Swing Your Feet

This sermon was heard at The Federated Church in Weatherford, Oklahoma on Sunday August 7, 2016, the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

On our first date, I took Marie to the North Pole, a delightfully cheesy Christmas themed amusement park at the foot of Pikes Peak. The buildings were like Swiss Chalets. There are odd statues on the grounds. And elves; some of the elves are people in costume, others are statues, some are painted wooden cutouts. One of these had this mildly malevolent expression so Marie and I named him “Omar the Evil Elf.” In my study there is a picture of Marie posing with Santa I took that day.

Something you always discover on first dates are the things that you like and the things you don’t. Me, I don’t like super spinney rides. I get dizzy, I get nauseous, and that’s a bad look on a first date. Marie hates, loathes, despises, abhors, roller coasters, cable gondolas, generally things that hang you over the ground with little support. She’ll tell you. She doesn’t even like bridges.

She was a good sport that day, she went on the gondola ride with me. It’s not a 100-yard-long loop and doesn’t go higher than 20 feet. Not much unless you hate these rides like Marie does. She got on. We were going up and I was falling in love with this wonderful woman.

I was having a great time. She was in abject terror. I told her “Swing your feet!” and she said “NO!” She had a white knuckle grip on the bar that she released one hand just long enough to show me her sweaty palm. Then suddenly the ride stopped, with us about 50 feet from the end, 15 feet in the air. At the end of the ride they helped two people jump down from the gondola in front of us because they couldn’t get the ride going and it was “close enough.” After we got off I didn’t think she would talk to me for the rest of the day.

So if she feels that way about a puny gondola ride at a cheesy amusement park, you know the chances of me getting her on one of those glass walkways like the one over the Grand Canyon or Tower Bridge in London are bad. What is infinity to the power of infinity against? Those chances got lower last year when one of the panels on the Yuntaishan Scenic Walkway in China’s central Henan province cracked, well, shattered.

Nobody was in any danger according to Chinese officials. Each panel was three pieces of tempered glass about nine square feet. Built like a piece of plywood, it was designed to support 1,700 pounds, and that much weight on one square yard isn’t that much if you consider three guys my size couldn’t stand comfortably in one square yard and don’t weigh 1,700 pounds. Then consider people would be walking along so these panels wouldn’t have to tolerate sustained weight. What would cause the impact needed to crack one of these panels is a dance team doing high kicks in stiletto heels. That would put tremendous force on a very small space. But scenic bridges were not made for a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader high-kick routine and they don’t wear that kind of heel anyway.

The whole idea of the glass bridge is to give us a different way to see the glory of creation while asking us to have faith that something we don’t think should hold us will. But when one layer of glass cracks, when what was once clear became pebbled, when what was filled with the laughter of people filled with awe became screams of people yelling “get out of my way,” when what was stable shuddered with the fracture causing just a tiny panic; faith gave way to “feet don’t fail me now.” Park officials reported nobody was injured, but they also reported the entire structure trembled with the break.

So when we hear our reading from Hebrews, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” we get it. We can’t really see the clear bridge panels, but we know they’re there. We can walk on them, but stepping out takes faith because walking on glass seems unreasonable. We’ve seen too much broken glass to have faith in it as sidewalk material, but these walkways keep going up.

That verse is one of scripture’s more renowned, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” And surely this is true. The remainder of the reading from Hebrews is filled with examples from the most ancient ancestors of the Hebrews, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Lord made them promises, promises which were kept. The ending to our reading makes an important point.

The ending of the reading notes that the most important promises, those of a nation so vast that they will be as countless as the sands by the sea and the stars in the sky, was not kept during their lifetimes. While the means to keep that promise was finally put in place during the life of Jacob, it was not fulfilled before the deaths of these Desert Fathers.

As our reading reminds us “they did not receive the things promised,” but they had the promise. They had faith in the promise and the one who made it. Their faith endured even though they did not. Their faith endured in the hope that God would fulfill the promise, if not today, if not soon, one day. Their faith had a long memory, back to the days of the covenant of Noah, their faith had a basis in promises kept by the Lord. They had faith that the promises of the Lord, the promises that we know as the covenant with Moses and the Exodus would come.

They had a vision of the heavenly country to come. By their great faith in the promises of God for this world and for the next, as it says in Hebrews, “God is not ashamed to be called their God.” This is all because by faith, by faith alone we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. As this is from the New Testament, fulfillment of the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is old news to those who know. And by faith, faith that profits from the experiences of our forbearers, we share in the covenants of old and the new covenant sealed in the blood of Christ.

Luke shares one of the most common commands in scripture, “Do not be afraid.” This command is found 70 times in the NIV. This is both a promise as well as a command. He promises us something better commanding us not to fear. Jesus offers more than fear. Jesus offers light. Fear should not be our guiding light, though all too often it is.

Then come the words “little flock.” Jesus describes his followers like a shepherd describes lambs. Lambs not ready for slaughter.

Jesus realizes that in our own way we have come together, but not always of our own volition. Often we are herded. We are small and we are weak and with just the wrong push at just the wrong time in just the wrong way we panic, like crowds on a bridge of shattered glass. It may be safe, but you can’t look to a flock for wisdom. We may not be ready for slaughter, but our own fear may take us over an edge we were never intended to find. Think about lemmings. Think about how natives used to hunt buffalo off of a cliff.

Is this an excuse for “peer pressure?” I’m acknowledging that when people fail to see that our Heavenly Father is pleased to give us the kingdom, we’ll settle for less. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We are meant to be children of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. When we give up our liberty in Christ for safety in what we know, we don’t deserve either and often seem to lose both.

But God in Christ knows we will be anxious, liberty can be scary and a little flock is never known for its confidence. This is where we must rely on faith, the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is where we have to remember to store treasures in heaven, in a purse that will not tear. Treasures that will not spoil.

I was at the Hyatt Regency Chicago for a convention in 1982. Coming through the front door I saw a decorative hanging covering construction over the lobby near the front wall. A minute later another man who had just checked in said, “I wonder what they’re doing up there?” I said, “I bet they’re fixing the skywalks like the ones that fell in KC last summer.” He looked at me and agreed, then he asked how I knew so quickly. I told him I was from Kansas City; my second grade teacher was among the dead. He nodded, we parted.

Faith in what looks secure, steel and concrete. Faith in what had held for years. Faith in what the engineers said would hold. Faith that the change order placed by a later architect was tested. Faith that the best laid plans of mice and men don’t go askew. Faith in the greatest structures built by men. This faith lasts as long as it takes for the first pane of glass to crack and send men, women, and children scurrying like so many lost sheep.

We are to have faith in the Lord who loves us more than that. The Lord who gives better gifts. The Lord whose promises were kept yesterday. The Lord whose promises are for today, tomorrow, and more tomorrows than we can count. We are to have faith in one another in God’s holy name, not in our own. We are called to love in his name. We are called to give in his name. We are called to have faith that surpasses all understanding… not in us, but in Christ and Christ alone.

So on this holy ride we call life, rely on the promises of God, look at the person next to you, let go of that hand rail, and swing your feet.