The Lutheran Hour
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"Life After Landing"
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Text: Isaiah 61:1-2
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This story has all the makings of a nightmare. Try to imagine it. Your friend who is a pilot, takes you up on a flight in his single-engine Cessna. Then 2,000 feet above the deck, he has a heart attack and dies at the controls. You’re all alone, a long way from home, and have zero flying experience. And so your trip is going to end in one of two ways: either you land the plane safely or you die in the crash. Ten years ago, a 77-year-old British man named John Wildey lived that nightmare. His pilot friend died in flight, and he had to land the plane. Now, landing is the most difficult thing a pilot has to do. It’s the culmination of all their training concentrated in a single task, which is really a series of a hundred micro tasks, which must be done in the proper sequence. Student pilots need around 30 hours of flying with an instructor before they’re trusted to take off and fly and land on their own, and then only in strict conditions: good weather, favorable winds, daylight.
Compare that to John Wildey’s situation. He would have to do all of that alone on his very first flight, and oh yeah, he’d have to do it at night. Because all of this happened at the end of the day, and because he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the plane’s dashboard lights, he had to do it in the blind: no displays or indicators to tell him how high he was or how fast he was going. He was alone in the dark, flying blind in mortal danger. It may be a passenger’s worst nightmare.
John Wildey’s story is told in the documentary film: Mayday: The Passenger Who Landed a Plane. The film’s title comes from the international distress call Mayday!, which is the phonetic spelling of the French phrase, “Help me!” John, the passenger who had involuntarily become the pilot, to say that he landed the plane isn’t the full picture. Because John had a lot of help. After someone makes a distress call, the next step in the protocol is to establish a distress silence.
Distress silence means that all extraneous chatter is diverted to other radio channels. Everything unrelated to the emergency is put on hold. All other noise is shut out. All voices are singularly attuned to the task at hand. So it’s not quite true to say that John landed the plane. For the entire one-hour-and-ten-minute ordeal, John had life-saving voices in his ear. The air traffic controller who stayed on after his shift to guide John; the search and rescue crew that talked him through it; the two flight instructors who were called in and had to skip dinner to rush to the airport to talk him down step by step, guiding him on exactly what to do next and how to do it. patiently assuring him, even though it took him three attempts and three fly arounds before he finally got it on the fourth try.
It’s a stretch to say that John landed the plane. In truth, others landed the plane through him. They had the requisite skill, the experience, the know-how. John just listened, tried to do what they said, and was grateful to do as he was told. Because he knew that on his own he was ignorant, afraid, and undoubtedly would have crashed. Of course, the media made John into a hero. They praised his calm demeanor, his positive attitude, his unwavering will to live. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing. John behaved admirably, better than I would; I’m sure of that. But I’m just questioning whether or not we should think of him as a hero.
What if instead we thought of him as a survivor who was rescued by others? He would still be involved in his rescue, involved like the survivor of a car crash stays calm when the fire department uses the jaws of life to cut open her wrecked vehicle. He would be involved like a shipwreck survivor clings to the Coast Guard swimmer who drags him to the rescue basket, connected to the helicopter, hovering above. Survivors are involved in their rescue, in many cases, and John Wildey was involved in his, but it doesn’t make him a hero. What’s special about John’s situation is that his rescue happened through words. Because his rescuers weren’t physically present in the space with him, their rescue came mainly in the form of words. They saved him by talking with him. They talked him down, talked him through it. Maybe we’re inclined to think of John as a heroic individual because we discount the power of words.
But words have power to create community. Words, make others present for us. Words make us know that we are not alone. Part of what makes a situation like John’s into a nightmare isn’t just the risk of dying, but dying alone, isolated, separated from people who care for you. For many folks, it’s not the dying, it’s the loneliness that really terrifies them. That night after his pilot friend died at the controls, John was alone. But in another sense, he was anything but. He was surrounded by a community created by words. At one point, as John was approaching for the landing, his attention was diverted. The flight instructors on the ground were having trouble keeping him focused. The search and rescue helicopter crew members dispatched to guide him from the air were quietly listening to the conversation over the radio. They could feel that John was starting to buckle under the pressure. Flight Lieutenant Becca Bethell, a member of the crew, who up until that moment hadn’t spoken a word on the emergency radio channel, radioed the tower on the other channel and offered to talk to John.
