January 22, 2006 (Jimmie Johnson)

I Corinthians 7:29-31

I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 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. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him

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When Mark tells the story of Jesus calling his disciples and their quick decision to leave everything and follow, we need to remember that, as a storyteller, Mark is using a technique called telescoping. He is not letting us know all that was involved nor how long it all took; he wants us to clearly see in magnified fashion that the call of God is the highest word spoken over our lives. No decision we make is as important as hearing God’s purpose in Jesus and following into that purpose. No other person or activity is to be given God’s place in our life.

Why? Because God is selfish or needy or controlling? No, because God alone loves so freely as to ensure that our service to God becomes the path to our own freedom and joy. Every form of human love is conditional; God’s love is unconditional. There is some kind of price tag to human love, some kind of expectation, even if hidden to all. Only God is free to love unconditionally. Only following into God’s good purpose will free us.

Even before the Gospels were written, at the time when Christianity was just underway with the Easter news and all believers assuming the world was about to come to an end, St. Paul begins to write in his letters that the most important God-idea for believers was not that the end was near but rather that all ends except God. You hear it echoed in the reading from Corinthians. Only God is ultimate. All else fades away. Whatever our realities, our situations, our circumstances— whether married or single, working or unemployed, happy or grieving—our attachment to God relativizes every other obligation, commitment, or loyalty. Again, is it because God is pathetically needy?

Because God needs constantly to be inflated by our commitment to God alone? No. No, God alone loves so unconditionally that our attachment to God is the only attachment that lasts, because God alone is ultimate and does not fade away. Because only God’s relationship with us is innocent of all neediness. So Paul, writing to Christians, helping them think through how to live as Christ’s people trusting in God’s future, and Mark, writing to convey this grand narrative of who God is in Jesus Christ, are saying to us that our attachment to God calls for degrees of detachment from all else.
Let me ’fess up to how difficult this call to hallow God’s name above all else is for me. I practice a spiritual discipline each morning that involves the reading of a Psalm, the reading from one of the New Testament letters, and reading from a devotional source called A Book of Daily Meditations for Men.

Sometimes one or more of these readings will stop me in my tracks and leave me with the feeling that a real Word has been spoken to me. Of course, sometimes I go through the reading disciplines, say my prayers, and leave for the day with no special sense of hearing a word or seeing an insight at all. Just nothing seems to happen. I see no new light, I hear no new sense of guidance; yet, when I do not practice this discipline for more than a couple of days, I feel a strange loneliness. A sense that I am missing Someone. I sense I am out of balance, a sense of being too detached from God while being too attached to someone or something else, or even a feeling.

Just before Christmas, as I was reading my meditation, I was awed by the powerful insight offered by St. Theresa. She wrote: “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. Everything passes away except God.” She must have been reading St. Paul. St. Theresa’s words revealed such a core fear of mine. But even this morning I am unsure what this fear is.
The fear of being abandoned? Possibly. The fear of fear? The fear of being embarrassed? The fear of failure? This fear, whatever it is about, has throughout my life pushed me into behaviors of attachment. Behaviors that are controlling and manipulating. Behaviors enacted so that I can feel secure. Behaviors and feelings that make everything about me, Jimmie. The idea of detachment is not natural for me. The idea of letting go is the hardest and most demanding aspect of my faith journey. Almost everything about “letting go” disturbs me or frightens me. Even good and beautiful experiences, I become anxious about coming to an end.

I’ve mentioned to you before that my mother suffered from a form of mental illness. I suspect that she became sick of mind and heart about the time I was in the seventh grade. There were many dimensions to her hurt that I never understood. Toward the end of her life, before she became homebound and bedridden, I was often puzzled by her behavior at our summertime family gatherings at the lake. One thing I noticed was that each year when the family would gather for a week of being together at the lake, everything was great and joyful for her on Sunday, the day it all began. On Monday and Tuesday, the happiness was evident on her face. But on Wednesday, it was as if a switch had been flipped. She would become angry, resentful, anxious, and demanding. It took me a long time to realize what was happening. On Wednesday, the sense of the week’s ending took over, robbing her of the enjoyment of the remaining time, and, frankly, ruining the whole week, even its pleasant memories for the rest of us.

I think in my own soul, that I, too, struggle with letting go and not becoming depressed. Perhaps that is why St. Theresa’s words about detachment spoke so sternly yet hopefully to me just a few short weeks ago, the challenge of trusting that in life everything passes away, fades away, except God. And how this truth need not be bad news.

The writer William Blake wrote that we need “to learn to kiss the joy as it flies.” To not grasp that thing or person or time in life that we love so tightly that we destroy, choke, control, and kill the joy as it is granted us.
We cannot permanently control and keep. We must learn to kiss the joy as it flies. Learn to trust God and let go, and, by detaching, not place upon those joys the burden of being forever. They will change, go their own way, fade; only God can fulfill the eternal.

One last thing: Recognizing the priority of God’s presence in our life that permits a proper detachment from all else and everyone else also means being filled with a sincere closeness and love toward another, yet knowing we cannot fix or protect that person. It means we can be in healthy emotional contact but not have to react to someone else’s issues. We grow with God’s help so that we can respond from our own center, our own soul, with what is fitting for us, not confusing our own life with theirs. Being detached means allowing others to be in the hands of God; we simply cannot live their lives for them.

In all honesty, when I have tried to control the lives of others, live their lives, determine their emotions and decisions, it was not at all about an unselfish love for them, nor my working innocently for a desired outcome for them. No, it was about me and my being frightened and unable to separate myself from them. But spiritual detachment gives us an inner quiet, a sense of our limits, and the freedom to live the only life we can: our own. Through practicing the receiving of the sacraments, the sermons, the scriptures, we realize that God does not end.

We can enter into a way of living that is not invested in binding others to us, but rather trusting in life and in death that we do belong to God. All done not to bind others to us, including God, but done out of the spiritual realization that we will not be left alone in the end whatever form the end takes.

In life and death we belong to God. And only God is forever. Only God lasts. God’s memory of us is enough. We will not be left nor forgotten. We will be loved into freedom.
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Sermon: The Rev. Dr. Jimmie D. Johnson
Edited for publication: Georgia Brady