For the past two years, I can say truly that it has been a joy to gather with you in this space – to praise God together, to welcome the morning light, to be reminded as a community of the call to discipleship that we each share. And now it’s almost the end of summer, the beginning of fall, the end of my second year with you, the beginning of my third. I know that you also have special transitions and moments like that, when you were struggling in your career or in raising a family, and you finally caught a break or had a success, or you did so well that you treated yourself to something special to commemorate the occasion.

Moments like those are ones I treasure, because I know what jobs I’ve undertaken to keep me going along the way. There was one gig with Habitat for Humanity of Washington, DC, during which I built 6 housing units as part of a team with them over the course of a year. In the winter months I was cold, and in the summer months I was hot. And every day when I came home, I was exhausted.

I had another job that was challenging, too. It was just moving books from one room of a seminary bookstore to another – without a discernible purpose, fulltime, for a year. It was because my manager wanted his staff to look busy, despite the painful reality that we were part of an industry that was shrinking. It was no coincidence that the year after I changed jobs, the store finally closed.

There was even a year when I was spending every afternoon rush hour of the week driving a truck full of dirty laundry from undergraduate Fraternities and Sororities, while I took classes in Church History and Systematic Theology. My wife can attest to how much I grumbled over those years.

But if nothing else, the walk built patience and gratitude for me. You know that walk, a lot better than I do. It develops a certain capacity for empathy toward others who are taking their own steps – one slow footfall after another – to find their own way forward.

I would not want to do it all again, just to develop empathy for others; but I am grateful for every hiccup along the way for arriving at and standing in this spot, in this place with you. I praise the Father for his providence; I’m grateful for everything it took for me to find myself right here, now.

We all have spot like that. The “spot” is where we all stand at one point or another. We may not recognize it when we get to it; there may not be finish line to cross or a vista to captivate you. But we each can find our way, because as we walk the paths given us by God, there’s no turning back or giving up. To arrive here is almost inevitable, like walking a lifelong labyrinth – albeit, at times, still seemingly far off and out of our reach – still, you come to the center.

Long walks, journeys, and pilgrimages are part of the Christian life. What makes Christian discipleship so meaningful is the focus that each follower has to place on God. There is a temptation to set our sights on the faithfulness of others, to deflect blame toward them, to deny our own faults. We gossip and tear down. We say she’s not kind enough, or he doesn’t listen. That temptation is the ruin of Christian communities and ministries. It drives us apart. It also is a threat to the individual devotional life of Christians, too. Soon our prayers lose their power when we only pray for God to make other people change for us to remain the same, year after year.

In the Gospel, Jesus declares to the people that he has come to bring division, brother against brother, parent against child. It isn’t a war he’s calling for. It isn’t a national cause he wants taken up by every one of the people of God. It also isn’t a Civil War, a war fought for purity, such as the one we fought and continue to fight over the answer to the question: “how many years can some people exist. Before they’re allowed to be free?”[i]

By his existence and presence, the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, brings about a clarification, between the precious metals that are refined by fire, and the waste, the garbage, the detritus, the chaff. Imagine if you were there and part of the crowd. Perhaps you would think Jesus was proclaiming a kind of final judgment, some end-time prophecy, when God’s power would be revealed, and every knee would bow.

Perhaps what would come to mind would be the villains in your worldview, the enemies, the ones you wish would just leave already. You might think of a father who was abusive or neglectful, or a mother-in-law who was controlling and critical. You might think of a sibling who was unhelpful, or a neighbor who was menacing. You might think of everyone but yourself. Jesus uses our obsession with casting blame as the image of his parable – that “households” will be divided against each other.

But Jesus’ salvation is offered to all, and the basic conflict of the Christian life rests not in a struggle “against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,”[ii] as we read in Ephesians. Our conflict rests in the resolution of the division within our own souls, the acceptance of ourselves as we are – as limited, as fallible, as in daily need of God’s love and grace. We cannot be counted on, try as we might. Our work before us isn’t in trying harder to follow God’s Law. We’ll only get better at noticing where we have our love has failed.

