Phillipe Petit.
Does the name ring a bell?
Some of you may remember in 1974 when this French magician, juggler and high wire walker illegally traversed from one Twin Tower in New York to the other on a metal wire.
He’s a man of many skills, well practiced and precise and recently he gave a presentation at the TED Talks.
High Wire Journey Clip – Video clip about Phillipe Petit and his journey on the high wire rope.
Wow!
The image of that first shift of weight from that back foot on the solid building to the other foot on that swinging, vibrating and shifting wire is…..well terrifying as he said.
To push yourself into such a dangerous and unpredictable situation is admirable.
Of course this doesn’t just happen does it?
Phillipe practiced on those many ropes with his big boots and finally ended up walking one rope in slippers.
Imagine the amount of times he fell off.
Ouch!
But even with all that practice you can never be completely prepared to step onto a wire hundreds of feet above the ground.
There are some things in life that no amount of preparation will teach you to deal with.
Would you be able to do this?
Would you be able to step out onto a thin wire hundreds of feet above the ground?
It takes a certain amount of faith, a certain amount of trust to walk a high wire.
There are the things you know, like the wire, the balancing pole, the hours of practice.
But then there are the faith parts, the unknown, the wind, whether the wire will hold, whether your equipment will do its job, whether your body will hold up under the stress.
Phillipe’s faith journey is the struggle of everyday faith.
We prepare, we step out, we fail with varying degrees of consequences, we get up and try again.
We ask God that our foot would not be moved, that we might walk safely across to the other side and then off we go.
Some people are better atthis everyday faith thing than others, Phillipe being one of those who is able to step out in faith.
But as terrifying as stepping onto a high wire is, much of the faith still rests on the person.
Take a more down to earth example
One day after some thought you decide to quit your job.
We often call this stepping out in faith because it puts you in a position where you have less control, the operative word being less.
If you don’t have another job to go to and you’re not sure how it will turn out.
While this does take faith, that is trust that God takes care of God’s children, there is still a certain amount of faith in ourselves and other people as well.
There’s always government support, savings, equity in your house, friends or family there to step in or for you to step onto as you put your foot forward.
But there is another faith unlike the high wire walker.
This isn’t stepping out onto a wire strung between the twin towers or Notre Dame, however terrifying and challenging that is.
This faith is what Kierkegaard calls the leap of faith - stepping into nothing.
Imagine this scene.
Phillipe is standing at the top of the twin towers with his balancing pole heavy in his hands.
He feels the wind hitting him as he looks out towards the other building that he is going to walk across to.
The humm of the city below fades as he prepares.
Before he even puts his first foot out he looks down and there is no wire.
He’s prepared everything else but has forgotten the wire.
He’s practiced and imagined and gone over the scene again and again but nothing could prepare him for this.
No wire.
He immediately pulls back because stepping out onto nothing is certain suicide.
It would be ludicrous to step out without a wire to catch his foot.
Crossing on the wire is scary enough but to step out with no wire that is utter and complete foolishness.
This type of faith is crazy.
It’s the type of faith that Jesus is talking to Nicodemus about.
This is death to life faith, dust in the ground faith, no hope left faith, cross to empty tomb faith.
It’s faith that shows up in the worst of circumstances when your tight wire breaks and you plummet to your death.
This faith doesn’t make you act, it’s there when you can no longer act for yourself.
It’s a gift, it’s grace, it’s free.
It’s given for you, shed for you, poured out for you.
It’s trust in the one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist,” as Paul writes.
It’s faith that will be there when the wire snaps and you go splat.
Amen.
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