“One Leg A Little Longer Than the Other One”

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

August 31, 2003

St. Paul UMC

Rev. John Fleming

I have never been bungee jumping in my thirty-five years. And, to be honest with you, the chances of me going now are not great. In fact, I would have to say that the chances of me doing such a thing are pretty slim. I might have considered it ten or twelve years ago, back in my not so smart years. But now, barring a strong blow to my head, I do not think that I will be doing any bungee jumping. There is just something about the thought of this old and overweight body of mine jumping off of a platform with only a harness and a giant rubber band keeping me from hitting the pavement that makes me more than a little uncomfortable. Oh, I might say that I want to do such a thing. I will talk big. I might even pay some money and get in line with everyone else to jump. But when push comes to shove, I don’t want to be shoved! Susie’s brother would go. I am convinced of that. He is the adventuresome one in our family. You would have to pay for it, but I am pretty sure that he would strap on the braces and leap. But not me, I would never do that!

Maybe that is why I like the story that came across my desk a few weeks back about two New York City businessmen who decided that there was some money to be made by introducing bungee jumping to Mexico. So, they sunk a little bit of time and a lot of their money into doing just that. They had a platform built, a jumping off place. They bought several hooks and harnesses and straps. Of course they bought the giant rubber band and an extra one or two and they set up their new enterprise in a prime location. There was, however, a small problem, once they were up and running. There were people all around. In fact, people were everywhere, but no one had been bungee jumping before and so they were scared to try it. The businessmen knew that they were going to have to do a little servant leadership if they were going to be successful. They knew that one of them would have to actually bungee jump. The problem was that their investment was mostly money and time. Neither of the two of them had ever bungee jumped before. And so they played the game that we’ve all played before, rock, paper, and scissors to determine who would do the jumping. The one who won or lost, depending on how you look at this sort of thing, put on the harness. He made sure that all of the fasteners were fastened and that all the hooks were in place. His business partner attached the giant rubber band to his belt. He moved as close to the edge of the platform as he could and with all the courage that he could muster, he closed his eyes and jumped while everyone down below watched with wonder. It looked like things were going extremely well, that was, until he sprung back up the first time. His partner noticed it when his friend popped up that first time; he saw blood oozing from his friend’s nose. He watched as he plummeted back towards the ground. His partner sprung back up a second time. This time one of the bungee jumper’s eyes was swelling and quickly turning black. He fell to the ground now a third time. When he popped up this third time the one who didn’t jump noticed that his friend’s ear had been cut off. He really wanted to know what was happening and so he cuffed his hands together and he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Are you okay?” With the one ear still intact and in good working order, this bungee jumper heard his partner’s question and yelled back this response, “I’m not sure. It is rough down there. By the way, do you know what a pinata is? I keep hearing that word right before they hit me!”

Have you known that feeling a time or two? Maybe it happened when you were a teenager. It happened to me once when I was that age. I was probably fourteen when I had my eye on Joy Carruth. Joy lived in our neighborhood, a neighborhood full of boys. I was convinced that I was the one for her, but she chose Andy Babb over me. Wham!” You will know this. I know this. You do not have to be a teenager with raging hormones to know such a feeling. Your marriage isn’t all that you hoped it could be and you know that it could come to an end. Wham! They chose him for the job and not you. You are more qualified, and besides that, you really needed the new job. You needed the money, but more than that, you needed the change, but you did not get it. Wham! If I asked you to, you could help me with this part of the sermon, giving me instance after instance that caused the whamming to happen. A bloody nose here. A black eye there. A part of an ear missing here. Folks beating us up and all the while they are doing it they are cheering.

One of the things that preachers do to stay on top of their games is to read books. For me the first line of a book is like a good sermon title, it has to grab your attention. By the way, what do you think about this morning’s sermon title? Anyway, the first line of a book is important. That is why I like the first line of M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled. Do you know the book? If you do, then perhaps you will remember it’s first line. It’s words are these, “Life is difficult.” I cannot tell you anything else about that book, but I can remember it’s first line. Life is difficult, have you discovered that?

The people for whom our scripture lesson was intended certainly knew that. Some say that these words are a letter, an epistle, written by the apostle Paul. Others think that it is a sermon, written by someone else, and not a letter. I even read someone this week who said that these words are a commentary, like the kind of commentaries that live in the shelves back in my study. To be honest with you, I do not know which it is. What I do know is that we have come across a people who are considering giving up on their faith in Jesus. They are standing at a crossroad and are facing an important, can’t turn back decision in their lives. They were new to Christianity. I am sure of that. They had been taught by contemporaries of Jesus, people who knew Jesus first hand, but still they were thinking about giving up on their faith because there were people all around them who being thrown out of their places of worship. Some were being thrown into jail cells for what they believed. And still others were being killed all because of what they now believed. Wham! I don’t know. Maybe it was the tug of the old and the fear of the new that kept these folks sitting on a decision fence. My guess is that they were much closer to giving it all up than they were to sticking it out with Christ. So Paul wrote to them, trying to convince them that following Jesus is worth any risk.

