“Will you come and follow me?”
James and John, two ordinary men, one extraordinary call: a call to follow Jesus. And when Jesus first uttered their names, on the Shores of Galilee, what felt like many moons ago, they immediately said, “yes”, dropping their nets leaving their father, Zebedee still sitting in the boat, to finish the days work.
It was call that initially seemed pretty easy. Here, these two lowly fishermen were being invited to follow and be part of the inner circle of someone who was quickly growing in popularity, or at the very least, he was the talk of the town. Young and old, rich and poor, sick and healthy were flocking to him from all sides for a word, a touch, an acknowledgement.
And as Peter and others began to acknowledge that he was the Messiah, the anointed one, surely the one to return the Jewish people to a place of political power. Then, they too, would also be great, especially as part of this elite group.
But things lately had become more difficult, nothing was what it seemed. Now for the third time Jesus had told the disciples of his passion and death.
James and John, completely petrified about what Jesus is saying, are trying to hold on to what they know. They are trying to find security in what feels like an ever changing dynamic with Jesus. What glory, honor and power will come from dying? Surely there must be another way. So they try to secure their position and place, and ask Jesus, if they can sit one on his right hand and one on his left?
But this was not who Jesus was calling them to be. The greatness that Jesus had in mind for them, since he first called them off the shores of Galilee, would never be found in places of honor or a secured position. Jesus vision for them was greater than they could have asked or imagined. What James and John didn’t know on that quiet morning on the Shores of Galilee was that their nets were the first of many things that they were going to have to leave behind. And yet, it would only be found in dying to themselves, of who they thought they were, so that they could be born anew. The road to life that Jesus was inviting them to travel on, was actually a road that looked like death.
A road that we too are invited to travel.
Story of St. James, Great Barrington and St. George’s, Lee
"In August of 2008, just eight months after calling their new rector, The Rev. Francie Hills, the outer wall of St. James, Barrington, part of the chancel area in their sanctuary, bulged out. The pieces falling on the parking lot behind the church, fell directly onto Francie’s car - not exactly the beginning they were anticipating.After an assessment, the building was no longer considered structurally sound and was condemned.
Nothing was what it seemed, nothing was what they could have possibly expected. They went from having a home, to no home, of having prayer books, hymnals and choir robes at their disposal, to Rubbermaid boxes, easily packable for the road, from having an office to print bulletins, to printing and working from home, bulletins showing up on the door step of Francie’s home the night before Sunday worship.
The eventually ended up in a unexpected place – the Pub at Crissey Farms – transforming a banquet room and bar into a worship space - learned to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary – a testimony to what God was doing in their life together.
In a moment of crisis, rather than clinging to what they knew, the tradition, their building, and re-securing their place in the community – the continually put before themselves the question, “Who is God calling us to be?”
At the same time this was going on, St. George’s, Lee was wrestling with their own set of questions. With such a small congregation 25 or less, the realized the building they were in was becoming more of a financially strain and liability….and yet to close completely was not a viable answer. The too were deeply wrestling with the question,
Who is God calling us to be? How can we be a viable presence in the community without a building in which people can identify us by? How can our mission with others tell people more about who we are, rather than our building?
The answer has not come easily but it has come faithfully.
The process of rebirth for these two congregations was a continued process of self-emptying of redefining what it meant and what it means to be church, of moving beyond who they thought they were when located on Main Street in Great Barrington, and downtown , Lee to who God was calling them to be with and alongside the people of Great Barrington and Lee.
It was a process that was filled with a hopeful spirit, deep grief, and the grace to continue to answer the question, Who is God calling us to be?
Detrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him….it is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
- It was this grace that met them in their grief and disbelief when the wall first fell
- It was grace that allowed them to ask the hard questions about what to do with their buildings without easy answers…
- It was grace that met them in moments of exhaustion around conference room tables, at homes and in parking lots
- It was grace that met them in the voices and words of one another, offering consolation and encouragement
- It was grace that fed them through word and song, bread and wine,bringing them out of death into new and abundant life
Yesterday at our annual Diocesan Convention, as of January 2013 they will officially be Grace Episcopal Church of the Southern Berkshires, still without a building but witnessing to God’s grace and love to that part of the Berkshires and beyond. Their greatness now found together in what they can be and do as one body.
Like James and John, St. George and St. James, we don’t always know what we are getting into when we say “yes” to Jesus. We do not know where it will lead us, we don’t know what shifts and turns it will take… we certainly don’t always know the cost, of what it will ask us to let go of or what it will ask us to take-on, so that our truest identities can be formed.
And so God keeps calling again and again and again, to let go and to take on, to serve and be served, beckoning us into a greater fullness, into greater places of love and compassion, as we are shaped into who, God, is calling us to be…moment by moment…
May we too be filled with the grace to answer the call.
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