Faith is Made For Walkin'

It always bothers me when I see people in town stopping their cars at their mailboxes.  For the most part, the lots around here are not that deep, so it’s only a matter of walking a few yards to the end of the driveway.  How lazy can we get?  I try to grant a mental exception to those whose ability to walk may be limited, but that probably applies to a small minority of the offenders.

Driving down a rural Iowa highway this past week, I saw an elderly man walking back up his lane with mail in one hand, a cane in the other.   He had a pretty good way left to go, too, the farmhouse being set back from the road at least the length of a football field.  It must have been something of a challenge for him, his legs not all that strong anymore, balance not what it used to be.  To keep steady on the uneven, unpaved surface probably required a fair amount of effort.  It took some time, too, I’m sure, but on he went, slowly and purposefully.

Had I not been driving, I would have applauded him for his courage and his perseverance.  How much more difficult it was for him to retrieve his mail this way than for the people in town who stop at the end of the driveway and reach through the car window before pulling into their garages.

I could go on to talk about how we take our transportation for granted here, after witnessing in Guatemala that vehicle ownership is far less common and how those who are fortunate enough to have a running set of wheels often use them to carry many more passengers than we typically do here.  But this is really about more than making us feel guilty for taking unnecessary trips in the car.  Though stewardship of our resources is important, what I saw in that man was more about the stewardship of self.

For me, at least, this man became a symbol of using our very selves to the fullest potential.  And while I can pat myself on the back for walking out to my mailbox every day on my own two legs, can I say the same thing for my walk of faith?  Have I given my faith feet to step forward or does it ride around comfortably seated inside, looking out the window, only occasionally reaching into the world around me?

The old man with the cane could certainly have used his mobility problems as an excuse.  In choosing to walk, though, he risked falling.  He risked being hurt.  It would not be unreasonable to assume, too, that using his legs involved some level of discomfort.   But what might he have missed had he not taken that walk? He breathed the fresh June air, felt the warm sun on his face.  Perhaps that day he even spotted an eagle flying overhead or heard the wind rustling through the tall grass along the ditch.  He inspired reflection in someone he didn’t know who happened to drive by.

Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask both that God’s kingdom come and will be done, but to what extent do we really expect to participate as instruments of God’s work toward accomplishing those things?  What changes would come about in the world if we all offered ourselves unreservedly, strengths and weaknesses both, to the ministry and mission of Christ’s Church?  What if we got out of our personal spiritual cars that we drive around, buckled securely inside?

Stuck in my head along with that image of the man in the lane is that Nancy Sinatra hit from 1966, These Boots.  But I think this time the message I hear is about our faith; it’s made for walkin’.

Peace and Carrots

Our pastor asked us to reflect on when we realized we were Lutheran, so here’s my way of explaining. 

Religion, it seemed to me, was like chasing a carrot at the end of a stick.  You could run as hard as you wanted, but you would never reach that carrot.  It was an elaborate and confusing point system that never quite allowed you to accumulate enough credit to reach your goal. 

What do you do when you realize you’re playing a game you can’t possibly win?  You quit and that’s pretty much what I did.  Oh, I would still pretend from time to time like I was still a part of the game, but I knew when it was all over, I was going to end up the loser, just like everyone else, except they didn’t know it yet. 

I played along so well that I was given a Sunday School class to teach.  We decided to do a skit, so I looked online for one with the right number of parts that wasn’t too long.  The format was a game show in which the contestants competed with one another by taking turns naming all the good things they had done.  This made perfect sense to me, until the game came to an end.  The winner wasn’t the obviously better competitor.  Something wasn’t right.

I re-read the script.  It referenced Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The “carrot” was already mine.  It had been mine all along. And what a wonderful, life-changing, precious carrot it is.  

Eventually, I realized that there was a limitless supply of carrots.  In fact, I started finding carrots in a lot more places than I ever would have guessed, even in some strange places. Sometimes they snuck up and surprised me, in places like a cowboy movie or an Andy Griffith episode. 

When you have all the carrots you could ever want or need, you can afford to be exorbitantly generous.  There is no more reason to be stingy with or protective of carrots. You no longer have to worry about whether the other person has more carrots than you do.  You don’t have to try to figure out whether they deserve any carrots because there are more than enough for everyone. 

The carrots are free, but they don’t belong to us.  We can’t hoard the carrots for ourselves and dole them out to only the people we think should have them.  The carrots are for everyone, no exceptions.

But what about the good works?  What about going to church?  What happens when there is no longer an obligation to perform a list of items on an endless checklist? 

Freedom happens.  And out of that freedom comes a joyful desire to respond in whatever way the Spirit leads.  Worship still happens, but instead of something we have to do it becomes something we can’t not  do.  Service to others happens, too, but instead of doing it in order to gain something, we do it because we are already filled and can’t help but share from that abundance.

Peace and carrots be with you all.