Author Archives: mbj

Prayer of consecration

I am just back from a week on the coast of Maine, and my eyes and ears are still full of the sights and sounds of the seashore. I spent hours one day with my husband, clambering over rocks, bending down to study the details of barnacle and lichen, the colors of granite and basalt, and then standing up to feel the wind on my face and to watch a cormorant skim over the water. Always there was the sound of the sea, and for a long time I watched as the waves poured themselves out on the rocks, and the rocks gave themselves to the waves, and everything was moving and tumbling and alive.

Standing by the sea, I felt what we all feel when we find ourselves on the edge of mystery: I wanted to praise. I wanted to give thanks. To be precise, I wanted to plant my two feet on that ancient rock, raise my hands, and say, “The Lord be with you. Lift up your hearts.”

This morning our sermon series brings us to the Great Thanksgiving, the prayer of consecration that begins the second part of the service. In the Great Thanksgiving we move from the liturgy of the word to the liturgy of the table, from the pulpit and lectern to the altar, from a focus on God coming to us in words to a focus on God coming to us in action. It is the place in the service where — if I might play for a moment with the metaphor — we all stand beside the sea, look out to the infinite expanse of God, and open ourselves to the waves of God’s blessing.

“Lift up your hearts,” says the celebrant in a dialogue between priest and congregation that echoes an ancient Jewish blessing, and with these words we launch into the recital of God’s mighty acts of salvation. More than one would-be priest has sought ordination because of feeling called to celebrate the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, to be the person who stands at the altar and blesses the bread and the wine. It is a great privilege to serve as the celebrant, and I find it one of the most meaningful things that I do, and will ever do. Yet it is worth asking: Who really carries out the Eucharist? Is it the priest? That was certainly the piety of the late Middle Ages before the Reformation, when the service was conducted in a language that most people did not understand, when many of the prayers were inaudible, and the congregation essentially sat back and watched what the priest was doing, as if the priest were the primary actor and everyone else only a passive spectator.

Our contemporary service of Holy Communion restores the understanding of the early church that the whole gathered community actively shares in carrying out the sacrament. As commentator Marion Hatchett observes, everyone stands up in this part of the service as a way to “[foster] and [signify] the participation of the congregation in the action.” ¹ We stand to give thanks; we stand because we have been raised in baptism; we stand because all of us are part of the action. And when the celebrant says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” the celebrant is not just saying, “Let’s do it! Let’s go for it!” — the celebrant is also asking for “permission to offer thanks in the name of those present.” ² The response, “It is right to give God thanks and praise,” is an expression of consent. To put it another way — when I, Rob, Hilary, Susan, or any other priest is at the altar, preparing to celebrate the sacrament, in a sense we wait for you to empower us, to bless us blessing you. When you proclaim, “It is right to give God thanks and praise,” you say to the celebrant: we entrust you to give thanks to God in our name. Yes, we stand with you and pray with you, and together we will open ourselves to the mystery of a God who created the world in love, who came among us, enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth, to enter our sufferings and joys and every part of human life, and who comes to us now in the elements of bread and wine.

All of us take part in the action of the Eucharist, for all of us are standing at the shore of the sea with the wind of God on our cheeks, and God’s bedrock beneath our feet. However familiar this moment may feel, however many times we may have stood in the very same spot and added our voices to the very same prayers, there is always an edge of exhilaration, a sense of anticipation and expectation, for every Eucharist is different. Every Eucharist has something new to reveal. God’s love is as vast as the sea, as full of majesty and surprise, and in the prayer of consecration, we stand before God, uttering words that reach back through the centuries and yet have power to quicken our hearts and to startle us awake. Of course, we don’t always feel this vastness, but like the ocean, it is always there.

In the early church, every worshiper offered prayers of thanksgiving in the posture that today is generally reserved for the celebrant alone: standing with arms outstretched, a posture in which one’s feet are grounded in the love of God, the chest and lungs are open to inspire — to breathe in — the Holy Spirit, and both hands are lifted up to receive the gifts that only God can give. If, during the prayer of consecration, you find yourself nodding off into a state of dreamy inattention, I invite you to be bold and to lift up your hands, to let your body remind you that God is right here, and that you are sharing in this great transaction between heaven and earth. It is you for whom Christ came into the world, you for whom he died, you whom he now would fill with his presence and his Spirit. We come to the table so that everything in us and around us can be lifted up and blessed, so that everything in us and around us can be caught up in the redeeming love of God — not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves, and the whole Creation, every leaf of it, and every speck of sand. Sometimes our bodies can take in that knowledge long before our minds are able to, so if it helps you to experience the sacrament more fully, then I encourage you to give it a try — to lift up not only your hearts, but your hands, as well.

In this context I can’t resist telling you a story that moved me deeply when I heard it. The story concerns Teilhard de Chardin, the 20^th century theologian and Jesuit priest who was also trained as a paleontologist and geologist. What I heard is that one day, while he was exploring a cave, he became so vividly aware of the presence of God, so deeply thankful for the divine mystery, that he wanted — right then and there — to celebrate the Eucharist. But he had no bread and no wine. What could he do? He reached down and lifted up a rock — that is what he could lift up, and bless, and offer back to God, and in that moment he felt as if he were lifting up and blessing the whole creation.

And that is what is happens in every Eucharist.

The first Eucharistic prayers were extemporaneous, ad lib creations that emerged spontaneously from within each gathering of the faithful. Over time, the church worked out a variety of fixed forms for the prayer. Our prayer book offers eight different Eucharistic prayers, each with its own wording and emphasis; some of them keep an open space so that celebrants can praise God in their own words.

All our Eucharistic prayers invite the active participation of the congregation, and all of them emphasize our unity in Christ. You will notice, for instance, that during the prayer of consecration we keep on the altar only one plate for bread and only one chalice for wine. The additional bread that needs to be blessed is placed to one side; the additional wine that needs to be blessed is kept in a flagon. The focus during the Eucharistic prayer is on the one Host (the single, large wafer that the celebrant lifts up), and on the one chalice of wine. The visual and theological point is that we are all one in Christ, that we share the one bread and the one cup. Only at the end of prayer does the deacon turn around and fetch the other chalices and containers that are needed to distribute the bread and the wine.

Similarly, although each of us comes to the service with all sorts of individual needs and concerns, in the prayer of consecration we are gathered up as one body into the story of salvation that we share. Together we turn to the Holy One who loved us into being; together we remember our shared history as a people created, redeemed, and sustained by God; together we discover again that we are more than a haphazard collection of small, ego-driven identities. We are a community that knows that God has come among us, and we are caught up in a holy mystery much greater than ourselves.

Every Eucharistic prayer ends with the same word, a single word that is printed in small capital letters, unlike any other word of the prayer book. It is a word to savor and proclaim. Not long ago one of the children of the parish stopped me after the service to ask about that word. What, he asked, is the meaning of the word ‘Amen’?

