LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK
Rev. Dr. Kathy Fuson Hurt
FBC, February 24, 2008
Scripture: Genesis 12:1-8
Milton Erickson, a psychotherapist and teacher, tells the story of preparing to head into his office in Detroit one winter day when he noticed a man with a prosthetic leg trying to summon up the courage to walk across an intersection with a significant buildup of glare ice. Erickson approached the man and offered to not just help him across, but to actually teach him how to walk on ice. He first crossed the intersection himself, so the man could see that walking on ice was possible, then proceeded with the lesson. Erickson instructed the man to close his eyes. Then he turned the man around, and walked him back and forth on the ice-free sidewalk several times, first longer and then shorter distances until he saw the man looking confused and lost, then walked him across the icy intersection. Erickson had the man open his eyes, and he was surprised to find himself on the other side of the street. “How did you get me across the ice?” he asked. Erickson explained, “You walked as if the cement was bare. When you try to walk on ice, the usual tendency is to tense your muscles, preparing for a fall. You get a mental set, and you slip that way. But if you put the weight of your legs down straight, the way you would on dry cement, you don’t slip. The slide comes because you don’t put down your full weight and because you tense yourself.” Erickson concludes this story with the observation, “Sometimes you have to forget what you know is true in order to go somewhere” (from My Voice Will Go With You, pp.110-111).
“A ship is safe in a harbor—but that is not what ships are for” (Ralph Helverson). And a person is safe at home, among familiar neighbors and places and routines—but perhaps that is not what a person is for, at least from God’s perspective.
For why else ask a man getting on in years to uproot his family and head off to a destination that would not even be disclosed to him until it had been reached? Why not just bestow on Abram and Sarai the blessings they were going to receive anyway, blessings of offspring and land and good fortune, and allow them to stay put? Nothing seemed to be wrong with their present situation, no problems that were unsolvable, no overwhelming issues that prevented them from living decent, moral lives. So God’s requirement that they embark on a journey with an unknown end as a condition of receiving fulfillment seems arbitrary, unnecessary—unless home and routine and familiarity and safety, all those comforts we seek and cherish and hold fast to once we find them, unless those basic elements of our lives get in the way of something more important. If that is the case, if our usual ways of doing things and our usual relationships and our usual places have become so usual that we lose sight of the unusual, the new possibility, then leaving home becomes necessary. Growth may only happen when everything we know is lost to us.
The sense of danger must not disappear;
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the bylaws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep:
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap:
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
(W. H. Auden)
Auden’s poem on the necessity of taking risks in order to keep passion in living stands in contrast to the messages from our culture that encourage us to cover all our bases, get our ducks in a row, document everything we do, and seek ever greater control of our lives, and messages that condemn those who gamble, who make snap decisions, who engage in whatever we define currently as “risky behavior.” And while it is wise to be cautious in some areas, caution as a whole does little for spiritual growth (which may be why God insisted that Abram pick up and move to an unknown destination, in effect asking Abram to cast aside prudence and common sense and the knowledge he had acquired from his years of living in one place, doing one thing). A spiritual path begins with what is known and then moves off into the unknown, demanding greater and greater risk if one is intent on continuing. The rules of the path change often and without notice; directional signs are either nonexistent or deliberately ambiguous, like God’s coy reference to “a land that I will show you”, but I’m not showing you now; feeling secure may be interpreted as evidence of error or illusion, while a sense of insecurity seems to mean that one is heading in the right direction. Auden notes that “a sense of danger [will]not disappear” as one moves along a spiritual course, so some of the usual indicators our culture provides of knowing that we have made a good decision, like feelings of “rightness” or relief of tension, are not the blessings we receive on a spiritual journey. Nor can we expect to be applauded for risk-taking, since the dangerous “leap” is likely to be taken when “no one else is watching.”
A church is safe within its walls, the literal walls of its magnificent building, the emotional walls of its community of “our kind of people,” the spiritual walls of its creeds and traditions, the institutional walls of the “way we’ve always done things,” safe within its walls—but that is not what churches are for. Studies of churches of all varieties show that they are notoriously averse to taking risks, are in fact the least likely to take risks of all nonprofit organizations. A curious finding, this news that churches do not take risks, since by definition a church, a beloved community that deals in faith and trusts God to sustain it no matter what, should be in the best position of all to engage in risky behavior. If God has promised to keep believers from falling, then those believers would seem to be the first ones ready to leap before they look, to take risks in order to fulfill the church’s mission and to grow spiritually. But such is not the case, for churches by and large demonstrate great caution, remaining safe within their walls, the last to step out on the firing line.
This church here, First Baptist Church of Granville, has shown itself to be an exception to the rule, however, and has been a risk-taking church. We took risks early in our history as participants in the Underground Railroad, helping guide escaping slaves to safety; we took risks most recently in becoming a welcoming and affirming congregation even when we knew that such a stance was result in our being ostracized and ultimately disfellowshipped, cast out of our local association of Baptist congregations.
But churches tend not to be risk-takers, and our church is flirting with moving back inside our walls of familiarity and comfortable routines and hoarding of resources and taking care of ourselves, all those cautious choices that churches make despite their fine talk of faith. I do not believe that churches are called to stay inside their walls; especially I do not believe that this particular congregation thrives by avoiding risks, for being willing to leap before we look is part of the identity of First Baptist Granville.
So this morning your bulletin invited you to reflect on risk, in your own personal life and in the life of this church, and to write down risks you would be willing to take. Whatever you have noted as a personal risk, I invite you to tear that out and keep as a commitment to yourself. The risk you would propose for this church, a risk that you would be willing to be part of, I will collect and read now. Listen to the risky possibilities that you envision for us:
Read, then say they will be discussed by the Board and presented back to congregation for further discussion in Beacon and on listserv.
A ship is safe in a harbor, a person is safe at home, a church is safe within its walls, but that is not what ships or persons or churches are for. We are given life, as individuals and as communities, as a gift not to be hoarded but to grow and share with others. And that growth and sharing will always, always involve taking risks small and large. Sometimes those risks will result in failure, even harm—and sometimes they will bring blessings beyond what we could ever imagine. That the outcome cannot be predicted with certainty is where the risk comes in. When we agree to take that risk, as an individual or as a church, we can be certain that our faith will be tested: how far can we go and still believe, as the author of James asserts, that God will keep us from falling?
“Although I love you, you will have to leap:/Our dream of safety has to disappear.” May we be willing, in this leap year, to truly leap—to head out, without looking (because we cannot see into the future anyway), into that unknown land where God waits for us with the promised blessing of abundant life.
