The Thinking, Walking Bipded, part three. Jesus

In the past, great religious leaders did a lot of walking. More recently, they have preferred limousines and jets paid for by rich donors who think God wants them to do this. Mahatma Gandhi did a lot of walking. In 1944, a back country preacher named Guy Howard published his biography, Walkin’ Preacher of the Ozarks.

Jesus of Nazareth walked everywhere during his short ministry on Earth. He gave the impression of wandering aimlessly—at least, he did not explain his itinerary to his disciples. He wandered in the desert, and took his disciples north into Galilee, the country-bumpkin part of Israel where he was born. He briefly rode on a donkey, when he triumphally entered Jerusalem on his last Passover.

Can you imagine how different Jesus’ impact would have been on his listeners, and on history, if he had ridden around on a horse and preached down at the people, with his sword sticking out?

He certainly gave the impression of poor planning in his walks. He did not arrange for his disciples to have enough food for them to eat, and wouldn’t you know it, he was leading them right through Samaria. Samaria was the place with the remnants of the northern kingdom who worshipped in a way Jerusalem Jews considered unholy. Righteous Jews did not want to even be in Samaria, much less get caught there without food. The disciples went off to find food, leaving Jesus alone at a well.

We see now that Jesus had planned it this way all along. A woman came to the well to draw water. She noticed Jesus did not have a bucket and wondered if he would like a drink. He offered her living water, which confused her. He surprised her by telling her about her past: she had had a succession of lovers. It couldn’t get much worse for a righteous Jew—having a personal conversation with a Samaritan woman of loose morals. The disciples were not pleased. Long afterwards, Christians realized that Jesus was teaching them, and the Samaritans, something important about how God does not look down on certain cultures of people.

Jesus summarized his whole way of life as not just walking, but walking on narrow, difficult paths. It is on such paths that you learn about the world and about yourself. Can I, in fact, complete this path, and more, can I learn from it and enjoy it? “Enter in at the narrow gate,” he said. “For the way is narrow and the path difficult that leads to life, but the way to hell is smooth and wide.” I preached a sermon on this topic to a bunch of Boy Scouts about 1969, when I was a scout myself. We were camping and hiking in the lower Sierra Nevada mountains.

As a botanist who walks nearly every day, I can tell you that the easy roads are mostly bordered by weeds; to find the beautiful wildflowers, you need to hike the narrow trails.