It's funny how the journey of life twists and turns and sometimes it takes a long detour to get back to where you were. I had that experience today. Two years ago our youngest son, Will, had a fantastic year of baseball as a freshman in high school capped off by a summer of playing with the varsity team in which he led the team in nearly every batting category. Shortly thereafter he was told that he needed to lose some weight to be a regular player on the team. He was too heavy and it was something he needed to change. What didn't need to happen was what did happen, he lost 90+ pounds in a seven month period and his ability to play the game was severely diminished because he lost most of his strength. His sophomore and junior seasons were near total washouts, only three at bats during his junior year.

I watched his hopes and dreams die and his joy in baseball, something at which he had excelled all his life, completely leave. In the process, my wife and I both died within, our own joy gone and our hopes for Will's future dashed. It has been a very difficult time for us emotionally. What had previously been one of the great joys of our life, baseball fields and baseball friends, was a place of deep pain.

In those two years Will committed himself to a physical fitness regime I could never have imagined. He became the healthiest eater I have ever seen, ran every day, worked out seven days a week in the gym, and hit baseball in the batting cage five days a week. In those two years of hard work, work he had never done before, his return on investment was zero. Over the last two weeks he has come home from either practice or scrimmage games prepared to quit baseball forever, we really thought it was done. His confidence was completely gone, at bats particularly were painful. In that same time he has become the best first baseman I have ever seen at the high school level.

Today, he hit his first home run in over two years. What I asked him when he got home was, "Is your amnesia gone?" That was what it looked like to me when I saw him at bat and when he got to home plate to a raucous greeting by his teammates, a young man who had long ago forgotten who he is but who suddenly remembered in two at bats. I too, rediscovered my joy in watching Will play baseball. If he had come home and told me he was done with baseball today I would have been okay with his decision, I needed him to remember how talented and gifted he is, so that he can call on those resources of faith in his life and I needed the healing remembrance as well.

Tomorrow - the spiritual implications of remembering.

My own Journey

You never know where the journey will lead. Twenty-nine years ago I thought I had irretrievably lost my way on my own journey. I was on the edge of flunking out of college, I had let my parents down, I had let down my friends, I had let down myself, and I had let God down. I had spent a semester partying constantly and was doing my best to tune out God's voice. I knew I had a call to ministry but I was equally clear that I didn't want to hear that any longer, so I did what I thought I had to do to drown out that voice, I self-medicated as much as possible.

As exams approached, I knew that I had to do better on one exam than I had any right to expect in order to stay in school. I remember Dec. 18 quite well because I had reached the point where I had studied harder than ever in my life and the chances of it being enough were nil. I went back to my dorm room where I had a shotgun a friend had loaned me to go squirrel hunting with (it was a very different time then but I still think you weren't allowed to have a shotgun in your dorm room) and stuck the barrel of the gun in my mouth with every intention of killing myself when someone came into my room and I quickly put the gun down. I never got a chance to be alone to finish the job that night or the next couple of days. As expected, I came up a bit short and was done with my Sewanee career.

Clearly my life didn't get better that day and it would be another 17 years before I would be willing to hear and answer the call to ministry. There was a lot of pain, a lot of running, and a lot of bargaining with God in between, but there was also a great deal of joy, laughter, love and life that happened in there that I am glad to have experienced. I am fortunate that God sent someone into that room that night to save me from giving up at a time when it all looked bleak.

Sometimes the journey is hard because of us and our failures and shortcomings, but I can say today that God was faithful, more faithful than I could ever have known or expected, more faithful than I ever deserve, but that is who He is.

After the sin of the golden calf in Exodus, when Moses has broken the tablets on which the Commandments are written, he goes back up the mountain to intercede for the people and God renews the covenant. Like Adam and Eve, the terms were obedience or death and they had already broken the first commandment and rejected Him, and yet He renewed the covenant with them. In that moment Moses asked to see the Lord. At that time, the name of the Lord was simply known as "I AM." On this day, Moses got an expanded understanding of his God, The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34.5-7)

I understand that reality of a merciful God who abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness, I have experienced it and I daily walk in that reality only because He kept me from my own will in 1980. For that I am deeply humbled and truly thankful and prepared to walk with Him wherever He leads me today.

