Saturday, March 8, 2014

Saturday March 8, 2014

John 17:9-17

“All mine are yours, and yours are mine...”

In this reading, the Gospel writer portrays Jesus in deep communion with his Father praying for the welfare of his followers. Jesus confesses that his disciples belong to God and to him and not to the world. When we read this passage today, we are faced with the very personal question: “To whom do we belong?”

Pondering that question, I couldn’t help but think of Wendell Berry’s short story “Fidelity.” As with most of his fiction, this story is a snapshot of the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky. We get a glimpse into the last days of Burley Coulter, one of the town’s patriarchs. Burley’s well-intentioned family checks the ailing man into the hospital but when they see him wasting away tethered to machines in a sterile environment, they regret their decision. Danny, Burley’s son, decides to bring his father home to die and, under cover of broad daylight, walks off with the old man.

The hospital considers Burley’s disappearance a case of kidnapping and sends a police detective to Port William to investigate. In one interview the family’s lawyer, Henry Catlett, protects Danny and reminds the detective that people “belong to each other and to God,” not to the state. The hospital has no suit against the family.  The frustrated detective eventually leaves the town, the case being left “unsolved.” Burley dies on and is buried in the very land he had farmed and hunted all his life.

Despite weaknesses in the story (couldn’t his family have legally checked Burley out of the hospital instead of kidnapping him?), Berry raises profound questions about the quality of one’s death and about what it means to belong to God and to each other. To belong, the writer seems to say, means to be at home. Burley belonged to the forest and the hills of Port William because he was at home in that place. Dying in the hospital separated from all the he knew and loved would have been to rip him from his natural context.

To whom do we belong? What is our natural place? In today’s reading, we are reminded that Jesus lived out his life and ministry gripped by the reality that he belonged to the Father. He was at home in the Father’s love. It was his natural place. He was out of place in the world (a term the writers of John’s Gospel used to refer to the forces of darkness and death in society). He prays for his followers that they too would live into their rightful place.

Of course there is a danger in all this talk of belonging if we understand it too exclusively. You notice the danger even in John’s Gospel.  It is all too easy to slip into strict “us” versus “them” categories. “We” belong to God and “they” do not. On the contrary, the calling to be at home in God’s love is universal in scope.

And with this sense of belonging comes great responsibility.  If we really do belong to God and to each other, what are we doing to create home together? 

-David Shumaker