AN AIRBORNE RECOVERY MONDAY
The Monday after Easter Sunday is referred to by some of us
as “Clergy/Staff Recovery Day.” It’s been six and a half weeks since Ash Wednesday
which began a long season of spiritual intensity plodding through Lent, rising
to a crescendo during Holy Week, and culminating in a rousing climax on
Resurrection Day. This Monday is the day for pastors and worship leaders to
pause, reflect, and catch their breath. The season of Lent/Easter this year has
been for me like no other. Recovery Monday has become a pivotal moment.
On Ash Wednesday my sermon was, as usual, about letting go.
Not just about giving something up, or taking something on, but simply about
letting go. But even letting go is only half of the story. What are you letting
go of, and what are you laying hold of? Letting go of something always leaves a
void unless and until it is replaced by something else. Now on Recovery Monday I
thought to myself, now that Lent is over, what is being released, and what is
being embraced?
This year the answer to that question was easy. On Ash Wednesday
I was carrying a secret that I could not yet reveal. The day before, I had
received a call from the cabinet about accepting another appointment. Neither I
nor the congregation I served had asked for a change in appointment, so this unexpected
development was something I was just beginning to process as I began to lead
the flock into Lent and all the way to Easter.
On Recovery Monday, I was talking on the phone with one of
our worship leaders and she remarked that she was happy we had such a
meaningful Holy Week since it was my last Holy Week here. “Your last Holy Week
here.” Those words caught in my mind. Even through we are itinerant pastors,
there is still a grieving process for us to go through as we prepare to leave
behind memories and relationships and prepare to make new ones.
Henri Nouwen loved the circus. At one time he took his father
to see a trapeze troupe known as the Flying Rodleighs, and he became deeply
enthralled with them. He went to see them several times, and finally he introduced
himself to them. They allowed him to attend their practice sessions, invited
him to dinner, and he actually became kind of a “groupie” and friend of the
Rodleighs. Nouwen describes one of this conversations with them in a talk he once
gave on death and dying:
One day, I was sitting with
Rodleigh, the leader of the troupe, in his caravan, talking about flying. He
said, "As a flyer, I must have complete trust in my catcher. The public
might think that I am the great star of the trapeze, but the real star is Joe,
my catcher. He has to be there for me with split-second precision and grab me
out of the air as I come to him in the long jump."
"How does it work?" I
asked.
"The secret," Rodleigh
said, "is that the flyer does nothing and the catcher does everything.
When I fly to Joe, I have simply to stretch out my arms and hands and wait for
him to catch me and pull me safely over the apron behind the catchbar."
"You do nothing!" I said,
surprised.
"Nothing," Rodleigh
repeated. "The worst thing the flyer can do is to try to catch the
catcher. I am not supposed to catch Joe. It's Joe's task to catch me. If I
grabbed Joe's wrists, I might break them, or he might break mine, and that
would be the end for both of us. A flyer must fly, and a catcher must catch,
and the flyer must trust, with outstretched arms, that his catcher will be
there for him."[1]
While Henri Nouwen was using this as a metaphor for letting
go of this earthly life and reaching out to be “caught” by God in the life to
come, it can also be applied to many of our transitions in life. For those of
us who are moving, we are being called to let go from holding onto our status
quo, and “trust the catcher” to be there for us in the next place of service!
We don’t have to catch the catcher (God) – the Catcher will be there to catch
us!
