the benediction (last sermon at providence umc)

I want to begin with one of my favorite stories. A business woman was in an airport on a Friday afternoon. It had been an arduous day, nothing remarkable, but not easy either. She was on the way home, ready to be reconnected with her family. She sat in her seat in the waiting area, looked up at the monitor and began to process the bad news: her flight would be delayed by an hour and a half. This was not good.

So she decided to take a short walk, and then it occurred to her that she would reward herself for the day’s work, and now for enduring a delay. She went into a store and saw a box of her favorite cookies; she purchased the box, put it into her bag, and walked back to the seats near her gate. She sat down, opened her bag, pulled out a few things, began to read the newspaper, and then she reached into the box of cookies. She took a bite, it was good, she took another bite.

Sitting adjacent to her, just out of the corner of her eye, was a man, and she noticed a moment later that he was holding a cookie in his hand, the same cookie, her cookie! He began to eat it, until it disappeared. He had a satisfied look on his face.

“What is going on?”, she wondered! Well, it had been that kind of day, she thought to herself, one more thing, but she ignored it. She reached down, took another cookie, and ate it, slowly, one bite at a time. She got back into reading her newspaper and tried to take her mind off of the situation. When she looked up she saw that he had taken a cookie, again, and was eating it! He had that same smile on his face.

At about this moment the announcement came over the system that boarding would begin, and her section was called. She stood up, got her things together. The man beside her smiled again, but it was just too strange, she did not know what to make of it, and so she moved along. She boarded the plane, sat down, put her seat belt on, and looked in her bag, again, for the newspaper.

What she found, when she reached her hand into the bag, was a box of cookies, a box of her favorite cookies. To her astonishment, she knew in that moment that the box of cookies, her box of cookies, was unopened.

She thought she had been sharing her cookies with a stranger. But it turned out that the stranger had been sharing his cookies with her.

Good stories don’t need much explanation, but this is what the story means to me: in the ministry I sometimes think I am doing something for other people, but I know---and in this moment it is very clear to me---that others are actually doing something for me. I think I am giving someone a gift, but, to be more accurate, I am the one who is on the receiving end.

Eight years is a short time and it is a long time. For me it seems like a very short time ago that I arrived here on a Sunday and met many of you for the first time. Week in and week out you have given me the gift of leaving your routine, coming into this sanctuary, listening to the sermon, and then, because I know you, you have tried to make sense of it in the places where you live, sometimes the hard and unexpected places. I know the church makes a difference in your life, I know that Christ makes a difference in your life, I know that all of this makes a difference in the world, and I have been a part of that, and it is not just that I have given you something, eight years, or whatever I have said or done; you have given something to me…you have changed the way I live as a disciple of Jesus.

The cookies----whether I understand that to be faith or talent or life itself----never belonged to me in the first place. We just got to share them together.

The scripture for today is taken from 2 Corinthians, which is, according to the scholars, Paul’s most personal letter. In particular, the scripture is the conclusion of the letter, and it is a benediction.

Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace with be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Paul’s benediction is a blessing, a transferring of power from one person to another, but it is also a set of instructions:

Put things in order, listen to my appeal, meaning, he cannot control or coerce them, their response must come from within them. The second letter to the Corinthians is correspondence shaped by the cross of Jesus, under which Paul stands, and it is marked by a deep humility. “We do not proclaim ourselves”, it is not about us, it is never about the preacher, but the message. We have this treasure [the gospel] in earthen vessels, Paul knows, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.

Throughout 2 Corinthians the message is one of confidence in the power of God who has reconciled the world to himself through Jesus Christ, it is about the living presence of Jesus Christ, if anyone is in him there is a new creation, the old has passed away, all things are made new, it is about the Holy Spirit that breaks our hearts of stone and sets us free to become children of God.

And so we do not lose heart, Paul says, again and again. Maybe he was writing the letter to encourage them and us, to stay with it. But all letters, all communication, all ministries come to an end, and they need closure, last words, a benediction.

