Good Fences?

January 22, 2021

GOOD FENCES ?

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.

This week we continue our series from Mark’s Gospel:  JESUS IS WHERE HE FINDS YOU.  Thus far we have met the present Jesus who accompanies us in the storms of life.  We have met the calling Jesus who invites us to accompany him in his kingdom work.  Last week we met the healing Jesus who validates the faith of those who support those who need more faith.  And this week we meet the radical Jesus who breaks through boundaries that we often set up to keep ourselves secure, comfortable, and isolated from harsher realities.

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The call

THE CALL

¹⁷And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’  ¹⁸And immediately they left [abandoned] their nets and followed him.    [Mark 1]  

You wake up one January morning, you look outside to check the weather, and find that the world has ended and a new one is being born.   What do you do?  Would you try to contain this earthquake?  Put this wild sea into a bottle?   What if the earthquake has a name:  A formerly dead man raised up and walking toward us at dinnertime?

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Shaking Hands

Because what’s the alternative?
Because of courage.
Because of loved ones lost.
Because no more.
Because it’s a small thing; shaking hands; it happens every day.
Because I heard of one man whose hands haven’t stopped shaking since a market day in Omagh.
Because it takes a second to say hate, but it takes longer, much longer, to be a great leader.
Much, much longer.  .  .  .  .

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MARKINGS (25)

“One of the most beautiful things in T.S. Eliot’s Quartets is in the third Quartet, where he speaks of the “unattended moment, the moment in and out of time”—in other words, “fragments”:

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are . . . .

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