We Have Lift Off

As much as possible I try to keep Saturdays as quiet, private time, a time for study, prayer, and hopefully some creative thinking all geared towards sermon preparation. I generally do not have the radio or TV on. So it was a bit of a fluke really that I heard about the loss of the space shuttle not long after it happened. I needed to come into church for just a bit in the morning and I had NPR on in the car. I already had the core of a sermon percolating in my mind. A sermon that in some ways seems particularly hard to reconcile with yesterday’s events. And yet as the hours passed yesterday I found I could not put the sermon idea aside. Nor could I disregard the loss of Columbia. So I have to believe that for me, at least, God wants me to hold the two together—difficult as it may seem. The loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew and a sermon based upon a poem by Shel Silverstein.

I didn’t discover the poetry of Shel Silverstein until I was in seminary. And since that time I’ve found more than one good sermon illustration amid the pages of his works. His poems are for children; they are about childhood. Remember that Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." So perhaps it is not surprising that children’s poems may serve as guideposts for those of us of more mature years who still seek the kingdom of God.

One of my favorites among Silverstein’s poems is called "Anchored." First I ask you to imagine the drawing that accompanies the poem. It’s of a small wooden dingy. The dingy floats not too far from shore and it is filled, almost to bursting point it seems, with three children. The children crowd the edge of the boat, looking at the top of a huge anchor. The top of the anchor pokes above the water. We can see beneath the water line that this great anchor is larger than the dingy. One child holds the rope which trails off through the water to the anchor.

Our anchor’s too big for our ship,
So we’re sitting here tryin’ to think.
If we leave it behind we’ll be lost.
If we haul it on board, we will sink.
If we sit and keep talkin’ about it,
It will soon be too late for our trip.
It sure can be rough on a sailor
When the anchor’s too big for the ship.

Today the church celebrates the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the temple. All first born Jewish males in Jesus’ day were ritually presented to God shortly after their birth. They were presented, offered to God’s service, their lives symbolically dedicated to God. In Jesus’ case, of course, that dedication to God’ service was much more than symbolic. One reason we, as a church, celebrate this day is to remind ourselves that we, too, are called to offer ourselves to God. Some of you will remember the words from the Rite One Eucharistic Prayer: "And here (Here! Every Sunday! At this altar!) …here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies…" We present ourselves, we dedicate ourselves to God’s service, we move into God’s very presence as we come to this holy communion. We present ourselves.

Or do we? This is where Shel Silverstein’s poem comes in. We certainly have the opportunity to present ourselves to God, both within the context of the Holy Eucharist and throughout our lives. We could present ourselves to God, we could set sail for God’s kingdom, but more often…

Our anchor’s too big for our ship,
So we’re sitting here tryin’ to think.
If we leave it behind we’ll be lost.
If we haul it on board, we will sink.
If we sit and keep talkin’ about it,
It will soon be too late for our trip.
It sure can be rough on a sailor
When the anchor’s too big for the ship.

We sit there dead in the water hanging onto our possessions, hanging onto our heavy jars of pennies, hanging onto our ambitions for our lives, clinging to our traditions, our needs… we hang onto them because we think that without them we will be lost… But we cannot sail towards God with them… we cannot present ourselves to God, we cannot move towards God as long as we are weighed down by all this stuff, but we cannot let go, so we just sit there talkin’ about it, talkin’ about living Christian lives until it’s too late to live any kind of life at all.

