On the (Christian) Road

'What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.' - from Kerouac's On The Road

I was flying from Sydney, Australia, to Dallas, Texas. This is a long flight so I watched a couple of movies, napped, ate, napped some more, ate some more, and had a pleasant conversation with a fellow seated next to me. We spoke of travel, of course, comparing notes as we both had experience with complicated foreign journeys. Inevitably, we realized that our conversation was less about the places we had visited and more about the adventures we had while traveling.

As has been noted so often that I’m unsure of the provenance of the observation, one can learn more from the journey than from the destination.

That’s why I’ve always enjoyed road trips. Many of the memories that make me smile were formed from them, especially by the misadventures.

I recall a harrowing time as a temporary guest of the Federales in Juarez, potholes so dramatic in India’s communist state of Kerala that I literally was launched from my bus seat into the headliner two feet above me, a traffic jam caused by a stubbornly slow elephant and its rider on the highway north of Phuket, having our Jeep overheat along a deserted beach road in Baja to the point that the exploding radiator cap banged a dent through the hood, a day-long pinochle game while stuck in a blizzard on board the Lake Shore Limited. There are others, of course.

This is certainly why The Road as metaphor has always been a common and powerful literary archetype. In evidence, offhand I can think of:

The Odyssey [Homer]
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [Mark Twain]
The Divine Comedy [Dante]
Canterbury Tales [Chaucer]
The Grapes of Wrath [Steinbeck]
On The Road [Kerouac]

My original paperback. TBH, I always preferred The Dharma Bums

There would be many more if I did even five minutes of research. If we extend the examination to stage, television, and film productions, the list becomes impressive. In each, it is the journey that presents an educational moment, both the good and the bad, and informs the character of the protagonist[s].

I often suggest to students and parishioners alike that it’s a useful practice to have a map handy when reading scripture, especially the New Testament. The pilgrimage of the principals highlights not only sociological and geographic realities, but serves as a proscenium for sacred teaching.

In the Older Testament, Exodus presents the paradigm for the historic experience of the Hebrews in the cycle of slavery/wilderness/promised land. Slavery is the source of the journey; the promised land is the goal. However, it is the time “on the road”, the forty years in the wilderness, that marks the seminal experience: The receiving of The Law.

From that moment, the Hebrews begin to change from a mob into a community as they simultaneously proceed directly to the promised land of Canaan.

They are wanderers no more; the road has changed them.

In the Gospels, Jesus narrows the thematic focus of his teaching and works of wonder the closer his peripatetic ministry gets to Jerusalem. Inasmuch as he was born literally in the midst of his parents’ road trip, it is not a surprise that Jesus uses travel as a tool in the deepening revelation of the New Covenant.

In fact, it has been convincingly argued that early Christianity would not have known its spectacular evangelistic growth throughout the Empire if not for the quality and accessibility of the Roman highway system.

Newer Testament teaching is often performed while in motion and there are three roads in particular that have taken on a metaphoric meaning beyond the mere physical existence of the roadway. So pivotal is their importance, the roads themselves have become characters in the narrative.

This week we’ll look at those roads, their history and construction, and see what was delivered to us along those remarkable highways.