Sermon Archive
Journeys
Sermon preached by John McLuckie at Matins on 2 March 2003
Gen 12:1-9, Lk 18:31-43
I was moved this week by pictures on the news of two very different sorts of journey. One was about to begin and the other had come to an end, at least for a time. The journey about to begin was the journey of some young Black Watch soldiers heading off for what may be war in the Gulf. For them, this is a journey of purpose, of painful partings, of acute awareness of danger and threat and, no doubt, of some uncertainty. Those saying goodbye were also deeply aware of the nature of this journey. Some may have said goodbye like this before. For others the emotions may be quite new. For all of those present in that scene, the bigger questions of the purpose of the deployment and its likely outcome are focussed primarily on the safety of loved ones in the midst of a huge and threatening international conflict.
The image of a journey at some kind of end was of asylum seekers hidden in a lorry landing at an English ferry port. Their future too is one of uncertainty, their experience is also of threat. Threat, for them, also comes in the shape of not knowing where the journey will end, also includes the risk of harm, also has the sadness of painful partings. In these two snapshot pictures, massive and complex international realities find focus in the lives of individuals and their journeys.
Lent, which begins in just a couple of days, is often described as a journey. The stories and traditions of our faith offer us many ways of reflecting on the real journeys we make and the real journeys of others and today's readings offer us two such stories. Like the stories of soldiers and asylum seekers, these stories are complex. They don't give us unrealistic or unsubtle images and because of that, I think they are all the more useful as resources to engage with the journeys of life. The first story is of Abram and his household setting out from Haran and all they have known there to Canaan. For these people, this is another journey with an uncertain end. There is promise in this journey, but it is promise that must wait for fulfilment at another time. The journey must go on past the promised destination but an altar is set there as a token of the promise and a reminder of the God who makes it. I guess that for us, there are times when journeys we long to make must be left until a better moment, times when the promise of a particular future must wait. There are times when we know we must travel on, content with small tokens of what we truly long for. There is choice and discernment at every stage of the journeys we undertake and there are always places we must pass by. Abram left an altar behind, a cairn to remind them that this part of the journey was important and holds something of God's promise for his people.
The complexity here is that the promise for his people may also be a threat for those who currently occupy the land. The journeys we choose are not made in isolation. The land that we tread is often shared with others on very different journeys.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus sets out on a journey that is certainly filled with the threat of what awaits in Jerusalem. Like Abram's journey, it has promise in it too, but that promise is hidden to those for whom the threat of the coming confrontation is too awful. The promise lies on the other side of that confrontation and the disciples are not in a position to see that far. The journey is interrupted by an incident outside Jericho when a blind beggar tries to stop the traveller from Nazareth. The people in front try to stop this interruption but Jesus responds to the insistent demands of a man who knows what he needs. In a way, this interruption is not an interruption at all but part of the deeper purpose of the journey to the cross. The journey is about confronting human need and the causes of our deepest alienation so the beggar is not an irritant getting in the way, but someone who steps boldly into the path of Jesus and his companions as a reminder of what the journey is all about.
For us, there are similar moments on our life's journey that may look like interruptions, but are, perhaps, a reminder too us that if we have our sights fixed on a particular goal, we may be missing something of what the journey is all about. Sometimes our journeys are interrupted by needs that are no less insistent than those of the beggar. The art of a faithful journey is to receive such interruptions as a gift and to see them as part of the journey itself.
I started with two stories with a powerful component of threat in them. The two biblical stories are also full of such threat, but also of one or two strategies to engage with the threat. For Abram, this meant walking past one particular destination and setting a marker down as a reminder of God's promise, a promise that must find fulfilment at another time. For Jesus and his followers, the journey to Jerusalem became transformed by an encounter that challenged them to consider the deeper purpose of the journey - the engagement with people in their need and the confrontation with the causes of that need. I hope that these stories give us imaginative resources to ask about the choices, purposes and strategies for our own life's journeys. And I hope that the journey of Lent will do the same thing. Travel well and keep an eye out for interruptions, they might be significant!
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