Straining to Hear Jesus in the Midst of it ALL

Every year, I am fortunate to be able to spend some time in Alton, NH, at our family’s hunting cabin on a small pond (Bear Pond). My dad, his brothers and my uncle helped to build the place about 50 years ago, and it’s a very peaceful haven in the midst of a chaotic world.   

One thing that I appreciate about being there is that there is no running water or electricity. While it certainly limits some things, it offers us an opportunity to live more simply. We live with only what we have packed for clothing. There’s no TV or WiFi. We have limited space to refrigerate food, so we plan accordingly. We bring whatever “essentials” we think we’re going to need, and it’s a lot less than what I live with on a day-to-day basis that I consider “essential.”

Maybe you have similar experiences when you travel or need to shift from what you are used to.

What I find amazing about the whole process is how much less I can live with and not feel any sense of loss whatever. In fact, there are ways that I even feel free-er without the stuff.

In the gospel reading today, a young man approaches Jesus and asks how to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds with the simple phrase, “keep the commandments.” I’m guessing that this is much harder than it seems. But apparently the young man feels like he has done this (and maybe he has met all the “requirements”) and asks, “What do I still lack?”

Let’s just pause on that question. What do I still lack?

I love this as a spiritual question, and it got me thinking about two different things.

First, I wondered what would happen in my spiritual life if I asked this question as a genuine question to the divine (or the universe). What do I lack? My sense is that the divine would often respond, “Nothing!” and I would be invited into deeper and deeper forms of gratitude for what is around me and generosity to attend to what I have. But it is interesting to consider what might come from this question.

But I could also imagine asking that question in the sense of, “What am I missing?” Said a different way, “What am I not sensing, seeing or paying attention to?” I wonder what would happen if I asked that more often.

Our spiritual teaching could end there, and we’d have plenty to reflect on. but wait, there’s more! #BonusDay

It is Jesus’ response to the young man that, again, cuts right to the chase with its simplicity and directiveness. “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Just let that statement sink in. What do you feel? What does it get you thinking? What’s the sequencing of words and what might that mean?

The gospel ends with another simple but powerful line, “When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.”

Take a few minutes of quiet with all this.

My time at Bear Pond always gets me thinking about my possessions and how much I really need in life – and how much I, in fact, have in my life. And it connects to this gospel for me because Jesus might be making a similar invitation to us and offering a sharp critique of a materialistic culture (which apparently was already a concern to Jesus as he experienced 1^st century Palestine. Imagine if he were alive today!!!).

Moreover, if we go back to today’s first reading, we hear of God’s displeasure that the children of Israel were worshipping false gods.  And in that passage we hear another hard truth, “Even when the LORD raised up [people] to deliver them…they did not listen…but abandoned themselves to the worship of other gods. They were quick to stray from the way their [ancestors] had taken, and did not follow their example of obedience to the commandments of the LORD.”

As I often try to do, I make a small poem using words from the scripture passages. Here’s what I came up with for today:

Let go of your possessions.

Then come, follow me.

And even when God tried to help them do this.

They did not listen.

[For] they had strayed from the ways of the ancestors.

I don’t know what all this might mean in your life, but I know that it makes me want to spend more time in quiet and reflection with these words – thinking about my ancestors and their way of life, reflecting on my many possessions and what I need to release, considering how God might be trying to help me and I do not listen, and straining to hear Jesus’ call to me in the midst of it all.