In this heavenly kingdom

There's more than a few wonderful moments in the classic movie 'Field of Dreams,' based on the equally classic book 'Shoeless Joe' by W.P. Kinsella. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, you should. There’s a lot more to it, but, essentially, Ray, a corn farmer in Iowa, hears a voice tell him “if you build it he will come” and is inspired to plow under part of his field and put up a baseball diamond. Long dead players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, come to play there and Ray’s father, who he never really knew, is one of the players. One of my favourite moments is when Ray meets him.

His dad asks, "is this heaven?" and Ray answers "it's Iowa." His dad ponders that and says "I could have sworn it was heaven." "Is there a heaven?" Ray asks and his dad says, with certainty, "oh yeah, it's where dreams come true."  Ray looks around at his family, his home and the land that he loves, he looks at the baseball diamond that has brought him healing with this father and, finally, wholeness in his life, and he says "maybe this is heaven."

Yes, Ray, yes it is.

I think this is what Jesus means when he says “heaven is near.” I think it’s also what Jesus means when he prays “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” It’s an affirmation of what is, not something we’re asking for or that we hope will one day be. This kingdom isn't in the next life or the kingdom promised with Jesus' return or the New Jerusalem of Revelation. It's now.

I think God’s “will” isn’t about a divine plan or about power or authority. It’s not what God wants, but what God is: love. It’s grace and compassion, kindness, justice and peace. It’s serving our neighbours and caring for the earth. It’s a whole and true relationship with all creation. Sure, I know that sounds big, general and idealistic, but it’s all there in the stories of Jesus’ life and those who live as Jesus. It’s the kingdom Jesus lived. It’s the kingdom Jesus said was so near because it’s already here, if we can only grasp it, engage it and live into it as Jesus did.

 Perhaps one of the difficulties we have is the very language Jesus seems to use in those stories, speaking of the kingdom, of God's will. It’s language that sounds hierarchical and about the power of God over us, rather than with us and in us. But that’s where God is, among us in Jesus, within us and in all creation around us. What's needed is our participation, our engagement of it. We pray "on earth, as it is in heaven" as if God - and all the love and grace that is God - is something that belongs in that other heaven and is somehow foreign to earth. As if, at best, it needs to come in here from outside somewhere, somewhere on the other side.

I believe the heaven Jesus talks about “on earth” is what Ray sees. It’s not like his life has been easy, it hasn’t. In the story, he had no relationship with his father. He’s struggling with the farm. And farming’s hard work, so is a family and building a home. There’s no suggestion that it’s easy. But when he looks around at where he is, how his life is, I think he sees the heaven that Jesus is telling us is right here: a heaven he’s part of.

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us

Did you learn how to recite The Lord’s Prayer when you were little? Back in the day (maybe even still today, in some places), The Lord’s Prayer was the first thing you memorized in Sunday School. Or Confirmation class. Or even in school. It was pretty much everywhere.

I remember memorizing it in Sunday School, along with the classics: the Ten Commandments, The 23rd Psalm and The Beatitudes. There were probably others, but those I still remember. Mostly. I'm pretty sure I could recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory when I was five or six. With some interesting pronunciation, probably. Words like "hallowed," "forgive," "trespasses" and "temptation" are a challenge for a little person to get their tongue around. Seems ironic that those are also the words that adults often have trouble with understanding. The meaning, at least.

That’s the thing: the meaning. I remember memorizing the words long before I understood what they meant. It was even longer still before I started to wonder about them and how I might be living them.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. These days, one can’t always assume that people know it. That may not be such a bad thing: new things can be fresh. And there's newer translations that might be better to understand than the old thees, thous and thines.

That's the thing about The Lord's Prayer: the balance between what it means to us as a piece of our ritual heritage and what it has to say to us.

For many, the meaning of the prayer isn't just the words, but the connection to our sense of community. We all say it together. It's the one thing so many know together, that's common to different traditions and denominations. If we know it, that is. Imagine how you might feel if it’s assumed you know it from memory and you don’t. While everyone else is reciting it from memory, wouldn’t you feel left out? So much for belonging.

Note to self: if you’re going to use it, make sure that The Lord’s Prayer is always printed where everyone can see it.

I do love that community aspect of it. And to me, it's like a treasured hymn or song that we all know, but we might know slightly different words or variations of the tune, and that’s okay. We can still share in it all together and have our own distinctiveness.  You, instead of thy, or maybe even mother or parent, instead of father.

