Entering the Cloud of Jesus Praying

 Luke 9:28-36

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Atop the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from where I grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia there is a tourist attraction known as Humpback Rocks.  It is a rather large outcropping of rocks that delivers a spectacular view of the Shenandoah Valley.  The climb up is one of the steepest and most strenuous one-mile hikes you will come across, but it’s worth it.  If you get out on the edge you get that “King of the World” sensation. Unfortunately, since my 20’s I have found being out on the edge just a little too terrifying.  If you fall off, it’s about a fifty or more-foot drop just to get into the tree tops below.  It’s a place you need to be careful, but the view is worth it.  It’s good.

I’ve been up on Humpback a couple of times on rainy-ish days when the clouds are blowing by.  It’s awesome to watch a cloud coming at you, billowing its way along the ridges, engulfing everything along the way and then…it engulfs you.  I have been up there when you couldn’t see but a few feet in front of you.  If you’re not familiar with the rocks, you’re best to just sit right down and wait it out.  In those fogged-out moments it is not “good” on Humpback.  It’s terrifying.  

I think of those experiences on Humpback when I read this story of the Transfiguration.  Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus to pray and it’s good.  But then comes the cloud and they find themselves engulfed by it.  It’s terrifying.  Yet in their case, it’s not the fog that terrifies them.  It’s that they have found themselves in the presence of God.  What shall we say about that?

Well to start, what we have here in this story of the Transfiguration is one of those rare moments in the Gospels when God fully reveals himself and to the consternation of many, God reveals himself as Trinity.  There’s Jesus the Son, the voice of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit showing up as the terrifying cloud.  Something similar happened at Jesus’ baptism when he began his ministry.  Jesus, the Son was in the water.  God the Father spoke from heaven.  The Holy Spirit came on him like a dove.  That was the beginning of his ministry and now it happens again this time as Jesus begins his journey to the cross.

Well, I’m going to apologize to you for what I’m about to do next.  I’m going to get a little theologically heavy on you and talk about the Trinity and what prayer is.  To do that it’s best we don’t start by trying to do the math: you know, 3-in-1, 1-in-3.  It’s better to think of Trinity as the relationship in love of the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  They are three persons who are in a relationship of mutually giving, unconditional love and this relationship of love is what they each are in themselves.  It’s like me saying “What makes me “Me” is all the significant relationships I’ve had in life.”  Sure, I’m uniquely me, but I am not “me” without those significant and formative relationships.  Persons aren’t islands to themselves.  Persons are in relationships.  The Father isn’t the Father without the Son and the Spirit, nor the Son without the Father and the Spirit, nor the Spirit without the Father and the Son.

 Since Trinity is this eternal relationship of love, we must note that communication is always happening between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In essence, this is prayer.  We ask what does a Triune God in all eternity do in his very self?  Well, God talks among himself…God prays.  God in God’s self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is always praying.  The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is ever-standing before the Father in the Spirit praying interceding on our behalf which also implies that the Father in the Spirit is always listening and answering.  Jesus is always praying for us and the Father is always listening and answering for us and the Spirit carries it out.  

Now here’s one more to wrap your head around.  The Holy Spirit due to his abiding in us, his bonding us to Jesus the Son, brings us as God’s beloved children into that eternal praying of the Son to the Father and the Father’s hearing and answering his beloved Son.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy spirit is always in us praying and when we don’t know what to pray, especially when we are deeply hurting and cannot put words to it, the Holy Spirit is in us praying with sighs too deep for words.  Our praying is participating in the praying that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does within Godself.

I bet you never thought of prayer that way.  We are inclined to think of prayer as our talking at God from a vast distance and God from a distance hearing and maybe from a distance answering at us.  But the truth is, prayer is our participating in the communication that goes on within the Trinity in such a way that by the work of the Holy Spirit our prayers become Jesus’ prayers and his ours.  When we pray Jesus is in us and us in Jesus.

Well, your theological moment is done, but let me make use of that basic thought about prayer – that prayer is our participation in Jesus’ own praying in the midst of the life of God the Trinity – let me use that to set the stage for what is going on here in Luke.  You see,  what we have here in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration is a moment when certain of the disciples entered into the “cloud” of Jesus’ praying.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story of the Transfiguration, but Luke tells it from a different perspective.  He is the only one to put the Transfiguration into the context of prayer.  It happens while Jesus is praying and his disciples are attempting to pray with him.  

