Share

Subscribe now

Get Away From Me, Jesus!

Luke 5:1-11

How many of you are familiar with Street Magician David Blaine?

David Blaine is a master illusionist who performs all kinds of sleight of hand before crowds of onlookers in public places, and many of his illusions are so convincing that they have actually frightened people, leaving some convinced that Mr. Blaine must be possessed of some kind of supernatural power.

Just for the record, he’s not; he’s a highly skilled illusionist with a master intuition for what will leave people in stunned amazement.

A few years back, I saw a video of an interaction between David Blaine and the actor Harrison Ford.

In this video, David Blaine is performing his illusions in Harrison Ford’s home before a small audience of family and friends. The “big” trick involves making a playing card disappear from the deck. After the card has vanished, Blaine asks Ford for an orange from his fruit bowl, and cuts open the orange, revealing the missing 9 of Hearts, somehow rolled up and stuck inside the fruit.

As the crowd gasps in astonishment, the normally unflappable Harrison Ford is overcome, saying to David Blaine, dead serious: “Get out of my house!”

(Full disclosure: There is some profanity involved, so be careful with this video.)

If you have spent much of your life attending church services or Sunday School, today’s Gospel reading can seem like many stories you have heard before, tales from another time and place, one of a handful of stories of Jesus involving boats and fish and a miracle.

While it’s easy for some of these stories to run together in our minds, there is something about this particular story that stands out:

The reaction of Peter to this gigantic, miraculous catch of fish: “Go away from me, Lord! For I am a sinful man!”

Have you ever heard someone react to Jesus the way Peter does here?

The way the people reacted to Jesus casting the legion of demons into the herd of swine?

The way some followers left him when he talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood?

“Get away from me, Lord!”

“Get out of my house!”

We don’t often think much about the people who did not embrace the presence of Jesus, outside of the religious leaders who plotted against him. Besides those religious leaders, there were many average people, just like us, who met Jesus at some crossroads in their lives, and decided they couldn’t bear his presence because he upset what was normal to them, and this was scarier than whatever had scared them before.

Why do you think it is that we don’t seem to ever react to Jesus this way?

Why don’t we ever tell Jesus to go away?

We call out to Jesus all the time in many ways, asking him to take the wheel when we feel overwhelmed, and cheesily thanking him for small favorable outcomes:

*Your direct deposit hits just in time to cover the auto debit coming out;

*There is an open parking space right where you need one;

*The field goal is....good!

*Comedian Jim Gaffigan goes so far as to attribute the “bonus French Fry” in the bottom of your McDonald’s bag to the direct intervention of Jesus: “Give him an extra fry!”

Hearing us talk, it seems very much like we always want to have Jesus around, but have you ever actually heard someone plead with Jesus to go away?

The closest thing I can remember to this was a statement a middle school student made to me years ago, as she told me the story of nearly getting into a fight with a classmate. This student had shown just enough self-control to keep the confrontation from turning physical, and later told me, “Mr. Dominguez, I almost told Jesus to stay home today, but I went to Bible study last night...”

In our culture today, we don’t typically tell Jesus to go away.

Now, I think we are pretty skillful at ghosting Jesus when we want to be left alone, but even when we hope he isn’t looking, we know we want him to at least stay nearby for when we need to call him again.

Today’s Gospel story, along with the question of why, in our culture, we don’t ever seem to ask Jesus to go away, brings up an important opportunity to ask ourselves just what it is we really want from Jesus.

What is it we want from God in our lives?

Setting aside for the moment people who are genuinely in desperate situations, let’s focus instead on the lives of most of us today.

With some exceptions, of course, most of us who will hear this message today are, for the most part, keeping our heads above water in the richest, most fast-paced, and most demanding society the world has ever known.

We certainly experience stress, we definitely have worries and fears, but looking at our lives, in our most honest moments, what is it we are usually asking God for?

I would offer that most of us, most of the time, without any sinful intention, desire to have our current way of life, the system we know in the society where we feel at home, just with the rough edges sanded off.

We want better health, better money, better relationships, reduced stress, improved leverage, better protections from harm, better security for us and our loved ones.

Like a good neighbor, Jesus is there.

And even if none of this is provided by Jesus during our walk here on earth, we can still accept that because, after all, it’s all about heaven, right?

When we’re honest about what we often want from God, our minds may be drawn back to the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, in which God commands Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a human sacrifice, and then intervenes at the last moment to stop this killing.

In this disturbing story, God reveals to Abraham, and to us, that God does not really work in the way that people of that time thought God worked.

God is not an ancient-world vending machine; people put in their sacrifices, they get back supernatural blessings like rain, fertility, or victory over enemies.

But neither is God a vending machine today; we put in our worship, we get back some spiritualized version of the American Dream.

