A Laywoman's Lectionary

"Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.  Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."  (Matthew 10:40-42) ([NRSV]

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There is a scene early on in the novel To Kill a  Mockingbird in which the young  Scout Finch, in a state of general despair following her first morning of elementary school, is further provoked when her older brother Jem, always the gentleman, invites her classmate Walter Cunningham home for lunch.  In Scout’s view, Walter has been the source of her troubles with her teacher, and she has retaliated by punching him out on the playground.  Jem, humiliated by his little sister’s inability to comprehend schoolyard etiquette for girls, is hoping to make amends with Walter and, therefore, the three children find themselves at the Finch family lunch table with the lawyer father Atticus.

As Calpurnia, the housekeeper who makes life livable for Atticus and his children, places lunch on the table, Walter asks for a pitcher of syrup.  Calpurnia supplies the pitcher withouta word, and Scout looks on in amazement as Walter proceeds to douse his entire plate with the stuff.  Jem’s hopes for a truce are dashed when Scout, unable to contain herself, screeches, “Walter, WHAT IN THE SAM HILL ARE YOU DOIN’?"

Calpurnia dispatches Scout to the kitchen with that speed well known to women grimly determined that their hospitable overtures will not be destroyed by impulsive children.  “But he’s ruinin’ it,” Scout protests with a whine.  “That boy’s your company,” responds Calpurnia, “and if he wants to eat up the tablecloth you let him, you hear?” Thus is Scout introduced to one of the most basic tenets of hospitality: make generous provision for whatever your guests want or need, regardless of how unusual the request.

Most of us learn the basic lessons of hospitality in a more congenial forum.  Long before we bring home children whose noses we have bloodied, we absorb lessons in creating a welcoming environment.  In my case, those lessons came from my grandmother whose efforts I, as a young girl, of course took completely for granted.  I knew that I could call her up anytime and slip down the gravel road between our houses to spend the night at hers, in a room freshly made up with clean sheets and towels, with a rose from her garden on the dresser.  As I grew older and went away to school and college and law school and married life, I could still call her up anytime and  announce that I would be coming for the night.  I would pull up the hill to find her waiting on the brick patio under the maple tree with icy lemonade and chocolate chip cookies, and know that inside a delicious dinner was roasting in the oven and my bedroom awaited me.  It wasn’t until I had children of my own that I realized that all of that preparation entailed WORK on her part, and that it isn’t so easy to reorganize your day to include making up a new room and replanning your meals and probably making an unscheduled trip to the grocery.  It’s not so difficult when you are accommodating family and friends, known quantities, as when someone completely unfamiliar drops by, but it still involves work –and attentiveness. 

Sometimes it seems that the Bible reads like one long call to attentiveness to the presence of God in our midst, and today’s passage is no exception.  It’s one of those long sets of sayings of Jesus, sayings probably culled from a variety of places and times in his ministry and pulled together to create a single scene, in which Jesus is about to send his disciples out to proclaim the coming of the kingdom.  His instructions seem designed to instill confidence in men about to enter unknown and possibly hostile territory; he gives them to power to heal and cleanse, but also warns them that they are being “sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.”  He tells them that they should make no mistake about the significance of their mission, saying, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  They go not as individuals, but as emissaries of Christ himself.

Consequently, those to whom they go, unaware though they may be, are also being called to participation in a relationship of deep magnitude.  Some will, literally and figuratively, see the disciples as beloved family members, receiving them as my grandmother always welcomed me, with lemonade on the terrace and a rose on the dresser.  Others will maintain the stance of a Scout Finch, seeing in the disciples baffling strangers with crude customs.  In both cases, says Jesus, the welcome offered the disciples will result in the reward of a prophet.  “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteousperson in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous."

