When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Luke 9:51

Because maybe more than anything else, life is a journey. In fact, depending on how any one person's life plays out, it's more than one journey. It is of course, first, a journey toward adulthood, a journey that requires of anyone who's brave enough to make it that they leave behind childish things; that they let go of teddy bears and toys and all the things that give us comfort and amusement as children in favor of the demands and responsibilities of adult life. And that's a hard enough transition that not everyone makes it successfully.

And that's not by no means the only journey we have to make in life. If you've been wounded along the way, and frankly, who hasn't, life can be a journey toward wholeness. And that, too, is not a given. In seminary Henri Nouwen's book, The Wounded Healer , was enormously popular amongst all of us prospective ministers.

Certainly the idea of getting in touch with my woundedness, my inner pain, so that I might someday be more empathetic about the many ways my congregants had been wounded appealed to me.

But then one day I realized I didn't want to be wounded anymore. I wanted to be a healed healer. I felt like wholeness would be a better place from which to do ministry than woundedness. If a person is trapped down deep in a hole, it doesn't really do anyone any good if the one person who can help jumps down into the hole, too, and fails to bring a ladder.

But it's one thing to decide you're going to give up nursing your wounds and to get on with living a healthy and well-adjusted life; it's quite another thing to get to that place. It is a journey. And it takes time and effort and intention.

There are other kinds of journeys, too, aren't there? The journey toward reconciliation with someone from whom you may be estranged. The journey toward physical healing after injury or surgery, a journey which can only be made one day at a time, one step at a time, and cannot be rushed.

Then there is the journey of discernment and self-discovery - finding out just who you were made to be, who you are called to be, and what you were called to do with your life.

Of course then there is the biggest journey of all - the journey to find God and to discover what faith means to you.

Given all these different kinds of journeys one can embark upon in one's life, it's no wonder the concept is so prevalent in the vocabulary of modern spirituality.

Few people would be surprised to know that this idea, this metaphor of life as a journey is very ancient indeed. What may surprise more than a few spiritual seekers, however, is how prevalent that idea is in the biblical record.

Beginning with Abraham and Sarah's spiritual odyssey and culminating with the Exodus from Egypt, journey is one of the foundational archetypes, one of the foundational experiences, in the life of ancient Israel.

For his part, Jesus is no stranger to journey. His parents undertook one while he was still in utero .

A brave unwed mother-to-be and a faithful father-to-be rent a donkey, and carry this unborn child with them until he finally makes his appearance in person in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes, surrounded by farm animals, with the very light of God shining on him and in him.

Then, immediately afterwards, mom, dad and newborn baby hightail it to Egypt, cause right from the get-go the powers that be seem to know that their world is about to change. Their claims to power and privilege are about to be challenged; it's all going change as soon as this one who's wrapped in swaddling clothes gets old enough to have a say in how the world's going be.

Now he is old enough. And here in this text the adult Jesus is about to undertake his own seminal journey. As Luke puts it, When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

He is about to travel his particular road, the one he is called to take, the one that will make him, and break him, and ultimately define him forever.

Immediately, he meets opposition. The first town he wishes to visit - a Samaritan village - will not receive him, but he is undeterred. He seems to know that spiritual progress, forward progress, his own progress will sometimes be met with opposition or misunderstanding.

His disciples, of course, not so enlightened. They wish to meet this resistance with violence and retribution, as though they haven't heard a word he's said so far.

So, for the millionth time, he shakes his head, rebukes them and simply moves on.

And that's where the real action in this story picks up. A stranger ripe with enthusiasm for this new movement approaches them on the highway and declares he'll follow Jesus anywhere. To which Jesus replies, Well, you'd better count on being homeless, then, cause we don't know where our next meal's coming from or where we're gonna sleep tonight. You up for that?

Another man is actually invited to join ranks and to follow, but he demures. Let me bury my father first, Jesus, please?

And still another man misses his chance. Not unreasonably, it seems he simply wants to say good-bye to his family first, before he milks the goats for the last time and leaves home forever. Fine , says Jesus. Go ahead and do that but if you do, you'll miss this train and it's not coming through this town ever again.

In each case Jesus' reply seems harsh and uncompassionate, almost as though he's trying to keep his numbers low and his popularity to a minimum.

I mean, you read this stuff and you want to shoot back, Who do you think you are Jesus? Have you ever buried a father? Do you know what that's like you little smart aleck? You want me to follow you, then you just hold your horses and wait for me to get back. I've got a job to do and it's sacred to me.

And do you mean to tell me I can't say good-bye to my family? Well, I'll tell you something mister. I'll follow you to the grave, but I've known and loved my family a lot longer than I've known and loved you, and by the way, they've known and loved me a lot longer, too. So just back off. Sit yourself down and have a cup of chai. I'll be back in an hour and then we'll be on our way.

I myself have long found these stories troublesome, as you can perhaps tell by my tone here. They seem arrogant at best and uncompassionate at worst. But you gotta believe they made the cut and are in the book for a reason.

So what's going on here? Why does this master of compassion suddenly come off sounding like some weird cult leader demanding the unreasonable and expecting the impossible from his would-be followers?

The standard scholarly explanation is that these are simply teaching moments. Ever the rabbi, Jesus is using here a tried and true rabbinical technique of exaggeration and hyperbole to drive him his point: Following me is no picnic. Living a life of love and compassion, a life of forgiveness and non-violence, it ain't easy. It requires sacrifice, and you'd better be ready for that before you hitch your wagon to my train.

That's a plausible explanation. And he's used that technique elsewhere in his teachings.

But I wonder if there isn't something more going on here. Maybe he's operating above his stress threshold. He's human after all. He's been traveling a while. He's pretty sure that something big and challenging lies ahead of him on his particular road. And meanwhile, everybody seems to want a piece of him.

Ever been in a situation like that, a place where stress and anxiety amplify your emotions? When things that would ordinarily seem small and harmless seem big and threatening? How about getting ready to host 15 people for Thanksgiving dinner? Or preparing to receive all of your children and all four of their spouses and your eight grandchildren for Christmas? Ever snapped at your spouse in that situation? (If you haven't then you should write a how-to book for the rest of us!)

But I think there may be still another factor at work here, one that has to do with how life is and with who Jesus ultimately is.

Someone once said that the most frustrating thing about Jesus is that he never provides answers. Ask him a question and in reply you get mystery not certainty. He declines the opportunity to tell anyone what life means, and invites his followers to simply participate in it and to trust God through it.

Which makes sense given the way life works. Nothing really lasts forever. Your family is not the same as it was 20 years ago - births, deaths, marriages, divorces.

This country is not the same as it was before Elvis and the Beatles and Gloria Steinem came along and changed everything. This country's not the same as it was even six years ago when those airplanes flew into those buildings, sending shock waves through our personal and national psyche.

This church is not the same as it was even two years ago. New members, new minister and now, soon, new lights and new bathrooms.

So I believe that's what this text is about, finally. Our families and their traditions are sacred. Our church family and its traditions are sacred. Our national traditions are meaningful and wonderful, and we'll celebrate those again this Wednesday on the Fourth of July.

But none of these things is God. All of these things can change, and if we cling to any of them too tightly, if devotion to any of them keeps our hearts closed and our fists clenched, then like the characters in today's Gospel story we'll miss our chance to catch that train that's heading straight for the Kingdom of God.

Amen