So, we have Jesus heading up the mountain to pray.  Peter, James, and John are with him and as he begins to pray of course they begin to fall asleep.  Prayer would not be prayer if we didn’t have a good nap.  Do I hear an amen?  Oddly, they manage to stay awake and suddenly they find themselves engulfed in the “goodness” of pure light.  Jesus’ face has changed and his clothes have become dazzling white.  Jesus, glorified, unveiled before them in his relationship with the Father in the Spirit.  

Then, they see two more people with Jesus, Moses and Elijah who are themselves no strangers to talking with God on the mountaintop.  On Mt. Sinai, Moses heard the voice of the LORD and received the Commandments.  Moses was also the great mediator.  Up on the mountain he talked the LORD out of destroying the Israelites for their idolatry in the Golden Calf incident and convinced God not to abandon his people but to continue on with them; and not just from afar, but present with them dwelling in their midst in the tabernacle, and leading them as a whirlwind by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Moses intercedes for God’s people, so does Jesus for us his beloved sisters and brothers.

Elijah also had a Mt. Sinai experience. On Mt. Sinai he, the greatest of the prophets excepting John the Baptist, heard the “still small voice of the Lord” while hiding there in a cave.  Elijah was on the run, afraid for his life for he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal and offended the very wicked King Ahab.  Elijah thought he was the only faithful person left in Israel, but by that still small voice God assured him he was not the only one and told him to go back to Israel for there were 7,000 still faithful waiting for him.  On the way he was to anoint a couple of yet to be kings who would prove to be the downfall of Ahab and to find Elisha who would be his successor.  Elijah had served the LORD faithfully and he would not die.  As we know, he was taken into heaven in a fiery chariot.  Likewise, Jesus was the only truly faithful one and yet he would die a death akin to the one that Ahab threatened Elijah with and yet be raised and ascend into heaven from where we await his return.  In a way, Elijah’s presence here is the still small voice of assurance from the Father to Jesus that though the cross lay ahead, he will live.

Peter, James, and John find this experience of praying with Jesus to be “good".  Peter’s remarks about its goodness reminds me of the Creation story and God saying at the end of each day of Creation “good”.  There is something “Creation-y” in the order of New Creation going on here in this experience of being with Jesus in his praying.  

Well, the moment is good and they want it to go on forever but reality sets in, if I might say it that way.  We could say that Peter, James, and John were suddenly awakened from a dream-like state and confronted with God in God’s very self.  The cloud of the Holy Spirit overshadows them. Things become darkened as they enter into the cloud.  Their feelings of “good” turn to outright terror.  “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death.”  Then, God the Father speaks to them just as he spoke to Moses and to Elijah.  “This is my Son, my Chosen One.  Listen to him.”  And…and there’s silence.  It’s time to go to Jerusalem.  They kept this one to themselves.

This moment leaves us with having to balance the goodness of being with Jesus in his praying with the daunting task of actually listening to him and doing what he says.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that God is with us and experience the “good-ness” of his living and life-giving presence, the Holy Spirit, with us.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that Jesus is praying for us, that he is praying for things to work together for the good for us.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we meet Moses, so to speak, where we are awakened to our idolatry and discover “forgiveness”.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we, like Elijah, hear the still small voice of assurance, that God knows our faithfulness and has a plan for us.  This is especially “good” when we feel alone and even abandoned in our faithfulness.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we find the strength and direction to go on with Jesus’ ministry, his mission for us.

Being with Jesus in his praying is very good but…we still have to listen to him and do what he says.  Jesus tells us we have to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses and follow him.  He tells us we have to love and pray for our enemies.  He tells us we have to forgive rather than hold grudges.  He tells us we have to love one another as he has loved us…unselfishly, without condition…to name a few.  These are difficult things to do and not only to do but to have become who we are at the very root of who we are.  Impossible tasks if we were simply left to them, but here’s your word of grace for the day.  As prayer is our participation in the Trinity’s life of prayer, the more time we spend in prayer the more God’s nature just naturally rubs off on us and we become more able to listen to Jesus and do what he says.  Entering the cloud of Jesus praying is where and how we become more like him, where his “Me” shapes the “me” we each were made to be. Amen.

