Since You're Awake

picture - Before the plunge at the February Freeze - Feb. 13, 2010 - Cape Charles Beach

Since it is Valentine’s Day, I have been thinking about romantic comedies. It seems like there are only two types of movies in the theaters these days – big budget action thrillers featuring comic book heroes or blue cat people and romantic comedies. We love them. Or at least a lot of us seem to – many of them female, if I can make a broad generalization.

One of the oldest tropes in romantic movies is the discovery that your soulmate is the person who has been there next to you all along. You think you’re searching for the woman or guy of your dreams and all of it sudden it dawns on that she or he has been their waiting for you to discover it. The scales fall from your eyes, there’s a big, sloppy kiss, cue the music to swell and it’s a wrap.

I think about a movie like Roxanne, which is now over twenty years old but which is based on a much older story – the tale of Cyrano de Bergerac. In the movie version Steve Martin plays a fire chief named C.D. ‘Charlie’ Bales who is infatuated with a beautiful astronomer named Roxanne, played by Darryl Hannah. What keeps him from expressing his love for Roxanne directly is his nose, which is huge, and which he can’t get surgically altered because of an allergy to anesthetic.

Roxanne is taken with Chris – a dim-witted fireman who works with Charlie. Chris is extremely nervous around women – he has a bad habit of throwing up when he’s around them – so he asks Charlie to write him love letters he can give to Roxanne. Charlie does – writing three letters a day – even though he knows Roxanne will believe that Chris has written them.

You know how this story has to end, right? Eventually it all comes out that Charlie has written the letters. Roxanne, though initially mad at the deception, sees something in Charlie that she had never seen before and is awakened to the possibility of love and romance. She tells Charlie:

“You know, I've been thinking about what attracted me to Chris. It wasn't the way he looked. Well, that's not true, at first it was the way he looked. But it was how he made me feel. He made me feel romantic, intelligent, feminine. But it wasn't him doing that, was it? It was you. You and your nose, Charlie. You have a big nose! You have a beautiful, great big, flesh-and-bone nose! I love your nose! I love your nose, Charlie. I love you, Charlie.”[i]

This is where you go, “Awww.”

Awakening to something that has always been there but you have never quite seen. It’s a big part of our human experience. A big part of the Christian experience, because when you think about it, entering into a relationship with Jesus can do the same thing for you – it can help you to see the wonder and magic of the world in ways you never could before. Suddenly life is filled with the glory of God.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to talk about the disciples and to ask the questions: Why is it so hard for us to stay awake? And when are we going to learn that being a Christian is an unnatural act? Are you interested in coming along with me to discover answers to these and more of life’s persistent questions? Come on and join me in the broken world of Jesus’ disciples.

We have talked before about the struggles Jesus’ disciples went through. Their failure to understand or comprehend what Jesus is talking about is well-documented throughout the gospels. Last year we followed the gospel of Mark and saw that that was one of his consistent themes and this year we are looking at it in the gospel of Luke.

In Luke…our gospel for today…we have plenty of instances where the disciples don’t get it.. Jesus tells them to humble themselves and be servants…they argue about which of them is the greatest. Jesus tells a parable about seeds and a sower…they don’t get it. Jesus tells them he must suffer and be rejected and die and three days later be raised from the dead…and they really don’t get it.

By the middle of Luke’s gospel, the disciples were getting pretty good at following Jesus physically. He even starts to entrust them with missions of their own to heal and to release people kept captive by dark powers. But they still can’t understand what Jesus has come to do. They have a story in their minds about how the world ought to work and in their story the Promised Liberator will come and claim power, use power, and reveal power. The disciples will rise up as agents of victory. They just don’t realize that their story doesn’t work. It can’t handle brokenness. It can’t handle the truth.

So after telling the disciples exactly what’s going to happen to him in Jerusalem…after telling them that some of those listening will not taste death before seeing the Reign of God revealed…8 days after this…he took three likely candidates to “get it”…Peter, James and John…up a mountain to pray. You can feel a sense of expectation in the air, can’t you? In the Bible, when you go up on a mountain something special is going to happen…something life changing. Bushes may burn and not be consumed…Stone tablets etched with commandments will be given out…Prophets will compete for God’s attention…Promised lands will be revealed…temptations will come…God will speak in a cloud with thunder or in a still, small voice. When you go up on a mountain, something’s going to happen, and I know you feel the tension and the expectation, don’t you?

Sure enough…something amazing happens. Jesus is praying and the appearance of his face starts to change…his clothes flash with the brilliance of lightning…Moses and Elijah, who know a thing or two about mountaintop experiences, appear to talk with Jesus about what is about to happen in Jerusalem. It’s an amazing event…a transfiguration other gospels call it. And what are the disciples doing…Peter, James and John…who are given front-row seats for the show…whom Jesus hand-picked for this revelation…what are they doing?

