February 9, 2025: What is ours to do?

Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

What is Ours to Do?

Homily for St. John’s Episcopal Church

by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn

given February 9, 2025

Luke 5:1-11

 

In times of great anxiety it is tempting to think that we must respond to each new shocking event with words and actions. Surely to say and do nothing is wrong. And yet we are also faced with the limits of our own power, the limits of our creativity, the limits of our endurance. Where do we get the wisdom and strength to know what is ours to do?

 

Bishop Steven Charleston is a Choctaw elder, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Alaska, who for many years has posted a short daily reflection on Facebook. He seamlessly integrates Christian and Indigenous wisdom, and perhaps because of this he almost always offers a perspective I would not have thought of and greatly appreciate. I’d like to share several of these reflections with you today. A few weeks ago he said this:

 

When things feel like they are happening too fast, the elders suggest slowing down your reactions to them. Leaping forward to respond to every new reality can wear you out. Practice mindfulness. You will know when and how to act when your response will have an impact. Do not lose your sense of balance. Choose your own time and place.[1]

In another post he said this:

Watch the birds in the wind. They do not fly into the currents, beating their wings to exhaustion as they move against the flowing tide, but instead they spread their wings and hover, gliding on the air without effort, riding the thermals, looking for the time and place to come down safely. Watch the birds. They are teaching us.[2]

This morning, he said this:

In 1830, when President Andrew Jackson ordered my people, and thousands more from other nations, on the death march known as the Trail of Tears, he did so by ignoring the Constitution he had sworn to uphold. He became a dictator. As indigenous people, we have been down this road before. We know where it leads. We will not go there again.

And the last reflection I’d like to share:

Shock and awe is a military tactic. Comfort and awe is a spiritual alternative. The military option supports the will to dominate. The spiritual option supports the commitment to liberate. We share with all people an awesome grace: the path to peace, on the walk of truth and reconciliation, with justice lived for the sake of all creation. We do not seek control, but something much more transformational and enduring: we seek kinship.[3]

The way we know what is ours to do is by being grounded in a reality and a story deeper and truer than the one that surrounds us on all sides. It is by experiencing a vision like what Bishop Charleston has shared—tasting  and touching a reality that transcends hatred and contempt but still tells the truth and offers compassion. And this groundedness, this vision, this experience does not come all in a day. It is sown like seeds in the ground that appear to do nothing for many days, but one day shoots appear, and soon after there is a garden of beautiful flowers.

In today’s gospel reading we hear the story of Jesus calling his first disciples. Somehow, he convinces Simon to let him get in their boat and put out into the water a little bit so he’s got room to teach the crowds. You wonder how he convinced a stranger to do this, but if you read Luke’s gospel carefully you find out they weren’t strangers after all. The chapter before, soon after Jesus declared his manifesto of justice and liberation in his hometown and his neighbors tried to run him off a cliff for it, Jesus went to Simon’s home and healed Simon’s very sick mother-in-law. So Simon had already been exposed to who Jesus was, to his teachings and his healing. Those experiences were like seeds in the ground of Simon’s heart, beginning to change Simon’s whole understanding about what was possible in life. So when Jesus tells Simon to put out into deep water after fishing all night and catching nothing, it isn’t perhaps quite so surprising that he humors Jesus and does it. But when he actually catches an extravagant amount of fish—out in the deep water where by their own effort they had accomplished nothing—he has this existential crisis where he realizes he is not up to the possibility Jesus embodies. He knows himself. He says he is a sinful man. I don’t know what modern equivalent would come from each of our mouths—I am just a priest, an accountant, a grocery store worker, a stay-at-home parent or a librarian or a retired person or a student. I struggle with my temper or trauma or addiction or depression. I absolutely don’t have what it takes to meet the needs of the moment. And Jesus’ response is always the same. Don’t be afraid, he says. From now on you will use the skills you already know but for a different and deeper purpose, with God’s help.

Perhaps we can relate to Simon’s feelings of inadequacy. Sometimes in today’s world we watch someone do something amazing and think, we could never do that. Who among us could come up with the wise things Bishop Charleston says on Facebook? Mariann Budde spoke truth to the President in a way that was loving and humble and without any hatred. I’ve been preaching for years, and I can’t imagine being in her place. But she did what was precisely hers to do. We aren’t called to do everything. We can’t. But each one of us is called to do what is uniquely ours to do, where we are, that no one else can do because no one else is in our shoes, with the gifts that each of us uniquely has.

And what is ours to do will make a difference precisely to the extent that it comes from a different place than the toxic environment around us. We can be right, but if we are shrill and self-righteous and yelling we will not be effective. In fact I would even go so far as to say if we are shrill and self-righteous and yelling we are probably not in touch with the whole truth. We will only be able to come from a different place if we have found it and spent time in it.

As is probably true for many of you I come from a family that has a very wide array of political and theological perspectives. On Friday night we met to celebrate three birthdays. It was the first time our whole family had gotten together since President Trump was inaugurated. One of my relatives is trans, which she is courageously public about.  And I am so grateful that everyone in our family without exception has loved and affirmed her throughout her transition even though we come from such radically different perspectives in life.

But my trans relative’s parents are sick with worry for her in today’s environment. I have been feeling crushed with the weight of so much fear and harm everywhere I turn among people our church cares for. And honestly, I was feeling I just couldn’t go to Friday night’s birthday party without naming the elephant in the room: that the difference in our worldviews had led to real changes and struggles and pain and danger not just for our niece but for many others I’m in touch with. But I didn’t want to start just another family political argument.

So I worked for hours on a letter to send to those in my family who see the world differently than I do. I worked to share the truth as I see it without sugarcoating it, but also without demonizing my family members, and truly recognizing that I don’t know what they are thinking and feeling about recent events or even about the President that I assume they voted for. I tried to find a place of authentic compassion. I truly do know and believe that we all think everyone should be treated with respect. It felt risky to send the letter before we got together on Friday. But I did. And you know what? My family members responded that they wanted to get together in person so they could understand how I was feeling better. Another family member thanked me for having a brave conversation that she really needed to hear. There was an outpouring of kindness and authentic feeling that had no blame or rage in it, even though it was uncomfortable and hard. We still have not had the deeper in person conversation that we need to have to try to bridge the gap. But I experienced a grace truly different from the toxicity all around us. Given how often my family and I have just fought over politics, this felt truly like a miracle.

This community of St. John’s can be a place we go to drink a different Kool-Aid than the one surrounding us everywhere. Here we can refuse to meet violence with violence or hatred with hatred. Here we can sink our roots deeply into compassion, because our first value is sacredness. Sacredness affirms that every single person without exception is made in the image of God. We all have goodness at our core even if sickness and evil cover that goodness like a storm covers the sun. If we begin from the place that everyone is made of light, and that kinship and not dominance is our goal, we can cultivate a sanctuary of light right here in the midst of the sickness and hatred all around us.

I pray that the energy of love and compassion and healing be made available to you where you are the most hurt, or afraid, or angry. I pray that you recognize your own divine light first, so that you may also recognize the divine light in others. I pray that the Spirit of Christ grants us experiences of such abundance in the midst of scarcity that we cannot help but leave everything to follow his Way of Love. Amen.

[1] Steven Charleston daily reflection on Facebook, January 23, 2025.

[2] Steven Charleston, daily reflection on Facebook, January 30, 2025.

[3] Steven Charleston, daily reflection on Facebook, January 24, 2025.

10am Service