Things are bad right now; there's no other way to say it.
Some of our greatest thinkers and poets harbored the hope that after the horrors of World War II humanity would change; they imagined a world where evil had been unmasked and it would never be able to subjugate us again. Tragically, this now seems like a naďve dream. Horrible, terrible things are being done all over the world, in the name of nations, powers, land, wealth, and yes, even in the name of God.
I learned U.S. History from a wonderful professor in college, idealistic and hopeful; he taught me to believe in humanity's potential and our own role in working toward it. Years later, on a trip to Philadelphia, I was deeply moved standing in the very places where what it means to be an American was first imagined.
I recently spoke with this professor again, his hair is grayer, his eyes much sadder. "I don't recognize my country anymore," he said with an air of disbelief. "I can't believe in the things we are doing anymore."
This history professor is also a priest, and I wondered how it is we do this, how do we remain radically truthful and critical about all the wrongs we see, and at the same time just as radically hopeful?
Among the many beautiful paintings by the American artist Andrew Wyeth, there is one which I think gives us some possible answers. In it Wyeth paints a brightly lit late afternoon, the elongated shadows of tall poles undulate across the sand, we see some dunes and beyond it, just a little water; is it a sea, a lake, maybe a lake called a sea, like in Galilee? A strong breeze blows lifting up the fishing nets hanging from the poles.
That is all he gives us, fishing nets and a strong breeze and such beauty that our heart aches to be there for just one moment. The name of the painting is "Pentecost."
The work of the disciples of Jesus was fishing. It was hard work, and as we're told several times in the Gospels, often they would return home with nothing in their nets. They didn't fish for sport, they fished to feed their families, their villages, and it was essential work for their survival. Yet, we are told, that once they were called by Jesus the disciples left their nets behind. Did they hang them up on poles on the sandy shore to dry out? Did they return to them? Is a part of Pentecost the leaving behind of our cares?
Yet... in the painting, it is these very nets which were left behind, that are lifted up by the playful breeze. They, the work, is also part of the Pentecost moment. Does Pentecost then remind us that it is not that we have left our cares, but rather that as we hang them up for a moment it is the Holy Spirit who will lift them? Does the painting not tell us of a Spirit that will playfully and wildly find ways to make beauty out of the everydayness of our concerns?
In the painting, the hanging nets are not guarded, no one watches over them, there is a radical sense of trust in seeing them left there, alone, by the edge of the water. Even more, there is the certainty that in a few hours the hard-working people who hung them there will return to take them up again; then they will head out into the sea.
Pentecost is a pause for the Wind, for the Ruach to act upon us: "And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were" (Acts 2:2). We need to hang up our nets, we need to stop whatever it is we are doing, and we need to look up and listen for that wind, to contemplate the dancing nets and know that God's power is mightier than all our efforts.
Yet, we also need to return to those nets, because - in spite of the image we have of the disciples leaving their nets and following Jesus - I for one think this was something they did often, and joyfully, but they did return to their nets and to the very hard work of both being workers and being prophets.
In the very final chapter of the Gospel of John, after the Resurrection and after Jesus has breathed the Spirit on them, what do we find the disciples doing? "Simon Peter said to them, 'I am going fishing.' They said to him, 'We also will come with you' (John 21: 3).
They fish all night and catch nothing. Life is not good to these fishermen; what can happen to a community when there is nothing to eat? Jesus is risen, it is true, a new world has dawned, but the everyday cares, the human need to eat and feed others, to hold a job, to contribute to the common good, all of those needs are still there as they were before.
But, the Gospel continues, a man they do not know appears on the shore as they are readying to return to shore and instructs them to try again. They do and the nets are filled. Like with the meal in Emmaus, it is then they recognize Jesus, in the fullness, in the fulfillment, in the having their trust justified and satisfied. The cares are there, but now we have an advocate.
The nets hanging in Wyeth's painting are awaiting men and women who will take them up, but only after giving the Holy Spirit a chance to dance around them, to show them light, to unburden them. Things are difficult in our world right now, but every single time we take up those nets and work hard for a full catch, we will know that we have trusted God, that the fullness and the results come from God's hand, and that we must keep at it, with plenty of breaks in between for us to rejoice in watching the nets dance in the wind in the late afternoon sun. Cecilia González-Andrieu is a Presidential Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley.
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