The language of that last sentence is arresting.  Jesus doesn’t suggest that the person who welcomes a prophet or a righteous person in the name of a prophet or righteous person may earn a reward, or should offer his or her welcome in the hope or anticipation of receiving a reward.  He says that such a person “will” receive a reward.  The reward is inescapable.  Is it possible that such a reward might bear little resemblance to what we might normally think of when we think of rewards?  It wouldn’t be the first time, would it, that attentiveness to the presence of God results in immediate consequences neither hoped nor longed for?  Abram and Sarai are not likely to have been thinking about picking up and moving their household to a distant land when they start listening to God.  Moses is the first in a long line of figures who resist with every fiber of their beings the call of God upon their lives for as long as they can – and when he finally acquiesces, what does it get him?  Forty years of leading an irritable and complaining people through a wilderness to a final destination that he is not permitted to enter.  Mary listens to the call of God and finds herself a pregnant outcast.  And Jesus himself, always  listening for the guidance of his father, is executed as a political opponent of the Roman Empire.

I was curious about what specifically “the reward of a prophet” might entail, so I looked a few of them up.  Isaiah, one of the most prolific and famous of the prophets, likely to have been a member of the aristocratic class, was instructed by God to walk about naked and barefoot for three years.  Jeremiah, apparently of priestly descent, was, according to tradition, put to death in Egypt for preaching against idolatry.  Micah, a favorite of many in this church for his insistence  that all that God requires of us is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, does not, so far as I could find, merit even a mention as to the outcome of his life and ministry.  I gave up looking after Micah.  It was clear enough that the reward of a prophet or of a person of righteousness is not likely to fall into the realm of winning the lottery, or even a cruise or a car.

I always get a bit of a chuckle when someone not interested in the religious dimension of life points out to me with great authority that faith in God is nothing more than a crutch.  Faith in God, as nearly every encounter with God in the Bible seems to demonstrate, is far more challenge than crutch.  St. Theresa, the sixteenth-century mystic who traveled all over Spain to revive the Carmelite monasteries, was one day bumped from her ox-cart to land in a muddy stream. She shook her fist at God and exclaimed, "If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you don't have many!"  It does seem surprising that with the examples provided by both the Bible and the later-day saints of God, most of which counter any image of God as a crutch, we yet continually try to reorient ourselves back to God’s ways and God’s paths, as Christ call us to do.

Of course, the reward is not all dramatic and deadly trials, or even muddy landings.  The reward, as indicated by the need for welcome and receptivity, lies in attentiveness and in calling others to attentiveness.  Attentiveness can be both a troubling curse and a great gift.  I think that Nathan, the prophet called to make clear to King David that HE, the king, was the man guilty of so many heinouscrimes, must have felt the cursedness of prophecy.  Those called today to issue the call to clarity and justice that so desperately needs to be heard in our land, must frequently be troubled by the reception their words receive.  It’s not usually a comfortable feeling to make ourselves available to the values of the kingdom, and to place ourselves on the line for them.  If  it does feel comfortable, then we should probably be asking whether God’s values are indeed the ones being promulgated. 

And yet, despite the discomfort created by God’s call to attentiveness, the other side of the coin, the gift of attentiveness, is one of God’s most profound.  Probably most of us in this sanctuary have had the experience of seeing life, or some small aspect of it, revealed in a completely new light following a devastating experience.  It is often just in the wake of a great loss that we see most clearly.  Many of you know that my stepmother lost her brief and brutal battle with cancer this past spring.  I stroked her hand as she died and, a few hours later as I walked down the woodland path to my father’s house, I was utterly saturated by the magic of an early spring morning that she was no longer here to witness.  Two gifts born of attentiveness:  the opportunity to bear witness to a beloved relative’s passage from this world to another, and the dazzling intensity of the passing of the planet from winter to spring on the cusp of the equinox.

For most of us, the call to attentiveness in the form of welcome comes in the small dailiness of mornings like that.  Most of us are not called to become Isaiahs or Micahs; most of us are not even called to preach in theNational Cathedral.  Most of us are simply called to be grandmothers welcoming granddaughters, Calpurnias welcoming grungy little boys, daughters helping women welcome the next life.  Our rewards are a combination of hard work and discomfort mixed with the awareness of the presence of God, all brought about by attentiveness to the kingdom.  It is perhaps for that “most of us” that Christ spoke the final words of today’s passage: “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” 

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I haven't been here for awhile, but I thought I would post this sermon, my first one ever, which I had the privilege of preaching at our service this morning.  Before the reading I thanked the congregation for singing the opening hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy," which is the traditional opening for the Sunday morning services at the Chautauqua Institution.  Today is opening day at Chautauqua and, as I told them, about 45 minutes after we got started,  5,000 people would be singing that hymn in an outdoor ampitheatre, so our singing it was a present to me.

