August 25, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Lean on Me

Ali Trowbridge
Former Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 139
Luke 13:10–17
Psalm 71:1–6

“For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from my birth.”
Psalm 71:5–6a (NRSV)

. . . when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry
“The Real Work”

An article from the Washington Post caught my eye earlier this week. Columnist Michael Gerson wrote about his experience of seeing his son off to college for the beginning of freshman year. He said, “That moment at the dorm is implied at the kindergarten door, at the gates of summer camp, at every ritual of parting and independence, but it comes as surprising as a thief,” he said, “taking [for a time] what you value most.”

While my own children are a ways from being college-bound, I know what Gerson means about all the firsts along the way preparing you for the series of letting-go that parenting entails. What I love about his essay is how he presents this letting-go event in the context of the long view of life. He writes, “We live in the briefest window—a fraction of a fraction of the unimaginable vastness of deep time—in which it is possible for us to inhabit an astounding, privileged instant in the life span of the universe.” And so he leaves us with a renewed sense of the deep wonder and joy of the day-to-day we do have—with each other, our children, our grandchildren—and a reminder not to forget how fleeting it all is.

Tomorrow is the first day of school here in Chicago, and so for many of you, today is the last day of summer vacation as you prepare to begin the fall semester. Still echoing in my ear is the convocation speech George Saunders, a writer and professor at Syracuse University, delivered to the class of 2013.

He makes a startling claim as he looks back on his life, saying that what he regrets is not what he has done—not the time he swam in a river in Sumatra and got sick, or the time when he was playing hockey and tried to impress a girl he liked in the stands, only to score on his own goalie and send his stick flying in the air. These seemingly silly, even somewhat embarrassing moments through the years were not his regrets. It was what he had left undone that bothers him.

He tells a story of when he was in seventh grade, when a new student joined his class. She was shy and nervous, and she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it. She was mostly ignored, occasionally teased. And Saunders could see this hurt her.

He still remembers, after forty-two years, the way she’d look after an insult: “eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. Sometimes he’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it. And then—they moved. That was it. One day she was there; next day she wasn’t. End of story.”

Saunders writes, “Now why do I regret that? Why all these years later am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even mildly defended her. But still. It bothers me. What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly, reservedly, mildly.”

Today’s Gospel lesson from Luke illustrates how Jesus handles things when he comes into the presence of one suffering. The story places us in the company of a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. It’s a story of long suffering. It could be literal, as L. Roger Owens writes in the current Christian Century, an arthritic condition that leaves the vertebrae of the spine and neck fused and bent.

But I also think the crippling condition, the view of only the ground—these could as well imply burdens of the spirit, fears, anxieties, that she carries, that have become her filter or lens through which she engages the world, so that she can’t look up, look out, and believe there may be a horizon of hope ahead. As Owens points out, she is marginalized, socially isolated, and bound by that which overwhelms her. She is suffering.

With a broader stroke definition of what might be ailing her, can we see ourselves in that woman? She did not ask for God’s healing ministry in the text today, and wouldn’t dare to, I bet; she probably just wants to disappear. She probably has a strand of hair in her mouth and is nervously chewing on it.

Meanwhile Jesus is teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath, and it is while he is speaking that this woman appears. And so imagine the scene: Jesus, seeing her, stops his storytelling and calls over to her, and he says, “Woman, you are free.” He lays his hands on her, and she is healed. The decision either to violate the oral law pertaining to the sabbath and heal her or to withhold a blessing that she needs did not seem to faze Jesus one bit; he does not hesitate in his actions. The woman, as Jesus proclaims, is a daughter of Abraham and therefore heir to the covenant promise. She is intended to live her life not in bondage but for her spirit to be free—free to stand tall, and to look on, with hope.

The care for God’s people is at the heart of our faith. There are moments in all our days when we are asked to decide how actively we are engaged in the ministry of healing, of kindness, of attentiveness and awareness to those in our midst and to challenge ourselves to be more engaged in behavior that leads to healing and the rebirth of hope.

I had the privilege of taking a Christian ethics class at Union Theological Seminary in New York with womanist theologian Dr. Emilie Townes. Referring to this text, she reminds us that though we know we are called to the ministry of healing, we tend either to walk away from people in need or to offer a mild, tepid response. She challenges us to “develop the ability to assess and reassess the direction our faith is going and to ask if ours is the path God is leading us on, or the path of our own human folly. People of faith must lean into the ministry of healing,” Townes says—that is, to acts of deeper kindness and compassion, because such acts are the birthplace of hope (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3).

Hope—that gift of the spirit, which is very deep, very basic, very private within us all—is the great expectation by which we live and move in the world. And even though time is fleeting, even though the only constant is change, hope is the thing that will always outlast change, and it can be stirred alive by the slightest gesture, the simplest kindness, the most subtle configuration in the beauty of nature, in the comfort of community, in the life of faith.

