There are times, in my preaching, when I like to invite you to go with me on an exploration of some of the deeper truths of the faith.  I don’t think of myself as being as naturally gifted as some of my colleagues with the native skills required for that kind of intellectual rappelling.  Nonetheless, as with the caverns at Carlsbad, it’s invigorating from time to time to climb down into some deep expanse of truth and wander around for a while.  But, there are also times when, for a whole host of reasons, its important to take another approach.  This is one of those times.

For some reason of late, I’ve been spending a great deal of time with people who are in terrible pain or who are facing insurmountable odds for reasons that run the gamut of human experience.  Certainly, pastors should be with people in times of crisis.  It’s just that the intensity comes and goes like the tide.  This is one of those times when, for a number of people, it’s a high tide of suffering and the undertows are scary.  Financial loss.  Marital crisis.  Career impasse.  Physical trauma.  Even death.  They’re all on the list and more.  None of these people are in any state for exploring anything.  In most cases, just taking the next step seems, for them, like climbing a mountain in one giant leap.  So, this morning’s sermon is for them.  And, even though you and I may not have visited personally, I hope it is for you, too.  If not today, perhaps on another day, the Holy Spirit will recall from your spiritual memory bank some of these words and you will be able to apply them with significance to your own experience. 

Now, I must tell you that the central idea for this sermon is not original with me.  It was a gift to me from a friend who got it from his pastor some twenty or more years ago.  And, though he did not need it as much when he first heard it, there came a day when he desperately needed it and, by his own testimony, the Holy Spirit recalled it to his memory.  On another day, he shared it with me and now I preach it about once every year or two.  I preach it in different ways at different times because I almost always rewrite it.  The spiritual truths in this sermon never change.  But, as the landscape I travel takes on different shapes I try to weave what I am experiencing into the fabric of the old sermon so that, in some ways, like a favorite old sweater, it never wears out and even comforts me anew as I grow older. 

My friend, Mark, tells me that he recalled this sermon while lying on the floor of the waiting room in an emergency ward in a North Dallas hospital about ten years ago.  What had put him on the floor were the words of the doctor who just told him that his wife of some ten years, Christie, was dead.  Mark had gotten the call earlier in the day that Christie had driven off the road and into a telephone pole that morning on the way to the school where she taught.  He was just learning that she was actually dead on arrival at the hospital and that what had killed her was not the automobile accident.  Driving down the road, an aneurysm had ruptured in her brain leaving her husband a widower and the single father of their seven-year-old daughter before her car even hit the telephone pole.  The blunt force trauma of those words slammed Mark to the floor.  And, it was there, in that state of shocked disbelief, staring up at the ceiling, that his pastor’s sermon from years before suddenly played through his mind in one instant and sustained him before he even took his next step.  I don’t remember the title of the sermon, if I ever knew it.  But, the pastor had asked and answered the question of what to do when the crisis comes.  I’ve taken to calling this sermon, “Learning to Lean.”

Again, the question is about what to do when the crisis comes, not if.  As John Claypool once said while reflecting on the loss of his eleven-year-old daughter to leukemia, no one lives long without being initiated into the brotherhood of the bereaved.  (John Claypool, Tracks of a Fellow Struggler)  It’s a painful initiation, as much as anything, because we never know when we’ll be invited to it.  When it comes, when the blunt force trauma of unbelievable reality hits, it’s good to have something on which to hold until you can find your way again.  So, when the crisis comes, first, lean on God.

Woven in and through every word of Jesus in the text for the morning is this spirit of absolute dependence on his Father in heaven.  This is the Lord of all time and the Savior of the world who is speaking.  This is also a son trusting his father even as he sees the shadow of the cross looming just over the horizon.  And, these are his words, “Everything that the Father gives will come to me . . ..”  The full meaning of these words no one can ever know.  The depth of them is cavernous.  But, the trust is simple, pure and easy to see.  “Whatever God has to give will be mine,” Jesus is saying.  My paraphrase, “My father will never let me do without that which I must have.”  I call that leaning on God.

One of the nice things about being married is having someone to help with the kids.  When you are a single parent, every responsibility is your responsibility to shoulder alone.  When you are tired at the end of the day and you need a break, you don’t get it.  As we like to say, “you just have to suck it up and keep moving.”  One night when I was single, I took the boys out to eat dinner.  It had been a long day and I was very tired.  The line was long at the restaurant so we’d have to wait a half hour or more for a table.  So, I started leaning against a wall and, as I recall, closing my eyes for just for a moment’s rest.  The next thing I know, Griffin started leaning on me.  He was ten at the time and his frame was made heavier by the fact that kids don’t just lean, they squirm.  Lean and squirm.  A miserable combination if you’re irritably tired.  So, I said, “Griffin, why don’t you lean on this big wall here.  It’s strong and it’s not tired like me.”  Griffin snuggled a little closer and said, “Yeah, but it’s not dad.”  Enough said.  I snuggled back, not only humbled by the reminder that kids aren’t there to lean forever but that my son was teaching me something about my own relationship with my heavenly father. 

