Sermons
August 16, 2026 (Proper 15)
“Broad is the road that leads to death…”[1]
Matthew 7:13-14
I’m sort of allergic to buzzwords. You know what I mean: words or phrases that become sort of trendy, and they get thrown around to the point that they lose all their meaning. Things like “throw them under the bus.” Or “in harm’s way,” which I know started out as sort of a cute way to describe someone being in a dangerous situation; but it’s just gotten out of hand now.
Or—and this one’s moment has maybe passed, but for awhile there it was common in school, in church, in job applications, you name it—“Journey.” Everything is a “journey”—education, career, you name it. When I have filled out search-and-call papers in the past, one of the questions I have had to answer has been, “Describe your faith journey and call to ministry.”
And while I’m seriously allergic to buzzwords, and “journey” has been severely overused, it’s actually a very appropriate word to use when talking about how we live as people of faith.
When Jesus talks about the two paths, one a six-lane freeway leading to destruction and the other a rutted, rocky, narrow path out in the wilderness, he is calling to mind images and language that were part of his Jewish faith. The Hebrew word is halakh, or “walk.” It can be used literally, as we might walk from our chair to the kitchen to get a snack; or it can be used figuratively to describe how we live our lives.
Look at the Psalm we just read responsively.
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers…
The Psalms are filled with language like this. We saw it when we read responsively Psalm 15 last week:
“O Lord, who may abide in your tent?
Who may dwell on your holy hill?
Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right…”
Psalm 119, the absolute crown jewel of Torah faithfulness, begins with, “Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.”
We see it throughout the Gospels, as well as in the epistles. In Romans 6:4 Paul says, “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” In 2 Corinthians 5:7 Paul reminds us that “we walk by faith, not by sight.” 1 John 1:5-6 reminds us that there is a way for others to recognize we belong to Jesus Christ: “…whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked.” It’s about what we do as followers of Jesus, how we walk the way of Christ.
There are other ways to talk about Christian discipleship, but this one is pretty compelling.
You know you can tell quite a lot about a person by the way they walk. Sometimes you can even recognize a person from far away just by their gait. A confident person will walk with their head high and a spring in their step. An insecure person might keep their head down and shoulders forward, as though trying to make themselves invisible.
When I went to Ireland 40 years ago I spent a fair amount of time walking around Dublin with a Jewish girl from New York City. She told me, “You walk like a New Yorker.” The closest I ever got to New York City was flying into and out of JFK on that trip.
You can tell if a person is in pain by their walk. I think, even if we can’t describe what it looks like, most of us know exactly what the backache walk feels like.
And when we walk, we’re oftentimes on some kind of path, whether it’s a wide one lots of people have taken, a narrow footpath that’s nearly overgrown, or a new trail we are blazing with our own footsteps.
If you’ve ever been on a college campus, you’ll know that there are sidewalks from one building to another; then there are the paths worn as students cut across the grass to save themselves some steps. One college I heard of years ago opted not to put in sidewalks immediately after completing a new library building. Instead, they just let students walk to and from the library and wear the paths that made sense to them, and then that’s where the sidewalks eventually went.
As Christians, we are not to create our own paths; we are to follow Jesus on what the church has for centuries called the “way of Christ,” or in Latin via Christi. I don’t think we need to assume it’s just going to be a long, hard, joyless slog, gritting our teeth and enduring misery for the sake of a reward in heaven. What kind of a life is that? It’s hardly what Jesus promised in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
“Abundant life” to me sounds like something extravagantly good, not a long commitment to drudgery in the hope of one day getting to heaven. But it’s also not an easy path, an easy life, necessarily.
United Methodist bishop William Willimon once told a story about his days as campus minister at Duke University.
The parents of one of his students came to see him one day, very upset. “She has told us that after graduation she plans to go and work with refugees in Turkey,” they said. “We are so afraid for her; how could she do this to us?”
Turned out that she had had quite a few long discussions with Dr. Willimon over the past few months, as she sought to figure out the ministry to which God was calling her. “She is following Christ in the way she believes he is asking her to follow,” he said. “Didn’t you have her baptized? Wasn’t she confirmed? You should be proud; you have raised a wonderful, thoughtful, compassionate, Christian young woman.”
“We would never have done any of that if we knew it would lead to this,” they said. “We just wanted her to be a good person!”
This young woman’s parents were, I think, like a lot of us who are Christian in a place where being a Christian is fairly easy. We see ourselves walking a broad, smooth path with our friends and kinfolk, being good people, working hard and playing by the rules, proclaiming that we’re followers of Jesus but rarely if ever being challenged.
Their daughter, on the other hand, had found Jesus leading her down a more difficult path, maybe a lonely path, maybe a dangerous path. But I daresay she would find that path the way to a much more abundant and joyful life.
Why?
Because Jesus walks that road with her.
[1] h/t to Dr. Watts.