Which reminds me of an experience from years ago. My wife was sitting in the balcony with our children, another church in another city, several parents were sitting with their kids, trying to hold it together. The service was especially long and full that day, the children were active, the parents were juggling all of this. Finally the service came to its conclusion, there was a benediction, and then the three chimes of the Trinity. And when the first one sounded a little boy looked up at his mom and made his hand into a first and thrust it into the air and said “yes”!

Reading a passage of scripture about a benediction leads me to say a word about the benediction that I have shared with you these eight years.

Go now in peace to serve God and your neighbor in all that you do. Bear witness to the love of God in this world, so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in you generous friends.

Then the Trinitarian name of God… A benediction is a good word…and in our Sunday worship, it is a last word…but it is a misunderstood act of worship. A benediction is not so much a prayer where we close our eyes as a good word among friends and a sending forth, and so I keep my eyes open in a benediction, and I try to scan the congregation and think about the places you will be going this week and the challenges you will encounter and the people you will influence.

I am grateful that the church gathers to worship God. Yes, we do sometimes think we are doing something for God, but on most Sundays, by the time we leave, we see the face of God, glancing at us, maybe even smiling at us, and we know that we are the ones who have received, and the name for that is grace.

The benediction gathers up all of that. The benediction is finally God’s “yes” to us, to life, to the creation, to all things. How did I come upon this benediction? I first heard it in when the current United Methodist Hymnal was published, in 1989. This benediction is taken from the Wedding service and it is found on page 869. From the first time I read it, this benediction began to take on a deep meaning for me, and I have been saying it in congregations in Greensboro, Winston-Salem and now Charlotte over the past twenty years. It reminds me that now that we have had the privilege and grace to be together----and, we believe, in the presence and at the invitation of God---we now go out to respond in some way, we want to serve God and our neighbor in all that we do.

But what does that mean? To bear witness to the love of God in this world is to take seriously the claim that reconciliation is stronger than hatred and forgiveness is stronger than bitterness and life is stronger than death. And it is to live this out in this world! It is not to imagine that people will somehow know that God loves them at some other time and place in the future. It is to bear witness to the love of God in this world.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit.

The name for Jesus Christ is grace, something we do not earn, something we did not deserve, something we will never repay. And so, brothers and sisters, if you were going to put things in order, I would appeal to you to live in and by grace. I cannot coerce you to do this, or control the outcome. In this life you will often have the decision to respond with judgment or grace. I appeal to you: Err on the side of grace.

The name for God is love. Some people think grace and love are easy and law and judgment are hard, but grace and love are hard. Throughout this life you will find yourself trying to love those who do not love you. This is what God does, most of the time, this is what God has always done.

The communion of the Holy Spirit. A spiritual life is not a warm feeling you want to have in some quiet place, or religious goose bumps you get when you hear a certain sound or a sequence of code words. The communion of the Holy Spirit is the gathering of God’s people into a family, a community, into one Body. Sometimes you will want to go away by yourself and enjoy that box of cookies and you will think that is having a spiritual life. But the spiritual life is something we share, it is a fellowship, it is a communion, something God, who often comes in the form of a stranger----Mother Teresa called this his “distressing disguise--- shares with us. It is a gift.

And so, brothers and sisters, farewell. Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace with be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

following Jesus into unfamiliar territory

I have had the privilege of being a part of a group of pastors, men and women who serve large and/or growing congregations and meet together on a regular basis. A year ago we went through a leadership development experience and I had the sense that I was being called to give up something I really loved in order to be available for something else that might be my calling in life.

As a couple of participants in that group reminded me recently, some of that has come to pass. At last week's annual conference (Western North Carolina) it was made official that I will be concluding my eighth and final year as senior pastor of Providence United Methodist Church in Charlotte, and will begin serving as the Superintendent of the Waynesville District of the Western North Carolina Conference next month.

I have written about my love for Providence and it really has been a place and a people that has helped me to grow as a leader and a preacher. It is not a perfect church, even as I am not a perfect pastor, but I am really in awe of what the people in this congregation are doing. Some of this is intentional and is a part of our strategic planning, developed with people like Janice Virtue, Gil Rendle, and Bishops Larry Goodpaster and Robert Schnase. Some of this is unintentional: our people have been passengers on the plane that landed in the Hudson, or they were serving in Port-au-Prince during the earthquake, or they have been spouses and parents who have lived through the loss of loved ones and written about all of this in CaringBridge; in each case thousands upon thousands of people have come to know our church indirectly through them and they have been witnesses to God's power and grace.

