That’s a phrase from my family…it goes way back to when “we cousins” were together; a group of third through fifth graders having fun outside. It was high noon on a summer day at the cabin. We kids had been busy with our made-up-game “What’s that?”
It was the kind of game we elementary kids took great delight in. “What’s that thing floating by the dock?” (a boat, a minnow bucket, a duck, a water-beetle.) “What’s that sharp thing next to the wood pile?” (filet knife, hatchet, swarm of mosquitoes.) You get the picture.
And then, one day, the center of the sky got noticed.
As we kids were all looking up and pointing, our parents came out. Although older and wiser, they just couldn’t see the most obvious thing. So they were searching and searching for what “big thing” we kids had spotted. We of the younger set fell on the ground laughing at them with their pointing and getting the binoculars and trying to see “something big.” They’d missed the obvious and only answer that high noon— the sun.
So the expression “like high noon on a summer day” became shorthand for “just goes to show you can miss the most obvious thing in the most obvious place because you think you are looking for something else.”
All these years later, I’ve come to see it describing how we humankind are about God. We miss out on seeing God, thinking we are looking for something else. Or miss out on seeing God at work among us, because we don’t think God is really among us.
Which brings us to Jesus. What’s that which is there, right in the center of this day, this life, your day, your life? Jesus.
As Pastor Walter Wangerin writes,
At the center? Jesus: the person and the work he has accomplished. He! Not some teaching of his…not his model for our behavior …not his poverty, not his condemnations, not what someone makes of him…
At the center: Jesus…the Bible isn’t the center of Christian faith, rather it proclaims him in whom our faith must be grounded: Jesus.
At the center of our worship, at the center of our ability to maintain love…at the center of our lives: Jesus. At the center of life everlasting: Christ.*
Now that is getting to the heart of the center in no uncertain terms. The Holy Spirit points us to see the Center of All That Is. But still, we little humans, we look and look, straining to see, to hear, to catch a glimpse, when God with boldness and greatness and brightness is right before us, right at the center. We men and women work hard to get out the tools we need, fingers to point with, binoculars to see with, and still miss what is the most obvious before us.
As Walt Wangerin continues, At the center of all we do: Jesus. The delight of our mornings, the trust of our nights; our comings and our goings; our sitting down and rising up and our walking by they way. Jesus. The Lord Jesus Christ. Him.
Don’t wait for high noon or a summer day. Today, now, look up, look out, look deep within. Jesus, your Lord, your Christ, is the Center. Once you know that, you won’t need to be straining as you try to know, “What is at the center?” You will see, you will know. Jesus. Him. * Wangerin, W. “Jesus. Him.” The Lutheran, December 2010. Pg 28-29.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. For January, our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran, Hovland.
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