Here are the introduction and prayer, after the reading and before the sermon:

I want to thank C. and J.  for the opportunity to preach from the pulpit which they distinguish every week.  I'm sure that when we called C. to the position of Director of Lay Leadership, no one was expecting her to go to this extreme.  And you would know just how far she's gone had you known me in high school -- a religious  high school, in which I frequently slipped out the back door of the chapel just after attendance was taken in order to pursue decidedly non-churchlike activities.  But, here I am and here you are, and we have no choice except to work with  the material we are given.  In that vein, we should definitely begin this enterprise with a prayer.

Gracious God, we are present in gratitude for this magnificent summer morning.  We have not forgotten that long, dark, damp, cold, and dreary winter, but we give thanks for the reality that the snow and rain of that season prepared the earth for the lush green respite of these summer days.  Enable us to pause now to hear and ruminate upon your word.  In the name of Jesus we pray.  Amen.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials,  so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.   (1 Peter 1:3-9) [NRSV]

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How extraordinarily fitting, that this particular passage from the first letter of Peter should be one of the texts for tomorrow, as Pope John Paul II, today's "Peter," the rock upon which Christ has built his church, passes from this world to the next.

I haven't been here for awhile.  Life often catches up with me early in the year, and I tend to miss much of Lent as I contend with what seems like the endlessness of winter.  I usually emerge from my mental cave just in time for Easter, and then retreat again almost immediately as the clouds and snow return (which they have done with a vengeance this morning).

This year has been a bit different.  While winter made its inevitable journey through the northern hemisphere, my stepmother was making a pilgrimmage of her own as cancer invaded her body.  One morning a few weeks ago, I sat with her for the last half- hour of her earthly life.  It was the first time that I had been with someone at the end of this journey.  There were no trumpets, no angels, no mists in the wee hours of the morning.  Her face did not break into recognition as she made the transition, and the room did not fill with light.

But as I sat there, as she died and for quite awhile afterward, I was sure that I was in another dimension of existence, somewhere between this world and another one.  It was a powerful experience of place and not-place, of time and not-time. 

It was indeed a sense of an entryway into an "imperishable inheritance", a passageway under the "protection of the power of God."  The Pope must be in that place now, "receiving the outcome of a faith" that has supported one of the strongest voices of our time.

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Sunrise Service, about 6:45 Easter morning.

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I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 

My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. 
Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. 

The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

(Psalm 121) [KJV]

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Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.  The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."  But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"  Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"   Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:1-11) [NRSV]

Many of us have issues with food.  Sometimes such difficult ones that we think that forty days without would be easier than going on Weight Watchers.  People who struggle with eating disorders are sometimes heard to wish that their problem was instead alcohol, or cigarette smoking -- it seems that it would be easier to eliminate something completely from our lives than to have to monitor it judiciously.  But the real truth is that we know that 40 days without food would be close to impossible and, definitely, impossibly dangerous.  We know that so well that, unless we are really ill, we don't even entertain the idea.  It's more likely that we'll respond as I did the other day, when entering a newly renovated bakery.  The sign above the door says, "Man CAN live on bread alone!"  But woman, I thought, needs a Margarita, too.

So why doesn't a hungry Jesus just turn those stones to bread?

How about testing God to care for us?  How many bargains have you made with God?  I started when I was a little girl, an incipient atheist in the making.  "God, " I would say as I lay in bed at night, "prove yourself.  Just move that table over there.  Just a couple of inches.  I need a sign!"  As I got older and moved into the wretchedness of what passed for adolescence in my life, I gave up hope that there would ever be a sign.  I threw myself repeatedly into the way of danger without ever a thought that there was anyone to protect me. 

But Jesus had every reason to be confident.  Why didn't he grab that opportunity to show off the power of God?

