I’ve been going through stuff lately, a lot of stuff, and came across a children’s book I hadn’t read before – the English translation of Eiko Kadono’s book Kiki’s Delivery Service. Some of you might know the Miyazaki film based on the book. It’s about a teenage witch. The witch tradition is that when a witch comes of age – about age 13 – they leave their parents and go off on their own to find a new town, where they will be the town’s witch. They must stay there for at least a year before returning to visit their parents. So at the beginning of the book Kiki turns 13 and her mother makes her a new black dress, firmly insists on her taking the sturdier broom, and pushes her out the door. Off Kiki goes, along with her little black cat Jiji, and flies for miles and miles until she spies the sea, and a larger, busier town called Koriko, where she lands and tries to figure out what next. Happily a pregnant baker lady treats her kindly and gives her a place to stay, and Kiki finds her role in the town – to be a flying delivery service. The book ends when the year finishes and she returns home to visit her parents, and then realizes she’s made a new life in Koriko and wants to stay there.
Obviously this is a classic coming of age story, going off to seek one’s fortune in the world, leaving parents and childhood behind. But I found it unsettling. Maybe because it’s set in modern times – or something like modern times – I kept worrying over Kiki’s safety and what would happen to her in the new city where most people didn’t seem all that friendly. Every chapter had a new adventure, and every chapter made me worry. She stays in the flour house owned by the kind baker lady. What about her black dress in all that flour? She fixes the town clock and accidentally makes the New Year’s celebration happen 5 minutes early. Won’t the townspeople be angry she’s ruined their tradition? She rigs up helium balloons to help her deliver a heavy item. But what if the balloons pop? I kept reminding myself that this is a children’s book, she’s a witch – it’s the adventure, not all the practical details, that is the important part of the story. But I kept struggling all the way through. It was a relief when I got to the end.
So let’s all play psychoanalyze the preacher. Q. Why do you think I reacted this way to the book? A. Because I’m about to leave you and go off to a new town, where I don’t know anyone (expect my husband), and where I’ll have to figure out how to make myself useful. And I’m scared and anxious about that. Any spirit of adventure is swallowed up in the details of packing, getting everything there, starting out in a new life. Not to mention having to say goodbye to all of you.
And that is probably why when I read the scriptures for today, I couldn’t help but notice that there are some real problems with these call stories we just heard. Neither Isaiah nor Simon Peter ask nearly enough questions before they raise their hands and set off to follow wherever it is God is calling them to go. Here I am, send me? What about ‘send me WHERE exactly, and to do WHAT?’ And I still think that Peter should have spent more time figuring out what to do with all of that fish before he just up and left.
Our faith is full of stories like this: Abraham leaving Ur to go to a new place God shows him. The Israelites forming as a people in the Exodus, wandering in the desert for 40 years before they get to the promised land. Esther taken to the king’s palace where she winds up saving her people. Mary saying yes to an unplanned pregnancy. The disciples called from their fishing nets and tax booths to follow Jesus. Paul roaming the Mediterranean, wherever the Spirit leads. It’s not a religion of staying put and staying safe. When Jesus says he is the way, he means that – he’s not the encampment, he’s the way.
And depending on what kind of person you are, this might all be exhilarating and exciting, or this might be deeply terrifying. There are those who go, and those who stay. Some live all their lives in the place where they were raised, with generations of family around them; some head off to a new place halfway around the world and start afresh. Some of those who stay look wistfully at those who go; some of those who move wish they could stay put.
And throughout Christian history, too, there have been those who went out into the desert to seek God in the unknown, and those who set up rigid rules and structures to keep everything and everybody under control. That difference alone could explain much of the divide between progressive and conservative Christianity: Are we open to the risk of the mystery, to the possibly of getting it wrong yet trusting in God’s grace? Or rooted to the solid rock, with firm clarity of belief and behavior and the holiness of the sacred place? Some of those who are more open find themselves wishing at times for clarity and certainty; some of those living in rule-based communities find themselves longing to break free. Maybe we all push and pull at these differently at different stages of our lives. Kiki the 13 year old witch is happy to fly off and see what’s out there; Kate the 53 year old priest finds that overwhelming.
The hard thing for all of us, perhaps, is that God offers no guarantees of happiness whether we stay or go. What if Peter and James and John had said no to Jesus and just stayed with the fish? Perhaps they could have had perfectly happy lives, caring for their families, enjoying the sunshine, remembering together about that one huge catch of fish they once had. What if Isaiah had said, how about Natalie, why not send her? Of course we wouldn’t have their stories told in our scriptures – we don’t tend to write epics about the ones who stay home and darn the stockings. But there’s no reason to think that God would have turned his back on them if they chose that. They were given a real choice, not forced to follow. But instead, they headed off to adventures unknown. And every one of them suffered. Every one of them was martyred, according to tradition. Peter was crucified upside down, and Isaiah was sawn in half. Not exactly the fame and fortune they might have hoped for. But they didn’t respond to God’s call by asking what it would lead to. They followed, because God was so inviting, so compelling, so good at wooing, that they didn’t want to say no. Even if it meant leaving everything they knew and expected and assumed to be true about the world – who will go for me? said God. I’ll make you fish for people, said Jesus. And everything in them responded, yes. Whatever that means, wherever you’re going, I’ll go. Because their hearts opened, and they heard, and they went. Whatever the cost – even when the cost was everything.
The thing is, whether our instinct is to circle the wagons to or pack the bags, we are on a journey. We might be starting off on a cross-country move, or we might be just heading to the grocery store, but we’re always moving. Life means change and motion, and we’re never given guarantees of happiness. That’s just not how God works. But God’s promise is different than that – God’s promise is to be with us. Come along with me, God says, and let’s do the work. Come fish for people – come love the people I lead you to, come speak words of truth and kindness, come advocate for the lost and the least. Come care for children and the friendless, come feed the hungry in body and spirit. It won’t always be easy – sometimes it might be terrifying. But listen to me in the quiet of your heart, turn to me throughout your day, step forward on the path. Do all that with me, together. And you can trust that I am there.
Wherever we are about God’s work, God is present, working with us; and really, wherever we are pursuing the opposite of that, God is present too, working on us to change. Working on our hard hearts, our cruelties, our cowardice; growing in us our hope, our generosity, our willingness to care. God is always setting us free from what keeps us back, God is always leading us into abundant life. So we may as well follow. And together with God, we can create the world as it should be.