They’re falling asleep. Well, you know, it’s hard hiking to the top of a mountain. They’d been busy preaching and healing down below. They had the crowds to deal with, the travel arrangements to make, the book promotion tour to plan. They were busy guys and Luke says they were just pretty sleepy and were barely able to keep their eyes open for all of this.

But, NO, you know there are no excuses! These disciples were not sleepy for any of those reasons. They’re sleepy because that’s how they are throughout the whole gospel. They aren’t awake enough to see the fish Jesus calls them to catch. They aren’t awake enough to understand the parables Jesus is telling them. They aren’t awake enough to comprehend Jesus’ predictions of his imminent death or the conversation about his ‘departure’ that he is having with Moses and Elijah. When the end comes and Jesus takes them up on another mountain to pray before his arrest, is it any surprise that these same disciples fall asleep again? They just can’t grasp it.

What’s it going to take for them to get it? A voice from heaven saying, “Listen to Jesus”? Well, that’s exactly what they get. Peter makes a silly suggestion, (because he doesn’t know what to say), that they have a campout with Moses and Elijah and just as he’s beginning to talk a cloud comes and overshadows them. The disciples are awake now. In fact, they’re terrified. And a voice which can only be God’s voice says, “This is the Chosen One; listen to him.” The cloud leaves. Jesus is standing there alone.

The disciples are speechless. In fact they don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. They still don’t “get it”. They’ve still got to walk to Jerusalem. They’ve still got to go to the Garden. They’ve still got to fall asleep, and betray him, and deny him, and abandon him. They’ve still got to disbelieve the outrageous reports of the women who claim the tomb is empty. They’re still waiting for him to die and waiting to live. But maybe now they’re beginning to see that something they didn’t expect is happening. Maybe they are seeing in Jesus something they hadn’t seen before. The new story isn’t yet clear, but the old story is beginning to fall apart.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the mountain, it’s starting to unravel for the other disciples, too. A man who has an only child has come to the disciples to get them to cast out the spirit that seizes the child and convulses him. The man is grieved because his son is hurting. In fact, he says, “My son is broken by this spirit.” But the disciples, who had so recently been healing up and down the land, are powerless here. They can’t handle brokenness. They can’t restore a son to his father. Only Jesus can handle the brokenness. Only Jesus can reconcile the child to his parent. Only Jesus knows the frustration of having so short a time to reveal so much. Only Jesus sees in this healing a foreshadowing of great things yet to come, of his own resurrection. But it has its effect. The disciples, and everyone else, are astounded, Luke says, “at the greatness of God.” The old story is starting to unravel.

It’s really not fair to pick on the disciples for being sleepy, dopey, and all the rest of the seven dwarves, because they could be stand-ins for us. They ARE stand-ins for us. It’s not just the disciples who get too comfortable with their own expectations…WE get too comfortable. I get too comfortable.

Do you ever think it’s comfortable to be a Christians? If you grew up in the Church you could start to think that it’s a natural thing to be a Christian. Because so much of our culture is built around the assumption that most Americans are Christian, it’s not that difficult to be Christian. Though your friends may shake their heads in wonder at you, most of them are not going to scorn you because you go to church on Sunday or a Bible Study on Wednesday night.

There might even be some strokes in going to Church. When people see you in the congregation on Sunday morning the cockles of their hearts are warmed and they will tell you how much your being there means to them. And the fact that I’m still asked to write recommendations for folks going on to jobs or grad school tells me that it’s still a positive thing for religious professionals to weigh in on these signs of cultural advancement.

I know it doesn’t always SEEM easy to be Christian, and it’s not always, but the fact is that Christians are still pretty acceptable figures in the United States and that’s dangerous because it is not natural to be a Christian. Christians are made not born. They trace their transformation to baptismal waters that represent death to old ways and rebirth to new ones. Christians are important to the world, not because they are good citizens of the nation, strong pillars of the community, or all-around nice people. Christians are important because they know that Jesus changes everything.

Christians aren’t trying to make the world more humane, they’re trying to tell the truth about it…that it’s not humane, but it’s still God’s. Christians aren’t trying to look good…they’re trying out what it means to BE good and they discover that by living on the edge every day. Christians don’t ignore the brokenness of the world…they celebrate the good news with broken bread to remember a broken body that means broken people like you and me can be made whole. And we put ourselves in places where we would not be if we did not believe that the words we say are trustworthy and true.

Another season of the Church year ends this week. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and we begin the 40-day journey of Lent. It’s good to stop on this mountaintop before we take that journey. It’s good to be reminded of how strange and unnatural this Christian thing is. Because if we get too comfortable with what we’re doing, we might just start building tents and forget that we don’t live on the mountain. We live down below where God is still at work, turning the world upside down and inviting us to join in. But that may seem hard because, you see, to join in this work, we have to be awake and see the world through the eyes of love. God’s love for every living thing. Thanks be to God.