The rhythm of worship

As a Christian who has chosen to be in a liturgical setting, this is an important time of the year. Liturgy really means work or service so it should also imply that our worship is more interactive, the work of the people being the worship of God. The implications for our worship are that we don't have congregations in the sense that their job is congregating to listen, that we are there to do more. Our worship asks that you sing, participate verbally in responding to prompts to worship or affirm your beliefs, that you join with others in the public confession of sinfulness in failing to love God with all your heart and the failure to love your neighbor as yourself, and to receive the forgiveness that comes through Jesus' death on the cross.

After that work is complete, you are invited to respond to an altar call. Most Protestant churches have an altar call and someone responds once to that call and they are then baptized and good to go. In our tradition, we believe that those who are already baptized need continual renewal due to the ongoing reality of sin in our lives. The practice of weekly communion is a reminder of our continuing need for the cleansing work of the cross and a reminder of the hope of the resurrection and its power for mission and ministry. The ending of the service is actually a commandment to mission, either "Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit" or "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord." We do it all again next week in the knowledge that we didn't do as well this past week as we should have.

That liturgical rhythm is important to me. I need to hear an Old Testament lesson, an epistle and a Gospel lesson to remind me that the story of God is one story and that the Word of God is unchanging, all those lessons tell of one God with one passion, to call a people to Himself and for Himself that they might build His kingdom on earth as a reminder of how it is supposed to be and a sign of what will be. I need to proclaim my faith in the timeless creeds to remind me that what I really believe about life and the world isn't just materialism, that what is, is. I believe in a God who created all things, that He sent His Son to die on a cross for my sins, that the Son came back from the dead after three days, lived among His disciples for a time and then rose to the right hand of the Father where he waits for the end of our time to come and judge the world, and that His resurrection means I will be resurrected from the dead and live forever if I believe these things. I believe that the Spirit of God lives in me and that gives me hope, faith and power for living a life more in line with God's will.

It is important to me that I confess my failures in the certain knowledge of the forgiveness of God and that I receive afresh the bread and wine that symbolize the body and blood of Jesus which are my surety. It is important that others participate in that work with me to remind me that I am not alone either in my faith or my failure to be all that I should. That work or liturgy is what keeps me moving ahead with hope and it is what keeps me humble.

Lost on the Journey

Maybe I should hike more often. I seem to get a lot of object lessons out of my time in the woods alone with God. This week it relates to the statement Jesus made in Matthew 7.13-14, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. ¹⁴For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

I was talking to a friend as I drove to the trailhead on Thursday and remarked that I was disappointed that the Blue Ridge Parkway is still closed going south from my house because it closed off miles of trail to me that I particularly like to hike. My real complaint was that the trail I was going to be hiking was so familiar to me as to be boring.

I have been doing a good deal of grumbling to God lately for a variety of reasons and this day was no exception. I had my head down and my brain completely engaged in the task of complaining during the first part of the hike. I began to slowly realize that this part of the trail was a bit too wide to be "right" for this area and that it didn't seem to be quite as well worn as I would have expected. In fact, in some places, it wasn't quite clear that anyone had been here recently. I also didn't remember the trail looking so much like an old, abandoned road bed, so I did the smart thing, I turned back. Problem was, there were no markers for a trail anywhere to be seen and at one point I was forced to choose at a fork in the road and then I was looking at someone's house.

The good thing about my familiarity with that trail was that I knew where it must be from my current position. The bad thing was that it was straight up a leaf covered hill about a quarter mile and the climb was several hundred feet. Panting and exhausted, I reached the trail after the climb. When I got to the original place where I had gone astray, I realized that what had happened was that the trail is well-marked but maybe one-third the width of the road I had gone down. It required me to not be in cruise control to see the right path.

Again, the journey is like life. We have to be alert and we have to follow the way-markers in order to keep in the right direction to reach our destination. Once we have taken the wide path it can be quite an ordeal to get back to the narrow but correct one.

Have you seen the movie, Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood? It teaches the Gospel pretty well.

The Journey and the Wizard of Oz

Several years ago I read an article about Christian leadership that compared our role in life to that of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and I think that is a good way of thinking about our lives as pilgrims. We are to know where we're going and to be welcoming and inviting along the way to any and all who are seeking change in their lives, who are aware that something is missing or not as it should be. Along the way Dorothy was always willing to accept those who would join her, never judging them by what they weren't but for their genuine willingness to share the journey and to admit their needs. No one on the journey believed they were "all together." They accepted one another for who they were and did their best to support one another collectively. They cared about one another even though they were sometimes frustrated with one another.