“Do you think it would be better if I speak to him?” She asked. “If he hears a girl, do you think—is that a calming voice?” The tower cleared her to talk, and she spoke into the silence. “Hi, John. It’s Becca. I’m the captain. I’m flying the helicopter you’re following. If you just follow us onto the runway and then once you’re on the ground, we’ll get you all sorted out. So just follow us for now,” she said. There was a brief silence. Then John replied over the radio, “Roger that. Thank you, love.”
Healthcare professionals sometimes comment on an epidemic of loneliness. Loneliness caused by social separation is common in our time, even 30 years ago, author Henri Nouwen suggested that loneliness is one of the most widespread diseases of our time. The dis-ease of loneliness from which our society suffers may be the result of a deeper disconnectedness with the world around us. So how did we get ourselves into this situation? Sometimes it feels like waking up in a bad dream, and we’re alone at the controls in the dark, a long way from home, and now we’re just trying to land the thing without crashing. Henri Nouwen observe that we sense this disconnectedness in different ways.
We feel it in boredom, in resentment, and depression. Boredom happens when you question the value of the things that you’re doing. Being bored doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to do. It means that the things that you’re so busy with don’t seem to matter. Boredom can lead to resentment. Resentment is anger gone cold, anger frozen over with the suspicion that you are being used, manipulated, or exploited by people who don’t take you seriously. And why should they take you seriously if nothing really matters in the long run? Boredom and resentment can lead to depression. When you start to think that your presence makes no difference, then it’s easy to conclude that your absence might be preferred. And then maybe you feel guilty simply for being alive. And if it’s a crime even to be alive, then wouldn’t it be better to crash and burn?
Henri Nouwen’s insights on boredom, resentment, depression, and loneliness express in contemporary terms the biblical theme of exile. Exile is a theme that runs throughout the biblical narrative. The Bible tells the story of how in the beginning, God created a home to share with the human creatures He planned to create. God created all things good and welcoming and promising. Last of all, God created humans to be involved with and at home in His creation. But then we humans took a wrong turn; we took off on our own; we grabbed for the controls, hijacked God’s good creation, flew off without Him. Unlike John Wildey’s story, we are not merely passengers. It wasn’t an innocent accident that put us here. We are all involved in this guilt of living.
We are alone a long way from home in the dark, in danger. That’s exile. We tried to hijack God’s good creation, but we don’t have the requisite skills, the experience, or the know-how to land the plane. As God said through His prophet Isaiah, “My people go into exile for lack of knowledge” (Isaiah 5:13). So what does God do? God dispatches the prophet to help us acknowledge our situation. God opens a line of communication with us. God establishes a distressed silence to get through to us, to reach out to you, to help you turn the plane and land safely home again with God. The Bible is the centuries-long account of God reaching out, God, communicating first through the prophets of His people, ancient Israel, and ultimately through their Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son.
The New Testament tells that when Jesus began His public work, He returned to Nazareth, to northern Israel where He had grown up. He went into their synagogue. In every Jewish town there was a synagogue, the place devoted to listening—listening to the books of Moses and the prophets, the story of the God who creates and saves by speaking. That day in Nazareth, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah 61, where it says, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then Jesus said to the people there that this prophecy from Isaiah was now fulfilled in their hearing. Isaiah’s prophecy pointed to a servant Messiah who would come to bring the people back home by speaking to them. Isaiah’s words emphasize the servant’s speaking role. He has come to preach, to proclaim, to announce, to communicate. Another one of Jesus’ biographers, a man named John refers to Jesus as the “Word of God.” Jesus is the eternal, definitive, complete, communicative act of God. The Word become human to talk us down, talk us through, talk us back to God. But many people thought this was too much for one Man to claim. And Jesus, the more He talked, the more He got Himself in trouble.