Our work is in building the courage to grow into what we have been redeemed to be. A favorite spiritual writer of mine once shared:

The great danger of the turmoil of the end-time in which we live is losing our souls. Losing our souls means losing touch with our center, our true call in life, our mission, our spiritual task. Losing our soul means becoming so distracted by and preoccupied with all that is happening around us that we end up fragmented, confused, and erratic. Jesus is very aware of that danger. He says: “Take care not to be deceived, because many will come using my name and saying, ‘I am the one’ and ‘The time is near at hand’ Refuse to join them” (Luke 21:8). In the midst of anxious times there are many false prophets, promising all sorts of “salvations.” It is important that we be faithful disciples of Jesus, never losing touch with our true spiritual selves.[iii]

I think that for the first disciples, they had moments as a community, gathered together, when they realized that Jesus wasn’t just another prophet, healer, or rebel, around whom they had rallied. They discovered they couldn’t just form factions and fight with each other for dominance. They might have been tempted to wonder: Would it be Peter, or would it be James and John who would be Jesus’ lieutenants? But that question was moot. They all had to call Christ their head, their teacher, their Lord. Whatever skills they might contribute, whatever asset they thought they might be, it was always God who did the heavy lifting, who brought about the transformation of their hearts, the changed minds, the tranquility in the midst of chaos and upheaval.

Later on, this community would realize that somehow, despite everything they had lost, despite everything seeming so out-of-reach, it was called not to settle for just anything that came its way, not to cover over differences of opinion among its members or to permit people who were uncommitted to call themselves disciples. They were worshiping Jesus Christ, not just repeating the words of another failed revolutionary. Their faith called them to give up their ambitions for power, their compulsion to be in the right, their plotting for a new world order, their bitterness.  

The truth is, the only way to get to where you have always wanted to go is to walk the path that has been set before you by the One who cares the most about you. It isn’t a path that will lead you and me to greater security or safety, to satisfaction of our hungers and thirsts. It is a path that brings us to fullness of spirit, to generosity toward strangers, to forgiveness toward enemies, and to acceptance of oneself as a beloved child of God.

You cannot hope to walk the way of love by also engaging in self-centeredness, self-promotion, self-delusion, or any other form of amorality or immorality. You can only find your way to the moment you wish for by the twofold discipline of self-sacrifice and self-care. 

And it’s not just you and me who are called to this life of love – love for others and love for God’s image in ourselves. Imagine what terror, amazement, and fear the first believers felt. I don’t know if I could have endured it, but, somehow, they did. Somehow Salome, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus’ mother each found the strength to go out from the tomb that first morning that faith was married to discipleship.

Somehow, they ventured to proclaim to Peter the possibility of something more, that Jesus was not just another figure to be one day forgotten, but that he is, forever, a Risen Savior to us all. And then maybe they all were able to begin to marry faith to their discipleship, and to journey to Galilee, and by some miracle their faith and discipleship led to us gathering together right now.

And I thank God for it, that others, once they had arrived at the center of their own labyrinthine journey of faith and discipleship, then followed the Holy Spirit’s prompting to turn their attention outward again, toward those who needed a little help finding their own paths, and eventually welcoming pilgrims who had come from every corner of the earth. I thank God for the long line of saints who have wandered across deserts and oceans, waded in loneliness and despair, persevered through doubt and conflict – from one changed life to another.

And now it’s our turn – our turn to look around us and to see where God is leading us. It’s our turn to listen to Christ’s voice calling out to us, pulling us out of our dark hiding places and into the light of a more committed life of discipleship. It’s our turn to stop planning our past and mourning our future. It’s our turn to follow after God and to find our way to whatever God has in store for us, by standing up for what is right and true and holding others in empathy.

It’s our turn to go out into our world and to invite others to do the same – to see that the sun rises again, to feel the warmth of summer sun, to encounter the redemptive power of love from unexpected sources, to discover we are never even a moment away from God’s embrace and encouragement, to realize that new life rushes into places we think it couldn’t possibly take root, and to watch it grow and grow and grow.

It’s our turn to give thanks to God and to tread our own path of discipleship this day. Will you? Will you stop focusing on other people’s discipleship and casting blame on them? Will you commit to examine yourself and how you can grow in faith and dependence on God? Will you begin to listen to what others are begging you to hear?

I pray you will.  

Amen.

---

[i] Bob Dillan. “Blowin’ in the Wind” in The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (Los Angeles: Warner Brothers, 1962), accessed at https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/blowin-wind/.

[ii] Ephesians 6:12

[iii] https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/guarding-our-souls/