The great 20th-century fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin, in her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, writes, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it’s the journey that matters in the end.”
Le Guin wrote these words in the 1960s, and in the years since, this perspective has only become more popular in certain circles, one that celebrates process as much as results. We often speak of faith as a journey, recognizing how it changes and grows over time—and even life itself. But it’s so potent an image, in fact, that you may have noticed it is a popular device in marketing circles, with advertisers eager to invite potential consumers on various journeys that their products are designed to help them with. Just this week, I believe I was encouraged in my “wellness journey”, my “meal-prep journey”, my “home-improvement journey”, and my “pet dental care journey”. Don’t ask.
But of course, “journey” is not a new concept. In fact, it is among the oldest and well-worn cultural motifs we have—from Homer to Gilgamesh to Abraham. It’s often said in literary circles that there are really only two stories: “a person goes on a journey” and “a stranger comes to town.” There’s even a circularity to these two stories, because the stranger who comes to town is often on his own journey. And it so happens that this is precisely the story we tell and retell and in so many ways reenact on this Palm Sunday.
I.
After making his way through the Galilee, preaching and teaching, healing the sick, casting out demons, welcoming others around tables, and modeling something of the Kingdom of God he says is at hand, Jesus now stands on the edge of the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem and the place where this journey will end.
It’s a story we know well, and it makes for quite a scene.there at the center, riding, famously, not a mighty steed of war, but a donkey—harkening back to the prophet Zechariah, writing some 500 years before, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey.” He makes his way to find a large crowd has assembled lining the streets, and they begin waving branches from the trees and laying their cloaks on the ground before him and shouting, “Hosanna,” and “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”—all signs and symbols from the history of Israel of how to welcome a triumphant king.
It was a celebration brimming with hope that soon things would be different. That somehow this “stranger come to town,” who was known to heal the sick, and was rumored to have raised the dead, and who told stories about mustard seeds and lost coins and treasure hidden in a field, and a world that would soon be turned upside down, would somehow be the one to make all things new.
And they were right. In the days to come, God, through Jesus, would make all things new. But not in the way they expected. Christ came as a different kind of king, bringing a different kind of kingdom. The donkey was no mere prop to feign humility. It was borrowed, and I like to think later that day, when they returned to Bethany, one of the disciples took it back to its owner, in gratitude. To us, looking back now, this all seems so clear, and of course, it will get even clearer as the week goes on. Yet as the opposition grows, he is betrayed, handed over, silenced. The people turn. This is not what they thought it would be.
But I wonder as we sit here some 2,000 years later, knowing where this journey will lead and how this story will end, what would it mean for us as we enter this Holy Week, to keep our gaze from lifting to look too far down the road and instead do our best to walk those final steps with Jesus, not knowing where they would lead?
If Easter brunch were not already on our calendars and all we knew were the darkness of Good Friday and the pained silence of the Saturday in between, are we prepared to ask ourselves whether Jesus is the savior we are expecting? Would we follow the Jesus of Holy Week if we didn’t know the Christ of Easter morning? Is it truly the journey that matters in the end?
Before he became the great humanitarian and doctor he’s known as today, Albert Schweitzer began his career as an accomplished biblical scholar. In those days, around the turn of the 20th century, what he called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” was coming into fashion. In a nutshell, this is the scholarly attempt to uncover what they called the “Jesus of history.” That is, to determine what we can know about Jesus from a purely historical perspective.believed that through critical research and archeology, it was possible to strip away all the theology and mysticism of faith recorded in the New Testament and, from what remained, create a rough sketch of who this Jesus of Nazareth really was.
Now, Schweitzer participated in this discussion, but was at the same time very suspicious of it. And the critique he offered, which virtually ended the so-called “Quest for the Historical Jesus” for the next 50 years, was this: He couldn’t help but notice that each scholar’s “sketch” of Jesus ended up looking remarkably like a self-portrait.
It seemed that as they pulled away these layers they found disagreeable, the Jesus they uncovered looked very much like themselves. To the philosopher, Jesus looked like a philosopher. To the critic of established religion, Jesus looked like a fellow critic. To the militant, he was a warrior; to the activist, Jesus always seemed to have a picket sign in his hand. Schweitzer said that trying to “recover” some pieced-together vision of Jesus in this way was like approaching a deep, dark well and seeing nothing more in the murky depths than your own reflection.
Now, before we join the crowds piling on the academics in their ivory towers, let me offer this question: What does your Jesus look like? How much does he look like you—or at least who you would associate with? Does he live in your neighborhood? Does he send his kids to the same school as your kids? Do you eat at the same restaurants and laugh at the same jokes? Does he go to the same church?!