I think that's all good. I'm not convinced that The Lords' Prayer was meant to be a set prayer. It might have been an example of how to pray, rather than "The One Prayer." I also don’t think it was meant to be just a community prayer. I think it was meant to be a personal prayer, too. More importantly, I think it bridges both. Jesus, I always remind myself, wasn’t an either/or kind of guy, but an and/with one.

This prayer is personal, this prayer is communal, this prayer is shared.  In 'Speaking Christian,' the late theologian Marcus Borg wrote that "the Lord's Prayer is a summary of what mattered most to Jesus.  When we pray this prayer, we are praying for what he was passionate about … we are praying for what God is passionate about.  We are praying for God's dream for the world.  To pray this prayer is to be invited, enlisted, into participation in God's passion and the passion of Jesus." We are invited, enlisted, together.

Finding Fullness

There’s two big fish stories in the gospels.

Just before Jesus calls the fishermen to be his first disciples, Luke says that they hadn’t caught anything that day. Jesus sends them out to “the deep water” and they catch full nets of fish. Then Jesus tells them to come with him and they’ll fish for people together.

The other one’s in John and it’s right at the very end of the gospel. After the resurrection story and Jesus’ encounter with Thomas, the author of John seems to wrap things up with a closing paragraph that sounds very much like “The End.” Except it isn’t. There’s another chapter. In that chapter, the disciples have gone back to fishing. They’ve worked hard all night and not caught anything, when a figure appears on the shore and tells them to fish “from the other side of the boat.” They do and catch a ridiculous abundance of fish. One of them recognizes Jesus, they end up on the shore having a meal with Jesus, he talks to Peter and sends them on their way. And that’s the end. It’s as if the author of John thought they needed an epilogue, a little something more about what could happen next.

I like both these fish stories because I think that’s what they’re about: what happens next.

For Luke, what happens next is that four fishermen are inspired to leave their boats behind and follow Jesus. I wonder if the fish story here isn’t meant to foreshadow what was happening next: they go “deep” with Jesus and find abundant life. 

In John, the disciples have already experienced life with Jesus. They’ve also experienced the trauma of his arrest, the grief of his death and the wonder of the resurrection. And, after all that, Jesus tells them “as the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” It’s been a whirlwind. And then there’s that first ending.

But I wonder if the author of John then thought, “after all that, what would the disciples do? Would they go and do as Jesus said? Would they even know how? Or would they, after all that has happened, be looking for a little normalcy in their lives? Ordinary, frail human beings, perhaps they would want to find something familiar and comfortable, something they know with certainty. Like fishing. And so they do. And what does it bring? Nothing. They fish all night and catch nothing. Because you can’t go back.

Then, Jesus appears again and tells them to try something different, to turn another way, to some nothing new, something opposite what they know, opposite what’s familiar and comfortable. And then they find what they’re looking for: a way forward.

One tells a story of finding abundant life in following Jesus and learning how to love, to go deep into the self and the spirit, the other of finding abundant life in living that love into the world. Both offer life-giving experience that comes from being open to something different and willing to step fully into it. Into the deep or to the other side, wherever we go, Jesus goes with us and we go forward.

Stepping Out

Author Douglas Adams always had a unique and quirky way of looking at the world. His work is a source of many pop culture references, including this interesting observation about the ability of human beings to fly: "there is an art to flying, or rather a knack.  Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss. … Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties."

Sure, that probably sounds silly. At first. But think about it for a moment. If it were at all possible to throw yourself at the ground and miss, you would be airborne. It’s true. There’s a couple of things in the way, of course, like the ground itself. It’s big and hard to avoid. And then there’s gravity. But, if you could do it - miss the ground, I mean - you would indeed be flying. It’d be a miracle.

The story of Jesus walking on water is a similar kind of miracle. It defies the laws of physics and ought not to be possible. Not the way magicians or illusionists might do it, of course, I mean the real thing. It just isn’t scientifically possible. It must be a miracle, one that demonstrates Jesus’ power over nature, the power of God. The disciples knew it: “and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “truly you are the Son of God” (Matt. 14:33). And that’s how we might see the story, too, as a miracle of Jesus. The only one to be able to walk on water.

Except he isn’t. Not, at least, according to Matthew.

While the story appears in Luke and John as well, Matthew adds a twist. The story’s a simple enough miracle. The disciples have gone ahead on the lake in a boat while Jesus takes some personal time. A storm comes up and Jesus sees they’re in trouble so he walks out on the water to save them. 

But Matthew adds that, as Jesus approached them, they didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Peter, realizing it’s Jesus says “if it’s really you, tell me to walk on the water with you.” Jesus says come and join me and Peter steps out of the boat. And walks on the water. Peter is walking on the water, too. At first. But then Peter sees the wind and the sea and the storm and he’s afraid and then he begins to sink. He calls out to Jesus to save him, Jesus does and then - only then - Jesus says “you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matt. 14: 31).

