Walking Reflections

On August 9, 2010, Ed Stafford plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil to cool off, pop open some champagne and celebrate. Other sun bathing tourists on the beach might have seen him as just another crazy Brit who soaked up a little too much South American sun. Stafford would say he was, indeed, a little bit crazy but not in the "frat boy" sense of the word - more in the "Indiana Jones/intrepid explorer/boldly-going-where-no-one-has-gone-before" sense of it.

That is because when Stafford's toes hit the surf that morning, he officially became the first man ever to walk the entire length of the Amazon River. His two-year, 4,200-mile trek took him through some of the most dangerous terrain on earth. Stafford and his companion, Peruvian forestry worker Gadiel "Cho" Sanchez Rivera, braved deadly snakes, 18-foot crocodiles, exotic tropical diseases, hostile natives and the daily potential of disaster to complete the trek entirely by walking through the rain forest and not using boats, as other expeditions had done. 

"I've been told I was going to be killed so many times," the 34-year-old former British army captain told the Associated Press. "But I'm not dead. I'm here now and ... I've proved that if you want something enough, you can do anything!" The day before, Stafford had collapsed on the side of a road just 53 miles short of the finish, but he rallied after a few hours of rest to push through to the end, having enough energy to make his run into the surf. 

Why did he do it, you ask? 

It was a personal challenge for a man who left the military to be a stockbroker, got bored by the drudgery of finance and ended up leading student expeditions in Belize, then supervising the building of a BBC base camp in Guyana. "The crux of it is, if this wasn't a selfish, boy's-own adventure, I don't think it would have worked," he said about his quest. "I am simply doing it because no one has done it before."

Stafford started his trek on April 2, 2008, on the southern coast of Peru. His original traveling companion, another Brit, left him after three months on the trail. Stafford continued walking with various local people he met along the way until Cho joined him a few months later. He also brought an electronic companion as well. Unlike the intrepid explorers of old, Stafford still had contact with the outside world via an Internet satellite phone that he carried with him and that enabled him to pass the nights by downloading TV shows such as The Office.

Stafford survived on beans and rice and on the piranhas he caught in the river. He was also able to buy provisions in villages he encountered along the way, many of which welcomed him. Some, however, were a bit less than hospitable. At one stop, he had villagers radio ahead to another village to ask permission for Stafford and Cho to walk through their territory. The response was that if any gringo came that way, they would kill him. After choosing an alternate route, Stafford and Cho were still confronted by another group of natives who were very distrustful of outsiders. The natives captured the two adventurers and brought them before the village elders. After a lot of scrutiny and a strong scolding, they were let go and continued on their way. 

Jesus was himself an epic walker, according to the gospels. Cari Haus, who writes for the Web site ILuvWalking.com, says Jesus traveled distances on foot that are mind-boggling to those of us who are used to moving while seated. Here are some stats:

* If we take Matthew's narrative at face value, Jesus, as a young boy, would have walked about 400 miles with his parents during their return from Egypt to Nazareth.
* Every devout male in Galilee would travel to Jerusalem three times a year for religious festivals, which meant a 240-mile round trip from Nazareth. If Jesus followed this pattern every year between the ages of 5 and 30, he would have walked 18,000 miles in trips to Jerusalem alone (3 x 240 x 25).
* Based on the gospel accounts, Jesus traveled 3,125 miles in his three-year public ministry. His disciples would have walked many of those miles with him.
* That means a conservative estimate of the distance Jesus walked during his lifetime was 21,525 miles. That's a lot of sandals!

 

Stafford's long walk allowed him to see and experience things that most people fly over and forget.

Jesus' lifetime of long walks allowed him the opportunity to see faces, hear stories, experience the hospitality of strangers and feel the connection between the land and its people. Jesus led his disciples on a journey that gave them the best kind of laboratory for learning what God was doing in Jesus' own ministry and their part in it.

We might call it "ministry by walking around." 

Creeds: This I Believe

            I want to share just a bit about Christian creeds. At the end of this article, I will invite you to reflect upon your core beliefs.

I know, a creed sounds boring, but I hope you will bear with me for just a moment.

 

“And I believe that what I believe

Is what makes me what I am

I did not make it, no it is making me

It is the very truth of God and not

the invention of any man.” - Rich Mullins

 

Rich Mullins, who was a Christian songwriter before his untimely death, penned these words for a contemporary song he wrote. He grew to appreciate the classic creeds of the church.

            Besides, in a book making the rounds in many United Methodist churches, Deepening Your Effectiveness, by Dan Glover and Claudia Lavy, the encouragement is that the congregation develop classes around their core beliefs as part of their “discipleship pathway.”

