Sixth Easter, 2009

May 17, 2009 Sixth Sunday of Easter (RCL, B) John 15: 9-17

In the fifth chapter of St. Luke Jesus is in a boat preaching to a congregation of local people gathered by the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and when he is finished he turns to Peter and tells him that it’s time for them all to quit talking and to get back to their work as fishermen. He gives a command that has always been to me especially evocative, resonant with multiple layers of meaning. He says to them, “Put out into deep water.”

“Put out into deep water.” I guess that’s maybe where you catch the big fish. (Like the famous story about the bank robber Willy Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “that’s where they keep the money.”)

It’s easier to fish near the shore, where it’s shallow, where maybe you can see better what you’re doing. Where it’s safer. Where you have less at risk if things go wrong. But if you want to catch the big fish, you have to go where they are. “Put out into deep water.”

The point probably has application in any number of areas of our lives, but this morning and as we move on toward the end of this Easter season it especially comes home as we would hear the word from Jesus himself and think about it most of all at the most foundational level--as I work just as we all do with the essential questions of life: what it’s all about, whom it’s for, where it’s headed. Trying to sort out who this Jesus is to me, how he is to be the way to the Father, what that could possibly mean.

It's just plain easier to stay in the shallow end of the pool. To slide along with goals based on numbers in a bank account, status at work, popularity. Easier to go with the flow. Maybe to play house, to play church. To go through the motions, or to get swept along with politics or all kinds of well-intentioned busyness. People are good at playing games. It may not be all that satisfying in the end, really and truly, but at least it’s pretty safe.

“Put out into deep water.” It’s actually the way I feel whenever I get going far into the John Gospel, as we are this morning. These deceptively simply poetic words swing open—really more like, fall open, like trap doors—and suddenly I’m out beyond sight of shore. Swept away. Just these words and phrases, that we might open our ears for them: abide; love; joy—that your joy may be complete; greater love; I have called you friends; I chose you; bear fruit; fruit that will last; love one another.

Any one of them—just to close my eyes, a meditation of lectio divina, sacred reading, to breathe in, to allow these words to rest in my thoughts, my imagination, my memory.

The story of Jesus, the Cross, the Empty Tomb. The person I see when I look in the mirror in the morning. Who I am as he sees me and knows me, completely; who I am as I know myself, partially, in fragments of understanding; who I am in relationship to others, to my family, my friends, my work, my live. Just take one of these words and hold it for a while. Breathe it in and out slowly. Let it be a candle to cast a new light. Abide in my love. So that my joy may be in you. You are my friends. I chose you. To bear fruit, fruit that will last.

By the old calendar this the last Sunday in the 40 Days of Easter, Ascension this coming Thursday, and then a bit more than a week waiting on the Spirit, until Whitsunday. Time marches on. The invitation before us as we come to meet him at the altar, take him in our hands as the Bread of Life, drink from the Cup of Heaven, that he might abide in us, as we in him--that we would allow this Easter to leave the calendar and to enter our lives. Our minds and hearts.

There is this wonderful line from the Gerard Manly Hopkins poem Wreck of the Deutchland, to get right to the heart of the matter: Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east . . . .

One of the great things about the fluidity of the English language, to make a noun a verb, which is like a resuscitation. The object becomes action, from being to doing. Change. Transformation. Bringing to life. “Let him easter in us.”

So all poetry this morning. Needing some time and space to digest. Grace and peace. That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. Jesus, who calls us, who feeds us, who blesses us this morning with the gift of himself, his friends.

Bruce Robison