Following Jesus Out of our Comfort Level

 

 

 

Kathy Sicard wrapped the scarf around my head and the world went dark. I felt like I had walked into a movie theater late, groping for chairs, hoping I didn’t end up in somebody’s lap.  But Marie Diebold grasped my hands, facing me, walking backwards. Her voice was low and soft.

She guided me slowly through her kitchen, around the butcher block island, the metal sink cupboard from the 50’s, the collection of hanging mugs by the window.  She talked me straight through the narrow kitchen doorway shuffling our feet from the wood floor of the kitchen to the oriental carpet in the living room.  “Walk straight. OK, a small step to the right, and there now, here’s the coffee table. Can you feel it against your legs? Ok stop. Turn left. Walk ahead two steps.” We wound through the downstairs of her farmhouse one step at a time.

 

We were meeting at Marie’s for our Tuesday night study.  It was our first year going through Terry Wardle’s powerful curriculum, the 16 week Healing Care study. One Tuesday night we went through the lessons ourselves, the next Tuesday night we taught it to others.

 

I do fine with trust exercises like this.  Not so much in real life.  In my head I know God is near, guiding through the darkness, but I find myself fumbling wildly for the wall, the doorways, looking for anything I can control.

 

Sometimes the walking out of my calling has seemed like taking one step at a time in a straight line. Who doesn’t like straight lines? Receive calling. Go to seminary. Work in a church for ten years.

 

Every line looks straighter when looking back.

 

The truth is that after ten years of parish ministry, I had to make a large pivot into the unknown. After 10 years of parish ministry with Andrew Priscilla and Aquila style, he was called to work for the denomination in communications. We moved and moved again. I began gestating with this message, the Presence Project message, learning the craft of writing, and learning to hold the hard and holy stories of people in spiritual direction. But gestation is often a dark season. Seeds sown one at a time down a row and pushed into dark hummus.

 

A season of quiet of listening of hiddenness.

 

I’ve bumped my shins more than once in this darkness but I’ve never been alone.

 

 

It wasn’t simple for the disciples as they set down heavy nets on the shore of Lake Galilee. “Come, now you’ll be fishing for men,” Jesus had said. I can’t believe they fully understood what that meant. They only knew who was doing the calling.

Until now, I always saw Christ’s calling of the fishermen as Jesus sending them out on a quest.  Set down your ordinary life. I’ve got something in store for you. Something big. Something dynamic.  I imagined the disciples going straight from cleaning that fishy smell off their hands into a brainstorming session.  But Jesus’ words indicate something quite different, “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

 

Some of the translations leave out the “come” but it’s right there in the Greek. The literal translation of the Greek here is: “Come follow after me and I will make you fishers of men.”

So much of my calling through the last five years has felt like a groping in the dark.

But “Come” makes all the difference in the world.  Come means He is walking in front of me. “Come” means He is present navigating the darkness.

 

Just the definition of following invites us to walk forward with SOMEONE in our field of vision.

I thought of Marie Diebold leading me through her living room.

When we hold onto His hands, following closely, He fills our focus. His voice. His Presence.

 

Instead of following a Jesus in the distance more mirage than real, I wondered if following Jesus in my calling could look more like more like Marie leading me through her kitchen. Jesus holding my hands, him walking backwards, present. Near. This image just might change everything.

 

Mother Teresa wrote this as a prayer request in a letter to Henri Nouwen

“Pray that I don’t loose the hands of Jesus in my attempt to feed the poor.”

I should have those words tattooed on my forehead.

 

 

Jump ahead quite a few years later. I’m getting my spiritual direction certificate with Spiritual formation/Spiritual direction from Healing Care, a program approved by the Evangelical Spiritual Director’s Association. And I’m on-site at one of our residencies in northern Ohio.

A canvas labyrinth was rolled out onto the floor and we were invited to walk and pray.

Now OK, labyrinths aren’t for everyone.

My husband jokes that he’d like to create a spiritual practices podcast with titles like, “How to shave 30 seconds off your labyrinth time.” He had me doubled over in laughter a few weeks ago as he described using the clinging cross as a weapon to jab the guy in front of you slowing you down.

But the labyrinth with its mindful placing of one foot in front of the other, the carved-out time, the silence, they all serve to still my mind into deeper prayer.