Living on the Level

 Luke 6:17-38

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I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything like that, but if I ever invite you over for dinner, please do not say to me, “What can I bring?”  But if you do, I will politely say, “Yourself”, which means don’t bring anything.  And then if you still show up with something in hand, well, of course I will politely accept it and act surprised and blessed and thankful and all that and say, “Oh, you didn’t have to.”   But, to be honest, there is a small part of me in there that gets a little bit offended and I will pass judgement on what I consider to be your inadequacy of character.  I will inwardly say to myself “You obsequious Roman”.  I’ll be petty like that unless of course, it’s something personal to you like beets you canned yourself or homemade maple syrup – something where you’re trying to share a bit of yourself.  I will graciously accept and cherish that.  But, this thing of never show up at somebody’s house empty-handed, I loathe that.  I really do.  At my house you don’t have to put on pretenses or worry that I might think you ungrateful for showing up empty-handed or that I’ll put a knife to your throat for eating too much.  Like I said, I don’t want to offend anybody here and please accept the facetious nature of my comments.  I’m just trying to be a bit humorous.  

Again, I don’t want to sound arrogant but coming to my house and eating my cooking is a unique experience that you’re not going to find anywhere else.  You never know, my cooking (if it doesn’t kill you you) might change your life.  If you come to my house to eat, it is my intent to pour on you grace and hospitality in the same way God pours out grace and hospitality on us – free and lavishly.  I don’t expect anything in return.  If I did, I would just charge you money up front.  The same is true if you happen to show up at my house invited around a meal time, I will cook for you and feed you expecting nothing in return. 

Now, I know you were all brought up that “don’t show up empty-handed” way.   There’s actually a name for it.  It’s the way of reciprocity.  The way of do unto others as they have done unto you.  If someone has treated you mean, you treat them mean in return. If your neighbour’s a jerk, be a jerk back.  If someone has been good to you, be good in return.  And so it is, if somebody invites you over for dinner, you bring something because that’s what respectable, well-mannered, brought-up-right people do.

This way of reciprocity is ancient and it is based in the belief that nothing is ever free in life.  Romans used to give gifts, lavish gifts at that, to people from whom they wanted something in return.  The way you got things done was to make people obligated to you, make people owe you one.  It worked that way in religion too.  If you wanted the favour of a god, wanted a god to do something for you, prayer wasn’t enough.  You had to bring something, something sacrificial.  

On the upside, you would have thought that this way of reciprocity would just set in motion a whole lot reciprocal kindness being done in society. That pay it forward thing.  But in reality, it just made it so that you always had to be suspicious of people’s motives.  It’s like if I, the minister, invited you for dinner just to deepen the friendship, you would have to be asking yourself, “Well, what’s he want from me?  What’s he going to rope me into?”  And so, to get yourself out of any obligation that I might beholden you with, you pick up a box of TimBits on the way over.  That way if I were to ask you to do something for the church, you’re no longer obligated.  We would both understand that the TimBits took away any obligation on your part.  You would no longer owe me one.  The TimBits bought your freedom.  That was everyday life as a petty Roman but people still live that way today.

And so that leads me back to Jesus and his Sermon on the Plain, or better yet, his Sermon on the Level.  If I had to come up with what his key point to his sermon is, I would start by noting that he’s got word play of a title here.  We could call it “Living on the Level”.  And then, I would have to say that his key point is that to live on the level is to live mercifully always showing unconditional love, forgiveness and generosity rather than living according to reciprocity.  The heart of this sermon is wrapped in Jesus’ statement that we are to be merciful as God is merciful.  Afterall, he is our Father and we are his beloved children.  Be merciful as God is merciful.  The word for merciful there isn’t the word we usually see in the Greek for mercy.  It should rather be translated as compassionate or sympathetic – to feel with somebody.  Be compassionate as God is compassionate.

It's time to pull out my trusty level from last week’s sermon.  Remember this from last week.  In Jesus’ Kingdom, which we have inherited and are to live according to in this world even if it means that what the world calls a blessing is a woe to us…in Jesus’ Kingdom the bubble on the level stays in the middle so that things are level meaning equal, fair, and just within the communities that bear his name and one day it will be the whole world.  Just like when you build a house, if the foundation isn’t level, if the bubble’s not in the middle, the house will lean and torque and eventually collapse in on itself.  So it is in life together as followers of Jesus.  In Jesus’ Kingdom the way things keep level is that the people who call him Lord, who follow his teachings, live according to love, forgiveness, and generosity – off the scale unconditional love, forgiveness, and generosity.  

