August 13, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

John 6:35, 41-51

He walked out and introduced himself to us. He was going to be the preacher at the various liturgies of our week-long conference, and he was about to launch into his first talk with us. He was large, very large, as in mightily overweight. I guess he thought he might as deal with that right up front, so to speak. He quoted the famous actor and director Orson Welles, who once said, "My doctor has advised me to give up those intimate little dinners for 4, unless, of course, there are 3 other people eating with me." I wouldn’t make an issue of his weight were it not for a remarkable personal anecdote he shared with us, one that in my mind, sharpens its pointed humor because he was so large.

Do you know what a barge is? Barges are those huge flat floating platforms, big or bigger than a football field used for hauling freight up and down rivers. Our large preacher lives on the East Coast, and he said, one sunny summer day, feeling depressed about the way his life and ministry were going, he decided to spend an afternoon at a park down by the Hudson River. Sitting there wallowing in self-pity, like Elijah under that ancient brush sighing to God that "he had enough!" , he noticed a tugboat chugging slowly up the Hudson River, towing a huge barge. Watching the scene, in his self-pity he thought, "Look at that: I’m just like that tugboat, working so hard, trying to pull my church along, and nobody appreciates how hard I’m working." And so and so forth. You know what it’s like when you’re wallowing in self-pity. And then the Holy Spirit zapped him; out of nowhere came the shocking realization. "Good Lord! I’m not the tugboat, I’m the barge!" He brought down the house with insight. But it’s a great insight!

Now let’s switch directions for a minute. You need to know that translation is an art, not a science. Nowhere is its the art more important for Christians than the attempt to render ancient Hebrew and Greek into fair-to-the-texts modern English. Theological biases can be and usually are revealed in the words that are chosen. You heard today in the CEV, "Jesus said, No one can come to me, unless the Father who sent me makes them want to come." In the CEV the translators choose to translate the Greek word for "drawn", with these words, "makes them want to come". But saying it that way leaves the impression that we come to Jesus inspired somehow by God, but all the same, using our own willpower. God has to make us want to come, but it is up to us to somehow move toward Christ. The Holy Spirit is like the diesel fuel providing the energy for our mighty little tugboats engines. This is exactly the view of many churches and their preachers and teachers. We must cooperate with grace, we must give our hearts to the Lord, we must to do something in order to be saved. We must want to come to Christ and move accordingly.

Consider now the NRSV translation, which is, by the way, the classic translation of the Greek "Jesus said, No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me." And what drawn suggests is that God is charge, even of our believing in Christ. In this view, we are never the tugboats, we are always and forever and only the barge. No one can come to Christ unless God draws or pulls sometimes even as tugboats sometime do, shoves to Christ, especially to see Christ on the Cross, who suffers and dies for you, me, and the world.

And so we get to the shock of insight our large preacher received on a summer afternoon of self-pity. If we’re the barge, then God’s the tugboat and is totally in charge. God maneuvers us then, in whatever way necessary to haul us into eternal life--to Christ, our spiritual bread and sustenance. It’s all the work of God; it is never our work Soul torture happens whenever we forget this fundamental reality: we are the barge, and God is charge, because God is the tugboat.

Why do people drop away from church and turn away from God when they’re having problems? Because they are exactly like that large-egoed preacher, sitting on the hillside, looking at the river traffic and thinking, "Poor me, I am like that tugboat, and I’ve tried and tried so hard, and look what good it’s done. Look at all my problems. Look at how no one appreciates me, in fact they criticize everything I do. And look at all my failures. I just can’t seem to get it right. Poor me." And then the next deadly thought. "And why hasn’t God stepped in and made things better?" And then the even deadlier thought, "I guess in view of these problems I’m having, I’m not really very much of a Christian." And then, "I guess I better stay away from church and avoid communion. I am not worthy. I am a failure."

That’s the kind soul torture we get trapped in when we think we are the tugboats: the Elijah archetype of a dangerous spiritual self-pity, trapped in our need to be the achievers concerned with our performance and with seeing immediate results of our faithful efforts! But think about it! Just what can we do, anyway, that is going to impress God? Does the fate of the Universe depend on how well we impress our boss at work, or our spouse across the dinner table? Does God only see what we’ve done (and usually poorly or not enough, in our view)? Or is God about the future, about what we can be and will be, if we let God drag us up the river and little bit closer to Christ?

The author Ron Lee Dunn tells the story of two altar boys. One was born in 1892 in Eastern Europe. The other was born just three years later in a small town in Illinois. Though they lived very separate lives in very different parts of the world, these two altar boys had almost identical experiences. Each boy was given the opportunity to assist his parish priest in the service of communion. While handling the communion cup, they both accidentally spilled some of the wine on the carpet by the altar. There the similarity in their story ends. The priest in the Eastern European church, seeing the purple stain, slapped the altar boy across the face and shouted, "Clumsy oaf! Leave the altar." The little boy grew up to become an atheist and a communist. His name was Marshall Josip Tito - dictator of Yugoslavia for 37 years. The priest in the church in Illinois upon seeing the stain near the altar, knelt down beside the boy and look him tenderly in the eyes and said, "It's alright son. You'll do better next time. You'll be a fine priest for God someday." That little boy grew up to become the much loved Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.

There is the gospel! We are drawn, not by wrath and condemnation, but by love. God is love. God draws us by love. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me. We’re not always pretty, but always, and, steadily, by the power of God, the barges of our lives are tenderly and lovingly drawn, pulled, nudged ever closer to Christ and his feast of salvation.

Yeah, I know, I know, you’ve made a mess of things, but don’t worry. You’ll be a fine saint for God someday. Amen.