YOUR RED BALLOON
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
February 21, 2010
Romans 10: 8-13
Luke 4: 1-13
A young man was sent to Spain by his company to work in a new plant. He accepted the job because it would enable him to earn enough money to marry his long time girlfriend. Their plan was to pool their resources and put a down payment on a house when he returned. As the lonely weeks went by, she began expressing doubts that he was being true to her. The young man declared that he was paying absolutely no attention to the women around him. “I admit,” he wrote, “that sometimes I’m tempted. But I fight it. I’m keeping myself for you.”
In the mail a few days later, the young man received a package. It contained a note and a harmonica. “I’m sending this to you,” his girlfriend wrote, “so you can have something to take your mind off the women there.”
The young man wrote back that he was practicing the harmonica every night and thinking only of her.
When the young man returned home to the states his girlfriend was waiting at the airport. As he rushed forward to embrace her, she held up a restraining hand and said, “Hold it right there. First I want to hear you play that harmonica.”
If there were to be a name for this first Sunday in Lent it would have to be “Temptation Sunday.” For every year we read either from Matthew, Mark or Luke about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness of Judea.
Some people wonder if it really happened. I don’t! I think if nothing else in the gospels are true, this is. Jesus was surely a real man who had to deal with real temptations, even as we do. Temptations to sell out for the sake of money; to sell out for the sake of being popular; to sell out for the sake of keeping or getting power or influence; to sell out simply because it feels better to do so or as in the case of Tiger Woods, we feel entitled after all we’ve been through.
In the Bible we read that Jesus faced similar temptations. Temptations, if you think about it, that challenge a person at the very core of their being: Who will I be? What will I stand for? What will I live for? What will be the legacy I leave?
We know how the story of Jesus’ temptations ends. Our task on this first Sunday in Lent is to take stock of ourselves and see how we’re doing and to look ahead and see where our story will end if we keep up as we have been.
There’s another story I love. You’ve likely heard it. I don’t who the author is. This year I want to share it with you in the hope that it will help you take stock of yourself in this season of self-examination though not in the way we often take stock of ourselves – trying to clean up the bad habits in our lives.
Rather, to examine ourselves to see if we’ve sold out our God-given uniqueness in ways that thwart God’s purposes for us and bring us a kind of spiritual misery. The story is called “The Red Balloon.”
Once upon a time, in a little village by the sea, there lived a girl named Lucinda. Lucinda, to most of the people in her village, was simply “that girl with the red balloon.” You see, she always walked around with a bright red balloon tied to a long silver string, the string tightly clutched in her hand.
The people laughed at Lucinda and her red balloon – even when she tried to explain how it would lead her to all kinds of places, to flowering fields, besides the crashing seas, to other warm places where she felt love, and to places where she was afraid – dark mysterious caves or sad forests of grief.
Somehow, she felt, the red balloon made all her feelings flow together – happiness and sadness, grief and joy, anger and love. But people only smiled and shook their heads.
Then, one day, someone said to her, “Lucinda, you are too old for a red balloon. It was okay when you were a little girl, but now you are a woman. You must let go of that stupid balloon and grow up.” But she found it hard to do.
Finally, Lucinda made up her mind. She would compromise. She would hide the balloon. But the question was: where? It had to be close to her, and it had to be well hidden. So she hid the balloon inside her head.
Now this hiding place was close enough, and secret enough, but it also gave her terrible headaches. She found it hard to laugh or even cry with a balloon inside her head. And there was also the danger that the balloon might pop out at any moment, and so Lucinda had to scrunch up her eyes to keep the balloon in, and that made seeing very difficult.
But, people stopped making fun of Lucinda because she was now “serious.” She even got married and had children of her own. Her headaches continued, however, and she almost forgot about flowers and warm places and caves and forests and seeing things through red balloons.
One day, as she watched her children playing, she thought she saw something familiar in the hand of one of them. She tried and tried to see, but her eyes were so scrunched up that she had trouble. If she really wanted to see, she realized, she would have to open her eyes wide. So she did. She saw that what was in her child’s hand was a red balloon on a silver string.
As she recognized the balloon, she began to cry, and out popped the balloon that had been hidden in her head all these years. Her own balloon looked so good, and it felt so good not to have those headaches anymore, that Lucinda decided to leave the balloon out in the open on its silver string from that time on.
Lucinda did not always live happily ever after. People laughed at her again, and called her flaky and spacey and childish, and told her she had no common sense. And the red balloon on its silver string didn’t always lead to fields of flowers of course; it also led to dark caves, sad forests, and even quarrels. So Lucinda, the grown up woman with the red balloon, did not always live happily ever after. But, Lucinda did live truly ever after.
Sometimes it may seem hard to identify with Jesus’ temptations. After all, he was as much God as man. But, Lucinda, well, that’s different. Although it’s 100% fiction, I can find myself in her story. More times than I would like to remember, I’ve found myself playing down or ignoring (or stuffing) a gift that God has given me in order to be accepted or to be perceived in a particular way or to not upset the status quo, etc.
What about you? Can you identify something authentic about yourself that you’re stuffing even now because you wanted to fit in or get ahead or be liked or to not make waves or be different? That you’re stuffing something uniquely priceless about yourself for all the wrong reasons?
We often call such selling out a “compromise” even as Lucinda called her decision a compromise. And, to be sure, compromises are necessary in life. But some compromises lead to good things and some compromises lead to bad things. Compromises that compromise the you that God made are always bad compromises.
Sometimes, like Lucinda, the first clue we have that we are stuffing our real self is a physical symptom. Mental pain or spiritual pain and often even physical pain are God-designed warning signals to let us know that something really needs to change. Is your body, is God, trying to get your attention this Lent?
You may find out that what needs changing has to do with letting your God-given red balloon express itself. Has to do with unstuffing your unique red balloon. Has to do with getting back to being the original, authentic, God-blessed you.
It’s really curious. Even though we may be unhappy and may even spend thousands of dollars in therapy we never think to ask, “Do you suppose God is trying to tell me something?” That maybe I’m trying to be something I’m not? That maybe God has already given me an identity to live out? Has already given me everything I need to be content?
Of course, letting balloons out, exercising our unique gifts, talents, inclinations that are God-given has consequences. As Lucinda discovered, living life God’s way is not going to merely be life-happily-ever-after. People may put you down. May call you flaky or spacy or childish. May say you have no common sense. May call you unmanly or unfeminine or naïve. Or maybe worse.
And, of course, your red balloon won’t always lead to fields of flowers or even tame deserts. Instead, it may lead to dark caves and sad forests. This is what Jesus found out. We call it the way of the cross.
To be very sure, releasing your red ballo0n may indeed lead to changes that may lead to difficult times. Yours may not be life-happily-ever-after. But it will be life truly ever after.