And just as God does in Genesis 22, Jesus also reveals that he does not work in the way we so often assume he does.

The Hebrew writer tells us that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and I believe the greatest lesson we can take from today’s Gospel message is to be reminded that the presence of Jesus Christ is something to take seriously.

Perhaps the greatest heresy of our time is the tendency to view Jesus as simply an insurance provider for eternity, or a bus driver to heaven, or a provider of small favors, or a mascot to be tamed and trotted out to validate our chosen causes, or even to view him as a king who rules, of course with us and our people as his favorite subjects.

Of course, Jesus does ensure our eternal life, but I would offer to you today that this is the easy part of what he does. The uncomfortable truth is that Jesus is a change agent who leaves no value system unaltered, no intellect unchallenged, no heart untouched, and no selfish priority unbroken.

He does far more than pick up the tab for our sin and ferry us to the pearly gate.

He changes us, he changes our view of others and the world around us, and he makes it impossible for us to continue living as we have lived before his arrival.

The demons knew this, and cried out to him, begging to be sent away from his presence.

The rich young ruler knew this, and walked away from him grieving, unwilling to risk losing the security of his money.

The troubled audience members suspected this when he made such strange and unsettling statements about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

The Gerasene townspeople sensed this when they saw their demon-possessed neighbor in his right mind again, deciding they were even more frightened of the power to cast out the demon than they had been of the demon itself.

And our friend Peter grasped this the instant his fishing net came up out of the sea.

Can you imagine it?

Peter is no amateur; he is a professional, commercial fisherman, who makes a living doing this, who knows what he’s doing. He is exhausted from fruitless effort, trying all night to catch fish with no luck, and then, right where Peter had struck out, Jesus brings forth a miraculous catch that leaves Peter scrambling, barely able to even contain it all.

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that it is a risky thing to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Once he comes aboard, our vessel and our course are never the same.

We want wealth?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, bursting at the seams with such a spirit of generosity that our greed is crushed by it.

We want power?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, overflowing with such a sense of empathy for others that our ambition is overwhelmed by it.

We want certainty?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, overflowing with such an embrace of mystery that our outlook becomes much more gray than black & white.

We want superiority?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, overflowing with such a respect for others that there is no room for us to be superior.

We want revenge?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, bursting with such a peace that we go beyond letting bygones be bygones.

We want success?

With Jesus on the boat, we’re just as likely to pull our net back up out of the sea, overflowing with such a concern for the well-being of others, that our own desire for success takes a back seat.

We want religious purity, like Saul in Acts prior to the Damascus Road? After being stopped in our tracks by Jesus, we’re going to be changed, just as Saul the prideful persecutor evolved into Paul the preacher of the Gospel with nothing to claim in this world.

Back to today’s Gospel: Isn’t it interesting that Peter, as far as we can tell, makes no move to capitalize on what seems like a pretty significant windfall with this overwhelming catch of fish? There is no scramble to rush all this fish to the market and at least make some money off this miracle, maybe invest in another boat or start a fishing franchise. I’m not sure whether Peter’s local market could have even absorbed such a haul of fresh fish anyway, but it’s interesting that there doesn’t even seem to be any consideration of this. The scene goes straight from the miraculous haul of fish, to Peter’s call to discipleship and leaving his career behind.

Everything is changed in an instant.

Whatever it is we want from God, if Jesus comes aboard, what we’re likely to end up with is a love so expansive it strains our capacity to even understand it, let alone hold it, a love that will not leave us the same as we are now, a love that will not allow us to operate as we always have, a love that will change deeply how we view every other person in the world.

It can honestly be a scary thing.

Sometimes scarier than whatever demons we’re dealing with now.

If we think about the change that Jesus is likely to bring when he comes through the door, we might not toss his name around so lightly, and we might even be inclined to tell him, “Get out of my house!”

But the Gospel is good news, not scary news, and today’s story does not end with a terrified fisherman on his knees before a power he cannot comprehend.

Peter’s plea for Jesus to get away from him is not met with offense or with force, but instead with reassurance.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

Jesus says to us all, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk. Come out of the boat and walk to me on the waves. Son, your sins are forgiven you. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Of course I’m too much for you, but I’ve got you, oh you of little faith. You don’t have to be big enough to hold what I bring. My grace is sufficient for you. And what’s more, you have a role to play in my mission of love. Love one another as I have loved you.”

Amen.

Preparing for Change

When I was 9 years old, I experienced what may have been my first serious disappointment in life:

One of my heroes, LA Dodgers’ First Baseman Steve Garvey, my first favorite Dodger, announced his decision to leave the Dodgers, going just a couple hours down the 5 to sign a free agent contract with our divisional rival San Diego Padres.

