On Sunday night, Austin Agape gathered upstairs in the Youth Room for a night of Super Bowl watching! Colts fans and Saints fans collided! Actually none of us ran into each other, and we simply enjoyed the game!
Thanks to Marco for his technological skills, and thanks to Barbara for the delicious food!
And thanks to Kathleen for this stunning cake!
We enjoyed some ping pong. .
Some other games. . .
Some music. . .
And some general silliness. . .
We also gathered together to worship. We heard a reflection and had a meaningful discussion about living in the present moment and seeking God's presence and call for our lives. Thanks to everyone for your meaningful words!
Reflection: But What About Now?
Luke 5:1-11
Isaiah 6:1-8
The Future. Oh. . .the future. When you’re a college student – when you’re a young adult – it seems to be the air you breathe. The Future. Why? It’s constantly surrounding you – bombarding you -and even if you want a break from the future, it’s definitely hard to get one. People are constantly telling you, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways: “You’re the future! We’re counting on you! Future, Future, Future. . .”
But it’s not just that you embody the future in the eyes of other adults. It’s also that as far back as when you were “knee-high to a grasshopper” you’ve been prepped for the future. Kindergarten getting you ready for elementary school, elementary school getting you ready for middle school, middle school making sure you’re prepped for high school, high school getting you ready for college, and yes, college getting you ready for your future. Tests, tests, tests. Preparation for the future. The TAKS test (Ian and I had the ISTEP –
But maybe we’ve missed something here. Aren’t you future people, well, alive now?
Oh yeah. . .maybe we’ve all forgotten that – not just the middle agers who make us out to be the “Future people” – but maybe we’ve forgotten too. We get wrapped up in the future, and maybe we forget that we are living, breathing people who are alive now, alive to discover the world right in front of us, just the way it is in this moment, alive to allow this moment to make us who we are so that we might go into the future shaped by the now.
The now is connected to the future, isn’t it? That is so ‘duh’, but I don’t we think about it as often as we should. Why? Because we’re rushing around trying to make our future a good one, and we’ll sacrifice anything in the present moment to get there. Maybe we’ll be workaholics, sacrificing the joy of our relationships. Maybe we’ll think so intensely about that upcoming test that we’ll forget to notice how gorgeous it is outside. Maybe we’ll sacrifice our sleep. Maybe we’ll forget to eat. And who knows what else? Maybe we’ll do this because we value our future, and we want it to be a good one.
And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with the future. I hope it doesn’t sound like picking on it too much. The future is a wonderful thing to plan for! A wonderful thing to dream about! It’s just that we have a problem in our planning. . . By the time, we get to that future, by the time the future we’ve been planning for becomes the present, we’re on to the next thing, planning for the future again. Do we lose the now, totally in service to the future?
What I mean, is that there was a period of time when many of you were planning and dreaming about college. Wouldn’t it be sad if you missed those glorious moments, the small things, the beautiful moments of right now?
Tonight we have two call stories before us – the story of Jesus calling his disciples by the
You would think so, and certainly the answer is at least partially, yes. As young people, you’re often asking, “What is it that I should do with my life? How can I make a difference? What can I add to the world? What’s my calling?” Yes. “What’s my calling, and how can I find out what it is?”
Good questions. We ask them all the time, and we shouldn’t tire of asking them. But here’s a thing to remember: Our calling – that thing we want to do in this world for this world – is not just about the future. It’s not simply this thing we’re waiting to get to. Our calling involves the present. The calling involves now.
The disciples were living a pretty run-of-the-mill day. Of course, they weren’t disciples yet. They were fishermen. They were doing what fishermen do: Fish. But this run-of-the-mill day wasn’t going so well, not yet. They hadn’t caught any fish. And this story of calling is obviously a miracle story, perhaps and odd one. Jesus tells Peter to go back into the deep water and throw the nets out again. And all of the sudden, their nets are full with more fish than they can count! More than they can imagine! And Jesus says to these fishermen who will be disciples, “From now on you will be catching people.” From now on you will be inviting others to move from a shallow life out into deep seas, seas that call human beings to love, peace, justice, healing, wholeness. That call is a miracle, isn’t it? It certainly involves their future, doesn’t it?
But you know what else is a miracle? It’s easy to miss it. Before Jesus tells Peter to cast his nets, he asks Peter to take him out in the boat so that he can speak to the people. The text says, “Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.” That language about sitting down is important. Sitting down? Pretty mundane, right? Not quite a miracle, right? Well, in this text, it’s significant. It’s a clue to us. Luke is telling us that Jesus was taking the stance of a rabbi. And all of the sudden, a pretty mundane, everyday scene becomes infinitely holy in the present moment. Jesus creates a synagogue, right there on the
And then we have this very odd, intriguing story from Isaiah. Isaiah went into the temple on what may have been a mundane, run-of-the-mill day. Sure, the temple is a sacred, holy place. But was he expecting the deep sense of transcendence he would encounter there? I don’t know, but something so holy and transcendent happened that it must have been hard to put into words. And so he writes it in a holy vision. Isaiah finds himself in the presence of God, and God’s holiness is so profound that Isaiah is called to a confessional moment, “‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’” (By the way, it’s interesting that Peter says something similar, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”) But God’s presence shows up in the mundane to say in effect: “I am calling you – you, the fullest you of this present moment, quirks and all – to use your gifts right now to follow me and act in this world.”
So that brings us back to the question of the hour (the question of so many hours as we live our young adult lives) – What is my calling, and how do I know what it is?
Wouldn’t it be convenient to have an obvious answer for that, a little formula to figure it out? I don’t, and none of us do. But instead of associating that calling solely with the future, let’s start associating it with the now. Isn’t it true that we’re called – not only to some future vocation but to this very day? Who are you called to be today? Tonight? In the next hour?
If we live fully in this moment and in all the present moments we have, who knows where we’ll find God? And so here are two questions for our discussion tonight: Where have you seen God recently? And how is God calling you through that? I’m going to sit down here too. Where have you seen God at work?
- Renee Roederer, Campus Minister, and the Austin Agape Community
[1] Idea borrowed from a sermon given at UPC by Ben Johnston-Krase in 2007.
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