The Path Nobody Else Is Taking

Luke 13:31 -35 Gen 15:1-6

I get an increasing sense of Jesus trudging along towards Jerusalem.

Pulling Himself along as the effects of challenging ministry and a long pilgrimage on foot take their toll.

He’s travelling alone by the sound of it. There’s no mention of disciples at all in these chapters. It’s just Jesus Christ against the world.

He’s on a path nobody else is taking.

His voice starts to quiver in something like a prayer about what lies ahead.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he cries.

He fears the truth about it all, that when he reaches the Holy City, this Gospel of his, is going to be rejected.

And that this will feel like a love spurned.

A Mother holding out her arms to her children, but none of them will come running.

In spite of the miracles, the stories and the evidence of changed lives, that the way ahead is getting more lonely and harder by the day.

And now some Pharisees stand in his way and pretending to have his best interests at heart – they advise him not continue further. “For your own good, turn back” they cry “For Herod is out to get you”.

Tempting to call it a day! Tempting to turn aside into a quieter ministry without headlines and without confrontation!

Tempting not to put your trust in the grace of God for much longer.

Similarly does Abraham plough a lone furrow. Trusting God with everything, he finds himself on a journey to who knows where. No destination in sight. No son and heir, just this dangling promise, this outrageous promise, of a land to call his own and offspring as many as the stars of heaven.

He too is on a path nobody else is taking. He too is wondering for how much longer he can put his trust in the grace of God.

The Christian way can feel like this for us, especially in Lent, when we try to give ourselves space, but don’t like what we find when we get there.   When that is true for us we need to remember the good company we keep, the founding Fathers of two of the world’s religions no less.

For Abraham, keeping on, keeping on, was counted to him as righteousness – against all the odds he continued to believe in the promise.

For Jesus , drawing ever nearer to his destination, even though with growing foreboding, means he does keep company with us when we most need it, and so in this dark journey we see his love shining.

Temptation comes in various forms and it can be especially acute when nobody appears to be accompanying us on the way and those travelling in the opposite direction, or who bar our way, question our motives and our sanity.

In following Christ, we inevitably become exiles and refugees from the world as it is.

It is as if we too have nowhere to lay our heads, no foxhole or no nest, but as we travel on this wilderness path we will discover the ministry of angels, in the form of Abraham and Jesus, pioneers of the road less travelled, instruments of our salvation. Heavenly company in which to move on towards the kingdom. 

RH 28.2.10