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What do you think is the most important, the journey or the destination?
Silly question. The journey is the way you get to a destination. And the
way you do the journey depends what you are doing the journey for, to
get somewhere or to experience the journey.
How you travel tells a lot about the journey's purpose. Do you put your
head down and pedal as fast as you can? Or do you sit up and beg on a
Dutch Bike and look around. Sometimes when I'm going flat out, I'm not
actually going flat out to get somewhere but to try and push the body
so that it will healthy and last longer. Strong heart and lungs promotes
good circulation promotes good health, so long as you don't fall off.
Different type of purpose, exhibited by a different type of journey.
A lot of people show what the journey of life is about by the way they
travel the journey. If someone was to do a sociological study of your
life, what kind of conclusions do you think they might come to about the
purpose of your journey?
The other intriguing little question that this throws up for me is what
do you call the purpose of the journey of life. Like any journey, there
are a lot of purposes that interact with each other. Sometimes I wonder
if the purpose is in the minutiae, or in the big picture. I remember passing
through the east of Devon, about 4 days into the cycle ride from Land's
End to Lowestoft, some years ago, and both I and my cycling mate were
finding the friendship a little bit stressed by having to put up with
each other's snoring in our ad-hoc B&B accommodations. We were also
a bit saddle sore and tense and I was riding down through a small village,
an appropriate grumpy 100 yards ahead of Chris. He was cycling behind
me, an appropriate grumpy 100 yards back, when I heard a strident shout.
"BRUCE. STOP! STOP!" I stopped and looked around for my cycling
mate. He pulled up and said
"Did you see it, did you see the castle?"
"What castle!"
"That dirty great big huge one, right on the side of the road?"
I hadn't. I was feeling grumpy, out of sorts, annoyed at my offsider for
being too bossy, and I'd had my head down, mumbling imprecations to myself,
and I'd failed to see what was before my eyes. OK, the ride was to raise
funds for the Skate Park in Bungay, and OK it was a personal challenge.
But at that moment, I'd missed something very significant. It was there.
I'd passed right by it. My vision, by virtue of the way I was travelling
the journey, was focussed so as not to see that castle. Since then there
has been a standing joke about me only seeing things on the side of the
road as long as they aren't shaped like a castle. So if ever I'm coming
down the road on the bike and your standing on the side of the road, don't
stand like a castle. I won't see you.
There is a story in Genesis 18, where Abraham is visited by God, to tell
him that his wife is going to have a baby, even though she's barren and
now too old to have children. But when God visits Abraham, he doesn't
know it's God. All he sees is three strangers, coming to his encampment.
This story doesn't tell us when Abraham realised these three men were
actually an epiphany. When he first saw them, he only saw three men. He
greeted them with profound eastern hospitality. He made them welcome,
just because he was a gracious, hospitable person. He fed them, looked
after their needs and treated them as honoured guests, because that was
the kind of man Abraham was. At some point in the interchange, he became
aware that the three men he was offering hospitality to were more than
just three men. Abraham realised this because of the way he was travelling
the journey. He might have simply sent them packing, treated them as a
nuisance to his own routine. He didn't, and in the course of the conversation,
Abraham was given the best possible news he could have asked for. It would
not have happened if it hadn't been for the way Abraham was, for the way
he lived his life
The story of Mary and Martha is another brilliant little insight into
the same process. Jesus is in their house, as a visitor, and there are
other people there, listening to him. The disciples are there, and these
two sisters are there.
One of the sisters, Mary, sits and listens to what Jesus has to say. Martha,
the other sister, is preoccupied with the housework and gets quite cranky
with Mary, even to the point of asking Jesus to tell her off for what
she's doing.
One sister experienced profound spiritual guidance,
The other sister experienced annoyance, isolation and a huge pile of housework.
They were both in precisely the same place, at the same time, with the
same opportunities.
The way they were travelling the journey profoundly affected the reality
of life for them.
The theme I've been given today in the lectionary is "Humility pleases
God" and you can make those connections, about the willingness of
Abraham to receive what God offered through these men, the willingness
of Mary to sit at Jesus feet and learn rather than busy herself doing
all the important tasks that needed to be done. But I can't get away from
a different sort of angle to these two stories.
Unless the way we live partakes of the essence of the God who gave us
life, we will miss God. We won't be able to see what is there. We'll pass
it by and others will say "Did you see it? Did you see it?"
and we'll answer "See what"
The thing is, with the journey of life, every moment is journey, and
every moment is destination. If we want to see God, then every moment
has to be in the image of God. If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive.
If we want to be treated with grace by God, we have to live grace with
ourselves and others. If we want to experience the love of God, we have
to live the love of God. The spiritual battles we face on a daily basis
are each one, as important as the whole destiny of our lives, because
they are all one with the God whose love does not know the boundaries
of time.
Billy Graham used to really grab people with the words "Now is the
hour of decision." He had a point. Now is God's time, sacred time,
eternal time, and how we receive what comes to us in any hour, in any
moment, profoundly affects what we receive.
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