I will miss all of this. At the same time I am delighted in the person who will serve as the next senior pastor of Providence, and the way the staff is taking shape. I also believe that I will enjoy the role of District Superintendent. I do feel a calling to encourage clergy, to intervene where needed in the life of the church, and to try to make opportunities possible for others. I have chaired a conference board of ordained ministry and committee on episcopacy, served on denominational search committees and two commissions to study the ordained ministry, and written books on spiritual gifts and United Methodist identity. I am hopeful that some of this will be relevant in what I will be doing. I know that I will depend on the experiences of my fellow superintendents, even as I have on the gifts of other pastors and leaders along the way.

So I will be giving up close friendships, the glorious opportunity to experience transformative worship each week and the creative work of developing a sermon that connects with people I have come to know well. But I will be entering into a season where I can perhaps work with clergy who are also on a journey to fully discover their gifts and offer them to others.

At the same annual conference I was also elected by my brothers and sisters in our annual conference to lead our delegation to the 2012 General Conference in Tampa. This will also be a new ministry: to help bring together a group of 56 leaders (22 delegates to General Conference, 22 delegates to Jurisdictional Conference and 12 reserve delegates) who are themselves leaders and care deeply about the church and its future. I believe it will be a historic General Conference, for many reasons, and that there are resonant voices from across the church calling for change. I believe this change can reconnect us with our historic theology (grace) and purpose (mission); in other words, I sense all of this as a time to rediscover who we are and why God has called us into being in the first place.

Grace and mission are centered in Jesus Christ, who is the source of life, the head of the church and the solid rock upon which we stand in the midst of a changing church and a turbulent world; I know all too well, as the hymn of my childhood had it, that "all other ground is sinking sand". And so I am trusting that in the time ahead I will follow him more closely, and allow him to lead me into unfamiliar territory.

by your spirit make us one (john 17)

A meal is at the center of God’s relationship with us. Israel tells its story at the Passover meal, how they were liberated from slavery and led into the Promised Land (Exodus 12). Jesus shares this same Passover meal with his own disciples (John 13), and commands them to eat this meal in remembrance of him (Matthew 26). Jesus feeds the multitudes (John 6), eats meals with sinners (Luke 15), and shares a mysterious meal with two of the disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24).

The first Christians break bread together and eat their meals with glad and generous hearts (Acts 2). But later, there are communal abuses of the practice of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11). One of the most misunderstood concepts in Christian faith and practice, the reference to eating the Lord’s Supper in an unworthy manner referred to the experiences of gluttony and poverty at the common meal: some had too much to eat, others went away hungry. The Christian hope was also shaped by the expectation of a Messiah who would preside over a great banquet (Luke 14).

And so this meal is at the heart of the Christian experience and the community gathers at the table to be fed, and, in the process, to know that we are guests of a generous and providential God.

Meals are also at the center of our relationships with each other. Family meals can take on different connotations: wedding rehearsal dinners, meals to celebrate graduations or birthdays, families who sat down to lunch after a memorial service, and journeys to distant places where we enjoy the local cuisine---it could be a falafel in Israel or barbecue in eastern North Carolina.

As a Christian practice, receiving Holy Communion can also take on different meanings. On World Communion Sunday, we are conscious that we receive this grace with our brothers and sisters in Christ who worship throughout the earth, the one body who partake of the one loaf, and our sense of space is enlarged. On All Saints Sunday, we remember those men and women of faith who have gone before us. Our sense of time is enlarged in the Communion of Saints. These two days give us a glimpse of the richness of the feast. There are always more people on the guest list, more people coming to the table than we might have imagined!

The grace of God is expansive, broad and comprehensive. Charles Wesley’s hymn text conveys this truth:

“O that the world might taste and see the riches of his grace!
The arms of love that compass me would all the world embrace.”

