Mar_11_07 Gerber.

A wondering mind is the reason travel writer Jan Morris gives for the number of scars on her body that are the result of several falls in locations around the world. Writing in a national newspaper last year, she said, "The sad truth is, I have been falling over for years. I have tripped, slid, toppled and collided with lampposts on several continents, often because I am reading a book as I walk, or contemplating a distant skyline. I carry with me always the scars of a wandering mind."

She goes on to tell the stories of several of her more memorable falls, including one in 1953 when she stubbed her left big toe so hard on an ice block on Mount Everest that every five years since the toenail has come off.

It turns out, however, that Ms. Morris may be mistaken about the reason for her falls. While inattention to where one is going can certainly contribute to toppling over, a recent study in Japan of fallers suggests other factors at play. In that scientific study, the researchers recruited volunteers who were 75 or older and divided them into two groups according to their history of falling. One group included those who had had at least two falls in the previous year. The other group was comprised of people who had not fallen in the previous year. The researchers then studied how the participants in the two groups walked.

For the study, the researchers placed retro-reflective markers on certain points on each person's torso and limbs, and then, with the use of a special video system and five infrared cameras, they tracked, measured and charted the gait of these people as they walked along a specified walkway.

What they discovered is that the fallers were distinguished by three things in how they moved: 1) During the swing phase of their gait, they had less clearance between their toes and the floor than did the non-fallers. 2) The inclination of the soles of their feet relative to the floor during the swing phase was less than that of the non-fallers. 3) And they had more lateral sway of the trunk of their body relative to how far apart their feet were spaced during the stance phase of their gait.

The combination of those three factors predisposes those possessing them to trip and/or fall more easily. (It could be revealing to know if Jan Morris has those issues going in how she walks.)

The apostle Paul commented on this tripping trauma, though he had spiritual spills, not physical flops, in mind. Writing to the Corinthians, he said, "So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall." In today's passage, he drew upon the history of the Israelites in the desert to remind his readers of the dangers of not paying attention to their commitments to God and to the manner in which they lived.

Paul pointed out that those ancient Israelites were offered spiritual sustenance but many ignored it, relying instead on the fact that God was taking care of them. Thus they concluded that they didn't need to be too scrupulous in how they behaved.

Paul, however, observed that many of them did not survive to enter the promised land. Paul wanted his readers to avoid the same mistake and not assume their bad behavior was okay simply because they had professed faith in Christ. "So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall," he said.

In other words, their actions need to match their testimony.

Now that's hardly an unexpected message from the Bible, but when Paul uses standing and falling as a metaphor for moral and spiritual faithfulness and sinning, he's not talking about a deliberate departure from the ways of the Lord. Nobody wakes up and says "I've decided to fall down today."

Falls are by definition unplanned and unexpected events.

Nonetheless, the imagery of falling gives us a way to think about how to remain spiritually upright. Some scholars had an opportunity recently to talk with Dr. James Butler, who is a senior lecturer on physiology in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard and one of the researchers on the study about why people fall. (He traveled to Japan for the study.)

He said that one of the salient points they tried to make was that something as simple as toe clearance during the swing phase of gait, when diminished by only a small amoun-sometimes by as little as the thickness of a piece of tape on the floor-can increase the risk of something bad happening, like a fall. He then applied that finding to life in general, commenting that while it is of course important to think about the big things, the big obstacles, the big dangers that we all face, it is equally if not more important to pay attention to the small things-or those that seem at least on the surface to be small.

Dr. Butler said, "In lots of ways this is a kind of turning upside down view- that the small things are really big, and the big things are not nearly as big as they appear."

That has special application for Christians, for the big sins are so obvious that it is hard to accidentally commit them. We know we are doing wrong if we head down those paths. But the smaller ones-ah, they can trip us up: judging others, accusing another, embellishing oneself, and so on.

