Psalm
130
Many years ago, when Philadelphia
was making a real push to start the redevelopment of the Delaware River
waterfront, one of the first, trendy restaurant-plus places that opened up was
called the Beach Club. It was just north
of Penn’s Landing, and its big feature was a crane that went out over the water
for bungee jumping. A group of around
seven or eight of us who were working together in Frankford at the time were
all in our late twenties or early thirties, just the right demographic for that
kind of adventure. I have no idea whose
idea it was, but somehow an agreement was reached that one Friday evening we
would meet at the Beach Club to hang out and if anybody in the group wanted to
bungee jump we would all split the cost evenly among us.
So there we were at 7:00 or so,
watching people lifted up to the top of the crane, almost even with the level
of the Ben Franklin Bridge, just off to the left. Then a horn would blow and off they went,
headfirst, almost but not quite hitting the top of the river, and bouncing
around upside-down a couple of times before being lowered to a kind of sandbox
built for the purpose. You could see
them from where we were, removing their helmets and letting the blood drain
back into their bodies from where it had pooled in their skulls. Of course, these folks were all laughing and
you could see how exhilarating it had been, so there was a lot of pointing and
nudging in our group.
Around
9:00 we were still debating who wanted to go first. By that point, the question of whether it was
a good idea to bungee jump on a full stomach had been raised. 10:00 came and went, and the quality of the
band was more of a preoccupation. 11:00
and the list was probably too full for the rest of the night to bother. Then people started leaving, and that meant
that the cost would go up a little and not everybody would get to watch
anyhow. There was some talk of maybe
another time, but it never really got to that point, because there were other
things to do and see that summer.
Maybe there are a few people who are
made for that kind of thing, but it wasn’t us.
And we knew it. You’d have to be
trying to do something pretty big to pull a stunt like that, trying to prove
something to someone (maybe yourself, even), and none of us in that group were
in that boat. In fact, following through
on something that dangerous to impress coworkers would probably have had the
opposite effect. Could you trust the
judgment of someone who would bungee jump from a crane on Delaware Avenue? Probably not.
Yet everybody there that evening, I
feel safe in saying, had already decided to take a longer-term jump in how they
would live their lives, consciously taking a step out in faith. They were all living and working in positions
of Christian service that they knew would not put them in control very
often. If they found themselves at the
top of things, that might be just when Jesus told them to jump, and it might be
just as they thought things were about to end in a destructive landing or, at
best, a horrible splash, that would be just when they felt the tug of the
safety line catch them and pull them back.
One man who was there was a
brilliant guy who had chosen, very consciously, to go into social work and help
children who were at risk. He understood
them, because his own mother, who was single, had died when he was six. Now there he was, having come through a lot,
and doing well when, about a year after this bungee-watching party, one of the
parents he worked with was charged with neglect and abuse of a toddler, leading
to the child’s death. He, as the
caseworker, went through a very public investigation. He was totally cleared, but the toll it took
on him was incredible. He looked at his
own competence and performance much more rigorously than the official
investigators.
“Out
of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice!
Let
your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!
If
you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?” [Psalm
130:1-3]
What
helped was the awareness that if he had not been involved in the situation,
there were other children who might have ended up the same way, and he had
prevented that.
“But
there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.” [Psalm
130:4]
It took a lot out of him, but God’s
grace was there. That is what allows
real discipleship that makes a difference, which always matches Jesus’ pattern
of surrendering the glory and the good report and the safety and the warm
fuzzies to go into the places that call for healing and the power of God. Jesus left heaven for earth, and then left
this life on earth by way of a cross and the darkness of the grave. For us.
Those who follow him, follow him.
For others. Along the way they
may call out
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!” [Psalm 130:1-2]
Their
voices, their whole being, may scream out like someone bungee jumping, having
that stomach-churning second when they suddenly realize what commitment means.
Don’t think Jesus didn’t have his
own second thoughts. Oh, his last week
began well enough, with the crowds cheering him, and waving palms, and shouting
his name. But by Thursday the tide had
turned and he was on the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane praying that if he
could possibly be spared all that lay before him, that God would take it away. Even on the cross he called out to ask where
God was, why he who had begun in the glory of eternity, the very glory of God
the Father, was now turned over to the angry maw of a fearful system that had condemned
him to a slow and painful death, surrounded by mockery and filled with a sense
of total failure and the weight of the sins of the whole world, with no one
able to help. Only a handful of his
friends would even stick around and there would be nothing they could do. He would quote a different psalm:
“My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Psalm 22:1]
And
yet, those who cry from the depths are those whom the Lord hears. Those who cry out from their hearts in real
faith, are those on whom the Lord has mercy.
On January 7 of this year, that
social worker I mentioned, the one who could easily have given up on it all, was
sworn in as the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the entire state of
California. He’s sort of taking another
dive into service. He was in the state
legislature for four years where he at least had a vote on the budget. Now he has less actual political power, having
chosen to forgo it. In the speech he
gave that day
“He
reflected on the fact that the state schools chief does not have direct
responsibility for what happens in districts around the state. ‘It’s a hard
job,’ he said. ‘This is the kind of job when you get all the blame
for what goes wrong, but you don’t have the resources to fix what needs to be
fixed.’
‘I accept
those challenges,’ he said.”[1]
Christian discipleship is following a king who rides a
mule, not a stallion. It means walking
the way of one who turned his back on life in heaven itself to be with us. It means going into situations where we know
we cannot win or will not succeed – at least in the ways that the world defines
winning or success – and going in with our eyes wide open to the realities
involved. It means praying, like Jesus,
“yet, not my will but yours be done.” [Luke 22:42]
Christian
discipleship means faith and trust and reliance on God in those times when you are
powerless and everything around is turned upside down and you’re hurtling
toward who-knows-what but you say,
“I
wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my
soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the
morning,
more than those who watch for the
morning.” [Psalm 130:5-6]
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