It
seems like a perfect time to stay – a large crowd has gathered around Jesus and
- isn’t that what all the money we dumped into social media marketing was for?
To get these people gathered around Jesus, to fill up these pews with people?!
This scripture drops us into a scene worthy of launching a building campaign – thanks
be to God, people have shown up! Except in the true style of an introvert, we
see Jesus masterfully weave through the buzzing crowd and announce that it’s
time to move. A state senator, having recently joined the movement and
begrudgingly committed to head the stewardship campaign, witnesses Jesus’
statement and, exhausted by the obligations of his life, declares his
allegiance to follow Jesus wherever he is going. So, Jesus, being the
transparent leader that he is, makes clear that on this journey they will not
be racking up any Hilton Honor Rewards points for “the foxes have holes and
birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” A
disciple anxiously eaves dropping on the conversation interjects, he hasn’t
packed a thing, his email auto reply has yet to be set up, he’s had no time to
arrange for someone to feed his pets. But it’s worse than that. It’s always
worse than that. “Lord, first let me go
bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury
their own dead.”
If
you are a biblical literalist, this is an incredibly awkward moment; Jesus just
won the worst boss of the year award. One
of my favorite stories about trying to communicate the metaphorical nature of the
bible began when my daughter, at five-years old, came to me suffering from a
rather large amount of anxiety about Noah’s Arc and the potential that God
would again decide to flood the earth. I proceeded to brilliantly explain the
concept of truth and meaning as understood through a historical critical method
of biblical exegesis to a five-year old communicating that the truth of the
story lies underneath the facts, that sometimes things didn’t happen exactly as
they were written so we must look for the meaning from the whole of the story;
setting aside an obsession with historical accuracy based on a scientific
method which was only introduced at a much later time during what we call the
Enlightenment. She seemed confused. A
few minutes later, having gone to her bedroom to process all the new wonderful,
age-appropriate lessons I had just bestowed upon her, I heard two little feet
pounding toward me, carrying what appeared to be a newly-liberated soul. In a
few words that are beyond the bounds of my memory she said something to let me
know that she understood and that she wasn’t worried anymore. Feeling relieved and
honestly, rather prideful that my five-year-old was obviously a genius, I
pushed it a bit further, “yes, I said, some things in the bible didn’t
necessarily happen like we read them.” Yes! She said, like Jesus being born!”
This
is a very long way of sharing that, you can pack up the world’s worst boss mug
for another day. The story doesn’t translate that way. It’s worse. It’s always
worse. This story isn’t about what a bad boss Jesus was, this story is about
us; not the individual you or I but the corporate us. The people called
disciples organizing themselves into a movement called the church. This passage
is about how the whole discipleship system works; how you become a part, how
you behave once participating, what you might expect as a participant in God’s
mission throughout the world. This story is about a choice that the corporate “us”
has, to be a part of Jesus’ continuing mission in the world or to remain safely
on the familiar shore. This is a story about the excuses we make, the fears
that we have, and the hopes that waver when Jesus steps to the margins and
calls into the center, “go over to the other side.”
I
think I speak for the majority when I say, I like the side I’m on. Really, I
feel like I just got here and good grief, I’ve been here just long enough to
figure out what I’m doing. It’s taken years just to figure out who to call for
what and when to call them. I had to burn through one million failed attempts
of gatherings to encourage growing in discipleship before I fell into the one
that seemed to work…just enough…like a slow and steady rumbling under the
surface of an institution once frozen yet still alive. I think I heard
something that took years to hear. Your voice, echoed in the stories, absorbing
into hearts forming new walls now penetrable. And I imagine, overall, together
we are comfortable in this place; we have a pattern, a relationship, a
predictability together. There’s no reason to rock the boat when the sun is
shining on the shore. Let’s stay on this side.
As
many of you know by now - since I would wager all my Starbucks cards that I
have literally ended up including this in every sermon I have preached here- I do
not like to travel. I spend a lot of time preparing to leave. I’m really good at the preparing to leave.
Not really good at the actual leaving.
