by Rev. Shannon E. Sullivan
I looked at the colorful handholds and footholds above me in the bouldering gym and took to the easy routes like they were a ladder. This wasn’t so bad, I thought, but I couldn’t yet feel how tightly I was clinging to the wall. Bouldering is a kind of rock climbing that is low to the ground so you don’t need ropes. When I arrived at the local bouldering gym with my spouse Aaron for the gym orientation, I limped along the pillow floor in too-tight shoes. The first thing I had to do was practice falling.
If you knew how non-athletic and very clumsy I am, you would think falling would be easy for me! It was not, at least, not if you learn ways to fall that hurt less. You are not supposed to catch yourself with your hands. You are supposed to fall feet first, hold your arms in, and then when you hit the ground, you roll onto your butt- do not lock your knees. Falling this way felt counter-intuitive to me: when I tried to fall, my whole body seemed to stiffen up, and I couldn’t make my hands let go. I was afraid, and my instincts to survive, even when they were wrong, were so strong.
“Whoa,” I remember thinking. “This will preach.”
Except that there are not many stories in scripture we associate with falling well. Christian tradition uses the word “Fall” to explain the presence of sin in the world, referencing the third chapter of Genesis. “The mighty have fallen” when King Saul dies, and he has no chance to redeem himself except in David’s tributes (2 Samuel 1:27). Peter “falls” away from Jesus even after swearing not to during Jesus’ trial (Mark 14:29). The evil Babylon falls, and we rejoice; Jerusalem falls after refusing to repent, and we lament. “Falling” in scripture overwhelmingly means falling away from God, not falling into God’s peace, not falling softly to roll back onto your feet so you can try again.
In bouldering, if you fall well, you get up and climb again. If you fall well, safely, carefully, you are freed to get up and seek new footholds, or train your fingers to grip differently, or just try a whole new way up the wall or rock. If you don’t fall well, you won’t be able to climb again, at least not at that moment. Perhaps that’s why learning to fall spoke to me so not just as someone trying to boulder but as a Christian and a pastor. So often, even when we try to align ourselves to follow God’s paths, we get stuck, unable to reach the next handhold or strategize a solid foothold. Rather than letting go of what has messed us up and trying again, trying a new way, we just cling to the wall, bodies tense with the fear of giving up control.
Today, for instance, even when the Church acknowledges something like the sin of racism, mainline denominations continue to cling to colonial structures that prioritize white, Western voices and dollars. While falling might not have good connotations in Scripture, one of the overarching themes in our story as people of faith is that we too often rely on our own instincts to survive, even when those instincts are wrong. We have not learned how to fall into God, trusting that God can help us live another way.
After all, Jerusalem falls, yes, but God promises to “repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old,” according to the prophet Amos in 9:11. We find those same words reimagined to describe the Church in a sermon by James in Acts 15:16. What if, today, we acknowledged how far the Church has fallen, how much repair and building up we need? What if we get back up and try again? And what if, in that acknowledgement, we didn’t just try to climb back up the same way we have fallen, but we look for new footholds?
In our current moment, capitalism is falling, US democracy is falling (it has a history of doing so, though, as BIPOC siblings have been telling us for centuries), and, really, the Church universal is falling from its old paradigm. Let us stop clinging to handholds that no longer support us or move us along. May we, instead, let our bodies soften so we might fall gently into God’s arms, and get up to try a new way.
Rev. Shannon E. Sullivan (she/her/hers) is a life-long feminist and United Methodist currently serving the community of Frederick, Maryland, as the senior pastor of Trinity UMC. She is a graduate of Drew Theological School in Madison, New Jersey. She is married to Aaron Harrington, her high school sweetheart, who is a pilot and all around aviation geek. They have two living children who they are raising in a house cluttered by books and airplane parts. Shannon is a proud former Managing Editor of Fidelia, and more of her writing can be found through Fidelia and at shannonesullivan.com.
