Sunday Sermons from Sell Chapel are written by Rev. Preston Van Deursen, Director of Pastoral Care at the Masonic Village at Elizabethtown.
The art of living is not so much our ability to pick one path and pursue it doggedly to the end. It has more to do with how well we are able to change paths and shift directions when the situation demands it. Most of all, the art of living is the ability to respond with grace and faith when the journeys we make in life are interrupted and left unfinished.
If I may use the analogy of sports: life is not like a track meet, where you run in a straight, predictable direction until you finish the race. Life is more like a football game.
You rarely see a football player run with the ball in one direct, uninterrupted path to the goal line. Instead, he has to bend and swerve and change direction over and over again to avoid the people who are trying to knock him down. If he is flexible enough, if he can react quickly enough to the obstacles put before him, he can keep running and score a touchdown.
But more often than not – most times, in fact – the football player is stopped short of his goal. He is knocked down and his journey is left unfinished, so he has to pick himself up off the ground and try again, and again and again. This is the art of living and it’s important that we know it, because for most of us, life is more like a football game than a track meet.
When you set out to drive across the country, you can sit down with a map and carefully mark out the route you intend to follow. If you want, you can plan to drive in a straight line on the interstate highways all the way from one coast to another.
But before you have travelled too far, you will run into those ubiquitous signs by the side of the road: “Your Tax Dollars At Work, Construction Site, Next 380 Miles, Pardon the Inconvenience.” It’s guaranteed. Your best laid plans will soon be dashed and your patience will be severely tested.
Now, you can do one of two things when you hit a detour on the road. You can insist on following the route you had planned to take, which means that you can stubbornly sit there in your car for two and a half years, when the construction work will be done. Or, you can be more flexible, realize that this route is closed to you and you must find another way to continue on your journey.
So often, the journeys we set out to make in life are interrupted. The straight paths we choose are detoured on the highways of our experience; our hopes and dreams go awry. More than that our plans and ambitions must sometimes be abandoned altogether and left as unfinished monuments to what might have been. Then we have to start afresh and not be defeated, for this is the art of living.
There was a teenage boy growing up in Decatur, Illinois, who had a passionate interest in photography; in fact, he wanted to make it his life’s career. So, he saved up his nickels and dimes, until finally he had enough money to send away for a mail order book on how to get started in photography.
But the mail order company made a mistake with the young boy’s order and sent him a book on ventriloquism instead. Trouble was: the boy had never heard of ventriloquism and he didn’t have enough money to send the book back. So there he was, a poor disappointed boy in Decatur, Illinois, stuck with a book on something called ventriloquism.
His life’s journey into the field of photography was interrupted, but the boy was able to adjust to his new situation. He was flexible enough to play with the hand he had been dealt, even though they weren’t the cards he wanted.
He started reading the book on ventriloquism and found that he liked it. Eventually, he got a wooden dummy and began practicing with it. The boy who wanted to be a photographer was named Edgar Bergen, and along with his dummy, Charley McCarthy, they became one of the most famous ventriloquist acts in the world.
The apostle Paul was someone who knew all about unfinished journeys. At one point in his life, he felt he had accomplished everything he could where he was and he longed to go to Spain, where the gospel had never been preached. It would be a fresh start, a new adventure and he was plainly excited about it.
Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, saying that he would come visit them on his way to Spain (Romans 15:22). But he never got to finish the journey he had dreamed about. Instead of travelling on to the wide, open country of Spain, Paul landed in the dark, narrow confines of a Roman prison cell, where he was eventually put to death.
But nowhere in Scripture is there a more poignant story of unfinished journeys than the story of Moses. We see him in our text today at the end of his life. He goes up into the Moabite hills which overlook the Dead Sea, in what is now Jordan, and he looks over into Israel, into the Promised Land. Then the Lord says to Moses, “This is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.” With that, Moses lies down and dies.
Not too long ago, I had the privilege of standing by the Dead Sea and looking up at those hills. I stood in the very land Moses only saw and I tried to imagine how he felt that day, knowing his life-long journey would be left incomplete. How do you think he felt?
