Free Falling
By Charles Rush
September 12, 2010
John 6: 35-41, 66-69
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(mp3, 6.9Mb) ]
had a wonderful, unplugged summer, mostly reading books. I turned off the papers, turned off the TV, got an enormous amount done, so it should be a very good year. I hope you did too.
I can't
completely detach, so I had a stack of articles from magazines that I had
marked for reading later. I'm going through them last week. Hamas has been
stockpiling missiles in Southern Lebanon. The President of Iran's speech on Al
Quds day, last week, was even nuttier than usual. 2 of the economists I
regularly read are predicting a longer, slower unwinding of all mortgage debt.
I can just feel my anxiety rising.
I get a call
from my sister the real estate developer. She used to make those fantastic
returns, the ones that make you feel like such a loser by comparison because
you aren't so clever, the returns that are so big that she used to say, “Oh,
it's only paper money anyway.” She was calling about our mother, but also let
me know that she had just liquidated a last tract bought in the upcycle for a huge loss.
I just sort of
blurted out, “Oh well, it was only paper money.” Silence on the line. And she
said, ‘Actually somewhere along the line, it became real money.'
Anxiety comes roaring back. Add to that for many of us, we
are living with internalized defeat, set back, frustration. It can just blanche the vivacious creativity out the most
colorful personalities. It is amazing how cautious you can become overnight.
You know you need to get a handle on it because you know that at some level this is
fundamentally a spiritual issue. It is a spiritual issue.
You want to get
back to that place where you feel confident, optimistic, where you feel like it
will all click together and it will all work out. You want to see the world as
an interesting place, full of wonder and mystery. You want to have that free
abandonment that children have who are ready to drink
in the world around them.
My number two
son loved to swim when he was younger. We are going back in time here. He was
probably one–and-a-half to two-and-a-half. He was one of those kids that never
really walked. He started out running. In the summer time, Kate would push him
in the stroller up to the pool. When he got fairly close, he would jump out and
start running, peeling off shirt, pulling off shoes. It was a straight shot for
the pool and he would dive in head first, usually into the deep end. It was
amazing. There was only one small problem. He couldn't swim. So there were
always guards diving in after him, parents diving in after the guards. He would
always come up with this huge grin on his face. I'm sure his parents told him
over and over, don't go near the pool without us, adults told him this. To no avail. Over and over we heard, “Kate, there he
goes”. Dive into the pool. And sometimes
he stayed under long enough to drink a goodly amount of water. I remember one
such time. He was shaking a bit from drinking the pool and he threw up
breakfast and lunch. He pointed at it and said ‘sick'. Two minutes later, he
made a dash for the pool. It got to the point that you would hear over the
loudspeaker. “Guards, Ian Rush is on premises, you know what to do.” Something
like that is what primordial faith is all about. It is when you can dive into
engagement, confident that everything is going to work out even if you don't
have all the skills to make it happen, when you are driven to a full engagement
with the world. The Spirit of God is just with you and you don't have to worry
about it.
The Gospel of
John says that Jesus went about preaching and teaching. A lot of people were
very moved by his message. Crowds came out to hear him. It was all very
edifying. Then he begins to teach about eating flesh and drinking blood. To our
ears, it sounds like Hannibal Lecter. But the Gospel
of John was written very late and it is filled with symbolism. We all know that
Jesus is teaching about the Lord's Supper. But what is hard about that saying?
It is not just the idea that God communicates grace to us through this simple,
ordinary meal. We also know the end of the story. We know what happens to Jesus
and if we follow after Jesus, we know where this can lead. Jesus is going to
suffer. Jesus tells the crowds, symbolically, that they will suffer too to the
degree that they participate in the same Spirit that lives in him.
At this point,
“many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” No
surprise there. Everyone wants to go to the party. Few are willing to stay with
you, keeping vigil through the night.
There is almost
a pathos to Jesus voice. He says to the twelve, ‘Do
you also wish to go away?' It appears that he, too, is expecting rejection.
Jesus knew what it was like to get worn down. This is a man that one time said,
plaintively, ‘foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no
place to lie his head.' What a terrible feeling to
feel like you have no home.
