Climbing Down the Stairs

Princeton Univerity Chapel. 

Whenever our babysitter was with us on weekends, she took us to the Princeton University Chapel for church. It was a radical change from our usual parish and ignited a passion for Gothic architecture that remains. I remember the way it felt to sit under the vaulted ceiling, with colors from the stained-glass windows glancing my hands and pant legs. It was a magic place, one that made me feel small, and God big. In other words, it was a perfect church.

Half way through the service, as we sang a hymn, the minister would stand and climb the many stairs up into the pulpit. For me, the pageantry said as much as the sermon, and I remember thinking, “I’d like to do that one day.” While my friends were thinking about being famous hockey players, or accomplished surgeons, I wanted to climb the stairs and preach sermons. Although I’ve never climbed those particular stairs, except when no one was looking one Saturday afternoon, I have climbed many others and delivered a fair number of sermons. What I didn’t know then was that climbing up the stairs was easier than climbing down.

To climb up the stairs, all you need is a desire, some additional education, something to say, and a bit of skill. The hard part is climbing down, because when you reach the bottom of the stairs you need to live out what it is you just said. It’s a challenge that’s not unique to ministers, but somehow it seems more pronounced. Suddenly what we do is measured by the faith we profess, and, for me anyway, that has proven the greatest challenge of my life.

It’s much easier to talk about God, than to talk to God, to talk about caring for others, than it is to lend a hand, to talk of forgiveness, than to forgive, to talk about the wonders of creation, than it is to care for the earth, to talk about being a Christian, than voting like one.

It’s all about living our faith “not only with our lips, but in our lives,” as they say in the Episcopal tradition. There are two journeys we need to make, to climb up and say what we believe, and climb down and live it out. If you’re like me, you’ll find the journey down the stairs is much harder than the one up.