Photo: St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury
West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.
This is how Jack Burden, the corrupted idealist in Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men, described his predicament as he drove to California in an existential fever-dream with his life imploding around him. These lines were constantly on my mind last summer as I made my own journey West under much happier circumstances.
Setting out on a journey into an unknown future is complicated. There are things we hope to find up ahead, and things we hope to leave behind, and things we’re just not sure about. This is the tricky problem when we hear stories of call - and stories of sending like last Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew 9. We would like them to follow what we in modern society think of as the default path of time: an upward trajectory of success, the moving staircase of progress and human history. It's easy to think of answering God’s call to us in terms of a forward springing into action. And last Sunday’s Gospel might suggest this: “Go proclaim the Good News,” Jesus says, and they do it. “Don’t plan ahead, don’t pack a bag, just go!” It’s a story of a heroic level of faith and trust.
Our paths aren’t quite so straightforward, and indeed we don’t know what was going through the disciples’ heads when they heard Jesus’ words either. We know what they did in the end, but we don’t know if they had second thoughts they kept to themselves. We don’t know if they were wondering where they would find the courage to start.
If Jesus was sending me out on an unknown, perilous journey, I suspect I might have a reaction more like that of St. Augustine of Canterbury, the first Archbishop of Canterbury sent by Pope Gregory I in 595 AD on a mission to Britain. Daunted by the magnitude of the task and the fierce reputation of the Anglo-Saxons, Augustine and his companions turned around in Gaul and tried to return to Rome. The Pope urged them onward with letters of encouragement, and the eventual mission was a success.
Much more often that not, those who dare great things for God would not have dared much of anything without the support of their community, and without the gift of the Holy Spirit. With God’s help, we can step out on our own journeys of witness, knowing that God is with us each step of the way – and knowing that we aren’t alone.
Yours in Christ,
Kara+