Down By The River

Down By The River

“I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched… Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.”

― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through it and Other Stories

Rivers have a way of sparking my imagination. I wonder about their source; their beginnings. I wonder about where they go and what they take on their journey. And, as a fisherman, I wonder about what life teems beneath the surface; in its pools, riffles, and runs. I find something deeply spiritual about rivers. They stir something deep within my own spirit. They have a way of drawing me closer to God, our creator.

The other day I was engaging in a practice known as Ignatian prayer. It’s a form of prayer practiced by St. Ignatius of Loyola in which you read a Gospel narrative in such a way that it immerses you in the text. You’re invited to imagine what you see, smell, taste, feel, and hear. You then imagine who you are or where you are in the story. It can be a powerful way to be present to and hear from Jesus what he wants you to know. It was for me this day.

The text I prayed was Matthew 3:13-17, the baptism of Jesus. I read the text of Jesus approaching his cousin, John the Baptist, at the Jordan River. As I entered the text using my five senses imaginatively, I first noticed the warm spring breeze on my face. I felt the cool waters of the Jordan surrounding my legs chilling my dusty, hot feet. I heard the movement of the wind through the trees and brush lining the banks of the Jordan. I heard the ripples of the water as it spilled over the rocks and stones. I saw the wispy clouds in the azure blue sky. And then I saw him: Jesus coming towards me in the water. And he was looking straight at me with a smile on his face. A smile of recognition and reunion of two friends separated by time and distance. And in my prayer, it dawned on me that I had taken on the role of John the Baptist.

He had come to me to be baptized… by me! Me in all my broken human frailty. Me in all my doubts and fears. Me, this broken jar of clay. I found myself deeply connecting with John’s thoughts, “why do you come to me to be baptized? It is I who need to be baptized by you!” Jesus smiles and says to me, “let it be like this because it is right.” Wow.

As I meditated on my experience with this prayer time, I had a deeply moving insight for me. In my calling as a pastor I am called on daily to mediate God’s grace, God’s relentless, pursuing love, to the different people with whom I interact. I largely have been doing this as a means to serve others in Jesus’s name. I now see it in a profoundly nuanced way. That as I minister to others, I am ministering to Jesus himself. It’s more than just caring for people because we all bear within us the Imagio Dei; the image of God. I now sense that in caring for others I am truly caring for Jesus. I am mindful of Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 where he says that, “as much as you have done it to one of the least of these you have done it unto me.” I have no more words, except another quote from Norman Maclean.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs… I am haunted by waters.”

D~