I heard about these two boys who came up with the bright idea that they were going to dig a hole to China.  They found some shovels and picked the right spot and started digging.  Well they were at it for several days, but they didn’t really make much progress; mostly they just played around in the hole, and examined all the bugs they found.  After a few days, an older boy came along and stopped and looked and asked the two younger boys, “What on earth are you doing?”  And they responded, “We’re digging to China.”  Well the older boy just roared with laughter.  He said, “You’ll never be able to dig all the way to China.”  But this didn’t bother these two younger boys.  One of them picked up the jar of bugs they’d collected and said excitedly, “So what if we don’t get all the way to China?  Look what we found on the way!”           

That reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.  Do you remember Calvin and Hobbes?  In many ways my life just hasn’t been complete since Bill Watterson stopped creating this cartoon.  If you remember, Calvin is this precocious little boy, and Hobbes is his stuffed animal, a stuffed tiger, that comes alive, in Calvin’s imagination, when the two of them are alone.  So in this old cartoon Calvin is digging a hole, and Hobbes is there and he asks, “Why are you digging a hole?”  And Calvin says, “I’m looking for buried treasure.”  So Hobbes asks, “What have you found so far?”  And Calvin says, “A few dirty rocks, and a weird root, and some disgusting grub worms.”  And Hobbes says excitedly, “You found all that on your first try?”  And Calvin says in amazement, “Look around.  There’s treasure everywhere.”           

Look what we found on the way. There’s treasure everywhere. It seems to me that this is pretty good theology, this is pretty good advice for how we might live, how we might go through life.  Jesus would see the wisdom in this immediately, I think.  For Jesus, it was never about the destination, it was always about the journey, never about where you are right now, always about where you’re headed, what direction you’re going.  For Jesus, it was never about who you are right now, it was always about who you might become, who you might be one day.           

We are on this journey of life.  Do you know these words of Walt Whitman? 

Sail forth!  Steer for the deep waters only!

Reckless, O soul, exploring,

For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all, 

O my brave soul!

O farther, farther sail!

O daring joy, but safe!  Are not they all the seas of God?

O farther, farther, farther sail. 

I love these words because they speak to us of the journey, the journey we are on, the journey of life.  Our Bishop, Tom Bickerton, always ends any letter he sends out with a rather unique salutation.  Some of us write, “Sincerely” or “Yours truly” or in a religious vein, we might write “Grace and Peace”.  But Bishop Bickerton always ends his letters with, “The Journey Continues”. The journey continues, I like that.  I would use that salutation myself, I would steal that from the Bishop, only it would be stealing from the person who appointed me here, and the person who could appoint me somewhere else.  But we are on a journey.  And the thing is that if our life is a journey, then the worst thing we might do is to hinder that journey, delay it, put obstacles in the way, decide that we don’t really like or need this journey.  If we decide that we already have life all figured out, we’re comfortable right where we are, we’re okay, there may be something wrong with everyone else, but we’re okay, we don’t need to grow any more or learn any more, then we have effectively stopped this journey, we have called a halt to any further progress.  And if a compelling metaphor for life is as a journey, an adventure, and we don’t participate in this journey, then where are we exactly, where does this leave us? 

From the sublime to the ridiculous, from Walt Whitman to this story I heard about this one couple who were on a journey, they were traveling cross country on vacation.  And they were a little older, and the wife was a little hard of hearing.  And the husband was frustrated because he had to repeat everything, because she refused to even acknowledge the fact that she could not hear so well.  So he just repeated everything.  Well the wife was driving one day, as I say, when they were on a journey, and she got pulled over by the police.  And the policeman came up to the car and asked the wife, “Do you know how fast you were driving?”  And the wife turns to her husband and asks, “What did he say?”  And the husband yells to her, “He wants to know if you realize how fast you were driving!”  And she tells the policeman that she didn’t think she was driving that fast.  Next the policeman asks, “May I see your license?”  The wife turns to her husband again and asks, “What did he say?”  And her husband yells back at her, “He says he wants to see your license!”  So she digs out her license, and hands it to the policeman, and after he looks at it, the policeman says, “I see you’re from Arkansas.  I had a blind date there once with the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.”  And the wife once again turns to her husband and asks, “What did he say?”  Well the husband, fed up by now with repeating everything, yells at her, “He says he thinks he recognizes you!”