Luke 9:28-43

Now about eight days after these saying, Jesus took Peter and John and James with him and went up on the mountain to pray. He was in the midst of prayer when the appearance of his face changed and his clothes flashed with the whiteness of lightning. And, look, two men were talking with him--Moses and Elijah. These, who appeared in glory, were speaking about his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Now Peter and those with him were weighed down with sleep, but having kept awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As they were leaving from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Teacher, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents -- one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not knowing what he said.

While he was saying this, a cloud came and covered them and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud saying, “This is my Son, the chosen one; listen to him!” When the voice began, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one anything about what they had seen.

On the next day, having come down from the mountain, a great crowd surrounded him. Look, a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, because he is my only child. Look, a spirit takes him and all at once he cries out and it convulses him so that he foams and it scarcely leaves him--it breaks him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they weren’t able to.”

Jesus answered, “O you faithless and perverse generation, how much longer will I be with you to put up with you? Bring your son here.”

While they were bringing him, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy and restored him to his father. And everyone was astounded at the greatness of God.

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[i] The Internet Movie Database, Memorable Quotes from Roxanne (1987), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093886/quotes.

Put Down the Nets and Step Away from the Boat

Tonight’s message is very simple. The thing I want to say is this: “You can’t grab hold of Jesus if you don’t have empty hands.” Which sounds like a very old-fashioned preacher thing to say. You can’t grab hold of Jesus if you don’t have empty hands. Let’s see if we can make some sense of that.

Last year I was invited down to the high school to be a part of a career fair. There were folks there from Purdue and NASA and the military – all there to talk about what they do and what sorts of things they look for in new recruits. These job fairs are a strange combination of exciting and overwhelming. I remember them from my campus ministry days, too, and I remember the way students came away from them with very mixed feelings.

Why is it that preparing for a career can be so exciting but actually getting one can sometimes seem so disappointing? In the abstract jobs can be places where dreams are fulfilled and where aspirations can be lived out. Often it’s the vision that moves us into careers. It’s not just that our careers will make us money…they are supposed to allow us to put our talents to work, contribute to the community, transform the way we work with one another, change the way we think, change the world. But moving from the thrill of those things to the realities of training, conforming, and paying the bills is a little less enticing.

You go to job fairs and what’s the first thing you ask yourself: Is this me? Could this be me giving my life to public interest work? Could this be me joining an accounting firm? Could this be me working for a Fortune 500 company? Could this be me joining the Navy? The Peace Corps? Could this be me doing full-time ministry in the Church? Is this me? That’s the question…isn’t it?

And a surprisingly large percentage of the time, the first response is…No…this is definitely NOT me. What I see in this new job, this new career, is something I don’t understand and am not sure I want to follow. What I see is an organization that doesn’t know me…that doesn’t really know what I can do. What I see is a future I’m not sure I want. I don’t think this is me. And so we rarely leap at the first opportunity that presents itself.

That’s what makes Jesus’ disciples so frustrating. Just who did they think they were dropping their nets, leaving their boats, and following Jesus at the first word of invitation? What kind of model is that? There is no deliberation. No questioning. No figuring out the cost. No reckoning on what this is going to do their Social Security earnings and their 401(k) plans. We know that at least Simon Peter was married. Don’t you know he heard about it when he finally went home?

What did they think they were doing? They were being downright irresponsible, dropping everything to follow a traveling teacher who could do a nifty trick with a boatful of fish. Didn’t they know they were setting a bad example for the rest of us? I mean, how are we going to say, “No, I can’t follow you like that, Jesus,” when they pick up and leave their boats at the first sign that the fishing in Galilee was really picking up? It’s something to think about when you’re wandering around the job fair. What does it take to follow a path you’ve never seen before?

It’s an interesting story that Luke tells us in the gospel reading. Jesus has begun to teach and heal around the Sea of Galilee and the word has started to spread. Folks are starting to claim some pretty amazing stuff for this young man. Some say he even preaches with the authority of one who knows the very word of God.

Then one day he shows up by the lake where several fishermen have pulled up on the shore to wash out their nets after a very unsuccessful night of fishing. A crowd is following him. They’re pressing in on him. They can’t get close enough. So Jesus gets into one of the two boats there and asks one of the fishermen, Simon, by name (though you might know him better by his later name of Peter)…he asks Simon to put out from the shore just a little bit so that he can have some room to reach. Simon obliges and Jesus sits down in the teaching position and teaches the crowds.