The truth is, we all tend to recreate Jesus in our own image. To conservatives, Jesus is conservative, to liberals, he’s liberal, and to contrarians who resist those labels, well, Jesus of course would resist those labels too.
So what do we do? How do we get beyond this murky reflection? When the crowd that gathered outside of Bethphage to escort their Messiah into Jerusalem looked at Jesus, they saw the humble peasant-king who would somehow deliver them from the powers of Rome. They were not expecting the crucified martyr of Good Friday, and so when they saw him days later, they left and wondered what they had missed.
When you look at Jesus, what do you see? How does he measure up to the peasant-king of Palm Sunday? The loving servant of Maundy Thursday? Are you prepared to follow the betrayed, scandalized, and abandoned criminal of Good Friday?
We can’t in good faith deny the others and wait for the glorified Christ of Easter morning, because without the others, that Christ wouldn’t exist. It’s the journey that led him to that end.
III.
And I believe that remembering this is how we get past our own self-reflection. Not jumping from glory to glory, but paying close attention to every step Jesus took on his way to the cross, not just over this Holy Week, but throughout his life.
This is what Paul wants us to understand so badly in these verses from Philippians, we now know as “the Christ hymn.” We often think of these six verses as a kind of summary of Jesus’ life. But if we look closely, we see that they’re less a summary of what he did or accomplished in his life, and more a description of how he lived it.
“Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”
Look at what’s not there—nothing about his healings or miracles. No teachings, no parables, no baptism, no Lord’s Supper. The only events of his life mentioned here are those we will all experience: birth and death.
This hymn is a celebration of the way Jesus lived his life: with humility and obedience to God, animated by empathy and compassion—literally, “to suffer with.” Emptying himself completely on behalf of others. Which is not meant to be a kind of degrading of the self, but is of that same paradoxical, inverted, world-on-its-head truth of so much of Christ’s teachings: that the first will be last and the last first, to let go is to gain everything—true fulfillment is found only through emptying.
A mentor of mine, at every baby dedication, as he stood there with the parents and their precious child, would say the words every parent wants to be so but finds it hard to wish for our own children. He would say we pray that this child would have a good life, not an easy life. There’s such a difference. The life Jesus lived was not easy—far from it. But it was good, in the deepest, truest sense of the word. Jesus lived this way to the fullest, and in the end it would lead to his death—and that’s exactly where this description of Jesus’ life ends in verse 8: his death on the cross.
In many translations of the Bible, you may notice that there is an extended space after those words. A break, a pause. Even a silence, like the silence of the tomb. This is where Jesus’ life ends, in verse 8, on the cross. “After that, God takes over.”1 “Therefore,” it says, “God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” In other words, “because” Jesus lived this way, humble, in all goodness, to and for others, God raised him up.
It is so critical that we remember, as we enter this holiest of weeks, that resurrection was not the end Jesus chose for himself. The end Jesus chose was the cross; he would do nothing to stop it. Resurrection was the ending God chose. It was God’s response, God’s blessing on a life worthy of it. God’s eternal and abiding “yes,” in the face of the world’s violent and self-defeating “no.”
Do you hear this? The world would tell you that “the ends justify the means.” That it doesn’t matter who you discard or ignore along the way—lie, cheat, steal. I don’t know if this is the way to success in this world. What I do know, as deeply as I know anything, is that nothing could be further from the Christian gospel.
Nothing could be more foreign to the story we will retell and reenact in the week to come. This week, when we trace every step, savor every tender moment, and endure every hard truth. This is a week when we remind ourselves of the gospel truth that, in fact, the means justify the ends. The cross would mean nothing without the path Jesus took to get there.
And so the most important verse of this hymn is the one that comes just before it starts. Paul writes, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Let the same mind be in you.
This is our calling throughout our Christian lives, but potently so this Holy Week, as we walk with Jesus through those final days of his journey to the cross: to be of the same mind of Christ. Not for Christ to be of the same mind as us, but for us to be in the same mind as Christ. To pay attention not to the end in sight, but to every step along the way and how Jesus walked them. This is how we cut through our own reflection.
How will we make our way this week? Will we take the road that Jesus took? The road of peace, the road of humility, the road of self-emptying love on behalf of others? Would we follow Jesus through this week wherever it should lead without the blessed assurance of Easter morning, that we would truly know that, while it is good to have an end to journey toward, in the eyes of God and the mind of Christ, it truly is the journey that matters in the end.
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1 Barbara Brown Taylor, Philippians 2:5-11, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Lent Through Eastertide, p. 175