Called to Life - Called to Love: The One Less Traveled By

by Fred Kane

March 19, 2000

Text: Genesis 17:1-5, 17-19 and Mark 8:31-38

Robert Frost once wrote:

• Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
  And sorry I could not travel both
  And be one traveler, long I stood
  And looked down as far as I could
  To where it bent in the undergrowth;
  Then took the other, as just as fair,
  And having perhaps the better claim,
  Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
  Though as far that the passing there
  Had worn them really about the same.
  And both that morning equally lay
  In leaves no step had trodden back,
  O, I kept the first for another day!
  Yet, knowing how way leads on to way,
  I doubted if I should ever come back.
  I shall be telling this with a sigh
  Somewhere ages and ages hence;
  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
  I took the one less traveled by,
  And that has made all the difference.

Has it made a difference in your own life? Perhaps I should back up a little and ask you first, have you ever been presented with a less traveled road in your life? Have you ever chosen the road less traveled? Have you ever chosen to take a path that is grassy and in want of wear? Or have the roads in your life been worn smooth and well traveled?

Jesus has a word for us about choosing a path, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Or there is the story of the great pilgrim Abraham, "When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, 'I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous. 'Then Abram fell on his face."

The contemporary poet, the superb teacher from Nazareth, and the Old Testament hero are all saying essentially the same thing to me this morning. They are speaking about life as a journey and with any journey we make choices about the route we take, the path we walk, the road we travel. This morning I want to think together with you about that idea.

Life continually confronts us with choices, doesn't it? That is what Robert Frost is talking about in his poem. We come to the fork in the road and we have to make a choice. We think that we can save the other path for another day, but knowing, "how way leads on to way," we are far more honest to admit that we will not come back to take that other path. You can't be a traveler, as he puts it, and travel both roads.

That too, is the clear implication in what Jesus says to me. Do you hear him? Every one of us faces choices, he says, not just superficial choices‚ but genuinely significant choices. We can choose and sometimes we will have to choose before all the evidence is submitted. We may have to choose on the basis of our intuition or our instinct, but we can't travel both roads.

That is also the implication of those searching words to Abraham, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless." It isn't, "sit beside me," or, "rest beside me." It is, "walk before me." Abraham must make a choice. Abraham must choose which path he will walk.

Now some of you may dissent at this point. You are convinced that you don't really exercise any initiative over the decisive moments in your life. You think that you have very little to say about what happens to you. You are the victim or the pawn of circumstances which are far beyond your control. Life, some people would say, is a mechanical business and personal freedom is an illusion. Perhaps you believe that?

It is obviously true that there are some things over which we have no control. We do not choose when we are going to be born, or where. We do not choose the color of our skin or the color of our eyes or the color of our hair (well, some of us, I am told, do choose the color our hair). We do not choose if we shall have hair at all and some of us are blessed with less to care for than others. We inherit certain physical assets and liabilities and while we can work at perfecting or improving them, there are certain limitations which we will never escape.

We inherit not only physical traits; we also inherit certain emotional characteristics. Some are blessed with a calm, quiet, sanguine (I love that word -"sanguine" - it sounds so very "sanguine.") - some have a sanguine temperament. Some have never had to contend with the violent passions and emotions that other people live with. Furthermore, the differences can be pronounced even in siblings. Everyone is born with certain physical and emotional characteristics that we take with us to the grave.

So there are some areas of life over which we have no control; there are certain given circumstances and characteristics which we inherit on the day of our birth. One person is born to wealth; another to poverty. One is born with a high capacity for learning; another may be born with a severely limited capacity. One is born in an age of progress and enlightenment; another may be born into a time of oppression or darkness. Those are not choices that a person makes; they are the circumstances that are arbitrarily imposed upon us.

But, one Christian understanding of humanity is that regardless of who we are, every one of us have some alternatives in life. We have the option of choosing which road we are going to travel. And it is precisely that endowment that makes us human beings, and to the best of our knowledge sets us apart from the rest of God's animate creation. We do have something to say about our own destiny; we are responsible for what we choose to make of the things that we have been given.