And yet our practice is always at a particular moment in time, in a specific place in the world, in the body of Christ, with a loaf of bread and a cup. The arms of God’s love embrace the whole world, and yet each person is welcomed in the spirit of Charles Wesley’s invitation:

Come sinners to the gospel feast!

And that includes every one of us! Holy Communion is a reminder that God provides grace for us. Jesus teaches us to pray, give us this day our daily bread.

The word daily bread is one that has multiple meanings. It can mean fresh bread, and those listening to Jesus would have been reminded of the gift of bread in the wilderness, manna that was new every morning, and we remember that every time we sing another hymn,

Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed thy hand has provided.
Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

That hymn, pointing back to Jesus’ teaching in John 6, that he is the bread of life, which itself had origins in the Passover, is a reminder that God provides grace for us. “Great is thy faithfulness”…”Give us each day fresh bread”, which means, I think, that we are praying for sufficient provisions for each day. None of us can truly secure the future, we cannot build a fortress to keep violent threats away, insulate ourselves from economic shifts, or predict the status of our health next year. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we live one day at a time.

And so we pray, give us this day “fresh bread”, a new experience of the truth that God provides grace for us. Great is thy faithfulness. The meal is also a reminder that God’s grace is available to all. John 6 is the account of the feeding of the 5000, which all began with a boy who had five loaves and two fish. And the simple truth was that God’s grace was not just for a few, not just for the disciples in the boat, but for all: “the arms of love that compass me would all the world embrace!”

Jesus made this point again and again in his teaching, and he modeled this truth—that God’s grace is available to all—in his life. “He eats with sinners”, some murmur under their breath in Luke 15, and so Jesus tells three of his great parables, about a lost coin, a lost sheep, a lost son. The son of man has come to seek and save that which is lost (Luke 19. 10).

In John Wesley’s day some felt they were unworthy to receive communion, and his response was that we are all unworthy to receive any mercy from God, and yet that is the core of the gospel: While we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5. 8), while we were far off a banquet was being prepared for us. This is, to borrow a phrase of Bishop Schnase, “radical hospitality”, which reminds us of the invitation, "Come sinners to the gospel feast!" God’s grace is available to all.

The meal is also a reminder that the grace given to us now is a foretaste of the banquet which is to come. One of the most reliable interpretations of the teaching of Jesus, “give us this day our daily bread”, is that he is praying, give us this day our bread for tomorrow. This was an anticipation of the great banquet, where disciples would be gathered from the north and the south and the east and the west to sit at the table of the Lord. This is the great homecoming. Homecomings are not about the past, although we do remember. Homecomings are also about the future.

A few years ago I went back to a rural church to preach at a homecoming service. I remembered a couple who had taken Pam and me under their wing, and made that community our community. We shared many meals together at the seafood restaurant in that rural area, eating bread and fish. These were often times of communion, confession, and thanksgiving. They have since passed to the other side, and I look forward to a homecoming with them, to the banquet, the great supper of the Lord.

Again, I think of a moving hymn by Charles Wesley:

Come let us join our friends above who have obtained the prize
and on the eagle wings of love to joys celestial rise.

Many of our friends have passed to the other side and have obtained the prize. And so we pray with Jesus: Give us bread for tomorrow.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.

The Christian practice of Holy Communion celebrates the providence of God, the hospitality of Jesus Christ, and the foretaste of his kingdom. As we come to the table, we know that God provides for us; that the grace of Jesus Christ is offered to all people, and that the meal we share here is an anticipation of the banquet that has been prepared for all who will accept the invitation:

Come sinners to the gospel feast, let every soul be Jesus’ guest
You need not one be left behind, for God hath bid all humankind.

Of course, we have not always welcomed everyone. In the history of American Methodist Christianity we recall the exclusion of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones from the fellowship of St. George’s Church in Philadelphia. Allen, a freed slave and an active Methodist, would go on to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 and serve as its first Bishop. This experience indicates a lack of hospitality that has led to a continued division. The Table of the Lord is a sign of God’s grace but it also stands in judgment upon our failure to offer radical hospitality, and our willingness to settle for divided lives.

