When Jesus was rejected by his neighbors in Nazareth, our gospel passage today says he "went on his way." Scripture is full of journey stories, for example: Abraham on his way to the promised land; Moses on his way with the children of Israel in the wilderness; Elijah on his way to Mt. Horeb in his flight from Jezebel; Jeremiah, in today's lesson from the Hebrew scriptures, on his way to become God's "prophet to the nations;" the Israelites on the way to exile in Babylon, the wise men from the East on the way to find the one "born king of the Jews;" the holy family on the way to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod; Paul's missionary journeys on his way to Rome; and of course, where we started today with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, the cross, and what lay beyond.

None of these journeys were easy. None of them were short-lived. Likely all the journeyers experienced fear of one kind or another as they were on the way—fear of the unknown, fear of the physical circumstances of the journey, fear of what was behind or what was ahead, fear of whether they were on the right way, fear of not being able to measure up—to withstand the rigors of the journey. sw When we start out on a trip in this day and age, we want to know our destination, our mode of travel, how long it will take, what we need to carry with us to cover all contingencies that we may encounter on the way. The spiritual journey that we are all on doesn't work that way, as much as we might wish it would. We have a vague idea of what our destination may be like, and we may think we're on the right way to get there, but when a barrier appears on our path, we may begin to wonder, to doubt, to experience the fears other journeyers before us have faced. That's when trust is called forth—trust that God is inspiring the journey from within, companioning us on the way, going before to make the rough places smooth, lighting the way one step at a time, encircling us with Love, bringing us on our own unique path to wholeness to the place prepared for us before God formed us in the womb.