A couple of years ago, Rose and I made popcorn and settled down on the living room couch to watch a marvelous movie called “The Way” starring Martin Sheen and his real-life son Emilio Estevez. Martin Sheen plays Tom Avery, an irascible American doctor who comes to France to collect the remains of his adult son (played by Estevez) who was killed during a storm in northern Spain while undertaking a 500-mile spiritual pilgrimage called The Camino de Santiago. Also known as “The Way of Saint James,” The Camino is a journey which Christians have been making for hundreds of years. However, once he gets there, rather than return home, Tom decides to embark on the religious pilgrimage HIMSELF to honor his son's desire to finish the journey. What Tom DOESN'T plan on is the profound impact the journey will eventually have on his life. 

Now when Tom starts out, he's withdrawn, solitary, and angry. He's a widower who had lost his wife and now he’s lost his only son- he feels so alone in the world. But while walking the Camino, Tom meets others from around the world, all looking for greater meaning in their lives. Reluctantly, he falls in with three other pilgrims: Joost, an overweight man from Amsterdam who says he is walking the route to lose weight to get ready for his brother's wedding and so that his wife will desire him again; Sarah, a Canadian fleeing an abusive husband who says she is walking the pilgrimage to quit smoking; and Jack, an Irish travel writer who when he was younger had dreams of becoming the next Yeats or Joyce but never wrote the novel he dreamt of because he suffers from "writer's block." From their unexpected and, oftentimes, amusing experiences along "The Way," this unlikely quartet of misfits creates an everlasting bond through which Tom begins to learn what it means to be ALIVE again.

Emilio Estevez, who wrote and directed the movie, had this to say about Tom Avery, his father’s character:

He's lived a very, very isolated life. He's an ophthalmologist, but he doesn't serve the Community- he belongs instead to the country club. But that's his evolution — and like all pilgrimages, you start off with a lot of things you think you'll need along the way. And as you begin to go along for a few days, you start getting rid of some of the stuff. You realize you've overpacked and you don't need it. And as you go on, you begin the inner journey, the transcendence. You begin to listen to the inner voice, and you begin to open up the cells where you've kept all of your hidden secrets in the darkness. You start letting go of your judgment, your envy, your anger, all the people who have wronged you all the years of your life and who are locked up in the dungeons of your heart.

While the film depicts a religious pilgrimage, Estevez considered it a SPIRITUAL film rather than a religious film. Calling his personal views on religion "a mystery," he said, "I have yet to declare myself, but I think the film is a reflection of where I'm at in my spiritual life, which is I'm on a path. We didn't want to assault the audience with religion. It's a spiritual journey.” “Unfortunately,” added Estevez, “so often, religions, vis-à-vis dogma, separate us. But spirituality unites us in our common humanity, and that is, I think, the major theme of the movie."

I believe many of us can identify with Estevez when he says he’s on a path, a spiritual journey and he doesn’t know where it will lead or ultimately end up. I know I’ve always viewed my OWN life that way. When I look back over it, I can only think of it as a wild and wonderful odyssey filled with all manner of twists and turns and unexpected detours. Even TODAY, my life is filled with many more QUESTIONS than answers, but you know, I’m not really all that concerned. And though it hasn't been easy learning to walk by faith as the way is often fraught with all sorts of risks and insecurities, I’ve grown convinced that if we continue the journey with faith and love and hope in our hearts, if we see our lives as ultimately directed by Christ himself, God will take care of the rest- he PROMISES us that! He will see to it that we arrive at our destination safely WHEREVER that may be.

In the Book of Acts, we read that the title "The Way" was one of the first names given to describe the community of Jesus' disciples. The word "way" means "path" or "route" and that was how the Early Church thought of themselves- as a group of disciples accompanying Jesus on a journey, following the path He was leading them on. This was because Jesus had regarded his OWN life in much the same terms- as a great journey faithfully taking directions from his Heavenly Father. 

This is ESPECIALLY apparent in the gospel of Luke. For the first nine chapters, Jesus' ministry has been confined solely to the region of Galilee- the area directly to the north of Judea. Suddenly, Jesus now sets his sights away from Galilee and instead looks to Judea and its religious and spiritual center, Jerusalem. Again and again, Luke makes the point of emphasizing, "And Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem":

Beginning with verse 51 in chapter 9, we read, "When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him; but the people would not receive him, becausehis face was set toward Jerusalem." 

In chapter 13, "He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem." 

In chapter 17, "On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee." 

In chapter 18, "And taking the twelve, he said to them, 'Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished.'" 

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem ONLY ONCE and that comes at the very end of his life- for the period of his Passion. His 32 years of ministry is the story of his journey to get to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city of destiny and the journey there entails humiliation and suffering and even death. Jesus must go to Jerusalem to DIE there.

It says "he set his face"- now there is more involved in this phrase than just making a simple choice or a decision. It implies fixedness of purpose, especially in the face of difficulty or danger. It is the same kind of determined commitment that Isaiah had when he said, "Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed." (Is.50:7) Jesus had steadfastly set his face to Jerusalem; he had fixed his purpose to go there; he would fulfill his Father's plan even though it could only end with his death. Thus, for Jesus, "setting his face to Jerusalem" meant preparing himself and his disciples for the ordeal that lay before him.