And there’s a huge "rather than" implied here in Jesus’ sermon.  We live Jesus’ way "rather than" the way of reciprocity.  Rather than reciprocating hate for hate and love for love, we pour out compassion on everybody just as God does even on those who hate us and do us harm.  We pray for everyone, even our enemies.  We lend and give generously to everyone not just to those we think deserve it or we know will pay us back. We lend and give expecting nothing in return.  We even give to those who take from us.  We wish well to everyone, even those who wish us harm.  We do good to everyone, even those who do us harm and when we do good, we don’t expect people to do good to us in return.  We treat others the way we want to be treated. 

We love.  We forgive.  We give.  We do good.  We do so unconditionally and generously because that’s the way God is and we are God’s much beloved children.

We also don’t judge or condemn.  Elsewhere in the Bible it says we are to leave those tasks to God.  And, it may surprise us what ultimately happens when God judges and condemns.  You see, God’s graciousness is surprising to say the least.  Some examples from Luke’s Gospel, a prodigal son who has offended his father in every way is welcomed home with a feast but it’s the unforgiving brother who can’t bring himself to celebrate.  A tax collector who has grown rich off of overtaxing, Jesus calls to be one of his Twelve best friends.  Jesus routinely sits at table, fellowshipping over a meal with “sinners” and it’s an example of the way things will be when he returns to establish his reign.  Jesus was judged for doing such gracious things, pronounced cursed by God, condemned and hung on a cross by the religious authorities who assumed the right to judge and who expected God to operate according to the ways of reciprocity.  Moreover, when we judge and condemn others, what it almost always if not always amounts to is little more than our keeping a grudge.  Grudges become toxic to us over time.

We love.  We forgive.  We give.  We do good.  We do so unconditionally and generously because that’s the way God is and we are God’s much beloved children.

Finally, Jesus notes here in his sermon that the way we measure it out is the way it will be measured to us presumably by God.  He’s not saying what the TV preachers say when they dupe people into giving money to their false ministries so that God will return it to the giver many times over and their financial problems will be solved.  Rather, if we measure out vengeance instead of love, forgiveness, generosity, and doing good, we will not know God’s compassion nor know ourselves as God’s beloved children is what Jesus is saying.  If we measure out compassion scantily so will be our experience of God’s compassion. 

Rather than living according to the conventions of reciprocity, we love, forgive, give generously, and do good.  That is what it is to be merciful or compassionate as God is. So, since we are God’s beloved children: We love.  We forgive.  We give generously.  We do good.  Unconditionally and generously.  That’s living on the level.  Amen.

 

On the Level

 Luke 6:17-26

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When I was a little boy, one of the tools my dad had that just totally fascinated me was his level.  It was two feet long.  Smaller than the Fat Max 48”-er I got here.  The little bubble in the tube was what got my attention.  I just liked making it go back and forth and seeing if I could keep it between the lines.  It had bubble tubes in the middle and on both ends; triple the fun.  I know: simple mind, simple pleasures.  

At that age I didn’t understand what the bubble was actually for.  The concepts of level and true were beyond me.  I know that if you’re building a house, a floor, a wall, or a fence this is the tool that keeps things, well, level.  Things won’t be leaning or tilted, one side higher than the other.  If things are true, square, and level your house is less likely to fall down.  

From an engineering standpoint, if things are level, it means that the structural load-bearing forces that act on the building will be equally distributed.  Admittedly, I’m not an engineer and I’m probably just BS-ing you on this, but if things aren’t level, in time your structure, due to leaning, will begin to torque or twist and come on down.  Level is good.

This is true for society as well.  The philosophical term associated with the concept of level in a society would be equality which has a link to justice and fairness.  If equality is not practised, then there will wind up being problems in the areas of fairness and justice and in time a society will collapse under the weight societal forces such as the economy and politics that have become unjust and unfair.  People need to be on a level playing field so to speak for a society to work.  I was born a white male and that gave me advantages in our society.  Like marbles will roll in the direction a floor is leaning.  So also in a society that is not level, opportunities and resources will naturally roll towards those who have the advantages.  In our society there has been a lot done legislatively and so forth to make things more level, but we still have a way to go yet.

That in mind, let’s take a look at our passage here from Luke which is the beginning of what is traditionally called ‘The Sermon on the Plain”.  It has similarities to what in Matthew’s Gospel we call the Beatitudes (The Blessed Are’s) which serve as a preamble to The Sermon on the Mount.  But Luke’s version here is different.  Luke portrays things in a much more literal, straight-forward, dare I say, level way.  In Matthew it’s a very lofty, up on the mount sort of thing when Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit”.  But in Luke, it’s a well-grounded “Blessed are you who are poor”, meaning literally poor.  Jesus is speaking about the literal economic and social status of his disciples with the terms rich and poor rather than about their spiritual disposition.  