“It is a way of saying ‘Yes,’” I told him. “Amen means, ‘I really mean it.’”

When the boy kept staring at me, looking bemused, I added, “Amen is like giving a high five. It means ‘Yes, I completely agree. Yes, I declare that this is true.’”

So when we come to the end of the great prayer, when we reach the place where the celebrant lifts up the bread and the wine, and expresses in the fullest possible terms our praise of the Creator, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, I invite you to sing out your Amen. What is called the Great Amen or the People’s Amen goes back at least to the second century, and even late in the Middle Ages, when the celebrant said most of the Eucharistic prayer in silence, the priest always raised his voice at the end so that the people would know when to respond Amen. ³

‘Amen,’ we say. ‘Yes, I really mean it.’ We are standing at the shore of the sea, looking out toward the expanse and depths of God, lifting up the stones, and seaweed, and water, and every aspect of our lives, and discovering to our amazement that we are immersed in God, and filled with God, and that through Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, nothing and no one can separate us from God’s love.

1. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, New York: The Seabury Press, 1980, p. 361.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 373.

Prayers of the people

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”— Luke 11:9

Today we reach the fourth in our 8-week summer sermon series on the Eucharist, and by sheer good fortune today’s Gospel reading from Luke actually has some bearing on the topic of today’s sermon, the Prayers of the People. “Teach us to pray,” asks one of Jesus’ disciples, after watching Jesus pray “in a certain place” (Luke 11:1). Jesus replies by offering a simple prayer that has been “received by the church as [his] essential teaching on prayer.” ¹ What we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer shows up not only here, in Luke’s Gospel, but also in the Gospel of Matthew, and it has become a prayer that unites Christian communities down through the ages and around the world. I won’t speak now about the Lord’s Prayer — we will have a chance to consider it in a couple of weeks, when we reach the part of the Eucharist where that prayer is placed — but for now let’s take from today’s Gospel passage Jesus’ encouragement that we join him in prayer, that we turn with him to speak honestly and fervently to the God who loved us into being, and that we be persistent in our prayers, willing to ask, seek, and knock again and again, fearless in trusting a God who yearns to give “good gifts” (Luke 11:13).

What shall we say about the Prayers of the People? Of course, the whole service of Holy Communion is an act of prayer, but the Prayers of the People give us a special opportunity as a gathered community to lay before God — in silence and aloud — the very particular longings and thanksgivings that move our hearts. We have listened to the biblical readings; we have absorbed the sermon; we have responded with an affirmation of faith by reciting the creed; and now, during the Prayers of the People, we open up a space in which to express the breadth and depth of Christian concern.

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer offers six different forms for the Prayers of the People in a Rite II Eucharist, six different models or templates for prayer that can be used as printed, or adapted according to the needs of the community. A deacon or a layperson leads the prayers, and from your own experience you know how interactive the prayers can be. They create a movement back and forth, an interplay of call and response between the person leading the prayers and the rest of the congregation. Sometimes we respond to each petition by speaking a short line of our own, and sometimes we respond with an attentive silence, as we lift up the concern before God. At the end of our intercessions, the celebrant chooses a closing prayer or “collect,” a prayer that collects or gathers up all the prayers that have been expressed, and offers them all to God.

Now I’m going to be very honest here. There are some things about the Prayers of the People that I find very appealing. For one thing, it encourages a big circle of concern. If you turn to page 383 of the Prayer Book, you will see at the top of the page that whichever form of prayer we use, our intercessions embrace many dimensions of our life — the Universal Church, its members and its mission; the nation and all in authority; the welfare of the world, the concerns of the local community, those who suffer, and those who have died. When I come to church caught up in my own preoccupations, and focused narrowly on my own little band of issues, it is good for me to open my awareness to the larger needs of the world, good for me to place my own concern into the wider basket of our human sorrows and joys. It is good to be reminded to pray for the people and the parts of reality that I might otherwise forget or ignore, and good to pray for the endless needs of the billions of human beings and other creatures with whom I share this planet. Only then can I begin to understand the depth and breadth of God’s infinite compassion, which excludes nothing and no one.

Another aspect of the Prayers of the People that appeals to me is that this part of the service can be creative and engage everyone — it is intended, after all, to be the prayers “of the people.” If there is a concern that you want to name before God and your brothers and sisters in Christ, now is your chance to name it. If you want to feel the support of other people who share your own fervent longing for justice and peace, for healing, or for the mercy of God, now is your chance to experience that Christian solidarity, to know that you stand with others and that you are not alone. For many of us, certainly for me, one of the first things we do in a time of personal crisis is to phone the church and to ask that our concern be put on the prayer list. There is something immeasurably heartening in knowing that other members of the community are praying with us and for us.

And yet — and yet. There are times when the Prayers of the People may not “work” so well for us. Sometimes the orderliness of the prayers gets in our way: we are hungry for something messier, more urgent, intimate, and raw, or more spontaneous. Sometimes the prayers seem too predictable: we stand there, reciting mechanical formulas as if reading something from a phonebook, and spacing out. Sometimes we want to linger on a particular petition, because we have a strong response to it, but we can’t pause, because the prayers have moved on. And sometimes we may feel swamped by words. In this parish we take the prayers at a measured pace, and surround them and undergird them with silence, but even so we may sometimes feel that all these words only cut us off from God. We may be hungry for spaciousness and silence, and find that words, even elegant words, constrict our awareness of divine mystery, rather than enlarge it.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever noticed something like this when you participate in the prayers? If the prayers of the people do bore you sometimes, or give you no felt sense of encounter with the living God, then I encourage you to let your heart speak in the many silences during the prayers. Let your heart cry or sing its lament or song during the silence or beneath the words. Take note of the images, thoughts, or concerns that come to you during the Prayers of the People — the memories, people, or situations that seem to call for more focused prayer — the inward callings of the heart that ask you to return to prayer when you go home

For there are many places to pray, and in addition to drawing you to Sunday worship, God may be inviting you to another place for prayer. There are three “places” in which to pray: the room, the house, and the sanctuary. I am citing here an essay by a Presbyterian minister, Charles Olsen, whose insights helped my own understanding of prayer. ² He argues that each place has its unique contribution to make to our prayer life, and that each has limitations if it is allowed to stand alone. Like sitting on a three-legged prayer stool, we can only keep our balance if we have three places for prayer.

