From the Pulpit:

Two Roads Diverged …
 

One of the requirements for all clergy in the Diocese of Texas is that every year we must earn twenty four credits in continuing education. I think you all know me well enough to figure out how miserable I was spending five whole days last week at the seminary immersed in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Oh, Bre’r Bear, don’t throw me in that briar patch! It really was a wonderful week and in time I’ll be eager to share with you all much of what I learned.

Whenever we approach a new endeavor, whether it is a class or a job or travel or whatever, we never really know what we’re getting into, so it was with some degree of trepidation that we all listened as our professor told us what the requirements would be for us to get those much sought after credits. Other than reading and discussing First Corinthians we had to do two things: we had to memorize a passage of scripture  to present dramatically to the class, and we had to make something. She was exactly that specific.

We had to make something relevant to present on the last day of class. Some people made drawings, one person made monkey bread, others sang or offered poems they had written. I created a Facebook page for St. Paul . That was lots of fun. But you should have seen the looks on our faces when she told us about the memorization thing. When is the last time you had to memorize something? With the exception of the two very young people among us, we were not at all sure our brains were still capable of memorizing. It turned out they were.

 Just the mention of it jettisoned me back to the week before I started second grade. Our family had moved during the summer and so I was going to a new school, actually the school my father had attended as a child. I was a pretty timid little girl, so my mother took me to meet my teacher before school began. I remember walking up the brick steps from the playground and that Miss South’s room was the first one on the right when we got indoors.  

Miss South was very, very old. Probably forty or so. And she was writing on the blackboard the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha. We were seven years old and on the first day of school we began memorizing a very healthy chunk of that long poem.

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

And so began an education that was not ashamed to require of us students a great deal of memorization. I think that along with penmanship memorization has gone the way of the dinosaurs. And I think that is sad, because over those years many great poems became emblazoned not only on my mind but in my heart. Actually, my professor said this week as we mature students balked at the thought of committing scripture to memory, it is better to call it ‘learning by heart.’

And so as I pondered the lessons we read today I remembered another poem I learned by heart, and I imagine that a number of you could recite along with me Robert Frost’s great poem, “The Road Not Taken.”  

       Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
       And sorry I could not travel both
       And be one traveler, long I stood
       And looked down one as far as I could 
       To where it bent in the undergrowth;
          Then took the other, as just as fair,
       And having perhaps the better claim,
       Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
       Though as for that the passing there
       Had worn them really about the same,
       And both that morning equally lay
       In leaves no step had trodden black.
       Oh, I kept the first for another day! 
       Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
       I doubted if I should ever come back.
       I shall be telling this with a sigh
       Somewhere ages and ages hence:
       Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
       I took the one less traveled by,
       And that has made all the difference.

Our reading from Luke’s gospel today finds Jesus and the disciples at just such a crossroads. This is a hinge in the story of Jesus’ life and the ministry of his followers. It’s a fish or cut bait moment, and those moments are rarely easy for anyone. In the first eight chapters of Luke we see Jesus establishing his identity and forming his community, revealing in teaching, healing, and liberating that he is God’s son. Then all of a sudden Peter gets it, and he blurts out, “You are the Messiah of God!” No sooner are those words out of his mouth than Jesus explains what that profound truth means, that they will go together to Jerusalem , where the powers of empire will have him killed because they are afraid of the power of his truth.

In the portion we read this morning we are told that he set his face toward Jerusalem . If we were filming this we’d take a close-up of his eyes and see in them a resolute determination. The truth is out, and it has consequences.  Consequences not only for Jesus, but for the disciples, and for every one of us who claims to follow his way. First we see James and John, who are among Jesus’ nearest and dearest, and you would think they of all people would have gotten it by now, but when a Samaritan town fails to offer them hospitality, rather than brushing the dust from their feet they want to call down fire from heaven.

Jesus pretty much blows them off, but it seems he is pretty harsh with the unnamed disciples who say they want to follow him but feel obliged to take care of other obligations first. “Let the dead bury the dead,” he tells the man who wants to take care of his aging father. And to the one who simply wants to say goodbye to his family he says that he is not fit for the kingdom of God . Not if he is stepping into his commitment to Christ while looking back over his shoulder.

Frost’s poem is frequently misinterpreted, as people tend to believe that it is a paean to rugged individualism, that it is a battle cry lauding individual courage and non-conformity. On the contrary, I think it is about humble commitment, about recognizing that one will never know what might have been if another choice had been made, but claiming the journey one has chosen and embracing the consequences with gratitude.

In light of today’s very challenging gospel reading, it is about holding before us the promise that Jesus made to us that when we allow ourselves to be guided by hope, by the glimpses we catch of his presence and his truth we will make the life-giving choices that even if they do not lead us in the easiest way will lead us to his presence.

When I was a child, singing from the Episcopal hymnal published in 1940, we sang a hymn with the words ‘Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide.’ Maybe you remember it. It is not in our current hymnal, though, because the editors objected to its message. Jesus does not say to us once and only once, “Follow me,” as if it is a take it or leave it deal. No, Jesus calls us every day, whether we have accepted the call yesterday or not. We don’t come upon one fork in the road. Every day we have choices, and every day we are called to choose life.

Each of us is the disciple who answers, “Yes, but I have to take care of my father first,” or, “I’ll be along but I have to say my good-byes before I leave.” Each of us is challenged to keep the kingdom our highest priority, and the thing is that in fact God does not call us to be unkind or irresponsible to our families or our friends. Rather, God calls us to gather all we love under the umbrella of his overarching love. That loving God first, following Jesus first will always invite all our relationships in, will nourish them in ways we could never nourish them alone, if we keep God at arm’s length, and as we are challenged inour discipleship, God will always empower us in ways we could never imagine.

No, we are not to care for what is dead before we tend to what is alive because in Christ we gain the vision to see that death is not death, that it is always radically redeemed by his grace. To be a disciple has nothing to do with being good enough, obedient enough, well-behaved and rigid enough. No, to be a disciple is to be open to life, to radical generosity and promise. It is to give up our timidity and our cautious nature, to say yes to what is preposterous, and to walk with Jesus into the kingdom, which is nothing less than the future filled with light and life, world without end.

Amen.