When I was a boy my teachers would tape those cardboard cut-outs of a Thanksgiving scene to the classroom windows.  Indians were always seen harvesting corn, the women were always setting a table, and the men always had a musket in one hand, a dead turkey in the other.  The holiday was whitewashed a bit from the original scene. 

We were not privy to the horrendous living conditions.  We were not told that half the inhabitants died that first winter.  The Thanksgiving holiday,[1] wholly passed over in our rush to Christmas consumption, was, in part, to remember these hearty souls, anxious for religious freedom at great physical cost.[2]  Pilgrims, a term first used by William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, was given to the first group of Christian separatists traveling on The Mayflower, coming from religious persecution in England.[3]  

Pilgrims, whether disenfranchised believers seeking freedom from religious tyranny or displaced from their original homeland, have never walked an easy path.  The word “pilgrimage” gives us the idea of a sojourn or residency in a land not one’s own.[4]  A pilgrim is what Scripture calls an “alien” or a “stranger”.[5]  For the original American Pilgrims, the concept of “covenant,” the need to work together for the good of all, was essential for their future longevity.[6] 

The Pilgrim’s Progress captures the essence of Christian pilgrimage.  No other book, apart from the Bible, has been so continuously published and read than John Bunyan’s classic.  Bunyan lived an early volatile, vile life, rescued by Jesus, retold by the autobiographical Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.  The line that haunts Christian, and so each Christian, is stated by Evangelist, “Your sin is very great.  It involves two evils: you forsook the right way, and you walked in a forbidden path.”  No one wants to be on the wrong path.

The Song of Ascents (Psalms 120-134) reminds the believer that there is one road; that the pilgrimage is toward one place, for one reason.  These Psalms were chanted or sung by religious pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem (or Zion) celebrating Levitical festivals three times a year.[7]  In the Old Testament economy getting from place to place, was a highway formed by people “treading or trampling” a path, worn by constant walking[8].  People would be “on the way” to someplace to complete a mission[9]. 

The pilgrimage took great effort for one purpose.  Walter Brueggemann in his pioneering book The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith says that “Place is space that has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations.  Place is space in which important words have been spoken that have established identity, defined vocation, and envisioned destiny.”  So “a yearning for a place is a decision to enter history with an identifiable people in an identifiable pilgrimage.”[10] 

The Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth on Cape Cod were no different than Old Testament pilgrims visiting Jerusalem.  Each group of believers was dedicated to a way of life.  As The Pilgrim’s Progress reminds us still, this sojourn is not easy.  But Christians are pilgrims together.  We walk the path holding hands with others: in both celebration and lamentation.  We are from another place but we are in this place, for this time.  Perhaps the day will come when a teacher somewhere tapes cut-outs of us on a classroom window.  Can’t you hear it now?  “Children, these were the 21^st century pilgrims.”

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[1] Washington first declared a national day of “thanksgiving and prayer” while Lincoln officially made Thanksgiving a national holiday. 

[2] The tale is well told in John Adair’s Founding Fathers: The Puritans in England and America (Baker, 1982), pp. 105-126.  Of course, the primary source Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford is a moving account of God’s providence overseeing the (humanly speaking) good and bad of the original English Cap Cod Colony.

[3] The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed. Paul S. Boyer, (Oxford, 2001), 598-99

[4] “Foreigner” in Tyndale Bible Dictionary ( p 493) offers a fine overview of how Scripture addresses the issue of the alien living in one’s homeland and how to act when a believer finds himself in another country.

[5] Hebrews 11:13 suggests that believers in general only see their true home at a distance.  See also 1 Peter 2:11, 12

[6] Mark Noll. 2002. The Old Religion in a New World (Eerdmans), pp. 38-39. The Mayflower Compact (1620) should still be studied today for the necessity of social cohesion.

[7] Walton, et al . 2000. The Old Testament Background Commentary (IVP) pp. 103, 186-87, 518.  Exodus 23:17 and Deuteronomy 16:9-16 discuss the annual Israelite pilgrimages.  Not uncommon in the ancient world, pilgrims were paying subservience (vassal) to The King (suzerain), reaffirming one’s loyalty as an individual or nation.

[8] Genesis 3:24

[9] Genesis 38:21; 45:23; Exodus 4:24; Genesis 24:21.

[10]. Walter Brueggemann, The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith, 2^nd edition, Fortress, pp. 3, 5.

“Where are you going?” is the famous phrase from the title of the novel by Polish Nobel Prize author Henryk Sienkiewicz.  Quo Vadis? was made into multiple adaptations on the big screen.  A Roman soldier, in love with a Christian woman, must come to understand why she believes as she does in the midst of Roman persecution.  Peter’s question of Jesus in John 13:36 began the discussion.  The Latin question “Quo vadis?” is a query everyone must ask and answer as one considers where they are going in life. 

