Scripture: Luke 24:13-35
I had my doubts about preaching a sermon on doubt last week. I have my doubts about preaching a sermon about journeying this morning…for some of the same reasons. The idea that faith is a journey is certainly not a new idea at Sojourners. If “faith journey” is not a phrase that you, any particular person here, are likely to use, you would also likely not be surprised to hear me or anyone else use the phrase. I think it would be fair to say that it’s a common part of our vocabulary that we probably feel comfortable with and that we can at least pretend that we understand. If someone refers to her journey of faith, it’s not likely to raise many eyebrows at Sojourners. As opposed to talking about being saved, for instance, which would probably raise a number of Sojourner eyebrows, make many of us uncomfortable and lead us to wonder what that person meant when he said such a thing. When we were putting out—it’s been a few years now—but when we were putting out an occasional publication consisting of writings by various Sojourners, we chose to call it “Journey”. It seemed to fit well with the nature of the publication and with the nature of the community from which it came and for whom it was intended. It’s comfortable language for us.
Which might be a good thing…or it might not. If we find ourselves in familiar territory when we’re talking about a particular topic, it’s very easy to fall into saying just what is easy to say. If we think we know before we start what there is to say about something, or if as a listener we think we know what we’re going to hear, it can be an encouragement for the speaker to stop thinking and the listener to stop listening. Simply going over well-traveled ground one more time is not usually very helpful or stimulating. I have to admit that although I do continue to use that phrase myself, journey of faith, when I do, I often think to myself something like, “Gee, can’t I think of some other way to say this? It’s getting to feel a little old.” And sometimes I think maybe talking about a faith journey is just a way of referring to our inner lives that sounds spiritual but doesn’t sound too awfully religious. Maybe sometimes it’s precisely a way of saying, “I’m one of those Christians who talks easily about being on a faith journey. I’m not one of those Christians who talks easily about being saved.” All of that makes me sort of shy away from preaching about the idea of faith being a journey.
On the other hand…there may be some value in trying to articulate and reaffirm why it is that a phrase like journey of faith is used so often. There may be some value in trying to think about some things that we may have fallen into taking a bit for granted. There may be some value in asking ourselves what we really do mean, or what we hear, when such a phrase is used. And, as was the case last week, the lectionary scripture for today leads me to think about journeys, faith journeys. It’s not the only way of looking at this scripture, but it’s certainly one way, and I decided to go with it. What I want to do is not so much try to come up with some definition of what a journey of faith is, or what we mean when we use the term. I just want to take the notion of a journey of faith and see where it leads me, what it brings to mind, all in the context of scripture.
I’ll get to the specific scripture reading for this morning, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, in just moment. First just a word or two about scripture as a whole as it relates to the notion of journey. Well, ok maybe a few words…several words… but not too many, I promise. I won’t preach a sermon on the whole Bible this morning. But the first thought that did occur to me was that we didn’t make this idea of faith being a journey up out of nothing, we meaning we religious progressives in general or we Sojourners in particular. Last week I quoted a piece of Sojourners lore that I think was written about the time we chose our name and that tried to explain why the name Sojourners. I’ll quote it again. I like it. “Sojourners connotes movement, fluidity, pilgrimage, inclusion of those who do not want set answers or rigid systems, but who, instead want to be in a moving changing relationship with God and with each other. We are a community of faith, called to be on a journey together, with other sojourners, always open to God’s call to move on.” I don’t know whether the person or persons who wrote that statement had the scriptures on their mind when they wrote it, but they could have. And if they didn’t, they certainly wrote a statement that echoes the scriptures, I mean the whole of scripture.
Looking at the Bible as a whole, all the major themes and story lines involve journeys, starting with Abram—well you could even say starting with Adam and Eve’s journey in the land east of Eden—but let’s say Abram leaving home and setting out in faith not knowing where he was to go. Then the great migration of the ancestors of the Hebrews, represented by Joseph, to the land of Egypt which became a land of slavery and oppression. The exodus out of Egypt, the forty year journey to the promised land, later the exile from that land to Assyria and then to Babylon, and the return, the coming home.
When we come to Jesus the story is no longer one that takes place on such a grand scale, involving empires and whole peoples traveling over thousands of miles. But it is still filled with movement. Jesus never stands still. People want him to stay here or there, but he doesn’t; he can’t. “Immediately,” the gospel of Mark will often say he moved on, always moving on, just like our Sojourners statement says. Moving on to the next town, later on to Jerusalem, and then on past the tomb, refusing to let even death make him stationary.
Of course, all of that is mostly just the geography of it, but it’s suggestive of journeys in the spiritual sense as well. Geographically and historically, the narrative stories unfold. Spiritually, meanwhile, the relationships of the various characters to God evolve, get closer, but then more distant. Sometimes God disappears altogether. The relationships to God ebb and flow, get more profound, more primitive, more loving, more conflictual; they progress and regress, and never settle into just one thing.
Alarms go off in my head any time I hear someone say, “the Bible says”. I know what I’m about to hear is not what “the Bible says” but what that particular person wants to say—unless of course the person speaking is one of the attackers of religious faith who refer to what “the Bible says” in order to make it seem ridiculous or objectionable in some way. In fact it is impossible to say what “the Bible says”, because the Bible doesn’t say just one thing about much of anything. And that doesn’t mean it’s just mixed up or that it contradicts itself and therefore we shouldn’t pay attention to it. To read it is to read about faith journeys and people who are always in a moving, changing relationship to God.