The first place for prayer is the room. Jesus advises his followers, “Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). Jesus is speaking here about the value of solitude and silence, about the kind of prayer in which we shut the door to all external distraction and preoccupation, and listen with complete attention to the inner voice of love. Prayer in solitude can take many forms. We may wish, as Ignatius of Loyola suggested, to gaze at length on a Gospel passage and to let its sights, sounds, and smells become vivid in our imagination. We may want to practice Lectio Divina, that ancient Benedictine method of reading a biblical passage very slowly until a word or phrase lights up and invites us to linger for a while. We may wish to spend our prayer time giving attention to a word or phrase that expresses our longing for God, maybe by repeating a phrase such as “Bless the Lord, my soul,” or “Come, Lord Jesus.” What other words do we need than that? Or we may wish to dive entirely below words and attend to God in silence. There are many prayer warriors who would tell us that there is nothing more like God than silence. I savor, for instance, the experience of writer Madeleine L’Engle. She loved words, and authored some 60 books, yet she wrote a poem (“Word”) that begins like this:

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stifled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.

The first place of prayer is the room, where in solitude we can go deep, and wait for the living Mystery who comes to us, as it came to Elijah, in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12).

The second place of prayer is the house — which means a small group. Its warrant comes from Jesus, who promised, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). The early Church met for fellowship in house churches (c.f. Acts 2:42), and for several centuries, house churches were the place in which small groups of Christians gathered to pray, hear Scripture, sing praises, eat meals, celebrate Eucharist. Here at Grace Church there are many ways to pray in a small group — perhaps by joining a pastorate, the Sunday morning Prayerful Bible Study, or one of our Saturday morning Quiet Days. Or maybe you want to start a prayer group of your own.

The value of praying in a so-called “house” (or small group) is that we have a place to speak our truth face to face, to be more vulnerable with each other, to offer each other accountability for our Christian life, and to pray for each other in a spontaneous and more intimate way. The “house” is a place for disclosure and empathy — a place, as St. Paul puts it, to “rejoice with those who rejoice, [and] weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

The third “place” of prayer is the sanctuary, where we gather as a large crowd. Jesus met with crowds when he taught the masses and healed the sick, and when he went to the synagogue (“as was his custom,” (Luke 4:16). Gathering to celebrate festivals and to worship in the temple was part of his Jewish religious practice. In the same way, every Sunday we Christians meet in a large assembly to worship the Holy Mystery, and to recite the drama of grace, the story of our salvation.

So if the Prayers of the People give you a powerful and invigorating space in which to name your concerns and to offer them to God, then I thank God for that. And if the Prayers of the People leave you restless or wanting something more, then I thank God for that, too, for the Holy Spirit may be inviting you to deepen and enlarge your prayer, and to explore other “places” in which to pray. We can’t learn to pray all the time everywhere until we learn to pray some of the time somewhere, and these three places of prayer give us a chance to encounter the God who dwells within us, between us, and among us.

Whether we pray in a room, a house, a sanctuary — or in the wide-open spaces of the natural world — the mercy of the Lord is everlasting: Come let us adore.

1. John Ernest Bode, Hymn #655, The Hymnal 1982.

2. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, Made for Goodness, NY, NY: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 170.

Rise up and follow

O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end; be thou forever near me, my Master and my friend. ¹ Amen.

We begin a new section of Luke’s Gospel this morning, the so-called “travel narrative,” in which Jesus “sets his face” to go to Jerusalem. What does it mean to “set your face” toward something? It means to face something with unswerving commitment and determination. When you “set your face,” you know clearly where you are headed, exactly where you intend to go. As Jesus “sets his face,” we can imagine him filled with a deep sense of purpose, even destiny. He is steadfast as he begins that journey. He is resolute. He intends, as fully and completely as he can, to proclaim the kingdom of God, to walk right into the center of Jerusalem, right into the center of religious and political power, and to express right there the redeeming, transforming, and liberating love of God. He is heading for a decisive confrontation with the political and religious authorities, heading for the final and consummate act of self-giving, which he will accomplish through the cross, resurrection, and ascension.

During the next four months, our Gospel lessons will be drawn from this section of Luke, as Jesus shows his disciples what it means to follow him along the way. Of course, when I say that we “follow” Jesus, I am using one of the basic metaphors of Christian life. Just think of all the times that Jesus urges us to “follow” him. For example, early on, Jesus asks the fishermen to let down their nets for a catch; when, with amazement, they haul in a great load of fish, the men leave their boats on the shore, drop everything, and follow him (Lk 5:1-11). Again, Jesus sees a tax collector named Levi, says to him, “Follow me,” and the man gets up, leaves everything, and follows (Lk 5:27-28). A rich ruler shows up in search of eternal life; Jesus tells him to give his money to the poor, and then come and follow (Lk 18:18-22). A penniless blind man cries out to Jesus, pleading for mercy; when Jesus restores the beggar’s sight, the man follows him (Lk 18:35-43). “Take up your cross and follow,” Jesus says, in different ways and places in all four Gospels [e.g. Lk 9:23, Mt 16:24, Mk 8:34, Jn 12:25-26). And so we do, every one of us who is baptized, every one of us who has promised to serve Jesus to the end.

But what does it mean to “follow” Jesus? When you hear the word “follow,” what kind of images spring to mind? If the Christian life is all about following, maybe it’s a good idea to bring to the surface our associations with the word “follow,” and to consider how well they fit with following Jesus.

For example, these days we often use the word “follow” in a very casual way. We “follow” all sorts of things, you and I — we follow sports, for instance, or the news. We follow the stock market, the soaps, maybe the latest celebrity triumph or scandal. We follow Facebook and Twitter — “following” in the sense of keeping up with the latest developments. When we follow something in this way, we add one more interest or hobby to our other interests or hobbies. We take up one more casual or ardent commitment, and we set it alongside our other commitments, adding one more thing to the pile.

Here’s another image of following. I think of taking a trail ride at a dude ranch. Maybe you’ve done that, too. You climb up on a sleepy horse and set out walking in single file, one horse following the next one, the nose of one horse just inches behind the tail of the horse ahead. The horse at the very front of the line is definitely awake and alert, with its eyes looking here and there, and its ears turning this way and that, listening closely. But I have to say: the horses following the lead horse are pretty much half-asleep. For them, “following” is a very passive affair, nothing more than putting one foot in front of the other and staying in line. If the horse we are riding is not the lead horse, we can practically doze off in the saddle. Our horse is going nowhere new; it is not thinking for itself or asking any questions; it is just following the same old well-worn trail, day after day, and it will do that until the day it dies or is let out to pasture.

Is following Jesus anything like that? Is it about adding one more interest to our collection of interests, or about dutifully following directions as we obediently walk in line? Not according to today’s Gospel passage. The journey of following Jesus is more bracing than that, more demanding, more costly, and more full of surprise. In fact, the call to follow Jesus is the call to become fully alive. In today’s Gospel, Jesus names himself the Son of Man, and one way to understand that term is as an archetype of the human being who is fully alive and living moment to moment completely surrendered to the divine. The Son of Man is a human being who lets the radiance of God shine out fully from within an ordinary life, someone who follows where divine love leads, someone who lives right now in the presence of the Eternal, and intentionally and deliberately opens his or her actions, words, and choices to the guidance of the divine. “God-pressure” is what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls it, the experience of sensing where the Divine is urging us to go. ² That is what it means to follow Jesus — to set our sights on union with God, and to do what we can every day, in the very ordinary, very particular circumstances and relationships of our lives, to let God’s love shine out of us and to follow where love leads.

