If You Can’t Get Out Of It, Get Into It
(Ephesians 2:11-22)
I have borrowed the title of my sermon this morning from the organization called Outward Bound. Outward Bound was founded decades ago to help young people with challenges grow beyond their personal histories and fears into ‘resilient and compassionate’ citizens of the world. Through carefully prepared wilderness experiences, kids learned new inner strength, outer teamwork and a commitment to leave no one behind. The motto of Outward Bound used to be – I don’t know whether it still is: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” There is no fear – big or small – in other words, that cannot be faced. There is, however, a decision to be made. You have to be ready to say to yourself: “I’m done being afraid. I will do anything, including walking right into my fear, to get beyond it.”
The idea isn’t just for outdoor adventures, is it? We all shield ourselves from fear – through purposeless busyness, over-zealous planning, addictions big and small, the inability to say No, and last but not least, by finding someone else to blame our fears on. So let me ask you: How’s that working for us? Fear gone yet? Ready to try another way?
Let me illustrate with a story. A number of years ago a friend of mine – a fellow pastor – told me about a dream she once had that showed her what her fear really is. At the time she was making a lot of transitions in her life. She was in her mid-40’s, recently divorced, changing careers, handling two sullen teenagers and literally wondering where the next mortgage payment was going to come from. Not a bad list, yes?
My friend lived in Santa Monica, CA and if you’ve ever seen the Santa Monica beaches, you know that there is a huge pier that goes way out over the surf. She dreams that she is sleep walking out on that pier and comes to the end of the pier over the water and wakes up. Something in the depths of that dark water is calling her to let go and fall in. She is absolutely terrified but can’t help herself and she falls into the cold water. She starts to sink down and down. She can’t swim, she can’t breathe and she runs out of energy to struggle anymore. Just as she feels she is about to drown she hits bottom and opens her eyes for one last glimpse of life.
And what does she see? She looks around and she sees scattered paperback books, an old washing machine tipped over, old pictures drifting off in the current and on and on. Junk. Rubbish! She starts to laugh. Then she is laughing hysterically with amazement that all these years she has been terrified of rubbish! And then she realizes that here she is at the bottom of the ocean and she can breathe! And it isn’t her own breath – something like laughter, something like love – is breathing for her. With every breath she rises up above the junk until she breaks the surface of the water at the edge of the beach and she can breathe on her own again.
Wonderful dream, yes? How much of our lives we hold onto without questioning, that turns out to be founded on fear and not truth. How much of our fears we hold on to because our fears are familiar and, well……ours. How much we think can’t be faced but turns out to be just……rubbish. How little we trust that life itself can breathe for us. How much – if we can’t get out of it – we can get into it.
But how reluctant we are to go beyond the desire to release our fears and really release them. To take a swan dive off that pier with trust as our wings and plumb the depths of our fears until they turn into allies.
You know what my greatest fear is? It’s not so much my personal mortality or whether my resources and my years come out even in the end. My greatest fear is what sort of world I leave to my grandchildren. I admit to getting to be a crotchety old geezer. I admit further to having been incredibly naïve about the world we live in. I have thought there is a core in most people of decency, dignity, self-honesty, an ability to share burdens with the most vulnerable among us, a common heritage concerning the lessons of history, a sometimes reluctant but real commitment to the slow-moving machinery of democracy. I had hoped there could be some fact-based consensus on common problems that reach beyond the gated communities of our own minds. It is OK to hate now. And I am afraid.
Yet I know that my own fear only creates more fear and attracts its own consequences. I also know that if I can’t get out of my own fear, I can get into it. I can take that swan dive off the pier. Why? Because I know there is a place where I am at home and fear is not. It is not a physical place. It has no geography or national boundaries. It is a place where none of us are aliens and strangers. A place where we can breathe and laugh and nobody gets left behind. Nobody.
That place is in me. And in you. I can live there. So can you. But we have to choose it. We have to choose to say peace to those far off and those near by. We have to practice looking closely at our illusions and see them for the rubbish they are. We have to notice when we live out of decency, dignity and self-honesty and when we do not. I can’t believe I am saying this, but we have to start all over again with the most basic of rules: Hate is NOT OK. Most of all, though, we have to decide what we actually believe. Yes, we have to get into it.
I believe that on a Good Friday two thousand years ago what was nailed to the Cross was our fear. Jesus rose from our fear. He rose from the graveyard of our illusions. I believe Jesus is footloose and free in our world, calling all to him who are ready to say, fully and without hesitation, I am home. And fear is not.
I promise my grandchildren, then, that I will not flinch before acts of hate and fear. I will call them for what they are. I will be honest with myself when I act out of the same. I will welcome in my life the hated, the vulnerable, and the stranger. I will step beyond mere words. I will dance to the music of the tender and the brave. I will spend my time with all those, old and young, who have not given up. I will be built with them and with you, into a household where God is at home.