How we get where we’re going, what road we take, is essential.  Life as a “road” has been a popular metaphor in literature used in such famous works as The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, and The Lord of the Rings.  Most recently Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men) penned an apocalyptic thriller simply titled The Road.  McCarthy’s view of life has limited hope.  McCarthy’s slight belief that someone will go ahead of us to keep the fire alive is small consolation for “the end of the road.”

Songwriters have flirted with the picture of a road.  Willie Nelson can’t wait to get back “On the Road Again.”  By “rolling down the highway” Jim Croce hopes “life won’t pass him by.”  Rascal Flatts remade the fist pumping “Life Is A Highway” for a new generation of those who want to “ride it all night long.”  Even Carrie Underwood says “Jesus, Take the Wheel” so she might be saved “from this road I’m on.”

But how to find the right road to get us where we are going?  Psalm 17:5 declares “my steps have held to your paths.”  The Lord says in Jeremiah 6:16, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”[1]  God’s “way,” or course of living, is found in His commandments.[2]  “Walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you” is a repetitious theme throughout Scripture.[3]

Some declare they have stayed on the path, while others ask to be shown the road.[4]  Ultimately there is a choice to be made.  There is a good way, “the way of The Lord,” or the evil way which travels in the opposite direction.[5]  Some follow “the way of Balaam” or heretics who walk in the “way of Cain.”[6]  But Peter refers to Christianity as “the way of truth,” the right way,” and “the way of righteousness.”[7]  And God knows every person’s path.[8]

Perhaps “Quo vadis?“ can be answered with a heavenly GPS (global positioning system).  Jesus’ sacrifice opened a “new and living way” since He is “the way.”[9]  For the Roman soldier, Peter, and all of us the answer to the question is the same: Jesus. 

Next to the question, “Where are you going?” demands another: “How do you get there?”  Eugene Peterson reminds us that the “how” is desperately important:

I want to counter the common reduction of “way” to a road, a route, a line on a map-a line that we can use to find our way to eternal life; such reduction means the elimination of way as a metaphor, the reduction of way to a lifeless technology.  The Way that is Jesus is . . . the way he acted, felt, talked, gestured, prayed, healed taught, and died.  And the way of his resurrection.  The Way that is Jesus cannot be reduced to information or instruction.  The Way is a person whom we believe and follow as God-with-us.[10]

 Jesus’ Way is the ancient path, the road less taken, the way to life, the way of life.

 

[1] Of course, the verse ends, “But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”  The opposite is also true: “My people have forgotten me; they burn incense to worthless idols, which made them stumble in their ways and in the ancient paths.  They made them walk in bypaths and on roads not built up” (Jeremiah 18:15).

[2] 1 Kings 2:3; 8:58; Psalm 119:1, 3, 14, 27, 30, etc.

[3] Deuteronomy 5:33; 8:6; 10:12; 11:22; 19:9, etc.

[4] Job 23:11; Psalm 18:21; 44:18 with Psalm 25:4; 27:11; 86:11; 119:33; 143:8.

[5] Genesis 18:19; 1 Samuel 12:23; 1 Kings 8:36; 2 Chronicles 6:27, etc. with Genesis 6:12; Numbers 22:32; Judges 2:19; 1 Kings 13:33; 15:26, etc.

[6] 2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11.

[7] 2 Peter 2:2, 15, 21.

[8] Psalm 139:3; Proverbs 5:21.

[9] Hebrews 10:20; John 14:6.

[10] Eugene H. Peterson. 2007. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways that Jesus is The Way. (Eerdmans), pp. 39-40.

June 11, 2009

to

June 14, 2009

November 16, 2008

to

November 18, 2008

Country music: I confess for years I hated it.  But lately the “twang” has been replaced with the “thang.”  A combination of rock, folk, blues, and down home southern style guitar strummin’ has captured my tapping toe.  Sometimes I find myself catching up on recent top twenty videos from CMT or flipping the channel in my car to the local station to hear the latest from Sugarland, Brooks and Dunn, Toby Keith (my favorite), or this one from Little Big Town: 

I feel no shame

I’m proud of where I came from

I was born and raised

In the boondocks

 One thing I know

No matter where I go

I keep my heart and soul

In the boondocks

When one listens to country there is a pride of country.  You won’t find patriotism in Hollywood, but you’ll hear the stars and stripes wave in songs from Nashville.  It is the tie to place, where one’s from, that grabbed my attention this morning.  Place gets into one’s person.  Hometown feels like down home.  Locale is mental.  The lyrics from “Boondocks” continue, “And I can feel that muddy water running through my veins.”  Where I’m from tells some about who I am.