More than that, these anxieties are
so very personal, you experience them alone. This is the stuff that wakes you
up in the middle of the night and leaves you without a bed. Often it is just a
vague inchoate sense that things are not coming together, things are not
working out. You wake up fixated on one particular thing but it is not just
that one thing, it is a multifaceted anxiety that permeates everything you seem
to be involved in. It colors your perspective, alters your mood, makes you tentative and edgy, not trusting, tense, sometimes
expecting rejection.
I love Peter's
response. In the Gospel of John, he is every disciple. He kind of blurts out,
“Where else would we go?” Not real comforting words for Jesus. It is the
bumbling confession of dimwit, who has little but honesty in his bank of
credit. He rather reminds me of Wilie Coyote, in his
quixotic quest for the Road Runner. Wilie Coyote had
an unquestioning loyalty in the ACME corporation- as though he, too, had no where else to go. He would order rocket launched roller
skates. Great idea til he skated off the cliff. Then the deadpan acknowledgment of impending doom. Then he'd
disappear. Then the puff of smoke from the canyon floor.
Next day, exploding birdseed from the ACME corporation.
He never gave up. He never stopped ordering. Endearing,
bone-headed loyalty. Peter is kind of like that. He says, “where would we go?”
Sometimes, we
have to be pried from our unhealthy faith alliances because, truth be told, too
many of us are boneheads for security like Peter. As one person said about
their extended family, “it may be dysfunctional but I know it well.” I have
heard this line more than once. “When I got laid off, it was the worst thing I
could imagine at the time and the best thing that ever happened in my career.”
What these folks mean is that they were tracking themselves down a path that
was not fulfilling, constricting of their self-expression and creativity
because it looked like it paid enough and after doing it for so many years, it
was very familiar terrain and they got to the point where they actually feared
the unknown more than the misery they lived day in an
day out, even though they couldn't actually articulate that at the time, even
though they weren't entirely aware that they were miserable at the time. But
looking back, even with less job security, even with fewer retirement benefits
or corporate perq's perhaps, they are much happier
today. But for them, somebody had to launch them, they would never launch
themselves. That is about half of us. We have to be launched.
But there is another
half too, a positive half. Peter also has this wonderful line to
accompany his boneheadedness. And that is one of the
reasons he is so endearing. He says, “You have the words of eternal life. We
have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” In short, you
are the One. You are the way, the truth, the life. You
are what brings us spiritual wholeness. At some point,
you have to make a confession and a commitment and go for it. That is the free
falling part of faith. You have to jump.
A few years ago, Kate and I finally had
all our kids out of the house- which was just before they moved back… We had
that summer that finally comes for all of us when I realized we could take an
actual vacation just the two of us. It was kind of like a honeymoon. We got
married in college, had children right away, grad school and poverty kept us
tethered.
We headed to Canada to camp, Kate's
choice. I surprise her with a stop at
Prince Edward Island, we go see that house of Green Gables that she read as a
child, she loved it, and we camped right on the cliffs overlooking the ocean
that Anne describes.
I've got our little chairs set up,
little fire going, plate of hor'dourves, we are looking over the ocean. We are both watching this
couple down the beach. He is working very hard and fast, trying to set up a
largish tent he is unfamiliar with. Early 30's. She
has the hands on the hips like “I told you so”. A child is skipping around the
camp site.
I say to Kate, “Are they married?” “No”
she says. “He's not asking the kid to do anything. It's her child, she's
divorced, he's never been married. He's trying out his
family man side and it is failing.”
He comes jogging over, wants to know
how the little stoves work. Kate explains, starts getting his story. He jogs
back. He jogs over again. Do we have a hatchet for his wood.
I give him a hatchet and he gives a little more story to Kate. Jogs back. Jogs
back over. He tells Kate that it isn't going well, that he wants to ask her to
marry him, that she is wonderful and he loves her child too so he brought her
along for this occasion, he has the ring and everything.
I say, ‘Great did you bring champagne?'
