April 25, 2008 What Inspires Us Is a Person

Dear E-pistle subscriber,

Lately I’ve been thinking again about something I’d read a few years ago:

Think for a moment of someone you admire.

It might be a political figure whose cause excites you. It might be a prominent businessperson, or a doctor or lawyer whom you respect.

Think of some person whom you look up to.

Have him or her in mind?

Now imagine that person calling you up on the phone and asking you to get together for lunch some day. Just the two of you.

At that lunch, he or she invites you to be part of an important and noble project that he or she wants to start.

He or she wants YOU to be part of it, involved in it.

Begin to let that thought play around in your mind, as a way of preparing you to think and respond to Jesus’ call to the fishermen.

It is not just a cause that stirs us.

It is a person.

I’ve told you before about a series of talks on stress given by an expert in the field at Harvard Business School. It was about how executives and other people should deal with stress.

When the expert came in to begin the series, he said,

“I imagine that you think I am going to talk to you about how you should relax, that you as executives need to take time for vacation, and need to work out and exercise, that you need to eat properly and that perhaps you should practice yoga.

“But that’s not what I am going to talk to you about at all,” he said, “because that won’t take care of your stress.”

He said, “the reason that so many of you are stressed, the reason you drink too much, eat too much, work too hard, and feel frazzled and fragile is that you think what you are doing is unimportant.

“You spend a lot of time doing it. You work hard. You make a lot of sacrifices.

“But in the end, deep in your hearts, you don’t really think what you do is worthwhile.”

Apparently you could have heard a pin drop in that room.

The expert said he’d given the talk many times, sometimes to leading executives at major corporations, and during the talk the executives would often break down and cry. He added that a particular executive approached him one time, and asked him to make a cassette of his talk so that he could give it to his son, so he wouldn’t make the same mistakes he had, right up to his mid-50s.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves – sometimes I need to remind myself! – that the sole reason St. James’ Episcopal Church exists is to put people in touch with the person of Jesus.

Jesus desires to have that meal with you.

Jesus invites you to share in his work in this world. Work that is important. Work that is worthwhile. Work that feeds and fills you, and doesn’t leave you hungry, frazzled, or frantic.

This is the work of proclaiming good news to the poor, of being an agent of healing in this world, proclaiming that God is here among us.

Jesus wants you to be a part of, involved in, the important and noble project he wants to continue.

Won’t you accept his invitation?

See you Sunday,

Fr. John