Have you ever just been kind of stuck? Like a car sunk in the mud down to its axles, spinning the tires, getting nowhere?
Nothing like that aroma of hot steaming mud and burnt tire.
Those long dark nights.
Lots of work, lots of worry, lots of time poured out and nothing to show for it.
Just smoking tires, a loud revved up engine, and mud all over everything.
And it just goes on and on, for a time, for a season, for a life.
Fruitless. Empty.
Fishing all night, not enough fish to even lie about.
Life. Sometimes it crushes the spirit.
A life of absence, of missing something essential.
Then there is that moment where things start to happen, of conversion.
Absence is overwhelmed by the Presence.
The empty waters, the empty nets start boiling over with fish.
An overwhelming abundance, heart stopping, mind blowing too muchness, it might sink us, it might rip open our nets.
God.
Too muchness.
John’s Gospel and the Easter encounter of the risen Lord, life and fruitfulness, the ludicrous too muchness of the presence of God.
That is when they knew it was Jesus, when absence became presence, when emptiness became stretching at the seams. It happened over and over when they were with him.
Nothing. Then suddenly everything. People hopping up and down, jumping in the water, scrambling and grabbing for the nets, trying not to tip the boat.
Cussing and praising God all at once.
And then the breakfast of bread and fish and the heart to heart about love, about really loving, about feeding those who belong to Jesus.
A conversation that carried the unspoken reminder of denying Jesus three times with the three questions about loving Jesus, cherishing.
The stuff of God.
Jesus brings that presence back to the world.
It is simply too much, and it is simply the heart’s desire, swimming in God’s flood of life pouring back into the world.
The too muchness. Bring that presence, that experience of God and feed the world.
Disciples of God’s too muchness in a world of never enough, of absence.
There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground, no moderate frugality, no temperate management of teaming glorious splashing catches.
Just overwhelming, ravishing love, adoration and cherishing that forces us into letting go of how we thought the world works.
Letting go of the old life, letting go of clinging to bitterness, letting go of all the lies that resentment told us to believe.
We are taught to live like atheists.
We are expected to live like atheists.
Like we don’t really believe that God makes a difference in the world.
Like forgiveness isn’t really flooding the world.
Like love is only a nice sentiment. Only.
Like there just isn’t enough.
Practical atheism is the term. It is our true faith.
Until. Until there is that moment where things start to happen, of conversion.
Absence is overwhelmed by the Presence.
The empty waters, the empty nets start boiling over with fish.
An overwhelming abundance, heart stopping, mind blowing too muchness, it might sink us, it might rip open our nets.
God.
Too muchness.
Nothing. Then suddenly everything. People hopping up and down, jumping in the water, scrambling and grabbing for the nets, trying not to tip the boat.
Cussing and praising God all at once.
It is the Lord.
Feed my sheep.
(As we send forth our graduates today may they go forth from here with hearts full of the too muchness of God. Lauryn, Warren, Matthew and Emma Kate: feed the sheep.)