|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Exodus 17:1-7 |
Psalm 78:1–4, 12–16 |
Philippians 2:1–13 |
Matthew
24:23–32
|
One of the blessings of this area is the many trails inviting a short walk either after work on a stress-filled day or on a more relaxed Sunday afternoon. One such trail is a short distance from my house. It follows a stream and then loops around a finger of a small glacial moraine before returning you to your starting point off Ellis Hollow Creek Road. About a couple hundred yards into the woods rests the remains of a twenty-foot wooden boat. Larger and broader than an ordinary utility rowboat, it was built for travel across the Finger Lakes and not for fishing in a farm pond. Once it seems to have been a substantial and well built craft. Now it is beyond any hope of restoration. There is nothing to salvage save a hand full of brass screws. I have no idea why it was carried all the way up there. By another decade likely it will disintegrate into a pile of rotten wood and vines of summer will obscure it from the majority of passing hikers.
I’ve passed the boat in fall, when it has been graced by garlands of muti-colored leaves, in early winter or late spring when a light snow has frosted it like granulated sugar, and when it lies shaded and surrounded by the dark and lush leaves of summer. Undoubtedly long ago it served well for many a voyage. Now, there is no use to mourn its passing. I may stop there for just a moment, but then the pleasure of the trail beckons that I move on.
Discipleship has similar moments, too. We are called to go forward and yet when I walk past the old boat, I’m reminded that there is always a temptation to stand in place with a wish to hold on to things as they were or might have been. I have a choice to return to the places that have sheltered me or to continue to climb and hike the trail. Yet I realize that my old experiences need to be integrated with my current experiences or my brain will rot as surely as the hull of that old boat. In the same way, my spiritual life either grows or dies, but never just stays idling in neutral.
In today’s Gospel Jesus confronts a group of his opponents who had resisted and completely closed their minds to the message of John the Baptist. They are not interested in understanding Jesus’ message either; they just want Jesus to be silenced. Jesus replies with the story of a man who had two sons. When asked to go into the vineyard for the harvest, one son says, “Sure right away,” but never goes. Perhaps he was too comfortable sitting on the sofa or too distracted watching a ball game or was simply afraid of going out into the far reaches of the vineyard. The other son, says,” No,” and then thinks better of it and goes. The challenge Jesus poses is which son do you think is the one who grows as a person of faith?
During youth choir camp this summer at the close of the day, we gathered and said evening prayer together. However, we never said it in the same place every day. Actually the campers never knew where we would say our evening prayers. Sometimes we gathered on the porch overlooking the lake. Once we said them with lights darkened, cross-kneed on the floor in a circle inside the room in which we rehearsed. Some nights as twilight merged into night we took a walk, past the cabins and ball field, through a thicket of wetland, up around the bank of a pond, and across a covered bridge to a recreated 19th. century village. In one sense every evening we always took a journey and discovered we could pray and the grace of the Spirit found us, wherever we went. In some way, albeit subtly or unconsciously, the campers found that the journey itself was an integral part of discipleship and the life of faith.
As I picture the old boat slowly, but inevitably becoming a mound of compost along the trail, the words of James Russell Lowell, the nineteenth century poet, philosopher, and college administrator return to me with deeper meaning. “New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient truth uncouth; they must upward still and onward who would keep abreast of truth.”1 That’s also the challenge Jesus puts to his opponents and presents in the parable of the two sons, and it is basically the same for us today.
1 Cf. “Once To Ev’ry Man and Nation, hymn 519 in the 1940 hymnal.” Lowell’s poem was one of the first war protest poems.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
