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I had this unexpected moment on Wednesday. And it had to do with being summoned to jury duty. I had already postponed a couple of times and when I got the summons three weeks ago, I figured I’d better respond.
I walked into the juror room down at 2600 S. California Avenue on Wednesday. The room looks a little like an enormous waiting hall at O’hare, and sitting there at a table in front of me, I did a double take and recognized a friend, E. E is one of those friends that I cross paths with at parties or synod events now and then. We share a close friend. We sang in this pub choir thing together once.
He took one look at me, shut what he was reading, and we proceeded to talk for four and a half hours. There wasn’t anything else to do. Lucky for me, I didn’t realize I could bring a computer, so I didn’t.
I can’t remember the last time I talked to anyone for 4 straight hours except to my spouse while we were on a road trip. We talked about our work, about the presidential debate, about what we had for dinner the night before, about our families, and I drove home that evening with this unexpected lightness.
In our gospel reading today, a couple of guys spend the day tagging along after Jesus and later that day, they say to Simon Peter, “we’ve found him. We have found the messiah.” The next day, we read about Jesus who finds Philip. Then Phillip finds his buddy Nathaniel. The gospel storyteller could have said that they “crossed paths” with each other or they “saw” each other or “encountered each other” or “discovered” each other but, instead, they use the word “found.”
In fact, in the gospel of John, there’s a whole lot of finding that happens. Jesus finds the woman at the well. (She also seems to find him.) He finds the formerly blind man who was cast out of the synagogue and makes him a disciple.
The only time I use the word found is if something (or someone) has been lost: I’m at the park and can’t find my kid. I walk into a restaurant and I can’t find the person I’m looking for. I was at a football game and on the phone with the person I was meeting trying like crazy to find them.
Outside of the gospel of John, another place where this word is used is when Jesus tells the story of the woman who lost her coin and searches the house top to bottom until she finds it. It's also in story of the shepherd who loses a sheep and searches until he finds it.
To be found goes hand in hand with being lost.
Lost. I’ve felt lost plenty of times. Sure, I feel lost when I can’t find someone at the ball park. But, more often than that, I am lost when I walk into a space, and I feel like I don’t belong there and want to turn around and run right back out. We get lost when we lose our capacity to trust someone and we can’t see our way forward with them. We get lost when all the familiar landmarks are gone, and the expected order of thing is all mixed up. Sometimes we get lost when the fog of illness descends on our lives and all of the sudden, God, who is supposedly all goodness, starts to seem...not so good anymore.
We get lost with unexpected news or when someone close to us dies too soon or too unexpectedly. We spin into lostness when we are trapped in the grip of anxiety or addiction or in the bitterness that will not let us forgive. We get lost when our children break our hearts, or the dearest person betrayed us, our marriages dies, or we retire from or lose the job that defined us. We get lost in wanting our lives to mean something and fearing that maybe they don't.
Then there are those of us who get lost very close to this church space… We take one look around this big room or this community of faces and we can’t figure out how to read the roadmap. We get lost when the prayers to fall empty, when the liturgy clangs in our ears, when the bread crumbles like dust, when we feel abandoned or bored or irritated or just out of sync. We get lost when it seems like someone is steadily drawing the threads out of the very rug of belief that we stand upon and we look down at the threadbare patches trying to figure out where on earth we are.
In the gospel of Luke, we have those stories of the sheep that has wandered off or the coin that has gone missing. We could read into these stories that it is God who goes and does the searching. It’s God that returns with the sheep over Her neck or that sweeps His house top to bottom until he finds that coin.
In the gospel of John, however, sometimes it's Jesus who finds people in the stories. But, sometimes, it's the people who find each other.
I have had an unusually busy and stressful last week. For a bunch of reasons, it was the kind of week where I was losing sleep and waking up at 4:30am with my mind racing.
When I encountered my friend at jury duty, it was as if God had turned on a magnet at home base and drew me back home. It was like God sat me down on the chiropractor table and clicked all my bones back into the right place. As I shared with E some of what was keeping me up, the dust in my head began to settle.
I had been lost.
But then, I was seen.
I was heard.
I was listened to and known.
I was found.
But then, I was seen.
I was heard.
I was listened to and known.
I was found.
In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, to be a disciple is to follow Jesus. In the gospel of John, to be a disciple has to do with being found. Or, finding the one who formed us out of the dust and has called us by name: The woman at the well is found. The man born blind is found. Nathaniel is found. Phillip is found.
To be a disciple is to be found, and then, it’s to abide in God’s love. It’s to go out and find the one who is lost and steady them with that age-old story (or presence) of God’s sacred love. It’s to trust that you will be found, that your name will be spoken, and that you’ll be offered an arm to steady yourself when the light grows dim. It’s to know that God’s very essence is right there abiding with you.
This series that we’re starting today is called “I’ve been meaning to ask.” It was born out of an interaction that one of the artists, Lisle, had when she was poking around in her back yard a few years ago. She was relatively new to the neighborhood and her, neighbor, who she didn’t know that well came up to the fence. At face value, they were from different generations and they had pretty different flags and yard signs in front to their house. The neighbor came up to the fence and called over to her, “I’ve been meaning to ask…where are you from?” They talked for all of 10-15 minutes and then went back to their yards, but it created a subtle shift for the better in their relationship.
Sometimes, we become disconnected and lost from each other. Sometimes, it can really be a lot to keep up community and social ties--life can be so hectic and full. More and more, I think that the act of community building, which we see illustrated all over our scriptures, is a sacred practice of finding one another.
Our call is to step into a space or into the pause and to find one another. It’s to be the hands and heart and face and feet of Love to one another. To abide in God together. To be found.