One of the images that's sometimes used to illustrate spiritual falling is that of an archer shooting an arrow toward a target. His aim is right, but when he looses the arrow, it doesn't make it all the way to the intended destination. Instead, short of the target, it falls to the ground. The bowstring wasn't pulled back far enough. A spiritual fall can be like that. Unlike a deliberate sin, where we don't even aim at the target God provides, in the smaller sins, our aim is okay, but we don't put enough energy behind the arrow to get it to its mark. Have you ever been in a situation where you had all of the right stuff to get the job done, but failed because you were not prepared for the follow through, or adjusting to the elements surrounding you?

William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury back in the 1940s, gave us another way to think about the little things that trip us up. As an undergraduate, he went to hear a well-known American evangelist preach about God's forgiveness of sins. This preacher used the text, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Temple said, "Though I went to the meeting in a serious, enquiring spirit, I found myself quite unmoved, for, alas, my sins were not scarlet, they were gray-all gray. They were not dramatic acts of rebellion and violent self-affirmation, but the colorless, tired sins of omission, inertia and timidity."

That is likely true for many of us. W.B.J. Martin was a pastor who later used Temple's story as the opening for a whole book about small sins, titled Little Foxes that Spoil the Vines. Martin did not discuss major transgressions of the Ten Commandments. Rather he included chapters on careless listening, stopping halfway, discourtesy, flippancy, ingratitude, by-standing and similar topics.

The title of his book comes from a verse in the Song of Solomon(2:15):
Catch us the foxes,
the little foxes,
that ruin the vineyards ?
for our vineyards are in blossom.

That verse appears in the midst of a love poem (2:8-17) where a young woman is waxing rhapsodic over her boyfriend. The rest of the verses rejoice in her lover's qualities and speak of how delicious his love makes her feel.

But then, all of a sudden, she drops in this comment about little foxes that ruin vineyards. She is in the blush of new love and is looking at her lover through rose-colored glasses, and she views their relationship as a vineyard in blossom. But still, she recognizes the possibility of little things happening in their connection that can diminish their joy. So she wants to catch those little foxes, the ones that come in and nibble from each grape cluster and wreck the whole vineyard.
We know what kind of little foxes damage relationships: being selfish, thoughtless, taking one another for granted, not listening, and doing similar small but hurtful things.

In the introduction to the study on falling, the researchers identified falling as a "public health problem," which means that its ramifications can be as serious as those from such major health concerns as cancer and heart disease. The study said, "Falls often lead to serious injuries such as hip fractures, resulting in hospitalization, confinement to bed or death." That's a lot of damage from a little fox.

So Paul is telling us to remain upright, to be careful not to fall. We know he's speaking figuratively, but in truth, are the chances that we will make it through life without a spiritual stumble any better than making it through life without a physical fall? Probably not.

Sometimes when people take some moral tumble, the first thing they do is stop coming to church. Maybe they think others are going to judge them. Maybe they think it would appear hypocritical to come when some spiritual plummet has occurred. Maybe they are embarrassed or ashamed. But whatever their reason, they are cutting themselves off from a great source of help.

We are all susceptible to spiritual tumbles of one sort or another, to little sins or even big ones. But let's keep our connection with our congregation active and strong. It's one of the good places to be, if we happen to fall. It's a good place to receive help to get upright again.
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Sources Chiba, H., S. Ebihara, N. Tomita, H. Sasaki and J.P. Butler. "Differential gait kinematics between fallers and non-fallers in community-dwelling elderly people." Geriatrics and Gerontology International. Vol. 5, no. 2 (2005): 127-34.
Grush, Ginny. "Falling down: Memoir of a grounded person." The Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2006, A15.
Martin, W.B.J. Little Foxes That Spoil the Vines. Nashville: Abingdon, 1968.
Merrill, Timothy. Learning to Fall: A Guide for the Spiritually Clumsy. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1998.
Morris, Jan. "Day tripper." The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2006, A16.