Beyond the Patio

The Pain of Leaving the Familiar
The Excitement of Facing New Beginnings
Luke 14:25-33

Over the years as a parish priest I have had the experience many times of moving to one parish and leaving another. It is painful to leave something familiar and the people who have known you and cared for you in some way of another. I can remember sitting in the church building on the day that the movers came to load all of our goods and take them to the new place.  As I sat there I reminisced about the past years and all that I would be leaving behind. I thought of the streets and buildings that were so  familiar.  I thought of trees that were so beautiful in the Fall or in the hoar frost in the Winter. I thought of the many houses that had stories behind them. This one is where there was always a coffee pot on and a warm friendly welcome. That one is remembered for desperate counseling that was needed at a certain time. This one for grief over the death of a loved one. That one for the joy and the celebration of a new baby.

I especially thought of all the people I would be leaving behind. – the ones who were supportive from the beginning…. those what were agin’ it no matter what it was… those that had a great thirst for growth in their spirituality…. those who looked for security in the familiar…. the children who would hid their faces if you asked them a simple question and those who were so noisy… the teenagers so profound at times and so awkward at others as they were trying to come to grips with life …. some of the older people who in their wisdom taught you so much … and those in their mature faith who gave you much more that you could ever give them. They are all there and there is an intimacy that has developed. To each goes a heart string.  Everyone and everything around you have become a part of your life and it is so difficult to leave.

On the other hand There is excitement in new beginnings. I remember one time talking with children during a church service about the subject of moving from one place to another. I fully expected that the children would relate moving with some painful experiences like leaving friends behind, leaving the house that they had grown accustomed to, leaving what was familiar.  To my surprise they talked about moving as a wonderful experience in which they met new friends, did new things, were introduced to a new style of life.  It ruined my plans for the children’s talk that day – I had planned to deal with the difficulties we had with change.  But it was OK.  Instead we ended up talking about how exciting  new beginnings can be.

New beginnings can also be very scary too because we are called out of a  familiar and comfortable world into an unfamiliar and strange world.  We don’t know whether we will be able to do the new work.  We don’t know whether we will continue to like the new surroundings and the new people that surround us.  We sometimes fell isolated, alone, unsupported as we embark on the new venture. Too many changes can lead to a dangerous level of stress in our lives.  We often can’t see where the new beginning will take us and we are afraid.

So new beginnings can be exciting and at the same time fearful.

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I think that what a lot of people who were thinking of following Jesus faced – the pain of losing what was familiar to them and the fear of what they would face by accepting a new way of life. They were being called to leave their old ways and open themselves to a new way of thinking which was so different than what they were leaving behind. This would take a lot of faith and  courage to be able to do this.  This is what Jesus was forcefully saying to them in the Gospel today when he says “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” and a little later, “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” .  I don’t think the  word “hate” doesn’t quite grasp the meaning of what is being said.  To me it is more like saying that you need to move beyond the present relationships such a family, because the new reality to which they are being called  includes all people, all of humanity.  In this transformation of life, you cannot confine your love to family or within tribal boundaries but like Jesus, love and compassionate must be expressed to all and espec ially those in need. The family represents the old way.  Also an emphasis on possessions was the old way of determining your importance.  The more you had, the more important you were.

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So what we have here is Jesus calling people away from the confines of their former way of looking at things, the way they emphasized  their own people and closing their doors on others, the restrictions that their present religion which its rules and regulations placed on them, their attempt to confine and define God who was really indefinable, their way of limiting God’s love and activity instead of opening themselves to a new consciousness.

O course this was threatening to the religious and political  authorities of the day because Jesus seemed to be an auditor of their way of life and somehow they had to either change or get rid of the auditor. So they began to plot ways of ridding the world of Jesus.  Not just the leaders but many others could not make the transition to the new way that Jesus was presenting. They couldn’t see themselves surviving without clinging to the past. They wanted rules and sacred traditions that were set and fixed. Jesus was offering new life,  a new vision of what an expanded life would look like, a universal consciousness, a new wholeness, a new view of what a new humanity was like. It was just too scary for some.  They were called to a new light but preferred the darkness of their old ways. So, they crept back into the shadows.

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What does it mean to us?  It is important to make new beginnings.  To some extent that is what life is all about. I don’t mean that to really find meaning in your life you have to move from one place to another.  But our lives are a series of new beginnings in which we have to find meaning in each one of them.  We all move from childhood to adulthood.  That can be exciting or traumatic.  That is what adolescence is all about.  Then there are various stages in our adult life that we need to adjust to. We all have to meet new people from time to time.  We all face new demands – relational demands, economic demands, political demands.  After all we live in a community, a city, a nation, a world, and the mere living with others on this planet is demanding.

I have faced many new beginnings in my spiritual life. At one point in my life I had thought of Jesus as someone who lived in the past and of whom we told stories in Sunday School. Even in Confirmation Class, the belief about Jesus was just another subject to study. However, in my late teens through a series of events I began to read the Bible on my own with some helpful tips from my Rector and I had an encounter with Jesus. Jesus became real to me and realized that he loved me and accepted me no matter who I was or what I was doing with my life. John Wesley described his experience at Aldersgate as his heart being ‘strangely warmed’. I think that is a good description of what I felt in my encounter with Jesus. Jesus became so real. I met God in Jesus. That makes a difference as to the way I looked at life, my life, relationships, and even the natural world. It made me aware of mystery in life.

That is why I can write poems about nature because It’s not only what I see in front of me – a beautiful scene but it is what I feel as I encounter God there. Every time we are in touch nature we are in touch with our human nature as well. I wrote a poem in Tofino not long ago:

The wild waves are breaking on the shore
as if escaping from some far off land
refusing to be harnessed
and taming all that lies within their path

They then creep across the hardened sand
to bring refreshment to our tired souls
Along the shoreline are the riptide warnings
and gulls are seen near waters edge
like small communities
gathered near the source of life

One has to marvel at the dangers of the sea
yet all it nurtures in it’s way
But the same such power often lies within our grasp

The spiritual journey  is a continual process.  My life is still a journey along Christ’s path into the mystery of God, and that becomes an ever deepening reality.  John Spong says the same of his life and remembers a retired bishop saying to him

“The older I get the more deeply I believe but the less beliefs I have.”  (John Selby Spong The Fourth Gospel, Tales of a Jewish Mystic, Harper Collins, Toronto, 2013 p. 6). 

I think that he was indicating that our spirituality needs to go beyond our formal religious practices and statement of beliefs.  In fact, as we have seen,  our formal religious practices can sometimes be a hindrance to our relationship with God. “Christianity , after all , is rooted not in doctrinal formulation but  in the person of Jesus Christ “(Lawrence Cunningham, On the Meaning of Saints).  We must not forget that it was the “religious leaders”, the so called “righteous” with all their laws, rituals and formulations that were behind the crucifixion of Jesus.  I reminds me a short saying, “The meanest man I ever knew lived inside the law.” (source unknown)

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It can be very painful moving on from what is familiar to new beginnings but on the other hand is it exciting .

To begin again may be to discover a new meaning in life. To begin again may be to come in touch with a new power for living. To begin again may be finding a new basis for our life together. To begin again may be finding a new perspectives in our studying the bible, a fresh understanding in participating in the Eucharist,  a revitalization in our prayer life.  To begin again may be one of these things or all of these things

Of course we must consider the pain of leaving what is familiar and what we are losing
We must be aware of the excitement of a new beginning but also the fear and uncertainty of the future never knowing where it will take us

If we can account for all of that and have the courage to move forward it can continue to be a exciting journey of faith.

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