The Well-Worn Path to God

How can I find God? For starters, I might nitpick the premise of that question. From the Garden of Eden to the birth of Jesus to God making his home among mortals in the Revelation to John, God is always seeking us and always finding us. The Prodigal Son was making his way back home, but the father ran up the road to meet him.

God will find us, but what is there for us to do? How can we see the road back home? How can we present ourselves to God? I heard a friend’s sermon recently, where she said that ritual is the well-worn path to God. There are many, many paths to God, but our rituals are reliable and as close to predictable as God will ever be.

This past Sunday, we heard about an ancient ritual that’s still going on. From the Book of Exodus, Jewish parents were commanded to present their first born son before the Lord and to make an offering of thanksgiving to God. February 2 is the Feast of the Presentation, forty days after Christmas. The Presentation is when Mary and Joseph took their first born and made offerings to God. This practice continues among Orthodox and Conservative (and some Reform) Jews today.

A well-worn path to God. Acknowledging that our children are a gift, making the offering, and giving thanks. A ritual. A well-worn path to God.

We have our own paths, some only once in our lives like baptism; others every week, like Eucharist. In baptism and Eucharist, we take the everyday, hum-drum elements of life: water, bread, the fruits of the earth – and we give thanks for them, we bless them, and we offer them to God. And when they are blessed Jesus says, “This is my body.” When they are offered, Jesus says, “This is the essence of who I am.” Jesus says, “wherever two or three are gathered, I am there.” A well-worn path to God.

The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of “running the race with perseverance.” But how will we know the route? That’s the very same scripture that reminds us “we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses.” The saints; the ones who’ve gone on before us; the ones we want to emulate: they created the well-worn path.

Now it’s our turn. How else will the path remain visible, unless we walk it? How else will our children and our neighbors see the path, unless we keep it worn with our prayers and with our actions? That’s our work.

But it’s not guilt or shame that encourages us in this work! It is the good news of the great love of God. When we have forgotten the path, when we have abandoned the way, when briars and brush grow over it and there seems to be no way through, the love of God will tromp through to the place we thought we might hide, to the place where we got lost. God, of his great love, will find us, every time.