Put yourselves in the apostles’ shoes. Or better yet, put yourselves in his mind and in his heart. You know this about the Hebrews. You know that you’ve got to write something, a powerful something, trying to convince this people, your people that while everything is coming unglued, while the things that you thought were nailed down, isn’t and while all hell is breaking loose, what can be trusted more than anything else are the promises of God. Beloved, the promise that God is with us must not be taken lightly. So there you are, in Paul’s shoes, in his heart, in his mind, and in his hand, as he fashions these words. How would you go about it? What words would you use to convince? Well, let’s see how Paul goes about this. The apostle does not try something all that revolutionary or innovative. He begins with a definition. He begins by defining what faith is. Listen to it, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” That is a pretty good definition. If I were leading a workshop on faith, I might have you pull out a piece of paper, ask you to define faith, and then give you a minute or two to do it. Actually, I hope that you will do such a thing this afternoon before you take your afternoon nap. What is faith? How would you define it? What does it mean to you? Paul says that it’s been sure of your hopes and confident and convinced of things that you cannot see. And to illustrate his definition, to let you know what he really thinks here, he offers some examples of people who lived in a faithful way. I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but Paul’s words sound like a repeating verse whose line is, “By faith.” Listen to it. Read it again this afternoon, not just the words that are our lesson, but the words in between, too. Paul writes, “By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. And the one that Paul holds up, heads and shoulders above the rest, is Abraham. By the way, he only holds up the good part of Abraham. He does not mention that Abraham tried to pass his wife off as his sister a couple of times, to protect himself. He does not mention that he did not always completely trust God. When it comes down to talking about Abraham, he mentions that the patriarch left his homeland and everything behind for the promise of a new land and children. Which was a pretty big promise to a man who never dreamed that he would be able to have such a blessing.

Well, I think that that is how Paul goes about encouraging these people to not give up. So, what is left for us this morning is to think about how these words can speak to us. Let me leave you with two lessons from our scripture. The first one is this, we can trust the God who grabbed Abraham’s hand, to lead us in times of doubt. I heard about a father and his little girl who went on a walk one day. She was four and curious, so they went out to explore some new territory. This father tells that Captain Kirk and Jacques Costeau would have been proud. The area was new to her. He says that they walked down streets they had never walked down, petted dogs that they had never seen. He says that the yards were different, the kids were older, and the houses were bigger. Her father thought that the change might bother his little girl, and so he looked over at her and asked if she was alright. “Sure!” she answered. He asked, “Do you know where we are?” “Nope”, she said. “Do you know how to get home?” “Nope!” “And you aren’t worried?” Without slowing her pace, she reached up and grabbed her daddy’s hand and said, “I don’t have to know how to get home. You already do.” Here is what I think our real danger is. I don’t think that our danger is giving up on Jesus and claiming Judaism. I think that our real danger is giving up on God altogether. Friends, you can trust the promises of God and the promise of God to be with us!

And second, because we have this trust, we can do some mighty things. I like the story that Bishop Alfred Norris told at Annual Conference in 1994 about a church that he once served. He tells that one of the things that he did was to go to the sporting events for the youth of his church. One year, there were three young men in his church who were great runners. They were so good, that in every race in every track meet, that year, they finished first, second, or third. When it came time for the state track meet, the bishop was in the stands and he looked out at the field of competition. He did not notice it at first, then he did. There was a young man, a competitor, who had one leg that was a little longer than the other one. The Bishop could not help but to think that that particular boy would give his youth no trouble. When the first race was over, the boys who always finished first, second, and third, finished second, third, and fourth, behind the guy whose one leg was a little longer than the other one. The bishop commented to his church members who were there that the boy’s winning was a fluke, that in the next race, things would be right again. Then the second race began, and the boys who always finished first, second, and third, finished, second, third, and fourth, behind the boy whose one leg was a little longer than the other one. It was that way all day. When the day was over, the boy had won every race. It didn’t seem to bother him that these other three boys always won. He just won himself. The bishop tells that he had to go over and speak to him. When he did, he asked him what his secret was. Listen to what he said. “When I was5 and tried out for the t-ball team, no one ever told me that I’d never make it. And when I was a little older and tried out for the high school basketball team, no one told me that I wouldn’t make it or that I couldn’t do it and so I did it. And since no one ever told me that I couldn’t do it, I never knew that I couldn’t and so I just did it.” You’ve got one question that you are supposed to be working on. Let me give you another one. Here it is, “What are the things that you could do if you believed that you could?” Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Max Lucado for the story about the father and the girl who went exploring in a nearby neighborhood. Special thanks to Bishop Alfred Norris for telling the closing story in this sermon).