,
and for everyone
who knocks,
the door will be opened.”
-Matthew 7: 7-8


Since my return from our recent experience on Encuentro 2009, I’ve had a lot of well-meaning and concerned people ask me, “Did you catch anything there in Mexico?”

They mean (in kindness) to inquire if I got sick, whether or not I picked up any kind of flu bug or illness while I was there.

But when people have asked me that question, “Did you catch anything in Mexico?,”

I’ve told them,

“Yes. . . I caught faith.”

My prayer life has been of a different order and magnitude since I returned from Mexico. You see, while in Mexico we visited the remote rural indigenous village of Huitzapula. Huitzapula is a place where most of the people live simply, off the land. There are few of the resources we take for granted: running water, good sanitation, electrical appliances. There is practically no medical care and few visits from any doctor.

What there is an abundance of in Huitzapula, is faith. In a place where few man-made resources are available, when all other help and comforts flee, the people must live out of a truly dependent, trusting faith in God alone.

What this looks like is: prayer. The Christians of Huitzapula pray. Prayer for them is not just a few mumbled words at a meal, not a few pious sounding phrases pulled out of the air, not just an insurance policy tacked onto the end our own best efforts. Prayer is a way of life. Prayer is daily bread. Prayer is their moment to moment breath. The people live by the grace of asking God.

The people of Huitzapula, even amid the mysteries of un- or not-yet-answered prayers that we are all familiar with, dare to take Jesus at his word: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

As part of our encounter in Huitzapula, our group went from house to house with Pastor Manuel visiting the sick. I kept thinking to myself, “I wish we could do something to help. I wish we had a doctor. I wish we had medicine. I wish we could be of some service.”

But we had helped, of course. We had come to visit, we had offered the balm of presence and Christian fellowship. We had come and seen and felt. And there was something else, something very powerful that we could always do, something the people desired more than anything else: we could pray for them.

Pray for them we did: in Spanish, in English, in the indigenous language of Paneco. Prayer is the universal language of faith: the gift of God shared by rich and poor, both of whom need it just as much as the either.

I don’t know how I can so often convince myself that my life and ministry are dependent first upon my hard work, my skill in planning, my intelligence or best efforts. I tend to live as if I can open the door of life or ministry by my strength, or just by barging into it, the way you open an automatic door. As a result, my life too often looks like the Far-Side Cartoon where the student from the School for the Gifted is pushing unsuccessfully with all of his might on a door that reads “Pull.”

But what if the world has been so ordered that everything operates according to the law of the request, that the most important thing we can ever do in any endeavor is simply to “Ask”?

What if, on the door to the good, on the door to ministry, on the door to reality, on the door to the universe, there is a simple sign that says, “Knock” ?

One of Wendell Berry’s characters, Jayber Crow, once speculated, “How would we know if all the good that has ever come into the world has come into it through prayer?”

I returned from Mexico with a longer prayer list. I’ve been asking more, seeking more. I’ve been knocking before entering more.

And I’ve been seeing more and more “coincidences” happen.

It’s hard to say whether this will prove to be a short-lived burst of spirituality or whether something more lasting has happened in me. No doubt I’ll need further reminding.

But I hope I’m never cured of what I caught in Mexico. I hope this illness lasts.

0 comments | Add a comment

Pages