Homily: “The Unknown Journey”
Lent for us can be about so many things. It can be an opportunity to refocus our spiritual lives. It can be a time to take up some small asceticism that we pray will lead us into deeper relationship with the Lord. It can be a time to reunite ourselves with the vision that God has of who we are and what we were created to be and do in this world. But above all else, I would like to suggest to you this morning, that at the heart of every Lent, including this one, is the invitation to each of us to engage fearlessly the unknown journey.
I imagine we each have an unknown journey to make. A journey that may look as different to each of us as we each look different from one another. It’s the journey that has been beckoning us. We’ve felt its nudge. We’ve heard the invitation but up until now we’ve been hesitant. Something holds us back; keeps the door firmly locked and our feet from stepping out onto the path. The spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen once wrote how we human beings, because we are human beings, will always tend to prefer a bad certainty over a good uncertainty. Like our ancient Israelite ancestors, we would much rather cling to our fleshpots so we know our bellies will be filled rather than risk the journey to freedom which will once and for all end our infatuation with slavery.
Recently I encountered an elderly woman. A few weeks before this encounter she had suffered a serious heart attack. Because of her advance years, she was 90, she made the decision not to undergo any procedure that might, in some small way, perhaps, prolong her life. She asked me: “Is this okay? I’ve had a good life, the Lord has been good to me,” she said. “I’m really at peace and I’m ready to go.” But, you know, it wasn’t her words so much that affected me but rather it was the gentleness, the trust, and the faith that had shaped those words that moved me most. She was ready to make that one Unknown Journey that awaits us all, not due to one heroic moment of courage, but because, I imagine, she had spent a lifetime fearlessly engaging all the unknown journeys that make a life so infinitely rich. She was free, not due to some special “end-of-life grace” but because she spent her entire life learning how to choose the Good Uncertainty over the bad certainty. Here was someone who had learned how to abandon the very tempting fleshpots that get us by and instead risked stepping into the freedom for which Christ has set us free.
God said to Abram: “Get up and go… and then I will show you how to get there.” There is no road map for any of us. God beckons: “Get up and go and then I will show you.” As we’ve heard again and again from our own Christian tradition in so many different ways: The path is only made by walking. The mount of Transfiguration has to be climbed. We’ll never encounter the infinite beauty of the Divine blazing through human flesh if we stay at the foot of the hill.
Our Psalmist today writes: “Lord, let your mercy be upon us, as we place our trust in you.” Those are the words of a man or a woman who recognizes they have a journey to make. The only way we might overcome whatever particular fears we have about our own unknown journeys is to trust that in the risks that are necessary God’s mercy is always abundant. And the only way to learn that trust is to be willing to step out the door because God’s mercy is not a theological concept or a nice idea, but a lived reality. It’s the invisible guidepost on every journey. When you know God’s mercy is real you suddenly are quite willing to step out of any door and walk down any path. When you know that God’s mercy is real you see the bad certainty for what it is and you can even learn to revel in the Good Uncertainty that lies ahead.
Lent for us, above all else, is a time to once again engage fearlessly with whatever unknown journey that now beckons us. The journey that leads to Life is by its nature always unknown. So we have placed before us a choice: cling in fear and live a safe, self-satisfied slavery or step out the door and fall into God’s mercy. The path is made by walking. And the walking consists of our own learning over time to stride between trust and mercy. Let us pray in this Eucharist today for the grace we need to let go the bad certainty that holds us back and step into the Good Uncertainty that now beckons us into life.
Chiaroscuro Spirituality 