Other Seas

(Mark 8.27-29)

A reflection by Dave Shull

Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ

Sammamish, Washington

The Second Sunday after Epiphany – January 17, 2010

Jesus and his disciples headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As they walked, he asked, “Who do the people say I am?”

“Some say ‘John the Baptizer,”’ they said. “Others say ‘Elijah.’ Still others say ‘one of the prophets.’

He then asked, “And you – what are you saying about me? Who am I?”

Peter gave the answer: “You are the Christ, the Messiah” (The Message Remix © 2003 by Eugene Peterson).

When I think of Jesus asking his disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?”, I think of the movie “Telladaga Nights. ” And the prayer Ricky the race-car driver offers before the family dinner.

Ricky prays: "Dear Lord Baby Jesus … We thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell. I just want to take time to say thank you for my family .... Dear Lord Baby Jesus, we also thank you for my wife's father Chip. We hope that you can use your Baby Jesus powers to heal him and his horrible leg …. Dear Tiny Infant Jesus..."

His wife Carley breaks in, "Hey, um... you know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don't always have to call him baby. It's a bit odd and off puttin' to pray to a baby."

Ricky’s undaunted. "Well, look, I like the Christmas Jesus best when I'm sayin' grace ….

Ricky’s father in law screams, “He’s a man! He had a beard!” ….

Ricky insists, “Look, I like the baby version the best, do you hear me? ….

Ricky’s friend Cal now chimes in. “I like to picture Jesus in a Tuxedo T-shirt, 'cause it says, like, 'I want to be formal, but I'm here to party, too.' I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.”

Not to be outdone, Ricky and Carley’s son, Walker, joins the conversation: “I like to picture Jesus as a ninja, fighting off evil samurai.”

Friend Cal continues, “I like to think of Jesus with like giant eagles' wings and singin' lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like an Angel Band, and I'm in the front row ….

Then Ricky concludes, "Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce, Newborn Baby Jesus, don't even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent: we just thank you for all the races I've won …. Thank you, for all your power and your grace, Dear Baby God, Amen."

A couple of months ago, I shared a quote with you from a pastor of a huge church in Seattle, who said, “In [the book of] Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship …. I cannot worship a guy I can beat up” (Mark Driscoll, quoted in Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw, Jesus for President © 2008 by The Simple Way, p. 194).

“And you,” Jesus asks, “What are you saying about me? Who am I?”

It’s a question all Christians need to answer again and again through our lives. Jesus is the one Christians follow. And who we say Jesus is has a lot to do with how we live. What we live for. And what we dream about doing.

Today, Linda and I are going to share with you one way each of us answers Jesus’ question. We’re going to do that by talking a bit. And by singing a bit.

For me, a hymn that answers Jesus’ question, Who are you saying I am? is “You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore”. It is #173 in your hymnals. Please sing with me.

You have come down to the lakeshore seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy,

but only asking for me to follow.

Refrain:

O Jesus, you have looked into my eyes; kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat; now with you I will seek other seas.

You know full well my possessions. Neither treasure nor weapons for conquest,

just these my fishnets and will for working. (Refrain)

You need my hands, my exhaustion, working love for the rest of the weary –

a love that’s willing to go on loving. (Refrain)

You who have fished other waters; you, the longing of souls that are yearning;

as loving Friend, you have come to call me. (Refrain)

It’s in the refrain where I hear who I say Jesus is:

On the sand I have abandoned my small boat; now with you I will seek other seas.

All through the Gospels, Jesus tries to get people to leave their small boats behind. And step out with him to seek a different way to live. There were all kinds of people in Jesus’ day whom respectable people avoided – sick people, poor people, women, foreigners. If you wanted people to respect you, you avoided these people as well. But for some reason, those were exactly the kinds of people Jesus hung with. He talked to them. He healed them. He ate with them. He loved them. He treated them like they mattered. They were used to being alone. And ignored. And despised. They didn’t need very bit boats when they were alone, ignored, and despised.

But Jesus had shown them they were sacred. He’d opened them to larger lives, bolder dreams, and wider grace. These all take up far more room than their small boats can hold. Now that they have felt his love, their small boats can’t fit all the new possibilities and paths that lay before them So Jesus tells them: “Leave those small boats behind. Follow me. And we’ll seek other seas.”