And so Holy Communion requires us to struggle with the implications of our union with each another, and our divisions. We pray, each time we share this meal, that the Spirit would make us

“one with Christ,
one with each other,
and one in ministry to all the world.”

To be one with Christ is to be lifted up, with him. And so we “lift up our hearts”. Holy Communion draws us closer to God, through the mediating presence of Jesus Christ. But Holy Communion also draws us closer to one another. In the church that I serve we join hands in prayer to conclude teh service after receiving communion. There are vertical and horizontal dimensions of this meal. This reminds us of the One from whom all blessings flow, and the ones with whom we share these blessings. And so the meal is God’s way of breaking down the barriers and divisions that separate us from Him and from each other, and the means of fulfilling the prayer of Jesus in the gospel lesson for today, that we might be one.

And yet, like the loaves and fish in the basket, the meal nourishes those beyond us: "Make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world." It is an echo of a very elemental prayer I have heard many friends say as you have led in prayer:

Bless this food to our bodies
and us in thy service.

By your spirit make us one… In a polarized and fragmented world, the church of Jesus Christ can be a sign of God’s unity, peace and wholeness. And so we are divided in many ways:

by our income levels and personal experiences,
by our aesthetic tastes and political convictions,
by gender and ethnicity and age,
estranged within families and across neighborhoods.

We are divided perhaps by harm we have done to others and by the awareness of those who have sinned against us. The good news of Jesus Christ is that we are his body, indeed that we are one body. Holy Communion brings us closer to God and to one another. The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

Now in Jesus Christ you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups (Jew or Gentile, but in our own time name any two groups that come to mind) he has made both groups into one and broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us. That he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross. (Ephesians 2)

Let us pray:

You are a God of miracles.
You transform ordinary bread into the body of Jesus Christ,
everyday wine into his very life poured out for us.
We ask for yet another miracle:

Make us one with Christ,
one with each other,
and one in ministry to all the world…
until Christ comes in final victory
and we feast at his heavenly banquet.

Amen.

Source: The United Methodist Hymnal

holy conferencing and holy communion

Holy Conferencing is rooted in Holy Communion. As a connectional people we struggle with the implications of our union with each another, and our divisions. We pray, each time we share the meal, that the Spirit would make us

one with Christ,
one with each other,
and one in ministry to all the world.

To be one with Christ is to be lifted up, with him. And so we “lift up our hearts”. Holy Communion draws us closer to God, through the mediating presence of Jesus Christ.

But Holy Communion also draws us closer to one another. In our congregation I ask at the conclusion of each service of Holy Communion that we join hands after receiving. There are vertical and horizontal dimensions of the meal. We are reminded of the One from whom all blessings flow, and the ones with whom we share these blessings. And so the meal is God’s way of breaking down the barriers and divisions that separate us from the Lord and each other, and the means of fulfilling the prayer of Jesus that we be one (John 17).

And yet, like the loaves and fish in the basket, the meal nourishes those beyond us: Make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world. It is an echo of the most basic and common of prayers: bless this food to our bodies and us in thy service.

Can we pray, with boldness and confidence?

By your spirit make us one…

In a polarized and fragmented world, the church of Jesus Christ can be a sign of God’s unity, peace and wholeness. In a polarized and fragmented church, the meal can be a sign of our life together. It is true that we are divided…

by our income levels and personal experiences,
by our aesthetic tastes and political convictions,
by gender and ethnicity,
by geography and age.

We come to Holy Communion and Holy Conferencing divided perhaps by harm we have done to others and by the awareness of those who have sinned against us.

The good news of Jesus Christ is that we are his body, indeed that we are one body. Holy Communion brings us closer to God and to one another. The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

Now in Jesus Christ you who were once far off
Have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he is our peace;
In his flesh he has made both groups
(Jew or Gentile, but in our own time name any two groups that come to mind)
He has made both groups
Into one and broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us.

That he might create in himself one new humanity
In place of the two,
Thus making peace,
And might reconcile both groups to God
In one body through the cross. (2. 13-16)

Let us pray:

You are a God of miracles.

It is a holy mystery that you transform ordinary bread into the body of Jesus Christ,
And everyday wine into his very life poured out for us.

