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Every August we go up to the Finger Lakes for three glorious weeks away. I find it so relaxing. The changing moods of the water in Seneca Lake. The corn fields we drive through to get to town. And the sky.
Without buildings, or lots of trees, or anything obscuring your sightline, the sky just seems so vast, so huge, so limitless. I know people talk of this experience in the west—Montana is even called “Big Sky Country.” There it is. That “dome” that seems to stretch from horizon to horizon. The sky…
As I thought about the sky, I thought—there are two ways of looking at it. The largeness of it, the seeming unending quality to it, can be expansive, can make us feel good—as in the phrase, “the sky’s the limit.” Everything is possible. We just need to shoot for the stars.
But there is another way of looking at the sky. The largeness of it can make us seem small. The unending quality to it can make us feel our limitations. Its expansive reach can make us remember how earthbound we are, and might even make us wonder whether we can make any difference at all.
These two opposite ways of experiencing the sky really mirror how we approach life, especially when times are hard, when push comes to shove, when faced with enormous problems.
The reading from Jeremiah is fairly dark. Creation, that beautiful thing that God looked at and called good, has been marred. The people of God no longer live as God intended; they have forgotten their special relationship to God, and their special duty to everything around them. As Jeremiah prophesies the downfall of Judah and the Babylonian captivity, he sees creation turned on its head.
The earth is once again a waste and void (as it was “in the beginning”)
The heavens no longer have any light
What should be stable, the mountains and hills, are quaking
There is no one around, not even birds in the air
The fruitful land is a desert
The cities are in ruins
It could be a very dark day indeed. And that is why I love the rephrasing of our passage called “Look to the Sky.” It still contains the message of destruction and decimation. It still points a finger at how we have behaved. But it also brings in the other part of Jeremiah’s message—that God will not let us go. God has not walked away. God will not make a final end.
“Look to the Sky” calls us to account. “Look to the Sky” wants us to pay attention, look around, see with God’s eyes what is happening to creation. And then, “Look to the Sky” gently reminds us that God is a gracious God, slow to anger and abiding in steadfast love. “Look to the Sky” asks us to “repent,” to turn back, to change our ways.
And this is where the sky, and our two-fold reaction to it, comes into play once again. We can be energized by all the possibilities; we can be fueled into action by knowledge; we can be resolute in doing our part to take care of our earth and all its inhabitants. Or we can be depressed by the damage we have done; we can be overwhelmed by the many crises we need to tackle; we can be unsure of what power our little actions could possibly have.
The writer of Psalm 19 tells the same story as Jeremiah—yet leaves us with those words that have become the prayer before sermon after sermon, year after year, generation to generation. “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
What we say, what we hold before our eyes, and from those words and those meditations what we then do, how we live our lives—it is all in the sight of the Lord, says the Psalmist. May it be acceptable, may it be pleasing, may it be in keeping with our rock, our redeemer, our creator, our God.
Last weekend the finals of the US Open Tennis tournament were held. It was a fitting time to remember a pioneer in the game, Althea Gibson. Althea grew up in Harlem, on the streets you might say. She wasn’t refined or genteel. But she was a spectacular athlete. There were two men, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Eaton, who recognized that and helped her to become a tennis player of note.
But being a black woman, she was not welcome at most tournaments. That didn’t stop Althea. She dreamed there were no limits to her sky. She pushed until she was invited to play at Forest Hills in 1950, the first black to be allowed to compete. And in 1956 she became the first black athlete to win a major tournament in tennis—the French Open. The following year she won Wimbleton and the US Nationals (the precursor to the US Open). She won both the next year as well. During those early years she partnered with an English player named Angela Buxton, who was a Russian Jew. Together they won 2 grand slam doubles titles (Althea would win another 4 doubles titles with other partners). As Angela put it, “Gibson and I were drawn to each other. It wasn’t easy for a Jewish or a black player to find a doubles partner in the posh world of lawn tennis.”
Back in those days there was not a lot of money in amateur tennis. And Gibson “retired” from playing because she needed to have a job that could pay the rent. Everyone moved on. Arthur Ashe won the US Open in 1968 and everyone said he was the first African-American winner. Althea had been forgotten. Later in life she began to have heart issues. She asked around the tennis world for help, and found none. She was down and out, and even confided in her friend Angela, that she might take her own life. The sky seemed dark indeed.
But she had a true friend in Angela—who made sure she could pay that month’s rent. And then Angela did more. She talked to everyone she could think of in the tennis world, but it was a journalist, Paul Fein who helped the most. He wrote a plea in the magazine Tennis Week: “I call upon tennis lovers and all men and women of good will and compassion to help Althea Gibson before it is too late. Overcoming the racism and discrimination that confronted her, Althea Gibson became our sport’s first black champion…and she always represented her country and her race and her sport with great dignity and pride. Now she is financially destitute and dispirited. She may not last much longer. Very few people seem to care. And our sport doesn’t have a pension plan to help a former champion in needy times. You can help avert a needless tragedy by sending her what you can. Althea Gibson titled her poignant autobiography, ‘I always wanted to be somebody.’ She was, and is, a somebody. Somebody very special.”
Five months later Angela gets a phone call from Althea. Althea says, “I just went down to my PO Box and I had to get the manger to open it up for me because the place is absolutely blocked. And it’s got money in it from all over the world, in different currencies. Is this to do with you?” And Angela replied, “Me, how could it have to do with me? I’m sitting here minding my own business, in England.”
“It just smells of you somehow. I thought it was you.”
Angela came to Orange where Althea was living and helped her open all the mail, from players who had remembered her, and fans who had watched her and enjoyed her all over the world. It was well over a million dollars. It allowed her to live out her days peacefully until her death in 2003.
Look to the Sky could well be the name of that story. Althea believed that there was no limit to her sky, even when others would never have dared to dream big. And Althea’s friend Angela looked to the sky when times got rough. She believed in the goodness of people, if only given half a chance, if only prodded in the right way. Something that seemed insurmountable, impossible, the worst of times, did not have the final say. Words found their way into the hearts of people everywhere and they responded.
Let us remember that the next time we are faced with something that seems too vast to conquer.
Let us remember that the next time we wonder if our small contributions will even make a ripple in the ocean of need.
Let the words that have been spoken with our lips
Let the thoughts that race through our minds
Let the emotions that have been felt in our hearts
Let these and more be lifted up to the sky
And may God smile down on us
And strengthen us to start anew.
May it be so, Alleluia, Amen.
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