At the end of his poem, Silverstein leaves the children still in the midst of their dilemma—to hang onto the anchor or let go and set sail. For the Christian, there can be no dilemma. We must let go of the anchor. We must let go. We must let go of our moorings, our anchors, and set out upon the open sea. I believe this is a message God wants proclaimed and preached even though seven people who did just that are now dead. You see, for me, space travel is an even more powerful metaphor than travel upon the sea. (Perhaps it is a childhood lived in Houston.)  And for me the people who blast off into space are the ultimate symbol of people who are free of life’s anchors. They do not cling to the past, but look to the future. They do not hoard security, but seek exploration. They are not bound by the familiar and predictable; rather, they trust in what is possible. They do not measure personal worth in what they have acquired, but in what they may discover. In their physical journeys into space astronauts represent, symbolize, the spiritual journeys all of us—all of us—are called to make

I like to think that Shel Silverstein’s children let go of the rope, that they freed themselves from that huge anchor that held them back from life’s journey. Children are more likely to than adults. I mentioned last week that the French priest Michel Quoist encourages us to more childlike (and, incidentally, less earthbound) as we seek God. Listen to part of his prayer entitled "I Like Youngsters." It is written in God’s voice.

"God says: I like youngsters. I want people to be like them. I don’t like old people unless they are still children. I want only children in my Kingdom; this has been decreed from the beginning of time. Youngsters—twisted, humped, wrinkled, white-bearded—all kinds of youngster, but youngsters. There is no changing it; it has been decided. There is room for no one else.

"I like little children because my image has not yet been dulled in them. They have not botched my likeness; they are new, pure, without a blot, without a smear. So, when I gently lean over them, I recognize myself in them. I like them because they are still growing; they are still improving. They are on the road; they are on their way. But with grown-ups there is nothing to expect any more. They will no longer grow, no longer improve. They have come to a full stop.

"It is disastrous—grown-ups thinking they have arrived.

"But above all, I like youngsters because of the look in their eyes. In their eyes I can read their age. In my heaven, there will be only five-year-old eyes, for I know of nothing more beautiful than the pure eyes of a child. It is not surprising, for I live in children, and it is I who look out through their eyes."

In my heaven, God says, there will be only they eyes of five-year-olds.  I didn’t have the TV on much yesterday. But at one point when I turned it on for a bit NASA had just released some video of interviews with some of the astronauts before the mission. They were talking about how excited they were to be going into space. It was excruciating to watch and yet… I remember with joy the pure joy in their eyes. I remember the eyes of those 40-something year old men who were going into space for the first time. Theirs were "five-year-old eyes." In my heaven, God says, there will be only five-year-old eyes. Five-year-old eyes. Unclouded. Unrestrained. Unashamed. Eager. Pure. Joyous. Hopeful. Shining. Open. Wide open. These are five-year-old eyes. I would never want to minimize the loss of these astronaut’s lives, nor discount the tragedy of their premature deaths. But ultimately it is not their deaths that are significant. Despite what many will say, they are not heroes because they paid the ultimate sacrifice. They died in a tragic accident, and ultimately, all die. They are not heroes because of how they died; they are heroes because of how they lived. They are memorable not for what happened upon re-entry, but for what happened during lift-off. I envy them their five-year-old eyes. Unrestrained. Eager. Pure. Joyous. Hopeful. Shining. Open. I will never go into space, but I pray that with God’s help I may explore my own life with five-year-old eyes. I pray that I may cast off all of life’s anchors and pursue my spiritual journey with childlike abandon.

And for those of us whose journey of exploration is the Christian journey, this morning’s collect bears a crucial reminder to us. "Almighty and everliving God, we humbly pray that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the temple, so we may be presented to you with pure and clean hearts by Jesus Christ our Lord. That little word "by" is the crucial piece of this prayer. We pray that we may be presented to God, by God’s Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Jesus is in the boat. We will not be lost.  Jesus is in the boat.  And if we let go of the anchor and put our trust in Jesus, Jesus will accompany and guide every step of our Christian adventure.

"Alleluia! Alleluia!" Quoist concludes his prayer, "Open, all of you, little old men [and women]! It is I, your God, the Eternal, risen from the dead, coming to bring back to life the child in you. Hurry! Now is the time. I am ready to give you again the beautiful face of a child, the beautiful eyes of a child. For I love youngsters, and I want everyone to be like them." Amen.

In memorium: Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool, Ilan Ramon.  The Lord bless them and keep them.  The Lord make his face to shine upon them and be gracious unto them.  The Lord lift up his countenance upon them and give them peace.  This day and for evermore…

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