Hope is the belief that the broken things will be made whole, that there is a future unfolding for each of us where we are restored, fulfilled, and free. Hope lies not on what has been, nor even where we are, but in all that is yet to be. And so we do not let ourselves despair in the present reality, no matter how dark it may seem, where we are tested, burdened, sometimes brought to our knees. Our Creator God, who calls us into the future, is our hope and our trust, the one we have leaned on from our birth. And God comes to us, stands with us, and invites us to lean back on everlasting arms.

The Kentucky native poet and professor and farmer Wendell Berry wrote a poem called “The Real Work,” which is excerpted on your bulletin cover:

. . . when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

The Apostle Paul tells us that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” What does it mean to hope for what we don’t see? This is so counterintuitive. It is broadly accepted that visualization is key to any ambitious, goal-driven person. An athlete, a business executive, a student, an entrepreneur—visualizing our goals and dreams has long proven a successful way to achieve them. If we can see our dream, name it, taste it, feel it, then we are more likely to achieve it.

Ask any Olympic athlete, like Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, who just won the World Championship in Moscow this week in the 200 meters to take his seventh world title. Imagine his visualization process before every race, closing his eyes and seeing the track stretching out before him. He thinks about winning. He visualizes it. He sees it happening in his mind’s eye.He hopes for it.

So is hope not partially a dream? Or wishful thinking? “Sometimes wishing is the wings the truth comes true on,” Frederick Buechner says. “I think that when we talk of hope, we are talking about our confidence in a future with God, and this is the basis for all our activity in the present. It is everything” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, p. 96).

I’ll long remember one of the greatest moments in sports, not because of a gold medal or a victory speech, but because of the embodiment of the best in the human spirit on display for the world to witness. It was at the Olympics in Barcelona, and the BBC was broadcasting runner Derek Redmond, who broke the British record and who, for the first time in ages, carried Great Britain’s hopes for a medal in the 400 meters. When you listen to the BBC commentators before the race in the playback, like any hometown broadcasters, they are slightly biased—and in this case, openly, unabashedly hopeful that Redmond will prevail. The runners take their positions, the countdown begins, and they’re off. The race is underway, and we watch as each runner leaps into action, finds his natural gate, and runs like the wind.

Then suddenly, the commentators’ emotion impossible to contain, Redmond is down. And totally out of character, pandemonium ensues because even though they’re meant to cover the rest of the runners, the BBC had their eyes trained on Redmond. And he is down and clearly in agony.

Later Redmond would say that he heard a “clap” or a “pop,” and at first he thought he was shot in the leg, but then he realized it was his hamstring. The medics came instantly, and almost as quickly as Redmond went down, as the initial pain of the hamstring tear subsided, he realized where he was, in the Olympic semifinal race, and he knew he had to get up and finish. And so he stood, and hopped, and winced. The cameras were fixed on him, and BBC abandoned the coverage of the rest of the race for the moment. The defeat and despair in the voices on air met with those of all who watched from around the world.

Then, up in the stands, there was movement, and the cameras moved from Redmond hobbling on the track to the commotion in the stands. And the commentators spoke as this scenario unfolded in real time for the world: “There in the stands emerged Redmond’s dad . . . who came bounding down the stairs, pushing desperately past the crowds, past the security, and onto the track. He ran to meet his son. And as he approached his son from behind, Redmond’s father lowered his head beneath his son’s hunched body, put his left arm around his son’s shoulders, and lifted him up and eased his burden.”

They walked toward the finish line slowly, painfully, exchanging words through tears, and then they crossed it, together. The BBC commentators said, right then and there, “In the greatest arena in sport, here Redmond finishes the race, getting the cheer of the games.”

Even in the swift moments of this televised event one can watch as hopes change literally within seconds. When just a few moments ago the hope was to cross the finish line first, now, after the extraordinary turn of events, the crowd was on its feet, cheering on this champion sprinter, champion human being, who found it deep within himself, to finish what he started—granted not the way he envisioned finishing, but crossing that line with all that he had to give.

The International Olympic Committee later said of this moment, “Force is measured in kilograms, speed is measured in seconds, Courage? You can’t measure courage.”

. . . when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Derek Redmond went on to become a motivational speaker and travels the world helping people believe again in hopes that they may not see at first, but hopes that are worth living for.

Our greatest hope lies in the knowledge that we are God’s own, that God will never let us go, and that we are beckoned onward into the future, just like the seemingly defeated British Olympic hopeful, Derek Redmond, like parents who must begin again after their kids move on to college, like the shy seventh grader who is finding her way in life, and like the woman burdened by a crippling spirit for eighteen years, like any one of us here this morning, with our own story we bring—God is faithful still.

The one we have leaned on from our birth is saying to you and me, “Look! Look up!” With God’s mighty and tender hand God lifts our chins and says,

Raise your weary heads. Look to the horizon. There is more, so much more.
Walk with me. . . . I will show you the way.
Not what you see. . . . It’s what I see that I will show you in time.
Come and walk with me through the broken places
yes, even your own broken places—
I’ve got you, your arm is over my shoulder
. . . lean in . . . take heart.
The real journey I intend for you has only just begun.
And if you listen, you’ll hear your heart sing.

May it be so.

Thanks be to God.