The Train

Proper 16 B 2009
1 Kings 8: 22-30, 41-43; Ps 84; Eph 6: 10-20; John 6: 56-69


Going through my files, I found this story—it still speaks.

There was a train running through lovely rolling countryside. The train was well-kept, efficiently run, with confident staff, good food in the dining car, and comfortable seating. The passengers were used to how good was the train, and so assumed that the train had always run this way and always would. The train’s name, oddly enough, was “the church.”

But as time went on, things seem to change—at first so gradually that it was easy to ignore or explain away. The train began to run a little late sometimes, and once in awhile it ran very late. The interior of the cars seemed to become a little more worn, and little problems like a small tear in the upholstery was not fixed right away, then was not fixed at all. The food was not the same—new recipes, and the old selections did not seem as good. The conductors and other staff seemed to be hiding anxiety behind their professional smiles, and could be seen to gather in small groups discussing things in quiet urgent tones. And the scenery outside the windows was different than people remembered—an unfamiliar route, through country with different trees and animals, becoming slowly more desert-like.

Some passengers seemed oblivious to the changes. Others noted the changes but kept their thoughts to themselves. Still others began to speak with each other—a few seemed glad of some change, but most were anxious or even angry that life on the train was different than before. Those who were angry blamed new passengers, or blamed the staff, or blamed those who owned the railroad.

One day, to everyone’s shock, the train slowed abruptly, then came to a sudden, lurching halt! The staff almost ran through the cars in near-panic and got off without giving any explanation or instruction. The passengers arose and most but not all climbed down the steps of the cars and gathered outside.

The train was in a barren desert landscape. Those who walked to the front of the train saw the reason why the train had stopped. The tracks actually seemed to slowly disappear in the sand in front of the engine, and were invisible as far as the eye could see.

The staff had no explanations and seemed as shocked as the passengers. Some, passengers and staff, walked apart from the larger group and stared into the distance in silence. Some were seen to cry. The rest all talked at once in disbelief. Those who were angry before were angry again, and blamed the staff and the railroad. Others said that some sort of conspiracy must have buried the tracks. A few people abandoned the train and the group and wandered off in various directions. People proposed first one solution, then another. A very vocal group advocated putting the train in reverse and backing down the way they had come—after all, they reasoned, at least those tracks were known to exist.

But then a couple of sharp-eyed people called the others to the front of the train. Wordlessly they pointed to the sands ahead. There the astonished people saw that the sand was without train tracks, but was not without tracks of any kind. Staring, the people saw one track leading into the heart of the desert. It was footprints, and those who bent over to examine the prints reported that it looked as though the person who made the prints was wearing sandals.

After a long time of staring, the passengers and the staff of the train walked into the desert, following the footprints.

That tale was written by a Roman Catholic in the Catechumenate movement, sometime back in the 1970’s. The storyteller had some clear sense of things to come.

The story can apply to a larger church on the whole—Episcopal certainly, but I hear from my friends in other polities that everyone has a version of the train. The story can apply to a congregation such as ours. Or it can apply to our own individual lives of faith.

Together or alone, we are all led to the desert, where what we expected and how we were used to live no longer applies. Usually this comes about through forces and realities larger than ourselves. Transitions good or painful put us in the desert. And once we’ve worked through all our emotions and fears and anger and wonder, we’re left gazing into the desert. Faith says that the desert is not just a waste of sand. Eyes of faith can see the path that has been made by the One who always goes before us.

The Gospel speaks of this. All the Gospels were composed when the early Jesus movement was fragile and there was no train, no routine, no long-established way to do things or run the railroad. Today we hear Jesus saying just how outrageous his path is. Share my life fully, be in me and let me be in you, flesh as food and blood as drink. It was a desert track way too stark and shocking for many who were following him up until then, who probably wanted their new faith presented in well-established Jewish categories. But that train had come to a stop in the sand, at least for those who had taken a chance on the strange compelling new rabbi who called them to follow him into the desert of faith and a new life.

It’s OK to love the train, it’s OK to love where the train has been. It’s OK to tell stories of how wonderful the journey has been up until now. It’s even OK to want to back the train up along the track we know.

But there is more ahead. There is a journey to walk. There is new life in what seems to be bleak and desert. And there is one who walks that path already, who asks us to follow him into what waits for us—food in the desert, unexpected water, a new journey to be blazed.