His name was
Harvey; and he was a goldfish. Although Harvey was a very small goldfish, he
made a tremendous impact on the little boy who owned him. That boy’s name was
Howard Friend. He’s all grown up now, a Presbyterian pastor who writes books. I’m going to tell you about Harvey in
Howard’s own words. (from Recovering the
Sacred Center by Howard Friend, 1998,
Judson Press, p. 5-6)
For my sixth birthday I received from my
grandmother a goldfish I named Harvey. After school I would pull a dining room
chair up to the bay window where we put Harvey’s bowl and carefully pinch in
just the right amount of food. As I watched him swim in the shimmering
afternoon sun, something caught my eye. Harvey always swam around his bowl in
the same direction, in the same path, at the same speed – an inch inside the
rim of the bowl, an inch below the surface of the water, round and round like
the hands of a clock. If I stirred the water with my finger, or pinched in the
food along a different trail, he would change direction – but only for a
minute. Then back he would go to his predictable, boring pattern. When Harvey’s bowl turned cloudy, Grandma
announced, “It’s time to change his water. We’ll fetch him out with that little
net we brought from the pet store and put him in the spaghetti pot while we
clean his bowl.” I had a better idea. “Let’s put Harvey in the bathtub while we
clean his bowl,” I suggested. Harvey could swim from one end of the tub to the
other, back and forth, along the bottom and across the top. “He’ll have a
terrific time!” I said. Grandma carried Harvey’s bowl up the stairs to the
bathroom, eased it over the edge of the tub, gently lowered it to the surface
of the water, and poured Harvey in. “C’mon, Harvey,” I said out loud. He just
lay there at first, a little stunned, I guess. Then he perked up. He was ready,
I was sure, to begin some real exploring. But to my disappointment and
amazement, Harvey began to swim in a circle about ten inches across and an inch
below the surface of the water, like the hands of a clock – just like in his
bowl!
Harvey’s
behavior made quite an impression on Howard. To this day, he remembers how
puzzled he was that Harvey refused to take advantage of the opportunity to swim
all the way around that big bathtub. Many years later, he realized that Harvey
isn’t the only one who behaves like this. Some people do the very same thing!
Even when their situation changes, when fresh needs arise and new opportunities
appear, they keep swimming in the same old circles, doing the same things over
and over again. We look at them and wonder, “Why don’t they change? Can’t they
see that they need to do something different?”
Unfortunately,
churches tend to follow the very same pattern. They do what is familiar and
comfortable, resisting change until it is thrust upon them, and they can escape
it no longer. Some of them refuse to embrace change until it is too late, and
they are forced to close their doors. Why in the world do they behave like
that? I could explain it by telling you that we sometimes can’t see beyond the
ends of our noses; or that we can imagine new possibilities, but we’re afraid
to act on them; but I’ll bet that you know those things already. And simply
being aware that we are in a bad situation doesn’t influence our behavior as
much as we would like to believe that it does. (If you have ever tried to argue
someone out of a political opinion by using reason, you know very well what I’m
talking about!)
So we just keep
doing what we’ve always done. We forget that our God is a God of novelty! God
does new things all the time! When the Hebrews fleeing slavery in Egypt stood
on the bank of the Red Sea, God parted those waters and asked them to step out
in faith; because God was going to do something that had never been done before
in the history of the world! When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, none
of them expected that when Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians, he would
let all those homesick refugees return to their homeland. And when Jesus of
Nazareth appeared and claimed to be the Messiah, not very many people believed
that this peasant from a Podunk village in Galilee would set them free, not
from the Roman Empire, but from sin and death itself! And when God does new
things, God invites us to get with the program and join in the new things that
God is doing!
As you join
in the program of discernment that our congregation is beginning, I invite you
to listen for God inviting us to do something new! We will have plenty of time
to listen for God’s voice, to discern what God is calling us to do, and to plan
how we’re going to proceed into the future. All kinds of possibilities are open
to us; and God will accompany us as we discern which of those possibilities we
will live into. Let’s learn a lesson from Harvey, shall we? God has given us a
very big bathtub. Let’s swim in every bit of it!
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