Sermon 1.21.2018 Avoiding Whales, Leaping to Follow

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Leap, a special commission created by Wayne Stratz

Mark 1:14-20 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Simon, Andrew, James, and John made a decision that leads to sainthood.

Imagine this. You are at work or you are with family on a walk. A man walks by and says “The time is fulfilled!”  What do you think?  How do you react?

The stranger says, “The Kingdom of God has come near!”  And you look at him. Do you say anything? Do you walk closer? Do you back away?

He says, “Repent and believe in the good news!” Do you turn away from your current life; or do you turn your back to the stranger? 

What would you want your children to do? Your spouse? Your best friend?

Now imagine a loved one turning toward this stranger and away from you.

What would you say about their decision? Do you see them becoming saints?

Did these four men have great learning and insight to help them discern this spiritual path? If you read through the Gospel of Mark, you won’t find much evidence. You will find apostles who continually miss the point and Jesus trying his best to explain things to them.

How could they leave their jobs? Their families? How did they trust in this stranger, Jesus? How did they decide so quickly? Did they even think about it? What would I have done? Could I leave everything behind?

***

Barbara Brown Taylor, Episcopal priest and author, suggests that we're missing the point if we linger on such questions; and that this is a story about God, not the disciples or us.  She suggests that we focus not on what the disciples gave up or whether we could do the same.

She calls this passage from Mark a "miracle story," and sees it as an example of "the power of God--to walk right up to a quartet of fishermen and work a miracle, creating faith where there was no faith, creating disciples where there were none just a moment before."

She continues: “What we have lost . . . is a full sense of the power of God—to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hopeless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them upside the head with glory.”

At a time when a Rabbi would wait for followers and then deem them worthy or not to be taught, Jesus shows us the kingdom of God. God did not care how learned they were. And God does not wait, God seeks all of us with a love that seems to throw discernment out the door. The four fishermen, two poor with their nets, two rich with their boat and hired hands; do not stop to think. They leap without discerning.

We want to make the right decisions. Then we ask God to judge us on how we have chosen the right jobs, the proper church, the nice neighborhood, and the decent friends.

But Jesus may simply just want us to leap into the Kingdom of God.

***

For some reason I chose not too doodle at a staff meeting a few days ago where on our laptops we were examining student test results from recently completed reading and math exams. Their scores fell into the red zone of needing improvement, the blue zone of being better than average and a thin green zone that separated the red from the blue. A friend, who had invited me to sit next to her, was looking up the reading results for our best readers. She seemed disheartened that one after another were in the thin green zone. I said, “That means they are okey dokey.”

Would Jesus place your career choice in the green okey dokey zone?

One of my favorite quotes is “Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need.” Frederick Buechner

Do you find joy at work? Do you help someone through your work? If yes, then its okey dokey. 

Is your job creating hatred for strangers, or making people hungry, or creating homelessness, or imprisoning the innocent? If no, then it is okey dokey.   You do not have to leave everything behind to work with the poorest of poor.

If you are unhappy and don’t feel right about your job, consider those stirrings to be the presence of the holy spirit. It may not lead to the perfect job for you, but to one that feeds your spirit more than the present not quite okey dokey job.

Following Jesus may not be anything more than moving by leaps and stumbles towards the Kingdom of God. Do I have to discern whether or not to feed the hungry? Is Jesus going to be upset about how I then choose to help. I can send a check to Manna, or buy a ten pack of tuna at the grocery, or volunteer on site.

We miss opportunities to help. We ignore some that we see. We act upon others. We are okey dokey.

***

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, "Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you." So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

When I read through the Bible twenty years ago, the story of Jonah caught my eye. It wasn’t just that Jonah spent time in a whale or that the people of Nineveh listened to the prophet. Though both of those are amazing. It was that Jonah did not want to be successful; in fact he was in the whale because he tried to flee his calling (think about that the next time you try to ignore a calling from God). Once the whale took him to Ninevah, then he wanted to fail so that he could watch God destroy his enemies. Clearly Jonah’s deep gladness was not in sync with God’s hope of expanding the Kingdom.

It is just so human of Jonah. Do we want our enemies to fail or succeed? From football teams to businesses, from politicians to foreign nations; are we that much different from Jonah? Do we feel joy when bad things happen to these teams, corporations, people? Are we hoping that those who we do not favor are ruined and humiliated; or are we be praying that we all repent and turn toward God?

***

Anne Lamott writes: "I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature...”

To survive winters without hibernating, shrews in Europe can shrink their skeleton, including their skull. Their brain loses a fourth of its mass, but they survive when food is scarce and their heart keeps beating 700 times a minute. Dwarf Lemurs on Madagascar store enough fat in their tales to hibernate through a seven month dry season.

There is science behind these abilities but they are also miraculous. I tell my students these things with the hope that they will be blown away by the life on this planet.

Anne Lamott continues: "… You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right."

