|
|
We were hiking in Arches National Park this past month. At one point I
disobeyed my own oft-preached advice and went on ahead of our group. I
have known from my youth how to follow a trail. So I tracked those who
went before me up a sandy dry wash. We had been that way before, but the
trail was beginning to look unfamiliar. |
|
The footprints divided. I tried one path for a while, then went back to
try the other. Neither looked right. So I sat down and had a can of tomato
juice to await my group. |
|
After a good long wait, it was clear they weren't coming. Maybe they had
stopped for some reason, or gone back to the car. So I backtracked a half-mile
or so until I found a guy from Montana who assured me he hadn't seen anyone
on the trail. |
|
Obviously, my companions had taken a different trail from mine. Trying
the trail again we came to a place where dozens of footprints led up the
sandy wash—the way I had gone the first time—and no footprints headed up
a narrow rock that extended out of the wash. A stack of small rocks caught
my eye, then two other stacks of rocks—called “cairns”—pointing the way
to the true path. I was used to following tracks, not cairns. |
I thought—as only a preacher would tend to do—that my old buddy, Jesus,
probably had a similar experience (if you can trust Matthew's report).
I looked up the verse in the 5 Gospels Version (the one put out by the
Jesus Scholars that color codes “authentic” sayings of Jesus). The verse
(in blue) reads:
Try to get in
through the narrow gate. Wide and smooth is the way that leads to destruction.
The majority is taking that route. Narrow and rough is the road that leads
to life. Only a minority discovers it. (Matthew
7, 13, 14)
|
|
That well-traveled dry wash led to a dead end. The rock ridge, leading
into a narrow cut in the rocks— with no footprints—led to where I would
find my group. Who hasn't been lost, or like Daniel Boone once said, “I've
never been lost, but once I was confused for three days!” At some point,
Jesus must have at least been confused on the trail. |
|
What was Jesus thinking on the trail? I don't know that he was terribly
religious. He wasn't likely thinking about God at 0001. Maybe he wasn't
thinking about God at all. (For those misguided souls, who think Jesus
was God, there was no need for him to think about Himself!) He was probably
thinking about a drink of water, about finding some shade, about getting
to wherever he was going. |
Friend Dick Wing in Columbus OH is doing a pre-Easter series on “Jesus
for our Time.” He comments:
“The most immediate
thing I notice is that Jesus didn't give a fig about morals or beliefs
at all. He was interested in righteousness that has to do with the poor,
that has to do with women, that has to do with caring about persons, that
has to do with sacrificial living. But all of those faith statements he
couldn't care less about…” (RAW letter, 3/14/2000)
|
|
Am I off the path again? I usually am. Preachers, like everyone else, tend
to spend too much time following 1,000’s of other loonies down the freeway,
rather than taking time to poke along the by-ways. We do this with our
brains and with our teaching and preaching. We peddle the same baloney
as others because our attention is on following the crowd. Like sheep. |
|
How many preachers will dare tell folks that when Jesus took that road
to Jerusalem he wasn't thinking about shedding blood for anyone's sins,
or about whether God so loved the world, or whether people would go to
hell if he didn't go up on that cross, or that following Jesus is not about
going to heaven? That's what they all say. |
|
Will there be a few who take a less obvious, but clearly marked way, and
remind all of us that the Way of the Christ (or the Buddha, or any spiritual
light) is away from self-centered hopes and anxieties and toward self-emptying
compassion? If that guy could think of others while in the very act of
dying, why can't we do the same while in the act of living?
-
Art Morgan, March 2000
|