Through encounter group sessions, people try to experience something that happened long before the coming of modern psychology and group dynamics. In our Gospel Lesson, a group of fishermen on Lake Gennesaret in Palestine encountered a man called Jesus and were never again the same. In meeting Jesus, they were somehow confronted with the truth about themselves. They knew that in order to be true to their most real selves, they had to belong to Him. “They left everything and followed Him,” the Gospel tells us.
As much as we might wish to view our worship experience as an encounter with Jesus, it is, perhaps, not so for all of us. There may be other reasons why some of us come to worship. Perhaps we come in obedience to a religious tradition, keeping faith with the religious practice of our fathers and our father’s fathers. Perhaps we come in fear, anxious lest the neglect of religious observances may bring us bad fortune, either now…
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