Walking the Faith

The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in northwest Spain is a trek of a few hundred miles (depending on your route).  It was created in the Middle Ages by Christian pilgrims seeking a spiritual experience that required a certain type of discipline as they made their way to the purported resting place of the bones of Saint James, one of the disciples of Jesus.  Legend had it that the apostle James brought Christianity to Spain, and after he was martyred, his bones were brought to the city of  Compostela in Spain, and a cathedral was built there.

A few years ago a friend of ours decided to make her own pilgrimage there.  At the time she was in her mid-twenties, single, and as a teacher, had her summer off.  So she set out to Spain, and spent three weeks on her journey.

 Her photographs from the trip were amazing, as you might imagine.  But what I found even more interesting was her description of the community she encountered on her way.  She went by herself; she knew no one else who was going.  She would walk for a few miles, or for a few days, with strangers.  Sometimes they would stay in the same place overnight.  Sometimes she walked with one other, other times with a group.  Then she or they would branch off and not walk together, but in a few days, or weeks, or at the end of the journey they would run into each other again.  It was a walking community, a mobile community, a fluid sort of a thing.

So as I was studying this text this week (and wondering why I didn't choose the Romans passage to preach on) it occurred to me that one way for us to approach these pretty difficult words of Jesus is to understand them in a fluid sort of way.  What if rather than think of these words as cut and dried, we looked at them using the metaphor of a walk.  Really, the life of faith is a journey, a walk or an amble or a run, or for some of us, one stumble after another.

This morning I would like us to think of this text as part of the journey each of us is on, and for us to take a walk together - a theological walk, a faith walk, a spiritual walk.

First I'd like you to imagine what the road looks like.  Is it flat or hilly or even mountainous?  Is the road paved, or dirt, or muddy?  Is it narrow or wide?  Is the road bordered by trees or sand, by water or prairie?  Or something else?  If you had to picture what the road of your faith journey looks like, what do you see?

And so we're walking along on our road and the first thing we hear is Jesus saying that he is going to suffer and be unjustly condemned and be crucified and raised.

If you've ever experienced someone dear to you telling you awful news - I've got cancer, we're getting divorced, I lost my job - you might know a little what Peter felt like.  It's like a punch to the gut, and your mind swims, and so the first thing that happens as we set out on this morning's walk is that we are stopped short by words of Jesus that haunt us. 

But we keep walking, because he keeps walking.  And he keeps walking, because his eyes are set on the horizon, and for Jesus, that horizon is God.  So often our eyes are set about 18 inches in front of us, looking at the path, making sure there are no potholes or rocks, or mud, or dog poop. Because all those things are on the road, metaphorically speaking.  Life gets in the way of faith sometimes.

So we've recovered from that sudden stop and we start walking again.  And then Jesus says that anyone who wants to follow him-  and that's what we're doing, we are following him on this road - must deny themselves and take up their own cross.  Those aren't exactly best-seller words.

That expression "take up your cross" has been used in interesting ways, sometimes in ways that can be quite hurtful.  A friend goes through something excruciating and a well-meaning person say "well, that's your cross to bear, isn't it?" 

I wonder if it might be more helpful, when Jesus says each takes up his or her own cross, to understand him to be saying that the journey is personal and individual - it is our walk to walk, and as the old spiritual goes, nobody else can walk it for us.

There are some who would walk their faith walk vicariously but I'm pretty sure that doesn't work.  For example, I can sit on the couch eating potato chips while watching hours of Suzanne Somers' infomercials about the thigh master, but that doesn't mean that after all that watching I'll be able to slip into a pair of size 2 capris.  It doesn't work that way.

Vicarious faith doesn't work - each of us is invited to figure it out for ourselves, to picture our own path, to decide what shoes to wear, what to put in our backpack, when to rest, when to skip, and when to leap.

Each of us has our own walk, but that doesn't mean there won't be times when we are called to help another.  You might have heard the story of Team Hoyt.  In 1962, Dick and Judy Hoyt welcomed their son Rick into the world, but his was a precarious beginning.  Because of oxygen deprivation at birth, Rick was diagnosed as a spastic quadriplegic.  The prognosis was for a very very limited life.  But his parents would not give up.

Through a perseverance that is miraculous, they realized that Rick's brain was quite active, and many helped to devise a way for him to communicate.  As he grew older, his interest in sports became clear.  To make a long story short, since 1977, Dick and his son Rick have competed in over 1000 races, including marathons, duathlons, and triathlons. 

When they compete in a triathlon, Dick, in a boat, pulls Rick who is wearing a vest with a bungee cord connected him to the boat; when biking, they ride a special two-seater bike; when running, Dick pushes Rick in a custom-made running chair.  Rick  was once asked what one thing he would give his father if he could.  He answered, "The thing I'd most like is for my dad to sit in the chair and I would push him for once." 