Well with Ash Wednesday, the church begins its OWN period of preparation- one which extends through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. On the Christian calendar, the time for laughing and dancing and being born is what ADVENT or CHRISTMAS is all about- the celebration over the birth of Jesus. The time for weeping and mourning and death, however, becomes for us the season of LENT- a period of preparation and training for the soul, a time for prayer and confession and dying to self, when spiritual disciplines are practiced for developing a deepened and more mature faith in God. Lent is the forty-day season of fasting that begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Easter eve. We’re told that after his baptism, Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry. Well that desert experience serves as a model for the church for what the LENTEN SEASON is all about.

With Ash Wednesday, Christians all over the world begin to "set THEIR faces to Jerusalem." During Lent, we make a personal pilgrimage marking those days with meditation, the confession of sins, fasting, and prayers. It is really the most significant season on the Christian calendar, more so than even CHRISTMAS, for it prepares us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually for the dramatic events of Holy Week, culminating with Easter Sunday. But the only way in which it can be said that we are genuinely “journeying with Jesus” is if we are also enjoined to the very same PURPOSE for which he HIMSELF was going there, which is… TO DIE WITH HIM. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian and martyr who lost his life in a failed bid to kill Hitler, once said that “when Christ calls someone, he bids him come and die.” Another time, he asked, "Who stands fast? Only the one whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the call of God.” What he was saying was that a Christian must be willing to make the cause of Christ and his kingdom more important than his own LIFE if he or she can ever be considered a TRUE follower or disciple of his- something MOST of us are honestly unwilling to do. WITHOUT commitment, our lives will lack real meaning and purpose. After all, if nothing is worth DYING for, then nothing is worth LIVING for. But WITH just such a commitment comes a knowledge and a maturity we could not experience otherwise. It is the same paradox spoken by Jesus when he bid persons to come to him and die that they might truly live.

Something I am discovering in my OWN travels with Christ is that as we step out in faith and undertake that journey with him, we begin to learn important lessons about ourselves and God we might never have learned otherwise, lessons that change us and gradually make us more like our Lord himself. As Tom Avery in “The Way” had to learn, as time goes on, an evolution begins to take place deep within us. We start off with a lot of things we think we’ll need along the way but as we proceed, we find ourselves having to get rid of more and more stuff which just weighs us down and becomes a heavy encumbrance rather than a help in reaching our goal. Journeying beside Jesus, we disclose ourselves to him in ways we might never have before, with an openness and honesty we could never trust ourselves to do, laying bare those places which we’ve tried to keep hidden- from him and even from OURSELVES. The more we do this, we discover that we unpack all the judgments and envy and fear and selfishness and pride and guilt and anger we’ve kept locked up inside us for so many years- weights which have slowed us down and impeded us from our destination.

However, let me be clear about this- when we DO arrive in Jerusalem, we must be willing to take up our OWN cross and be crucified upon it. We are NOT going there to be a SPECTATOR, to WITNESS FROM AFAR the events which occur to Christ. Rather, it is for the express purpose of JOINING him there, of dying WITH him that we undertake the journey in the FIRST PLACE. It is to agree with what the Apostle Paul said: "I no longer count my life as dear unto myself; I have abandoned my personal aspirations and ambitions; I have offered myself as a living sacrifice to Christ." Only until we have followed Christ all the way to Golgotha and had those nails driven into OUR hands and feet can it ever be said of US that WE are true disciples of Christ for there is no way we can follow Jesus to the holy city and still remain as we are. 

And we are to follow Jesus to Jerusalem, not just during the church’s season of Lent but to accompany him EVERY DAY OF OUR LIVES. We are to die with Christ by denying ourselves and letting his life reign in us 365 days of the year. Phillips Brooks, the great Episcopal preacher and author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” has a memorable passage in one of his sermons entitled "Going up to Jerusalem":

Every true life has its Jerusalem, to which it is always going up. At first far off and dimly seen, laying but light hold upon our purpose and our will, then gradually taking us more and more into its power, compelling our study, directing the current of our thoughts:...so every live man's Jerusalem, his sacred city, calls to him from the hill-top on which it stands...The man who is going up to NO Jerusalem is but the ghost and relic of a man...

Well Lent becomes for US that time for "setting our face to Jerusalem," to begin preparing our OWN hearts and minds for the drama of Holy Week. Only as the cross "lays hold upon our OWN purpose and will, taking us more and more into its power, compelling our study, directing the current of our OWN thoughts" will the truth and power of his resurrection seize our own imagination and lives. The empty tomb has meaning for us only if we have first followed Christ to the cross. If we never begin to prepare ourselves inwardly for Easter, if we fail to sense our own unworthiness in the light of Christ's sacrifice for us, then to our own shame, Easter will never signify any more than chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. Amen and amen.