A Foot in Two Worlds

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

March 18, 2012; 4 Lent, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Numbers 21:4-9) – From Mount Hor the Israelites set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live." So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

(John 3:14-21) – Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

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Jesus is talking with Nicodemus – an important man; a serious man.  I say Jesus is talking with him.  Really Jesus is playing with him.  “Nick!  You gotta be born again; born from above.”  “Impossible.  I’m an old man.  How can a grown person re-enter a mother’s womb?”  “Nick, Nick!  The wind blows where it will.  Invisible.  You hear its sound; you feel its breath.  Whooosh.  You must be born of the Spirit!”  “What?”

“I know about these things, Nick.  And just like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.  Look, and be alive!”

Nicodemus knows the story.  The Hebrew people were in the wilderness.  Miserable, short of food and water.  They whined to Moses; they complained to God.  And, “The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people.”  The people asked Moses, “Pray!  Save us!”  And God told Moses to make a bronze image of the serpent – an image of the very thing that was tormenting them.  Moses made the bronze serpent and raised it high so the people could see it.  And whenever someone was bitten by a serpent looked at it, their life was saved.

Kevin Kling is a storyteller and writer.  He was born with his left arm disabled, much shorter than his right.  In his early 40’s, he had an accident.  “It all started because I wanted to fly,” he writes.  “I remember watching the barn swallows on my grandparents’ farm, fork-tailed acrobats of the sky, darting in and out of rafters, following roads only they could see, living life just ahead of their bodies.  God, I wanted to feel that, a foot in two worlds, so I got a motorcycle.”  The last line in the story is, “and from my body I flew.”  His good arm, the right arm, was paralyzed in the accident.  His life was changed forever. [i]

He remembers it as a near-death experience.  He recalls a point – he assumes it was the point of impact – where he was “given a choice to follow a great sense of peace, or to return to this plane.”  He returned, and he now lives with the question, “Why did I return?  Why did I choose tension over peace?”  He returned, disabled.

When you read Dante, you read a story of a journey into the Underworld.  The walled city of the Underworld is called “Dis.”  Dis “is the place of shadow and reflection where you round off the rough edges of torment and desire.”  One with a dis-ability is one whose ability is “through the world of shadow and reflection.”  One who has a foot in two worlds.

We all are disabled.  Certainly, sooner or later.  Kevin Kling likes to say, “being able-bodied is always only a temporary condition.”  He also likes to point out that “when you are born with a loss, you grow from it.  But when you experience a loss later in life, you grow toward it…  [You] have to become the person you aren’t yet.”

One day you’ll round a corner, your path is shifted.  In a blink something is missing.  It’s stolen, misplaced, it’s gone.  Your heart, a memory, a limb, a promise, a person.  Your innocence is gone, and now your journey has changed.  Your path, as though channeled through a spectrum, is refracted, and has left you pointed in a new direction.  Some won’t approve.  Some will want the other you.  And some will cry that you’ve left it all.  But what has happened, has happened, and cannot be undone.  We pay for our laughter.  We pay to weep.  Knowledge is not cheap.  To survive we must return to our senses, touch, taste, smell, sight, sound.  We must let our spirit guide us, our spirit that lives in breath.  With each breath we inhale, we exhale.  We inspire, we expire.  Every breath has a possibility of a laugh, a cry, a story, a song.  Every conversation is an exchange of spirit, the words flowing bitter or sweet over the tongue.  Every scar is a monument to a battle survived.  Now when you’re born into loss, you grow from it.  But when you experience loss later in life, you grow toward it.  A slow move to an embrace, an embrace that leaves you holding tight the beauty wrapped in the grotesque, an embrace that becomes a dance, a new dance… [ii]

Some years after his accident, Kevin experienced a return of the post-traumatic stress that he had suffered following the wreck.  Years later it came back.  He couldn’t sleep; he had anger issues.  Not the kind of anger that motivates one to action, to confront a wrong.  This was an anger that was like pain – a symptom of something else.  He went to a therapist who said this injury “sits in such a deep place that it’s not triggered in ways you would think.  It’s not something that time heals.  It will come back.”  So, she made him create an image of the very thing that was tormenting him.  She had him tell the motorcycle story again, only this time, in the story, instead of hitting the car, he missed the car, and went where he was going.  And, he says, “by retelling the story and having a different outcome, I started sleeping better.”  The post-traumatic stress dissipated significantly. 

So much of our life is the mysterious journey of having our feet in two worlds.  Telling the myths we form to make ourselves feel better, and to give meaning to our reality, so we can sleep in peace.  And fitting all of that with the concrete reality that we live with day by day.

How we tell our stories is how become free.  Kevin says, “By telling a story, things don’t control me anymore.  It’s in my vernacular.  It’s the way I see the world.  And I think that’s why our stories ask our questions, our big questions, like ‘Where do we come from before life, after life?’  ‘What’s funny in this world, or sacred?’  And even more importantly, by the asking in front of people, and with people, even if we don’t find the answer, by the asking, we know we’re not alone.”

Community.  A community telling stories.  When we do stories together – even when we don’t find the answer – the asking, the working with the stories together, creates community.  We know we aren’t alone.  We share stories.  We belong.  We find comfort in the mystery.  And the wind blows where it will – you hear its sound; you feel its breath.  And you are born again; born from above.

Who knows what Nicodemus thought when he left Jesus that day, after Jesus told him the story of Moses’ lifting the serpent up in the desert?  But we do know that after Nicodemus looked upon the body of Jesus, lifted up so concretely upon the cross, Nicodemus went to help Joseph of Arimathea with the anointing of the body.  The body that would rise from death.  And from that holy place, with a foot in two worlds, Nicodemus must have experienced some sort of mysterious new birth.

So let me close with a story.  A story from Kevin Kling.

Back in the days when pots and pans could talk, which indeed they still do, there lived a man. And in order to have water, every day he had to walk down the hill and fill two pots and walk them home. One day, it was discovered one of the pots had a crack, and as time went on, the crack widened. Finally, the pot turned to the man and said, "You know, every day you take me to the river, and by the time you get home, half of the water's leaked out. Please replace me with a better pot." And the man said, "You don't understand. As you spill, you water the wild flowers by the side of the path." And sure enough, on the side of the path where the cracked pot was carried, beautiful flowers grew, while the other side was barren. "I think I'll keep you," said the man.

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[i] The quotes in this sermon come from the March 15, 2012 radio broadcast transcript of On Being with Krista Tippett, The Losses and the Laughter We Grow Into, her interview with Kevin Kling.

[ii] from Kevin Kling’s poem “Tickled Pink”

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