Yearning for the vast and endless sea of God

Chrism Mass Sermon, 2024 (Luke 5:1-11)

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”*

This is a paraphrase of something written by 20th century French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Best known for ‘The Little Prince’, Saint-Exupery was an aviation pioneer with a taste for adventure. I think this quote gets at what we are to be about.

In the Gospel passage which we just heard, Jesus tells Peter and the others to put out into the deep.  An early motto of the Diocese of Fond du Lac was “In Altum” – Into the Deep. We are called to “Put out into the deep water.” We who are leaders are charged with inspiring others to put out into the deep.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

It might serve as a description of good preaching and teaching. The Church needs preachers and teachers, lay as well as ordained, (and, yes, bishops) who are soaked and smell of salt water and look like they have faced into the Wind and squinted at the Sun on the horizon, who sound like they have put out into the deep of the vast and endless sea and returned to share the wonder of it.

I say that. And, then, I wonder how much of my preaching and teaching over the years has been more about drumming up people to gather wood, dividing the work, and giving orders rather than inspiring them to yearn for the vast and endless sea of God.

But, that is what I need to be about. I want to smell like the Sea – the aroma of God. It is what we need to be about for the sake of the Church. It is what the Church needs to be about for the sake of the world. I can only do that if I – we can only do it if we – put out into the deep of God.

One of my favorite Irish saints literally put out into the deep. Brendan of Clonfert, aka, Brendan the Navigator had already founded several monasteries when he was visited by another old monk who told of journey to the Island of Delight where there was a community of monks. They sent him on to another island – the Promised land of the Saints. On that island there were trees that bore tasty fruit all year long. There was no night and it was always comfortably warm because Christ was its Light.

The old monk asked Brendan, “Do you not smell the fragrance of heaven that we carry on us?”

So, yearning for the sea and for the vast expanse of God and the Promised Land, Brendan, along with some of his monks , built a ship and sailed west. They had many adventures, so the story goes, including taking their rest on an island that turned out to be the back of a resting whale. They stopped at the Island of Delight on their way to the Promised Land which they found just as they had heard. They returned in wonder, rejoicing in the Lord.

Brendan was part of larger movement of wild Irish monks who put out into the deep in search God. Some sailed to islands where they founded monasteries like Iona and Lindisfarne. Or more remote and wilder islands like Skellig Michael which has featured in Star Wars movies.

But others did something even wilder – even more mad, perhaps. There is an account of three monks who washed up on the southern coast of England in a small boat made of wood and leather, a coracle. They had no oars or sail. They had just set out into the deep, vast and endless sea, trusting that the wild Spirit of God would guide and protect them on the wild sea as they dedicated themselves to prayer.

Crazy. But I have to wonder, what wild vision of God had so captured their imagination as to provoke those monks, Brendan, and the others? And what might it look like if our imaginations were similarly inspired?

We are not likely to literally set out into the deep like they did. In fact, I want to discourage any of you who live near Lake Michigan or Lake Superior from trying anything like those would monks. But, we don’t have to do that. We can recommit ourselves to setting out in the coracle of our hearts in prayer, yearning for that vast and endless sea of God.

Perhaps you already have some experience with that.

 Maybe you have been staggered by the Infinity and the Mystery.

Maybe you have gone deep into the awesome beauty and goodness of God.

Maybe you have felt the grace of God splash over you, soaking you to the bone with his forgiving, healing, transforming love?

Maybe you have tasted the saltiness of God’s mercy and delight?

Maybe you have been bedazzled by the awesome splendor of God?

Maybe you have seen a vision of your own self and others in the glory of that splendor?

Maybe you have seen what glorious and beautiful beings we are meant and destined to be?

Maybe you have also dared to face into the stormy, surging waves of your spirit and to acknowledge the dead weight of sin that holds you back threatening to swamp the boat of your heart?

Maybe you have gotten a glimpse of the approaching kingdom of God just beyond the horizon? The kingdom of love and joy and peace where swords and spears – and guns – are beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks, where all divisions cease and there is no stranger or enemy, where there is no more violence or war, where death is swallowed up and all that is left is abundant and eternal life?

Set out in the coracle of your heart into the deep waters of God. That is where our nets will catch the goodness God desires for us. Do it frequently and long. Go further and further. Otherwise however grace-soaked we have been we will dry out. And our bedazzled eyes will adjust again to the mundane selfish fear and violent ways of this world.

I urge you, as we renew our vows today, to make that your first priority. I commit myself to doing the same. We just might begin smell like salt water. We might take on the fragrance of heaven. And we will be able to inspire others to yearn for the vast and endless sea of God.

After all, as Evelyn Underhill, famously wrote, it is God that is the interesting thing about religion. And William Temple said we need clergy to be teachers of prayer. But we can only do that if we are committed to going deep into God in prayer ourselves and come to look and feel like we have been there.

I suspect that when Patrick or Brendan or Brigid showed up in a village part of what got peoples attention was they seemed soaked with the wildness of God and had something of the fragrance of heaven about them. And when people went to Norwich to see Julian’s they encountered someone who looked a little windblown and had a squint in her eye as though she had been staring into the horizon of God. These saints made people yearn to set out themselves into the vast expanse of God.

