Wandering

“I went walking, through streets paved with gold.

Lifted some stones, saw the skin and bones

of a city without a soul…

I went drifting, through the capitals of tin.

Where men can’t walk or freely talk

And son’s turn their fathers in…

I stopped outside a church house, where the citizens like to sit.

They say they “want the kingdom,”

but they don’t want God in it…

I went out walking down that winding road,

where no one’s trusting no one

and conscience a too heavy load…

Yeah, I left with nothing,

but the thought you’d be there too

Looking for you.

Yeah, I left with nothing,

Nothing but the thought of you,

I went wandering.”

The gravelly voice of Johnny Cash adds a weathered, tired, tone to these exhausted words as U2 plays a deceitfully simple loop to undergird them. I can’t help but hear in this song the spectral sigh of the Preacher from Ecclesiastes. I find myself searching, wandering, and the wanderlust, it’s incurable. With the Preacher, it would seem all that seeking is indeed a striving after the wind.

Perhaps I sound bleak. As an ENFP in Myers-Briggs Typology, and a 7 on the Enneagram, I assure you that I am not. Well, at least if I am for a moment, it is impossible for me to sit there too long. I love the soberness and the reality check this song, and the Preacher’s sermon in Ecclesiastes, ushers me into. The Advent Season, with its longing and nature of waiting expectantly, has been a good season for me to wander a bit.

We have been looking for a church over the past few months. Like everything else in our culture here in the United States, there is a flavor and color and size available for each of your tastes and desires. There are many options available for my consumption, and, quite frankly, it has become exhausting.

I really resonate with the idea of walking streets of gold and finding a city without a soul, or walking through capitals of tin, or a church people that keep preaching that we are the kingdom, or bringing the kingdom, or some variant version of this, yet without God in it. He has become the power of making our kingdom come (or if we are “orthodox,” His kingdom), but we are the engines doing the work. It’s up to you and me to make it happen. Meanwhile, God is somewhere out there waiting on us to bring it about. Perhaps, if we are lucky, after a guilt trip on how I need to be doing better as a Christian, because I am the only example of upstanding goodness a person might see, we might be offered a better choice we can make that might make God happy with us for at least trying hard, while still missing the mark.

What I am saying is overly simplistic, lacking the nuance that pastors and well-meaning Christians put on it. I speak from a place of tiredness and exhaustion, so please forgive me. I have no desire to discourage brothers and sisters.

I just yearn to hear afresh, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jew and Greek, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Not what I need to be doing. Not what I need to know. Not what I have been or am growing to be. As Luther wrote, “The law of God [read: what God requires us to be doing], the most salutary doctrine of life, cannot advance humans on their way to righteousness, but rather hinders them. Much less can human works, which are done over and over again with the aid of natural precepts, so to speak, lead to that end.” (Thesis 1 and 2 of the Heidelberg Disputation, 1518).

What I need is the foolishness of God as seen in the cross. The strange and yet life giving truth that in the death of Jesus, I see the death of my sin. In his words from the cross, “Father forgive them they know not what they do,” Jesus is giving himself to me so that I can hear the words, “You are forgiven.” In his resurrection from the dead, I can trust that I too will be risen from the dead. It has been here that the wind is settled and I realize I am not grasping after wind, yet, have been grasped by someone who is quite tangible.

Yeah, I left with nothing,

but the thought that you’d be there too

Looking for you.

Yeah, I left with nothing,

Nothing but the thought of you,

I went wandering.”

It is in the quiet voice given with the bread: the body of Christ, broken for you, and in the quiet voice given with the cup: the blood of Christ, shed for you, that I find my fear’s and strivings cease. When offered these, my eyes are opened to that I have left with everything.