Crushing news to this little LA kid, who had just the year before celebrated the Dodgers’ 1981 World Series victory. I was too young to have seen the beginning of the legendary Dodgers’ infield of the 1970’s of Garvey, Lopes, Russell, and Cey, but I knew enough to know that this change was serious, that it was the end of an era, that there was no turning back.

For many years, I kept among my treasures the full-page ad that Steve Garvey took out in the Los Angeles Times, announcing his departure and thanking the Dodger faithful for their love and support over the course of his career.

One of my most painful regrets, to this very day, is how I handled this transition as it unfolded: Turning harshly against my former hero, booing Garvey in his Padres brown & gold uniform, and, in the ultimate insult, rooting for the Detroit Tigers to beat Garvey’s Padres in the 1984 World Series.

I suppose I wasn’t in a place yet where I was prepared for transitions that might be uncomfortable for me. I suppose I really wanted things to stay as they were. Steve Garvey was my first favorite Dodger, and even though he surely had his reasons for becoming a Padre, for closing out that chapter of his career and starting a new one, I suppose I just wanted him to stay a Dodger.

Sometimes a person knows it’s time for change, whether or not others understand.

*****

I love today’s Gospel reading, but in a way, isn’t it odd that we read Jesus’ warning about publicly flaunting our faith just to be noticed by our neighbors, right on the day when we are all receiving a visible mark on our foreheads before we go back out into the public eye?

I love today’s Old Testament reading from Joel, which comes at such a perfect moment when most of us, I daresay all of us, can think of someone out there who seriously needs to repent, to return to the Lord with all their heart, with fasting and weeping, to rend their hearts and not their clothing, before we all hurtle headlong off the cliff of destruction.

I love today’s Psalm, which reminds us that God knows we are human, that we are but dust, a comforting thought on the day in which we remind ourselves of the very same, that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

And once again, I love today’s Gospel reading, and in a way, isn’t it odd that we read Jesus’ warning about publicly flaunting our faith just to be noticed by our neighbors, right in the middle of a season of history in which many are questioning just what it means to be a Christian anyway?

Following Jesus can be a mysterious journey.

Let us pray for the wisdom to accept and live in these mysteries instead of thinking we need to solve them via the scientific method. Sometimes the answers are not easy, sometimes they evolve, and all of this is to be expected as we walk with Jesus.

Today’s observance continues a tradition centuries old, in which we remind ourselves that we are mortal, that this walk on earth is finite, that there is more to this story than just ourselves, that there are times when we should pause, evaluate who we are, and make a statement of who we are, whether that statement is private, public, or some of both.

As we receive the ashes today and remind ourselves that we are dust and to dust we shall return, I wonder if we might expand our thinking beyond just our human mortality? After all, thinking about our eventual death someday down the road can be a little abstract for most of us, even though we know that we never know.

I wonder, as we consider our mortality, if it might be helpful for us to take this in smaller bites; in addition to considering our mortality, to consider times when a chapter of our lives is coming to a close, or an aspect of our lives is changing and something must be left behind?

I wonder, as we commit ourselves to repentance of sin, if, in addition to our resolve to leave behind sinful words, thoughts, and deeds, if it might be helpful for us to think more broadly about leaving behind the chapters of our lives that may be coming to a close, or the patterns we have followed and been a part of that have brought about sinful results in our lives?

Have you ever sensed that the seasons of your life were changing?

That maybe it was time to change direction or go somewhere new?

Perhaps that you were becoming someone new?

That the version of yourself you have been presenting to the world may no longer be the most true or authentic?

That an update may be in progress?

As we consider our New Testament reading, we remember the life of St. Paul, who closed the old chapter of religious extremism and began a new chapter of grace so unfamiliar it must have felt like learning to write with the opposite hand.

As we draw comfort from our Psalm, we remember the life of David, who evolved from unknown to anointed to outcast to pursued to crowned to disgraced to overthrown to restored to revered.

And as we draw inspiration from our Gospel reading, we remember Jesus’ 40-day fast in the wilderness, in which he left behind his identity as a carpenter and emerged as a rabbi who would preach a message acceptable only to those who are also willing to leave behind a former identity and emerge to lead a new life.

What does it take to make a change of this significance?

We are not likely to wake up one day surprised to find ourselves suddenly transformed into a completely different creature, as the main character in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”.

For most of us, a change in our character, a transformation in our identity, is something that happens slowly over time and then seemingly all at once, as people, experiences, and the Holy Spirit have their influence as we grow and mature.

How do we react as these good forces work to change us over time?

Yes, of course, we have the ability to choose sinful influences as well, and our identity can evolve into something evil, but let’s focus today on the good, on the forces of godliness that seek to mold our spirits into the image of Christ.

How do we react as these forces for good in our lives mold us and shape us?

Do we fight them?