Yes, it could be a miracle story displaying Jesus’ divine power of nature. But what if Matthew thought it was something more, something about us? What if Matthew told it as a myth story, one that, like all myths, has a fundamental truth at its core, even if the narrative itself might not have really happened?

What if Jesus comment about faith and doubt wasn’t a criticism or a disappointment, but a compliment and an encouragement? What if Jesus meant “look, Peter, see what you could do with even a little faith? It was only when you began to doubt yourself that you began to sink.” What if Jesus called Peter out of the boat because he knew Peter wasn’t in any danger? What if he knew Peter could do it?

What if the core truth of this story isn’t the miracle of Jesus’ uniqueness, but the miracle of Jesus showing us, once again, what we are capable of: that we too are both human and divine, and we are capable of everything Jesus shows us. The divinity and the humanity, the love and the grace, the justice and the compassion, all these are within us, too. What keeps us from being just like Jesus is our fear.

A Moment on a Journey

There’s a familiar story told in three of the four gospels about Jesus and a storm at sea. Mark tells it like this. It’s the end of a long day. Jesus wants to cross to the other side of the lake so says to the disciples, let’s go. The head out onto the lake and Jesus falls asleep in the back of the boat. A fierce storm comes up and the boat and its occupants are overwhelmed. They wake up Jesus, feeling like the end is near, and Jesus gets up, commands the storm to cease and it does. He asks them “why are you afraid? Don’t you have any faith?” They’re amazed and wonder who this could be, that nature obeys him.

I can recall many, many sermons and bible studies that suggest two approaches to this story. 

The first is that it’s simply a miracle story that displays the power of God present in Jesus. The story is a real narrative in which Jesus demonstrates his power, even over nature. The answer to the question “who is this?” is clear: Jesus is divine and the power of God is in him, the same power that was present in stories of Hebrew scripture, even back to the very beginning. The spirit of God moved over the waters in the creation story.

I’d be happier if it was less about Jesus power over nature and more about his relationship with nature, but I can see how meaningful this is as a story of the miracle tradition. It demonstrates Jesus divine power saving us when we are in need. It’s one interpretation. 

Another is that the story’s a parable. Whether it really happened this way or not is less important than the metaphor that in the storms of life, we turn to Jesus who is there for us. In those moments in our lives when we are most in need, Jesus is there. It may seem like we are adrift, but Jesus is there. If only we will reach out to him, we will be saved.

A meaningful interpretation, again emphasizing Jesus’ power to save us from the events in our lives that bring fear and trouble. It again offers rescue, this time from the storms that can come up in our daily lives. It’s one interpretation.

Both those understandings of the story emphasize our calling out to Jesus in the moment, the moment of fear when we should have faith. It would be a good time to remember how often Jesus said “don’t be afraid.” And that he meant, it’s okay to be scared, just remember that you’re not alone. God is with you. But what if we looked at the bigger picture, including asking how we got to this moment in the first place.

Jesus asks the disciples to come with him in the boat. Experienced fishermen agreed to get in a boat at night after a long day. No one wondered if there might be a storm. No one suggested waiting until morning. The same people who left their boats to follow Jesus, now follow him back into a boat when they might well have paused and asked questions. But they didn’t. They trusted and got in and off they went. They took the first step - again - and began a journey with Jesus, trusting in his presence.

Jesus’ eagerness to get to “the other side” might also be about the hope that Jesus offers as we journey. We might not know what’s ahead, but we step out with trust and hope.

And God goes with us, together. The storm is just a moment in a larger journey. What if it wasn’t the storm that was stilled, but our fear so that we may engage the storm and make our way through it? What if the questions about fear and faith were simply a reminder that we are journeying together and that, whatever storms or brief squalls or rain or sun or calm seas, we are not alone, even if it seems someone’s asleep at the wheel? Or rudder? What if the wonder at Jesus was the beginning of getting to know him? What if the question here isn’t about faith in what God will do to save us, but rather what we will do together, with God in our lives?

Just as we are

When we read the story of Jesus calling the first disciples to follow him, I think we sometimes have this idea that they simply dropped everything and went, without a second thought. It’s Jesus, after all.

But each of the gospels has its own account of what happened. We might want to condense the story into a simple run-on sentence “Jesus went to the lakeshore and told some fishermen to come and follow him and they will fish for people and they dropped everything and went.” But it isn’t that simple.

First of all, John’s story is more complicated and doesn’t involve fish at all, and, second, it’s just not that simple. Luke, in particular, makes that clear. In fact, I don’t think Luke’s story is really about Jesus. It’s about Simon.