Is this costly work? You bet it is. As we heard in today’s Gospel, an unnamed man catches sight of Jesus, and apparently sees something attractive in him — we don’t know what. Maybe the man sees the kindness in Jesus’ eyes, hears the authority in his voice, or notices the compassion with which Jesus meets every person who crosses his path. In all sincerity, the man blurts out, “I will follow you wherever you go.” What does Jesus say in reply? “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Lk 9:57-58). It is a warning, perhaps, and also an invitation: an invitation to a kind of consciousness that is not attached to personal comfort and security. As we enter that big, wide consciousness and take up our God-given identity as the Son of Man, we learn to be light on our feet — not to grip so tightly to our opinions and beliefs, not to retreat so readily into the safe little confines of what we know, or think we know, not to move so quickly and anxiously to defending and protecting and justifying ourselves, but rather to live out in the open, unguarded and undefended, cultivating an open mind and an open heart.

To someone else, Jesus says, “Follow me,” but this individual answers that first he must go and bury his father. Of course that is a completely worthy, reasonable, and necessary task, so Jesus’ response is all the more startling. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Jesus says to the man, “but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” It makes you wonder — does Jesus sense that the man is clinging to family duties as a way to avoid the radical claims of God? Is the man so caught up in being respectable, or so attached to fulfilling his social and filial responsibilities, that he cannot respond freely to the Word-made-flesh who is, after all, standing right there in front of him?

The next would-be follower also has business to take care of at home before he is able to follow Jesus: he wants first to say farewell to his family. Again, this is a perfectly reasonable request, and in our reading this morning from First Kings we heard how Elijah permitted his disciple Elisha to go home and kiss his father and mother goodbye before heading off to follow the prophet (1 Kings 19:19-21). But Jesus’ response is just as uncompromising as in the preceding encounter: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk 9:62).

It is as if Jesus were saying to each of these people: quit stalling. Quit procrastinating. Don’t hang on to the past. Don’t look back. Don’t cling to your comfort and security, to your possessions or good name. Don’t cling to your good causes, ideas, or rituals — in fact, don’t cling to anything at all! Drop everything you are hanging on to, and let yourself fall into the radical love of God.

Then you will know what to do.
Then you will know how to love, and what to love.
Then you will know the next step in your journey.

As we reflect this morning on what it means to follow Jesus, I want to leave you with two questions.

First, just as Jesus “set his face” to go to Jerusalem, how would you name your own deepest longing? What is the deep intention of your life, the direction toward which everything in you feels drawn, as filings are drawn to a magnet? Toward what end-point or destination do you desire to set your face with complete devotion and commitment?

And second, in order to move forward on that journey, what do you need to let go?

1. John Ernest Bode, Hymn #655, The Hymnal 1982.

2. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, Made for Goodness, NY, NY: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 170.

“Do you want to be made well?”

In today’s reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus heals a paralyzed man whom he finds lying beside a pool. It is a quick little story — almost a blink, no more than nine sentences — and l want to take a moment to visualize the scene. The pool was by the Sheep Gate, which was near the temple in Jerusalem. In our story, the pool’s name is Beth-zatha, although some texts call it Bethsaida or Bethesda. ¹ Whatever its name, the pool was a real place — in fact, Rob told me yesterday that he saw it when he visited the Holy Land last fall. Years ago, archaeologists located the pool, excavated it, and found that it had four sides and was more than 300 feet long — pretty big, almost the length of two Olympic-size swimming pools. A series of columns ran along each side and along a partition in the middle, which explains the story’s mention of five porticoes. Stairways were built in the corners of the pool, so that people could descend into the water, which may have been fed by springs that welled up at intervals. The bubbling waters were thought to have healing powers, and sick people — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed — came to the pool, believing that whenever the waters were stirred up, the first person to enter the pool would be cured of whatever sickness he or she had.

That is the scene. Here is the story. A man who has been ill for thirty-eight years is lying by the pool on his mat, a thin mattress that the poor used for bedding. The story doesn’t say how long he has been there, waiting to get into the water, but it does say that he has been there “a long time” John 5:6.

What do you think this man is going through, as he lies paralyzed for so long beside the pool? As I imagine it, he experiences himself as completely helpless. The waters that can heal him are close by, but he can’t reach them. The thing that can heal him — and he badly needs healing — is way over there, separate from him, at some distance away, and he can’t move. He can’t reach it. He can’t get there. He is cut off from the source of healing, and utterly paralyzed. What’s more, he is cut off from the people around him, too, as he competes with the crowd to be the first to get into the pool when the waters bubble up. Who knows what he is feeling, but I imagine anxiety, frustration, desperation, even despair — all those painful, negative feelings that are stirred up when we feel helpless, vulnerable, and alone.

Now of course we can take the story literally, as a story about physical illness, but in John’s Gospel every story has an imaginative or symbolic dimension, as well, so let’s think for a moment about paralysis in a wider sense. When have you felt paralyzed? We can feel paralyzed by grief, paralyzed by doubt or indecision, paralyzed by anxiety. Like that man beside the Beth-zatha pool, we can feel completely immobilized. Like him, we can feel alone in the crowd, utterly bereft of inner or outer resources, with no one to help.

I don’t have to tell you that we live in stressful, even scary times, and that the world around us is volatile and unpredictable. Just recall some of the events of the past ten days, from the failed bomb attempt in New York City’s Times Square to the massive water break that left almost two million people in the Boston area under an order to boil their water. Some things took place quickly, such as the twenty-minute episode of near panic on Wall Street last week, when stocks went into freefall and briefly erased 1 trillion dollars. Some things are playing out in excruciatingly slow motion, like the heart-breaking oil spill catastrophe that is still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.

How do we prepare ourselves for adversity? How do we stay connected with our deep inner resources of creative energy, wisdom, and hope when the world around us is so full of suffering, and the future ahead of us is so full of uncertainty? What do we do when we feel alone and paralyzed by the side of the pool, cut off from the healing and wholeness that seem so impossibly far away?

“When Jesus saw [the man] lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” John 5:6. The first step in the healing miracle was this: Jesus drew near and he “saw” the man and he “knew” him. As John’s Gospel underscores again and again, when Jesus sees and knows us, he sees and knows us through and through, more widely and deeply than we know ourselves. He looks deeply into us with eyes of love, with eyes that see the whole truth of who we are, and that perceive everything in us, everything about us, with loving kindness and compassion. When we open ourselves in prayer, we open ourselves to the One “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid” [Collect for Purity]. In prayer, we turn our attention to the Holy Presence who searches for truth deep within and whose loving embrace encompasses everything we are, everything we feel.

