It is so good to be here! It has been a long journey I know, for you. And it has been a long journey for me and my family. I want to thank you for calling us here. I want to thank you for welcoming us so graciously.
"Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies. It remains but a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life, lose it; and those who lose their life, find it." (John 12:24-25)
Hyam Potak is an orthodox Jew, and a novelist. His books give an glimpse into the life of orthodox Judaism. Now, Hyman fell in love with the written word when he was in high school. After he saw how novels can transform people, he went home and announced to his parents his desire to be a writer. His Mother was not pleased. His mother said, "Hyam, you are going to be a brain surgeon. You can write your stories on the side." Well, Hyam stuck to his calling. When he went to college, he said that he was going to become a writer and that is what he majored in. But every time he went home on break, his Mother tried to change his mind. "Hyam, be a brain surgeon; you will earn a lot of money and you will keep people alive." No, Mom, I going to be a writer. Every break, the same thing. "Hyam, be a brain surgeon, you will make a lot of money and keep people alive." No, Mom, I will be a writer. Finally, his last trip home before graduation, at Spring break, his Mother tried one last time, "It's not too late; we'll pay for more college. You can be a brain surgeon and keep people alive." Hyam could take it no longer. Hyam replied, "Mom, I am not interested in keeping people alive; I want to teach them how to live."
When Jesus became his ministry in Galilee, he had a knack for keeping people alive. He had a knack for healing them of whatever it was that was bothering them. If you were blind, he could make you see. If you were lame, he could make you walk. If you had bunions, gone! It was that quick! So, as you might expect, he was very popular and very successful. But, he was also unhappy, because he didn't come to keep people alive. He wanted to teach them how to live. He didn't care so much about the length of one's life but rather the depth, the quality. He came to bring abundant life, deep life, rich life. So, he tried teaching. He tried telling people. He said, "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the Kingdom of Heaven is right here; start living it. Everything you need, for abundant, eternal, rich, glorious life is here, right now. You just have to wake up and start living it."
It didn't work. People didn't get the message. At some point, while Jesus went from town to town in Galilee. He realized he was going to have to do something different. Now this is where Jesus' thinking is really different from my thinking. Because people were not getting his message so He got he bright idea of going to Jerusalem and be killed. That will do it. Now, I don't quite understand the connection. But, apparently, Jesus did. He decided that the only way he was going to bring people to life, the only way he was going to help them to start living their life, was to go to Jerusalem and be crucified. Now it's that connection, that somehow, dying leads to life. Not just for Jesus, He wants all of us to do that. "If anyone wants to be my follower," he said, "take up their cross and follow me. Those who want to save their life will lose it. It is those who lose their life who find it".
Somehow, Jesus thinks that dying is the path to life. Now it's understanding that that's going to take the rest of my life. My entire spiritual journey as a Christian is going to be spent trying to figure out how the path to death is really the path to life. Each year at Lent, I pose this mystery again and each year, at Lent, I spend Lent sort of pondering it. Each year I come up with a different nuance of what it is to die so we live. This year, I've been thinking a lot about fear. I think that part of what Jesus is trying to teach us, so we can really live our lives, is to stop living in fear. I know I spend a lot of my life clinging to things I think I need to be safe; or clinging to things I think I need to be esteemed. I cling to people's affection. I like to be liked. I cling to things that make me feel safe and OK in the world. I believe the part of this mystery is that Jesus knows that if I cling too tightly, than I can fail to ever really live my life. To live, I have to let go. Sometimes letting go feels like death. I have to walk into a path that is really scarey. But walking into that path is the only way that I am really going to live. Life is meant, I believe, to be spent like the seed is spent in the soil, so it can bear much fruit. But if I am too afraid to take the risk of letting myself die in that soil, than I will never really live my life.
When people come to see me; when people come to see me as their Priest, more often than not, the reason they are coming to see me is because they are afraid. Most people, when we are talking, a few minutes into the conversation, realize they know what they need to do; what step they need to take in order to really live their life. But they were afraid to do it. For some people, it may be leaving an abusive relationship. For others, it may be taking a scary job. For others, it might just having the hard conversation with someone they love. The conversation they know they need to have, but it's scary. There is, this I believe, the sense that if we can walk with courage toward that which is scary, our calling, and step into it, that we will have deep and abundant life. It's just moving from fear to courage. That is what I think Jesus came to show us. When he went to the cross he endured everything we are afraid of. He was rejected by his friends, abandoned completely, he was impoverished. He was stripped naked. He was beaten and he died. Everything we are afraid of, he experienced. And he did it, not because he had a death wish, but he had a life wish. He wanted to show us, the way to really live, abundantly and richly, is to walk boldly and let go of all of those fears. What if I'm not successful, what if I'm not popular, what if I'm impoverished What if my friends don't like me. But to, rather, walk boldly and have the hard conversation.v
So when people come to see me and what they need the most is courage, I tell them a poem, and somehow it seems to work. So I'm going to tell you this poem. It's my favorite poem in the whole world. Unfortunately you'll going to hear it again, I mean not this Sunday, but it will come up again. It's a poem by a contemporary poet named David Whyte. Now, David Whyte is reflecting on a story in the Bible. In this story, the disciples are in a boat and the boat is being knocked by waves. They are asleep and wake up and see Jesus far across the water and Jesus walks toward them. Peter steps out the safety of the boat into the danger of the scary waves in order to take the hand of Jesus.
The title of the poem is "The True Love". For David Whyte the true love isn't necessarily a person. The true love is that which you are called to do or be. The poem is about the courage it takes to step out of the safety of your boat into the chaos and danger of the waves in order to live your life deeply. Here goes:
'There is faith in loving furiously the one who is rightfully yours. especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way.
"I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
"Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them.
"And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking and that calling, and that moment we have to say YES!, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love,
"So that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find everything holds us, and everything confirms our courage, and if you wanted to drown you could, but you don't.
"Because finally after all this struggle and all these years, you don't want to any more, you simply had enough of downing, and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness, however fluid and however dangerous, to take the one hand you know belongs in yours."
Stepping out of the boat is scary, But Jesus came not to give us a long life, but to teach us how to live and show us how to live boldly, richly, fully, courageously, so take up your cross and follow Jesus. "For those who seek to save their life will lose it, those who lose their life will find it"