And finally, the big one.  The whole world.  Anything you want.  I spend a lot of time thinking about things I want.  A redecorated downstairs.  Functional plumbing in the spare bathroom.  A bigger yard.  A hot tub.  A entirely different yard for the hot tub -- one several hundred miles away where it's sunny ALL WINTER.  My stepmother's recovery.  My children's guaranteed health and safety.  The Mastercard bill paid off.  No more emotional trauma.  A month in Italy and one in France.  An organized basement.  A full night's sleep. 

So why didn't Jesus want all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor?

I've been taking a class on the 13th-14th century German mystic Meister Eckhart and last night some of our discussion revolved around issues of scarcity and abundance.  What do we think we need?  What do we cling to?  Why?

The answer to the "Why?" seems to be a simply and yet terribly complex one: fear.  We fear scarcity.  We fear, ultimately, scarcity of love, of God's love.  In a passage from a book called Beauty by an author new to me, John O'Donohue, our instructor read (and I have to paraphrase here): Unless we say "Yes" to God's love, we operate out of a sense of scarcity and begin to back off and protect ourselves.

What we do, it seems to me, is look for every opportunity to turn stones to bread, to prove that we are safe, and to take over the world -- as least as much of it as we personally think we need. 

"Sometimes," says O'Donohue, " the urgency of our hunger blinds us to the fact that we're already at the feast."

That's what Jesus knew -- that he was already there.  Hungry and tired and lonely and no doubt in need of  a bath, he knew that he was in the midst of the abundance of his father's love.  The things to which one would expect a king to be attached -- rich food, a  show of power, command over all that lay before him -- were of no significance to him.  They were nothing but signs of scarcity, of our eagerness to fill our lives with emptiness and overlook the abundance of the present moment.

It would be a good thing if, for Lent, I  could focus on the abundance of the present moment.  The honest truth, though, is that it's a clear night out there, with Orion and an exact half-moon starkly etched into the sky, and I wish there were a hot tub on the back porch.

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Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 

While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."  And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."  (Matthew 17:1-9)[NRSV]

www.geocities.com/mkaira1209/glacier_e.html

It was September of 1981 and we had hiked all the way from Glenns Lake to Stoney Indian Lake in Glacier Park.  According to the brief note in my photographic journal, the trek UP over Stoney Indian Pass was so challenging that we were too exhausted to take many pictures.  I did manage to note, however, that we had seen a dipper -- a small mountain bird that walks upstream, bobbing up and down in icy mountain flows.  Those of you who are birders and maintain life lists will recognize a dipper as something of a big deal, at least for someone from Ohio -- a state with no icy mountain rivers and, therefore, no dippers. 

At the end of the day, we collapsed into Stoney Indian Campground, a spot so isolated that we had seen no other hikers all day and would see none  until the next evening.  Its  loneliness was compounded by its treelessness, meaning that it offered no place from which to hang food packs out of the reach of bears.

When you pack into the Glacier backcountry, the presence of grizzly bears dominates your consciousness.  You waiver endlessly between a hopeful longing to see one of those magnificent creatures with the silver-tipped fur rise from the ground (in the distance, of course) and a heart-thumping terror that one will choose your campsite as its evening dining facility, leaving no evidence that you were ever there.  Needless to say, Stoney Indian, utterly devoid of human artifacts, was at once exhilarating and nerve-wracking.

Perhaps it was the isolation and tension of the place.  Perhaps it was the exhaustion from the hike.  Perhaps it was the joyful little dipper.  But, trite as it seems, I think that it was the view from Stomey Indian that convinced me, maybe for the first time in my life, of the existence of God as Creator and Spirit.  As the sun began to set, the puffs of white clouds cast long shadows across the granite mountains, which rise well above the tree line.  The mountains stretched and reached and slid across the horizon in shades of purple and gold and gray.  The air was still and the space was silent.  A space wide and wild enough for God.  God may have walked in a garden in the cool of one evening, but I think that God strode across mountains in the twilight of others.

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I originally wrote what's above for our church's Lenten devotional booklet last year. 

"All things that rise must converge."  So Flannery O'Connor titled a short story, although if she borrowed the title from someone else, I can't remember.