That is the first step in today’s healing miracle: Jesus draws near; he sees and knows. The other step in healing is his question, “Do you want to be made well?” It is a surprising question, really, for you might think that Jesus would take one look at the situation, pick the man up without a word, and carry him straight to the pool of healing water. Why waste time? Why bother asking such an obvious question? When someone is evidently hungry, you offer something to eat; when someone is thirty, you offer a drink. Why mess around with questions?

But Jesus’ question reveals something important about God. The God we meet in Jesus will never force or push, even when it comes to offering healing. The God we meet in Jesus is deeply respectful of our freedom, and gives us space in which to choose. Do we want the grace that God is offering us? Will we give our consent? It is not just a rhetorical question with a pro forma answer. The question invites the man beside the pool — and invites us, as well — to explore our desires, to examine what we want and why.

Do I really want to be made well? Well, yes and no. Some part of me likes to play the role of innocent victim, to blame the other person for wounding or offending me, or for keeping me stuck. Some part of me likes to complain and to look for excuses, to note the ways my parents have done me wrong, my spouse has let me down, I deserve better, it’s not my fault. Why me? I could have been fully alive and well — but then such-and-such bad thing happened and so here I am, stuck forever on the very edge of healing, with healing so close, but never quite making the move.

Do you want to be made well? That question requires honest self-examination. You might say that it comes with a shovel. With that question in hand, we carry out an ‘archaeology’ of our motives and desires, and dig down deep to discover the bedrock of what we really want. When we have sifted out and sorted through all our lesser wants, what we may discover is that deep down we want to be fully alive. Deep down we want to love and to be loved, and to draw close to the holy Source of love. Deep down we want our lives to be about something much larger than ourselves and our endless striving and self-promotion. We want our lives to be full of light, and to be a blessing to other people.

Knowing that is like having a compass in our pocket, like having the North Star shine overhead. In every moment we have a dependable indicator that can point the way to wise action and loving speech. Moment to moment, in everything we do, in every situation we encounter, we can ask ourselves: How do I meet this situation in a way that is consonant with my deepest desire and my highest purpose? What can I say in this moment, what can I do in this moment that will let the love of God be more fully expressed? The more completely our lives are aligned with that deepest motive, the more inner peace and stability we will feel, no matter what our outer circumstances may be.

When it comes to healing, Jesus does not appear out of nowhere, waving a magic wand. What Jesus asks is more demanding than that, and more costly, for he needs us to do the work of becoming conscious, of becoming as self-aware as we can, so that in every interaction and decision and thought, we are tuned in to our motives, to what we most deeply want.

How does the man by the pool reply to Jesus when he asks, “Do you want to be made well?” As I hear it, it’s a mess of an answer, really. He does not reply directly to Jesus’ question but responds with blaming and complaint. “’Sir,’ [the man says,] ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me’” John 5:7. Jesus’ response is brusque and clear: “’Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ And at once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk” John 5:8-9.

How did the miracle take place? No one can explain a miracle. But as I imagine it, the man did the work that he needed to do. He clarified his muddy, murky motives. He became conscious of his excuses and half-hearted commitments, and recognized at last that he had been hiding behind passivity and self-pity. As Jesus gazed on him with those piercing, loving eyes that saw and knew and loved the sick man through and through, the man was able to name and confess the ways that he had been holding himself back. I think that in a flash of insight and inner healing, he was able to turn to Jesus and to give his consent, to say Yes, it is life that I want, fullness of life, to fall in love with life, to give myself in love to each moment without holding back. The Gospel does not record that conversation, but I imagine it happening at a non-verbal level, by gesture and glance, as the sick man looked up at Jesus and said, without words, “Yes, I do want to be made well.”

“Stand up,” Jesus said, “and walk.”

And so he did. And so do we.

You will notice that the man did not need to climb into the Beth-zatha pool in order to be healed. The healing spring was not outside him, but inside him, just as it is inside us. As Jesus told the woman at the well in the chapter right before this one John 4:1-26, Jesus gives us water that will become in us a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life” John 4:14. Even in troubled and scary times, we have everything we need. The healing pool is within us; the spring of healing is already rising up. All we need, when we feel paralyzed and alone, is to turn to the One who knows and loves us through and through, and to listen to the question that he is asking, “Do you want to be made well?”

We say yes every time we examine our motives and re-align ourselves with our deepest desires. We say yes every time we say the loving word and choose the loving act. We say yes every time our intentions are clear and in line with love. And then we are free again to stand up and to walk, and to reach out to the frightened or sorrowful people around us who need healing as much as we do, and to give them encouragement — a word that means “to make the heart strong.”

God never promised that our lives would be free from struggle, pain, or tragedy. ² But God is with us, and will make our hearts strong.

1. The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (I-XII), introduction, translation, and notes by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1966, pp. 206-207.

2. Maggie Geller, paraphrase, cited in Synthesis, “Easter 6 -Tradition,” May 9, 2010.

The foolishness of the cross

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

Tonight’s Gospel passage comes immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The mood in the city was tense, excited, on edge. Passover was at hand, and Jewish crowds, chafing under the rule of the Roman Empire, had gathered to celebrate the memory of liberation from the Egyptian Empire. Riots against the Roman Empire sometimes broke out during Passover, and some commentators describe Passover as being “tinderbox time.” ¹ That year noisy crowds were coming out to meet Jesus, eager to see the man who had raised Lazarus from the dead, and who had just entered Jerusalem to confront Roman imperial authority and the religious leaders that were collaborating with it. Would he lead a political revolt? Would he call the Jewish people to arms and initiate a violent rebellion? Suspense was high. The authorities were alarmed, and set into motion the plot to kill him.

It is in this complex atmosphere of celebration, intrigue, and plotting that we hear tonight’s reading. Some unnamed Greeks have come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. They approach Philip to say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” John 12:21. Philip tells Andrew, and the two of them report the message to Jesus, who exclaims, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” John 12:23. It seems that Jesus has received at last the sign that he was looking for, the signal from God that the decisive “hour” has arrived. It is the hour of what he calls his “glorification,” but Jesus’ idea of glory is clearly not like our idea of glory. As preacher Barry Vaughn puts it, “For Jesus, to be glorified was to embrace the cross, the epitome of suffering…Because non-Jews such as the Greeks were seeking to meet Jesus, he knew that his mission was no longer restricted to Israel but had become universal. It was time for him to be lifted up – that is, crucified – so that all people could be drawn to him.” ²

Tonight with Jesus we look ahead to the cross.