College football coaches announced their new signers from the high school and junior college ranks a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that Head Coach Dennis Erickson at Oregon State didn't dip as heavily into the ranks of the junior colleges. After last season's historic winning season he didn't have to look for immediate help. Spring practice is beginning already and it might not be inappropriate to refer to one of the immortals of the game.

• I'm thinking about Amos Alonzo Stagg, who lived to be more than a hundred years old. He is enshrined in football's Hall of Fame as, "a player, a coach, and the game's greatest teacher." He's forgotten by most people these days. But, his career as a coach spanned more than seventy years from coast to coast. When he was going on ninety he would still show up every spring over in Forest Grove, next door to us here in Hillsboro, to assist his son Paul who was head coach at Pacific University. The old man, with his snow white hair‚ would be out on the field teaching the fine points of the game to the young men.
  He was born the son of a cobbler. Are there any cobblers anymore? He attended Yale University. He was an outstanding baseball player in school, a pitcher, and he made the first All-American football team playing as an end in 1889. He was invited to become the first director of athletics at the University of Chicago and in his acceptance letter he said, "After much thought and prayer I have decided that my life can best be used for my Master's service in the position you have offered." Can you imagine? Have any of us said anything like that when we were hired for a job? Or those of us who have hired people - have you had anyone say anything similar?
  Years later he became the athletic director at the University of the Pacific, a United Methodist school in Stockton, California, and he said, "I felt especially called to preach when I was a young man, but I decided to do it on the athletic field." That reminds me of Saint Francis who said that when you preach you sometimes have to use words.

You see, he was a person who understood that there are choices to make and that the best way to make them is with a frank appraisal of one's own talents and with sensitivity to where those talents might best be employed in the service of Christ. That is what it means to be a human being: to make choices. We are not puppets, dancing when someone pulls the strings. We are not little toy soldiers marching around in a circle when someone winds us up. We are human beings which means that we have the high privilege and the awesome responsibility of making significant choices in this life.

When we make those choices we are usually tempted to take the path of least resistance. That's what Jesus means when he says to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me. Jesus knows that we tend to take the path of least resistance. We tend not to deny ourselves. We tend to take the easiest way. We avoid crosses. We resist them with a passion, don't we?

The path of least resistance. That's the way the majority of people travel, isn't it? I know that I often do. It is tempting because it looks comfortable and convenient to take the easy path. It is always easier to drift than to go upstream. It is easier to meander along without thinking about the consequences than to confront the hard experiences of life. I wonder if you share my feelings at this point that this is the mood of a lot of people today! Everyone is free to do their own thing and if the rules get in the way, then you simply disregard them. If the going gets tough, just slide back.

• There was a movie back in the 1960's - many of you, I am sure, remember it and some of you probably saw it more than once. I know that I did. A lot of you in this congregation saw it when you were teenagers or a little older and I suspect it influenced you some. Some of you saw it, but have no recollection of the 60's despite living through them. You know what I mean.
  I'll bet, too that at least one of you here this morning even modeled your life on it. It's called "Easy Rider." It's the story of two young men on low-slung motorcycles who set out on a cross-country trip across America with no particular destination in mind. Along the way they find themselves occasionally in danger and sometimes among friendly natives. They finally arrive in New Orleans where they go through a drug-filed nightmare. Then violent death overtakes them.

One of my colleagues made reference to the story and said, "I think that in many ways it was a powerful commentary on contemporary American life and perhaps in others it is a mirror of the uneasiness of many youth; but the thing that struck me most of all about it was that for young men out to enjoy themselves, these two were remarkably unsuccessful. I would say they were looking in the wrong place. The place to look for freedom and joy is not in vague and aimless wandering or in drug-induced euphoria, but in disciplined behavior. Freedom does not begin in living without rules, but in living by rules."

In other words, freedom begins in discipline. Discipline springs from obedience. The Latin root of the word is to "hear" or to "listen." To whom will you listen? Who are you going to follow? Who will you serve? Bob Dylan sang, "You've got to serve somebody." Who are you going to serve? To whom or to what will you be obedient?