Last Sunday, our pastor began to preach on the "thin places."  I was baffled for a few minutes, wondering why her theme sounded so familiar.  Then she referenced Marcus Borg's description of the thin places, those places on earth where it seems, somehow, that God is much closer than in our usual experience.  At that point I knew that I must have heard Marcus Borg himself speak about the thin places,at Chautauqua one  summer.  (Chautuauqa itself is often one of the thin places.)

Then Sunday evening I picked up the little book that's making the rounds at church for this year's Lenten season: Celtic Prayers from Iona by J. Philip Newell.  Iona is  a  very small island off the west coast of Scotland, where Celtic Christianity was born for Ireland the sixth century.  Iona has been described by George MacLeod, the founder of its twentieth century community, as " 'a thin place', in which the material realm is only thinly separated from the spiritual."

This entry represents my own first experience of a "thin place."  It seemed appropriate for the day on which the story of the Transfiguration appears in the lectionary texts.

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When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."  (Matthew 5:1-12) [NRSV]

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That was quick.  Last week Jesus was calling his disciples, and already he is immersed in his ministry of teaching.  As far as the church year is concerned, there's no time to waste between his search for companions and his plunge into the substance of his work. (Matthew 5:1-12) [NRSV]

The first one is the hardest, and that's what I've been thinking about this week, as I tried to plan what to write here.  For many years, I found the Luke version, the concrete "Blessed are the poor," was much easier to comprehend.  Not that it's easy to understand why literal, monetary, material poverty should exist, either in God's  plan or on a planet so rich in resources.  But it is easier to talk about poverty as a concrete concept than poverty as a spiritual concept.

It does seem to seep into our consciousness though.  I think that now, in my fifties, I can comprehend spiritual poverty in ways that were outside my grasp a decade ago.  I can't claim advancing maturity or depth of understanding as the reason; I can only say that circumstances have required me to abandon certain goals and ideals that I thought were unshakable, as necessary to my existence as breathing.  All gone now.  Things that most other people in my small world have been able to take for granted evaporated for me, suddenly and with no warning.  All gone now.

When hopes and dreams that you have worked for fall away, you get two choices.  You can stand there, screaming and crying and begging to get them back, resisting with all your being the new path laid before you.  Or you can wipe your eyes and set your shoulders straight and let the past go.  We usually talk about this process as one of "detachment," although one of my sons, who has studied a bit of East Asian thought and history, tells me that "un-attachment" would be a more appropriate phraseology.

I'm not there yet.  I can't talk about spiritual poverty with more than the most glancing acquaintance with the consequences it might bring.  But even that glancing acquaintance is an expereince that we resist, as individuals who want what we want, and as a culture that wants more all the time.  Perhaps most of us experience it only when it is thrust upon us, unwanted and despised.

When I realized that this passage was one that I wanted to explore but could barely understand, I started looking for what some other people have had to say.  Sometimes, I just have no hope of conveying what I would like to, so I'm going to let them do the talking today:

And you must know that to be empty of all created things is to be full of God, and to be full of created things is to be empty of God.    (Meister Eckhart)

The creative individual is particularly gifted in seeing thegap between what is and what could be (which means, of course, that he has achoeved a certain measure of detachment from what is.    (John W. Gardner)

Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see heaven in every direction?    (Laotzu)

The test of Christian leadership:  What are we giving away?     (Our pastor in a sermon this morning, on this very passage)

When one sees eternity in things that pass away and infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge.    (Bhagavad Gita)

The desert is a place for learning to lower one's expectations almost to the point of absurdity, being content increasingly with less and less, giving up living ambitiously for lofty ends of any sort.  One discovers there the importance of the simplest of means, ignoring everything else that doesn't serve the ordinary.  That's how one comes, at last, to find strange comfort in the desert waste, only by embracing indifference, learning to delight in nothing so much as simplicity. Solace likes at the still point of emptiness-beyond hope, beyond proof, beyond consolation. Deliberately aiming the exercise of indifference(apatheia)at oneself, one releases little by little the anxious thoughts of the distracted ego. The false self is gradually starved by inattention. One learns also to be indifferent to others, ignoring  surface impressions so as to open oneself to radically different people on the clean, level ground of unspoken humanity. No longer driven by short-lived feelings of sympathy or pity, one consistently, doggedly works for justice without thought of reward.    (Beldon Lane)  

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.      (Meister Eckhart)  

Serenity and purity do sound like blessedness, don't they?

