I mentioned in passing a few weeks back, that the area around my computer desk is littered with post-it notes, stuck all over every surface. Once in a while they carry a phone number or an appointment reminder, but most of the time they are thoughts or quotes that somewhere along the way caught my interest and I stuck them up there for further reflection.
Today’s quote is one of the latter. In fact, this may be the grandmother of all the sticky-note quotes scattered around. I’m sure it is the oldest one here. The quote is from Annie Dillard, who is an incredible wordsmith, absolutely one of my favorite writers. She writes with a poetic quality – not the hearts and flowers kind of poetry – but sometimes with a sharp edged, painful poetry and meaning in her words.
Since it’s the one stuck right in front of my face, I’ve read this quote every day – for years – and still I hesitate to try to say what she means here. I think I know what she means, but I’ve read enough of her work to be aware that I might be completely wrong, too.
But I’m feeling courageous today, so this is how it goes:
- “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.”
This comes, by the way, from her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk.**
“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.”
I think I grasp it well enough in the context of our everyday social lives, referring to those things we’ve always dreamed of, longed for, obsessed over – whether it be a who or a what, an idea or a concrete something. But I don’t think what she is talking about here is that simple. I suspect that she intends something of a more existential question – why am I here?
I decided to go back to the original book to see what her context there was – and found that it comes in a chapter where she is telling a story about weasels. Yup, weasels – those sinewy furry creatures. It is entirely characteristic of Dillard’s writing that she may seem to be on one subject and then it turns out she’s been writing about something else all along.
Since the point of my messages in this current series is to find an intriguing quote and then connect its message to some part of scripture, this last revelation got me to wondering how often Jesus seems at first glance to be talking about one thing, but then turns out to be pointing towards something else instead.
His parables often seem to work like this – he’ll start out with a story that appears to be going to some obvious conclusion, but then takes a hard left and ends up somewhere else entirely.
The many “Call” stories that mark the beginning of Jesus’ public ministries are often straight forward enough, such as this one from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel
- As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Or this short bit from Matthew:
- As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
- As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.
I’ve always been intrigued by this particular pericope because, counting Jesus, there are four different people here (five actually, if you want to count the readers of the story as one), and none of them seem to be having the same conversation. Like Dillard and her weasels, I’m not sure that any of us are actually talking about the same thing.
Probably we are talking about the same thing but we see it – each from our own perspective – and our perspectives are so different that it sounds like we are all speaking different languages.
And finally, this brings us back to my original connection with Dillard’s quote. Are all these different call stories just different ways for Jesus to teach us to grasp our one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes us?
Is the point then, not so much the dropping of whatever it is we’re doing to follow him, but our recognition of what that one necessity is – that thing we suddenly see as so utterly necessary for us that we are willing to give up everything else to follow after it – to dangle from it limp wherever it takes us?
There’s one more call story I want to share here. This one comes from John’s gospel, but unlike the others, it’s not from the start of the story, but from the end of his life here as one of us. It’s found in the 21st chapter of John, after the cross and after the resurrection, when Jesus is talking with Peter on the beach beside the sea.
Twice he has asked Peter if he loves him .....
- He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he, Peter. would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
This so much more than a simple, “Come, and walk with me.” This is a call to go where Jesus goes, and do what he does – feed my sheep – and eventually follow him all the way to the kind of death he is describing here. Follow him with every fiber of his being until the very last breath in his body.
Maybe this is not the particular necessity that drives you – and it doesn’t have to be. But this is the intensity that should drive us and our necessary things. As usual, the scriptures speak to us across the centuries, and still address the issues that drive our lives. There is still wisdom to be found here if we use our minds and read and listen with open hearts.
Let us have the desire and the courage to follow where Jesus -- not the world’s desires, but Jesus -- leads us.
** Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters; (c) 1982, Annie Dillard; Harper & Row Publishers
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