Well, back to the location of the Sermon.  Luke notes that Jesus delivered this sermon on a plain.  He came down to a level place, a plain.  And it is here on this level place that I suggest that Jesus gives his vision, his manifesto, for the way things will be societally in the Kingdom in which he rules.  Things will be level or rather made level.

This is a very important moment in Luke’s story of Jesus.  This is really the only sermon that Luke has Jesus preach.  It’s a central moment in the story line where Jesus is doing something that began with John the Baptist.  John the Baptist came on to the scene preaching a message first proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah.  It went: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”  And now, here on the level, the plain, we find Jesus teaching in a place where it seems the valleys have been filled and the mountains and hills are made low.  He’s on the Plain, the level place, and he is going to talk about the salvation of God, what it looks like.  If you have been listening to all the songs that have been sung in Luke’s Gospel so far – Mary’s Magnificat, The Song of Zechariah the Father of John the Baptist, and the by the old prophet Simeon – then you will have figured out that the salvation of God has something to do with a complete turning upside-down of things in the world with respect to status, power and wealth. And so, Jesus here in his Sermon on the Plain, his Sermon on the Level, he’s going to reveal how the playing field will be level in his kingdom.

So, Jesus is standing on a Plain, the level place.  He is surrounded by a crowd of his disciples and also by a multitude of people from all over who are not just Jews.  Luke says the people of the multitude are simply there to listen to Jesus teach or to be helped by him; healed of disease or freed from an unclean spirit.  They keep coming up and touching him and power is going out of him and people are being healed and the unclean spirits are leaving.  The Kingdom of God, the reigning of God, God putting things right is manifesting powerfully there.  

Please, you need to appreciate this moment.  It is a powerful, powerful, powerful moment in history.  I like to imagine it as being like a supernova of God’s power.  Jesus isn’t saying anything.  People are just coming up and touching him and being healed and freed.  People coming in despair and leaving full of joy.  The lame leaping, the mute speaking, the blind seeing.  People shouting joyfully, praising.  Imagine the shout of joy if in a moment this pandemic ended.  

Jesus finally begins to speak, but it’s almost clandestine.  Instead of addressing the multitude, he turns to the little crowd of disciples and speaks directly to them.  What he is about to say, he doesn’t say it to the world.  He says it to his disciples who are standing in the midst of the world.  He speaks first to those who are committed to following him.  So, apparently, among those who follow him things are to be different than the way things are out there in the world.  This is important to note, particularly to the church today in which there really isn’t a noticeable difference in the way we live in comparison to those outside the church.

Jesus begins to speak and speaks “blessings and woes” to his disciples.  These aren’t blessings and curses which means if you do this, God will bless you with wealth and health and peace and security.  But if you do that, God will damn you or put a plague on your house or send locusts or marauders or make you a cat owner.  These “blessing and woes” are statements of the way we are when the Kingdom of God is present in our lives in the world.  The term “blessed” means something like you will know a particular kind of joy from the presence of God in your lives particularly during difficult circumstances and this will be enviable to those around you.    

The ”Woe” part in Greek is “Ouai” (pronounced oo-eye”).  It’s that noise you make when you realize you’ve messed up royally.  You’ve gotten it all wrong.  These woes are like, “Ouai, you’ve missed the boat for empty rewards.”  The world’s values are not Kingdom of God values.  The world will call you blessed, blessed by God, if you are wealthy and able to do whatever brings yourself joy, able to eat your fill at every meal if you want, able to not worry but rather celebrate and laugh.  The world will call you blessed if you have never had to grieve, never had to lose anything or anyone.  It will call you blessed when you are well-liked and spoken well of by most people.  Jesus likens all that stuff the world values to false prophecy, to false comfort, to something that only leaves you hungering for more and in the end you actually do lose.  

Having it all doesn’t mean it came from God.  Having it all usually means things aren’t level.  Let me pull out the level again.  If the bubble is up, that means this side has got the bubble and the down side has nothing.  But, it’s just a bubble.  Why is it such a big deal to have the whole bubble?  Why can't we just have the bubble in the middle for everyone to share?

Back to the Sermon on the Plain, remember Jesus is saying this to his disciples, those desiring to follow him and live his way.  Remember he is saying this to them in the midst of a supernova of the power of God bursting forth healing and freeing of people who are, with respect to the level, on the down side.

