IHas anybody here ridden “The Tube?”  Any London subway riders here this morning? 

I rode the “Tube” this summer. Paula and I got on near Buckingham Palace and got off at the Tower Station.  There were a couple of stops along the way. Whenever the train stopped, the doors opened and a very British sounding voice came over the PA:  “Mind the Gap. Mind the Gap.” 

Traveling by train this summer, we heard that over and over: “Mind the Gap.” 

The gap “minded” is the gap between the subway car and the train platform.  You don’t want to step off into the gap.  The gap is a dangerous place. You could break a leg in the gap or worse. 

At one train station, while killing time I wandered around looking at the gap or what was beneath the gap and it was not pretty—spilled diesel fuel, thick grease, dirt, grime, broken glass, trash, and of course the rails, big bulky steel rails, and all sorts of electrical wires.  The world beneath the gap, well, it could ruin your day like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Subway cars are straight, elongated, box-like.  Some subway track, particularly in London, is curved and some train or subway stops are located on those curves, which means that “the gap” at some stations is greater than at others; hence the warning, “Mind the Gap.”  There are gaps at all stops, but on those stops where there are curves, the gap is greater: “Mind the Gap.”

Minding the gap means stepping over the gap which is especially important at curves where the gap is wider.  It’s important to “mind the gap” everywhere, but especially important at curves. It can be life-saving. Minding the gap means avoiding danger, avoiding harm, avoiding hurt, injury. You don’t want to step into the gap. The gap is dangerous. The gap is harmful. The gap is life-threatening.  “Mind the Gap.”

I got to thinking about gaps and it occurred to me that there are gaps in life. We all meet gaps.  And where there are “curves,” gaps are greatest.  Life sometimes hands us “curves,” doesn’t it? Life is not all straight lines. Life throws us curves. And when we’re thrown curves, the gaps are great.

How do we mind gaps, especially at curves?  Let me give some examples of the gaps I’m talking about.  The first is this: there is a gap between heaven and earth and by that, I mean God is not obvious.  I mean God’s identity and God’s intention are not self-evident.  Moreover, I mean that while God’s identity and intention are not self-evident, we nonetheless live with a profound sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be.  And this sense of things not being the way they are supposed to be, our sense of life’s disjointedness, points us back to God’s intention and identity.  Or, to use classical Reformed language, we know enough to know God exists but not enough to know God saves. There is a gap between heaven and earth.

Let me say a bit more about this.

 

We tell children, for example, God is invisible.  By that, we don’t mean God doesn’t exist. We mean God is not obvious, at least not in the way this pulpit is obvious or these Corinthian columns are obvious.  God’s invisibility expresses the gap between heaven and earth. 

We also teach children that God is holy.  Again, we don’t mean God doesn’t exist, but rather that God is different in kind from things on earth. Unlike this pulpit or these columns, we cannot touch God.

When the children come back for the baptism, Amanda is going to shush them. She’s going to try her best to keep them quiet and still.  Amanda’s trying to teach our children reverence.  And reverence is a good thing to teach children. Children should learn to be reverent in God’s presence. 

Reverence is not a bad thing for adults either.  As Tom Long aptly puts it, prayer is not like placing an order at a fast food restaurant. When Moses walked on holy ground he took his shoes off.  We’re more likely as not to march into church with mud on our shoes.

We live in a flat world.  There’s not much we revere.  We’ve gotten over Moses’ terrible God.  As J.B. Phillips said a long time ago, ‘our God is too small.’  Though smaller, God is still invisible, still holy, still untouchable; still other.  Our guts tell us this is so. A gap exists between heaven and earth. God is not obvious and it is not obvious who God is or what God wants.  God is inscrutable. God is hidden.  God is mysterious.

That said, we have a hunch, a perception, however dimly or vaguely formed, that God must exist. And this hunch or perception stems in part from our recognition that things are not the way they are supposed to be.

Lately I’ve been reading a book titled, The Bottom Billion.   One-sixth of the world’s population lives in absolute poverty. Absolute poverty as defined by the World Bank means living on a dollar a day.  Worldwide, things have improved in the last 30 years.  Since 1980, absolute poverty has declined from 1.7 billion to one billion.  Still, is it fair or right that one billion people live in absolute poverty?  Is that the way things are supposed to be? 

Is it fair that some children go to bed hungry or thirsty? Is it fair that hundreds of thousands of children could live to a ripe old age if they only had malaria shots?  Is it fair that 15 year olds get sucked into violent revolution by ruthless oligarchs in exchange for a place to sleep or promises of glory?  Likewise, is it fair when a seven year old gets picked on at recess because he’s odd or overweight or funny-looking? 