Jonah was so heavy with hatred and grudges that he could not dance. Those four fisherman were more than ready to dance when a stranger invited them into the Kingdom God. The apostles didn’t stop and think about whether or not it was the right path. They would be baffled by the one they chose to follow, but they kept following Jesus. So go forth and meet the needy with joy, be blown away by the miracles of nature, and don’t let worries and grudges stop you from dancing.

After the Ugly Oyster, a new beginning for silence

Wernersville Tree ~ as I approached 

Having left the arts and crafts pub in Reading, it was a direct route to the Jesuit Center but a road not yet travelled.  I would be filled with thoughts of riches and poverty and how crossing one boundary can lead to such radical changes as I simply drove out of Reading into West Reading.  Do people drive this everyday? Do they get used to it?

The brain will get used to silence.  Thirty hours in I woke up and felt it.  I had made the transition.

I am not a fan of superlatives... Questions like who is your favorite band can baffle me.  I used to be able to say I never read a lot on retreats.  But I fell into the writings of (let me be safe here) one of the most influential authors in my life, Frederick Buechner.  

I came across his book The Clown in The Belfry as I weeded my bookcase of spiritual writings recently.  It is a collection of essays and sermons thrown together for the sake of making a book.  Not my most favorite thing.  But I hadn't read it.  

It proved to be a path into the many ways he has influenced my faith.  By the time I woke up 30 hours into the retreat, I realized that I only had three chapters left.  It made sense ~  one for that morning and one each for the last two mornings of the retreat.  I could not have planned it better.

As I look back at the book, I see that the last essay I read, before I woke up feeling the silence, had ended with this paragraph.  And this may be the coolest thing ever ~ 

Let us instead tell a story which is the story about every one of us,  It is a story about a pig, and a fox, and an ass under his holy and appalling burden.  It is the story about a mouth pushed crooked, about a voice breaking.  Let the rest be Christ's silence.

Wernersville Tree ~ about to step inside

Mystical Mondays ~ Hope sermon: The Alpha and Omega

an amazing commission
by Wayne Stratz

I started...

THE HOPE OF LOVING

by: Meister Eckhart 
Transl. Daniel Ladinksky

What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?

I think it is the hope of loving,
 or being loved.

I am inside our booth and I tell a stranger that Hope is my favorite word.  He asks why.  My answer was because it is the opposite of despair, maybe my true answer is… I know despair.

Meister Eckhart 
continues

I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey 
to find its source, and how the moon wept
 without her lover’s 
warm gaze.

We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither 
like fields if someone close
 does not rain their 
kindness 
upon 
us.

I ended...

I don’t know how I unfolded into a man of hope, but it sure did help to stop believing in a God who keeps lists of sins and waits to throw it into my face.  Seeking out positive people sure does help.  Reading Frederick Buechner may have been key.  I will end with his words, from his sermon about hope: 

"I think it is hope that lies at our hearts and hope that finally brings us all here [into the church].  Hope that in spite of all the devastating evidence to the contrary, the ground we stand on is holy ground because Christ walked here and walks here still.  Hope that we are known, each one of us, by name, and that out of the burning moments of our lives he will call us by our names to the lives he would have us live and the selves he would have us become.  Hope that into the secret grief and pain and bewilderment of each of us and of our world he will come at last to heal and to save." (81)

Isaiah, Springsteen, and Buechner call me out of darkness

Isaiah 49:9

saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture;

It was 1978 and I was in a light blue Chevy Monte Carlo. It was that time period when I was old enough to go into the examination room by myself, but not old enough to drive to the doctor's appointment.

My relationship with the urologist had started when I was four and lasted till I was 23 and so I can now sadly say that one of my most intimate relationships occurred at his office on Hamilton Street. Best practices of the day observed (but lots of pain, fear, sadness, anger, despair, embarassment). Nothing I would wish upon a nemesis.

I was 15 and growing up in Bruce Springsteen country (in this case defined by the radius of Philadelphia rock stations) and so I had to have heard his music. I must have. But I will swear it was that day, that moment, when Bruce showed up in my life. Soon after that drive home with my dad, I would buy Darkness on The Edge of Town.

This past week I have been listening to Bruce while flashing back to high school by working in Orange and Black. Back in 1978, I would have just begun my three years in the senior high school.

Well everybody's got a secret Sonny
Something that they just can't face
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it
They carry it with them every step that they take
Till some day they just cut it loose
Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down
Where no one asks any questions, or looks too long in your face
In the darkness on the edge of town
In the darkness on the edge of town

Well, I had a secret all right. If I ever spoke of the urologist before my 20's, I don't recall the conversation. There have been times I have come close to telling my story here, but then stopped. But Friday night when I picked up the lyrics sheet, saw myself being driven in that car, and remembered how much I lacked in spirit, I decided it was time to cut the secret loose even further.

By the time I graduated I was spiraling downward and inward and my last memory is not of being handed a diploma, but of wanting to be lost and knowing of only one way to get my mind there.