Let’s go back to the blessed side of things, the side that according to the values of the world doesn’t appear to be blessed.  I mentioned a moment ago that the idea floating behind the term we translate here as “blessed” or some translations use “happy” is that of being in an enviable position that others will want to be; particularly that of having a God-given joy in the midst of pretty difficult circumstances.  Jesus wants his disciples to know that because of their association with him, their fidelity to him, they will not have it good according to what the world values.  

Those who follow Jesus will be poor, economically disadvantaged.  Yet, the Kingdom of God is theirs.  The supernova of Kingdom of God power will be manifesting in and through them.  They will be part of a close fellowship who share so that if one has much and another little, the one who has much shares so that all have enough. Wealth and the pursuit of wealth, in turn, will only be a distraction.  In the early church the rich sold fields to give to those who had need.  They virtually eliminated poverty in their midst. 

The followers of Jesus will indeed at times be literally hungry, not having enough to eat because of their association to Jesus, their faithfulness to him, but they will be filled – but with what?  Well, the presence of God experienced in the midst of the fulfilling fellowship of true friends, friends who are on the level, friends who will share their food. 

The followers of Jesus will know grief because they will have to leave family and friends behind who don’t understand their allegiance to Jesus, the supernova of the Kingdom of God, or his way of life that is contrary to the values of the world.  They will also lose each other due to persecution.  People will hate them, exclude them, insult them, defame them because of their association to Jesus.  But that’s simply the proof they belong to God.

Winding down, imagine being in the midst of this supernova of the Kingdom of God.  A multitude of people coming to Jesus to be healed and set free and then after touching him, they are healed and set free.  They are shouting for joy as they go away leaping because Jesus has put their world to right.  Then, in the midst of all that, Jesus tells his disciples that they will suffer on account of him but he tells them to rejoice and leap for joy for they are the enviable ones, they are the ones to whom belongs the Kingdom of God.

I read Luke’s account of Jesus’ Sermon in the Plain here.  I try as best as I can to imagine that supernova moment…just how “WOW!” that was and I just wish it would break forth in our midst.  I also imagine Jesus speaking to me, as one of his followers, these blessings and the “Ouai’s”.  I’ve had a taste of the blessing.  I’ve had a taste of the consequences that come with being a disciple of Jesus.  There is a cost to following him.  I’ve experienced the joy.  I’ve felt the presence of God.  I’ve experienced the fellowship that shares and supports.  I’ve felt the blessing.  But…those “Ouai’s”, they hit home.  They really hit home.  So much of my life is lived according to the values of the world.  I’ve got some levelling to do.  How about you?  Amen.

Life-Catching

 Luke 5:1-11

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Around Christmas time a friend of mine told me about a TV series available on the Internet called “The Chosen”.  It’s not the one you can binge on Netflix right now simply called “Chosen”.  “The Chosen” is a multi-season show on the life of Jesus put out free by Angel Studios.  You can just livestream it with your computer and smart TV. They’ve so far produced two of seven seasons.  I recommend it.  

But, enough of the commercial. In the series they present Peter as a bit troubled and debt-ridden.  He, like most fisherman back then, lived day to day dependent on the catch.  Two brothers running a fishing business was break-even at best and then you had to throw on top of that the Roman tax and the fact that the religious authorities wouldn’t allow you to fish on the Sabbath.  Many fishermen had taken to fishing during the night on the Sabbath so that they wouldn’t get caught.  

Well, Peter had financial problems that got him into trouble.  In order to make ends meet he occasionally took to gambling.  That didn’t go well so he eventually became a false-informant for the Romans to help catch people fishing on the Sabbath.  This was actually a scam.  He would go out with the Romans and direct them to places where he knew people had been fishing so that they just miss catching them in the act. Then, the next day he would tell the people he had saved them from being caught and ask for their catch or next time they wouldn’t be so fortunate.  The scam caught up with him when the Romans began to suspect what he was doing because they never seemed to catch anybody.  That’s when they gave him the “pay your debts or else” speech.  

This is the point in the series when we encounter our story in Luke.  Peter had been fishing all night desperately trying to get a catch to pay off his debt, but nothing. There’s a couple of minutes of film catching Peter’s very heart-breakingly disappointing prayer-filled night of fishing in which Peter let God have it for not being faithful to his people and him under this Roman oppression.  In the wee hours after Peter had finished his rant, Andrew, James and John, and their father Zebedee came to join him on his last night of freedom.  When morning came, they returned to shore to clean the nets.  They came ashore where Jesus was teaching a small group and he asked Peter to take him off shore a couple of feet so the people could hear better.  Peter did and sat and listened as Jesus taught about how the Kingdom of Heaven is like a net.  You cast it out and it gathers in. 