 

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Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.   He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned."

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people."

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them.

Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. (Matthew 4:12-23)[NRSV]

Peligrino di Mariano ~ 15th Century

Immediately?

Do you do anything immediately?  I don't even hit the off button on the clock radio immediately; I burrow under the comforter and wait for my husband to do it.

This passage has intrigued me for a long time.  Did  the disciples "immediately" leave their boats and their nets and follow Jesus?  What about their wives, children, mortgages?  Didn't they think about storing their nets, or selling the business?  What were they going to do about their health insurance and 401(k)s?

A couple of years ago I served on a church committee to call a new associate pastor to our church.  We began our meetings with prayers, readings, and discussion, and one night we spent quite some time on this passage.  What did "immediately" really mean?"   Did these disciples respond just as the story tells it?  Any embellishment here?  Or forgotten details? We knew that we wanted someone who would respond to our church's call wholeheartedly and without reservation, who would see it as Christ's call on his or her life -- but we didn't expect the response to come immediately, or overnight.  In our church we talk a lot about discernment, and about the importance of understanding whether we are really called to a  next step.  What does "immediateness" have to do with it?

My best guess, taking the life of Jesus as a whole, is that circumstances, both external and internal, dictate our reactions.  At times we are called to respond "immediately" and at other times we know that we need to wait and take stock.  Certainly Jesus himself often took take away to pray before acting, and at times his own actions or words seem strangely delayed.  The family of Lazurus criticizes him for not making haste to his friend's deathbed.  He frequently tells his followers not to reveal what he has been up to.  The events of his life unfold over time, as do ours, and the revelation of his reality continues to unfold, two thousand years later.  Most things take time, at least in the universe as we humans experience it.

So what about the disiples and the immediacy of their response?  For me, this year, that word, repeated twice, has to do with the attentiveness and awareness that is emphasized so strongly in the Bible.  During Advent, the texts called for attentiveness to what was about to happen in the world.  As Jesus' ministry begins, the same call is apparent, but the ominous tone of Advent is missing.  No Jesus railing about end times to his followers,no angels appearing to young people who had thought they were just going about their daily business, no prophets ranting in the wilderness.  Just a young man with an extraordinary charisma, standing on the beach and calling fishermen to a new task and a new life.  I imagine the day as a sunny one, the water quietly lapping at the shore, the workers talking and laughing as the day is getting underway -- until they decide to respond to the young man on the beach.

What did they feel?  A sense of urgency?  A seriousness of purpose?  An overwhelming internal insistence that they follow?  A realization that new lives and new ends lay before them?  Or were they relaxed and cheerful, thinking that they were going to pass a day or two with this new fellow and would be back at work by the end of the week? Who knows?

Perhaps it is only in retrospect that the emphasis falls on the word "immediately."  Perhaps it was decades later, when the stories were finally written down, that the writers chose to emphasize the speed and completeness with which the disiples embraced their new lives, because they as writers saw what had come to pass as so dramatically distinct from all that had gone before or since.  Perhaps it was only much later that the change in the circumstances of the human world was so vivid that it could only be relayed as a great drama -- because that's what it was, whether the disiples knew it at the time or not.  And the call to us, with its immediacy and directness emphasized, is to be alert and aware, at all times.  Regardless of what we are doing -- washing dishes, typing, writing on a blackboard, checking a heartbeat, washing down an animal -- and what we know, or don't know, we could be called elsewhere, to a new life, just like that.

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The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!  This is he of whom I said, 'After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'  I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel."

And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.  I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.'  And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!"   The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.  He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed).  He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).   (John 1:29-42) [NRSV]

St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Salisbury MD

Come and see.

We have to move, at least mentally, if not physically, to where Jesus is.  Come.

We have to pay attention.  And see.

Action and discernment.

I wish I had read this passage when I first joined my first church.  As I've written before, I took that step without much forethought or understanding.  Something moved me to suggest to my husband that we start attending a church, we chose one and went, and a month later were full-fledged members.  It was kind of like joining a social club or organization.  Nothing much was demanded, or even expected, of us. 

