A Road Map
How do we get around?
Almost a year-and-a-half ago I began meeting with a small group of folks. We had gathered with the express intent to explore a particular speech by Jesus, commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. We gave ourselves a long time to go through the three chapters found in the book of the Matthew. We met once every two weeks. We worked through the three chapters a few lines at a time. During our time together we would consider the text (reading it out loud to one another), our own lives (sharing any relevant context), and what we were seeing or hearing amid the conversation (responding to the moment together). During our time apart we would take up the study of the next small section. It was during one such time apart that I was struck by a possibility.
I was standing in my kitchen, eating a snack, while I was reading and re-reading the first few lines of the fifth chapter in the book of Matthew. Commonly known as the beatitudes, these lines have been interpreted a multitude of ways by many thinkers who are better than me over the years. I don’t have enough room, nor the intention, to summarize all this work here. For our purposes, however, it is enough to know that each line has two parts. On the left side, or beginning of each line, there is an identification – “Blessed are the [fill in the blank].” On the right side, or end of each line, there is pronouncement – “For they [fill in the blank].”
Some believe that the beatitudes are who followers of Jesus must become (identifiers) to receive the pronouncements. Others take the beatitudes as common experiences of life and character (identifiers) and the corresponding experience (pronouncements) for those who undertake to follow Jesus. My own thinking around the beatitudes has been profoundly impacted by the work of Dallas Willard, but there, in my kitchen, I was open to the possibility of further insight.
As I stood in my kitchen, eating, and reading and re-reading this list of identifiers and pronouncements, I was struck by a possible relationship across the entire list of beatitudes. Could there be such a relationship? If there was, what would it point toward? If Jesus is the smartest thinker that ever walked the earth, of course there could be a relationship across all the beatitudes – something deeper than just a checklist of sorts. If one of the central ideas Jesus speaks to, especially in the Sermon of the Mount, is that of who we become, maybe the beatitudes are a kind of road map of our spiritual formation. That was the thing I hadn’t noticed before and started to investigate. I have been working out this possibility for over a year now. I have been trying small experiments to test it out. I’m still learning, and the core idea isn’t completely flushed out yet, so I’m not going to write more about it here. If you’re interested in hearing more about it, let me know.
Instead, I want to preface whatever future writing may come from my exploration of the beatitudes with this: thinking about the relationship between a map and a person.
Two summers ago, I drove across the United States. It was the first time I had ever done such a thing. I had driven up and down the east coast from New Jersey to Maine, to South Carolina, but never across the entire country. To prepare for my trip I bought a map. In my pre-flight research, everyone I read or spoke with recommended I have a physical map handy. Google or Apple maps would do fine for most of the way, but some areas of the trip would be out of any kind of signal range rendering my phone useless. So, I invested in a physical map. I found all the places I planned to stop and sorted out my route on the map well before I even began my trip. The map would guide my way. I would refer to it when I needed to know whether to turn or to stay on the road I was on. The map was great for this. I was thankful I had it.
Conversely a few years ago I went to Barcelona for this tap dance festival (currently running in Mallorca). It would be my first trip to the city. Before my trip I asked some friends of mine what I should to do if I had time. I will never forget the response I got from one friend. They said, “For you…you need to see Sagrada Familia.” My friend knew me. They knew my heart and the kinds of things that would speak to it. His recommendation wasn’t about what he liked, it was about what he knew I would like. Now that’s a personal recommendation. With that in mind I made the trek to the Sagrada, and came back and told my friend all about it. He was right, and my gift to him in return wasn’t a photo of me at the place. It was the expression on my face when I told him of my experience (which I still remember more than seven years later). That’s something no map could give me.
So I’ve been thinking about the difference between a map and a person when it comes to this other journey we are all on – our journey of becoming. What or who are we to trust? Do we trust the step by step plans (the maps), of courses developed with much care for the sake and benefit of those who will work through them? Do we trust the coaches who deliver the more personal 1:1 sessions geared toward personal development?
Maps are impersonal but, in the best of cases, true to the landscape of the area they are mapping. They can help us see the reality of things when our own sense of where we are or where we might be headed gets foggy. People can deliver personal recommendations, even insight, but may not have the larger context. We can’t always see the whole reality (or map) when it comes to someone else (let alone ourselves). But what if there was a person who knew the map?
I suspect that if I was handed a map to the reality of the entire unseen world I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Even with the best of intentions I suspect my choices would somehow get myself in trouble. To have an understanding of everything that is going on within and without would be overwhelming, debilitating, or fill me with over-confidence. After all, a map doesn’t tell you where the good choices are. It just tells you what’s there.
Jesus claims to the be the way, the truth, and the life. In a single statement he claims to be the direction we can follow, the reality we can trust, and the kind of life we can experience. He claims that he knows the map – that the map is in him. For us in our limitedness, he demonstrates the reality of these claims in the life he is said to have lead. In following Jesus, we are told that we can know where we are going to end up. Yet, nothing about Jesus is impersonal, or map like. On the contrary, in story after story in the life of Jesus documented in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we see him being exceptionally personal. He speaks directly to the life of the person in front of him. He knows them, even better than they may know themselves. He offers what they need, for where they are, and for where they might hope to be. He chooses his words for the listening ear that sits before him, and for those that may be listening in – even us. He is the coach, or even better, friend, who knows us and can guide us from that position of intimacy and vulnerability, even while knowing the unseen landscape we are journeying on.
So what if this were true? What if there was a person who already knew the landscape – of the world outside and our own inner world? What if there was a person who knew what would speak to our hearts and move them toward goodness? Someone who could say, “In all of life, for you…you need to experience this,” and whom on account of their trustworthiness, we would simply follow. We wouldn’t care about all the other things that we might be missing out on. We would know that what we were getting was somehow tailor made for us, and that it was good, and enough.
If there was such a person, would we still desire a map? Honestly, I might. And maybe in their graciousness, they would provide such a map to me, as a way of helping me see a little of the landscape I am in. My hope is that the confidence I might get from having that map points me even more in the direction of the giver of the map. The one who knows both the landscape of the world around me, and my own inner landscape, better than I ever could. I can’t imagine a better way to journey through life than with a map and the giver of the map, a person, even a friend.