|
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see." - John Newton
Today we wonder if the word wretch is too dramatic. I know that when I get to sing standing next to each other, when Jeff Kunkel comes to the line: "That saved a wretch like me," he likes to change the words to: "that saved a wretch like you -" and uses one long index finger to point to me! John Newton, the author of those words, did not think that word: "wretch" too dramatic to point the finger at himself.
John Newton lost his mother at the age of 7, and at the age of 11 his father, a merchant navy captain, took his son on his first sea-voyage. Newton lost his first job in a merchant's office because of "unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint." This behavior was to persist for years. In 1744 Newton joined the Royal Navy; he soon rebelled against the discipline of the Navy, deserted, was caught, put in irons, and flogged for desertion. Eventually he was able to leave the Navy by convincing his superiors to allow him to work on a slave ship. He continued to be arrogant, and in his own words: "I sinned with a high hand."
He worked for a slave-trader named Clow, who owned a plantation in the West of Africa. Newton's behavior resulted in cruel treatment by Clow. Newton's clothes turned to rags and he was forced to beg for food because he was not fed. Transferred to service about the Greyhound, a Liverpool ship, Newton left Africa to return home to England. Returning home, the ship was overtaken by an enormous storm. Afraid for his life, he remembered the line from Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ: "the uncertain continuance of life." During the storm, reflecting on these words, Newton converted to Christ.
"I once was lost but now I'm found..."
We know one another by what we do, don't we? We are a people of action, committed to action, regarded highly - or lowly - by our actions. History books are filled with the memory of the actions of people who have been in power throughout history. We are prone to judge those who do not do what we think they should be doing: "What are they waiting for?" "Who'll do their work while we are waiting for them?" we think, and say. "What are we going to do?" We ask.
When we are sad, or depressed, or frightened or angry, we think the way around our feelings - feelings which often make us feel powerless - is to do something.
We are not a people given to reflection. Reflection, it seems, is a lost art.
How many of us have gone through times in life when we find ourselves repeating the same mistakes, over and over? How many of us have several failed relationships, yet we choose the same kind of partner, over and over - after all, we have not changed, so we take this same person into our relationships! How many of us have made one mistake after another, bouncing from career to career, or job to job, or from one frantic activity to another, because we have not taken the time to reflect on our lives?
Today's scripture, is part of the larger story that contains the "feeding of the 5,000," one of the best-known miracle stories of the life of Jesus. Most of us have heard many sermons about that story, I am sure. I want to look at the passage from a different angle today, however. It's not that this way of looking at the story has never been taken; perhaps it is simply over-shadowed - as so many times of reflection are - by the great actions that book-mark the reflection.
We know John Newton was a slave ship worker, for example, and we know he penned the famous words of the hymn: "Amazing Grace." But that time of the storm? The time when he went inside himself, soul-searching, to learn who truly lived there? The time when he reflected on his life to discover who he was, what and what could not be changed? Those times of "in-action": are they important at all?
"Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." Jesus invites the disciples, as the people, hearing of the great miracles that this man and his followers perform, to get away from it all. "Sit," we think to ourselves, "the dishes can wait, the floor will be swept, the garbage will get taken out, the bills will be paid, the phone calls will be answered." We make these demand of ourselves, especially when we want to sit. And we make these demand of others. We want our emails answered right away! We want traffic to move faster, so that we can make it quickly from one important activity to the next! We don't want to get to that quiet place. Or are we afraid?
It has only been in the past couple of years that I have discovered that the quiet place Jesus invited to disciples to join him is not a place I can go to in mind alone.
I know well how to spend time in my mind: the mind is a place of action!
I must take my whole self to that quiet place: the longings, the fears, the painful feelings I do not want to feel, the shame, the anxiety, the rage. I must take all of these things to the place of quiet, that place of reflection. Most of us will keep on keepin' on - anything - to avoid that quiet place!
In life there really is an ebb and flow. We live in a cycle of night and day, spring and summer, autumn and winter. Plants rest. Our pets rest. God invited people to join God in the Sabbath - a day of rest from all the frantic activity of the week. There's the calm before the storm, when the storm is gathering. The sea ebbs and flows.
Do the children know about the time of reflection? More and more, it seems we take our children from one activity to another, teaching them, I suppose, that there is some danger in having a bit of quiet, "a quiet place to get some rest."
To learn to reflect, you must find someone who knows that quiet place, that place of reflection. You cannot go there with those who only know how to act.
A long time ago I heard a story that has stayed with me in the form of an image. An old woman nears the end of her life. In the corner, by the window, is her rocking chair. She has been too busy, for most of her life, to sit by the window, to sit in her chair and rock. This is a sad story, because after all, as she nears the end of her life, the rocking chair is empty by the window. And she does not know who she is.
|