For a while I’ve felt like Peter, Pedro, and my current living situation in our condo was like a small boat Jesus was calling me to abandon. As I’ve shared with you, I hear Jesus calling me to help create a place where Christians can live together. A place where we can share living space, meals, worship, money, cars … a place where we can share a vision of what it means to follow Jesus in an economically edgy area. So we can build friendships with people who live with addiction and mental illness, people who have spent time in prison and who have no place to call home … I dream of a group of Christian who live together, and who live with and around people who don’t often get invitations to dine and hang out with respectable people. But who have wisdom, faith, and life to share which respectable people like me need.

The biggest obstacle to moving ahead with this dream has been my certainty that this community needed to be somewhere other than Seattle. When Peter and I moved out here over 15 years ago, my Midwest soul couldn’t imagine making the upper-left-hand corner of the US my long-term home. So these are the things I knew needed to happen before Jesus and I could seek the other sea that is this residential Christian community:

1) Peter needed to stop enjoying his job at University Congregational United Church of Christ;

2) Then Peter and I needed to look for and find church jobs in some city closer to the middle of the country;

3) Then we needed to get settled and get to know some people.

4) Then we needed to start talking up this idea of a residential Christian community and hopefully find people who were interested so we could move ahead to try to create it.

Only after all that happened could I abandon the small boat that is my current living situation … and seek the larger life and bolder dream I know Jesus wants me to seek with him.

A couple months ago, I was telling a friend how stuck I felt because I couldn’t move ahead with this dream. She asked, “Why?” And I listed the four things that needed to happen before I could move ahead. When I got done, she just looked at me. And said, “You’re really making it hard for God to help you make this dream come true.” It was like Jesus was speaking through her. “I’m calling you to abandon your way-too-small boat, Dave,” Jesus was saying. “I’m telling you to drop it like a bad habit. But you’re setting up all these things that need to happen before you leave it behind.” Jesus was trying to get my attention.

Then, in December, Peter and I had dinner with a couple in their 20s we hadn’t seen in months. We talked about community. And I felt their passion. And I felt our shared energy. As Peter and I were biking home from that dinner, I asked myself, Why have I limited my imagination so much when it comes to where this community might be? Why have I always assumed it can’t be in Seattle?

Who do I say you are, Jesus? I say you’re the dream-planter. You plant dreams in us … and you will not leave us alone unless we’re doing whatever we need to to make that dream real. If we’re setting up obstacles to the dream you’ve planted in us, then you’re the frustration-builder. For you refuse to leave us alone. When our lives are too small, when our dreams are too safe, when we close ourselves off to the grace that reminds us we’re sacred … you keep calling us. Abandon that small boat. Because the life I have for you, the dreams I’ve planted in you, the grace I have to shower upon you will never fit in that boat. You and I – we’re going to seek other seas.

So this dream-planter, this frustration-builder, this companion-to-other-seas, has called me to bolder dreams. I’m learning how to dream that this community of Christians living together will take shape in Seattle. I don’t need to keep making it hard for God to help me make this dream come true. I believe Jesus plants dreams in us. And wants to hear how they form. And, if they’re his dream for us, he then wants to walk beside us to seek ways to make them real. Because that’s were the largest life and the widest grace is for us.

In Ted Kennedy’s autobiography, True Compass, he tells this story. It’s August 28, 1963. The day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington. Kennedy writes,

I [was in] my office [in the Capitol] watch[ing] the speeches on television. That iswhere I saw Dr. King rise to deliver his prepared remarks about Negro suffering andaspirations for freedom ….I listened to those remarks and watched as Dr. King finished and turned to sit down and then abruptly turned back to the crowd. Although I could not distinguish her, and her voice was not picked up by the microphones, the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had blurted out to Dr. King from behind him, ‘Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!’ And Martin Luther King did. In a decade in which cataclysmic events inspired lasting oratory, the Georgia-born minister spontaneously delivered the great aria of the civil rights movement (© 2008, Hatchette Book Company, p. 201).

Jesus, what I say about you is that you blurt out to each of us, usually from behind, “Tell me about your dream. Tell them about the dream. Then ditch that too-small boat that isn’t big enough to carry that dream. And walk with me. You and I, we’ll seek other seas.”