Maybe, as he stood there, Moses remembered how it all began, with God calling him as a young man at the burning bush. Maybe he remembered the tense confrontations with Pharaoh, the plagues against Egypt, and the miraculous escape through the Red Sea.
Perhaps he reflected on the forty years they spent in the desert, the days they were hungry and the manna from heaven. Maybe he recalled how the people had rebelled against his leadership, how the people had repaid him for his love and loyalty with idolatry and mutiny and ingratitude of every kind.
Imagine the tears welling up in his eyes as he looked across into Israel! He had risked so much and suffered so long to get here, and now, at the very brink of achieving his goal, he must stop. His journey must be left unfinished. Everyone will enter the Promised Land except the one man who most deserved to go.
It doesn’t seem right and it doesn’t seem fair. If Hollywood had written the script, Moses would have led his people in triumphant procession across the Jordan River into Israel. But Hollywood doesn’t write the script for real life and there isn’t always a happy ending. Life is often a story of dreams deferred and journeys left unfinished.
In our own lifetime, there was another Moses who looked over into a Promised Land which he himself would not enter. I refer, of course, to Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke on the very night before his murder about going up to the mountaintop and seeing the Promised Land. He said that night, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” Then he concluded by saying the same words Moses might have said on his own mountaintop so many years before: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Of course, we need not be a Moses or a Martin to know that our achievements are often incomplete. It seems that whether we are great or small, famous or obscure, we all can find detours and unfinished ventures in life. We all can see the promised land of some purpose we’ve been pursuing; then we realize that our journey will stop short of its goal, and we will have to be content with looking over from the other side of the river.
A pastor wants to call a church into the fullness and faithfulness of Christian community. When is that task ever done?
A parent or teacher wants to instill in every youngster a love of learning. When is that job ever completely finished?
A person decides to forgo a “conventional” career which offers more pay and recognition, and chooses instead a more idealistic line of work. They choose to help the hungry or the dispossesed. They are moved to bring a measure of reform and justice to a fallen world; they value morality over mammon.
But when is their work ever done? When will all the hungry be fed? When shall there be no more poor among us, or no more need to struggle for equal rights for women and minorities? When people choose a project in life which is larger than themselves, how do they keep going when they know that no matter how hard they work, the task before them is endless?
It’s been said that, “Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in one lifetime” (Reinhold Niebuhr). And because that is true, we need a way to continue our journeys in life without getting fed up or burned out. This is, first of all, a spiritual challenge.
Look to the people in Scripture who met that challenge. Look at Paul, who wanted to go to Spain and ended up in prison. How did Paul respond when his hopes and dreams were dashed?
An unfinished journey can be a crushing disappointment or an occasion for faith and grace. It all depends on what prize we are seeking. In Paul’s case, he was quite clear what he was after, and he expressed it well in Philippians: “One thing I do,” he wrote, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (3:13-14).
In other words, the prize Paul wanted was not simply to go to Spain; it was the upward call of God in Jesus Christ. So, if he couldn’t preach the gospel in Spain, he would preach it to the guards in prison. As he lay in his cell and reflected on the prize in Spain which now lay behind, Paul avoided all bitterness by remembering the greater prize which lay ahead.
We see that same quality in Moses – especially in his final speech, as recorded in the last few chapters of Deuteronomy.
It really is a remarkable statement. As he gives his speech on the very banks of the Promised Land, Moses doesn’t talk about his own disappointment, or try to settle old scores. Moses talks instead about God. In 3 1:7-8, he says to Israel, “Be strong and of good courage, for you shall go into this land. It is the Lord who goes before you; He will be with you, He will not fail you or forsake you; do not fear or be dismayed.”
When we take on a task in life which is larger than ourselves, we need something even larger to keep us going. We need the Lord to go before us. Remember that God Himself called you on your journey – in a burning bush or a still, small voice He called you — and because He did, God will see you through.
We can’t change the fact of life’s disappointments any more than Moses could. Sometimes we’ll meet the detour on life’s highway; sometimes our journeys will be left unfinished. But at least we can go on living for that upward call and that higher prize. At least we can know that no matter where our life’s journeys may take us, our travelling still is pleasing in God’s sight. Amen
