Lest the People Perish
Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
October 18, 2009

Message: Lest the People Perish

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2009.

A traveler sets out.
A traveler sets out on a journey.
They start by packing –
an old, beat up bag – scuffed and worn,
but whole, no rips or tears.
A good strong bag,
and into they place a few essentials:
a map,
a few changes of clothes,
a good book or two,
for when one has to sit and wait,
as one always does while traveling.

Our traveler sets out shortly after dawn one morning.
The birds are singing.
The dew is on the grass,
water suspended for a moment before its fall into earth.

And the beginning of the journey is exciting.
It always is.
The traveler takes to the open road,
light-hearted.

After the first day of movement,
the traveler sleeps in a strange bed in a new town.
It’s exciting.
But the bed is a little lumpy,
and there are noises in the night,
different ones.
Our traveler wakes the next day
a little groggy –
we’re still excited for this adventure,
but you know how it goes.

As the traveler steps out onto the road,
she is joined by others –
folks on their way to work,
on their way to school,
on their way to the market.
It is crowded.

Someone bumps into the traveler.
Maybe some coffee gets spilled –
and she didn’t bring that many changes of clothes.
Maybe she gets bumped into the road –
she gets back on the sidewalk safely,
but it is frightening.

And she begins to lose confidence.
Begins to be watchful and cautious.
She gets, as the monk does, nervous.

But she’s in no hurry.
There is no reason to fight the traffic,
so she stops, sits down at a café,
at a table or under a tree,
drinks tea, waits.

When things calm down –
when she’s had a chance to recover her sanity,
she makes her way again.
Gets out of the city and back to the open road.

Hits the highway.
Makes good time.
Sleeps in strange beds,
sees new sights,
and keeps going.

Arrives at her destination.
Maybe it is a cave,
high up in a mountain,
where the hermit lives,
the wise one.

Maybe it is a monastery.
Maybe it is a modern university.
Maybe it is a new job.
Maybe it is the sacred river.
Maybe it is the mall.

She gets there –
there, where there are supposed to be answers,
and direction, and meaning,
and things that will make her happy.

And our traveler enters.

Time goes by –
minutes maybe,
before the hermit says,
I can’t help you.
Our maybe it is years of searching and waiting,
before she realizes
that this isn’t what she’s looking for.

This isn’t it.
She thought, somehow,
that arriving at this destination would change her life.
She thought that it would give her clarity,
that it would give her joy and hope and purpose.

But somehow,
everything seems still the same.

Over a meal, late one night,
she tells a friend or a mentor or the hermit,
I haven’t found what I was looking for.
I arrived at my destination,
but it didn’t seem to work.

And her friend says,
the way must be in you.
It’s not like getting reservations on a plane –
the way must be in you.
Transformation happens when transformation happens
within your very soul.

Without vision, the people perish.

That’s from the book of proverbs, in the Hebrew Bible:
without a vision, the people perish.

Without a vision, our traveler was perishing –
unable to find a way within or without.

And so our traveler left that place.
She packed first.
The same old trusted bag,
worn and scuffed,
but without tears or rips.
She packed a few books,
and a change of clothes.
A map.

And off she went.
New beds in new towns weren’t so rough this time.
She traveled the open road once more,
and it felt good.
Walking alongside a small glen of trees,
she saw a deer dart through the woods.
She stopped, looked.

Saw the leaves turning colors,
and thought about the cycles of life,
and the meaning of time,
and the fragility of everything.
And the same deer – or maybe it was another one,
its sister, maybe? – a deer bounded out of the woods,
across the path,
and into the wild grasses.
The traveler watched it go,
and she thought about energy and possibility,
strength and courage,
beauty.

And vision came unto her.
She saw what her life was for.
It wasn’t something in words –
it was that image of the bounding deer
against the backdrop of red and yellow leaves
and she couldn’t tell you what it meant,
but in her heart, it was clear.

And the way was in her.
She kept walking.
Arrived where she was going,
and began to transform herself.

She took more risks.
She bounded into the wild grasses.
Remembering the leaves,
she was compassionate and kind.
The way was in her.

Time went by.
Minutes maybe,
or perhaps years.
She’s walking down the street,
and gets bumped.
Maybe she spills her coffee,
or steps, momentarily but frighteningly,
into the street.
And she looses herself.

She goes to her job,
and forgets the deer and the leaves for the day.
She draws up loyalties,
to tribe or nation,
makes lines between the in and the out.
Strives for things.

She looses herself.
It takes minutes, maybe,
or years,
or something in between.

Time goes by.
And at mid-day,
sitting at a meal with a friend,
she confesses:
she can’t seem to stay the person she longs to be.
She cannot seem to resist the temptations and occupations of the system.

And her friend says,
it’s hard.
I have trouble too.
Let’s make a pact,
they agree:
they will resist together.
Come and go with me,
and we’ll be bound to each other.
There is a lovely tree, in a park near to the traveler’s house,
and they agree they will meet there,
and share their struggles,
and encourage each other.