Once upon a time a small group of people in the church I was serving decided we were going to read the Bible straight through from beginning to end. It took about three years of weekly assignments and discussions. When we were done, it felt like we had been on an enormously long journey, not just through the lands and books of the Bible, but encountering all sorts of spiritual experiences and theological ideas. We do the Bible a disservice when we read a few verses and try to settle on some point they are trying to make. That’s ok to do, I guess, if we remember that those “points” are part of a much larger journey, and that in the big picture the points are not as important as the journey. OK, that’s enough on the Bible as a whole.
As to the specific story of those disciples on the road to Emmaus, I suppose you could say it fits in to the general notion of being on a journey and being in a moving changing relationship to God, always open to God’s call to move on. And I could make the points, similar to some of the points I was making last week when I was talking about doubt, that being people of faith doesn’t mean we think have arrived anywhere or found anything as though all our seeking is over. Referring now to this story rather than the one about Thomas and his doubt, and recognizing the grief of the disciples as they walk along the road, we know that being on a journey of faith can mean that we feel God’s absence as well as God’s presence. If we were not people of faith we wouldn’t feel God’s absence. We only feel the absence of those who are important to us. Thinking of faith as a journey can mean recognizing that we are not among the certain and the saved, but among those whose questions arise out of our encounters with God and who look not so much for answers as for a presence, and if we find neither, we know that we must live with and be guided by the questions themselves. All those kinds of things are there in the story of the people on the road to Emmaus.
But some other things came to mind too as I reflected on this particular story. It occurred to me that Cleopas and his unnamed companion in this story weren’t really on a journey. A journey is too fancy a word for what they were doing. A journey implies a destination. As I read the story, the people on the road to Emmaus weren’t really trying to get to Emmaus. They weren’t really trying to get much of anywhere. They weren’t going toward anything. They were trying to get away. The word to describe what they were doing would not be so much journey as flight, or maybe an aimless kind of wandering.
Based on this scripture alone, the topic of the sermon for today could easily have been the ways we try to escape from God, as opposed to the idea of journey. And all of this suggests to me that the notion of faith being a journey by itself doesn’t really say very much and rather than being a satisfying description of what faith is all about, it really just presents us with some further questions. For one thing, is our so-called journey really an attempt to run away from God? Or rather, since there are probably elements of that in all our journeys, maybe the question is: in what ways am I trying to avoid God? Thinking of faith as a journey could in some ways, just maybe, for some of us, some of the time, be a cover for our techniques of spiritual avoidance, whatever they are. I think we all probably have several.
Also, thinking of ourselves as being on a journey of faith suggests that we ask ourselves what we consider our destination to be. Merely saying that we know we haven’t arrived begs the question: haven’t arrived where? If there is no destination, if we don’t know where we are headed, then what we are doing is probably more like wandering than journeying. And that’s ok too. All of us do our share of wandering. All journeys have occasional detours.
But still the question is there. We may be comfortable talking about faith as a journey. We may be less comfortable talking about how we think of the destination of our journeys. Some Christians I think have a straightforward answer to that question. The destination of my spiritual journey is heaven. I’m just passing through this world on the way to heaven and trying to do what I have to do to make sure I get where I’m going. I suspect most of us at Sojourners, whatever our feelings about heaven may be, have a different or at least a more complicated answer as to what our destination is. But that doesn’t mean the question shouldn’t be asked. In fact it may make it even more important for us to ask the question of ourselves. What do we imagine the destination of our faith journey to be? How do we talk about that?
In a similar vein, thinking of journeys makes me think of the desirability of traveling light. I’m thinking now in terms of traveling light in a theological sense, without too much baggage that we have to drag along. We can think about all sorts of things as people who are on a journey of faith. Everything there is to think about period can be thought about in the light of faith. We ask and live with all sorts of questions. The Christian faith does not consist of a long laundry list of beliefs. It’s good to keep our theological baggage to a minimum, but that doesn’t mean we do without it altogether. In the end we need our affirmations too.
They should be few and basic. For me, thinking of myself as being on a journey of faith means that I have this question forced on me too. It’s true that I may not have a set of beliefs that are unquestioned and unquestionable. It’s true that I hope to be in a moving, changing relationship to God. But nevertheless I do have some things I believe, some things that matter to me, that I am committed to and that I measure myself by. Being on a journey of faith asks us to ask ourselves what those things are that sustain us and keep us moving on the journey. And if, as the statement about Sojourers says, we called to be on a journey of faith together, then we are also called to consider what few things, what 3 things, say, or 2 or 4 or 5, what few things are crucial to our being Christian in the way we want to be Christian at Sojourners, that if we lost them we would lose the heart of what being Christian means to us?
One last thought that has to do with faith being a journey. I know Paul once described faith as being like a race, but a journey is not a race. It is a long haul kind of thing and speed is not of the essence. It is a matter of urgency, yes, but also of patience and persistence. It’s important to be going somewhere, but it’s also important to take time to talk, to reflect, to grieve, to pray, and to sing along the way. We have individual journeys to make to be sure, but all of what I just said—talking, reflecting, grieving, praying, singing—it is all best done in the company of others. It’s what we do when we show up here on a Sunday morning. May we know ourselves blessed when we have companions along the way. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 26, 2009