Sermon for October 30, 2011 - Journey of Faith

The Scripture for this Sermon was Joshua 3:7-17

Once upon a time, I used to run somewhat regularly.  I was a member of my high school cross country team.  I don’t actually remember us doing very well.  I remember us playing a lot of ultimate Frisbee.  And I also remember one year pulling in the last five spots at an All-Colony track meet.  Still throughout my life, barring a time here or there, I have been a somewhat consistent runner.

Well, I didn’t run at all this summer.  I began in the spring with high hopes.  I quickly rebelled against those high hopes, finding a number of excuses which threw off my discipline and any inertia I might have gathered.  That being said, once late summer came around I decided I really wanted to run 5k again.  That’s about 30 minutes of running.  Nothing too significant, but something I would still have to commit to.  So I began very slowly.  I used a program I found online that I put on my phone.  Its called the 5k101 training program.  It is eight weeks, essentially going from the couch to running for 30 minutes straight.

The first week it had me running for two minutes, and walking for three, then repeating that set for a total of 8 minutes of running.  The first time I tried it, I was beat and realized how out of shape I had become.  I had to do that three times that week.  The next week, the running went up a little bit, and the walking down a little bit.  I think it was two and a half minutes of running, followed by two and a half minutes of walking, then repeating over until I had run for a total of ten minutes.  I’m on week five now.  The sets are eight minutes of running, and two minutes of walking for a total of twenty four minutes running.  And it feels really good.  I’m not there yet, but I can see myself getting there.

The most difficult thing about it, is developing a sense of patience.  Being patient with myself.  Accepting that I’m not there yet, that I can’t run for 30 minutes straight anymore.  Sometimes it is hard not to rush the whole program.  Instead I have to learn to let my body, let my legs and my lungs, let my heart, as well as my mind get used to the whole process.  It may surprise some of you (or not) that patience with myself does not come easily to me.

Has anyone heard the Chinese proverb, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”?  Can anyone think of something else that requires time and energy to accomplish?  Can anyone think of a journey of a thousand miles that starts with a single step?

In our scripture reading for today, we encounter the Israelites entering into the Promised Land.  That place which had been promised to their ancestors hundreds of years earlier.  But this is not the same group of Israelites that first went into the desert out of slavery in Egypt.  Though they were initially excited about leaving Egypt, they quickly grew disgruntled.  They argued with God, with Moses, and with themselves.  They complained about hunger, about thirst, worshiped a golden calf, doubted God’s promise.  And so they wandered in the desert for forty years.

Forty years later, we find the Israelites a completely different group of people.  They have become something else.  They have been changed.  This next generation of Israelites no longer fears entering the Promised Land.  Aware that God is among them, this is a spiritually transformed group.  And so they cross the River Jordan into the Promised Land in much the same way that they crossed the Red Sea.  Only this time they are not driven by fear, but instead by hope. 

This is not a small trickle of a river, this is a river at full flood, and we in Manitoba have seen what a flooding river looks like.  Imagine crossing the Assiniboine or the Souris this past spring, knowing that the only thing stopping you from being swept away was the presence of God.

Where did this trust come from?  Where did this faith in God come from?  How were the Israelites transformed so dramatically?  It came from forty years of wandering through the desert.  Forty years of living in the wilderness.  It did not come over night.  The faith of the Israelites was hard fought.  It was not a momentary, “Hey, we trust in God.  Look at us.”  It takes a long time for that relationship to develop.

And this is a wonderful model for our lives as Christians.  Our lives are a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage always moving towards that promised land of deeper relationship with the holy.  Our lives are a pilgrimage seeking wholeness, moving through our own brokenness.

And here’s the best part!

For me, the joy of running doesn’t come from hitting that end goal.  The joy of running comes from simply doing it.  I feel good about myself when I’m running, when I get out and enjoy the day, when I feel my own heart beat and spend time concentrating on my very breath.  I didn’t pick up the guitar in order to become a rock star (although lets face, you all heard my rendition of Tom Dooley, I’m pretty sure I will become one), I picked it up because I think it will be fun just to mess around with it.

As I was cleaning up some files in my study, I found a scrap piece of paper with something written on it.  Based on the papers around it, I think it was Shane Claiborne who said it at our Conference Annual Meeting last year, but I’ll stand to be corrected.  “Christians are so often worried about life after death, the we never even think about life before death!”  i.e. We are so worried about the destination, about the end goal, that we never even notice the pilgrimage itself.  How does our faith affect our lives here and now?

Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  It’s not tomorrow, its not a week from now, its not December 21, 2012.  It’s here!  It’s now!  He’s not talking about the afterlife, he’s talking about this world!  He’s talking about today!

There is a wonderful story I once heard a minister tell.  It was about a teacher living in Africa.  One day one of her students, gave her a beautiful gift, a certain kind of shell that could only be find at a beach miles away.  The student, who had no mode of transportation, had walked out there, found the shell and brought it back.  The teacher said, “That’s such a long journey for a gift!”  The student’s reply was “But don’t you see?  The journey is the gift!”

The Israelites could have wandered through the desert another forty years and still would have been in their promised land because they realized that through all that wandering, they remained in the presence of God.  It is the pilgrimage of our lives themselves that are holiness, not some end call that we are constantly striving for.

It doesn’t happen overnight, we never get to that final end goal we think we long for.  Transformation, relationship with God, encountering the holy and embodying Christ is not an on/off switch that we just need to find so we can flick it. And so we must be patient with ourselves.  We must learn throughout our lives that it is the path itself that is the pilgrimage, it is the forty years of wandering that is the promised land, the journey is the gift.  We are pilgrims together, seeking the God who exists within all of our lives and supporting one another in our travels.  In that way, we come to see that God is with us, always and in all ways.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.