Peter was familiar with Jesus because Andrew had had a significant moment with Jesus.  So, it’s not like Jesus sprung one out-of-the-blue on him when after he finished teaching, he turned to Peter and said, “Peter, I have a gift for you. Put out into deep water and try again”.  Peter was reluctant.  “I don’t have a quarrel with you, Teacher, but we’ve been doing this all night…nothing.”  Jesus said, “I know” and gives Peter the “Aw, come on” look.  Peter says, “Alright.  At your word.”  

Exhausted and resigned to the fact that he was a done deal with the Romans and with his fellow fishermen for scamming them, Peter did as Jesus said.  The next thing you know he's got a catch bigger than he and Andrew could handle so they called in James and John and their father Zebedee who came alongside to help.  They could barely get the fish into the boats.  The nets were about to rip and the boats were about to sink.  Suddenly, Peter no longer has debt troubles and he’s financially set for quite some time.  Quite a gift Jesus had for him.  They came to shore and Peter had his “I’m not worthy” moment.  Then they left it behind for Zebedee to look after and began to follow Jesus.

To be a bit personal, as I watched this episode, when Peter said, “We’ve been doing this all night…nothing”, it hit me and I started to cry a bit.  I watched it again a couple days ago to make sure I had the story right and it got me again even knowing what was coming.  Why?  I’m a minister.  I know what it’s like to be faithful and to work, to pour yourself into what your doing, hoping and hoping and hoping for some sort of catch…but nothing.  That shaking your fist praying at God thing that Peter did while fishing in the dark hoping for a miracle; I know that too well…too well.  

Today, I’m in my mid-fifties and, to be honest, I’m not where I thought I would be at this stage in my life.  When I started out, I thought by now I’d likely be teaching somewhere.  I always felt my gift was feeding the people who feed the people.  But with the decline of the church, teaching positions have dried up.  I also thought that if I wasn’t teaching, I would then probably be the minister of a financially secure but generous, couple hundred-member church like we used to have back in the ‘80’s.  But those churches are few and far between today.  When I look back at what I’ve done, the way I tell my story is that God seems to call me to places nobody else will go to do what nobody else will do and something beautiful comes of it.

And then there’s that guy down in Chattanooga, TN whose been in the news the past couple of weeks.  He’s only forty-one years old and the head minister of a two site several thousand-member mega-church thing.  He’s rolling in the money because his weekly sermon which he gives after a 45-minute Christian rock praise concert, always seems to wind up being “tithe 10% to my church and God will fix your life and give you abundance”.  Nobody ever sees where the money is going.  He is certainly rolling in abundance himself.  He owns several houses in different States and some really nice cars.  He’s got the catch.  Two boats full of it, if that’s what you think the catch is.

But…well, he got caught at his house in his underwear with a staff member of one of the churches who is not his wife.  She was wearing only a towel.  They said they were making chili and it spilled all over them.  He’s done nothing but lie and delude people.  His scamming only makes life more difficult for me, for us, as people see what he’s done and throw the baby out with the bathwater.  That man needs help and healing that he can only find in the company of compassionate people and I hope God gives him that and in the midst of that fellowship I hope he finds his way to Jesus and forgiveness and wellness.

Well, it’s worth a moment’s thought on what exactly “the catch” is.  In our Western, and dare I say predominantly “American” understanding of the church, Jesus’ metaphor of “catching people” seems to mean having the personal charisma to get people to buy your product meaning get people to make a decision to dedicate themselves to supporting your religious organization with their finances and abilities.  In Western culture, an historically tried and true means of doing this is to play to personal guilt and shame.  It goes, “You’re a sinner and that has eternal consequences.  There’s forgiveness available here.  Buy in.”  In the wake of the self-help movement, there’s been a shift in the message to “You are broken.  There’s wholeness available here.  Buy in or at least buy my book.”   Now that we live in a consumeristic society where the majority of people live under that horrible institution of debt slavery, the message of “There’s abundance available here, if you buy in” is very effective.  Then, there’s the really sinister “people catchers” who prey on people who have significant to life-threatening health issues, saying, “Believe and you will be healed, but you have to show your belief by buying in.  What you’re not being healed?  You don’t believe enough.  Buy in some more.”  

