When I was in the sixth grade, I got a little
autograph book for my birthday. Back in the early ‘70’s, these books were not
necessarily intended for celebrity autographs, but you would get your
classmates and teachers and family to write something cute and funny in
there—the kind of things that people write these days in school yearbooks.
Well, when I gave the book to my parents to sign, my father jotted down
something sweet and comforting like, “I will always be proud of you. Love,
Daddy.” But my mother, O my mother …. She pulled out a little poem from her
well-worn devotional notebook, full of pasted prayers and inspirational quotes,
and she wrote: “’To every man there openeth, a way and a ways and a way. The
high soul treads the high way and the low soul gropes the low, and in between
on the misty flats, the rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth,
a way, and a ways, and a way. And every man decideth the way his soul shall
go,’ Love, Mama.”
I remember rolling my eyes and grinding my teeth in my best
pre-adolescent girl way when I read it, thinking, “O come on, Mother, it’s just
an autograph book—Lighten up on me, please!” And yet, that little poem in that
silly little autograph book had a profound effect on my life. Against my will,
it somehow stuck fast in my memory. After 40 years, I didn’t even have to look
it up today to write it in my sermon. It made me painfully aware of the importance of
my choices. When I would stand at a fork in the road, I would picture those
words in my mother’s tilting and familiar handwriting, and I would remember
what I had been taught at church and at home, and I would know that, even
though I had a choice, the high road was the way to go. Sure, I was not always
able to take that road in my life, but I knew which one it was and that I
belonged on it.
In John’s
Gospel, the disciples, too, are presented with a life-changing choice. Do they
remain good, faithful Jews, following the Law, remaining true to their
understanding of God, or do they continue to follow the difficult, different,
and dangerous Word that Jesus presents to them—a Word that is growing more confusing
and more threatening to their old lives every day. It is a difficult choice
that they must make, and according to our Gospel lesson, “many of [Jesus’]
disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Peter, however,
standing at the fork in the road, finds that he has no choice but to throw up
his hands like I did in front of my mother’s poem: “Lord, to whom can we go?”
he complains. “You have the words of Everlasting Life.” Realizing that he has
seen the Holy One in the heretical rabbi from Nazareth, Peter knows that he
must follow him.
Deep down, most of us here today have
seen the Holy One in Jesus Christ. We have seen at least glimpses of the
Truth, or we probably wouldn’t be in church today. Going to church is no longer
the “socially acceptable” thing to do. In the 21st century, we no
longer need to have our names in the roll books of a church for business reasons or
to be accepted by society or our families. So unless your parents have dragged
you here today out of your nice, warm beds to sing in the youth choir, you have
probably come of your own free will, somehow hungry for Life or Truth or God.
You have perhaps tasted Life in the mystery of the Eucharist, or you have heard
whispers of Truth in the strange Words of Scripture, or you have met Jesus in
the loving deeds of another Christian. We are not yet the
disciples who have turned away. We, like Peter, are here because the Truth has hold
of us by the scruff of our necks. Once we have opened ourselves to just a
sliver of the Truth, it will continue to gnaw away at even the easiest and most
attractive lies within us.
The temptation for us today, though, given the
difficulty of the journey, is to want to hold out at the entrance to the path of
discipleship for as long as we can, without really entering it. Peter acknowledges
here in chapter 6 of John’s Gospel that he is compelled to follow Jesus, but it
is not until much later, after he has denied Jesus 3 times to save his own
skin, that he becomes a true leader in the early Church … a leader who is
eventually martyred for following Jesus’ dangerous, difficult Words. It takes
him awhile finally to enter the path that he reluctantly chooses in today’s
Gospel. Like Peter, it is hard for us to take the plunge, as well. Wouldn’t it
be appealing to imagine the Christian life to be like a bird soaring through
the skies? Swooping through the heavens, close to God, as free as a bird, going where I please, looking from afar at the
troubles and traps of the world down below? Zipping into a community of faith
and back out again, unattached, grabbing a bit of God, shaking Jesus’ hand,
sipping a bit of Truth as reinforcement for my continued solo flight—Doesn’t
that sound wonderful?
The trouble is that we can only fly
around for so long. We can try to put off the moment of decision, but choose we
must, for we cannot spend our lives in flight. Even birds have to land, and
where they chose to make their nest is where they and their young will live and
die. Our Psalmist cries, “The sparrow
has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; by
the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts … Happy are they who dwell in your
house… whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.” Jesus says over and over in
John’s Gospel that we are to abide
him, and that he abides in us.
Abiding is not like flitting through the heavens. Abiding is like building a
nest, settling down for the long haul, making a place into our home. To choose
Christ is to make our nests in him, to curl up and live—and die—in him.
At Stewardship time, when the Vestry
and Stewardship Team and I start talking about giving a sizable percentage of
your income back to God, I know that it sounds an awful lot like a tricky way
of saying that St. Thomas needs a new air-conditioner. I know that when I call
you and ask you to be an acolyte or to be on the Vestry, that it sounds an
awful lot like I am desperate to get some job done in the parish. Yes, we do need money
to run St. Thomas, and we do have lots of jobs that need doing, but truly—and I
am being upfront with you, I promise—that is not why you should give your valuable time, treasure, and talent to
any parish. You give these things to God, because the way to find life in Christ,
is to build your nest in him. It is to drag all of the scraps and pieces of
your world into Christ and to form them, painstakingly, into your spiritual
home. To enter the path that you have chosen is to dwell in God in a concrete way—to
make the rhythms of your life, God’s rhythms: to rebel against our fast-paced
world and to take real Sabbath rest; to worship regularly enough so that you
live consciously into the circle of the Christian year, from Advent to
Incarnation, to Lent, to Easter, to Pentecost; to pray throughout the day so
that your prayer structures your life.[1]
To enter the path that you have chosen is to dwell in Christian community: to
serve together with others, to serve together with God, to offer yourselves to
Christ and to one another.
Several years
ago, I found that some birds had done an awfully speedy and careless job of building a nest
in the running shoes that were sitting on a shelf in my garage. I obviously
didn't wear the shoes very often, but when I found a compact little nest
balancing in the empty shoe, with stray grass and straw scattered messily
around it for good measure, I decided that I didn’t like sharing my shoes.
Since the nest was completely empty, I deduced that the birds agreed with me,
and I carefully moved the nest from my shoe and tossed it outside. Much to my
dismay, a few days later I found several little blue eggs sitting forlornly on
the shelf next to the spot where the nest used to be. The birds, apparently
confused because their nest was no longer there, didn’t know where else to lay
their eggs. The eggs never hatched.
We are
blessed. We know where we can lay our eggs so that they will come alive. We
know the difference between running shoes and the tallest cedar branches, between
the low road and the high road, between life in the world and life in God,
between the flower that fades and the God that abides forever. It would be sad for
us to fly around afraid or undecided until we drop with exhaustion onto a shelf
in the garage. It is time for us to start building our nests where our hearts are
already set.
[1]
You can tell that I just read Dorothy Bass’ book, Receiving the Day, which will be the subject of our fall parish
retreat in October ….
No comments:
Post a Comment