UNSTICKING TOGETHER [W, 7-29-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

UNSTICKING TOGETHER    [W, 7-29-20] 

Two days ago, I mentioned that nobody says “We’ll get through this together” anymore. But…

There was a local [Indianapolis] news item this week that reminded me of one of my favorite sermon vignettes. It seems a woman was on a pontoon boat on Geist Reservoir when her $20,000 prosthetic leg fell into the water. It just so happened that fire department crews were finishing a training exercise there, led by Battalion Chief Rita Reith. They promptly jumped into their diving equipment and the DNR boat and went looking for the leg. They found it an hour later, after finding an anchor and sunglasses, etc.

So now I shall update the sermon story: This woman fell off a pontoon boat at the reservoir. The fire department people jumped into the water to save her. Chief Rita grabbed her sunbonnet, but it came off. So chief Rita grabbed her hair, but she was wearing a wig, and it just came off in her hand, too. A diver went down and grabbed her by the leg, but it was a prosthetic leg, and it came off, too. Chief Rita blurted out, “How can we save you if you won’t stick together?”

Frankly, I think Chief Rita is going to be disappointed. I used to tell that story with the idea that if we understood that our salvation depended on sticking together, we’d be smart enough to do it. As a church, and as a nation. The United Methodist Church and the current Republican administration have proved me wrong. They don’t want everyone to be saved, not if it means they have to stick together with undesirables. They’d rather drown than take off the money belt around their waists. [Another old sermon vignette.]

Barack Obama proved that. My continuing grievance with him is that he squandered a chance to get things done, while he tried to get people to stick together when they were determined not to do so.

I apply this now to myself. There are parts of me that just don’t want to stick together with the others. Not just my faltering memory and eyes and legs, all of which play tricks on one another, but my hopes, my fears, my desires, my intentions. Some of them just will not stick together with the others to make a harmonious whole. So I’m accepting them as they are. The outliers will just have to stay there, sneering at the others in their arrogance and selfishness, but getting no rewards. The rest of us in me will go ahead and “go on to perfection.” 

I think we’re going to have to do that socially and politically, too. We should not be mean or vindictive to those who won’t stick together for the good of the whole, but we just have to move on without them. In the meantime, I understand that some folks make a lot of money from retrieving golf balls from ponds. It sounds like dragging the pond for artificial legs might have an even bigger payoff.

John Robert McFarland