“Path” is not simply something I’m on, but what should be in me, what should run through me.  My feet and my heart are to walk on the same path (Psalm 44:18).  Every wrong path can be understood by God’s precepts within me (Psalm 119:104).  God’s Word is the light for how I think, my internal path (Psalm 119:105).  I need to say with the Psalmist, “Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight . . . Turn my eyes away from worthless things, and renew my life in your way” (Psalm 119, 35, 37).  Path is a choice I make to live a certain way, and the way becomes my path (Psalm 119:133). 

In The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers, there is a canticle entitled “The Gospel Way.”  In part it reads, “Blessed be thou, O Father, for contriving this way, Eternal thanks to thee, O Lamb of God, for opening this way, Praise everlasting to thee, O Holy Spirit, for applying this way to my heart.  Glorious Trinity, impress the gospel on my soul, until its virtue diffuses every faculty; Let it be heard, acknowledged, professed, felt.”  The Gospel Way should become my way, leading me down the way.

Where I’m from tells some about who I am.  Where I walk infuses my thought, my talk.  The Gospel Way is my way.  As the country runs through country music, so The Path I’m on runs through me.

In 1929 the U. S. Naval Academy unveiled a monument to Matthew Maury with the engraving “Pathfinder of the Seas.”  While others had established ocean currents prior to Maury’s birth, Maury himself invested his life in helping mariners navigate the oceans’ unseen streams.  It is the phrase in Psalm 8:8 “All that swim in the paths of the seas” which may have led to Maury’s being noted as the founder of modern oceanography.

 

For ages, explorers such as Columbus or Magellan sought to give humanity a way to traverse the oceans.  The circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan sets the standard for such discoveries.  The Straits of Magellan, given for his accomplishments, south of Chile expanded human knowledge by a means unknown in the 16^th C.  Whether over water or seeking overland routes, such as those of Lewis and Clark, people seem intent on finding their way.

 

Continuing down the road of human discovery is an ongoing, never ending process (Job 28:1-11).  What we understand about the world may grow but we have only scratched the surface (Job 26:1-14).  Indeed, The Creator alone knows the way to wisdom (Job 28:12-28).  Military triumph, unseen by the enemy, was had because He “made a way through the sea” (Isaiah 43:16).  And while we enjoy the benefits of light and darkness, humans do not know their “places” or the “paths to their dwellings” (Job 38:20).

 

But what happens when The Almighty Himself blocks “my way so I cannot pass . . .  shroud[ing] my paths in darkness” (Job 19:8)?  Why does God permit my enemies to “break up my road” allowing them to destroy me? (Job 30:13).  Even when He “knows my way” it seems it is still to take me intentionally down “the path I walk” where “men have hidden a snare for me” (Psalm 142:3).  At times, it is my own sin for which He “drives me away, making me walk in darkness . . . making my paths crooked” (Lamentations 3:2, 9).  Still, when I “have kept my feet from every evil path” (Psalm 119:101) even my so-called friends “turn aside from their routes” to see me (Job 6:14-23).

 

Let’s face it: we don’t like The Way of God-”my ways are not your ways” (Isaiah 55:7-9).  In all honesty, I struggle with “not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42) in my Christ-unlike-ness.  Outside of forgiving my enemies in The Lord’s Prayer, the hardest phrase for me to repeat (and mean!) is “your will be done on earth” (Matthew 6:10).  I want the “level path” (Psalm 27:11; see 18:33; 143:10). 

 

Leveling and straightening the road in preparation for a highway is exactly the prophecy of what John the Baptist would do for Jesus (Isaiah 40:3-4; Malachi 3:1; 4:5; Mark 1:2-3; Luke 1:76; John 1:22-23).  But this was no Easy Street!  Temptation to crucifixion was a difficult traverse for The Son of Man: and it would be no different for His followers.  Matthew 7:13-14 tell that the path is narrow and only a few find it.  Victor Hamilton’s work on the Hebrew word for “way” reminds us “Our Lord’s reference to himself as ‘the way, the truth, the life’ means that Jesus is the way to the truth about life.  He is not the answer.  That would be an oversimplification.  He is the way that leads to the answer.[1]

 

At times we are left so far off the beaten track of life that we do not even know what the question is; and now we are told there is no answer yet.  We are expected to be on The Way, blind, walking unfamiliar paths, yet where the rough places are made smooth (Isaiah 42:16).  It is no mistake that early Christians called their belief “The Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:8, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).  There is a clear road (Jesus), a clear path to follow (Scripture), and a clear destination (Heaven).  What is quite unclear is the broken pavement, detours, and lane closures that make our way quite uncomfortable.  To The One who placed “paths in the seas” that humans trust for trade and travel, all I can do is trust, “YOU (emphatic in Hebrew) who know my way” (Psalm 142:3).

 

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[1] “Harak” in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1, (Moody, 1980), p 71.