That is an insight that we need to come to terms with if we are going to make meaningful choices in life. We may want to choose the path that looks convenient and seems comfortable, but that is a snare and an illusion. It is, as Jesus says in the Gospels, a road that leads to disaster.

We are tempted, not only as individuals, to take the easy well-traveled path, but we are tempted collectively. We have always been tempted to settle our disputes by force; that is the easy well-traveled path, and history is a vivid document of where that road leads. The way to peace is narrow and hard and there are few who travel that road.

We have always been tempted to protect our possessions at the expense of others; that is a well-traveled road and there are many who travel it. It is much more difficult to confront the problem of universal human needs and how to solve them and there are few that travel that way.

In the realm of politics it is always a temptation to surrender our responsibility and let someone else carry the burden; that is a broad road that leads to only one end. It is much more difficult to hold oneself accountable for what happens and speak the truth in love; that is the hard road less traveled by.

When it comes to the problems of the environment, it is easier to dismiss the imminent danger and go on with life as we have known it, even though we know from reliable witnesses where that road leads. To take on a personal responsibility for the air, the water, the forests, and for continued employment and economic strength is a hard road and few there be who travel it.

In the church it is far easier to sail along on an even keel, keeping the waters smooth, than it is to risk ourselves for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. We grow so complacent and so comfortable. Sometimes a financial crisis shakes us up. Sometimes a change in pastors. Pastors come and pastors go (and someone out there just muttered, "Thank God!"). But, it is the Gospel that stirs the waters - or should, if we would only hear the Word of God - not the going or coming of a pastor.

The temptation which we all face, in our own lives, in our society, and in the church is to take the path of least resistance. But, deep within every one of us there is the call to be heroic - the call to take up the cross. There is a road less traveled, and there is something within us that pulls us down that path. It is the road that takes Jesus from Bethlehem to the Place of the Skull - Golgotha, from the manger to the cross. We may successfully thwart the inclination, but it is there. We may play the game close to the vest, but there are many of us who will never cease to wonder at what might have been, if we had been obedient to the inner voice. "If I had only taken the right path," we say.

The great chapters of history have never been written by those who were content to take the easy road. Instead they have been written by women and men who went down the road less traveled with dedication, self-discipline, honor, duty, and self-denial, taking up the cross and risking it all for something greater than themselves. They are the people who have always known that there are things in life worth serving, no matter what the cost.

• There is a grave stone back near Kearney, Nebraska which has on it the name, Susan Hale. As a young bride, Susan and her husband were part of the gold rush on the Oregon Trail, but she drank some contaminated water, came down with a high fever, and died before they reached Fort Kearney. Her husband made a coffin for her body from their wagon, and buried her mortal remains on the highest knoll he could find, driving in a few wooden stakes so that he would be able to find the place again after he had gone on West and made his fortune. But he changed his mind. Instead of going west, he retraced his steps eastward to St. Joe, Missouri, which was the closest outpost of European life, and had a stonecutter cut into granite her name and the date of her death. Then he tried to get someone to haul it westward, but no one would. They didn't have time or space; their wagons were loaded, and they were impatient to get to the gold fields. So he bought a wheelbarrow, put the stone on it, and pushed it all those miles to Kearney and set it up over her grave.

There is no indication as to whether he ever made it to California or found his fortune. When you think of it, it seems like a foolish thing, a sentimental gesture. Why did he do it? Well, I think he did it because deep down within himself he knew that there are some things that we cannot easily and conveniently walk away from; he knew that there are some values in this life that are too important to neglect. The easy thing to do would have been to dig a shallow grace and leave the body there. He did the hard thing. He chose the road less traveled by. That is the road, Jesus said, that leads to life.

What choices do you face today? What roads are before you in your life? Which one will you choose? The well traveled path? The path of least resistance? Will you choose that way which leads you in the footsteps of Christ? Remember that God is with you in your choosing. God is with you as you travel. God is calling you to life. Thanks be to God. Amen.