This journey of life, this journey we are on, can take us through some strange places, we can meet some strange people.  We put obstacles up ourselves that hinder us.  And perhaps there is no one stranger, no one more foreign to our natural way of doing things than this one Jesus.  Jesus, we are told, went back to his hometown of Nazareth, and, seemingly at first, he went back in triumph.  Everyone spoke well of him.  Everyone was eager to hear what he had to say in the synagogue.  But then they began to listen to what he was saying, and the thing about Jesus is that you never know just exactly where he is going to take you.  He began to tell them about Elijah, the prophet, who could have helped any number of widows right there in Israel, but he chose to help this poor widow who was a foreigner, in Zarephath, way up in Sidon.  He felt that he was sent, by God, to this foreign woman.  And there were many lepers in Israel that Elisha could have healed, that God could have healed, in other words, but God chose to heal, through Elisha, this foreigner, Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army, mortal enemies at the time of Israel.  Jesus was saying to those in Nazareth that his message, the message of God, was not just to them, it was to the whole world. 

Sometimes we make God too small, too provincial, too centered on just us, when God’s message is also for the world.  The only problem here was that these people in Nazareth didn’t really seem to care about the world.  What was God doing for them?  That’s what they wanted to know.  Their journey of spiritual discovery ended a long time ago, and they were satisfied right where they were.  And so this person they had welcomed with open arms only a few moments before, now suddenly they were ready to throw him off a cliff. 

We’re going to meet a lot of people like this, and we have to decide if we’re going to let them keep us from our journey through life, keep us from our journey with Jesus Christ.  There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is trying to encourage the hapless Charlie Brown, and so she says, “Look at it this way, Charlie Brown, these are your bitter days, these are your days of hardship and struggle.  But if you’ll just hold your head up high and keep on fighting someday you’ll triumph!”  And Charlie Brown says hopefully, “Gee, do you really think so, Lucy?”  And Lucy says, “Frankly, No!”  There are plenty of people like Lucy, who are comfortable where they are, they are not going to grow any more, they are not going to take one more step on any kind of spiritual journey, and they will keep you from your spiritual journey, if you let them, they will keep you from attempting anything of significance in the name of Jesus.

 The people of Nazareth just could not get over seeing Jesus as this precocious little boy running around in his father’s carpenter shop, let alone see him as one who would carry a message that would shake the foundations of their world.  We too need to ask ourselves, are we comfortable with the Jesus we think we know now?  Are we maybe a little too comfortable?  Or are we willing to grow in our understanding of him, grow in our relationship with him.  In the words of Walt Whitman, are we bound where mariner has not yet dared to go?  And we will risk the ship, for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of our souls, we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all. 

The contemporary theologian Marcus Borg coined this phrase that I’m using today for my sermon title, “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time”, meeting Jesus again as if for the first time, continually renewing our understanding of Jesus, continually growing in our experience of Jesus.  And if we’ve lost that fire, we need to search for it again, be open once again to the transforming influence that Jesus can have on us. 

We need to see Jesus and meet Jesus again and again throughout our lives.  We need to know once more of his love for us if we’ve forgotten.  We need to hear once again his challenge to us to forgive others who have wronged us, just as he has forgiven, and continues to forgive, our sin.  We need to be inspired once again to live a life that is not centered only on ourselves, but considers the needs of others, and of the world.  We need to feel once again as we go through those dark and uncertain times, that he is present with us, he walks ever beside us. 

I heard about a priest in Europe in the Middle Ages who once gathered his church people together for a special service.  “Come tonight,” he told them, “for a special sermon on Jesus.”  And so they came, but to their surprise, when they got there the sanctuary was dark; there were no candles lit.  They wondered what was going on, but they groped their way to the pews and took their seats and waited.  And a few minutes later they heard the priest walking through the church in the dark toward the front.  When he reached the crucifix that hung on the wall, he lit a candle. Saying nothing, he simply began to illuminate this crucifix that had hung on the wall of this church for a hundred years or more.  It was the same old crucifix that had hung there their whole lives they saw it every time they came to church.  First the priest brought the candle close and illuminated the pierced feet of Jesus, then he illuminated the wounded side of Jesus, then one nail-pierced hand, and then the other, and finally he lifted the candle to illumine the blood-soaked face of Jesus and the crown of thorns.  And some of the people, I understand, not all, but some, as they looked at this crucifix they knew so well, but as they looked at it in a new way, they began to see and perceive and experience something new about Jesus.  And then the priest blew out the candle and dismissed the church.  The sermon was over.