This seems to annoy my husband. Perhaps his annoyance has grown over the past
fifteen years because it seemed a likely possibility that if I did not get in
the car the day we were to leave for Ogden, Utah to attend Annual Conference he
would take it upon himself to pick me up and put me in the car. He didn’t say this. I just saw intent in his eyes.
“I
don’t want to go,” I said. “I don’t like Annual Conference.” Yes, I did sound
like a three-year-old on the brink of a tantrum. That was my mental headspace.
“I
don’t want to leave the animals.”
My husband seems unmoved by my rationale; “They will be fine.”
Me:
“Mary Jane is in the hospital.”
Him:
“She has people to take care of her.”
Me:
“I feel like I am forgetting something.”
Him:
“There’s always something we leave behind.”
Bags over my shoulder. Curtains shut.
Lights out. Door Closed. Moving out.
“What
scares you the most?” my therapist asked me.
First,
I say, “The thought of being alone. Out in that field like Jonah in the belly
of the whale. You can’t see out. You don’t ever know the whole story. You
rarely know what’s coming next.”
“And
how are you feeling about leaving Hope?”
I
laugh like I do when I don’t want to talk about something. I try to think of a
joke but only muster up a half-hearted, “I don’t. (A long pause). It feels too
hard.”
Therapist:
“What feels hard?”
Me:
“Knowing they are hurting because of me and there is nothing I can do to fix it.”
It’s
hard to hold the tension of two things being true. As if each experience in our
lives is compiled of a million feelings shooting about, crashing together,
exploding in unexpected, unfamiliar, unwelcome ways. I pray, oh Lord, might I not
stretch my heart to wrap around Hope and The Land without ever feeling a tear.
Prayers carried even as I sit to witness the rich golden hue of a new beginning
through the misty blue brokenness of goodbye.
Go to the other side.
I
see him waiting for me. Not with the clarity of these eyes but with dull, deep
knowing of my aching soul and anxious heart. Bags over my shoulder. Curtains
shut. Lights out. Door Closed. One foot, then another, lifts off from the
stability of a sandy shore, trading it in for the volatile rocking of a creaky
wooden boat, where I am confident a giant whale waits to eat me. I want to look
back but I can’t seem to turn my head. The pattern of the waves speaks his
voice, “What are you afraid of?” I settle in, noticing the lack of an anchor
and the absence of an oar. “Everything,” I whisper.
“We
may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” These
words from Martin Luther King showing the water’s reflection that transition
pushes us all off shore. We don’t look down fearing the off chance that our
gaze might extend beyond the boundaries of our own reflection and there is much
to fear beyond the comfort of its preferences and opinions. Two new pastors
arriving into this sea riddled with invisible habits and unspoken rules. It
would be impossible to navigate a ship safely if you didn’t know better. And
they will not know better. They may show up on their first Sunday wearing flip
flops. They may laugh too loud or speak too softly. They may delegate a task
once embraced and engage a ministry once forgotten. They may not ask permission
and they may ask for too much. They may let things go and pick new things up.
They may change things on purpose and they may change things on accident. They
may be unapologetically who God called them to be amid a culture of comfortable
conformity and they may ask that for
the sake of the church that you might meet them halfway and while I am stepping
off the shore perhaps you will be called to stand from your pew and move so you
can get a better view of the place called Hope that God is now calling you to
prepare.
If
we are truly following, then swallowing the news of change will always leave
the aftertaste fear for we know not where we go only the one who waits for us
upon arrival.
It’s
taken me awhile but I’ve begun to understand that if we want to have a story to
pass down about the mission of God through the church, we must focus less on
the flood and remind ourselves more often of the promise. In the end it will
not be the historical facts that are remembered, it won’t be the way it really
happened that they will want to tell, but the myth of the adventure embraced in
the moment we let go. The birth of a story melded from the moments molding us
into a message translated to generations about what it means to follow though
we know not where we go. If we had set the destination it would have meant we
were in the lead when the forfeiting of certainty is but a formula to follow in
faith. Perhaps, there are occasions where it is the unwelcome change, that is needed most of all.
The
crowds have gathered. Do you see him waiting over there? You can almost hear
him, can’t you? Soft words rising up in the spaces between us, "It's time. Go to the other side."
