“Trust Your Instruments”

October 2, 2005

Scripture Reading: Exodus 20

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

Have you ever been in dire straights?  Have you ever been in a life threatening situation that you didn’t know how to get out of?  Have you ever felt absolutely desperate physically or emotionally or spiritually and was absolutely clueless what to do next? When life puts this kind of pressure on you, you learn a lot and you learn it quickly.  If you don’t, well, you might not get a second chance.  There is no grading on the curve here. 

Let me tell you about one time when Dave and I and Gavin were in dire straights.  It was about eleven years ago.  Gavin was three.  Ian was not yet born.  We were flying home to Maine from my mother’s house in Michigan after spending Christmas there.  If you don’t know, my husband Dave is a pilot by avocation.  He owns a small four seater Cessna, with retractable landing gear.  It was suppose to have been scattered clouds that day, but it turned out to be mostly cloudy.  This meant that over Lake Erie we were flying in the clouds.  That was not the problem.  Dave is trained to fly using just the instruments on the control panel.  This way you can fly in the clouds and know exactly where you are and what you are doing.  It was cold outside, and icing was beginning to build up on our wings.  That was not the problem either.  Because when there is icing, all you have to do is descend and get to a lower altitude that is warmer, or get out of the clouds entirely.  So, when you are 8,000 feet in the air, the pilot simply asks the air traffic control people permission to drop lower.  This is what we were doing as we were coming up on Buffalo.  We were flying at about 170 knots – we had a strong tail wind that day.  We asked for “lower” to 6,000 feet.  No problem, they gave us permission.  Then we still had icing.  So we asked for “lower” to 4,000 feet.  No problem, there was still icing.  So we asked for 2,000 feet which would get us out of the clouds completely.  When we were about 2,200 feet, still in the clouds, about eight minutes away for Buffalo and all our electronics went dead.  This was the real problem.  We lost our navigational equipment and we lost all radio contact with the control tower in Buffalo.  For some reason our back up electronic system wasn’t working either.  We had three things left.  We had an altimeter which tells you your altitude. This doesn’t depend on the electronics, just air pressure.  We had a paper map of the terrain.  Plus we had an old fashion compass that was screwed into the windshield.  By the way, it was getting dark in about an hour. 

We would have been O.K. even then if the electronics hadn’t gone out when we were still in the clouds.  So, we had no idea of our present position in order to orient ourselves with the compass once we dropped out of the clouds entirely and could see the terrain several minutes later.  There we were with the roar of the engines, the silence from our headphones and the darkness on our control panel.  We were lost.

We could see a city ahead of us.  Since we had been 8 minutes out of Buffalo when we lost everything, we assumed we were looking at Buffalo.  There was a large body of water to our left and we assumed that was Lake Erie.  According to our map there are many small airports along the shore of the lake, just south of Buffalo.  So we started looking for them.    However, it had just snowed and farm fields and airport runways covered with a thin layer of snow look pretty much the same from 2,000 feet up in the air. 

As the co-pilot, I tried to do some dead reckoning with the compass and the map.  I had a fix on Buffalo and then on some other landmark.  Nothing worked.  However, I did notice that the edge of the lake seem to lay at a more easterly incline than it should have been according to the map.  The difference, though seemed pretty slight.  I chalked it up to the angle of the plane somehow.  I have given all you geography buffs enough information to figure out where we were.  Can anyone guess?

When you are learning how to be a pilot they have a motto which is “Trust your instruments.”  When you are in dire straights you must trust your instruments.  That means do not rely on what you think is your common sense is telling you if your instruments are telling you something different.  My problem at that point was that I didn’t trust my instruments.  What had happened is that boogying at 170 knots we had blown by Buffalo when we were still in the clouds.  The city we were looking at was not Buffalo but Rochester.  The lake shore that we were flying along was not Lake Erie.  By that time we were on the shore of Lake Ontario.  If you look a the map, the shore of Lake Ontario lies at the precise angel that our compass was saying it was at! 