Vulnerability is key to the Christian life, especially in community. We have to be able to trust one another enough to share our needs with one another. Ever since the first sin we have hidden from one another and blamed one another. Jesus came in order that we can come out of hiding. We can acknowledge our sin knowing that in doing so and having faith in His Name that indeed we shall not surely die. Accepting His sacrifice puts us on level ground, sinners saved by grace, struggling with temptation and desires and falling down regularly in our walk. We need others to be there to pick us up, assure us of forgiveness and keep us pointed toward Jesus.

We are those who know where we're going but we remain on the journey, aware that we aren't there yet and aware that the hope of wholeness lies at the end of the road, not at any point along the road. We continue to be on the journey all our lives, never attaining to complete Godliness in this mortal frame. We can make the journey alone in the body but never alone because the Holy Spirit is with us always, but God's gracious provision for us typically includes others with who we can travel and we should rejoice to have brothers and sisters on the way with us and we should always be welcoming of others who are willing to share the journey.

Journey or pilgrimage

A few years ago I was in a pub near the Appalachian trail with some fellow pastors and a young woman came up to us and began to talk. She was hiking the trail with her boyfriend and wanted to know who we were because we were clearly not on the trail and in this little town it was a bit strange to see a group of guys together who weren't hikers. We told her who we were and she volunteered that she was a Christian and that this hike was, for her, sort of a spiritual journey. One friend asked if she had a Bible and when she said no, we offered to get one for her before we left. The same pastor had great wisdom and asked her if she understood the word "pilgrimage" as distinct from journey. That little question allowed him to offer her a true spiritual journey by explaining that the difference lies in the purpose.

Many of us are literally on a journey without a set destination, but those on a pilgrimage know where they're going and their lives are oriented by that destination. God told Abram to go to the land He would show Him. Moses knew where God was leading the people, his first promised destination was back to the mountain where he had seen the burning bush, after he had led the people out of Egypt, his second destination was one he would never reach, the Promised Land. The Magi knew by the star where they were going to see the new born king. Do we know our destination?

It is important for us as Christians to know where our journey is headed. It is important to know that we aren't leading the jourey, we are still following the One who knows the way to the Father. We are still following Jesus. I am more and more thankful each day for the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me in this pilgrim journey. The Bible is a wonderful guidebook and the Holy Spirit is both guide and companion, revealing the Word incarnate and the Word written in such a way that we are never alone and never without the ability to discern God's way forward in any situation if we will just take the time to listen and have the courage to follow.

Thoughts on the Journey

About eighteen months ago I decided that I really wanted to take my oldest son and go hiking on the North York Moors in England. My wife and I had been there a couple of times and there is something about the area of the world that appeals to me. I wanted to spend some time with my son and I wanted to spend some time in hiking boots walking across those moors. I planned for months, found the hike that looked like the best option for us, bought all the gear, typed out all the route information and had it laminated (it is northern Britain, so I knew I could count on rain), found the places we would stay, all the stuff necessary to have a successful trip. Then I did the hard part, preparing my body for the work of hiking nearly 90 miles in five days. I began going out into the woods here in Asheville and hiking 35 miles a week or so, knowing that the elevation changes on the moors wouldn't compare to what we have in the mountains so I didn't have to hike as much as I would there. I began working out in a gym several days a week as well. Everything went according to plan, I was prepared for what lay ahead of me, and it was a great trip.

When I got back from that trip I cut back on my hiking here and, in fact, hadn't been out in the woods for several months until yesterday and boy, did I pay a price for the lay-off. I have continued working out in the gym but that is a poor substitute for actually hiking on trails. I have blisters on my heels and sore muscles abounding in my lower body. I chose a hike that was perhaps too difficult for my first time back out, and I nearly gave up before I reached my destination (it was an out and back hike).

What I realized as I hiked yesterday was that the Journey of faith is very much like that experience, we need a goal to keep us motivated and on-track. It is no coincidence that Paul uses the image of an Olympic runner who trains his body in order to win the race and get the prize. It is important that we keep the end in mind as we travel what was initially referred to as The Way. If we keep in mind that our goal is "Christ-likeness" then we can focus on what we need to do to get there. If we forget that day by day we are to be moving in that direction, prepping for our eventual destination of the throne of God, we run the risk of spiritual sloth. As I discovered yesterday, if you lack a goal, you lack motivation and getting back in shape, even to regain where you once were, requires hard work. Keep the goal ever before you on the Journey and realize that it isn't a sprint, but a marathon we're running.