Baskets at the Crossroads

 

The wilderness and the dry ground shall be glad,

The desert shall rejoice and blossom . . .

Waters shall break forth in the wilderness,

And streams in the desert . . .

 

A highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Holy Way . . .

and the ransomed of the LORD shall return,

and come to Zion with singing.

(Isaiah 35:1a, 6b, 8a, 10a)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2007

Volume 2, Number 22

 

 As one stands on the Mount of Olives and looks west across a small valley called Kidron, one sees Jerusalem, the City of David, Zion.   Turning around at the very spot to look east, Jerusalem now to your back, your eyes clearly pick up the red tint of the Judean Wilderness, a nearly 4,000 feet drop in a mere 20 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho and the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the earth.   The highway from Jerusalem to Jericho (“On the Jericho road” the song says, “there’s room for just two”) snakes it way through that wilderness and can be, even today, quite an adventure.  Jesus tells a story of “a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho” who falls into the hands of robbers, is beaten and left for dead.   The story’s particulars accent the barrenness of the Judean Wilderness as Jesus paints a situation of vivid hopelessness. 

 

Yet, Isaiah’s words are filled with hope, envisioning that wilderness blossoming with life, water breaking forth to create streams in the desert, which literally happens in the rainy seasons, the potential torrents of water rushing toward the Sea are quickly reduced to streams in the desert. 

 

The desert thus tamed, Isaiah tells of a highway -- “a highway shall be there” -- upon which the “ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing.”  On my trips to the Holy Land, as we returned from our trips to the desert, to Jericho and the Dead Sea and Masada, we often found ourselves singing along that highway as we approached the Holy City. 

 

A highway shall be there.   I’ve lived with these five words this week, pondering the highways cutting through the Judean Wilderness toward Jerusalem.  What was it like in biblical times, this life on the highway?  In our most recent century, rapid advances in the technology of transportation altered forever our concept of life on the highway.  Since President Eisenhower began the Interstate System of Highways in the 1950’s that system has grown to nearly 50,000 miles, and with it the entire culture of the traveler has been drastically changed. 

 

A freeway, you see, is destination-oriented, while a highway is more oriented toward experiences along the road, more receptive of the unexpected.  Charles Kuralt, who passed away in 1997, helped preserve America’s love of the highway.  His unique brand of journalism took him on the road, about 1,000,000 miles of road, in his series “Life on the Road.”  Kuralt delighted in gathering up the stories which were to be found, not on the interstate highways driving at top speeds, but by slowing down and stopping at America’s intersections.  He didn’t travel the freeways, but the highways, those twisting two-laners leading under the flashing yellow lights of small town America, the very intersections where one hears the stories that define not only our American culture, but especially local history and customs.

 

A freeway takes you from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.  Detours and side roads are unwelcome.  A freeway finds its most satisfying experience at the point of destination.  The freeway itself is not meant to be a part of the experience.  When a freeway does become part of the experience, it’s usually because you’re stuck.  With controlled access, one enters a freeway at a designated entrance and gets off at a pre-planned exit, with little between but a certain sameness constructed with one goal in mind, to shuttle you to your destination as fast as possible. In a very real sense, life doesn’t happen on the freeway, but is rather suspended in limbo until you arrive at your destination, where life can be fully re-engaged.

 

A highway, on the other hand, is not so much destination-oriented as it is experience-oriented, more welcoming of the unexpected.  The highway doesn’t so much shuttle us to our next experience, as it becomes an experience in itself.  Sameness doesn’t figure into the equation.  You don’t expect a Cracker Barrel at each major city, flanked by a McDonalds and a Subway, all within a pitching wedge of a Comfort Inn.  On the highway the scenery is always shifting.  Distractions are welcomed, inviting the sojourner to pull off the road into small communities, to meander in a town’s Main Street shops, to refresh oneself in local bakeries and restaurants without an overbearing concern for time, perhaps even to relax while gaining a bit of local knowledge in city and county museums.  The message of the highway can be, “Take your time.  Linger a while.”  The pace is slower.  Who knows?  You may just find a local version of Mayberry, complete with its own Andy and Oppie, Aunt Bea and Barney Fife. 

 

Not so the freeway, where the risk of encountering others at the crossroads is intentionally reduced to virtually nil.  Freeways are for efficient, streamlined travel.  It’s controlled access. You can’t pull your car onto a freeway at any spot along the road.  So, for those on the freeway, crossroads are removed — lifted over, tunneled under, or just blocked off altogether.  Crossroads won’t touch the freeway traveler, which makes for great speed.

