STRETCH BEYOND MY GRASP

STRETCH BEYOND MY GRASP

I was astonished yesterday to hear the BBC Outlook account of the South African who fell off his boat in the middle of the night into the Indian Ocean. He kept himself afloat for 28 hours before he was rescued. At one point he was visited by a shark and on another some sea bird swooped to attack. But most traumatic of all was when the people on his boat turned round to look for him and he saw them but they did not see him and sailed away. Eventually a stranger who heard his plight set out to look for him and found him.

As I heard the story I knew that if it had been me I would not have lasted an hour. That he could resist thirst, hunger, tiredness and keep his hope alive is just amazing. It makes me wonder at us humans; what endurance people are capable of, what limits they can stretch to. When we have no choice we can call on reserves of physical stamina and inner strength we never knew we had.

But what if we have a choice? What if the stretch we are called to comes, not from some outside event like falling overboard, but from some inner conviction we have come to? There are many who have done so in politics (Lincoln, Mandela) and in the arts (Shakespeare, Vermeer), in sport and so forth. One who has touched my life and the lives of many others is Ignatius Loyola, a sixteen century Spaniard. He came to a conviction about a course he had to follow and nothing would deter him. At one point he set out for France to study even though it was said, the French “put Spaniards on roasting spits, but he never had any kind of fear.”

Where does a person get such courage and conviction? Either on Thursday or Sunday this week many Christians will celebrate the centuries old festival of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ). It recalls the moment on the day before he died when Jesus gave his followers a simple rite of extraordinary significance. In a matter of fact way our earliest account of what happened runs like this: “on the same night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and thanked God for it, and he said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’”

Simple! But it was an act charged with inner strength for all who participated in it. It was Jesus’ way of sharing everything he was and did with us. He actually wanted to give us his life so that we would stretch ourselves as he had done. You can see it in the gospels: He gave everything he possibly could give. That is the height of human achievement, to give everything. There is “no greater love.” Looking at myself, looking at my contemporaries, looking at our politicians and other leaders, I ask myself are we really stretching ourselves? ‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ (Robert Browning)         

29 May 2016                           Corpus Christi

Genesis 14:18-20                    I Corinthians 11:23-26                       Luke 9:11-17