Epiphany 5C
In the name of the God of dreams,
and possibilities, and resurrection, and life.
Amen.
Michael and I have cable in the
house, but, beyond the news, and football, and sometimes the weather, we almost
never watch TV live. In fact, very
often, with some of television’s most iconic shows in recent years, we never
watched the first episode until after the last had already aired. So I never worry too much about being behind
the times with Game of Thrones or the Handmaid’s Tale or whatever else people
are talking about – because I figure we’ll catch up someday. Or, if we don’t, people will have stopped
talking about it, and it won’t be important anymore.
Here lately we’ve been
re-watching a sitcom that’s been off the air for a few years, “Parks &
Recreation”. It’s the heartwarming story
of Leslie Knope – a dreamy-eyed, idealistic government employee – the Deputy
Director of a small town’s Parks & Recreation Department, whose love for
government service (and the people she serves and the people with whom she
serves) guides her every moment. The
director of her department, Ron Swanson, is everything Leslie is not – a
cynical, reclusive, anti-government Libertarian whose sole purpose in
government service is to try to dismantle it from the inside.
But despite their differences,
Leslie and Ron become great friends.
Though they disagree with each other on just about everything, she
accepts him as a sort of mentor, and through the telling of her story, in their
one-on-one conversations, he becomes a sort of embodiment of her
conscience. And whenever she is at a
cross road, he is there as a guidepost, pointing her toward her truest self.
There’s a moment as the series
progresses, when Leslie’s world seems to be falling apart. She had run for City Council and been
elected, but before she could serve her full term, she was recalled. She returns to her old job at the Parks
Department and struggles to find her place in the office that had kept running
in her absence. She wants to put
everything back like it was before, but she can’t. Things kept moving forward, even while she
was briefly away.
Exasperated, she sits with Ron
and asks, “Does this department even still need me?” Matter-of-factly, he says, “It does
not.” He points out that she spent a
decade building an efficient, productive department, and now, that’s exactly
what it is. But more importantly, Ron
reminds Leslie of her deeper truth. He
says, “You won’t be here forever. We
both know this is just a weigh station for you, on the road to bigger and better
things.” In her fear of failure, she
just wanted to rebuild the world where she last felt secure, but her conscience
reminded her that, despite the setback, she wasn’t done yet. She had to keep dreaming bigger.
As Jesus met James, and John, and
Simon, he found them in a moment of loss.
They’d wasted a night fishing, with nothing to show for it. Their livelihood was imperiled. But Jesus pushes them out again, sends them
deeper, and the fish are so abundant that they nearly tear the nets. There’s more than they can handle. It nearly sinks the boat. Their shock at the abundance turns to horror
at their unworthiness. But Jesus pulls
them back into focus. “Don’t be afraid,”
he says. “From now on you will be
catching people.”
One of the most iconic moments of
our Diocesan Convention last week was when Bishop Hughes spoke of the financial
concerns of so many of our congregations, and the ways that we allow that to
limit our visions of the ministries to which we’ve been called. In a moment of unbridled poetry, she said,
“We dream down to meet our budgets.”
Jesus was telling James and John
and Simon to quit dreaming down. Don’t
follow the path of your failure. Don’t
believe the foolishness that you’re not good enough. The problem isn’t that you’re not good
enough, but that you’re so good – so valuable, so gifted, so important – that
you don’t realize what all you can
do. The fish are great. But you can do so much more.
The same is true for us. We are called to greatness – to the ministry
of Jesus Christ in the world around us.
It’s normal for us to stumble, everyone does it. It’s normal for us to get bogged down in the
day to day realities of life, and to forget the divine love of God that enfolds
us and supports us and empowers us to face the world. But the “bondage of our sins” that we prayed
about earlier today – that bondage is the stumbling, and the getting bogged
down. That bondage is the veil of
thinking that stumbling is all there is.
In Paul’s letter to the
Corinthians, he speaks of his own stumbling.
He was one who persecuted others.
He was one “untimely born” – he missed the first-hand revelation of
Jesus that those first apostles knew.
“But by the grace of God,” he says, “I
am what I am, and God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.”
Despite his stumbling, despite
the ways that he had fallen short, despite the ways that he was least likely to become an agent of
Christ for God in the world – despite all
of that, the grace of God helped him to see that more was possible. The grace of God helped him to dream bigger
than his experience should have suggested.
He didn’t dream down to his past, but up to his potential – a potential
made possible by grace.
We are the beneficiaries of that
same grace. And we are people of that
same potential. God is calling us. Just as surely as Jesus called the fishermen
to a truer version of themselves – Just as surely as Ron pointed Leslie to a
truer version of her self – Just as surely as Paul’s stumbling wasn’t enough to
keep God from calling him to a truer version of his own self – we, too, are
being called to follow Christ, to dream bigger, and to envision a world that is
blooming with Christ’s love. We are
being called to find our way in that world, and to lead others along the way.
There is no dream big enough to
encompass all that God has in store for us.
But together, our best dreams can bring us closer. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Comments