Who Will Catch Us When We Fall

1 Peter 1:3-9  John 6:37-40 Deut 33:27

Whilst never being what you would describe as a particularly graceful individual – I do have a great deal of admiration for those who seem to have this quality in abundance.

I marvel especially at a team of trapeze artists at a circus as they launch themselves into mid air, twisting and turning with great skill and elegance before they are caught expertly by another.

I am transfixed by the combination of grace and risk and faith shown by such people. But those who fly through the air would be nothing without someone waiting to catch Him. The one with his arms outstretched, clinging on to his trapeze with only his feet maybe – to pluck the other out of the sky when he seemed to be in freefall.

You and I are flyers and fallers – each and every one of us – we can’t help but be.

Life is good to us and there are days when we fly through the air with grace.

We take risks and they pay off. We take a chance and it works. We amaze ourselves with how creative we can be – everything feels synchronised.

But then we fall usually when we’re least expecting it. We grasp for what should have been there and there’s only thin air – we take one risk too many and suddenly we are in freefall.

The beauty of those we remember in our prayers tonight is that they have often been the ones to catch us when we’ve flown far too bravely for our own good. They have been the ones to offer themselves for us to grasp onto when otherwise we would have hit the ground.

Sometimes we are regretful in that we did not reach out and grasp their love more.

Sometimes maybe that love was not there for us – for each and every one of us is human.

Then there would have been times when we offered ourselves – hanging there and reaching out because we loved.

For in the end we were flyers and fallers together.

In the end we simply come together today to thank God for those with whom we shared the grace, took the risks and invested the faith and in doing so we increasingly know that we were all caught up in God.

We come together to say that our love for them is such that we go on stretching our arms towards them – even though we know that they are out of reach and held by another.

And when sadness grips us acutely - we inevitably ask – who will catch us now?

Flyers and fallers need an ultimate catcher who in the end perfects our hapless spiralling about.

There is such a one in Christ for did he not hang with his arms outstretched like one participating in our strange routine?

Is there not a promise tucked away in Deuteronomy of all places:

“The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms”

In our Epistle reading, Peter speaks of this hope of salvation as we pass through the glories and the trials of life.

In the Gospel Jesus speaks of a raising up upon the last day – when everything about us will be gathered to Him and nothing be lost.

And in that eternal catching and holding, towards which you and I are moving all tears and pains vanish forever.

Such a vision is, in my view, a reality for those we remember tonight – so amidst the pain of loss there is thanksgiving in our hearts as we pray.

For ourselves we carry on – flying and falling as inevitably as day turns into night with that dangerous combination of grace and risk that characterises the faithful follower.

RH 2.11.07