Later, I felt critical of both myself and the church for that situation.  As we were drawn into the life of the church, became part of a small group of like-minded church neighbors, served on committees and pursued educational offerings, I began to see that we were part of something huge.  Something well beyond our understanding.  Something to which nothing, so far as I could remember, in our brief membership classes, had even alluded. And so I was critical of myself for jumping in with both feet, and of the church for welcoming people with little knowledge of who they were or preparation for whom they were to become.

I took a long break from church.  A really long break.  Years.  And when I returned, it was to a different church in a different denomination and, in reality, I was still taking a long break.  I saw myself as engaged in a process of discernment, of spiritual awakening -- reading and writing and listening but not acting.  I sat in the back, volunteered a little here and there, but mostly kept my own counsel and shied away from committment. 

And then, one day, I had had enough of that and started taking the steps necessary to transfer my membership and become an active and engaged participant once again.  And sure enough, as I realized to my chagrin somewhat later, I did exactly what I had done before:  jumped in up to my waist without really paying attention. 

In fact, I had paid so little attention to what I was doing that last fall I became highly critical of someone who had done the same thing.  I was taking a graduate class on Spiritual Autobiography and one of our texts was Dorotny Day's The Long Loneliness.  Dorothy Day is famous for her service to society's poor and discarded and her implacable pacifism.  I didn't find much to like in Dorothy Day -- she struck me as a great lady, but not a friendly one.  And I especially didn't like the way in which she converted to Catholicism, throwing herself blindly into it on the basis of a few masses and some tutoring by a nun, becoming confirmed in the church before she knew even a single Catholic layperson.  My reasoning and lawyerly mind stiffened against the idea of an intelligent and insightful woman making such an impulsive and ill-informed leap into a life of faith.

Until I realized that I had done exactly the same thing.

(Not, I hasten to add, that I am comparing myself in any other way to Dorothy Day.  I recognize genius when I see it and I'm not too worried that I have any hope of measuring up to hers.)

"Come," says Jesus.  He doesn't "Think about it" or "Figure it out" or "Get a doctorate in theology first."  He just says, "Come."

Quite and entirely by accident, both times I ahd joined a church, I had done exactly that.  I had just come along, no differently than any of Jesus' orginal disciples.  I had just come to where he seemed to be.

"And see."  Once you get there, you have to be attentive to what you find.

And what is that, exactly?  I'm stumped -- I don't know how to explain this.  But when you begin to see with the eyes of Christ, things start to take on a different hue.   

Don't get me wrong.  I am no saint.  In Catholic school we used to gossip about who was "holy" -- and I'm a realist, so I never had to contemplate being included in that group.  As an adult church member, I know a lot of people who do a lot of good things for religious reasons,  helping the poor, school children, the homeless.  I know people who give away a lot of money.  I know people who are active in politics -- in protests against the war, in the election, on behalf of gay rights -- as a result of their religious beliefs.  I'm not any of those people.  I am a totally average, overscheduled and overwhelmed suburban mom and teacher who can't manage to get either the Mastercard bill paid off or the kitchen floor washed.  I have my fantasies about joing the Peace Corps when my children's college degrees are completed and their bills are paid, but I don't harbor illusions about experiencing a sudden infusion of energy and efficiency ten years from now any more than I expect it to happen this afternoon.  So I can't talk about "doing" or "achieving."   But I can talk a little bit about seeing.   

Many years ago, I was out on a Christmas shopping marathon, charging down the aisles of a big-box chain toy store looking for gifts for unknown children, soon-to-be recipients of church largesse.  Aisle after aisle of toy guns, military action figures, enough gear to outfit an entire National Guard Unit in plastic camoflauge and weaponry.  That store looked very different to me as I contemplated celebrating the birthday of the Prince of Peace than it would have a few years earlier when Christmas was simply a major secular holiday for me.  It felt like a poor place for me to be spending my money.  

