It’s said that back when Ireland was mostly peopled by farmers and fisher folk, most of the old fishermen used to say a particular prayer as they pushed off from the shore:

Dear Lord, be good to me
for the sea is so wide and my boat is so small.

The sea in those parts was unpredictable. And small boats in stormy seas are a recipe for disaster. Some say that the prayer is not Irish but Breton – a Celtic area across the channel. But that doesn’t change the equation, since the seas of the channel can whip up even worse. Few Irish or Breton families were untouched by tragedy born of the sea.

Today, if you take a tour of any U.S. nuclear submarine, odds are you will find on the bridge a plaque engraved with this same prayer. Admiral Hyman Rickover, “the father of the U.S. submarine service,” gave one to President John F. Kennedy, who kept it on his desk in the oval office. It was to remind him that his responsibilities were too great a load to carry without God.

What does this have to do with today’s Gospel? I’ll get to that… but first a question or two.

In what direction do we read the Scriptures? Left to right, correct?

And in what direction do we interpret what we read there? Left to right and linear, correct? So when we read a text like today’s – “Those who love me will keep their word,” and “whoever does not love me does not keep my words,” – we tend to understand the actions as leading from one to another, often implying logical consequence. And so we often us such texts to make a judgment about people, like when we say, “That was not a very Christian thing to say” (or do).

But this passage was not written in English, nor by an Englishman. It was written in Greek by a Jew whose native tongue was either Hebrew or Aramaic, which read from right to left. And while Greek may be written and read in a left-to-right orientation, its use of case endings renders a word’s relative placement in the sentence is almost insignificant.

I think that in today’s Gospel Jesus is not making an evaluative comment but simply stating a fact of life – of spiritual life: That loving Jesus Christ, living his word, being loved by God his Father, and having both of them coming to live within your heart are all of a piece – they all go together. True, loving Christ makes us love to live into Christ’s word, and that that in turn helps us to open our hearts more to God. But God’s love for us is what makes it possible for us to love at all. And hearing the word of Christ is part of what softens our hearts and make it possible for us to let God in. Without God loving us first, without Christ love enabling us to trust, without God’s Spirit of love coursing through us, we are nothing… we can do nothing.

Yesterday was Darnestown Day: D-Day, one could say without too much overstatement. Quite an undertaking. I know that several times along the way it must have seemed to Terri Murphy and her “Band of Brothers (and Sisters)” like an impossible task. And perhaps it may be said, with tongue only partly in cheek of our D-Day, what Winston Churchill said of his:

“Never in the face of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”

Why did we take on something that big? Well, it wasn’t for the money, I can tell you that: we didn’t make that much or expect to (not that there’s anything wrong with fundraising). And it wasn’t to get a lot of new parishioners (not that there would be anything wrong with that either: some may come again, but most won’t until next D-Day. Mostly we did it because long ago, even as we were just forming St. Nick’s, we felt that God was calling us to do more than just build a spiritual community within our own walls: an improbable community held together by God’s love alone. We felt God also calling us to draw on that unique sense of community in order to reach out beyond our walls and help the people of our area discover a greater sense of community, too.

A daunting task. Just becoming the kind of spiritual community God was calling us to become was challenging enough. The only reason it doesn’t seem like such a miracle to us today is that after having lived that way for 14 years we’ve become used to it.

Yes, I know: sometimes it does seem scary now as we contemplate becoming a larger church with more people and more services. “How can that work?” we often ask ourselves, “How can we possibly have a sense of connection and community in a growing congregation with an expanding organization?”

Well, actually: It’s not possible… without God. Yet in the power of Christ’s love, it’s no more impossible than it was for God to create the kind of community have already become.

You see, the question for those of us who are followers of Christ is never, “Is it possible?” but always “Is it what God is calling us to be and to do?”

A friend and colleague of mine who started a church a few years ago in Kingland, Georgia, recently told this. “When we started King of Peace, we prayed to God for a vision so big that if God were not in it with us, we would fall flat on our face.” A

I think there’s great wisdom in that. I think that every Christian and every Christian community should pray a prayer like that from time to time. In effect, that’s what a just couple of dozen people did when St. Nick’s was planted. And I think that as we become more and more convinced that God is calling to grow into a new size of congregation with a new kind of organization, yet still held together by the power of Christ’s love, that is, in effect, what we are praying now. And so we might as well pray it clearly and thank God for seeding in us a B-HAG: A Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. A Vision so big, so hairy, so audacious, that if Christ is not in it with us we will sure fall on our face.

And so let us end with the same collect we prayed at the beginning of our worship service:

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.