“Travel On”                  Vance L. Toivonen

READING                   Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them.

Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

READING                   From the journals of Sue Monk Kidd

I’m walking through a mazelike cavern full of twists and turns. As I move along, I come upon a man carving something on a large wooden beam. I pause and look at him, then start to walk on. As I do so, he lets the beam fall across my path like a gate. I see the words he’s carved in the wood. They say, “Die and become.” I want to continue on my way, but I can’t get around the beam.

SERMON

The fifth chapter of Sue Monk Kidd’s book When the Heart Waits begins with the following reading attributed to four individuals:

I am a caterpillar. The leaves I eat taste bitter. But dimly I sense a great change coming. What I offer you humans is my willingness to dissolve and transform. I do that without knowing what the end-result will be.

This fifth chapter is headed by two words – Letting Go. As I read this chapter I was surprised to discover that, according to Kidd, caterpillars experience a hesitation as they approach the process of weaving their cocoons. They hesitate to varying degrees, she tells the reader, although this particular reader wondered how she knew such a thing. I guess it makes sense that the uncertainty that plagues me when it comes to letting go of an old way of being or thinking or doing could also plague creatures throughout the animal kingdom.

In the parish I served before moving to Sturgeon Bay there was a woman dying of cancer. As she lived her illness we would talk and pray, and she would assure me that her faith was sustaining her through this crisis of health. She spoke of being ready to go, that God would carry her through the transition. But then, as the day of her demise drew closer, her mood changed. She started bargaining. And in her final hours she struggled against death so hard it seemed to add to her pain. It was a difficult transition from life to death.

I have been with many people in their life to death transitions, and have seen a wide variety of ways that people deal with the process. It is a poignant metaphor for what we are faced with day in and day out. As we look at the life and teachings of Jesus we are faced with a constant challenge to invite change into our lives. The first reading today is one such set of teachings, words that call us to let go of the past and move on. Jesus is saying that if a person should wish to follow him, follow his lead, his guidance, his direction, then it will require a willingness to leave behind the familiar, and enter the unknown.

Kidd quotes Daniel Day Williams, who writes

We fear it is all we have. Even its sufferings are familiar and we clutch them because their very familiarity is comforting…Yet so long as we aim at the maintenance of this present self, as we now conceive it, we cannot enter the larger selfhood which is pressing for life. (Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love).

Even our aches and pains, our illnesses and diseases can be things we cling to. I usually ask people who are ill if they wish to get well. It seems like a silly question, perhaps, but the desire for wholeness begins deep within us. Dr. Bernie Siegel has devoted his life to working with cancer patients. He uses multiple techniques for treatment, from traditional medicine to therapy to visioning work. In his book Love, Medicine, & Miracles Siegel makes a strong case for the mind/body connection when it comes to illness and disease. He suggests four basic questions for exploring the soul of the patient.

• Do you want to live to be a hundred?
• What happened to you in the year or two before your illness?
• What does the illness mean to you?
• Why did you need the illness?

These are challenging and pointed questions that we can apply not only to illness and disease, but also to the myriad of other behaviors, thoughts, and emotions we cling to every day. We need to get at the symbiosis of our clinging. What keeps us from traveling on, from moving forward, from changing from caterpillars into butterflies?

The simple answer in my case is – me. I am usually the primary suspect in this investigation. But I am also acutely aware of the fact that I desire the change, conscious that I desire to walk the path that Jesus invites me to walk. The other day I had a conversation with a member about what it is that keeps us coming to this place. It is that same old question, “Why are we here at worship?” I think what keeps us coming back here is that we like to visit our desire to walk the path. We hunger to follow Jesus, to follow a deeper wisdom, and to ultimately change from caterpillars into butterflies. We want resurrection and new life. We want our hopes and dreams realized. So we come here to visit those hopes and dreams, to touch our desire for transformation.

But then there is that hesitation. We pray for God’s kingdom to come, but do we really want it to come into our lives, to adjust our way of being in the world? We listen to greater wisdom, we hear Jesus’ voice, we examine his life, but when he calls us to move on with him will we go? Or are there a hundred other things we need to take care of first?

So let us imagine, like Sue Monk Kidd, that we too are at an impasse; that we can’t go on without dying in some way to ourselves; that we cannot move another inch without letting go of some familiar aspect of our lives. The path lies just on the other side of that beam etched with the words, “Die and become.” What this means for each one of us is as unique as we are. What we are being asked to let go of at any given moment will vary.

My son turned 21 this week. Although he is home working an internship up north this summer, I find the time I get to spend with him is still meted out at a premium. I told him before he came home that this would be the difficult part for me about having him home, my attachment to him. I have to work so hard at letting him go. But this is what I must do, for his sake, and for mine. My attachment to my son is among my myriad little forms of dying that need to take place in order for me to move on. What’s on your list?

Kidd writes,

Letting go is like releasing a tight spring at the core of yourself, one you’ve spent your whole life winding and maintaining. When you let go, you grow still and silent. You learn to sit among the cornstalks and wait with God.

So now, in this brief silence, let us let go, unwind, invite stillness into our souls, and prepare to travel on with grace and peace in our hearts, dying to what has been, and rising to what will be.