Amen
Rev. Peter Heinrichs
July 22, 2018
Interim Minister at South Freeport Congregational Church
(Ephesians 2:11-22)
I have borrowed the title of my sermon this morning from the organization called Outward Bound. Outward Bound was founded decades ago to help young people with challenges grow beyond their personal histories and fears into ‘resilient and compassionate’ citizens of the world. Through carefully prepared wilderness experiences, kids learned new inner strength, outer teamwork and a commitment to leave no one behind. The motto of Outward Bound used to be – I don’t know whether it still is: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” There is no fear – big or small – in other words, that cannot be faced. There is, however, a decision to be made. You have to be ready to say to yourself: “I’m done being afraid. I will do anything, including walking right into my fear, to get beyond it.”
The idea isn’t just for outdoor adventures, is it? We all shield ourselves from fear – through purposeless busyness, over-zealous planning, addictions big and small, the inability to say No, and last but not least, by finding someone else to blame our fears on. So let me ask you: How’s that working for us? Fear gone yet? Ready to try another way?
Let me illustrate with a story. A number of years ago a friend of mine – a fellow pastor – told me about a dream she once had that showed her what her fear really is. At the time she was making a lot of transitions in her life. She was in her mid-40’s, recently divorced, changing careers, handling two sullen teenagers and literally wondering where the next mortgage payment was going to come from. Not a bad list, yes?
My friend lived in Santa Monica, CA and if you’ve ever seen the Santa Monica beaches, you know that there is a huge pier that goes way out over the surf. She dreams that she is sleep walking out on that pier and comes to the end of the pier over the water and wakes up. Something in the depths of that dark water is calling her to let go and fall in. She is absolutely terrified but can’t help herself and she falls into the cold water. She starts to sink down and down. She can’t swim, she can’t breathe and she runs out of energy to struggle anymore. Just as she feels she is about to drown she hits bottom and opens her eyes for one last glimpse of life.
And what does she see? She looks around and she sees scattered paperback books, an old washing machine tipped over, old pictures drifting off in the current and on and on. Junk. Rubbish! She starts to laugh. Then she is laughing hysterically with amazement that all these years she has been terrified of rubbish! And then she realizes that here she is at the bottom of the ocean and she can breathe! And it isn’t her own breath – something like laughter, something like love – is breathing for her. With every breath she rises up above the junk until she breaks the surface of the water at the edge of the beach and she can breathe on her own again.
Wonderful dream, yes? How much of our lives we hold onto without questioning, that turns out to be founded on fear and not truth. How much of our fears we hold on to because our fears are familiar and, well……ours. How much we think can’t be faced but turns out to be just……rubbish. How little we trust that life itself can breathe for us. How much – if we can’t get out of it – we can get into it.
But how reluctant we are to go beyond the desire to release our fears and really release them. To take a swan dive off that pier with trust as our wings and plumb the depths of our fears until they turn into allies.
You know what my greatest fear is? It’s not so much my personal mortality or whether my resources and my years come out even in the end. My greatest fear is what sort of world I leave to my grandchildren. I admit to getting to be a crotchety old geezer. I admit further to having been incredibly naïve about the world we live in. I have thought there is a core in most people of decency, dignity, self-honesty, an ability to share burdens with the most vulnerable among us, a common heritage concerning the lessons of history, a sometimes reluctant but real commitment to the slow-moving machinery of democracy. I had hoped there could be some fact-based consensus on common problems that reach beyond the gated communities of our own minds. It is OK to hate now. And I am afraid.
Yet I know that my own fear only creates more fear and attracts its own consequences. I also know that if I can’t get out of my own fear, I can get into it. I can take that swan dive off the pier. Why? Because I know there is a place where I am at home and fear is not. It is not a physical place. It has no geography or national boundaries. It is a place where none of us are aliens and strangers. A place where we can breathe and laugh and nobody gets left behind. Nobody.
That place is in me. And in you. I can live there. So can you. But we have to choose it. We have to choose to say peace to those far off and those near by. We have to practice looking closely at our illusions and see them for the rubbish they are. We have to notice when we live out of decency, dignity and self-honesty and when we do not. I can’t believe I am saying this, but we have to start all over again with the most basic of rules: Hate is NOT OK. Most of all, though, we have to decide what we actually believe. Yes, we have to get into it.
I believe that on a Good Friday two thousand years ago what was nailed to the Cross was our fear. Jesus rose from our fear. He rose from the graveyard of our illusions. I believe Jesus is footloose and free in our world, calling all to him who are ready to say, fully and without hesitation, I am home. And fear is not.
I promise my grandchildren, then, that I will not flinch before acts of hate and fear. I will call them for what they are. I will be honest with myself when I act out of the same. I will welcome in my life the hated, the vulnerable, and the stranger. I will step beyond mere words. I will dance to the music of the tender and the brave. I will spend my time with all those, old and young, who have not given up. I will be built with them and with you, into a household where God is at home.
Amen
Rev. Peter Heinrichs
July 22, 2018
Interim Minister at South Freeport Congregational Church