Journeying On By Stages

Exodus 17: 1-7
Roger Lynn
October 11, 2020

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am preaching this sermon today because I need to hear it. The speed of my life has been increasing exponentially in recent weeks and it’s not finished speeding up quite yet.

There is a strong tendency in our culture to get where we’re going as quickly as possible. 80mph speed limits that are routinely broken. Faster and faster computers. High-speed internet connections that are never quite fast enough. Express lanes in the grocery stores. Patience is not a quality much prized in our culture. And that, I think, is unfortunate. It is difficult to appreciate the landscape of our lives at 80mph.

Almost twenty years ago I had the privilege of taking a sabbatical, and one of the great joys of that experience was giving myself permission to take my time. With a few rare exceptions, there was nowhere I needed to be at any particular time. As a result, I discovered lots of interesting places I might otherwise have missed completely. Driving down the Oregon and California coast on Highway One is not the route I would normally choose. There are corners on that road labeled “15mph” and they mean it. But by choosing to take such a route I experienced the amazing beauty of the southern Oregon coastline, with giant rocks standing out in the surf; the breathtaking magnificence of the redwoods; and the section of highway around Big Sur that runs several hundred feet above the water, where I was pulling off every 50 or 100 yards to savor the view. Because I slowed down I was able to spend a week camped by the ocean in southern California, where everyday I watched dolphins leaping and pelicans gliding over the surface of the water. None of that would have been possible if I had been in my usual hurry.

My friend Randy loves to tell stories. It isn’t just something he does. It is actually a central part of who he is. Talking to him is an exercise in patience, because his conversations almost always meander along, with frequent side trips which seem both out of the way and beside the point. If you have ever heard Garrison Keillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” then you have experienced some of what it is like talking to Randy. It used to drive me nuts, but what I have come to realize over the years is that the side trips are at the very heart of the point. They flesh out the reality of what we are talking about and provide a richness and meaning that could never be achieved simply by sticking to “the facts.” It takes more time to have this kind of conversation, but the trip is always worth it.

The Hebrew people spent forty years traveling the few hundred miles from Egypt to the Promised Land. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not because Moses was a man and refused to stop for directions. It was because there were lessons to be learned and it took a while to learn them. There is a phrase in today’s reading from Exodus which I find particularly illuminating. “The whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages...” (Exodus 17:1) They didn’t always like it. In fact, they very seldom liked it and frequently complained loudly. But in the end, the story of their journey became a central part of how they understood themselves as a people. That slow journey came to define who they were – who God was – who they were in relationship to God. They would not have been the people they became if Moses had simply chartered a bus and driven them directly from Cairo to Jerusalem. They were shaped in profound and lasting ways because they “journeyed by stages.”

And so it is for us. The life of faith is a journey and a process. It requires patience and it demands that we take it slow. And most of all, it is absolutely essential that we remember we are not in it alone. We travel with each other and we travel with God. As a community of faith there are worthwhile, significant, important places we are heading together – places with names like justice and peace. There are qualities of life we need to be striving for – qualities such as compassion and understanding. Sometimes the journey will be filled with beauty and joy – when we are fully aware of God’s presence in our midst and empowered by God’s Spirit in our lives. And sometimes the journey will be filled with grief and pain – when God’s presence seems very far away indeed and we seem impotent in the face of the world’s horror. Like the Hebrew people in the wilderness, our journey of faith may take a very long time, because there are lessons we cannot learn quickly or easily. There are things we need to do which cannot be accomplished overnight. Such a perspective of faith opens us to the possibility of catching a glimpse of the light of God’s presence which is always breaking forth in our world, despite the headlines which so often leave us focused only on the darkness. Taking the long view enables us to understand that with God’s help we are not powerless and we can make a difference, even when it doesn’t seem to be happening immediately. May we learn to slow down long enough in our life together that we might begin to recognize the value of journeying on by stages.