In a recent interview, the Yale scholar Jaroslave Pelikan contrasted contemporary attempts to make new creeds with what he describes as the language of love. The ancient creed is a way of saying simply, when all other words fail, “I love you.” Some contemporary creeds succeed in this effort, but many fail to say the faith in a way that unites the world church. For Pelikan, one contemporary creed, written in 1960 by the Masai people in Africa, fully expresses the language of love. It bears the obvious marks of its own culture, yet speaks of the faith held in common by all:

 

We believe that God made good his

promise by sending his Son, Jesus Christ,

a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe,

born poor in a little village,

who left his home and was always

on safari doing good,

curing people by the power of God,

teaching about God and man,

showing that the meaning of religion

is love.

He was rejected by his people,

tortured and nailed hands and feet

to a cross, and died.

He was buried in the grave,

but the hyenas did not touch him,

and on the third day, he rose from

that grave.

He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

 

            With its striking folk images, the Masai Creed confesses the faith in a particular and very personal language of love. Clearly, it does not speak the same thing as the Apostles’ Creed but it does say the same thing.

            To relate this to our post-modern setting, the creed admittedly moves against the segmentation and focus on the contemporary that seems so much part of this time in history. Yet, according to one post-modern Christian web site:

 

In postmodernity, creeds are making a comeback, primarily because we see that everybody has a creed, even those who have said for years, “We have no creed.” We postmoderns are rediscovering our Christian heritage, preferring to be connected to a larger entity than just our recent era. While for years, modernists, especially “liberal” modernists, told us to forget about the ancient creeds and just “believe what you want.” Many postmoderns are rejecting the creed of “believe what you want” and discovering the ancient creeds, which are worded in such a way to allow real freedom of belief on side issues, yet still connect us to present and past believers.[1]

 

In his recent book, Creed: What Christians Believe and Why itMatters, Luke Timothy Johnson points out that the root of forming creeds is Judaism found in Deuteronomy 6:4: (“Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might.”) This is known in Judaism as the Shema from the word, Hear. What is important about this statement is that it describes a common belief about God and a personal response, so the creed here is both communal (our God) and personal (love the Lord, your God).

            Though Christian confessional statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the original Shema, there is one obvious alteration. The earliest Christians altered their story of God’s way in the world in light of their personal experience of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

            Creeds are important not just because they articulate our personal experience of the risen Christ, but they also serve to unite the church. When so much else divides the global church and the local church, the story held in common by all Christians and expressed in the creed, brings us together. Christians can and do disagree on any number of issues that are rocking the world, but still maintain unity through a common confession of faith.

            The creeds also protect believers from the tendency toward radical individualism or simply inventing our own faith.

            Anything we created would not contain God. The creed does not contain God. Yet, they do point the way. Experienced in this way, creeds, like stories, open up a new world of faithful exploration. Once we accept the truthfulness of what they are expressing, that can shape our lives in the way Rich Mullins described so personally.

            Finally, William Sloane Coffin, in what was his last book, Credo, says that a creed is that “to which I give my heart.” The task for us all is to take the creed — words on paper — and allow those words to become a living, breathing reality in our experience. Our faith, embodied by the creeds, is a way to say “I love you,” according to Pelikan. Coffin says it is something we must give our hearts to, our lives to.

Many young people today want the church to be honest with them. What do you believe? What defines you as a Christian community? In fact, many persons today want to connect with something larger than what they could create. They want to be part of something huge. The creeds remind us that we are part of a global Christian community that has existed for almost 2000 years. We live into the creed, and as we do so, we let it define us.

People often misunderstand the nature of the creeds in the New Testament and in church history. Creeds are one attempt that Christian leaders take throughout history to identify what is essential. The creed is a guide for a reading of the Bible that accords with the experience of God in Jesus Christ. A creed asks individuals to make a collective commitment to a set of convictions and to each other. In a culture that rightly values individuality, the creed reminds us of community. In a culture that rightly rewards novelty and creativity, creeds use ancient and traditional language. As our modern culture rightly looks to the future to be better than today, the creed invites us to look to the past for wisdom and guidance. When modern society throws away things so easily, the church invites us to ponder the continuing significance of words and thoughts that have lasted for centuries.

Imagine that you had to write a letter to your family for some reason that summed up your perception of what you are all about. “This is what I am about, this is what I believe, this is what I have given my heart to.”

Even though I have not done this (yet), I had a visit from one of my sisters some years ago. She started talking with my sons about what I was like back then, when we lived in the same home. Of course, all of this could have gone quite badly. However, her response was something like the following. George is a lot today as he was then. He stood by and with the church then, and he still does today. I find much true in that statement. Regardless of other changes that have been obvious in my life, some things have remained constant. Such a constant has been the importance of a community to which I belong and with which I share common core beliefs.

 

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[1] —David Bennett, “The creeds: Why do we need creeds?” Ancient and Future Catholics Web Site, ancient-future.net.  Retrieved October 15, 2004.