Early on, when the Church was young, there was a man, a pilgrim who traveled to Rome, on pilgrimage. When he arrived he was told of a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always in one small room, never going out. Skeptical about her way of life-for he himself was a great wanderer-the man called on her and asked, “Why are you sitting here?” To which she replied, “I am not sitting; I am on a journey.”
The journey, the pilgrimage, perhaps it is an inward journey, perhaps it is outward, perhaps both, but there it is: The Journey.
Perhaps it is a worn out metaphor for the life of faith, perhaps we say it too much, journey, pilgrimage. We could update the language: traveling, on a road trip, but that sounds recreational, and the life of faith is more than that. Commuting perhaps?
Emigration. That is a good word for the life of faith, it is grueling and it reaches down to the roots of both our nation, and the sacred text. The faith of being an emigrant. Leaving something, looking for something new, risking it all and setting out into the unknown. The big gamble, the leap of faith.
What ever the word, it is still there, the journey.
I don’t know how many times I have heard or read the sweeping generalization that we are all on a journey. I’m not sure I believe that anymore, it assumes too much, it says more than we know.
Perhaps we all are, perhaps we are and just don’t know it. I suspect most of us just sit most of the time, or wander most of the time, not really on a journey so much as distracted and forgetful or desperate and lost. I speak for myself.
Looking for love in all the wrong places.
That is the difference between being lost and being on the journey, the wrong places for love verses the right place for love, where we find home.
If you are like me you probably find yourself sort of wobbling back and forth between being lost and being on a journey.
Old habits die hard, it takes a lifetime to outgrow them.
John’s Gospel this morning shows a whole bunch of folks looking for a home, looking for love in the right place. They are confronted, overwhelmed, offended by Jesus’ self offering of his flesh and blood for them.
“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
“Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went with him.”
“Do you also wish to go away?”
The response to Jesus varies.
There is complaining, grumbling, disbelief, rejection, confession of faith and betrayal.
The confession of faith.
At what point do we cross that line? The line between being lost and being on the journey, between looking for love in all the wrong places and looking for love in the right place? How many times do we cross over it, back and forth?
“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Peter found home, the right place for love, now he knew where to journey toward.
Most did not.
And there it is. Most did not. Why is that? What keeps us away?
Maybe being lost is part of the journey.
I guess being lost precedes being found. If so than being lost is part of the journey, that means the journey can be convoluted and circuitous at times.
But at some point we are confronted by the great thanksgiving, the great offering of God for us, the knowledge that God is for us, and we realize that life is about giving thanks. Will we have thankful hearts for God? Will we now live a life that is for others, in the same way that Jesus is for us?
At some point we are confronted, overwhelmed, offended and we face a choice.
The choice of the journey, the great migration, when the human heart lives out of thanksgiving not out of withdrawal or grasping, but just being thankful and because of that being for others.
There is an inner journey, and there is an outward journey.
The inward journey of a thankful heart and the outward journey of a faithful life, a thankful life that shares and reaches out, out of exuberance for what God in Christ is doing in our life and in the world.
Feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.
“I am not sitting, I am on a journey.”