Wanting Jesus

​Our readings for this morning are unusually rich. We get more of David’s dramatic story, and Paul’s beautiful prayer, and in our Gospel reading we hear about Jesus feeding thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. Then Jesus walks on water three or four miles across a rough sea and against a strong wind. That’s a LOT!
 
But I’m going to ignore all that great stuff and focus just on the last sentence of our Gospel reading. So, I encourage folks here in person to take the bulletin insert home and read through the readings slowly and prayerfully. If you are joining us online, you can find the passages in your Bibles easily enough. Going through our readings on your own is good every week, but especially with the readings for this Sunday.
 
But as I say, it’s the last sentence of our Gospel that stuck with me. “The disciples wanted to take Jesus into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.”  
 
As is often the case with Scripture, I’m left wanting more information. Did Jesus actually get into the boat, or did they just want him in the boat? John doesn’t tell us. And does John mean that the boat immediately reached their destination as yet another miracle, or just that the disciples suddenly found their way eased?
 
I would like to know those things, but John clearly doesn’t care about them.
 
The key word in this sentence is “wanted.” All John cares about is the disciples’ desire for Christ to be with them, and their resulting ability to get where they needed to go.
 
There is a lot just in that.
 
I think of two moments in my own life.
 
First moment: At a difficult time in my life, a therapist asked me what I wanted. She meant, what did I want out of my life? As I heard it put in a later context, what was my BHAG, my big, hairy audacious goal? What was it that made my life cohere?
 
It turns out to be a more difficult question that it seems. At least it was for me at that time. I tried in several different ways to dodge the question, but the therapist kept on me: what is it that you, Harvey, want for your life? Finally, I had to admit to her, and, for the first time, to myself, too, that I didn’t know what I wanted. It was a startling admission. 
 
A second moment: Carrie and I had not been married long before the two of us went canoeing on the Connecticut River. I had canoed before, but not since I was a child. And as a child I had never really learned to steer a canoe.
 
As you may know, the person in the back of the canoe does the steering. When Carrie was in the back, we got wherever we wanted to go in a more or less straight line without too much effort.
 
Not so when I was in the back and in charge of steering us. I wanted to go straight forward, but we’d veer off to the right. I would paddle a little harder in an effort to get us back on track, only to overcorrect so much that we veered towards the left. I’d paddle still harder, and we’d go back to the right.
 
That is not a good way to make progress. Among other things, it’s exhausting. Poor Carrie tried to be patient. Meanwhile I was getting more and more frustrated.
 
Life, particularly when we don’t know what we want out of life, can be like that canoe ride. We wander in one direction for a while. But that doesn’t work out, so we change course and head in a different direction. But it’s not any better. And we get tired and frustrated, without making any progress or experiencing any real satisfaction.
 
That was my life at the time I couldn’t answer the question, what do you want?
 
What I needed then, what we all need, is clarity about our own deepest desires.
 
I come back to our Gospel sentence. The disciples wanted Jesus in the boat with them.
 
That is what we all want. That is the deep desire of every human being. To be in right relationship with Christ. To go where Christ leads us. Or at least to move in that direction, even if we can’t ever get all the way there in this lifetime.
 
But for many of us, for much of the time, that desire for Christ is buried so deep inside that we aren’t even aware of our own desire, much less directed by it. And so we stumble through life, seeking satisfaction in things that can never satisfy. And all along, the answer—Christ—is right there, in front of us, inside us, with us, all the time.
 
So, imagine that I am that therapist, from all those years ago in my life. What is it that you want?
 
Now, I have just told you the right answer. We should all want Jesus in the boat with us. But ask yourself if that is true for you, as you actually live your life. Does the desire for Christ, or the presence of Christ, shape everything else you do?
 
For me, today, the answer is yes, in some ways and some of the time. But not always.
 
So, here’s a third moment from my life. When Carrie and I were travelling back in May, I got off course. We had a great trip. But I was hoping for more spiritually out of the trip than I was getting.
 
Thankfully, Terry, who is a little like a compass, steering me in the right direction, had loaned me a book on prayer called Toward God.[1] In it, the author argues that we are all naturally oriented toward God. We are created that way. Ideally, then, our life is a journey toward God.
 
But we all get off course all the time. And so, said this author, we pray.
 
We pray for a lot of reasons. But one really good reason to pray is that prayer points us back in the direction of God. Prayer reminds us that God is what we really want. When we are praying regularly, we are a LOT more likely to stay focused, to live more aware of Christ’s presence with us, and so to live in ways that are more deeply satisfying to our souls.
 
Terry’s book was a wake-up call for me on that trip. I had let my prayer routine lapse while we were on the road, and so it was no surprise that the trip hadn’t been as spiritually satisfying as I wanted it to be. For the remainder of our trip, I tried to pray more regularly. And, not coincidentally, the last part of our trip was the most satisfying part of the whole thing.
 
Terry’s book reminded me that what I really wanted was Jesus in the boat with me. And if I didn’t immediately reach my goal at that point, I did at least start moving in the right direction again.   
 
I ask again, what do you want? And if the true answer isn’t Jesus in the boat with you, reflect on your prayer life and whether it’s where you want it to be.
 
For now, I thank God for the reminder that Christ is in fact in the boat with us all the time. I thank God for steering us toward our ultimate destination, which is union with God. And I ask that God touch our hearts and help us stay pointed in the right direction.
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.


[1] Michael Casey, Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer, 1996