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February 7, 2010

Have you ever felt "pressed in" by someone or something?

Have you ever felt caught between conflicting demands or even two different good things you had to choose between? Have you ever felt caught between …

In short, have you ever felt overwhelmed by situations that felt too uncomfortable or too big for you?

In today's Gospel text, our first glimpse of Jesus is of someone who is "pressed in" and "caught between." A crowd is "pressing in on him" as he stands beside the lake of Gennesaret. The lake of Gennersaret was the local name for the Sea of Galilee – a very big lake. Before anything is reported about what Jesus said, Luke paints a portrait of a Jesus caught between two big things: the crowd and the sea.

With the sea on one side and the crowd pressing him on the other, Luke tells us that Jesus noticed two boats on the shore. The fishermen are still around – they are washing nets. Jesus climbs into the boat belonging to Simon and asks him to put out a little from the shore. Notice how small Jesus' first request of Simon is. "Would you push out a little way from the shore?" Would you let me use something within your power to give – your boat and your time to row it – so that I can continue to talk to these people on the shore?

It's an amazing art of leadership, don't you think? Jesus has the presence of mind to ask for what he needs – a little space from the pressing crowd, a little room to breathe, a place to sit down. Aided by these seemingly small gifts that Simon is able and apparently willing to offer, Jesus continues his work.

With the first three verses of an 11-verse story, so much about the Jesus of Luke's Gospel is revealed. Wherever Jesus goes, crowds follow and demands are made. But these times of engagement are followed by Luke's often-repeated description about how Jesus "withdrew" – often to a "deserted place" to pray. Those who long for the never-need-a-rest, always-out-there Jesus will not find him in Luke's Gospel.

Also, there is something inspiring to me about how Jesus finds a practical way to keep on with his work by requesting others' help to make it possible. A small act of generosity on Simon's part made it possible for Jesus to be generous with the crowd, offering the word of God that they had come to hear.

So much of what the Gospels tell us about Jesus is that the biggest longings of heavy-laden people – for rest of mind and heart, for healing, for the renewal of hope and faith in God – were met in their encounters with Jesus.

Encountering the depth of human pain and longing, in any of its forms, can be exhausting, even when we experience the deep and uplifting meaningfulness that comes from being able to serve as even the smallest instrument of God's love in others' lives. The meaningfulness of ministry – the joy of helping – can be such a "high" that we who experience it can become vulnerable to the "never take a breath" and "I can do it all myself" temptations. The helplessness that can occur when we slam up against the "bigness" of life's tragedies and limitations, on the other hand, can make us vulnerable to weariness and, in the depths of that weariness, to despair. The portrait of Jesus I find so poignant and helpful in Luke's Gospel is of one whose leadership resists both of these powerful temptations. Pressed in, he shows us that it is possible to find a way to honor one's own needs without sacrificing ministry to others. Applauded and sought after, he asks for others' help and partnership. In this story of calling disciples, Jesus doesn't walk on water. He asks to borrow a boat and for someone else to steer it.

In reflecting on this first Sunday of Black History month, I find a moving example of this kind of savvy leadership amid an overwhelming situation in the story of how Black History month got its start. You have some of the story in Inlook bulletin insert, second page. G. Carter Woodson, renowned African American historian, scholar, and educator, went to Chicago in 1915 for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of emancipation. What is not in the paragraph you have about what happened in 1915 is the story about what Woodson found when he arrived in Chicago. From all over the United States, African Americans had come to see the exhibits housed in the Chicago Coliseum. According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson helped to form, somewhere between six and twelve thousand people waited outside the building to be able to see these displays. (link)

Think about what Woodson faced in 1915. Segregation was still firmly entrenched. Americans as a whole, no matter what color or creed, had little knowledge of the role that African Americans played in shaping American history. Today the scholarship of and about African Americans is astounding in its depth and breadth – but this was decades away in 1915, and Woodson and colleagues had to face overwhelming obstacles to create the conditions for what is visible today. As deep as a sea of ignorance, however, Woodson encountered an ocean of hunger on the part of African Americans to learn about their people's strivings and accomplishments, as well as their hopes to create a brighter present and future for their people. Woodson drew many people into the quest to address these needs and hopes: building an association, reaching out to organizations that could be partners in the effort. It took from 1915 to the mid-1970s to fully launch what is now known as Black History month. It began with a crowd, a sea of need and possibility, and the capacity of a leader, inviting and working with many partners, to find a way to stay in the struggle over the long haul.

Luke's account of the calling of the fishermen leaves us with two images, and the church over its history has been vulnerable to lifting up one over the other. Many sermons I have heard on this text are all about "leaving everything" to follow. Somehow the boatloads of fish get back to shore, Luke tells us. But others are left to clean them and take them where they need to go; the ones closest to the experience of the "amazing catch" leave the nets behind. Because of this, themes of sacrifice, of leaving things behind, have often dominated interpretations of the text.

But let us not forget the other image – the nets teeming with fish … the boats sinking because of the abundance of the catch. It is abundance that is sometimes more frightening than scarcity. There are methods for managing scarcity, as awful as scarcity is. We divide up, we sell, we share, we put our coins together, we make do with less. Overwhelming abundance, when we've never known it before, is something else.

One of my former students told me that when she got back from a year's internship in India she was overwhelmed by US grocery stores. She literally became so paralyzed by all the choices of goods on the shelves that she would start shaking and would have to leave the store. Can we imagine, if we are used to abundance, if we've come to take it for granted, how those boats sinking under the weight of abundance must have terrified Simon?

To fall on one's knees in the presence of something extraordinary, something holy, is understandable and appropriate. I suspect we can imagine the fear in the presence of holiness that would make someone say, "Go away, Lord, for I am sinful." Can we also take into ourselves the mystery that it is not the call to privation and sacrifice that makes Simon afraid – those were likely already familiar realities for those Galilean fisher folk. It is the outpouring of abundance that brings Simon to his knees. It is the "bigness" of what has been given back, when all he gave was his boat, his time, his arms for rowing, his obedience to Jesus' call to "try again" when he had made his peace with a night of failed effort. It is the call to take part in something so big; so much bigger than our abilities, our resources, even our imaginations – to be "caught up" and held there in that call, and to call others to it as well.

There are surely sacrifices to be made for the sake of the call to the "bigness" of trying to follow Jesus. There are things to be left behind from time to time – things that get in the way; obstacles that need to be overcome. There are times when Jesus has to nudge us awake when our eyes close with the weight of weariness or grief. But just as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that it was for the sake of the "joy set before him" that "Jesus endured the cross" (Heb. 12:2), Luke lets us know up front in his Gospel that it is the "bigness" of that joy – the amazing and indestructible abundance of God's love – that calls us to a life marked not only by service and sacrifice but by times of Sabbath rest and glad receiving.

I stand here today because you have a pastor wise enough to be a receiver as well as a giver, and because as a congregation you have made a choice to encourage her to be grounded in a life of prayer and Sabbath rest as well as vibrant service in your midst. You have welcomed me so warmly into your lives to give and to receive … to dwell with you in the "bigness" of the net of God's love and grace. The promise we have received from the Christ who calls us is that the net will hold, in times of scarcity and in times of abundance, and that there is nothing so big or overwhelming we will ever encounter that will prevail against Jesus' promise that there is, finally, nothing to fear. He will be with us on the journey through all things, as he seriously – and perhaps playfully as well – invites us to join him in catching others up in the net of God's grace. Amen.

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