That buzz you hear is just fish-flies…

 

Bzzzz. My husband and I had a resort near Deer River for several years. We knew that hearing a buzz might mean mosquitoes, but it also might mean fish-flies. At times they would hang in tall columns, attracted by the one mercury vapor light at the resort, which was next to the launching ramp. Thousands of fishflies could be attracted; they would form a column that could be tall, wide, and noisy. “Bzzzz” coming from a 20-40 foot high column extending into the sky can be scary; folks seeing and hearing it for the first time would be unnerved.

We learned to say, “Oh, that buzz you hear is just fish-flies. They don’t bite, aren’t interested u in people, and are really here just to become fish food.

That buzz is harmless—except it slows down fishing.”

Listening to WTIP, I heard buzz used in another way. It was a program from another station, and the host was discussing what’s “hot” in the music scene. “That band’s been the buzz in Minneapolis, but in Nashville the buzz is about another new group.”

I’d heard buzz used like that before, but the frequency on that show told me it is now ” a common way to say what’s “catching on” and people are paying attention to.

The phrase, the buzz, is now the buzz. “Thebuzz about the Oscars…on Wall Street… in technology…” Maybe for some, like Cook County folks, “the buzz” is about other interests: what lake still has ice on it, when the ice will go out… or maybe when the first fishfly hatch will be. People hear what’s going on, and talk about it spreads.

What does this conversation about the buzz have to do with spiritual reflections?

In the Bible there is this story: Jesus went to a village and a large crowd, attracted by the buzz that the life and ministry of Jesus was making, followed him. As he got close to the town, he saw a funeral procession with men carrying the dead body of a widow’s only son. With her was another large crowd, and the buzz might have been about what was going to happen to this woman, widowed already and now without even a son. The two crowds coming together…imagine the sound! The clamor of the crowds following Jesus throughout the region meeting up with the clamor of those in anguish for the woman now left destitute and in grief. Buzz would be an understatement.

But the buzz about what the people were seeing and experiencing would only increase. Jesus, unasked, acts decisively out of compassion for the woman. Jesus touches the stretcher on which the dead son’s body is being carried. At that time, merely touching that stretcher would have been considered taboo for him, but Jesus did so. (Bzzz… did you see? He touched the stretcher that held a dead body!) Jesus touches, and delivers compassion. Jesus speaks, saying words that restore life, to the son, to the mother. The reaction of the crowds surrounding them? A telling and a re-telling to neighbors, friends, and mere acquaintances must have happened, for “word spread throughout all the surrounding country.”

News about what had happened in the compassion of God spread without cell phones, Internet, satellite communications, radio, or even daily newspapers. The word spread throughout all the appy surrounding country because in Jesus, God passed over what were considered certain boundaries (touching a stretcher carrying a dead body, caring about a woman not of your family, and most significantly, death itself) to bring new life.

In our lives, we are created by God to hear the buzz of the whisper of the Holy Spirit, the words and actions of Jesus, the quiet of God’s care. When you let yourself push aside all the distractions of daily life, all the rest of the buzz, you’ll hear the one true buzz: God.

This BUZZ, however, has God’s purpose: to touch your life, and deliver God’s compassion.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. For March, our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran, Hovland.