And so we are bold to ask for yet another miracle:

Make us one with Christ
one with each other,
and one in ministry to all the world,
until Christ comes in final victory
and we feast at his heavenly banquet.

Amen.

the way (john 14. 6)

I have the skill, I will confess, of getting lost. When I moved to Charlotte eight years ago, after about seventeen years in the Triad, it was disorienting. All these streets names that had variations of Queens and Sharon in them, and everyone else seemed to know exactly where they were headed, but not me. I was lost, and more than one fellow traveler expressed their frustration with my disorientation. Having been here a few years, I realize that I have now become that frustrated person! But that is another story!

I actually had the skill of getting lost long before I came to Charlotte. Years ago I was serving a group of churches way out in the country. Early on someone would say to me, “you should visit Miss Irma”. Then another person would mention, in passing, “you really ought to go see Miss Irma”. So I would ask: “How do I get to Miss Irma’s house?” And I remember one man responding to the question like this: “You pass the oak tree near where the red barn used to be…”

Many of us have the skill of getting lost. Maybe we just need good directions. “We don’t know where we are going…how can we know the way?”

The disciples, it seemed, had the skill of getting lost too. They were asking for directions. Jesus had given them a promise: I go to prepare a place for you. He has shared the Passover meal with them, and washed their feet. He has experienced the betrayal of Judas and commanded them to love one another. And now he gives them a promise: I go to prepare a place for you. The place, according to John, is in the presence of the Father, in heaven.

But how will they get there? They are asking for directions. Jesus says, “ I am the way, the truth and the life”. We sometimes interpret this verse in an intellectual way----we imagine that Jesus is actually saying, “I am the truth, the way and the life.” But this is not what he says. He says, “I am the way” first, which means, he is calling us to follow him, to be his students, to learn from him. In the modern world to learn from a master teacher is to agree to a body of material content, usually what we need to know to pass an examination. But in the ancient world it was different: There is a saying in the Mishnah, a source of Jewish teaching: “may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi”. Rabbis taught as they walked around, and their students, their disciples, followed them. As the rabbis walked and talked they would kick up the dust as they made their points. By the end of a day, their disciples would be covered with the dust of their rabbis.

To follow Jesus is to cover the ground that he covered. Do you ever recall saying to your children, when they were very small, “stay close to me.” It is similar: to stay close to Jesus is to be on the way that he is going.

That way is the journey, but we do sometimes get fixated on the destination. And so we read this verse, John 14. 6., one that many of us know well, and we go all the way to the endpoint, the destination. Some have read it as a passage about who will or will not be in heaven. As with all verses of scripture we know well, it requires a careful reading: Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Christians believe that God is Trinitarian, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do come to the Father through the Son. Lesslie Newbigin, the missionary and theologian, wrote:

"We do not know the destination. We have no map of what lies beyond the curtain, though theologians---and others---often use language to suggest that we have. We do not know the limits of the possibilities for our personal lives or for the life of the world. We do not know, and cannot know, all that God has prepared for those who love him. It is beyond the highest power of our imagination (1 Corinthians 2. 9)."We do not know the destination; but we do know the way. That is the heart of the matter…”

Jesus is the way. He says, of himself, “I am the way.” We are often too focused on outcomes, end results, goals, destinations. We do often give less attention to the process, to the preparations, to journey. We give more attention to where we are going than the way we get there.

I have always enjoyed hiking, and one of my favorite memories is hiking Mt. LeConte, in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee. It is only a few feet less in altitude than Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi river. It is tempting to be preoccupied with what you experience on the top of LeConte: they prepare a delicious meal for you, the vistas in every direction are stunning, the air is cool and clear, and the sunset is a wonder to behold.

But there is more, much more to LeConte, than getting to the top. What also matters is the way up there. There are four or five routes to the top; one is long and winding, another is quicker, with a steeper incline. So you choose a particular trail, based on your needs, the time you have, your physical capacity. It matters how you get there, and it matters who you are walking with, your traveling companions. As you walk you get to know them, and they come to know you. If you can pay attention, you will discover that along the way the vegetation changes, the ferns, the mountain laurel, the rhododendron. You may see a small bear. Along the way you will need to stop to drink some cold water, or else you will become dehydrated. And unless you hike a great deal, you will need to take care of a blister that is likely to develop. You will ignore the blister at your own peril!