“Oh, but what foolishness!” the world will tell us, as it once told him. “Arm yourselves! Fight fire with fire! Call down the armies of heaven and wipe out evil from the face of the earth!” But Jesus’ response to oppression and violence is not to wield a sword or raise a fist. His response to violence is not to retaliate or to seek revenge, but to absorb it, endure it, and transform it in his own body. To words of hate he replies with words of forgiveness. To acts of violence he responds with acts of suffering love. To the power-driven evil and oppression of the world, he responds by being lifted up on the cross.

I want to make something clear that is not always made clear during Holy Week. Jesus did not value suffering for its own sake, as if suffering were somehow intrinsically virtuous or ennobling. Jesus was not a masochist. There are scenes in all four Gospels when Jesus deliberately avoided attack. In John’s Gospel, the one from which we read tonight, Jesus sometimes steered clear of trouble by traveling in secret John 7:10; 11:54, and during a visit to the temple he hid from an angry crowd that was about to throw stones at him John 8:59. Today’s passage ends with his removing himself from public view and hiding with his disciples until the night of the Last Supper John 12:36b.

Jesus did not seek out suffering, but kept his inward vision fixed on God. He listened intently for what divine Love was calling him to do, and, as we heard in tonight’s Gospel passage, at last the hour did come when the only and best and truest way to stand up to the powers-that-be, the only and best and truest way to drive out “the ruler of this world” John 12:31 — that is, Satan and the powers of evil — was to give himself in love, to offer his life freely on the cross.

As Richard Rohr, the Roman Catholic writer and priest, often remarks, when it comes to suffering, we either transmit it or transform it. We transmit suffering when we pass it along to other people, when we retaliate, seek revenge, and take an eye for an eye. We transform suffering when we find a creative, non-violent response to it, when we find a way, through God’s grace, to follow Jesus and to bear the cross with love and an open heart. It takes strength to transform suffering, and we need God’s help to do it. When we transform our suffering, we receive power to reach out in love, when love seemed impossible — power to forgive, when forgiveness seemed impossible — power to feel and express compassion, when so much within us wanted only to close down . As Wendell Berry puts it so beautifully, “the Christian Gospel is a summons to peace, calling for justice beyond anger, mercy beyond justice, forgiveness beyond mercy, love beyond forgiveness.” ³

Where in your own life have you found a way to transform your suffering?

Where do you transmit suffering? Where do you need to ask Jesus to help you follow more faithfully in the way of the cross, which is foolishness in the eyes of the world, but which to us reveals the power of God?

1. Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, “Collision Course: Jesus’ Final Week,” Christian Century, March 20, 2007, p. 29. The article is based on their book, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006.

2. Rev. Dr. J. Barry Vaughn, http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_106304_ENG_HTM.htm March 29, 2009 – Fifth Sunday in Lent

3. Wendell Berry, “A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” Orion 22 (March/April 2003), p. 26, quoted by John Gatta, Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 206.

A loving father and his two lost sons

What if I told you that when you walked into church this morning, you were one sort of person, but that when you walk out at the end of the service, you will be someone new? That you will have changed in some fundamental way? That is the promise of the Gospel — that in Christ we enter a process of transformation that quickly or slowly changes how we see ourselves and how we look at life and the world around us. St. Paul makes this crystal clear in today’s epistle: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” 2 Corinthians 5:17. As one writer puts it, “that’s a description of earth-shaking change that goes right to the core of our being — something so fundamental that it changes the axis of our entire bearing; which, according to news reports, is exactly what scientists have said occurred to our earth as a result of the recent … earthquake [in Chile]. Apparently the earth’s figure axis moved several inches, and as a result our days have been shortened by approximately 1.25 milliseconds.” ¹

In Lent we are given forty days in which to look closely at the axis of our lives, to notice where our thoughts, attitudes, and choices still revolve around our own small self and that ancient, anxious, defensive question, “What’s in it for me?” and also to notice where we have begun to find a new axis in the love of God in Christ. Transformation is what we’re up to in Lent — inner transformation that de-centers and de-thrones our little ego and reconciles us to God and neighbor. As St. Paul cries out in today’s epistle: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” 2 Corinthians 5: 20.

I can think of no finer story about reconciliation with God and neighbor than the parable from Luke’s Gospel that we just heard. It is often called the parable of the Prodigal Son, but of course that title is not quite accurate, since the parable is really about a loving father who has two sons. However you name it, some folks consider it the greatest short story in the world, ² and it is certainly one of the best-known and best-loved parables that Jesus ever told. When I hear it, I can’t help thinking of Rembrandt’s painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, so today I brought in a reproduction of a portion of that painting. The poster is a bit frayed around the edges, because in the course of leading retreats, my husband and I have carried it to different places, but you can still make out the basic scene: the father is a bearded, nearly blind old man in a red cloak who has placed his large hands on the shoulders of his returning son. The son — half-barefoot, exhausted, his head shaven like that of a prisoner or a survivor of a concentration camp, robbed of his identity — wears no cloak, only torn undergarments. He kneels before the father, and his cheek is nestled against the father’s chest, as if he were listening to the heartbeat of God.

The original oil painting hangs in the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, and it is much bigger than this poster. In fact, it is huge — 8 feet high and 6 feet wide — and it includes not only the scene that we see here, the embrace of the father and his wayward younger son; it also portrays the elder son and three other figures that stand at the side or in the shadows behind. It was probably one of Rembrandt’s last works, painted when the artist was close to death.

If you want to meditate more deeply on both the parable and the painting, I suggest you read Henri Nouwen’s book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which has inspired thousands of Christians and probably hundreds of sermons, including this one. ³ For now, as we walk through this familiar story, I invite you to notice where you identify with the characters. I imagine Jesus lifting up this parable before us as if it were a mirror. If we can see ourselves in it, perhaps we can sense where God is inviting us to take the next step in our journey of transformation. Are we the younger son, who runs away from home and returns full of penitence and sorrow? Are we the elder son, angry, resentful, and holding back? Are we the father, who is filled with compassion, forgiveness, and a joy that know no bounds?

The story begins: “There was a man who had two sons” Luke 15:11. For reasons we are not told, the younger son decides to go it alone. He’s outta there, itching to leave, ready to hit the road and do things his own way. He asks his father not only for his portion of his inheritance, but also for the right to spend it. As Nouwen points out, in that culture it was normal for a father to sign over his possessions to his son, but ordinarily the father would live off the proceeds for the rest of his life. For a son to ask to receive and spend his inheritance now was to ask for what he had no right to have until after his father’s death. In effect the son was rejecting his father, blowing him off, even wishing him dead. ⁴

The loving father lets him go freely, for love cannot be coerced. The younger son takes off, money in hand, to what the story calls “a distant country,” and there he squanders it all in dissolute living, until he hits that rock bottom place of the soul. Lost, humiliated, almost starving, he wishes desperately that he could eat the very pods that he’s feeding to the pigs.