I have had to dig deep down into unknown territories to find a place of peace and foirgiveness with respect to certain matters.  (Actually, I'm lying.  I'm not there yet.  But I'm working on it.)  Yesterday I was in a workshop in which we participants were asked to identify our favorite New Testament passage.  I had no idea what mine might be and I was flipping through a Bible when it practically leaped from the page. "And Jesus said, 'There was a man who had two sons.' "  The story of the Prodigal Son, the ultimate story of human forgiveness.   Of course.  When that story, or one like it, has come completely alive for you and you begin to understand what Jesus really meant by by mercy and forgiveness, you see things differently.  Not comfortably, but differently.  

As anyone who reads my other journal knows, my stepmother  is very ill.  Her battle against cancer has raised questions not uncommon in our society, questions having to do with quality of life, technology, and choice.  Almost every person with whom I have discussed those issues describes one set of choices as "giving up."  I don't see the decision to forego treatment that way at all.  And I don't think that you have to have a specific religion or spirituality to conclude that the end of life, wherever it may lead, is a transition and that you are not "giving up" by coming to terms with that.  You just need to see things differently.  Not, perhaps, comfortably, but differently.    

So, as it turns out, I was wrong to be critical of my former church for welcoming the delusionally innocent.  I was wrong to think that Dorothy Day had moved too fast.  I was wrong to think that you need to work out your faith before you get moving on it.  You do not begin to see differently until you are in the midst of texts and preachers and friends who share that vision, until you are in a place where you can begin to practice it for yourself.  Jesus know that; that's why he issued the invitation to follow him before offering a college course on exactly what that would entail.  We begin simply by responding to the invitation.  

Come.  And see.

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Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  

John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented.

And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.

And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."  (Matthew 3:13-17)[NRSV]

What does it mean ~ baptism?

In my family, my nonreligious family, it apparently meant something of unvoiced significance, because we children were not baptized as babies in accordance with the usual practice of the Methodist Church.  My father felt that people shouldn't get entangled with the church until they were old enough to know what they were doing, and babies weren't old enough.  Young teens weren't either, as I discovered when I went through a period of wanting to convert to Catholicism while I was a junior high school student in a Catholic boarding school.

So I wasn't baptized until I was an adult, and had decided to become an official member of the Methodist church.  Baptism was a prerequisite, so there I was, still pretty clueless, but doing it anyway.  I can't say that I thought I was "saved" or "cleansed of my sins" or anything else approximating what people often say about baptism.  I just thought I was taking the first step in a journey that was going to have a public as well as a private side to it.

One of our pastors articulated it well a couple of weeks ago when she said that baptism was an occasion for welcoming someone into the church family.  I wish I had had that language on the tip of my tongue a couple of years after my own baptism, when we arranged for the baptisms of our first babies.  I had hoped that my family would join us but circumstances got in the way.  Months later one of my younger stepsisters, as cyncial and caustic as I had been as a teenager, asked icily, "Why would you have them baptized, anyway?"  It was hard to respond in the face of her adolescent certitude that religion was for idiots, and I wish I could have just said something along the lines of what our pastor had said to me: I wanted them to be part of a church family, and baptism was the doorway.  Jesus says as much, when he says that "it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness."

No doves, of course, for the rest of us.  And no voice of God from the heavens, either.  Or am I wrong about that?  Jesus' baptism is apparently one of the few moments in the Bible when God as Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit are simultaneously present.  Their concurrent appearance  would seem to portend a momentous occasion, and maybe that is indeed what baptism is, even for those of us who don't recognize it at the time.  Maybe it's a time when God in all of God's vastness drives a wedge into our lives and begins to take up permanent residence there -- quietly and unobtrusively, perhaps, but definitively there.  Even defiantly there.  God perhaps saying, "I am pleased with your existence, whether you like it or not, and whether you even know it or not ~ and this is your first  step toward undertanding that."

In our church, our pastors emphasize, week after week, over and over, God's all-encompassing love for all of us.  At Jesus' baptsim, at the outset of his ministry, we see God call Jesus "the beloved, with whom I am well pleased."  At a baby's baptism, it's easy to see that love, too -- what could be more lovely than an innocent newborn in the arms of a parent?.  But even those of us who are adults -- adults with long histories behind us -- even for us, God's love is there at baptism.  Recognized or not.

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