The “Bon Voyage” Moment

 

And Jesus said to them, “Follow me . . .”

(Mark 1:17a)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 15, 2007

Volume 2 Number 3

 

 

My subject this morning is very simple.  I offer no complexities for you to contemplate, no intricate mysteries deeply to ponder, nothing profound at all.  Not that I think such to be inappropriate or unhealthy for one’s spiritual life.  I think it important to lead the congregation to an appreciation for the mystery of faith, a mystery better contained in sacrament and symbol than explained from the pulpit. 

 

This morning, though, I take aim at an essential component of your faith, a concept so simple that the smallest child can clutch it, understanding clearly what is meant, as clearly as when their own parents say, “Come here to me.”  This simple core of faith is discovered in Jesus’ call to the fisher of Galilee, Follow me.  The Christian faith is really that simple. 

 

The word follow invites us to response, and that response initiates a journey.  The question I want us to think about this morning is, at what point did that journey begin?  What was the Alpha point?  When people begin an exciting journey those who love them often gather in celebration to wish them well, to call out, “Bon Voyage!”  Bon Voyage means more than “Good-bye.”  It possesses a decidedly more excited quality.  It says with enthusiasm, “We are excited for you.  Have a great trip!”   It is likely that, when you embarked on your journey of faith, there were those – family and friends, perhaps an entire church – who, witnessing your commitment to join them in following Jesus, said “Bon Voyage!” with their excited affirmation of your decision. 

 

Here is the Christian life at its most basic level . . . one hears a call, and sets out to follow.  Whether or not one is ever inclined to engage the intellectuals of the faith, or to involve themselves in debate over the doctrines of orthodoxy, or to dive into the mysteries, or to meditate one’s way to a spiritual ecstasy – it matters not.  The essential core of what it means to be a Christian is in no way diminished by the lack of these things.  One is determined to follow, and it is enough.

 

Bishop William Willimon wrote,  “Christianity is not a set of beliefs (and) propositions.  It is a matter of discipleship, following.  Faith in Jesus is not about beliefs about Jesus.  It’s a willingness to follow Jesus.  The faith is in the following.  We make a mistake to turn this into some sort of mystery.  Jesus does not demand that we swallow a dozen philosophical absurdities in order to be with him.  He asked us to follow him . . . The faith is in the following.”

 

How inappropriate for preachers to seek to drive their congregations to such self-examination that conjures doubt about their relationship with God through Christ.  It may surprise some or even most of you whose faith has been worked out in a mainline denomination, that it’s not uncommon in the fundamentalist milieu in which my preaching began to be in church services where it seemed the preacher’s theme was on the order of “five reasons you’re probably not a Christian even though you thought you were one when you dressed to come to church this morning.”  Years ago I might have been that preacher, feeling called to probe the people’s faith, to have them test its validity against the standards of my views of orthodoxy, my opinions as to its standards of doctrine and morality.  Often my preaching gave rise to tormenting thoughts on the order of, “Am I really, truly a Christian?   Today I feel something like I’ve not felt before.  Perhaps I was never really a Christian at all.  I’ve been in church all my life but perhaps this sermon, this day, is the true ‘Bon Voyage’ moment of my journey.  Nothing before this day matters.”

 

I wonder if some (I was one in the early years of my walk with Christ) have a tendency to confuse each new adventure along the Way with a new embarking on the journey, a new “Bon Voyage” moment?  “Wow! I’ve learned something new today.  I was growing tired in my walk, feelings of guilt emerging . . . but today I feel refreshed spiritually.  Perhaps, before today, I just thought I was on the journey.  Perhaps I was on the wrong path all along.  Now, at last, I think I am on the right path, I think I’ve finally commenced the journey.” 

 

It’s possible, in one’s walk with Christ, to happen upon something so fresh, so exciting, that one begins to question the authenticity of what one had before.  This is why I think that many, if not most, adult professions of faith made by individuals who are church members might better be described as re-dedications of one’s life.  I strongly suspect that, in most of these cases, they are merely confusing a new and exciting spot on the journey with the commencing of the journey itself.  I’ve known some in my ministry, especially when I stood in the pulpit of a fundamentalist denomination, who, at several junctures along the way, have doubted their previous commitment to Christ and started all over, in effect piling up a number of “Bon Voyage” moments. 

 

But is the “Bon Voyage” moment really that important?  Perhaps you’ve been present in a church service or a gathering of Christians where the question was asked, “When did you become a Christian?”  Some people can share dramatic accounts of how they were converted to the Christian faith.  Some recall soul-stirring moments when their lives were dramatically interrupted by an infusion of the grace of God, a crystal clear moment when they decided to follow Jesus, a Damascus Road sort of experience where, like Paul, conversion is dramatic and could not possibly be confused with re-dedication.  I’m certain God still calls people to himself in that way.  But that’s not most of us!

 

In one such, “When did you become a Christian?” meeting, one man, after hearing several accounts of those who could pinpoint the very moment, the very preacher, the stanza of the hymn during the invitation, said a bit hesitantly, “You know, I can’t remember when I wasn’t a Christian.  I’ve been a Christian from my earliest childhood, from the very first.”

 

My guess is that most in this sanctuary hear that with a nod of understanding and assent.  We are Methodists, after all – with the Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians, mainliners and moderates.  This is one of our distinctives and such language suits us fine.  Yet others, with more fundamentalist influences in their experience, would hear those words with a rather large dose of skepticism, reasoning,  “No, no one can forget that experience!  How can anyone be sure they are ‘saved’ unless there is a moment of drama in their lives, a moment that stands out as uniquely life-transforming?”  There was a time early in my ministry that I would have thought along those lines, questioning that man’s faith. 