It’s a path that we’ve all taken and may still be taking today, the go-it-alone path, the I-don’t-need-God path, the rebellious path of “self-will run riot,” in which we do whatever we darn well please and never mind the consequences to ourselves or anyone else — until we end up defeated and at the end of our rope. Have you ever been lost in that distant country? Are you wandering there still? Have you ever tasted that bitter sense of shame, isolation, and loneliness that the younger son knows so well, wallowing with the pigs?

Then comes a beautiful line, one of the story’s turning points: “When he came to himself…” It is as if Jesus were saying that at the deepest level of our being, we are good and we belong to God; we are made in God’s image. When we come to ourselves, when we are truly ourselves, we begin the journey home to God. Our basic nature, our truest nature, is found as we head toward God, our divine Father and Mother, the Source of life.

So the young man comes to himself, turns, and starts to travel home, but he doesn’t really trust the father’s love. He has a plan and he starts making speeches, rehearsing his lines, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of the hired hands.” He is heading in the right direction, but he is still far away. He still doesn’t grasp the nature of the father’s love. Will the father be harsh with him? Will he make his son work hard as a hired hand to atone for what he has done, make him earn his salvation?

The father, who has evidently been waiting eagerly for his son’s return, catches sight of him while he is “still far off” and, “filled with compassion,” runs out to greet him. It is completely unexpected and undignified, this decisive moment when the old man hikes his robe above his shins and runs, breathing hard, sandals slapping and forehead perspiring, until he reaches his son and catches him up in his arms.

That moment of reunion is the one that Rembrandt portrays. It is a wordless moment, a moment of enormous stillness, in which the gentle arms of the father embrace the repentant son and draw him close. Can you imagine those kind hands on your shoulders? Can you imagine your face sheltered in the shadow of that warm red cloak, resting against the father’s loving heart? That experience of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation is what our souls long for so ardently. We may need to gaze at that scene for a long time so that we can really take it in.

The repentant son tries to launch into his long apology, but the father will have none of it. “Quick,” he says to his slaves, “bring out a robe, a ring, a pair of sandals. Clothe my son in fresh garments and let’s have a party, for,” says the father, “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” It’s all about joy — the father’s joy and the joy of the repentant son. Can you imagine the joy that God feels when you decide at last to come home?

But the story does not end here. There is someone else to consider: the elder son, who is out in the field. When he approaches the house, he hears music and dancing. Rather than being caught up at once in the merriment, he calls one of the slaves and demands an explanation. The poster I’ve brought in shows only part of Rembrandt’s painting, but Rembrandt places the elder son at some distance to the right of the embracing father and younger son. Like his father, the elder son is also bearded and wearing a red cloak, but unlike his father, he is standing erect and aloof, with his hands closely tucked together rather than open in a embrace of welcome and blessing. He is glaring down at his father and brother, for, as the parable tells us, he is outraged by what he sees. He thinks he has been neglected, and his sense of justice has been affronted. Sure, let the sinful brother come back, but give him bread and water, not the fatted calf; give him sackcloth and ashes, not a new robe and a ring.

The elder brother refuses to go inside. The father comes out looking for him, and the elder son says, “Look, I’ve been slaving for years. I’ve been dutiful, I’ve done all the right things — I’ve served on the Vestry, and tithed, and prayed the Daily Office. I’ve voted for the right candidates and lobbied for good causes

— heck, I even showed up for adult ed. classes and for every parish event! But here you are, welcoming back this wretched son of yours” — and you can practically see him waving his hand in dismissal — “and I don’t see you killing the fatted calf for me!”

Do you sometimes hear that voice of anger and jealousy and resentment within yourself? The elder son has done everything, and more, that he was (quote/unquote) “supposed” to do, but he has only been doing it in order to earn merit and to follow the rules, not because he is abiding inwardly in the father’s love. In his own way, he, too, is as lost as his younger brother, and he, too, has run away from home. He embodies that part of our selves that wants to trust in its own righteousness, in what we deserve and earn and produce on our own. As writer Cynthia Bourgeault explains, “The older brother with his indignant ‘This isn’t fair!’ is a textbook example of the [ego-centered] operating system at work. Through him, Jesus is asking us to look closely at that part in each one of us that insists on keeping score, that can’t let go into the generosity and the blessedness.” Bourgeault goes on: “The parable’s concluding image — of the older son standing alone outside, refusing to join the party because he feels he has been slighted — is a vivid symbol of the way the [ego-based] operating system holds us back from joining the dance of Divine Mercy in full swing around us. If we’re stuck in the ego, we can’t hear the music.” ⁵

The parable makes it clear that the father loves both sons. He runs out to meet them both, and wants both of them to sit at his table and to share in his joy. ⁶ “My son,” says the father to the angry elder son — and the Greek word, “teknon,” is an affectionate word for child, or daughter, or son — “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” Sweet words. “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. Come home,” the father is saying. “I have always loved you, and my love for your brother in no way diminishes my love for you.”

What will the elder brother do next? Will he stay outside, holding tight to his angry self-righteousness, or will he follow his brother’s lead, accept his father’s love, and join the celebration? Jesus told this story with the elder brother very much in mind, for the parable is his response to the grumbling Pharisees and scribes who complained that he welcomed sinners and ate with them. Would the Pharisees and scribes let go their ego-centered self-righteousness and join the feast? Would the elder brother? Will we?

That is the scandal of the father’s love, and the scandal of the Eucharist, for everyone is welcome to the feast, prodigal and respectable alike, all of us equally dependent on and equally embraced by the unconditional love of God. It is a meal that can transform our consciousness and shift the axis of the self, so that we discover our center and true self in the unconditional love of God.

So, come to the table of Christ, as the old prayer says, ⁷ “you who feel weak and unworthy, you who come often and you who have stayed away.

“Come, you who love him and you who wish you could.

“Come, you who are hungry for friendship or forgiveness.

“Come, you who long for meaning or a just world.”

Come. The Father is waiting for you, arms outstretched.

1. Ronald H. Love, “Are we willing to throw a feast?”, SermonSuite,
http://www.sermonsuite.com/the-immediate-word.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100302/sc_space/chileearthquakemayhaveshorteneddaysonearth

2. William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975, p. 204.

3. Henri J.M Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons, NY: Doubleday, 1992.

4. Ibid., p. 32

5. Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom Jesus, Boston: Shambhala, 2008, p. 49.