The place, at the top, is important. But the way comes first. I go to prepare a place for you, Jesus says. We do not know where you are going, the disciples comment. How can we know the way? Jesus says, “I am the way.” Now, this verse requires out interpretation. There was a community, in the lifetime of Jesus, that saw itself as “the way.” We learned a great deal about this community, Qumran, in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They saw themselves as the ideal and only “way” a person lived a life that was pleasing and obedient to God. The implication was that anyone outside their community was not a part of “the way”; anyone outside their community was living a life that was not pleasing to God, that was in fact disobedient to God.

So it is significant that Jesus says, of himself, “I am the way.” Christians have always struggled with this, and we must always be reminded of this statement of his: our tradition, our denomination, our way of worshipping and serving and believing is never “the way.” Now the United Methodist Church is my home and I am grateful for it, but it is never true to scripture to say, “if you are not a part of my denomination, you are not really a Christian”….but that message sometimes gets communicated!

Jesus is the way, and insofar as we are following him, as closely as possible, we are on the way with him.

Another issue arises, this one more personal. Sometimes we attach out understanding of what it means to be a Christian to the way we see another person living it out: perhaps a Christian preacher or teacher or servant with some celebrity or extreme dedication, and we try to emulate them. But for one reason or another, this fails: you want to be Mother Teresa, but you actually have two or three children who need you, and so you can’t pick up and move to India; you want to be a missionary but you actually have a mortgage and you are putting your son or daughter through college, or helping an aging parent. You would love to move the crowds with your testimony like Billy Graham, but there is that small matter of a fear of public speaking.

I think we fall in step with Jesus wherever we are, and we become his traveling companion, and he ours. And just as Jesus walked the roads of Capernaum and Emmaus and Jerusalem and Nazareth, we walk on our particular routes that take us to our appointed places. That is the way we follow Jesus.

There is yet another complexity in this verse, John 14. 6: it has been understood to say that only those who confess Jesus as Lord will be in heaven, in the house with many rooms, or mansions, as the King James translated it. What do we make of this?

When Will Willimon was here in the spring he reflected on another saying of Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself”. He used this image: “Like a great magnet that indiscriminately picks up all kinds of metallic trash, Jesus says that when he is lifted up, he will extravagantly draw all to himself.”

Early in John’s Gospel we are told in fact been told that Jesus is the light that lightens every man and woman. So who will inhabit those many mansions? If we read the gospels closely, we are not inclined to set limits on what God cannot or cannot do, whom Jesus can or cannot save. The question of who will be in heaven is one that is really beyond our grasp, only God knows. It is like describing a mountain peak we have actually never seen. But what have we seen? We have seen Jesus, who is the way, the sufficient guide to that place.

I want you to think about Jesus today not as an abstract idea or name that you have learned, the right answer that will get you into heaven, you get that clear in your mind and you say it and you pass the test. I want you to think about Jesus today as the way, he is the way from God to us and from us to God, he is the traveling companion who helps us to consider the lilies of the field, who teaches us to live one day at a time, who comes not to condemn us but to set us free, who opens our blind eyes, who commands us to take up the cross.

Not everyone says “yes” to the invitation to follow Jesus. Indeed, in the words of Robert Frost, who said, “I took the road less traveled by…”, not everyone becomes his disciple. But for those who say yes to his invitation, he is the way, the truth and the life.

The journey is just as important as the destination. In this season of graduations, we often gather for the ceremony, we hear the commencement speaker, we take a picture with our Smartphone to capture the moment. The outcome----the degree, the completion----is important. But if you are a parent, sitting there, you are also thinking about the journey, the sacrifices, the detours, the failures, the discipline that allowed you to take that next step and then another one and then another one.

To climb the mountain with Jesus is the great adventure of this life. In the words of one of the saints, Catherine:

“All the way to heaven is heaven, because he said, I am the way.”

Sources: Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way. Lesslie Newbigin, The Light Has Come. William Willimon, Why Jesus?