It's About the Journey, Not the Destination

This was my message for Ash Wednesday. The text was 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10:

I remember hearing about someone who came to Maya Angelou, or at least that’s whom I remember it being about, although I couldn’t find the proper attribution, and so it could be someone else, and if it is you’ll have to forgive me, but the story is too appropriate for this message to ignore. But, any ways they came and told her they were a Christian, to which she responded, “already? I thought becoming a Christian took a lifetime.” And while I may not remember who said it exactly, what I do remember in reading that the first time was how succinctly that little response put what could be a complicated thought about the journey of faith. “You’re already a Christian? I thought it took a lifetime.” It’s the difference between an event and a journey, as Seth Godin recently said. A journey can have events in them, including things that change the substance of the journey, but it’s still about the journey, not the event. So, for example, a wedding is an event that changes the relationship from dating, or fiancées, to  being married,  but it’s just one even in the journey of the relationship. And if someone were to say that they were done doing any of the work that a relationship requires simply because they had gotten married, I think we would tell them that they were missing the entire point. Indeed, as I usually tell the couples I marry, it is after the wedding that the hard work of being married begins. That’s not the end of the journey, it’s merely the beginning. The event is over, now the journey begins.

In some ways that’s what Lent is setting us up to do and to remember, that our faith is not an event but a journey. Even today we might think of simply as an event, and just move on as if it makes no difference, other than going to eat fish on Friday, even at some protestant churches, because tradition trumps having any theological meaning behind it. Or perhaps we’ll take on a practice for Lent, because again that’s what we do, and as I’ve joked before giving up chocolate for forty days surely has the same meaning, purpose and pain as being crucified on a cross. And just to be clear, it doesn’t, and don’t call me Shirley. Again, the difference between an event and a journey, seeing the movie Airplane is an event, continuing to quote from it all these many years later is a journey. Lent is that same journey, or it can be. It can be a time in which we work to deepen our faith and our relationship with God, or to deepen our relationship with others, and even to deepen our relationship with ourselves. Because while we often think about practicing one of the spiritual disciplines during Lent, with fasting being the one in particular that we focus on, it can be bigger than that. I was talking with someone this week about spiritual practices and I said that it could be someone is having trouble remembering to take their medication, and so perhaps that’s what they’re going to take on in Lent, or maybe it’s exercising, or getting more or better sleep, because being physically healthy is just as important as being spiritually healthy, and the two definitely impact each other. And so, this time of lent is part of that journey, either as the beginning or perhaps simply as a continuation. These forty days are the reminder that our faith is a journey.

It starts in the waters of baptism, the initiation into the church, which we remember each year at the beginning of January, after the celebration of Jesus’ birth, and then quickly, we move into lent, or maybe not so quickly depending on the year, then into the passion story, then Easter, and then the rest of the year, known as ordinary time, not because of it being normal, but because the Sunday’s are numbered, so ordinary from the word ordinal for numbers, and then we’re to Christ the Kind Sunday and Advent all over again. That is the Christian year is this journey through time and space, interspersed with the events that mark the journey. And what it powerful about that journey, at least to me is that fact that it doesn’t matter then what happened before. Maybe we had a great Christmas, or maybe we didn’t, but next year we get the chance to do it again. And maybe we had a particularly tough year, and being reminded of our baptism is what we needed, or we need to know of the power and reality of resurrection. Those are all happening over and over again. The map is laid out before us in the journey. These past few months we have lost some of our musical giants of this congregation, the last of whose life we will remember this Saturday, and so as we get marked with the ashes in a few moments we are reminded of our own mortality, and then the need for God in that to help us find the meaning and purpose to be with us on this journey, or as Paul said in the passage we heard tonight to be reconciled to God. Which is also not a one-time event, but an all the time event because as Paul says, and as Lent seeks to remind us, we all fall short of the glory of God.

And so, salvation, as Paul tells the Corinthians, and us, is now. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation. Now is the time to begin this journey of faith, or continue to walk the journey of faith, or get back into the walk of the journey of faith. And you know what? So is tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that. But in the hustle and bustle of ordinary life, or the things that keep us distracted, for the negatives and the positives of reality, Lent serves as that reminder for us. A concentrated period of time to focus and be focused, to see not just life as a journey from life to death and from death to life, but to see our faith as that same journey, with highs and lows, mountaintop experiences as we heard last Sunday in the story of the transfiguration and in experiences of the valley, even in the valley of the shadow of death, which we will encounter in a few weeks in the passion story, and to know that God is with us through all of those things. And so I encourage you this Lenten season, beginning today, to see this journey stretched out before us, but to know we don’t do it all at one time, but instead step-by-step, moment-by-moment, day-by-day, one moment at a time, and to take on something additional as a part of this journey, even if that thing is to let go of something else, in order to walk a little closer with God and with each other for these next 40 days so that we can celebrate on Easter the eternal reminder that God always wins, that love wins, that life wins, that the journey wins. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.