The Church has long been likened to the ark, a boat, or a ship. That is why the area where the congregation worships is called a “nave” which comes from the same word as navy. Look up. It looks like you are sitting under a large upturned boat. Like Brendan and his companion monks, each congregation is a band of pilgrims called to set out into the deep.

Let’s set out together on the adventure of seeking the vast expanse of God’s mercy and delight. Let’s open ourselves to being transformed by the by God’s grace such that we bear the fragrance of heaven. And let’s dare to set out into the deep of the communities around us bearing witness to the gospel of life and peace, justice and truth. And serving with them to do what we can to make the world rhyme a bit more with the kingdom of God in anticipation of the Day when God’s will be done on earth as in Heaven.

Let us teach the world to yearn for the vast expanse of God and invite them to join us as we set out into the deep.

* The actual passage that gave rise to the quote above is probably,

"One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love."

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wisdom of the Sands’

Good Friday Poem

When the longed-for Lion of Judah

insisted on being the Lamb of God,
when the Messiah we got
was not the Messiah we wanted,
when he would not play along
with our deceptions and self-justifications –
personal and communal,
when he would not affirm
our fear-filled desire for power,
when he would not bless
our lust for violence,
when he would not wreak vengeance
on our enemies;
what could we do
but avenge ourselves,
and kill him?
 
Will we ever forgive him
for even then
looking—seeing—looking
at us,
at them,
and saying,
"Father forgive"?

(Crucifix from St. James Episcopal Church

Manitowoc, Wisconsin)

Holy Week Confession

 Holy Week

Confession: I have often found faith in God difficult. I nearly gave it up when I was younger. A lot of god-talk leaves me cold. Even less compelling is vague talk of "the Sacred" or "the Holy" – whether glossed with a hint of Christianity or not. So much sounds like a mere projection of the believer’s own ideal self onto the cosmos. Or a sort of cosmic lucky rabbit’s foot.

Ultimately, it is the events of this week, with all their wild meaning and resistance to easy meaning-making that enable me to believe. If this week points to something true about the source, purpose, and destiny of all things, I can have faith and hope. If God is revealed in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, I can respond with adoration, praise, and thanksgiving. I can dare to give myself over to the way of love and peace, mercy and justice. And there is freedom and joy.

Sometimes at the Eucharist, as I am distributing the Sacrament, I imagine I am wielding an invisible needle and thread. With every placing of the Bread in the hands or tongue of a communicant and then the next as I go along the line, the body of Christ is being threaded together anew.

Every Eucharist is a remembering of the body of Christ as we remember and recall the Presence of Jesus in the Sacrament. And every Eucharist is a re-membering of the body of Christ, the Church, in which the threads that bind us together are reinforced. We recall that we are not our own. We are created for communion – communion with God and communion with one another. The Holy Spirit – the Holy Weaver – weaves, knits, and sews us together.

All of humanity is created for communion with God, communion with itself, and communion with all of creation. Part of the Church’s vocation is to be the sign and foretaste of that communion. The Church’s vocation is to be a sign and foretaste of the promise that all that is torn and tattered will be mended, rewoven, and knit back together. All that is torn and tattered in each of us can be mended. The torn and tattered fabric of human relationship and society can be mended. Creation, torn and tattered, can be repaired. It is not just about the Church. But, it is the mission of the Church to point to and live in anticipation of God’s restoration of all things (Acts 3:21).

That is the work of God. Only God can finally accomplish it. But Christians are called to participate in that mission and be menders in the world. It is the Church’s vocation, knit together by the Holy Spirit through Baptism and Eucharist, to be the loom of the Lord.

There is precedence for this image:

“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:15-16)

"Christ is likened to a needle the eye in which, pierced most painfully at his passion, now draws all after him, so repairing the tunic rent by Adam, stitching together the two peoples of Jews and Gentiles [and, by extension, every division that rends the human fabric], making them one for always." – Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), 'Catholicism, Christ and the Common Destiny of Man', referencing Paschasius Radbertus (785-865)

"One day a little girl sat watching her mother working in the kitchen. She asked her mommy, 'What does God do all day long?' For a while, her mother mother was stumped, but then she said, 'Darling, I'll tell you what God does all day long. He spends his whole day mending broken things.'" – Festo Kivengere (1921-1988), quoted in 'Glorious Companions'

"From Jesus began a weaving together of the divine and human nature in order that human nature, through fellowship with what is more divine, might become divine, not only in Jesus but also in all those who, besides believing in Jesus, take up the life which he taught; the life which leads everyone who lives according to the precepts of Jesus to friendship with God and fellowship with him." – Origen (184-253), 'Contra Celsus'

“For the sake of love all the saints resisted sin, not showing any regard for this present life. And they endured many forms of death, in order to be separated from the world and united with themselves and with God, joining together in themselves the broken fragments of human nature. For this is the true and undefiled theosophy of the faithful. Its consummation is goodness and truth – if indeed goodness as compassion and truth as devotion to God in faith are the marks of love. It unites men to God and to one another, and on this account contains the unchanging permanence of all blessings.” – Maximus the Confessor, ‘Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice’, 1st Century