His simple childlike dependence has served to remind me more than once that, when you are weary and tired and you don’t know what else to do, lean on God, the very one whom Jesus taught us to call, “Father.”  (Mark 14:36)  Lean on him in prayer.  Sing to him.  Read his word.  Hang out with people who know him well.  Physically, get on your knees or sit in a chair and ask him to hold you.  You may be surprised at how physically present God can feel sometimes.  As much as anything, leaning on God is the spiritual discipline of learning to recognize the presence of God in all of life’s circumstances. 

Just as Jesus was saying these words out loud, speaking words of faith out loud in moments of crisis tends to invoke the presence of God.  If you need help, perhaps you could simply repeat out loud the words of the Psalmist who, recognizing the presence of God in all of life’s circumstances penned these words, “Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in (hell), you are there.  If I take the wings of the morning and settle in the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me fast.”  (Psalm 139:7-10)  When the crisis comes, lean on God.  And, second, lean on others.

Jesus rarely spoke of his relationship to God without in some way affirming how that relationship was central to his purpose of building a community of faith.  Listen again to his words from John’s gospel.  “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”  And again, “This is the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”  Jesus came to build God’s kingdom among men.  It is a spiritual kingdom.  A spiritual kingdom built on man’s relationship to God through Christ and man’s interdependent relationship with all others who have come to God through faith in Christ.  God has given us life.  But, it is not a life in isolation from the larger community of faith.  Our lives, in Christ, are inseparably intertwined with God’s greater purpose for all mankind.  All of this to say, we need each other.  That’s easy to affirm in church.  Yet, why is it that, in times of crisis, we will do nearly anything before turning to another for help?

When my father had just been discharged from the Navy after World War II he was working in the oil fields of deep Southeast Texas when he saw what was almost an automobile accident on a nearby highway.  A car was driving down the road at a high rate of speed when the wind caught the hood and peeled it back and over the windshield totally blocking the driver’s view.  Dad said the next thing he saw was two heads, one sticking out the driver’s side of the car and the other sticking out the passenger window.  Between the two of them, they were able to see enough to steer the car to a safe stop.  Do I have to say it?  Two heads are almost always better than one.

Sometimes when pain or conflict blinds your vision it is wise to ask someone else to help you look down the road with you until you can regain your sight.  God has given us each other to be each other’s hands when ours are bound.  To be each other’s feet when we cannot walk.  To be each other’s legs when ours are broken.  To be each other’s eyes when we cannot see.  To even have faith for each other when our faith is weak.  Lean on God.  Lean on others.  And, finally, when the crisis comes, do the next thing.

Jesus lived by this very simple philosophy.  He chose to do the will of his heavenly father as best he understood it and simply trust his heavenly father to take care of the consequences.  “I have come . . . not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.  And, this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”  Jesus viewed a world darkened to darkest night by sin-born pain, suffering and death, even his own, through eyes set firmly on a final resurrection sunrise.  Every step he took, he knew, took him not just closer to his own cross but to the empty tomb on the other side of it.  (Hebrews 12:2)  No matter what life brought his way, Jesus always busied himself simply doing the next thing his father gave him to do.  Can you think of a better way to live?

They teach you something like this when you are first learning to water ski.  When things start to go wrong the first thing you are supposed to do is the thing that feels most unnatural, let go of the rope.  No matter how bad it may feel to hit the water when you fall it won’t hurt nearly as bad as being dragged behind a powerboat over which you have no control.  Our instinct in crisis is to take control.  And, it’s natural enough, when things fall apart, to attempt a sort of management crisis that puts everything back in its place as quickly as possible.  Yet, by its very nature, a crisis is specifically one of those times when we lose control and can’t manage and there is more to do than any one person can do.  When those times come it is important to remember that the only thing for which God holds us accountable is the very next thing he’s given us to do.  So, all we should do is be responsible for doing the next thing right in front of us and trusting God for the ultimate consequences which Jesus has reassured us have something to do with a resurrection.  Jesus modeled disciplined responsibility in a spirit of simple surrender. 

Now, this may not sound like very spiritual advice.  But, sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do in a moment of overwhelming crisis is the next task God gives us, even if it is nothing more than menial labor.  One of God’s greatest gifts to a depressed mind and soul can sometimes be a hard day’s work.  When Mark was lying on the floor, as overwhelmed as he felt, within an instant he knew that the next thing he had to do was take care of a little girl who had just lost her mother.  Taking care of her helped save his life.

So, there’s the sermon.  You’ll hear it again.  It may be when I am preaching it another day and another time under a totally different set of circumstances.  Or, you never know, it may be one day when something has just knocked you down.  Lying there, looking up, don’t be surprised if the Holy Spirit plays a tape in your head.  A tape of an old sermon you once heard that a preacher gave to one of his friends who gave it to me so I could give it to you.  A sermon in three simple sentences best heard when life has collapsed all around you and there is nothing but crisis left.  When that happens, I hope you remember the sermon. 

Lean on God.  Lean on others.  Do the next thing.