It’s a simple phrase but not one we necessarily use very often in our day to day speech. A good path. I have heard it most often in conversations I have had with indigenous people. A good path, or a good way. It is what we are meant to be looking for in our lives. And most often that good path has to do with good or right relationships – with the Creator, with the Earth and with other human beings.
Of course if we say this, we are also acknowledging that there is a not so good path. In much of what is being revealed about the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples since the first encounters between European traders and settlers and First Nations on Turtle Island more than 500 years ago we have seen more of this not so good path than the good one. The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission documents this quite clearly, especially in relation to the history of the Indian residential school system that forcibly removed indigenous children from their families and placed them in schools, most often at long distances from their homes. The objective of the schools was quite explicitly to “remove the Indian from the child”, a process of forced assimilation in which vulnerable children were made to abandon their language and culture and were open to all kinds of abuse. The churches were willingly coopted by the government to run the schools, including our own Presbyterian Church, and our Christian faith was made a tool of this oppression. I am always moved by the poignant lyrics of the last stanza of Bruce Cockburn’s song Red Brother/Red Sister
Went to a pow wow, red brother
Felt the people’s love/joy flow around
It left me crying just thinking about it
How they used my saviour’s name to keep you down
It was a long path. And not a good path. At many junctures along the way it was a path strewn with broken promises and broken relationships. And it is a path, in large part, on which we still walk. Some would say it was inevitable, simply about the progress of peoples and nations. But in fact it was about choices. At many points along the path, there were opportunities to take a different way, a better way, perhaps even a good way. Of course we always look back with 20/20 hindsight and perhaps it was not so clear to those who were making decisions what the good path might have been. Like in Robert Frost’s poem, it is not always easy to decide what is the best path to choose. But perhaps Frost’s experience of taking the road less travelled could have spoken to those decisions and perhaps has wisdom for us even now. As a country we are at another fork in this path. What will it mean for us to choose the good path?
I was struck as I reflected on the lectionary readings for this week how each of them poses choices for the way forward for the people and communities they are addressing. There is something of a crossroads, or perhaps a fork in the road, in each of the readings, where people had to decide the direction they would take. What was the good path that was beckoning them? What was the good path to which they were being called.
Last week we began reading from the book of Exodus in the Hebrew scriptures. A great deal of time had passed since Joseph had been sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. He had turned the story around as he rose to a position of great power and instituted a system of saving grain in the years of abundant harvest to be used in the years of drought and famine. He saved his family from starvation when famine decimated the land of Canaan and they came looking for food in Egypt. He brought his whole family to Egypt and they settled there and grew in number. In last week’s reading we heard how the Egyptians became afraid of these people who they considered to be foreigners in their land and enslaved them and began to take deadly measures to limit their population by killing all the male children who were born to them. We also heard though of how the midwives of the Hebrews, Shiphrah and Puah, were able to save many and how two other women, the mother and sister of Moses, were able to save him by endearing him to the daughter of the Pharaoh. We did not read the part of the story where Moses later kills an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave and fled into exile in the land of Midian.
That’s where we picked up the story today as Moses is tending the flock of his father-in-law near Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. He has lost his favoured position in Pharaoh’s court. He is not trusted by his own community of Hebrews because of his association with the Egyptians. And he is an exile and foreigner where he is. His path had taken him out to the wilderness and beyond and it seemed to have come to a dead end where he was, without hope. But in that moment he witnesses an amazing sight. He sees a bush that appears to be on fire, but it is not burned. And he hears a voice come out of the bush that calls him to a new and different path. First of all, he is to take off his shoes to acknowledge that this is sacred territory, and a sacred time. Although he thought he had left his people behind in Egypt and now had nothing to do with them, they had not been forgotten. The God of his ancestors, the God of his sacred story had not forgotten this people. This God had heard the cries of oppression and slavery and Moses is called to do something about it. He has lots of excuses of why not to choose this way – many more than what we read today. He is not adequate to the task. The people will not respond to him and to a God that they do not know. They will ask who is behind this who would enable them to challenge the greatest power of the day and to demand their freedom? Tell them, “I am who I am” has sent you. At least that is how it is usually translated. In fact a better translation from the Hebrew would seem to be, “I am becoming who I am becoming”. A God on the move, on the path, moving toward something. Moses is invited to join. To choose the path of this God whom his ancestors had known. Who hears the cries of the oppressed. Who is willing to challenge the most powerful and to put slaves on the path to dignity and freedom. Choose this path Moses.
In the reading from Paul’s letter to the followers of Jesus’ way in Rome, we continued from where we left off last week. How is it those who recognize God’s grace and forgiveness in the Christ are to live their lives? The “therefore” following the “since” of the previous chapters. Since God has redeemed us through grace, both Jews and Gentiles, and has brought us to new life in Christ, therefore we should give ourselves as an offering to God. We should choose to live our lives as the body of Christ. Each member should recognize the value of the other and live with mutual respect. Each should use their gift for the good of all. A different path from what we usually think. Not looking out only for number one but being concerned for all. And then this week the path becomes even less travelled. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” It’s a very grassy path. And it has some pitfalls, for sure. But Paul is saying that if we are to respond to God’s love and grace given to us with all of our faults and failings, we need to be willing to also go down that path of love and grace with all those we meet in our lives, both friend and foe.
He is of course following on Jesus’ own teaching. We reached a critical juncture in Matthew’s gospel today also. Another fork in the road. After Peter’s bold confession at Caesarea Phillipi, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, he gets into some problems. Jesus tells the disciples that being the Messiah means he will have to suffer when he confronts the powers that be. For Peter, that wasn’t part of the bargain. They were going to march into Jerusalem and God’s reign would begin. That was who the Messiah was. But Jesus tells the rock of the church that he needs to think again. Anyone who wants to follow on the path that Jesus is on must also be willing to look at a cross, must also be willing to take the consequences of proclaiming that the reign of God is not like the reign of human beings. In order to gain life, you must be willing to lose it. In order to lead, you must be willing to serve. This is the turning point in the gospel, the choice that needs to be made. Jesus is turning toward Jerusalem, toward the confrontation that is to come and the suffering that will result. And also, paradoxically, toward the new life that will emerge from it. He calls his disciples to follow him on this path.
As we try to discern the good path we need to follow in our own time, there is some wisdom to be gained here in these ancient writings. Finding the good path is never easy. We must make some decisions and we must often follow a way that is different from the usual. When “the God who is becoming” calls us to hear the cries of those who are enslaved and oppressed it will demand our attention, our listening and our action. It will demand walking with those who are suffering because of those who abuse power even when we do not feel adequate to the task. When we understand ourselves to be part of the body of Christ and we are tempted to give back to those we call our enemies what they have given to us, we need to stop and to look at a different way. To bless them, to give them food, to give them something to drink, to do good to them. To follow a path that will be surprising to all. To be transformed and transforming in a world spiralling downward in enmity, hatred and fear. And finally, to follow in the way of the cross. Not words that are welcome in our world. We do everything we can to avoid conflict and suffering. But if we are to follow in the way of Jesus, if we are going to talk about and live out a different way of being, a different kind of relationship, a different way of living that responds to God’s love and grace in our lives, then we should expect some resistance. It will not be an easy path or one about which we are always certain. But it is a good path, a good way on which we will be joined by the likes of Moses and Puah, Paul and Mary, Peter and many unnamed disciples, and then some people we may never have expected to find there in whose faces we may just catch a glimpse of the Messiah walking toward Jerusalem. Thanks be to God.
