Risking All – Br. James Koester

SSJE Sermons

Profession of Jack Crowley SSJE in Life Vows

John 21: 1-14

When you told me the other day Jack, that you wanted to use the same gospel reading for today’s profession, as you had for your initial profession three years ago, I thought, well that makes my life easy, I’ll just use the same sermon! After all I reasoned, some here today weren’t here in 2021, and so won’t have heard that sermon. Others will have forgotten it by now. For those few who do remember it, I could simply express shock at the very idea I would repeat myself. But as you know, life isn’t that simple. While I don’t disagree with anything I said back then, today is a different occasion. You and I are in different places. Different things resonate with me. And for the last year or so, as I have thought about this moment, and prayed for you, one word has been constantly present and that has changed how I am thinking about today. The word which resonates with me today is risk.

Having lived with us now for six years, you’ll be familiar with that word, both as we use it in the Rule, and live it day by day. It’s a word that appears in one form or another, 11 times in the Rule, most notably in the chapter on life profession. There we say, [the] life profession of a brother inspires us with awe as well as joy; we wonder at the risk of such an irrevocable choice … Only by depending on God for the grace of perseverance, fixing ourselves by faith in God’s unwavering commitment to us, can we risk taking vows which bind us forever.[1]

What you are doing today is a huge risk. You know it. We know it. Those who are here supporting you know it. And our Rule very clear, this life, and your free choice to cast in your lot with this community, for life, is a risky choice. It is perhaps the riskiest thing you have ever done, and I say this to you Jack, a man I know who is not afraid to take risks.

In that way, you are not unlike the disciples we heard about in this morning’s gospel, one that so obviously means an enormous amount to you.

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.[2]

We’re not here talking about a group of buddies piling into a motorboat, with a case of beer, and some fishing poles, out for a lark, more interested in the beer and having a good time, than in the fish. We’re talking about seasoned, weathered, fishermen, who knew the risks and challenges of earning a living, fishing the waters of the Sea of Galilee, a lake notorious for sudden storms. I am sure nothing was more terrifying and riskier for them than being caught out, at night, in a storm, on the Sea of Galilee. And the disciples would have known that. It had happened before.

As Matthew tells it, when [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’[3]

The combination of the weather, the design of the flat bottom, shallow draft boats used at the time, making them easy to drag up on shore, but unstable on the water, with the weight of over 100 feet of fishing nets dragging through the water, and the need for some men to be in the water maneuvering the nets, meant that fishing was a dangerous, risky occupation. Like any band of fishermen who make a living by fishing, the disciples would have known any number of their friends who had drowned, after being tangled in the nets, fallen overboard, or when their boats had capsized in a storm. Fishing was, and is, a risky occupation. You could, and many did, lose their life. And the disciples knew this.

Curiously Jack, that is exactly what Jesus is asking of you today.

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.[4]

The disciples in the boat that night knew something about risking their lives. They probably also knew more than they wanted about losing their lives. No doubt they had lost friends in these very waters. They had certainly lost a friend not many days before on that hill outside Jerusalem. Now it seemed they had even lost the ability to make a living doing what they thought they knew how to do, fish, for that night, they caught nothing.[5] But those were the risks they took when they first became fishermen. That was the risk they took when they first answered the call of the stranger to follow.

As [Jesus] walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.[6]

Responding to the call of God is a response to an invitation to risk all for Christ, who risked and gave all for us.[7]

To be a follower of Jesus is to live a life full of risk. Like him we must be willing to take the risk of speaking with those deemed unworthy, touching those considered untouchable, breaking bread with those who are despised by others, breaching the walls of respectability. As followers of Jesus, we must take the risk of encountering life where it is lived, and not where we are comfortable.

And that Jack, is what will happen as a life professed member of this community. You will take the risk of living life where it is lived, which will often be outside your comfort zone. Through the vow of poverty, you will discover the readiness of others to confide in us their own experiences of suffering, grief and loss. By opening ourselves to the pain and weakness in the lives of our brothers and sisters…they will find in our company a holy place of acceptance and under­standing where they can wait for God to bring strength out of weakness and resurrection from death.[8] In the vow of celibacy you will learn to embrace[your] sexuality as a divine gift, and draw upon it as a source of energy and creativity, [and thus] bring hope and encourage­ment to many who meet [you].[9] By the vow of obedience you will lean to be resilient and prompt in responding to the Lord in the here and now.[10] Your example will be a sign [to] the Church of what it means to be a living branch of the true vine.[11]

In all this you will risk leaning to die, and in so dying, find life.

Week by week we are to accept every experience that requires us to let go as an opportunity for Christ to bring us through death into life. Hardships, renunciations, losses, bereavements, frustrations and risks are all ways in which death is at work in advance preparing us for the self-surrender of bodily death. Through them we practice the final letting go of dying, so that it will be less strange and terrifying to us.[12]

That night long ago Jack, those disciples risked their lives as they got into the boat. But by doing so they were able to see again the stranger on the shore, and knew this time, that it was the Lord.[13] Today Jack you are risking your life by getting into the boat of this community. My prayer for you is that in the days and months and years ahead, you too will see, not a stranger on the shore, but the Lord calling to you, Come, and have breakfast,[14] and in joining him there by that fire, sharing a simple meal of bread and wine find the abundant life he promises to all who follow him.[15]

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[1] SSJE, Rule of Life, Life Profession, chapter 39, page 79

[2] John 21: 1 – 3

[3] Matthew 8: 23 – 25

[4] Matthew 16: 25

[5] John 21: 3

[6] Matthew 4: 18 – 22

[7] See Rule, The Spirit of Poverty, chapter 6, page 13

[8] Ibid, Engaging with Poverty, chapter 8, page 17

[9] Ibid, The Witness of Celibacy, chapter 11, page 22

[10] Ibid, The Spirit of Obedience, chapter 12, page 25

[11] Ibid, Obedience in Practice, chapter13, page 27

[12] Ibid, Holy Death, chapter 48, page 97

[13] John 21: 7

[14] John 21: 12

[15] John 10:10