Some time later the crowds start to disperse and Jesus decides to provide a miracle for the fishing fleet. As miracles go, it’s not one of the most spectacular….Jesus just tells Simon where to go to find the fish. Now this was in the days before bass trackers and fish radar, so folks who made their living on the sea had to rely on their knowledge of the shoals below, the habits of the fish, and just plain luck. So when Jesus points them to fish after a night of fishing futility, well, that’s impressive, but it hardly ranks as the sort of thing that would cause a person to leave behind everything and follow.

What is impressive about the catch is the quantity of fish. This story tells us about straining nets and sinking boats all because of the great load of fish…more than any of them had ever seen in their lives. But would it really have been enough for you to follow…enough to make you send word back to the folks at home that you wouldn’t be home for dinner…ever?

Of course, I have a theory. I think this miracle took all the fun out of being a fisher. After this, could any of them ever told another story about “the one that got away”? No, it was over for them as soon as there was a catch in which none of them got away. The old story was broken. The old cycle of fishing the lake, with good days and bad, and always wondering what more could have happened, was not the most meaningful story in their lives anymore. A new story had begun. So when Jesus says, “From now on you will fish for people,” it was a new day beginning. The old way was done.

What I don’t think is that the disciples need excuses from us to justify this wild and dangerous thing that they do. “Maybe,” some interpreters say, “Maybe there was something in Jesus’ teachings from the boat that caused them to recognize that Jesus was different. Maybe they had heard stories about his healings and were impressed by his credentials. Maybe Jesus had an aura around him like in the old painting of Jesus that hangs in so many old Sunday School classrooms. Maybe he had a glow.”

But if that were so, why didn’t everybody pick up and follow? What made the disciples different? The rich young ruler came to Jesus to follow him but couldn’t bring himself to leave his riches behind in the hands of the poor. Some people, maybe even most people, were able to resist the temptation to drop everything and follow this man.

So no, I don’t think we need to give the disciples an excuse. I think what made them follow was not anything outside of them, but something inside of them. I think these disciples were desperate people. When Jesus happened upon them in the midst of their everyday lives they saw an answer to a deep, gnawing need that they couldn’t hide from themselves any longer. Jesus called and they followed--not because they were foolish and irresponsible--but because they honestly could not see any other way of living except in the footsteps of Jesus. Like Roger Miller wrote and Janis Joplin sang in “Me and Bobby McGhee,” “Nothing’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” and these disciples had nothing left to lose.

So they let the nets fall to the ground. They didn’t go back to the village to tell the best fish story they ever had to tell. They even left the fish for somebody else to clean. And then they had the empty hands they needed to grab onto Jesus. That’s what this sermon is about in case you forgot. Empty hands for grabbing on to the one who brings new life.

But it doesn’t make it any easier to follow these disciples. They can tell us what they dropped, but it doesn’t help me to discover what I’m holding in my hands. Where is that place of quiet desperation in me that waits for the call of a fishing master? Where is the clear, compelling path that reveals itself as my path? Who am I and what is it that I have to give, that I have to give, that I need to give?

What is it that you’re holding onto? What is it that blocks your line of sight, that obscures your vision, that keeps you from listening to that still, small voice within or that loud, booming voice without that tells you to follow? Deep inside, we’re all desperate people, and that’s O.K. Desperation suits us. Or maybe it’s desire. Desire for a life that is more than just the same stories told endlessly. Desire that is more than just a repetitive cycle with nothing new. Desire for life and hope and God.

In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis writes about this deep desire that motivates him, and he believes, many of us. He is writing about heaven and he says:

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else…Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it – tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest – if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself – you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”[i]

It may not happen in the career fair. It may not happen in the classroom. It may not happen in our workplace or in the office with our financial planner. But somewhere in each of our lives, we are being called. To discover that place within us that responds to God. To leave behind the things that we clutch. To take a risk on a new story. And to take our empty hands and follow.

Put down the nets and step away from the boat. If your life is going to be different, it might as well start now. Thanks be to God.

Luke 5:1-11

Now it happened that the crowd pressed in on him to hear the Word of God as he was standing by the Lake of Genesserat. He saw two boats there by the lake, but the fishermen from them had gotten out and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which belonged to Simon, and asked him to put out from the shore a little ways. Then he sat and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Go out to the deep waters and let your nets down for a catch.”

Simon answered him, “Master, we labored through the whole night and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will let down my nets.”

When he did this, they caught a net full of fish, so much that their nets were breaking. So they nodded a signal to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. They came and filled both boats so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell at Jesus’ feet saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord!” He said this because fear surrounded him and all those with him at the sight of the catch of fish. So also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, the partners of Simon.

Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”

And they brought the boats into shore and, leaving everything, they followed him.

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[i] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, [HarperCollins e-book, 1940], locations 1640-1659