Toeing the Line | A Sermon on Liminal Space, Skepticism, and Stephen Nedoroscik
A Sermon by the Reverend Crystal Hardin for the people of The Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 11, 2024 (B).
1 Kings 19:4-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51
The Olympics has been on in our house pretty much non-stop since the opening ceremony. I’m sure I’m not alone. There is something so inspiring, so unifying, so special about the Olympic Games. As the NYTimes noted: no sports event does it like the Olympics.
Everyone has their favorite events, their favorite athletes —the games, the people —that they might wake up in the wee hours of the morning to spectate live. It’s track events for me.
There is nothing like seeing the athletes walk out onto the track. The cheers that accompany them. The lights that flash. The looks on their faces. Some of them smile. Others wave and form a heart with their hands. Still others barely acknowledge the camera —too dialed in already for the work in front of them. Some will run to glory. Others will fall behind. But all of them, forever, will be Olympians.
Toeing the line at the Olympics is something most of us will never get the opportunity to do (I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I will never be an Olympic marathoner). And yet, we all live through transitional moments —moments where we go to sleep knowing that tomorrow will absolutely change things, change us, whether we like it or not. For the Olympic athlete, thoughts before falling asleep in this moment might be about what it will mean to be called the world’s greatest sprinter. For others (more like us) on the verge of transition —caught in the in between— our thoughts might be about what it will mean to retire, or to walk across the stage at college graduation, or to begin high school, or to get the call with our biopsy results, or to bring a child into the world. Transition is fertile ground —for anxiety, yes, but also for hope, joy, and grace.
That being said, I’ve met basically no one who enjoys hanging out in the “in between.” -whether they expect that what is coming is positive or negative. The in-between feels a lot like waiting. And, waiting is, after all, counter-cultural. It looks too much like, “doing nothing.” It is, sometimes, not knowing what comes next. It is, most of the time, out of our control. Because, could we control it, we would. We wouldn’t sit in the between, we’d be there all ready. And, we’d sure as heck know where there is. Where we will be and who we will be when the moment comes.
There is great risk when approaching a threshold or a transition. We all feel it. It makes us very nervous. And, this risk is of more consequence than it appears to us in our fear, because we don’t actually see the real risk. We think we see the risk. We see the risk of change. The risk of the unknown. We focus our eyes and energies on these and open ourselves up to an even greater risk. It is this: To avoid discomfort we allow ourselves to be trapped in normalcy, resting easy in the status quo, residents of a comfortable land with a well-worn motto, “but this is how we’ve always done it.” We stay at the threshold to reduce anxiety - never crossing over. Never taking the risk.
Or, alternatively, to alleviate our discomfort we plunge headlong into the next thing. We get a jump on the start gun if you will. We leap over the liminal space to the familiar. We spend little time or energy in the unknown, seeking instead order, stability and certainty through our own planning and quick decision making.
If this is the risk, then here’s the rub. Regardless of how fond, or not, we are of transition, of the in-between, of life’s liminal spaces, God is always leading us towards them. Because, says theologian Richard Rohr, “there alone - in the transition - is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. . . . It is the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed.” [1]
Jesus as written in the Gospel of John works most profoundly in liminal space. He’s calming the waters from a boat in the middle of a sea that separates one land and people from another land and people. He’s sitting in the place between hunger and plenty as he creates much from little. He’s existing in our world while also occupying another, one that is more mysterious and more real than we can imagine. The ministry of Jesus is necessarily transitional. What is old has passed away. What will come is completely unknown. Something is shifting. Nothing will ever be the same.
Of course, we know this given our vantage point in the here and now. But, those who encountered Jesus in his own time felt it too. From his most committed followers to those who remained skeptical, we see few, if any, unaffected by the risk of Jesus’ transitional presence in their midst.
Now, at the risk of talking too much about the Olympics, I’d like to call to mind one of this Olympic’s most popular players.
You could call him Clark Kent. You could get away with that (newscasters already have). He appears, well, a bit nerdy (said with love and his own endorsement). He wears thick-rimmed glasses up and until the moment he becomes Superman [2].
His name is Stephen Nedoroscik, and he specializes in the pommel horse (a gymnastic apparatus). The cameras panned to him several times as he waited on the sidelines for his big moment and, each time, he seemed an even more unlikely Olympian. Nerdy, yes. A bit too laid-back and aloof. Seems so (at one point he looked like he had fallen asleep while waiting). A contender? Well, yes, in fact he was (in the face of all skepticism and evidence to the contrary).