They will resist together.

The friend remembers a quotation:
something from an old poet,
a sage:

that a person will worship something,
that which dominates out imaginations
and our thoughts will determine our lives,
that, what we are worshiping we are becoming,

They agree, they’ve believed in the wrong things,
or, rather, they’ve allowed their too-tentative commitments
to be overcome by the forces of materialism, violence, and division.
Some beliefs are like blinders, and some are like gateways,
and they make a decision to be clear about what they stand for.

They write it down.
Two copies, one for each of them.
I don’t know what they wrote, exactly –
but imagine it goes something like this:
We believe in the moral purpose of life
and the emerging kinship of humankind.
We stand for tolerance, reason, liberty,
individual responsibility, and the ethics of Jesus.

We believe in the quest for truth, the path of love,
the goal of character, the life of service,
and the inspiring fellowship of the church.

Something along those lines, anyway.
They get clear about what they are committed to.
And they get clear about what they value.
It’s not hard,
saying what matters:
friendship, love, peace, mercy, justice, truth.
Stuff like that.
These two friends know that the hard part is living it,
they know this all too well.
But they suspect that being clear about what they value
and what they care about
will make it easier to live they way they aspire to.
They know it will make it possible
for these two friends to hold each other accountable.
They covenant with each other:
we will live this way.

We will encourage each other.
We will say, hey, that’s not how we said we wanted to live.
They will resist the invasions and occupations
of the system of violence and despair which surrounds them.
They will be a community of resistance.

Without vision, the people perish –
that’s from proverbs, in the Hebrew Bible.
But not really.

See, the King James translation is without vision, the people perish.
It’s a lovely sentiment,
but the King James is notoriously inaccurate.

The New Revised Standard Version renders it this way:
without prophecy, the people are unrestrained.

Without prophecy, the people are unrestrained.

“Obviously one doesn’t continue to resist unless one has vision;
it’s ridiculous to think so.
If one only has politics to resist politics,
then everything goes!
If one has an ideology to resist an ideology,
everything goes.
What is required to resist . . . is vision, . . . a faith.”

The traveler and her friend write down their commitments,
they write down their values,
and the traveler draws on the page a mosaic:
the leaves turning color,
the deer bounding into the wild grasses,
a road winding through the countryside,
two friends sitting under a tree in the middle of the city.

They make a pledge to each other:
We shall help one another live the lives we aspire to.

“When our hunger and our passion meet to call us on our way
Then our promise finds fulfillment
and our future can begin.”

They go on with their lives.
But things are new.
Time goes by.
Minutes, maybe, or perhaps years.
And, of course, each makes mistakes.
Each finds themselves, from time to time,
living short of their mutual vow.
But they gather regularly,
and encourage each other,
and they do better.

They resist the “headlong tumble into the next moment”,
they pay attention,
they “live like they like themselves”
and stay strong and free.

Some days the system is hard on their lives,
and they feel beat down.
But they get up again,
and love each other,
and keep at it.

And life is better.

These things help:
the values and the commitments,
the vision,
the vow they took, which is a kind of mission for their lives,
the covenant to help each other live that mission.
These things help,
but both friends are deeply aware
that all these things depend on a spirit between them,
a spirit of love and hope.
A kind of mystery.

But that spirit lives within them, and between them,
and in parks and bounding deer and wild grasses,
and so they keep on keeping on.
And life is better.

Time goes by.
Minutes, maybe, but we pray it be years.

And the time comes for the traveler to pack her bag once more.
Only a few things. No map this time.
And she departs for the next great adventure,
the one beyond the veil.

Remembering her, her friends, her family, those who knew her say this:
she lived her life well.
She set out on a journey,
and eventually realized that the way was within her.
She heard the tune and sang the words:
come and go with me.

She was diverted from her path for a time,
but she found her center,
and she entered into deep relationship.
She was assured of the fire that burns within.
She loved and she cared and she walked her talk.
She knew what mattered to her.
She wasn’t perfect, of course,
no one is.
She kept a good sense of humor about her,
and that helped a lot.

At the service,
her old friend stood,
or maybe it was her son,
or her god-daughter,
someone who knew her,
they stood,
and said something like this:

I pray for each of us, for each of you,
everyone gathered here today,
that we may learn from the life of this traveler:
that we may learn to say,
this is what I hold true,
and that our beliefs are expansive and pliable,
but strong, too:
like the tree that bends in the wind,
rather than snap with a sharp gust.
I pray that our values be clear and wise,
that we value those things which really matter,
ancient and worthy things
like truth and beauty, wisdom and caring,
that we value the justice which sings in the heart.
I pray that, like the traveler,
we have a vision –
for without it, we will perish.
without it, we cannot resist.
A vision, a vow, a covenant.

I pray that we walk thought this world with a friend,
someone who holds us to account,
who loves us into our best selves,
someone to laugh and cry with us
until it comes time to pack our bags
and travel, once more, the open road.
Amen and Blessed Be.