Just Like Riding a Bike

I remember the day I learned to ride a bike.  I was seven years old, which, I confess, is a bit late to acquire this skill. Before then I tooled around on my Chevrolet pedal-car before graduating to a tricycle, neither requiring much in the way of athletic talent. When my parents bought me my first two-wheeler it came with training wheels. That, too, I could handle. After awhile my father determined that these needed to go. So he would run alongside me as I wobbled to stay balanced, steadying me with his hand when I started to tip. But as soon as he let go, I panicked, faltered and fell. I hadn’t yet discovered my balance point, and fearing a disaster, I didn’t pedal fast enough to generate the momentum I needed to find it. Instead of a bicycle I ended up riding a vicious cycle of doubt and trepidation that doomed my efforts to failure.

And then is when it happened. One summer morning I bolted from breakfast, climbed on my bike and started pedaling, all by myself. Careening into some garbage cans, I sensed that, unlike yesterday, something had changed, something was different. Those watching must have thought, “Poor little guy—he just doesn’t get it.” Yet shortly into my morning collision course I knew, or I felt, that I really could ride that bike. Coming like a revelatory flash my long-desired but elusive sense of balance just happened, just kicked in. From that moment on riding was easy—and fun.

Lately I’ve been remembering this epiphany while watching my youngest grandson endure the trial-and-error process of learning how to ride a two-wheeler. Much younger than I was when I first tried, he knows he wants to do this, especially so he can keep up with his older brother. But he’s still on the “don’t quite get it” side of finding his balance, so each venture on two wheels is intimidating. Of one thing I am certain. He will master this, if not now, then sometime soon. 

Last week I had one of those deju vu experiences that reminded me of the old saying, “it’s just like riding a bike.” Mine wasn’t triggered by anything with wheels. It was prompted by an invitation I received to fill-in for a preacher who needed to be away from his pulpit for a Sunday. While I once preached on a weekly basis to rural congregations and nursing home residents, I haven’t been so engaged since the mid-1980s. However I did my share of public speaking over the past three decades as a high school teacher and chaplain. But standing in front of students on the home turf of your own classroom or school auditorium is one thing. Sharing your faith before a gathering of people you’ve never met, people who do not know you—and in their church no less—that’s an entirely different animal. Nonetheless I welcomed the invitation, even though it forced me to come to grips with a small but gnawing insecurity: could I still do it?  Could I get back on the homiletical bike?

Truth be told, preaching is a specialized form of public address, akin to teaching and even to theatrical performance. Each demands preparation and practice to gain both proficiency and confidence. All require an understanding of vocal projection, inflection, diction, articulation, dramatic emphasis and pacing, eye contact, gestures and body language—in short, the skills that make one presentation inspiring and engaging and another dull and tedious. Church audiences have very specific expectations when they listen to a sermon. They want preachers to be engaging, inspirational, thought provoking, sometimes humorous, and, above all things—time conscious. If you can’t make your point in 15 to 20 minutes, you probably have no point to make. It is a naïve preacher who thinks otherwise. Unlike audiences in classrooms or lecture halls, church congregations regard those who deliver homilies and sermons as fellow believers sharing their testimony of faith. That is why all sermons are inevitably autobiographical, and preaching is unavoidably a baring of one’s soul.

Preparing to preach rekindled feelings of anticipation and dread not unlike those I recall having when I was learning to ride a bike. Would I be able to jump right on and steer my efforts purposefully and towards a successful end? Or would I tighten up, spin my wheels and ultimately stumble and crash in front of my captive church audience? Would they soon be looking at me floundering in front of them, all the while thinking, “Poor old guy, he just doesn’t get it.” Without dad around to run alongside me, I had to go it alone and hope that preaching would prove to be just like riding a bike.

I’m not sure what it is that clicks in our psyche, enabling us to ride a bike and retain that skill so well that, years removed from riding, we can get back on as if we were born to it. That inner component of balance is certainly critical, and physical coordination has to factor in as well.  But I think the factor that really determines whether we can ride a bike—or speak in public—is trust. I’m not talking about the trust we must have in the integrity of the bike, nor in the good judgment and considerate behavior of others with whom we will be sharing the road. I’m thinking instead of the trust we must have that convinces us that we can do this—that abiding trust we have in ourselves even more than in the bike. Without it, riding for the first time, or after years of inactivity, will be scary and frustrating. With that trust our mind is free to coordinate our body’s movements that allow us to steer, accelerate, brake, and navigate sharp turns and steep descents. These skills become so deeply ingrained in us, so second-nature, that even years later we can still do it.

Trust, balance and coordination—that’s what riding a bike requires. That’s what the hordes of American bikers will be counting on as they traverse the thousands of miles of on- and off-road trails of our national recreational wonderlands. And it is trust, trust in himself, that my young grandson will soon discover as he enters the game of keeping up with his brother and experiences the joys and thrills that make bike riding such a delightful outdoor pastime.

Last Sunday I managed to fight through my misgivings about preaching once again. I got back on the metaphorical bike and rode it without falling off, the first time in quite a while. I suspect this was because preaching also requires trust, balance, and coordination—just like riding a bike. We must trust that our faith will hold us up, even under the scrutiny of an audience. We must trust that our words, these windows to our soul, will be genuine and true, reflecting our spiritual balance point, allowing us to navigate between the certainties of our beliefs and the misgivings of our doubts. Finally we must trust that our minds and bodies will work together in coordinating what we want to say and how we express it so that our congregation finds our message to be sincere and trustworthy. In a way, preaching is daring to talk the talk that genuinely reflects how we walk—or in this case—how we ride through life. Perhaps that is why so many pastors offer this prayerful disclaimer as they start their sermons:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord.   (Psalms 19:14).

Trust, balance and coordination, these three things keep us riding our bikes, keep us preaching from our hearts.  But to my way of thinking, in both of these endeavors, the greatest of these is trust.

Ride on!