My friend Joby and I had a conversation about church today, as I mentioned in the post below.
We were taking an opportunity to do some joint-ranting and during said rant we started talking about the "relationship with Jesus" aspect of a sustainable faith.
The thing is -- that phrase "relationship with Jesus" is something that scares many of us mainline Christians. We prefer to know Jesus as "Christ" and thereby keep him a little removed and certainly more controlable.
I think we're scared because "relationship with Jesus" implies a surrender like any good relationship. We've got to give up a little (or a lot) of ourselves to let another have space in our lives. The fulcrum of any good relationship is a trust that the other will treat the space created with respect, but in order to trust, there's a lot of surrender, and surrender means lack of control in midst of a myriad of unknowns. And boy do we ever dislike the unknown.
Joby reminded me of a seminary professor of ours who took offense to the phrase, "Jesus is my fishing buddy." I don't know whether he saw that on a bumper sticker or whether it was just a colloquialism passed around that part of Kentucky, but he was really adamant that fishing buddy is expressly NOT a role Jesus should be in. But why not? As Joby reminded me today, perhaps our professor had never been fishing with a buddy.
And I thought of the few times I have been fishing, all with my grandfather as my fishing buddy. Gramps selected the spot, prepared the tackle, baited the hook, showed me how to cast, sat in companionable silence as we waited for the fish to bite and listened to the cicadas. He listened to my questions, provided some answers, gently introduced other possibilities. When we were done, he had me help put everything away and we headed home to enjoy our catch. My fishing buddy was secure, comforting, and loving. It's not that he didn't challenge me -- Gramps made me put many a worm on a hook -- but I trusted that he would not hurt me and that the challenges would bring me growth and open up new worlds to me.
As I see it, it would be pretty darn beneficial if more of us in these churches had a relationship with Jesus that could be likened to that of a fishing buddy. It's gotta be better than not necessarily knowing if we even have a relationship in the first place!
I named this blog GO FISH because my job as a pastor is to find inspiration and share hope with others and to lead them to the Fisherman and their role as fishers. But this is not just my task or the task of those of us who have jumped through the seminary hoops. This is what Jesus said to those he asked to follow him. "Come follow me," he said, "And I will make you fish for people."
It's almost as if he assumed that knowing him and following him would naturally encourage us to invite others on the fishing expedition. I pray that's the case for those of us who have chosen to follow.
