Well do we know each other well enough for me to tell you the story of the woman who went up the side of a mountain that she probably should have avoided.  Max Lucado, the fairly famous preacher and writer, tells this story in one of his books.  So I figure if he can tell this, so can I.  This woman and her husband went skiing, and so they went on the ski lift up this mountain.  The thing is that when this woman got off the ski lift, she realized suddenly, now here’s the delicate part, she realized that she had to visit the necessary room.  It was necessary for her to visit the necessary room.  Have I put this delicately enough?  Only there was no necessary room up there, and she just couldn’t wait.           

Her husband had a brilliant idea, husbands are good for a brilliant idea every so often, his idea was that she should go over into the woods by herself where she’d have a little privacy.  So that’s what she did, she didn’t really have much choice, she went over into the woods, unzipped this one-piece ski outfit she was wearing, lowered it down to her knees.  Are you getting the picture?  Are you getting more of the picture than you really want?  Actually, this could have been a brilliant idea.  This plan would have worked, she decided later, if she had just taken her skis off first.  Because there she was, her clothes down around her knees, and then just very slowly at first, but gradually gathering more speed, she begins to move backward.  And before she realizes it, she’s really going at quite a clip.  There she is, streaking, literally, down the mountain, that is, until she hits a tree and breaks her leg.           

She’s airlifted down to the medical center, and while she’s there, she meets a man with a broken arm.  They start talking, and she asks him how he broke his arm.  And he says, “Well there I was, taking the ski lift up to the top of the mountain, when all of a sudden I saw this crazy lady skiing backwards totally naked.”  Here’s the part I like best.  He said, “I leaned over to get a better look, when I fell out of the ski lift and broke my arm.”  Then he asked this woman, “By the way, how did you break your leg?”           

We have those kinds of days, don’t we?  Some of us have had those years, those decades, those lifetimes.  I have a friend who has this kind of interesting philosophy of life.  It seems to boil down to this.  He will say, “Some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.”  Or I’ve heard it said like this: some days you’re the windshield, and some days you’re the bug.  It’s true, isn’t it?  Some days you are on top of the world, everything is going your way.  You ask people how they’re doing, and usually they say something like fine or good or okay.  I remember I once asked someone how he was doing and he said, “Excellent.  Excellent.  If I were any better I’d be two people,” which was kind of scary since this was not someone you would want two of.           

But Peter must have gotten out of the boat feeling like this, somewhat exultant, triumphant.  Here he was walking on water.  He’d seen Jesus doing things like this, and now here he was.  We have those moments in our lives when there is a transcendence almost that seems to run through us, a strength, a power, what we had long thought was impossible now seems very real, it is within our reach.  We might even begin to believe that this is us doing all this, this is our strength, our power, we are the ones who are doing this impossible thing.  And we take our eyes off of the source of our strength.           

So some days we are on top of the world.  And some days we are carrying the weight of the world.  Some days we are being crushed by the world, it feels as though we are sinking into the depths, we are falling and we can’t get up, not on our own.           

I’m not one who follows professional basketball, and I wonder if many of you do, I know this is not a pro basketball city.  But I’ll never forget hearing about this young star of the Boston Celtics a few years ago, Reggie Lewis was his name, does anyone remember Reggie Lewis?  He was only 27, and a wonderful basketball player, in the best shape of his life, everyone would have thought, but at 27, at the height of his abilities, the height of his physical fitness, he just dropped over dead one day in practice on the basketball court.  This kind of thing happens, I guess, to some people, it just happens.  And a teammate of his, a close friend, was struggling to express his thoughts about this.  He’d been asked by a reporter what his thoughts were about this, and he said, “My thoughts?  My thoughts have just been questions, questions, questions and questions, and no answers, no answers.”           