 

Doesn’t make for great stories, though, because crossroads, the places where people meet, are the places from which stories emerge. 

 

My title this morning, “Baskets at the Crossroads,” is taken from an essay of the same name by Nouk Bassomb, who tells of a ritual marking the rite of passage for thirteen year old boys among the African Bassa people.  It begins with a surprise visit at five in the morning from nine elders of the tribe.  “It’s time for you to depart, boy.  Go!  Now!”   His father says, “Come, boy. Wake up.  The time has come for you to follow the path of men.”

 

In a ritual enactment known to the entire tribe, the young man’s mother will run after the boy, but the elders of the village hold her back from hugging or even touching the child.  As the boy crosses the border of the village, the last thing he hears is his mother shouting the time-honored ritual, “Don’t forget to put your baskets at the crossroads.  And check them often.” 

 

The boy has been taught about the crossroads.  His months long initiation under the nine elders has instructed him.  “When you walk on a path going north, you will only meet people coming from the north.   At the crossroads, you’ll meet people coming from the east, and from the west.  Do you understand?”  The boy learns that it is by respecting the crossroads of life that we learn kindness, love, respect for elders, protection of children, compassion for the weak.  Being generous, compassionate, humble, hospitable — these things fill the empty baskets of emerging humanity.  “Put your empty baskets at the crossroads and check them often” is mother’s way of saying — the village’s way of saying — “you will become an adult at the intersections of human relationships along the path.  Fill your baskets with stories, teachings, experiences, wisdom.  And if you do, there will be a lot to talk about when you finally get home.”

 

This philosophy of living, the placing of empty baskets at the crossroads, fills our baskets with serendipitous stories.  It is these crossroads of life which have a unique ability to reveal who we are, and to shape what we are becoming. 

 

I mentioned Andy and Aunt Bea.  One of the classic episodes played on that theme, opening with a traveler’s car breaking down in Mayberry.  Malcolm Tucker was a busy man, a man whose destination was the larger North Carolina town of Raleigh.  He had business there, business that couldn’t wait.  He needed immediate car repair, but that was not going to happen in Mayberry.  Not on a Sunday.  Malcolm Tucker would have to wait.  The stressed out man couldn’t believe his misfortune, couldn’t believe the inconvenience, the ineptness of this small town that could, but wouldn’t, fix his car until Monday.  Oh, to be sure, there was plenty of hospitality offered by Mayberry.  But it was rapid efficiency Malcolm sought.  Not hospitality.

 

It was delightful watching Malcolm’s stress and frustration build, disgusted with Andy’s patient responses to his own impatience.  Andy passed the time on the front porch talking, delicately peeling an apple, making a contest of something so simple, trying to peel the entire apple with one twirling path of the knife.  Gradually Malcolm’s impatience melted away as he learned that his destination wasn’t as important as he might have imagined.  A bit grudgingly he learned that if he put out his empty basket at this unexpected and unwanted Crossroad, that basket would be filled with meaning and joy.  Peeling his own apple with one swirl became his delight, something you can’t do when you’re in a hurry.

 

Perhaps, to peel Isaiah’s words in a different swirl than he originally intended, Isaiah is teaching the same lesson which Malcolm learned, that the places we dread as deserts of human experience can blossom abundantly, waters can break forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert.

 

The Christmas story is filled with many crossroads . . . the Roman Empire, King Herod, the Angels, the Shepherds.  The Magi traveled the longest distance, all the way from the Orient.  These crossroads of biblical narrative have given us the stories by which our faith is passed down from generation to generation.  By them we are instructed which crossroads to avoid, those holding potential danger, and which are to be engaged.  

 

When we learn to see at the Crossroads what others refuse to see, we will discover what others miss, filling our baskets with generous provisions of human stories.  There is an old Hasidic saying, “God created man because he loves stories.”  Yes, I think so.  Even God sought the stories which emerge at the Crossroads.  And perhaps Christmas is about the grandest Crossroad of them all, when the Word because flesh, when divinity and humanity crossed in Bethlehem.  From that manger has come the greatest story of all. 

 

This Advent season, let us rejoice to return to that Crossroad, there to place our empty baskets, checking them often.

 

Sources:

“Baskets at the Crossroads,” an essay by Nouk Bassomb in PARABOLA (Fall 1993, Crossroads).