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The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 7,
2010 The Rev. William Van Oss, Rector
Readings
A couple of weeks ago I was going through some boxes of papers in the attic, and I came across a journal I kept in 1990. In this journal my goal was to capture some of the “glimpses of God” I had from time to time, and to write them down. I paged through the journal, and when I can to June, there was an entry entitled “Chasing Bunnies” and it immediately brought a smile to my face.
One beautiful, sunny, warm June morning in 1990 I was out for a jog in the quiet suburban neighborhood where I was living. I was just jogging along, thinking what a beautiful day it was when I noticed, further down the block, a woman yelling and looking around wildly. As I jogged nearer I heard her yelling, “Steven, Steven,” and so I stopped and asked her if everything was OK. ”No, it’s not,” she said, and she quickly explained that her three year old boy, Steven, who loves bunnies, was playing in the yard, and she went in to answer the phone and she looked out the window to see him running down the block, probably chasing a bunny, and she ran outside and yelled and he didn’t come back and she has a little girl sleeping in the crib so she can’t leave the house and could I , please, help look for him. She said all that in about three seconds and with one breath.
I, of course, told her I would help and I had her point in the direction Steven had run, and I set out, looking for this little boy, in a neighborhood I didn’t know very well. I ran along yelling, “Steven,” looking up driveways and next to houses. I ran around a corner and looked down the side of a house, and sticking out from some low bushes were the hindquarters of a little person searching.
Ah, thank God, but what do I do now? I’m a stranger, so I asked him, “are you Steven?” and he looked up at me kind of bewildered and I said, “Steven, can you show me where you live?” and he reluctantly agreed. He kept looking over his shoulder as we walked away, looking for that bunny, and together we walked around the corner and back toward where we came, when all at once his mother spied us, from about a block away. I’ll never forget it, I’ll never forget the look on her face, it was the most perfect mixture of pure joy and “I’m gonna ring your neck” that I had ever seen. She ran to us at a full sprint and scooped Steven up into her arms, tears flowing, and she thanked me and began to walk away. And Little Steven, peeking over her shoulder, just kept looking back, looking back over to that house, to those bushes, looking for that bunny. In my reflection on the experience I wrote: “I wonder how often I have been like little Steven. Off chasing bunnies, distracted by the things of this world, petty cares and concerns, stuff I can’t let go of, things I can’t control and all the while God is seeking me out, calling my name, eager to scoop me up in warm embrace and to be in relationship, with me.”
I thought about that story of Steven chasing bunnies as I reflected on Jesus calling the first disciples in today’s Gospel. Thus far in Luke’s Gospel Jesus has not had a lot of success in influencing people. A couple of weeks ago we heard the story of Jesus going to the temple on the Sabbath and reading from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord was upon (Him),” how He “came to bring good news to the poor and release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind.” Jesus tells all the temple folks that this scripture “has been fulfilled in their hearing” and it seems they just sit there and stare at Him, dumbfounded. No followers there. Jesus isn’t doing so well, in Luke’s Gospel. The religious establishment doesn’t know what to make of Him. The people at his hometown see Him as a threat. And so Jesus performs a couple of healing and he heads for the Sea of Galilee, called Gennesaret in today’s Gospel. And there he teaches the crowds, he helps some fishermen catch a boatload of fish, and then he calls them. He calls Simon, who would be named Peter, and James and John to be His disciples.
They were simple fishermen, minding their own business, washing their nets after a long night of fishing where they caught nothing. Frustrated, tired and hungry, they probably just wanted to go home. Simple fishermen, there’s no evidence they were even interested in Jesus, the Gospel makes it sound like they happened to be there and Jesus needed their boat because of the crowd. But Jesus had sought then out; Jesus went after them. Like seeking out little Steven after he ran away from home chasing bunnies, Jesus went after those first disciples, he met them where they were, in their world, in their life, in their boat, in their frustration and fatigue and hunger. And Jesus invited them to change directions, to become fishers of men and women, fishers of people. Jesus invited them to broaden their spiritual horizons and to live their lives for someone else, to live their lives for Him.
One of the things I’ll never forget about little Steven out chasing bunnies is how focused he was, even though a kind stranger entered his life, even though his mother embraced him with pure joy and relief, all he could think about was that bunny in the bushes. And that’s how we are sometimes, distracted, caught up in earthly things, material things, success, good looks, distracted by worries, or weighed down by unresolved grief or grudges we hang on to. We can become so focused, so obsessed, we miss the moments that God enters our lives and calls us to new things. Off chasing bunnies, we sometimes are, when God is seeking after us, inviting us into relationship, inviting us to a new thing, a new life, a new direction.
God is calling us, looking for us, anxious to scoop us up in joyful embrace. Our job is to let go of the distractions and let ourselves be found.