I remember a big, muscular, hulking fellow I was acquainted with at one time.  He was good-natured, but you didn’t want to make him mad.  And at one point one of his best friends died, unexpectedly, at a young age.  And it was so pitiful to watch this big, big-hearted, hulking fellow, just lumbering around with his grief, trying to make sense of this.  At one point I remember him lifting his face heavenward and his voice just fairly exploding with emotion said, “I want some answers, and I want them now.”           

Annie Dillard, the writer, once wrote that someone had said to her, “It just seems like we’re been set down here, and can’t nobody tell us why.”  Of course, you never have those kinds of thoughts when everything’s going just fine.  But there are those times when it’s like you’re out in a boat somewhere, all alone, in the dark, in the middle of the storm, and the winds and the waves are about to capsize you, your insignificant little vessel is about to crack up.  And it looks hopeless, there’s no way out, this must surely be the end.           

I think of that poem by W. H. Auden, where he is in despair over the loss of someone he loved.  You might know this one from the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral”: 

Stop all the clocks,

Cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos and, with muffled drum,

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,

For nothing now can ever come to any good. 

As I encounter people in my profession as a minister, I sense a certain uneasiness out there, an uneasiness in people, an uneasiness in the world, over something, I can’t quite put my finger on just what it is precisely.  Maybe it’s just that there are so many things.  Do you feel it, an uneasiness about things, an uncertainty about the future?  I don’t know if it’s the economy for some of us, pensions that may or may not be there when we need them, the cost of health insurance.  Or is it some of the social issues that are so divisive, the nasty political climate (it’s hard to believe that the presidential election is a year away, and they’ve already been at it for a year), there are so many things tearing at the very fabric of our nation, and it seems that no one is able or willing to compromise.  Is it Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or now Pakistan or Darfur, to name only a few of the places that so trouble us?  And we begin to wonder, now how is all this going to turn out here, how are things going to turn out?  And then there are the very real personal struggles that we face every day, some of us.  Some people face the most daunting challenges in their personal lives.

I seems to me that Jesus wasn’t just reaching down into the waters to pick up this one man, Peter, he was reaching out to humanity, he was reaching out for all the world, he was reaching out for all who would take his hand and come to the realization that I can’t do it all, I can’t do it on my own, I must have a savior, a redeemer, I need someone who can save me.  Jesus was reaching out for you, in other words, he’s reaching out for me. 

I heard someone, a father, say once that he remembered when he first loved his children, he remembered when he first loved his children.  He said it wasn’t the day they climbed onto his lap and hugged him and said, “I love you, Daddy.”  It wasn’t the day they took their first step or babbled their first word, “Da Da.”  It wasn’t the day they quit crying when he held them.  It wasn’t even the day they were born.  He said that the first day he loved his children was the day his wife came home and announced, “We’re going to have a baby!”  Maybe this is the way it was for you.  This is the love of God, it reaches out to us throughout our lives, and it will not let us go, this love, and it will not let us down. 

I remember the story of the little girl who went to the beach with her parents, and she was playing in the sand, and they had told her not to wander too far away, but she felt more grown up than she really was, and so she kind of edged away from her parents, and got a little too close to the water.  And all of a sudden a great wave came in and knocked her off her feet.  She managed to get back up and stand up momentarily, but the sand was shifting out from under her feet, and then another wave came in and knocked her over again.  She cried out, for help, for her parents, but all she could see was the vast ocean, and she began to panic.  But suddenly, and in this I see an image of Jesus, an image of God, suddenly there was her father, who reached out and picked her up and into the safety of his arms.  And he said to her very tenderly, “Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be afraid.  There’s nothing to be afraid of.  I’ve been watching you all the time.” 

I want to leave you with a poem I like by Maria Rainier Rilke. 

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

As if whole orchards are dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.” 

And tonight the whole earth is falling

Away from all the other stars in the loneliness. 

We’re all falling.  This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one.  It’s in them all. 

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

Infinitely calm, hold up all this falling. 

I love that last line: “And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.”