But how can people call on him if they have not believed in him? How can they believe in him if they have not heard his message? How can they hear if no one tells the Good News? How can people tell the Good News if no one sends them? As Scripture says, "How beautiful are the feet of the messengers who announce the Good News." (Romans 10:14-15)
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Often when I’m asked to do an interment service for a family at one of the local cemeteries, I share this reading as a part of our time together because I think it helps to put both life and death into perspective. It seemed relevant to what I wanted to discuss today:
Birth is a beginning And death a destination But life is a journey A going -- a growing From stage to stage From childhood to maturity And youth to age. From innocence to awareness And ignorance to knowing; From foolishness to discretion And then perhaps, to wisdom. From Weakness to strength Or strength to weakness And, often, back again. From health to sickness And back we pray, to health again. From offense to forgiveness, From loneliness to love, From joy to gratitude, From pain to compassion, And grief to understanding -- From fear to faith. From defeat to defeat to defeat -- Until, looking backward or ahead, We see that victory lies Not as some high place along the way, But in having made the journey, stage by stage. A sacred pilgrimage. Birth is a beginning And death a destination. But life is a journey, A sacred pilgrimage -- Made stage by stage -- To life everlasting.
When I say that this helps me to put life and death into perspective, what I mean is that it makes the point that life is a an ongoing journey - from beginning to end, but even more than that. We think of time as linear - a straight line moving from one end to the other. I think probably (and there’s increasing scientific theory to back me up) that time is more of a circle than a line. It starts and it ends and it starts again. Eternity doesn’t have a beginning or an end. Eternity just is. What happens within eternity is the journey. The Bible is a story of journey. Abraham journeying to a strange and foreign land; Moses leading the Israelites on a journey through the wilderness of Sinai; Israel travelling from the holy land to exile in Babylon and back again; Jesus the journeying, itinerant preacher; Paul journeying on the road to Damascus, and then journeying throughout the Roman Empire to share the Gospel. The Bible itself is a destination - from the Garden of Eden of the Book of Genesis to the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. Or science would speak of the journey of the universe from the Big Bang to what some believe will be the Big Crunch. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that what’s important in the journey is the destination. So Christian faith is sometimes guilty of pointing people ahead to the destination - heaven, eternity, however you want to describe it - and forgetting about the importance of what happens along the way on the journey to get there. Perhaps we overemphasize what’s to come at the expense of becoming complacent about what’s actually going on around us. To put it another way, sometimes Christians are in fact guilty of becoming - as an old saying says - so heavenly minded that we’re of no earthly use! That happens because we forget the importance of the journey. We start to see the journey as an obstacle to get through rather than as an opportunity.
I want to encourage us all to celebrate the journey. It’s a God-given journey we’re on, just as it’s a God-given faith we believe in and just as much as it’s a God-given life we enjoy. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was an invitation for us all to share in the journey, by offering us a powerful reminder of the exciting newness that God wants to offer us; of the bold “what next?” that we should be asking and then acting on. Last week I was speaking about the asking of the “what next?” question. This week I’m encouraging you to act on the “what next?” question. We have to act, because a journey can’t be static. A journey that doesn’t take you anywhere isn’t a journey. But the journey of faith isn't just about the destination. Sometimes on any journey the things you find along the way are more interesting and exciting and satisfying than the destination you finally arrive at. The journey that the resurrection invites us into is just such a journey of exciting discovery and sharing. I’m not talking about a “unitarian” type of journey where the journey leads nowhere, anywhere and everywhere all at the same time. I’m talking about a journey that leads us deeper - constantly deeper - into the reality of the living Christ in our midst. I’m talking about a journey so wondrous that it inevitably leads us to want to invite others to travel with us.
Paul wrote, “‘As Scripture says, ‘How beautiful are the feet of the messengers who announce the Good News.’” It was Isaiah who first spoke those words: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!” We walk. We journey. We travel. And as we do we bring good news. I don’t know about you, but I know lots of people who need good news. Too often the church brings them bad news: news of judgment, or news about an angry God, or news about how hopelessly sinful we all are. And in the midst of doing that, too often we forget the good news. We have the gospel bound up so tightly that we never seem to let it go. But we have to unbind the gospel and let it loose, travelling ourselves to discover new and joyous points of interest, and guiding others to discover the good news: the gifts of peace, good tidings and salvation.
The journey never ends. I’ve noticed that there are Christians who seem to think it does - at least for them. Some who believe that they’ve “got it” or they’ve “made it.” The “truth” is theirs. But honestly? No. If we become, as Jesus suggests we do, “like little children,” and we find ourselves asking “Are we there yet?” we’ll discover that the answer is “no.” The journey (at least as far as this life is concerned) is never ending, because we never know it all. Paul once wrote that “now we see dimly as in a mirror.” That's a call to humility. We don't know everything there is to know. As we travel this path, we see the Kingdom of God reflected, and we see a reflection of the relationship we should have with God, but the journey continues - a journey from here to eternity, a journey from now to then. “Now we see dimly as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” The resurrection of Jesus places us on the journey, and constantly pushes us ahead on roads perhaps untraveled, but roads that contain wonders we may never have dreamed of.
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