And this particular December night of the residency, I was exhausted. We’re talking crawl-up-in-corner-and-shut-out-the-world tired. It was a Thursday night after 5 days of teachings and spiritual direction sessions. Yet, here was a quiet room and an invitation to a favorite prayer practice. So I waited and then asked Jesus this simple question, “Jesus, how would You like me to walk the labyrinth tonight?” Into my brain popped the memory of Marie, holding my hands, guiding me around her kitchen as she walked backwards. She knew the terrain. She knew every step, every hard edge.

I walked slowly, hands out, imagining Him directly in front of me holding my hands, walking backwards, listening for His invitation. And this is what I heard: “Summer, I see your weariness. I know you’re exhausted. But We’ve got all the time in the world. This is not a race. Walk as slowly as you need to and Pause when you need to receive My energy. Because remember, I’m the bread of Life. There’s always manna. The cupboard is full. There is no scarcity.”

I slowly navigated the turns, holding onto His hands, looking into His eyes, pausing to receive enough energy to take a few more steps.

The experience was so profound, for months I would close my eyes and see the turns, the stops, His eyes. And the rhythm started sinking deeper into my soul. Less striving. More grace. More Presence.

And again I wondered, maybe following Jesus, could look like this.

 

 

Brother Lawrence, a simple monk from the 17^th century, was a kitchen worker and a cobbler in a Carmelite monastery in Paris. The beauty of his life is that He invites us to remember the end and not get caught up with the means.

We can get tangled in piety, practices, and perfectionism. In fact, it’s a net some people crave. Spiritual practices signal something controllable. A to-do list neatly checked off. But here’s the problem: we can miss the big picture: prayer practices, liturgies, and knowledge gathering were never meant to be ends in themselves, They were never meant to be something we wrestled, overcame, and subdued in order to earn worth or love.

The end goal for Brother Lawrence was always communion with God. I can still hear the Westminster chatecism I memorized when I was a child: What is the chief end of man? To worship God and enjoy Him forever. Communion.

Here it is in Brother Lawrence’ own words: “Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”

And this is where we intersect Practicing the Presence with Calling. Brother Lawrence prayed with his arms elbows deep in warm soapy water, doing dishes in a monastery kitchen.

He was less interested in his calling or vocation and more interested in following closely behind Jesus.

Today, we have our own brand of static, the constant search for personal fulfillment and umpteen journals stamped with a rainbow and “Follow your dreams.” Dreams are important to pay attention to. The deep desires of our soul can often be signposts to God’s invitation. But, I wonder if sometimes in following our dreams, we’re actually losing sight of the Dream-Giver.

Often we slander the small, trashing the simple and beautiful act of offering, and worship the large.

But so much of our lives are serving in small ways.

And really, if we think about it, every big thing is made up of a thousand tiny faithfulnesses.

 

Here’s Brother Lawrence again: “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

 

 

By focusing all of His attention on Practicing the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence was able to cut through all of the static built around the Medieval church. Just as skillfully, he cuts through the static of our time, a church which worships numbers and programs, a Christianized version of the American dream.

 

 

 

Listen to the beautiful movement of abandonment, repentance, and God’s filling Brother Lawrence describes here:

 

“I regard myself as the most wretched of all men, stinking and covered with sores, and as one who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King. Overcome by remorse, I confess all my wickedness to Him, ask His pardon and abandon myself entirely to Him to do with as He will. But this King, filled with goodness and mercy, far from chastising me, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the keys of His treasures, and treats me as His favorite.”

 

I hope you can hear these same words spoken over you.

 

“The King, filled with goodness and mercy, far from chastising you, invites you to eat at His table, serves you with His own hands, gives you the keys of His treasures, and treats you as his favorite.”

 

 

 

While Marie walked backwards, I grasped her hands tight.

Into those same hands I had placed pieces of the honey-flavored host on a hundred Sunday mornings. They were same hands I held between mine before she went into surgery for breast cancer.  And they were the same hands which had massaged my tired pregnant muscles in the weeks before labor. I was holding the hands of someone dear, knowing she had my care in mind.

When Andrew and Peter heard the call of Jesus, they opened their hands to grasp ahold of His, setting down nets and expectations. They followed trusting His heart.

When we open our hands to follow Jesus, Brother Lawrence teaches us, we drop the What for the Who.

……………………………………………………….

 

Join me at minute 21:06 above for the lectio divina.

We are constantly being marketed to, being told what to invest time and money in. It’s easy to lose focus. But, what is the deeper end? How can we make sure the end is the focus of every means? We have many callings, but how do we stay clear of the static?

Psalm 27:4 One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.

 

May you know today, that you are being held in the hollow of God’s hands.