If you don’t get anything  spiritual out of this sermon, remember this one practical thing, “Trust you instruments.”  It just might save your life if you fly, or sail, or hike.  The reason why it is so important to remember is because people will override their instruments when they think their instruments don’t jive with their hunches.  Too quickly we abandon those things that can help us find our way. 

This, of course leads me to the spiritual point of my sermon which is about ten instruments that help us find our way in life, the ten commandments.  For the past several weeks we have been reflecting on Exodus.  This is Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and slavery to the promised land.  In the middle of this great migration they had become completely lost.  They had dropped out of the clouds of slavery and escaped the icing conditions of the Egyptians, only to find themselves in the desert with no idea where they were, they didn’t even have a map.  The Hebrews were lost physically.  But, once they got their hunger and thirst needs met, they realized that they were also lost spiritually.  They last gods they knew were the gods of the Egyptians.  These gods demanded certain precise and lavish rituals.  The gods would ruthlessly and in fickle ways deal with each other as well as those that worshiped them.  The Egyptians might please them if they performed the rituals well enough.  But, the Hebrews were completely neglected.  They Hebrews who had followed Moses knew the Egyptian gods well, and had only heard about the God of Abraham, from old stories told by their grandparent’s grandparents.  

It had been a long time since anyone worshiped this true and living God they had forgotten how.  They wanted to know what kinds of rituals should they perform for the God.  What kind of incense.  What kind of clothes should the priests wear.  What incantations would please this new God.  Would they be the same as the ones of the Egyptian Gods?  So Moses says, “I’ll go up on the mountain and get directions for the service.”  When Moses arrives at the top, God seems to change the subject.  He doesn’t seem interested in services.  In the middle of the lightening and smoke God gives Moses a bunch of rules for living.  He says, “Write this down.  First, you will have no other gods before me.  I bought you; I own you.  You’re mine.  Second, don’t make idols.  You’re not free to give yourself to anything – your spouse, your job, your nation – but me.  Then don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t have sex with other people’s spouses, don’t envy what others have, even their SUV’s, I mean camels.”

Moses thinks,  “I’ve never heard of any worship like this.”

God says, “I’m a funny sort of God.  There are other gods who want to be worshiped through fertility rites, sex, loud music, or pretty priests.  I’m into justice, righteousness.  Keep writing this down.  Honor your parents, because you’re not the first to walk this earth.  Did I mention stealing?  Don’t do that.”

It is here that Moses receives not correct forms of worship.  He does not get the control tower, so to speak, telling him what kind of incense they should burn for worship that day.   Rather God, give Moses a whole new instrument panel with whole new navigational equipment that won’t break down no matter where the people are, where they go and what they do.   God wasn’t interested in fancy worship practices.  He wasn’t interested in theatrical performances.  There was a fundamental paradigm shift going on here.  Something happened that no one expected.  Moses discovered that to worship this God correctly first and foremost the Hebrew people had to live ethically.  It was mind blowing.

There are many people now days who have lost their way.  Unfortunately, not many think of referring to the ten commandments to find their way.  Our modern mentality has gotten the idea that the ten commandments are childish, Sunday school things.  We are more grown up than these primitive rules.  The word for our day and age, as Rev. William Willimon notes, is liberation, autonomy, and not childish obedience.  We are under the impression that our world is so fresh and new, our dilemmas so unique, we must make up the rules as we go along, ad hoc.  We think we have to rely on our common sense and don’t bother to check our instruments, let alone, trust our instruments.  Somehow we have the impression that is better to fly by the seat of our pants than by our compass.  We assume that no one has ever gotten lost over Buffalo before.  We assume that the way we have gotten lost is unique to us, and there is no real help that we can turn to and trust to obey.  The fact that people have printed maps of Buffalo does not mean that we should bother with the compass bearings they have written down. 

I am a clinical counselor as well as a minister.  In counseling and the ministry, I often work with people who are in dire straights.  They don’t know what direction they are going in.  They have no idea which way is up and which way is down.  I have found over the years that their pain can be alleviated not by analyzing what their mother did when they were three, not by diagnosing some psychological disorder.  Often what helps is if they start following the ten commandments.  Israel’s name for the law is Torah, meaning “the way,” or better still, “the finger pointing the way.” 

