Oh, One More Thing....

There was a very enjoyable television series, “Columbo”, starring Peter Falk as a detective who seemed innocuous and harmless, but whose cleverness would show in his habit of returning, moments after he had left, with a question arising from his suspicions: “Oh, I’m sorry to bother you again, but just one more thing….”  Approaching his departure from planet earth, Jesus keeps coming back, Columbo-like, for just one more thing.  There are a number of films that give the recently departed a chance of returning to life for awhile to straighten things out, to complete unfinished business.  Jesus is having this kind of extended contract, around after his rising from the dead and before he is taken into the clouds, out of sight. 

Max Brill was a friend who had an uncanny gift of inviting a dozen or more people to his house and helping us enjoy a single conversation, all of us listening to whoever happened to be speaking.  In a society where we seem to break into multiple conversations while in a large group, this was always a refreshing experience, being called to listen to each other, to have time to consider our own words more carefully, knowing that people will actually be listening.  Max facilitated this respectful conversation by framing a question for us to consider, and he helped us listen to each other, and saw that we all had the opportunity to be heard.  Here’s one: 

Imagine that you are going to relocate in one week to Australia, and will never be able to return to the U.S.  Your company will take care of everything regarding the move, every little detail getting us from here to there, so all you have to do is show up in one week to the airport.  You are at leisure for one week in the place you have spent your entire lives. What will you do with this week?

The responses were as diverse as those of us in the room.  The star-gazer would enjoy the northern constellations, star patterns he would not see from Australia, it being in the southern hemisphere.  Many of us would spend time with family or friends, or take slow walks in places linked with memory, to strengthen our bonds, to say goodbye.  I don’t remember what Max said.  That’s unfortunate, because I believe that the question was not about relocation, but the end of life.  As Max approached his own death, he had wanted to consider with us the value of last days, but had wanted to save us from the shadow of death.  So he had posed this earthly situation.

I find symbols of Christianity like Max Brill’s questions. They invite me deep into myself, and they slow me down so I can listen as my own response develops.  One such symbol that comes to mind in considering priorities in the face of “relocation” is the cross, like the one on which Jesus spent his last hours.  I’d like to credit the theologian who posed this idea in his book, but it is lost on the shelves of those marked up in my shelves.  The cross, he said, stretches out left and right, horizontal, reaching farther and farther.  It also stretches up and down, reaching higher and deeper. One reaches for the limits, the other for the source.

I suspect that during our lives, when time is not of the essence, when we don’t consider its end, we reach out for more and more, farther and farther – but that when we consider leaving it all, we switch axes, and reach higher and deeper.  So I enjoy these weeks in the seasonal readings in churches like mine that use the Lectionary on Sundays, this time when Jesus is trying to get his followers to change axes, trying to help them reach not for more and more, but deeper and deeper.  (Click for a link to John 14) 

I think again of Max’s question, and of the star-gazer spending time with his stars, and so many of us sending time with our roots.  So imagine that you are going to relocate….  Maybe that's another way of looking at the invitation to pick up our cross and follow?

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.