In Luke’s story, Jesus has been hanging around for a bit. In fact, in the previous chapter, he already knows Simon and has been staying at his house. He’s even helped Simon’s mother, who was ill. Then, he’s doing some teaching by the lake and he sees that Simon, a fisherman, hasn’t caught anything even though he’s been out all night. Jesus tells him to go out again, into deep water, and this time there are so many fish that he has to get help. Amazed and overwhelmed, Simon tells Jesus to go away. “I’m a sinful man,” he says. But Jesus says “come with me.”

It might seem like all it takes is faith in Jesus to drop everything and go, but I wonder if Luke isn’t reminding us that it takes something else, too: faith in yourself. You have to participate.

To me, it seems like Simon might feel unworthy of Jesus. He’s been getting to know him for a couple of days, he’s seen him work, heard him speak. Luke says everyone around there was pretty impressed with Jesus, I can’t imagine Simon wasn’t, too. It also seems to me that he might be feeling a little embarrassed that he, a professional fisherman, hadn’t caught anything and suddenly, with Jesus’ advice, has caught enough to feed the village. I can see how Simon might have been feeling pretty low.

So I wonder if Jesus said “I believe in you, Simon. You are worthy just as you are. Come with me and see what else you can do.”

Jesus had faith in Simon because Jesus knows what many of us so often seem to forget: we are enough, just as we are. Enough to go forward, enough to try new things, enough to dream and live into those dreams, enough to be fully and wholly who we are.

Simon was certainly not what he - and others - would think is perfect, he’ll prove that repeatedly to Jesus in the days ahead, but he’s the perfect one and only Simon. And he’ll be exactly that. So can we.

Faith in God is just one piece. To live and love like Jesus, we need to believe in ourselves, that we are enough, just as we are, to be the best version of ourselves. And that can change the world.

They that go down to the sea in ships (Psalm 107:23)

Three of the four gospels tell a similar story of how Jesus called his first disciples. They were fisherman, Jesus saw them on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he told them to follow him and, together, they’ll fish for people.

Each telling of the story has its own uniqueness, but Luke’s version is quite a bit more elaborate. Luke tells that Jesus, with a large crowd wanting to hear him, sees that the fishermen are done for the day so he asks to borrow one of their boats. They put out a bit from shore and he teaches the crowd from there. When he’s done, he tells Simon to go out one more time to the deeper water and they find a huge catch of fish. Others come to help and, when they get to shore, Jesus says “don’t be afraid, from now on we’re going to catch people.”

That’s the obvious takeaway here: Jesus calls the first disciples. It’s literally the heading in most translations. I’ll get there next week, but first, I’d like to take a moment and wonder about how this story gets started. Jesus teaches from a boat.

Jesus teaches - and preaches, heals, ministers and socializes - in a lot of places. That he chooses the work vehicle of the very people who will be the first ones invited to follow him resonates with me. I wonder about a few things that prompt me to ask questions.

I wonder, for example, what Jesus was teaching here. “The word of God,” Luke says. Yes, but how did he communicate that? Jesus seems to be able to communicate with people wherever they are. Did he tell some fishing parables? Was there, perhaps, a version of the “mustard seed” story that used a minnow instead or something about the abundance of love that comes with going deeper that segued into that demonstration with Simon?

I wonder about the boat itself. There’s nothing to suggest Jesus knew anything about fish or boats or the sea. And yet, he seems to fearlessly step out into one and speak to people on the shore from it. Was he hoping Simon and the others would see that he wasn’t afraid to step into their lives so that they might not be afraid to join his?

And, again with the boat, I wonder that Jesus sat and taught in a vessel that’s meant to be out on the open water. I presume it was kept stationary so people weren’t running up and down the shore. But then, think about it: he gathers his first “ship mates,” steps off the boat on to dry land, and “sets sail” in his ministry. That’s one powerful boating experience.

Here, at the beginning of a new season, those couple of verses remind me to reflect on some important aspects of ministry. No, more than ministry: how we live our lives.

How are we communicating with each other? Are we finding common ground, respecting each other and building relationships? Are we remembering that, when Jesus says “don’t be afraid” he means “it’s okay to be scared - you’re not alone. I’m here.”

And what kind of boat are we building anyway? The church isn’t meant to be anchored in our buildings, it’s meant to set sail into our communities and into our lives. What Jesus taught didn’t stay in one place, it was blown by the wind and carried by the water out into the world. From the depths of all our hearts, there’s an abundance of love to be carried into our lives and into all the lives we touch, looking for a place to land.