 

When I arrived at Friendship Baptist Church in Clarendon 32 years ago in 1975, there was a sign as you crossed the White River.  Home of Dr. Margaret Moore Jacobs.  One of my church members reported to me that Dr. Jacobs, a Presbyterian as I recall, had made a similar comment to her.  “I’ve been a Christian from my childhood, from the very first.”  I, at 21 years old the new fiery evangelist in town, was asked to pay her a visit.  I still recall my nervousness, standing on her porch overlooking the river, knocking at her door and being received with graciousness into the home of a uniquely gifted Christian woman.  (Mind you, I didn’t think so back then!  I was trying to give her an experience, a Bon Voyage moment!  “You say you can’t recall such a transformation?  Let me help you find one!”)  She, much further along the journey of walking with Christ than I, instead taught me a lesson or two (though it took me years to learn it).  Are we to assume that the only way God saves is through a tearful revival experience, at the altar at the end of the aisle which one has courageously left their pew to walk?   I began to learn, however gradually, that the circumstances in which we embark on the journey are inconsequential and unimportant.  The crucial matter is that we are on the Way.

 

Growing up in church, I committed myself to be a follower of Christ at any number of junctures along the way through grade school, junior high, high school, and college.  I imagine I saw half a dozen Billy Graham films, making professions of faith after each.  When the statistics of people “saved” through that wonderful man’s ministry are related, I am about six of those people!  And I’m hardly alone among those having multiple professions of faith.  A bit older, now a teenager, I recall at least two James Robinson crusades and one Angel Martinez crusade at Southside Baptist Church -- walking the aisle and being ushered into a side room, learning and praying “the sinner’s prayer.”  In one of those crusades I was incredibly impacted – not so much, as I recall, by the preaching, but rather by a contemporary Christian group of musicians singing (I won’t offend you by singing – the words will, I think, suffice) “This is the very first day of the rest of your entire life.  So forget the past, what’s done is done, a brand new day has now begun.  The very best is yet to come.  Don’t delay.  Well start today. Throw away the memories of yesterday.  You’ve been given a brand new beginning, so tell me why on earth don’t you start living, today.” 

 

That was in high school, and I was impacted enough to spread the word as much as I could.  For about two weeks.  It wore off, too, and while a sophomore in college at Jonesboro I had an experience in my faith journey that jolted me harder than all the others and led me into the baptistry for the last time.  For many years, when in those “When you did become a Christian?” conversations, I would have dated the Bon Voyage of my Christian experience, that brand new beginning, the first true embarking on the journey, to my sophomore year in college.

 

I’ve long since come to think differently.  Though I’ve a number of potential Bon Voyage moments from which to choose, I would speak today like Dr. Margaret Moore Jacobs.  “You ask me about the ‘Bon Voyage’ moment of my faith?  I don’t know.  I’ve had many, many places along the way where my faith was renewed, invigorated, fortified, moments in which my faith took on new and exciting dimensions.  But if you ask me when the ‘Bon Voyage’ moment occurred, when I commenced the journey, it’s so far in the misty past of my journey with Christ that I have no remembrance.  I can’t remember when I wasn’t a Christian.  But the important thing is not the way I embarked on the journey.  That is inconsequential and unimportant.  The crucial matter is that, today, I am on the Way.  I’m trying, however imperfectly, to be a follower of Jesus, and that the core of faith.”

 

In our theological culture of fundamentalism, one with spiritual sensibilities can be made to torture themselves when their experience doesn’t measure up to being as dramatic as another’s.  Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to this approach.  As a Methodist pastor, a Mainline denomination where children are brought up to be on the Way from baptism to confirmation and beyond, I’ve not seldom been called by a youth or parents of a youth after the evangelist has come to town, perhaps at the high school or a friend’s church.  The conversation goes like this.  “Rev. Johnson, my child walked the aisle in a revival service last week.  He/She has grown up in church and loved the church, but has never had an experience where they remembered so dramatically giving their life to Christ as their friend had done.  He/She felt they needed to respond, that their Christian walk was somehow lacking this element of a dramatic encounter, lacking this altar call to an emotional public affirmation of repentance and faith.”  

 

I hope you won’t torture yourselves by confusing stirring religious experiences with the ‘Bon Voyage’ moment of faith.  When Jesus called these disciples, it was a simple act of responding to his call and walking with him.  They would all have many more profound and stirring religious experiences over the course of their lives, but the Bon Voyage of their faith was in that simple act of Following Jesus.  No organ music.  No piano softly playing.  No singing Just as I Am twice through.  No urgent calls to flee from the wrath of God.  Just individuals who, in the ordinariness of their daily life, made a commitment to Christ.  No, their commitment would not always hold.  Yes, they stumbled at times.  Failed at times.  Dishonored their Lord at times.  But they were on the Way.  And the faith is in the following.

 

Let us stand and sing a beautiful hymn of commitment, “Lord, you have come to the lakeshore.”  May we all hear, and follow.  Amen.

 

 

 

Sources and notes:

William Willimon, “Christianity: Following Jesus,” in Pulpit Resource, Volume 28, Number 4, an excellent sermon helping me form my owbn thoughts for “The ‘Bon Voyage’ Moment.”