A Long Way To Go

Week of Monday, March 11, 2002

With this week's essay The Journey With Jesus marks its one year anniversary. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can go to the Comprehensive Index to access all fifty two essays. It is a pleasure for me to thank our web master Ray Cowan, a physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, who not only formats, corrects and improves each of my weekly essays, but who also maintains the Stanford InterVarsity faculty ministry website.

I would also like to thank you, my readers, for the encouragements you have given me the past year by word of mouth and email, recounting how the essays have in some small way helped you in your own journey with Jesus. I think Kierkegaard is probably right that every author writes with the intent that what he has written “is in search of that solitary individual, to whom it wholly abandons itself, by whom it wishes to be received as if it had arisen within his own heart; that solitary individual whom with joy and gratitude I call my reader.”¹

In my essay last week I reached back to quote one of my favorite Christian writers, . The result of that for me was to indulge myself in a Buechner binge by rereading several of his books. If you are unfamiliar with him, he has written about thirty-five books, roughly half fiction and half non-fiction, earning along the way nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. A key theme throughout all his works is the idea that life is not merely a journey through time or an impersonal history without meaning or significance. Rather, every life, including yours and mine, is a sacred journey that is part of God's redemptive history of salvation, and that it is in and through each life that God speaks.

Part of Buechner's Christian journey began with a trip to the Order of the Holy Cross in West Park, New York.² He went, he said, to visit an old monk who had a reputation for wisdom and holiness, and who he hoped would be able to answer some of his questions. He also went “to be cleansed of the too-muchness and too-littleness of my life.” As it turned out, the monk he had hoped to see was unavailable, the other monks had taken vows of silence, and the Guest Master who was appointed to talk to visitors was almost unintelligible. So his questions went unanswered.

His hope for cleansing likewise took an unexpected turn. After a few days at the monastery Buechner was ready to leave, when the Guest Master asked him if he would like him to hear his confession. Buechner was embarrassed but agreed, and after confessing a few trite foibles and receiving a pronouncement of forgiveness, he recalls that he felt neither cleansed nor forgiven. Later the Guest Master then offered to give Buechner a blessing:

As much out of politeness as anything, and because I thought that then maybe he would let me go, I said yes, so he indicated that I was to kneel, and down on the stone floor I knelt, as awkwardly as I had confessed, if not more so, and he signed me with the cross and blessed me. “You have a long way to go,” he said, his only words that I think I remember exactly. I had a long way to go.

A sacred journey, yes, and a long way to go. I am not sure what the Guest Master intended to tell Buechner, or how Buechner heard and received this “blessing,” but I must say that his words resonate with my own experience on the Christian journey in a couple of ways.

Sometimes Christians are too easy on themselves, too cavalier in their faith. To people like this I think the Guest Master's “blessing” comes as a provocative admonition. Watch out; you have a long way to go. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Pay careful attention, and don't drift away (Hebrews 2:1). Run the race in such a way as to get the prize rather than to incur disqualification (1 Corinthians 9:24–27).

Other believers can be way too hard on themselves, and to them too the Guest Master's words can serve as a blessing. Be patient with yourself. Don't give up, persevere, run with endurance (Hebrews 12:1). You are on a long journey, something more like a marathon than a sprint. As a runner, one of the most encouraging talks I ever heard was by the famous marathoner Bill Rodgers who talked about all the races he failed to finish.

After about thirty years on the journey with Jesus I feel like I still have a long way to go. Why is my life not more characterized by the fruits of the Spirit rather than by the acts of my sinful nature (Galatians 5:19–26)? With the Psalmist I wonder why I can get so discouraged so easily (Psalm 43:5). Why is it that judgmentalism rather than grace and empathy comes to me all too readily (Matthew 7:1–2)? I could go on, and I am sure that you could too. The Guest Master was right; I have a long way to go.

There will be injury, failure, disappointment and setbacks, but remember, it is not those who are healthy who need a physician but those who know they are sick ( Matthew 9:12). In the literature of the Christian church maybe the best expression of this “perilous journey” motif is Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1628–1688), a classic of western literature that he largely wrote during the twelve years he was in prison (cf. too his autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners). The apostle Paul himself felt his own wretchedness (Romans 7:24). He knew all too well that he fell far short of the Gospel ideal, that he was far from perfection, but he still pressed on, forgetting the past and straining toward the future (Philippians 3:12–14).

When the journey is long and we do our best to listen to our lives to hear the voice of the Lord, says Buechner, it can be scary. We might not like what we hear, or we might in fact fear that we will hear nothing at all. But we should not be afraid.

He says he is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for him. Listen to the sweet and bitter airs of your present and your past for the sound of him.³

This is what the Lord told his cowering group of disciples, “I am with you” (Matthew 28:20). This is what he told the apostle Paul at Corinth amidst abuse and persecution, emboldening him to stay there for eighteen months: “Do not be afraid, I am with you” (1 Corinthians 18:9–10). This is what he tells me, and what he tells you on your own journey with Jesus, even though we may have a very long way to go: “I am with you.”

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1. Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing (New York: Harper and Row, 1956), p. 27.
2. For the following story see Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey (San Francisco: Harper, 1982), pp. 102–104.
3. Ibid., p. 78.

The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.