My late husband and I were hunting buddies. After he died, I mostly quit hunting because, as I’m sure many of you know, it’s way more fun to hunt with a buddy.
But that’s not the story for this morning. The story for this morning is how we got lost, more specifically, how the one who was always certain she knew where we were, and which way to go, got turned around and got us completely lost.. because he trusted and followed her.
See, he was born and grew up in a city.., and he had a lousy sense of direction. You could never have told him, “Go east on I-20, then south on Highway 65 to reach St. Joseph,” because he never knew which way was east and which way south.
I, on the other hand, grew up in the country, and had and still have a good sense of direction. Tell me that St. Joseph is southeast of Monroe about an hour and a half’s drive, and I’ll immediately have a mental map of going east on I-20 a ways and then south on some state highway, the name of which I might need to look up.
Give me a map, I have often bragged, and I can get anywhere I want to go, and home again! It got a little harder when we moved to Louisiana, where everything this side of the Ouachita is flat and covered with palmettos and… to people from Pennsylvania, looks exactly alike, indeed, seems to have no distinguishing features to help you find your way.
Nevertheless, a few basic maps and my good sense of direction got us in and out of a number of hunting areas.
Then one day we decided to go to the Tensas Refuge. I had a rather rudimentary map, but I knew exactly where we were when we parked the truck on an east-west road, and I knew that we walked into the woods going straight south.
After we had walked awhile, we came upon a stream—a stream of significant width and depth that I couldn’t see on the map. Well, maybe that little line was it. But we followed it, even though I had no idea where it had come from or where it was going.
Then suddenly the sun had disappeared, and the trees were dense enough that I could no longer see where it had gone down. We decided we’d better head back while we had a little light left, so I pointed us in what I thought was north, and we walked, and we walked, and we walked.
My husband kept saying, I think we need to cross the stream, and I kept saying, no, that makes no sense. And he trusted me enough to keep going. And then finally we began to hear the sound of major water up ahead, the gurgling of what I later figured out was the Tensas River.
And at about that moment, we came upon a nice, big fat tree that had fallen and formed a perfect bridge over what was now, clearly, a tributary into the Tensas River. And I said, “Honey, I’m lost and we’re going to trust your instinct.”
So we crossed the stream and headed the direction his instinct said we should go. I walked behind him with my hand on his shoulder and sighted a distinctive star pattern so we wouldn’t walk in circles, and sure enough, after some walking we began to hear traffic and finally we walked out to a road. A couple of fellow hunters in a pickup truck let us sit on their tailgate and took us back to our vehicle, which was a couple miles away on a road perpendicular to the road we walked out to.
Following someone is not wrong, and it’s not a sign of weakness. The question is, How do you choose whom to follow?
My husband was willing to follow me because he trusted my sense of direction. I knew the way. I was certain I knew the way. In fact, I acted more certain than I was because I was accustomed to being—and I’m sure had some ego invested in being—the one who always knew the way.
Today it is not hard to find Christians of various denominations, including ours, who are quite certain they know the way. They know who’s on the right path and who’s on the road to perdition, and they don’t hesitate to tell you if you are one of the latter. They often base that judgment on very little information about you.
Not only are they on the right path, but they know exactly where the edges of the path are. They can describe the edges in detail. They know the rules. Think like this, believe these things, and end up in heaven with me, they say. Don’t think or do or be or believe that because that’s over the edge and you’ll end up in hell!
Indeed, these folks tend to use this very passage in John (and similar ones) to bolster their claim to have the answers. But in that regard, they are amazingly like the pharisees, who also knew the rules according to scripture and used them to badger Jesus for joining hands with people who were supposedly off the path.
In contrast, Jesus offers none of the comfort and security of detailed knowledge of the path. He spends no time describing the edges of the path. He gives us no categories of people to avoid. Indeed, he did make a habit of reaching out to people who seem to be, even to the most open-minded of us, OFF the path. (John 14:1-14, NRSV)
I’m the way, he said. If you want to get to God, follow me. You don’t have to know the way… so long as you know that I know the way. Just follow me, he says. Even if you don’t know where I am going, if you follow me you will end up where I am going. But you’ve got to trust me enough to follow.
Fortunately for all of us, Jesus is a much more trustworthy guide than I was that night in Tensas! Fortunately for my husband and I, it finally penetrated my confidence and ego that I was lost and needed to trust his instinct for a change!
But we know with the clarity of hindsight what the disciples were trying to grasp in today’s Gospel story. The way of Jesus is not a waltz in the park. For him, it led to the cross. For us, it will lead into dark valleys. Life often will make no sense. We will feel insecure, and be tempted to follow the siren call of those who claim to have all the answers.
We will look at fellow travelers on the way and think, “What is that sinner or illegal immigrant or gay person or pharisee doing here? Surely I don’t have to share the way with them!”
And all the while, Jesus is up front saying, follow me. You don’t need to know the way, you don’t need to see the edges of the path, you certainly don’t need to worry about who is on it with you—that’s way over your pay grade. Just follow me. I cannot or will not prevent hard times, grief and death, but I will lead you through it and out into the sunshine of Easter.
Today I pray we will have the wits and faith to follow the one who knows the way.
AMEN
