The Destination or The Journey?

 Who likes travelling?  We all have our way of planning a trip.  For some we look for the shortest route to get where we are going. For others the shortest route is secondary to the journey.  What was the preference in your family when you were growing up?  Has that changed?  If so, what changed it?  

Feb, 2018   Readings:  1 Corth  9: 16-23 Mark 1: 29-39

Good morning Folks:   Has anyone ever suggested to you that everything your parents, your peers, teacher, even your clergy have taught you might not be right?  

The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright tells the story of an incident that may have seemed insignificant at the time, but had a profound influence on the rest of his life.  When he was 9 years old, he went walking across the freshly washed sand at the shore with his reserved, no- nonsense uncle.   As the two of them reached the far end of the beach, his uncle stopped him.  He pointed out his own tracks in the sand, “look son” he said, “straight and true as an arrow's flight” and then pointed out to young Frank. “Your tracks are wondering all over the sand, aimlessly from one side to the other, first over to the rocks, then to the ocean and back again.  See how straight my tracks lead me directly to my goal. There is an important lesson for you to be learn from our walk hear, Frank.”  Said the Uncle. 

Years later the world-famous architect liked to tell how the experience had contributed to his philosophy in life.   "I was determined right then” said Frank, “not to get distracted by focusing on a goal in life while missing out on the importance of the journey,  as my uncle had done."

Frank saw in those tracks what his uncle could not:   It is so easy to let the demands of an organized, orderly life, keep him from living and experiencing the journey.   He believed that the focus should not be the destination or the goal, but the most important thing was to learn from the journey along the way.  Unfortunately for most of western Christianity the teaching has been mainly focused on a destination, heaven and their understanding of salvation, or how to get there.
If you look closely at the life and times of Jesus you will find His teaching is all about the journey. There was one specific Goal for Jesus to accomplish to do His heavenly Fathers will, but to do that, it wasn’t straight to the cross, no it took his life on a wondering journey outside the norms of life and it shock the foundations of the status quo.  Jesus needed to experience everything we would.  As we have discovered in our bibles, Jesus was not only a divine and special person, but he was also fully human.   His journey would take him well off the straight and narrow, Oh the goal would eventually be achieved, but it certainly wouldn’t be a straight pathway from point A to point B.  Don’t let anyone tell you they have found all the answers to the stories in the bible, for all the rocks have yet to be turned over. 

He would experience the wonder of human birth, love, warmth, hugs, kisses, pleasure, but he also would have endure hunger, hardships, disappointments, setbacks, feel the cold, become lonely, experience emptiness, rejection by his own religion, elders, and in the end, even his own family.   Jesus would be abandonment by his closest friends and then endure the agonizing of death on a cross.  All this to fulfill his goal in life.   His journey would show us a much deeper understanding of justice and love.   A just-world where the least are, just as if not more important, than those who contained the most.  He would show us a love that the world still does not know, a love that is completely forgiving and free from condition.  Jesus would also caution us that our goal in life cannot not be accomplished without the full experience of the journey to include both joy and suffering.    His example shows us that it is through our interactions with people, our response to our human condition with its pain and sorrow, the building up and the termination of personal relationships, and in serving others along the way.   That is how we will find the fullness of life and complete our goal, which is to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

  

I think we all recognize that any goal in life worth achieving demands a great journey.  If you are a doctor you must spend vast hours studying to learn about disease and the human body.  The life of your patient demands it.   If you are a teacher you must give countless hours to research and preparation for your lectures. The mind of your student demands it. If you are a carpenter you must patiently spend countless hours learning to craft your skills often before you drive your first professional nail. The integrity of the structure depends on it. If you are a mother you must sacrifice much of your life for another. Your child requires it.   We could not live if we did not set goals and work to fulfill them, no sane person would argue otherwise.   But here's what young Frank Wright discovered at the tender age of 9, and what some don't learn until later in life and others never.  The objective in life is not the goal, as important as goals are, but the journey on the way to the goal.   In other words what kind of footprint do we leave when achieving our goals?  Many misunderstand that achieving the goal is so important that they even compromise their own values, run over or even crush others in their achieving.   Countries have even been known to gone to war over a specific goal.   In the Second World War the goal was to exterminate an entire race of people and rule over all others as the supreme race.  Many today are still struggling with that goal.  

If profit becomes the ultimate goal, we again run the risk of compromising ethical and ecological values.  This is why it is so important that we fellowship and teach each other in the ways of Jesus.  This is why the example of Jesus is so important in the lives of individuals and families today.   We need not only to take the message in, but then we need to take the message out, outside this box.  We need to become the examples for all others to see, not by speaking of what we know, but by actually doing  what we say we know.   As followers of Christ it is our mission, it is our calling.     
Listen to the words in this song: