Jesus has been teaching his disciples about the fact that Jesus didn’t have a place to lay his head, and that the dead should bury the dead. From this brief paragraph, we learn that being a disciple of Jesus wasn’t easy. There’d be times of feeling nomadic, and times when God needed to be put ahead of familial obligations. Both of these run counter to our Western values and priorities. We’re trained to set down roots, to buy a house, to make a home. And we’re taught that family is of utmost importance.
As I was starting the discernment process to get ordained, I knew I was going to have a conflict between family priorities and God. My husband doesn’t regularly attend church – maybe once a year. And my kids had been attending church with me since they were baptized. When I was ordained, and had to work Sunday mornings, what would happen to the commitment I’d made to raise my kids in the Church? Would they stop attending? Did they need to show up as early as I did and stay as late? I was absolutely torn both because of the sense that I owed my presence to my kids, and because I’d made a covenant with God at their baptism about my responsibilities in raising them. It turns out, this is just one of the instances where my contrived conflict failed to materialize. It worked out just fine, in part because of the kids’ friends, my husband’s willingness to support me, and the time that passed before I was ordained and had to face these problems. Poof. Gone.
The struggle is real, especially when we’re torn between two things we think God is calling us to do. It is now, and it was for the disciples. I don’t have an answer for that, except to say that things tend to work out better when we don’t impose and imagine problems, but at the moment, in prayer, follow God’s call.
So after Jesus gives the disciples this sobering truth about the cost of discipleship, he and his disciples get in a boat to cross to the other side. He falls asleep, the storm arises, and they wake him, fearful of the storm. He asks, “Why are you afraid”? Um, because we followed you into this boat, despite the high costs you’ve outlined, and because we’re in a little boat, you’re the guy in charge, and you were sleeping. I’ve been in big boats during storms, and it’s frightening; you quickly get a sense of the power of the sea, the vastness of the sea, and the mystery of the sea. I can imagine that’s multiplied a hundred fold in a small boat.
That feels like life, sometimes, doesn’t it? Life comes crashing down, immense, powerful, mysterious. My reaction on a bad day is to presume all is lost, or that I’ll need to single-handedly pull things together. As it turns out, I don’t need to do it on my own. So on a mediocre day, I have the foresight to realize I’m not alone, and I might sound just like the disciples. Lord, save me! At least I turned to God on those days.
On really good days, however, I don’t feel tossed by the waves. I know that God’s got me. I stand there on the front of the boat like Kate Winslet in the Titanic, laughing at the spray.
This morning, I’m thinking about aiming for a mediocre response. As opposed to feeling self-reliant as I’m tossed and turned, I want to sound more like the disciples. I want to remember Jesus is in the boat, even if it seems he’s asleep. I want to cry out, ‘Lord save me’, more than I do. I don’t need to be entirely altruistic, only praying for others. I don’t need to be stupidly self-reliant. At least if I call out to Jesus at moments like that, what I’ll hear is, “why are you afraid?” I’ll be in dialogue with God, rather than a monologue with myself.
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