It started there in Nazareth when they heard Him talking about prophecies fulfilled in Him. They tried to throw Him off a cliff and it got worse. The people of Jesus day were like many people today. They didn’t trust that Jesus’ voice was the only one who could bring them home. They didn’t want to believe that they too were flying blind, lost, alone. But Jesus kept speaking despite their unbelief. And three years later because of it, they had Him killed, nailed to a Roman cross. And there in that distressed silence, God gave His most profound communication.
In His crucifixion, Jesus proved that God would do anything to get through to us, even at the cost of His life. And then God raised Jesus from the dead, not just because He’s God, not just because He was flexing on us and can do whatever He wants. No, God did it out of love. God did it to make Jesus and His cross the emergency signal. We needed to know that we’re not alone. God came to be one of us, not just to speak over the radio from a distance, but to share our flesh, to bear our guilt, to dispatch His Spirit to live inside us. And so it’s not you or me landing the plane anymore. It’s God’s Spirit at the controls, God flying through us by faith in Jesus.
One day Jesus will land this plane. He will return. He promises to bind up the broken-hearted, to raise the dead, to restore all things and to bring us home. But between now and then, you and I each have a terrifying power. We can try to seize the controls all over again. We can try to fly on our own. We can’t crash God’s plans. We can’t stop God’s kingdom from landing, but we can eject ourselves from it. And so, Jesus, in addition to giving His life for us on the cross, gives another gift, a dedicated, always-on two-way channel of communication between us. God’s Word, speaking through the Bible and the open frequency of prayer. We need this gift because we can’t do this on our own. We need to make space in our lives to hear God’s life-saving voice, and then to speak to Him in prayer. Treat this like a distressed silence. Turn off the noise of this world so that you can tune into God’s Word, God’s wisdom, God’s commands and promises for your life. Treat it like an emergency, like your life is on the line. And this is the lifesaving voice in your ear that you need because it is, He is.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. Start with 10 or 20 minutes a day. On a Sunday or a Monday you could listen to this program. On Tuesday you could listen to another Christ-centered program. You could listen to the Daily Devotions on our Lutheran Hour Ministries app. Or you could simply open up your Bible and read a psalm or a proverb each day. Whatever you do, as long as Jesus is at the center of it, God’s life-saving voice will be in your ear, reminding you that God is with you and you can talk to Him anytime.
What we’re talking about now is sometimes called a spiritual discipline. For a good introduction to spiritual disciplines, you might check out that author I mentioned at the beginning, Henri Nouwen, in his book, Making All Things New. Nouwen describes two core spiritual disciplines: the discipline of solitude with Jesus, and the discipline of community, that is, gathering with a group committed to listening to Jesus together. Make time, a couple hours a week to go in person. Listen to God’s Word together, to the Word that creates community. Learn from others who are more experienced at letting God fly the plane through us. And as you become more experienced at it, be a guide for someone else. Because we are still in a distressed situation. We’re still in danger. But these disciplines aren’t just for emergencies. They are for life. The life to come, eternal life with God and Jesus, flying in formation with His people forever.
And so what happened to John Wildey after that nightmarish landing might actually be more instructive for us. When his Cessna 150 rolled to a stop in the grass just to the left of the runway, the ambulance and rescue crews were all out there to meet him. By this time, his mouth was really dry. “I’d have given a million for a drink,” John said, “I was a bit shaken, not stirred, just shaken.” So the folks from the ambulance got him out of the plane and calmed him down with a cup of tea, that British cure-all. And then two weeks later, the 77-year-old decided to start taking flying lessons officially. But before he showed up, he bought a logbook; he recorded one hour and ten minutes of flight time, which included his first solo, his first formation flying, and his first night landing, all on his first trip. Not a bad start.
Would you pray with me? Dear God, that’s all this mortal life is, just a start. And You talk us down, You get us through it by Your Word, Jesus Christ. By Your written Word in the prophets, in the holy apostles, by Your Word dispatched in the mouths of Your people. Send us Your Holy Spirit to keep our channel of prayer open and unbroken always. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the same Spirit, One God now and forever. Amen.
No Reflections for December 17, 2023
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Hark! A Thrilling Voice Is Sounding” by David Schack. From The Seminary Kantorei Through the Church Year (© Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne)
“Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Once He Came in Blessing” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.