The internet was quick with hilarious memes featuring Stephen. One of the best: A picture of him “asleep” literally minutes before performance time. The caption reads: Jesus in the bottom of the boat just before his disciples come to wake him up.
Because Stephen may have looked fully aloof and unimpressed (not to mention unimpressive) before stepping up for his event, but that all fell away when his brilliance was revealed. You see, Stephen only made Team USA because of his prowess in the pommel horse. And, as it turns out, he cannot see when he maneuvers around the horse (hence the thick glasses - Stephen has no depth perception and is highly sensitive to light). On the pommel horse, he relies not on sight, but instead feels everything with his hands - and to great effect. In those few minutes, he comes alive. All you can do is watch a master at his craft. There is no more room for skepticism.
In today’s Gospel reading, skepticism is on full display over the person of Jesus. Like our intrepid pommel horse master, people cannot immediately characterize Jesus in a way that made sense: Is not this Jesus, they asked, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven?’ (John 6:42)
Is not this Jesus? I can only imagine their confusion at seeing one they believed they knew existing at the threshold of something mysterious, something utterly new. And, not only is he existing at this threshold, he is calling to them from it. This is a frightening invitation, and although I’d like to believe that, had I been there, I would have accepted it without hesitation, following Jesus bravely into this new world, the way I order my life now suggests that I would not have dared so greatly.
Instead, I may have been a skeptic. Is not this Jesus? Skepticism is one way - and it happens to be one of my favorite ways - to stall. It is a way to self-protect. To look engaged while standing apart, refusing to truly cross the threshold, to truly commit oneself to the unknown of the thing.
Now, before you start wondering if Im suggesting that questions aren’t okay, know this: skepticism is a far cry from discernment. And, discernment is always about the questions: where is God in this? what would God have me do? what am I afraid of? The difference between these questions and questions of skepticism? The former truly desire an answer. The latter, the skeptics, don’t. Is not this Jesus? This is a question asked by someone who thinks they know the answer already. They don’t need, or want, to know anything else. Their question is not one of curiosity or openness. It holds no risk. No vulnerability.
I’ll admit that I fall into this pattern a lot more than I’d like. No risk. No vulnerability. Somewhere in my growing up, I got the idea that it was far preferable to point out where an idea would most certainly fail, than to open myself to the risk of an idea actually failing. That it was far preferable to miss a learning opportunity than to admit that I didn’t know something. That it was far preferable to people please than to risk people knowing me and not liking me. Of course, I know now that none of these things are preferable. And, yet, if I’m not careful, I slip into this old pattern without even noticing. And, I refuse an invitation into transformational space — a space of complete unknown, yes, and also of untapped potential. It might look frightening, like an end we don’t want or a beginning we don’t understand, and yet:
Looks don’t always tell the whole story. We know this. Look at Clark Kent. Look at Stephen Nedoroscik. In the words of an article published recently by Mockingbird (which coined the nickname Superman for Stephen as far as I can tell):
When the Bercy Arena announcer called Stephen’s name last Monday night, Superman emerged. [After event and event of waiting] The glasses came off. The warm-up windbreaker was tossed to the floor. Intensity flared. Muscles taut. And a master put on a 40-second display of brilliance on the pommel horse. It was as if Clark had heard there was an emergency in Metropolis. Nerd boy no more, it was time to shine — and shine he did. A podium finish for team U.S.A. for the first time in 16 years. The world couldn’t believe what they had witnessed and the cameras could not take their lensed eyes off the jubilant, transformed superhero.
He came to Paris a supposed dweeb. He leaves a hero, the champion who dominated the pommel horse [3].
The Kingdom of Heaven does not function on appearances. When it comes to the ways of God, much is not what it seems. That can be frightening. But it can also be an invitation. Not to figure it all out, which, my friends, we will never do. But to do the work. To toe the line. To drop our pretenses and our expectations. And to risk seeing the world with new eyes, approach it with open hearts, and live into it with gratitude —for what we know it will bring and, more importantly, for all the surprises we will encounter along the way.
Amen.
*Image from the TeamUSA website.
[1] Richard Rohr, “Liminal Space” in Sacred Space, Center for Action and Contemplaton, 26 Sept. 2023, https://cac.org/daily-meditations/liminal-space.
[2] Matt Pearson, “Clarke Kent, Stephen Nedoroscik, and Jesus the Nazarene: Looks Never Tell the Whole Story,” Mockingbird, Aug. 6, 2024, https://mbird.com/sports/clark-kent-stephen-nedoroscik-and-jesus-the-nazarene.
[3] Pearson, “Clarke Kent.”
