“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Thank you Lao Tzu. Whatever that means. I mean we think we know. It sounds great. Something powerful, something that sounds impossible, has humble beginnings. Actually, supposedly the original quote said a thousand li journey. A li was an ancient Chinese measurement that equaled three hundred and sixty miles. So, he actually said a journey of 360,000 miles begins with a single step. Wow. How far do you have to go today? More than a quarter of a million, but just short of a half a million miles! Yikes, better sit down. You realize that is more than a hundred thousand miles past the moon? OK, now I’m tired. Thanks Lao Tzu.
We’re on a journey. That’s how we describe the season of Lent. It’s our Lenten Journey. The devotional we are using is titled “Moving Toward the Cross.” It is a daily reflection based on the writings of Frederick Buechner, one of my long time favorite writer/preachers.
The Lenten Journey. The very concept implies at least two things. One that we are moving. This isn’t a static, sit and contemplate event. I know we often think of Lent as a time of consideration, self-reflection, introspection. And certainly there is an element of that inherent in the design of the season. But movement is built into the pattern of the season. We are walking with Christ. And Christ is on his way somewhere.
That’s the second implication of the season: we have a destination. This journey isn’t just random wandering in the wilderness, even though it often feels like it. We are on a path, and I’ve already given it away in the devotional title. Moving Toward the Cross. That’s our destination. The culmination of our Lenten journey is not Easter sunrise, as much as we wish it was. No, Easter is something completely different. We can no more journey to Easter than we could travel a hundred thousand miles past the moon. Easter is another dimension of time and of space. No, actually it is beyond time and space. It is completely out of reach. More on that to come ... really.
No, our destination is much more earthy. Much more real. And, unfortunately, more painful. Requiring more sacrifice, more surrender. The journey to the cross is a journey laden with struggle, with a wrestling match with our greatest foe. Ourselves. I know, you were hoping for an enemy to conquer. A stranger who’s a threat. The bad guy. Them. You know those people, that type, the evil empire, all that stuff. Yeah, no, sorry. It’s you. Old Pogo had it right. We have met the enemy and he is us. And because he is us, because this journey is an inner journey at least in part, we’d just as soon not. We’d give it a pass, and most of the time we do. No thanks, I’m fine. Our usual social response. No thanks, I’m fine. All on my own, I’m good. It’s everyone else that is the problem. If it weren’t for them, all would be peachy.
Which means that our philosophical aphorism ought to be “a journey of a thousand (or three hundred sixty thousand) miles begins with a single stumble. We fall down a lot. That’s kind of our story. We start out that way. I remember when the kids were learning to walk all those years ago. Falling down seemed to be the way of it. Hardly any attempt was made without crashing down on their thankfully well padded existential ground of being. Sometimes there was tears. Sometimes frustration. Sometimes the ground seemed a safer place and the attempt was put off until another day. We fall down. Any journey that gets us anywhere important is going to include a few stumbles. A stubbed toe, a cracked shin, a bloody nose, a teary moment, an unplanned detour, a lack of resources, a mechanical failure, a ... well, point taken. We fall down.
Which leads us to continually ask why bother? If the journey is too great, why take it? If I’m likely to fall down, why set out? Especially to heading someplace that is “good for me”? God save us from what is good for us. That just seems to scream painful, exhausting, humiliating, and ultimately asking for me to change.
Who does that? Who seeks that strenuous, wrestling with self that leads to surrender and sacrifice and then transformation? Who does that?
Matthew 4:1-11 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" 7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." 10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" 11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Yeah, ok. Him. He would go for that. But then He’s ... Him. Well, take another look. Matthew (and Luke) says that He was led up. He didn’t go looking for it. He didn’t run to meet it. He shuffled forward in the line at Ash Wednesday with the same slumped shoulders as the rest of us. Mark even goes further and says the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. Kicking and screaming perhaps. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna. Or maybe not, maybe He knew that this journey was one worth taking. Even though it ended at what seemed like a dead end. Even though it ended with a painful betrayal and an agonizing night and lonely and broken surrender of life on a hill that looked like a skull, under a blazing sun that didn’t weep until it was too late for Him to feel it.
But that was His journey, not ours, surely. We don’t spend forty hungry days in a desert hallucinating conversations around impossibilities and sleight of hand. Do we? No, of course not. We can’t turn stones into bread, that wouldn’t enter our minds. But we can turn every hunger into a physical one and satisfy spiritual needs by stuffing our faces or filling our closets. We can’t leap from the pinnacle of the temple and be caught by angels. But we can leap into self destructive habits that lead to death more often than not in the misguided belief that we are immortal as long as we don’t think about it. We aren’t shown the kingdoms of the world in their splendor and given the keys to these kingdoms if we just fall down again. Yet we believe we deserve everything, anything our hearts desire, in an odd confusion about rights and freedoms.
We fall down. Over and over. The painful realization is that our journey is not just the forty days of Lent, but the whole of our lives. Every day we are given opportunities to claim the gift of life that we’ve been given in Christ, and we fall down. We surrender to our own temptations, to our own selfishness, me time. Instead of surrendering to the cross. Upon which we can nail all our falling down, all our brokenness. Instead of journeying to the death of self and of sin. We wrestle with the adversary inside of us, our own willfulness. And we fall down.
We seem to think Lent is about falling down. About collapsing in tears and remorse and regret and this overwhelming sense of sinfulness. That’s the only way to move forward, we seem to think. But maybe, like the One we follow, our Lenten opportunity is to not fall down. For once. We stand in the arms of the One who stood for us. We stand and we walk with Him all the way to the cross.
So, old Lao Tzu was right. It’s not about falling down, not about stumbling. It’s about standing and stepping. It’s about taking the first step. Putting our hands in His hand and taking that first step on the road to the cross. It’s a long painful journey, but one worth taking. Walk with me.
Shalom,
Derek
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