Where does this sense of “fair” come from?  How is it that we know things are not the way they are supposed to be?  How is it that we are able to see this gap?  Who told us there was a gap?  Were we born with this knowledge? Did we learn it? Did we acquire it?  Whatever its origin, we have it.  We live with an understanding that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We understand there is a gap between heaven and earth.

 

There are other “gaps” in life.  There is a gap between knowing the good and doing the good. I don’t know about you, but that regularly happens to me. I can see the good, but I don’t always do it. Why this gap between my knowledge and action?  I see someone in need. I possess the means to help them, but I refuse. Why do I refuse? 

Or, with Paul, why do we sometimes do the “very thing we hate”?  We even promise ourselves, “I’ll never do that again,” but we do.

There are other “gaps” in life. A big one is sickness and health.  Yes, there are things I can do to make and keep myself healthy.  I need to eat right, rest, and so on.  But one day, I will get sick and die.  I can’t keep myself from dying. It’s out of my control.  There’s a yawning gap between sickness and health.  And I can’t bridge it.

There’s also a yawning gap in my ability to fix things.  Stuff happens that we can’t fix.  Stuff happens we can’t apologize for.  The movie Seven Pounds makes this point profoundly.  Maybe you’ve seen it.

 Seven Pounds stars Will Smith. Will plays a highly successful rocket scientist. He’s engaged to be married. On the night he proposes, he has a wreck when he takes his eye off of the road to answer one more business call, to make one more deal.  Will crashes his fancy car careening into an oncoming van. Seven people die.

Will is haunted by the wreck. He has killed seven people. One of the seven is the love of his life.  How does he pay back the debt he’s created?  His carelessness killed seven people. How does he repay his “seven pounds” of flesh? 

I won’t tell you the story because it would ruin the movie, but it’s worth watching. The point is, stuff happens that we can’t fix.  Things break that we can’t repair.  Some things don’t allow “do-overs.”  Some things are broken beyond repair.  Where do you put those things? 

There are gaps in life.  Sometimes the gap is between hope and courage.  We know what needs to be done, but we lack the courage to do it. Our nerve fails.  We don’t speak up. We don’t speak out. Then again, sometimes we may have all of the courage in the world, but we lack compassion, we lack sympathy.  It’s not for a lack of nerve that we fail to act but for a lack of empathy. A gap exists between obedience and love’s command.

 

 Here’s my take, we can’t bridge these and other gaps on our own. And some of them are far wider than others.  No amount of effort will get us across these gaps. And no amount of caution will keep us from falling in these gaps. We need help and not just help, we need a Savior.  The Good News is we have a Savior, a Savior who bridges the gap, a Savior who stands in the gap, a Savior who is “not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” 

Calvin said that unlike angels Jesus understands exactly what it’s like to be human.  Angels, Calvin reasoned, have no sorrow, they have no fear. They are not “tortured by cares.”  Christ, on the other hand, writes Calvin, “took on these infirmities so that whenever we are tempted by them we should be assured that he is unfailingly present with us.” 

There is an old expression:  Christ was as we are—therefore he will help us.  Christ was not as we are—therefore he can help us. Jesus is fully God, fully human.

Jesus bridges the gap. He doesn’t just “mind the gap.” He conquers it.  But his conquering is unique.  Jesus conquers, not by pretending there is no gap or by destroying the gap, but by entering it.  Here’s how the Bible puts it, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” 

Why does Jesus “offer up prayers with loud cries and tears?”  I mean really, doesn’t God prefer calm, quiet, emotionally neutral prayers?  Why “loud cries and tears?” Is the human situation that dramatic, that tragic, that dire?  Why the fuss?  Surely Jesus knew how it would all end?  Wasn’t he a privileged insider? Why this business about learning obedience “through what he suffered?”  Why not a royal wave of the hand?  Can’t “almighty god” do that—a wave of hand, a little magic—and presto, things are fixed—no sorrow or suffering, no “loud cries and tears?” 

Here’s the thing, when it comes down to it, who do you want standing in the gap—somebody who hasn’t a clue about the human condition or somebody who knows exactly what it’s like?  Jesus knows what it’s like to be you.  “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” Jesus knows what it means to walk in our shoes.  Therefore we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness” and “find help in time of need.”  But be careful what you ask for. 

Jesus doesn’t just pat us on the head and tell us: “I feel your pain.”  When we pray with boldness, when we stand with Jesus, we are never the same. For with him, when we “mind the gap,” we learn obedience through what we suffer. And not only are we heard for our reverent submission, we are saved by the One who is the source of eternal salvation.  Amen.