Marriage counseling is a good example.  Often a couple comes in to me and say they don’t think they love each other any more.  How can they reignite their love, they wonder?   I think they are looking for some sort of hot vacation destination.  Or for, quick weight loss techniques.  Love, it is presumed, is something magical that takes special incantations, and rituals to reignite.

On the contrary, what I find usually reignites the marriage is pointing to the compass to get their bearings.  I suggest that they trust their instruments and do not rely on common sense which is saying they don’t love each other anymore.  The ten commandments work much better than some new fangled technique.  I find if they are honest with each other even if sometimes the truth hurts.  Fidelity is important and that they don’t have sex with other people.  It is liberating when they learn to savor what they do have and are not envious of what they don’t have.  They should honor their commitments and promises.  They shouldn’t take each other’s name in vain, let alone the Lord’s.  Cultivating an atmosphere of civility and respect is very important.  Also,  going to church is very good for marriages.  I think this is because we start to worship God and put God at the center of their lives instead of our egos at the center of their lives.  We become more forgiving and charitable, like Jesus.  Furthermore, not taking the L:ord’s name in vain, but show reverence to the Lord and all of creation makes room for joy and gratefulness in the marriage.  Honoring their father and mother, and their father-in-law and mother-in-law is not a bad idea either. 

As a counselor, I find that once the couple returns to the ten commandments, really live them out as individuals and in their family, the marriage does begin to flourish.  Or, putting it another way, without the ten commandments, the marriage will certainly die. 

Rev. William Willimon remembers one time having a conversation with an old prison chaplain, a man who had been in ministry in the state penitentiary for many years.  Willimon said something about prison being the place where people end up who are abuse, who suffer from low self-esteem.  These are the kinds of thoughts us liberals are prone to have.

“Not true,” the old chaplain corrected.  “Most people here are not in jail because they think too little of themselves, but because they think too much of themselves.  They are brilliant.  Everyone else who has a job or follows the law, is a chump.  Most of them get here because of the arrogant idea that the rules are made for everyone but them” 

How did we finally land our airplane?  Eventually we passed the city we thought was Buffalo in order to see if we could find Niagra falls.  But, that didn’t work either.  It was getting dark around 4pm.  We had about 45 minutes of light left.  We decided to turn back and begin to grid the city for the metropolitan airport.  As we did a 180 degree turn, Dave looked out and said, “Is that a runway?”  Sure enough, dead ahead, at 12 o’clock about six miles away was  a snowy white perfectly straight, recently plowed little private runway.  If we had been a little to the left or a little to the right we would not have seen it.  But, as it was we were right on it.  At that moment I knew exactly how the Hebrews felt when the Red Sea parted before them. 

We circled the runway.  Dave pushed the button to put down the landing gears.  It didn’t work.  He pushed the button again.  The landing gear is electronic.  This was the first time I saw Dave break out in a sweat.  (Although you can land pretty well without our landing gear down, you want to avoid that.)  There is a hand pump to the landing gear.  He tried, it got jammed.  Then he fixed it.  We lost site of the runway once.   Then we found it again.  Dave, who by the way is an excellent pilot, landed without the use of flaps on the wings to slow the plane down.  These also are electronic.  He landed only by controlling the throttle to slow the plane down.  We made it!  We landed perfectly safely and taxied to a stop.  At this point Gavin who was in the back seat woke up.  Suddenly he started singing the song from his favorite T.V. show, “Barney.”  “I love you. You love me.  We’re a happy family!”  Sounded like the “Halleluiah Chorus” to me!

One last thought.   We had just had the compass on our dash board tuned when the plane was in Michigan.  Compasses work when they are tuned precisely according to the magnetic axis of the earth.  So too, love tunes the ten commandments, and give them grace.  That is why they work so well in so many situations.  Trust you instruments.  Trust the ten commandments.  They are given to us by a God who loves justice more than fancy worship and spiritual ecstasies.  Like the magnetic force of the earth itself, there is a divine background, enormous, hidden and near that will direct all our lives surely toward safety and thanks.