6. Nouwen, op. cit., p. 74.

7. Ray Simpson, Healing the Land: Natural Seasons, Sacraments, and Special Services, The Celtic Prayer Book, Volume 3, Suffolk, England: Kevin Mayhew, 2004, p.154, based on a prayer of the Iona Community

Out into the deep

“Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”
Luke 5:4

Today’s Gospel is for all of us who feel as if we are skimming along the surface of life on a motorboat. It is for all of us who are busy, working hard, and hurrying along, but who sometimes feel enmeshed in things that are trivial, repetitive, boring, unsatisfying. Daily life can be a grind. Like the fishermen in this story who fished all night long and never caught a thing, we, too, go through times in our lives when day after day we throw our nets over the side of our boats and half the time, and maybe more than half, have nothing much to show for it. The nets are coming up empty, and we feel as if we are living on automatic pilot, stuck in our mindless routines. We drop off the kids; we pick them up again. We shop for groceries, cook the meal, and clean up — again. We drive to work, put in a day’s labor, go home and catch up on sports, the soaps, the latest scandal or crime. We fill our minds with the worries and cares of the world; we fret about things; we circle around our anxieties like a moth around a flame, and then we escape our repetitive preoccupations by paddling in the world of entertainment, maybe amuse ourselves with celebrity gossip, the latest movie, or the newest gadget. We post a note on Facebook, try out a new recipe, order something online, or check off another item on our list of things to do. The sun rises; the sun sets; and what does it all add up to? Another day passes, and even though we may be outwardly successful and have gotten a thousand things done, something in us feels restless, impatient, and unfulfilled. Something inside keeps tugging at us, keeps murmuring its baleful question, “Is that all there is?”

I don’t know if I am conveying it well, but I am trying to express that sense of quiet despair that can come upon us when we feel as if we are trapped in the shallows of life, and our lives feel too small. We can go very dutifully through the motions — we do what needs to be done at home, we show up at work, we even show up at church — but somehow we feel trapped, as if real life, what Dostoevsky called zhivaja zhizn’ — “living life” — has somehow eluded us and is out of reach.

Today’s Gospel is also for those of us who are getting older. A friend of mine who was trained in Jungian psychology used to speak about Jung’s idea that we have two distinct tasks in life. During the first part of our lives, most of us try to expand on the horizontal level: we want to become more competent in navigating the ways of the world. We want to enlarge our database, meet new people, see more places, acquire more skills, expand our horizons. We are like a rubber band that stretches out horizontally, growing larger and larger. But in the second half of life, it’s as if the rubber band tips on its end. We become hungry for the vertical dimension. We are no longer satisfied with the surface of things, but want to go deep. We ask new questions. What is the purpose of my life? What really matters? What really lasts? What is most deeply true, and how do I align my life with that truth?

So whether you are longing for the depths because you are getting older, or because — whatever your age — your skipping-stone self is tired of staying on the surface, today’s Gospel is for you. “Put out into the deep water,” Jesus says to Simon Peter, and to us, “and let down your nets for a catch” Luke 5:4.

How do we put out into the deep? There are many ways. Maybe we go on a pilgrimage or make a retreat. Maybe we enter an intensive period of prayer, begin psychotherapy, show up at 12 Step meetings, or set aside regular time for solitude, silence, and contemplation. Maybe we find a spiritual director or make a commitment to attend adult ed classes on Wednesday nights. Sometimes it is life itself that pulls us into the depths — an experience of illness or a brush with death, a failed relationship or a loss that overwhelms us with grief. Contemplative prayer is the practice that Christians have especially trusted over the years to draw us down below the surface of things, and simply closing one’s eyes for a little while and consciously breathing in the love of God is a way to begin to attune oneself to the Christ who dwells within.

But however we make the plunge, however we cast not just our nets but also our whole selves into the deep, we have to relinquish our small selves, our social selves, our selves that locate our identity in what we do, what we have, what other people think about us, and what we ourselves think. When we drop “like a stone [into] the quiet depths of each moment,” ¹ we are in over our heads, no longer in control. As one writer observes in a book about Thomas Merton, “To sink is to vanish.” ² The whole ego-project of proving ourselves and promoting ourselves, justifying ourselves and defending ourselves — all that gets stripped away, washed away in the deep currents of God. In the depths we are simply naked before the divine Mystery, unguarded, undefended, holding on to nothing, drawn moment by moment to a deeper union with the Lover of our souls. In the end, prayer is not about trying to influence God or to change God’s mind — it is about letting everything go so that we are completely free to belong to God. And in this experience of radical self-emptying, we discover that our deepest identity is to share in God’s own life, to enter into a relationship of deep intimacy with the Divine.

We have nothing, but we have everything. We possess nothing, but we possess everything. We hold on to nothing, but everything is being given to us. We have been drawn into an abundant life that we did not create and that does not depend on us for existence, but which, by the grace of God, is always flowing through the core of our being and which can well up into our lives, pour out of our hands, and bear good fruit in the world around us. The Gospels speak again and again of God’s surprising abundance — water turns into wine John 2:1-11, the loaves and fishes multiply Luke 9:10-17, and Simon Peter suddenly has so many fish leaping into his nets that he must enlist the help of his friends, and even then both boats are sinking and the nets are breaking from the abundance of the catch. I like to imagine how the jaws of those weary fishermen dropped in amazement, and how they threw back their heads to laugh!

It is a joyful and “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” Hebrews 10:31. Peter drops to his knees before Jesus, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” Luke 5:8. Peter is filled with humility and awe. His ego can take no credit for the fish; there is no room for pride. Peter did answer Jesus’ call, and he did cast his nets into the deep. He did have a role to play in the miracle, by doing what was in his power do and by giving himself fully to the task. But he knows through and through that he himself is not responsible for the outcome, and that the outcome of his efforts is in the hands of God. As Paul writes in his Letter to the Ephesians, the glory belongs to God alone, whose “power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” Ephesians 3:20.

If I were to summarize what I hear in our Gospel today, it would be something like this:

1) Notice where you have settled for a small life, for a life that is shallow, or wasted on trivial things.

2) Plunge into the deep. Take up the practice of contemplative prayer, or selfless service, or whatever helps you to relinquish your small self and to discover again that the deep ground of your being is love Ephesians 3:17. When our consciousness is open to the divine Presence in which we are submerged, then we can return to our ordinary tasks with fresh energy and a new perspective.

And finally — 3) Listen for your call. God has a mission for you! When you know that you are loved, when you know that your deep self, your real self, is in God and that you are made for union with God, then God will send you back out into the world to speak and act fearlessly for peace, for healing, for reconciling and setting free. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says to Simon, and to us, as well. The outcome of our efforts is in the hands of God, and we trust that God will work through us, and that, in a way we cannot possibly imagine, our lives will bear abundant fruit. God is whispering in our hearts, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”, and we dare to reply, “Here am I; send me!” Isaiah 6:8.

1. James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere: A Search for God through Awareness of the True Self, Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1978, p. 26.

2. Ibid.