On the Journey

​Much of the language in our baptismal service comes from today’s reading from Ephesians. Listen to how the baptismal service begins: There is one Body and one Spirit; there is one hope in God’s call to us; One Lord, one Faith, one baptism; One God and Father of all. A bit later, the sponsors of the person receiving baptism promise to help the newly baptized person “to grow into the full stature of Christ.”
 
And so begins the Christian journey for each of us. We are baptized into Christ’s body; touched by the Holy Spirit; called by God to live as beloved children of our heavenly Father; and destined to become more and more Christ-like over time.
 
I want to think about that journey towards the full stature of Christ. But I begin in what might seem like an odd place.
 
A group of us are reading a book by the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich, which turns out to be more interesting and relevant than it may sound. During a serious illness, Julian received a series of visions that she spent the rest of her life interpreting.
 
At our last session, our group discussed a vision in which Julian said it was as if God spoke to her, saying, “Look, I am God. I am in all. I do everything! I never cease upholding my work, and I never will. I am guiding everything toward the end I ordained for it from the first, by the same might, wisdom, and love with which I first made it. How can anything be wrong?”[1]
 
I particularly focus on the first and last part of that quotation. “I am God. I am in all…. How can anything be wrong?”
 
When I look back at my life to this point, it looks at first like there is plenty that is wrong. I have made bad decisions. I have taken wrong turns. Things have not always gone the way I wanted them to.
 
But Julian tells us that God was in all of it, bringing good even out of our mistakes and missteps, and eventually shepherding us toward the end for which God created us. The full stature of Christ. Perfect love. Perfect unity with God.
 
Here is an example from my life. At age twenty-three, I approached my rector to ask about getting ordained. But when I heard all the steps in the process, I ran screaming. I decided to become a teacher instead.
 
That was a long-term decision. I didn’t come back to the question of ordination for many years and didn’t get ordained until I was forty-four—more than two decades after my first conversation about ordination.
 
But that twenty-year detour wasn’t a waste. As Julian says, God was in it. Through good times and bad, God was shaping and guiding me into the person that I am today. Even when ordination was the farthest thing from my mind, God was making me into a priest. I just didn’t know it at the time.
 
The same is true for all of us. We all have regrets. We all have wounds. But God is in all of it, even the worst parts. God is in there somewhere, often beneath the surface, but always sustaining us, molding us, guiding us on our journeys toward the full stature of Christ.
 
And God continues to sustain and shape and guide us today, as our journeys continue, even through dark times and what sometimes look like long detours.
 
One way God sustains us is through the Eucharist. As he says in our Gospel reading, Christ comes to us as the bread of life. That bread, Christ tells us, gives life to the world.
 
Understandably, the people who heard Christ that day ask him to “give us this bread always.” To which, Christ replies, “Come to me.”
 
That invitation is open always. We can come on good days to celebrate. We can come on hard days for consolation and strength. We can come for forgiveness when we are wrestling with guilt. We can come for nourishment when we are struggling.
 
We come, and we receive whatever it is that we need.
 
In a couple of weeks, Carrie and I are taking our first-ever backpacking trip together. That has me thinking of the Eucharist as a kind of spiritual trail mix. 
 
One of the great things about backpacking is that you really need to eat. These days I mostly worry about eating too much. But for backpackers, the challenge is making sure you eat enough.
 
Most trips I don’t push myself all that hard. Carrie and I have reasonable goals for how far we plan to walk each day. But backpacking with my son Benjamin is a different story.
 
For a long time now, Benjamin has been so much stronger than I am that I have to keep him behind me at all times. Otherwise he leaves me in the dust without even noticing that he is doing it.
 
But having Benjamin behind me doesn’t solve all my problems. My ego remains an issue. With Benjamin behind me, I try to walk fast enough to impress him. For the same reason, I don’t take a lot of breaks.
 
The result is very predictable. First off, I do NOT impress him. But twice I have actually given out. Both times I felt sick enough that I had to lie down in the middle of the day.
 
Both times that happened, I lay there for a while, forcing down some food because I knew I needed energy. Eventually I recovered enough to get going again, but humbled, at a more manageable pace, with LOTS more breaks, and LOTS of trail mix.
 
Here’s the point of all this. God is with us all the time. But we often ignore God’s presence and God’s guidance. We try to go it on our own. And eventually we bump up against our limitations.
 
What we need to sustain us on the spiritual journey, what we especially need in moments of collapse, no matter what form collapse takes, is the bread of life. That’s the bread that can keep us going, or get us going again.
 
And so we heed Christ’s invitation. We come to the altar, and we share the bread of life. And we keep going on our journey. 
 
And the journey does keep going, which is a comfort, particularly as we age.
 
We tend to think of aging in terms of loss, and for good reason.
 
I’m not sure when I passed my physical peak, but it was a long time ago. At this point, I have been in slow but inexorable physical decline for decades. I’m even less clear when I passed my mental peak. But names come noticeably more slowly than they used to.
 
In body and mind, I am on a downhill slope, and there is no turning back. If I needed a reminder, spending time with a twenty-five-year-old son this week has made that very clear!
 
But in our relationship with God, it’s a very different story. That journey continues. On that journey, we can all keeping growing and getting stronger until the moment we die, and maybe even after that.
 
It is gratifying to know that, in the area that matters most, progress is always possible, that our best days are, hopefully!, still ahead of us, that the adventure continues, no matter how old we are.
 
And so I thank God for working with us always, for sustaining us our journeys with the bread of life, and for giving us the capacity to grow continuously in our relationship with him. And I pray that God will keep us moving forward!
 
In Christ’s name. Amen.


[1] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Penguin books, chapter 11, pages 81-82.