Long pause. He didn't realize that Canada liquor stores were closed on Sunday.
Kate disappears in the back of my truck and emerges with a bottle of
wonderfully expensive wine that someone had given us at a dinner party. She hands
it to him, looking at me, like would this be okay?”
I'm like “OOOhhh
no…. Okay”. He jogs off.
Kate gets out the field glasses and
hands them to me for updated reports. Dinner is fine. Clean up fine. They are
walking up the beach. This is good, her daughter is
doing cartwheels away from them. The beach was beautiful. He's making a big
speech… Now he is on one knee. Her back is to us… Long pause…. Houston, we have
lift off.
They come walking over towards us. She
shows us the ring. He is beaming like Kate is his Mom. Kate is ecstatic. Guy
turns to me and says, “Could I borrow your corkscrew?”
But man it is so uplifting, so
infectious. What a moment. Some times you just have
to go for it. You are the one. He's feeling great, she's feeling great, Kate and I are feeling great. They are walking up and down
the beach just telling everyone they are engaged.
Love is a great faith leap. Truth be
told, maybe most of us, if we had a full disclosure agreement- if we knew in
advance exactly what we were getting into, how much it would challenge us, how
much heart ache we were opening ourselves to- we might never make the leap to
begin with. And that is part of the deal. We don't know everything in advance.
We don't know how we are going to solve all the problems out there, how we are
going to rise to the occasion when it comes, but we will. You just have to make
a faith leap when you have the intuition that it is the right thing to do and
it is never a clear cut thing. One of the nieces in our family asked one of the
uncles how you know when you find the right partner, the one. He said, “Oh you
know, but … you don't”. And part of that is because, the leap of marriage is
not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner. Mark Twain
once said of his wife, “wherever she was, there was Eden.”
Our spiritual life is like that too. We
want you to make a free falling commitment to our community, to each other. The
church is the strangest place to be part of. We will ask you for your
involvement, we'll ask you for your money, we will ask you to contribute your
creativity. We want all of what your family has to offer and we ask you to
commit yourself and your family to all of these other families, because this is
the one and only way that we can actually practice and grow in the life of
love, the way of reconciliation, the development of worship and beauty. This is
the place we make the values that we need to sustain our families and our
community front and center and we try to actualize that side of us that will
allow us to tap into the higher reasons for which we live.
And in the process of
opening our selves, opening our talents, opening our wallets, we live more
profoundly sharing each other's burdens as we walk each other through illness,
loss, and even death. We get to
these critical moments in our lives where we simply have to let go, the really
difficult free falling, and we can do it because we are supported by all of
these other people that are pretty deeply related to us, pretty deeply rooted
with us. It is not only about falling in love, it is
about growing, living, and finally dying surrounded by love. That is what makes our life worth living. It
is what wakes us up with energy, even when the demands around us produce quite
a lot of anxiety. This is what drives back cynicism. It puts a bit in the mouth
of despair. It is not safe. It is not easy. It is as profound as our life but
what a great experiment
And a lot of that is faith- a free
falling trust that it is all going to work out. You'll have to call upon that
faith too…
My godson Zach is four and a half years
old. He is with his Dad at the pool this week and he says to his dad, you want
to see me go off the high dive. This is the ten foot board. He starts walking
over to the ladder. His Dad doesn't know what to do or say but he doesn't want
to tell his son that he can't do something that is a great challenge but not
lethally dangerous. So he follows his son over to the ladder. Up Zach goes, up
and up and up and he is on top of the ladder. Now Dad is tense. He steps back
to see Zach run off the end of the board and leap into the air, Kaboom, great canon ball. Dad is stunned. Zach swims over
to him. Dad helps him out of the water. Dad says, “Zach,
weren't you scared?” Zach says, “Yeah, that's what makes it cool.” They sit
there for a moment. Zach says, “you want to see me do
it again?”
Peter says, “You have the words of
eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of
God.” Brothers and sisters, take the plunge and free fall. It drives out
anxiety, self-doubt, fear, banality, and despair. It opens us to hope, love,
purpose, and meaning. Go for it. Amen
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