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere
and you know it's really hard to hold your breath.
Swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared,
I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress...

In my first year of college these lyrics (from Growing Up) inspired a friend to call me Stratozpheres which got shortened to Stratoz by the time I had lost my will to succeed and was asked to move on by the college. I left the college and the nickname, but kept my secret.

Lights out tonight,
Trouble in the heartland,
Got a head on collision,
Smashin' in my guts, man,
I'm caught in a cross fire,
That I don't understand,
I don't give a damn,
for the same old played out scenes,
I don't give a damn,
for just the in betweens,
Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul,
I want control right now
Talk about a dream,
try to make it real
You wake up in the night,
with a fear so real,
Spend your life waiting,
for a moment that just don't come,
Well, don't waste your time waiting,

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday,
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay,
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood,
and these badlands start treating us good.

I believe in the love that you gave me,
I believe in the hope that can save me,
I believe in the faith
and I pray, that someday it may raise me,
Above these badlands

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday,
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay,
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood,
and these badlands start treating us good.

For the ones who had a notion,
A notion deep inside,
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me
I wanna find one place,
I wanna spit in the face of these badlands

Bruce bursts into the album with those lyrics to what would become my favorite song. Gradually people, places, and things can melt even my amazingly stoic heart. That is what this blog is about. Not a rant about things that bring about anger, despair, fear, sadness..., but a celebration of the things that raised me up: God, Mosaic Woman, Friends, Jazz, Birds, Gardening, Teaching Science, Photography, Doodling, Stained Glass...

But it all started when I released the secret into the world and with lots of time and hope and love; finally one day I realized: That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive ...


Moments of darkness await me. If there is one thing I have learned from this life is that healing can happen. Light can arrive. Darkness can linger, but more as a shadow than a cave that has entrapped us. No wonder I so agree with Frederick Buechner about the need to tell our stories, Darkness wants you to fear releasing what keeps it hidden. Trust allows you to tell your secrets.

"What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier . . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own . . . " Buechner from Telling Secrets

worshiping with my body, it is becoming natural

Worship at the Jesuit Center was a new world for me. I was clearly an outsider. Becoming Episcopalian helped. Now years later I see worship differently.

Monday evening I met some friends at that Episcopal church and inspired by the words found in the writings of Saint Matthew, Joe Paprocki, and Frederick Buechner we spoke about worship.

Matthew tells us that Jesus refuted the third temptation he faced in the desert with these words..."The Lord your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve"

Joe Paprocki in a Well-Built Faith speaks of worship as a place where we align ourselves with God and tells us that the word for worship in Hebrew (shachach) means "to bow before."

Monday at work a friend hands me Wishful Thinking by Buechner, a book I had loaned her years ago. I turn to the W's and read that as with any great love; joy and foolishness would best be found in the proceedings we call worship. I decide it will be read to my friends later that evening.

Tonight I meet with another group of friends at a Quaker Meeting House and I speak of how movement has become so important to me. I desire to bow down when I enter the sanctuary. I am drawn to kneel before the "high" altar and ask for renewal and cleansing when I receive the Eucharist in my outstretched hands. I love the feeling of my hands touching my friend's hands as I take the chalice to my lips, and Oh to cross myself at the mention of the Holy Trinity during the final blessing, my hand lingering at the center of my chest as I bow down filled with the hope that I have aligned myself with God.

Oh, I have changed.

and to have my friends travel along with me as I unfold is a blessing beyond even my imagination. Here is an unfolding dahlia to brighten the spirits of anyone else out there who is hoping to feel temperatures above freezing...

Despair and Hope

are all books based on these two things? these days, it seems like it to me.

warning-- spoiler alert

My last enjoyable reading post featured a book, which talked a bit about these concepts as it explored a Jesuit's involvement in a play about Judas Iscariot ----- the idea of hell as being in such despair that one can not accept the loving forgiveness of Jesus. Today, we turn to one of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner.

I have read novels, memoirs, and theology by this man. Buechner believes in the power of telling one's story and the despair when stories are not allowed to be told. His childhood experience is no secret to those, who like me have read his nonfiction. Nine weeks ago today, I picked up a small novel (long story) by Buechner at the library. Renewed twice, it has to go back today, so that inspired me to read it this week.

The Wizard's Tide tells the story in a boy's voice, and as things progressed I began to wonder if this was turning into a story based on the author's life. By the end I was more certain in that belief, and a web search confirmed it, and also that it has been renamed to the Christmas Tide.

Buechner's dad fell into a great despair during the great depression and what occurred was a story not to be mentioned. The book ends a month later in a bedroom where the boy and his younger sister talk about a rare trip to a church service which had happened that night, Christmas Eve. And knowing this man's life from his words, the spark of hope carried him through till he got old enough to realize that emotional, physical, and spiritual health often comes from unlocking our secrets.

This I find to be a great truth.