"Brad, just remember it's very hard for us to believe anything that we don't understand. It's easier for things to get into my heart after they've passed through my head." (An eighty-eight-year-old gives Brad advice.)
This is an important day for St. Margaret's parish in Palm Desert. Along with being a lovely Sunday in the desert, the third Sunday after Epiphany, it is also the time for our Annual Parish meeting. We will gather together after the 10 a.m. service and do the business of the church. We will:
...Remember what has gone on all this past year.
...Look at the finances that keep us going and pass a budget for 1985.
...Elect five new Vestry members who will guide and govern the parish in our years ahead.
...Enjoy fellowship together with a lovely luncheon.
And as we prepare to do this necessary and indeed enjoyable business of the church, I think it is important for us to keep one eye on the other side of our church life--and remember why we are doing this and what the church is all about anyway. Let's take as our guide this morning's Gospel from Mark.
Passing along by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men." And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately He called them (follow me), and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed Him.
Like Andrew and Simon, James and John, what we are really all about is following Jesus. I think that leads us to a very obvious question. How do we do this, how do we follow Jesus in our lives? Along with doing the necessary business to keep this church going--how do we as individuals and as a parish keep an eye on following him?
Let me suggest to you a simple daily rule to follow. I call it the three H's: Head, Heart, Hands.
You follow Jesus with your Head, your Heart and with your Hands!
Head: Jesus probably spent more time teaching his disciples than anything else. The Gospels are filled with records of his teaching and if we are to follow him as his disciples, we too must learn and understand what He was all about.
During my seminary training, I visited one day with an 88-year-old woman in the Episcopal Retirement home in San Francisco. After a proper tea, she sat up very straight and said to me, "Brad, just you remember it's very hard for us to believe anything that we don't understand. It's easier for things to get into my heart after they have passed through my head." I've never forgotten that, because it reflected my own experience as well.
I am convinced of this simple religious premise in life: the more we know, the more we learn about our Christian faith, the deeper will be our commitment, the easier will be our ability to cope in this world.
If you want to follow Jesus you must know something about him and about the church that he left behind to carry on his work. We have available the Holy Scriptures in easy-to-read modern translations, we have Bible classes to help us understand what we read, we have the wonderful histories of Christianity as it has struggled and grown through the past two millennia.
All the resources you need to read and learn about your faith are available in the library. With the guidance of librarian Jean Smith you can begin a simple study program in some phase of Christianity, whether biblical, historical, faith development or prayer. Give your spiritual development one-half the time you give to your mental, emotional and physical development and you will be amazed at what will happen, and not just to you, but to the world around you.
As one theologian put it:
"The creator made us with two ends, one on which to sit, the other with which to think. Our success depends on which end we use. Heads we win, tails we lose."
Secondly, we follow Jesus with our Heart:
"When a young disciple approached Jesus one day and asked him, 'Lord, what must I do to follow you to eternal life?' Jesus answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10)
Very simply, this is the second way to follow Jesus--with your heart. Well, maybe it isn't all that simple because loving your neighbor is hard to get a handle on. It's a bit like the three blind Englishmen who ran across their first elephant in India. The first blind man ran into the elephant's leg and declared, "Mates, it appears to be a tree." The second somehow got hold of its tail and said, "No, no, it's a vine." The third blind man reached out and grasped hold of the elephant's trunk and shouted out, "You better be careful, mates, we've got a live snake here!"
When we try to get a hold on life in this complex world, we discover that it has many dimensions and we tend to grope around it much like the three blind men.
What I can tell you is that when the young disciple pushed Jesus a bit on this one and asked what it really meant to love your neighbor, Jesus responded by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. If you want to follow Jesus with your heart, go and do likewise, he said.
Along with loving your neighbor, Jesus said to love God. If you want to love God, lean on him...lean on him like:
The devoted missionary who went to the mission field in Africa where the custom was to sit on the floor, something she was not used to doing. One of her loving pupils saw what was needed. So she sat down behind her, and with her own back supported the body of her teacher, back to back. When the pupil realized that the teacher was not really leaning on her the girl whispered, "If you love me, lean hard!"
Following Jesus means leaning hard on God's wonderful support and love. I think that many of us are like that teacher and are a bit concerned about leaning on God too hard. But his call to you is to love him by leaning. Why? Simply because none of us can really go it alone through life. If you can't lean, if you don't know how to lean...pray for the ability to lean. Leaning is not just for extraordinary conditions but for everyday occasions. It is in its constancy that we learn to love God.
Through the constant rhythm of leaning on God we learn that he can hold up all the weight we apply and indeed will provide a little extra support when we get tired.
Follow Jesus with your head, follow him with your heart, and you will be moved to perform good deeds and follow Him with your Hands. Jesus sent His disciples into the world way before they were ready:
"The Lord appointed 70," Luke tells us, "and sent them out two by two into every town and place. Go your way, he said, the harvest is plentiful, the laborers few."
There is a time and a place when we must put our knowledge and love into action and we will never be ready.
The destiny of humanity is to become one with God, and just as we are not alone in our knowledge and love of Him, we are not alone in our deeds. Doing good deeds is an act which God and you have in common.
One of the great heritages of Old Testament theology is the recognition that our motives don't have to be pure and genuine to carry out a good deed. There is a power in the deed, they say, which purifies our motives and desires. Mankind is replete with selfish motives, but the deed and God are stronger than selfish motives.
Life is an endless opportunity to see God in the midst of ordinary human circumstances and to act for good. Nowhere is this principle better illustrated than in this story of the young bride from the East who, during the last war, followed her husband to an Army camp on the edge of the desert in California:
Living conditions were primitive at best, but she wanted to be with her husband. They only housing they could find was a rundown shack near an Indian village. The heat was unbearable in the daytime--115 degrees in the shade. The wind blew constantly, spreading dust and sand all over everything. The days were long and boring. Her only neighbors were the Indians, none of whom spoke English.
When her husband was ordered farther into the desert for two weeks of maneuvers, loneliness and the wretched living conditions got the best of her. She wrote to her mother that she was coming home, she just couldn't take it any more. In a short time she received a reply which included two lines:
Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw mud, the other saw the stars.
She read the lines over and over and began to feel ashamed of herself. And she didn't really want to leave her husband. All right, she'd look for the stars.
In the following days she set out to make friends with the Indians. She asked them to teach her weaving and pottery. At first they were distant, but as soon as they sensed her interest was genuine they returned her friendship. She became fascinated with their culture, history--everything about them. She began to study the desert as well and soon it, too, changed from a desolate, forbidding place to a marvelous thing of beauty.
She had her mother send her books. She studied the forms of the cacti, the yuccas and the Joshua trees. She collected sea shells that had been left there millions of years ago when the sand had been an ocean floor. Later, she became such an expert on the area that she wrote a book about it.
What had changed? Not the desert; not the Indians. Simply by choosing to act, her whole world changed. In her actions she found a reason to live well.
"Follow me," said Jesus. And remember the three H's--follow Him with
...your head and you will know Him
...your heart by loving your neighbor and leaning on Him
...your hands and act for Him. Amen.
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