This Western and predominantly American model of “catching people” just seems to be little more than a belief that life’s problems can be made to magically go away through faith.  This thing called faith seems to be little more than magical thinking with respect to God that that God promises to fix our lives and the fix can only be activated by a financial exchange offered to an individual with charisma who is making the promise that God will a fix to your life by giving to this ministry generously.  Then, the validity or success of these efforts to catch people is judged by the size of the catch, which is the number of people you can get in the boat and of course the loot. 

I’ve been using the terms “catch” and “catch people” because these are the terms Luke presents us with.  In Luke’s version of the call of the first disciples, Jesus does not tell Peter and the others “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people” as he does in Matthew and Mark.  Here, after a nothing short of a miracle “catch”, Peter comes and kneels before Jesus calling him Lord.  He says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a disrespectful man.”  The only person a Jew calls “Lord” is God.  Peter knows he is somehow in the presence of God.  He knows he has lived dishonorably and probably, like we all do, blamed God for it.  I used the word “disrespectful” here rather than “sinful”. “Sinful” is a word loaded with a lot of unhelpful, historical theological baggage from being used by coercive people in our culture to “catch people” by playing on our sense of guilt and shame.  There are better words to use.  Jesus looked past Peter’s confession and says, “Do not be afraid, from now on you will catch people.”  

What Jesus meant by “catch people”, in my humble opinion, is not what we’ve come to think it means in our Western predominantly American system of individualistic, self-help, big business institutional religion that we call the Christian Church.  In Greek there is a word for “the catch” which they brought in with their nets. There is a similar sounding word for the action of “catching” which means to take control of something.  Now get this, the word Jesus uses here is an interesting mix of the word for “life” stuck on to the front of the word for “to catch” – to “life-catch”.  I don’t think he’s meaning to live catch like snaring an animal to tame it or release it somewhere else.  I think he’s playing with the word the way the that the word “fishermen” gets played on in Matthew and Mark.  You were fisher-people and now you will fish for people. (Women go fishing too.)  I think Jesus is wanting this word to mean “to catch and bring to life” as Jesus had just done to Peter.  Usually when we “catch” something, the result is death.  Or, as in the days of the slave trade, “live-catching” is to take control of the life of another in a way that leads to that person’s eventual death due to being worked to death and tortured.  

But, the kind of “life-catching” that Jesus does is the opposite.  He catches us to bring us from death into life.  I just think there’s a word play going on here – to catch and bring to life.  Jesus brought Peter out of the deep water of his troubled life that he might truly live in fellowship with Jesus and his followers. 

Let me just put one more thought out there to you.  Jesus didn’t mean for Peter to “life-catch” people into an institution called the Church with buildings and priesthoods and programs.  We need to think about the work of fishing to understand what the church is to be.  If we think of fishing as just hauling the catch into the boat, then we miss the point and wind up with an institution called the church.  Taking a closer look at Luke’s account here, we see that fishing is done with partners.  When Peter fished alone, well, let’s just say his personal charisma didn’t bring any fish into the boat.  He had partners, his brother Andrew and James and John and Zebedee, and they did the work together.  It was a fellowship.  The Greek word there for “partners” is reflective of deep friendship – of true community which is indicated in the reading when James and John and Zebedee saw that Peter and Andrew were having trouble bringing in the catch and they came alongside to help.  

The church is not a boat for the haul.  The church is the fellowship of friends working together in Jesus’ work of “life-catching”, the work of bringing people to a personal encounter with Jesus that brings them to life.  The church is where friends in Christ come alongside each other and help each other.  It’s listening.  It’s unconditional love.  It can even be financial or whatever kind of support a person needs.  We can’t regard the boat as simply the place we haul the catch of fish into.  That Western predominantly American model of the church really seems to regard people as nothing more than fish for the catch.  The boat is simply space where people come out of the deep water into life in the open air, the open air where fellowship in Christ is the new way of life.  The net is just letting our fellowship, our friendship in Christ be open and available to others and actually including others as we go about this work of learning to love as Jesus has loved us each and amazed us with it. 

I said earlier that when I look back at what I’ve done in life so far it seems God calls me to places nobody else will go to do what nobody else will do and something beautiful comes of it. This loving fellowship thing is the something beautiful I’m talking about.  Hope-filled, loving fellowship that looks like Jesus is what I hope to leave behind me when God calls me to another lake.  Amen.