Do we resist the call to love, to shine the light of God in a world of darkness, to change into the person God is calling us to be? Do we hold onto the version of ourselves we know, afraid to move forward into a future that is uncertain? Too proud to admit that some of the things we have valued before have had their moment, but the moment has passed, and now those things need to be left behind? Too misguided to realize that some of the things we are reaching for are not what we need, and we should abandon the reach for them, and move on?

How do we react when the forces for good in our lives remind us that we are mortal, that we are dust, and to dust we shall return?

Do we ignore this voice? Do we resist it? Do we keep the blinders on and insist we will somehow continue on in this plane indefinitely? (Though, if you’re attending an Ash Wednesday service, you’re probably heeding this voice.)

And again, laying aside for the moment the reality of our ultimate mortality, how do we react when the forces for good in our lives signal to us that it’s time to close the book on a chapter of our lives, and move on to something new? When it’s our turn to do as Abram did, and leave the place we know to venture forward to a place the Lord will show us?

Do we resist this call? Do we hold on to the current era when it’s becoming time to let it go and move on?

As we enter this season of Lent, may we focus in our prayers, not only on our mortality and on our commitment to repentance, but also on these smaller and larger questions:

*Not just our ultimate personal mortality, but also our willingness to follow the Spirit’s lead in sensing our own development and growth, in being willing to let go and move on when a chapter is coming to a close, being willing to depart when it’s time to depart, not just when this earthly life is over, but at multiple points along our journey, recognizing that we can’t keep all the tabs on our desktop open at once forever, and ultimately, recognizing we may not be the same person now that we were before, and that this transformation is just part of what it means to walk with Jesus.

*Not just our specific, personal acts of sinfulness, but our willingness to participate in larger systems that bring about sinful results, both in our lives and families and in our larger society. How do we react when the Spirit moves us to think more broadly about the choices we make collectively as families, as churches, as companies, as communities, and as nations? About how we all make our way in this world, and the ways in which our actions impact the opportunities of others, even those we never see? We must be warned, that following Jesus and opening the door to the Spirit will bring conviction within us about patterns much larger and broader than just our personal acts of sinfulness.

How do we react when the forces of good in our lives make us aware of the evolution happening in the lives of our neighbors, when our neighbors’ journey takes them in a direction we were not expecting, perhaps in a direction we find frightening, perhaps in a direction we cannot possibly understand, like leaving the Dodgers to sign with the Padres?

Do we resist? Do we mount our defenses? Do we listen and seek to understand before seeking to be understood?

As we enter the season of Lent, may our prayers be focused on the growth needed to see these things as they are:

*To see our mortality in its proper focus, and to accept that our time here is finite;

*To resolve to let go of specific sinful practices and the patterns that produce sinful practices in our lives;

*To embrace the changes the Spirit is bringing about in our lives, and in the lives of our neighbors, even if these changes are not comfortable, even if these changes feel like learning to write with the opposite hand;

*To enter a new era with courage, even though we may be afraid;

*To let go of what needs to left behind, and to stop reaching for what we do not need.

*****

There is a touching scene in the movie Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, an adventure that also explores the strained relationship between the main character, Indiana Jones, and his aging father, played by Sean Connery.

Throughout the movie, there is an ongoing, seemingly comical interaction between father and son, in which father refuses to address son by the name everyone knows him by, but continues to use his childhood name, “Junior”. This annoys Indiana Jones, but it is clear his father has no interest in using his adopted nickname.

Toward the end of the movie, in a climactic scene, Indiana Jones is scrambling for his life, literally dangling from a cliff, reaching with everything he has to grasp hold of the legendary Holy Grail, only moments after another character has lost her life grasping greedily for the same cup.

In this moment, with everything at stake, Indiana Jones whispers to himself, “I can reach it...I can reach it...”

But his father then speaks up, while holding onto his son with all his might:

“Indiana...”

The son is startled by the sound of the father calling him by his chosen name.

Once again: “Indiana...”

Indy turns to look into his father’s eyes.

“Let it go. Indiana, let it go...”

Still reluctant to give up, but finally convinced his father is right, Indy gives up on the reach for the cup, and reaches back for his father, who helps him to safety just before the cup and the cliff it is perched upon collapse into oblivion.

As we enter the season of Lent, our Creator whispers our name, calls us by the name that rings true in our hearts, holds onto us as we come near to falling, and pleads with us to stop reaching for folly, stop grasping onto the familiar, stop resisting the broader vision the Spirit provides, and open ourselves to the next step in our journey.

As we enter these 40 days of Lent, may we remember that our time here is short, and the chapters of our story are ever-changing.

May we also remember that our neighbors’ time here is also short, and the chapters of their stories are also ever-changing.

May we remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return, and may we embrace the humility that this knowledge brings.

Amen.

Share

Share

Subscribe now