At times we will be called on to help another carry their cross.  For some, that is a privilege and not a burden.  The walk is getting more interesting, isn't it?

We continue walking, and at this point maybe someone is helping us, or we are helping another.  And Jesus keeps talking, and says words that are both stirring and terrifying.  "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." 

A few weeks ago I was heading down on a Sunday afternoon to conduct the Vespers service at the Willamette View community.  Willamette View, as you may know, is in southeast Portland.  We live in northeast Portland.  So when I found myself crossing the lovely Willamette River, I knew I had gone wrong.  And I have a bit of a bridge phobia, so making an unnecessary crossing went from bad to worse.  Then I couldn't figure out how to get back across the river, and I'm trying to pull up a teeny tiny map on my I-phone... you get the picture.

All of which is to say that we've all ended up on side paths that take us nowhere, that lead us in the wrong direction.  The sooner we realize we need to get off of that path and back to the right path, the path that is leading somewhere, the path whose horizon is God, the better off we'll be.  But even changing paths can mean a death of sorts.

Throughout the New Testament we hear language of dying to an old life and rising to a new; it's a primary metaphor for the Christian journey.  Jesus showed us how it is done, and then Peter, and then Paul, and so many faithful.  What's important for us to know, in this metaphor of dying and rising, is that for us the dying is most likely not a physical death, but a dying to a way of living that doesn't lead us to God.

People in recovery from addiction use the language of letting go - that's a sort of dying.  Letting go of choices that have terrible consequences for ourselves and others; letting go of habits that isolate and divide; letting go of our focus on self.  But that is so very counter-intuitive to our human nature.  The human race survived because we focused on self and survival, and now Jesus is walking along teaching us that it is, in fact not about us and that we have to die before we can live.

 In his marvelous little book Let Your Life Speak[i], Parker Palmer describes an experience he had while participating in Outward Bound.  It was a day when each participant was to rappel down a 110 foot high cliff.  Palmer was not excited.  As he began his descent, he clung to the cliff face, dropping a few feet at a time and then slamming into the rock.  His instructor informed him that rather than hug the cliff, he needed to be perpendicular to it.  He got the hang of it.

About halfway down the instructor called to him, and drew his attention to the big hole below in the cliff face.  He would need to change course, swing to one side or the other, and as he writes, "I knew for a certainty that attempting to do so would lead directly to my death - so I froze, paralyzed with fear."

The instructor let him hang there for a good long while, until finally she called up to him, "Parker, is anything wrong?"  And he answered, in a still, small, squeaky voice, "I don't want to talk about it."

We don't like to talk about difficult realities, but Jesus did.  He never shied away from the hard truths about what the spiritual path could mean.  He didn't give his disciples false expectations.  He didn't paint his passion in rosy-colored hues. 

He still doesn't.  However you understand Jesus speaking to you, and laying out your  road for you, he still doesn't sugarcoat things.  If you imagine he has made a path for you that is all slightly downhill, paved, with a passing lane on the left, water fountains every half-mile, 72 degrees and sunny, it might not be the real path he has set for you.

Choosing the Christian life is no guarantee of a pain-free life.  Choosing a life without any sort of spiritual path does not guarantee a life of pain and suffering. Life is life.  My belief in Jesus as Savior doesn't protect me from grief, or disease, or disappointment, or fear.

My belief in Jesus as Savior does guarantee me two things: hope, and community.  Hope lies in the faithful understanding that this path we're on does have an end, and that end is Jesus or God or heaven or the fulfilled creation.  The path may be bumpy with hot and humid weather and all uphill, but it will end, and that end is God.  On that, I stake my life.

And community.  I think of our friend Staci and her experience on the Camino de Santiago.  She walked that rode - her legs, her backpack, her planning.  But she was never by herself on that road.  Pilgrims of all sorts were there too, weaving in and out of each other's journey. 

That's how it is for us.  Each of us makes our own way, but when we look to the left or right, or ahead or behind, we see other people.  We might know them; we might not.  We might love them, or fear them, or pity them, or be inspired by them.  We might call them stranger; we might call them friend.

I'd like you to picture the road again, but this time, to picture who is there with you.  Who has walked your spiritual path with you, rested with you, or given you a hand up?  Who has carried you for a while?  Look again - whom might God be asking you to walk with, to rest with, to give a hand up to, to carry?

The farther I travel the path, the less I know.  I have let go of so many things that weighed me down, and in letting go I have forgotten much.  The path gets simpler; simpler, not easier.  So I keep walking.

So we keep walking, alone yet together, to God.

Beth Neel

Westminster Presbyterian Church

August 28, 2011

[i] Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.  San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass, 2000.