Walk This Way

Reading: 2 John 4-6


Everyone has mysteries in their life. For some people, its how they can bend a finger all the way to their wrist, or remember every phone number they have ever heard. With others it’s an unexplained gift in math, or the ability to know a sibling is in trouble even when you aren’t with him or her. For me – one of the major mysteries of my life has been speed – or at least, my lack of it. When I was a small child my mother called me “Moses” (as in “as slow as Moses”) so much one of the Marshallese ladies we knew in the Marshall Islands thought it was my name and called me that for months. School friends were always waiting on me sighing “any day, Kellie…” as I plodded toward them, and a friend from college would just shake her head as she turned around to see how far behind her I was. She would then pat her chin and ask, “How? How? How? Can someone who is 6 feet tall with at least 3 feet of leg possibly be SO SLOW?”. The truth is: I don’t know.

I do almost everything slow. I eat slow (mostly I push my food around the plate and pretend to eat – I hate eating. But not liking to eat is a different mystery), I react to things slowly, I plan slow, I clean slow, and yes – I walk slow. In fact, last week when my friend Lea was saying she needed to walk for exercise I offered to let her walk with me. She laughed out loud! I said, “WHAT?” and she said, “You don’t walk, you Stttrooollllll.” But I have found some solace in our passage today. It seems walking (maybe even strolling) is what God wants from us all along.

“It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.” 2 John 4-6

Notice something about that verse – it says the word WALK three times. It’s clear the writer of the Second Letter of John (a small New Testament epistle about rejecting false prophets) has no problem with Christians being in the slow lane. In fact if you look a little farther down at verse 9 – you’ll see running is outright scorned.

“9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.” 2 John 9.

Of course the Bible is talking about theology and living, not actually physical movement – but there’s a neat lesson here. In calorie burning, all experts will tell you running is better than walking. But in Christian theology – it’s the attributes of walking that make the difference.

The Way of Simplicity

The first benefit to walking over running is its simplicity. Walking is easy. We do it from the time we are young children. (and yes, I learned to walk slowly too – my mother claims to have worried she would end up carrying me to kindergarten). So some of us take a while – but as small kids we all learn that song, “Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be across the floor…” Walking is easy. Running is harder.

Christianity isn’t meant to be a sprint where you learn everything in a big hurry then rush off to the next fountain of knowledge. Nor is a marathon where you push your endurance to its limits just to get God’s attention or approval. Christianity in its finest witness to a lost world is the every day act of putting one foot in front of the other. It’s the steps of faith, courage, forgiveness, grace, hope, and love every day that change our lives, change our world and reflect our faith. We don’t need a doctorate in theology, a Strong’s Greek Concordance, and a labyrinth drawn on the church parking lot to live and share our faith. We just need the simple act of taking every day as it comes and walking with God.

Less Pain, More Gain

One of the things that inevitably rears its head in the debate between walking and running is the fact that running burns many more calories than walking. However, the reason that is true is because walking is simply a more energy efficient form of motion. From a physics standpoint – walking requires less energy because it absorbs less impact to the joints and converts forward energy more economically. One website said this about running:

“Running is generally considered to be a fairly high impact exercise with a great deal of repetitive pounding.” www.therunnersguide.com

A great deal of repetitive pounding? I don’t know about you – but that sounds like some preachers I know of – pounding their doctrine over and over – bringing out the same old tired rhetoric and non-biblical traditions to involve faith in politics, culture wars, business models and pyramid schemes.

But 2 John is clear that our walk is to be the efficient gliding of love – not the pounding of rules and judgment. Our faith is a walk – a connective stroll between ourselves and our creator God which is slow and easy enough to bring anyone from the smallest child to the oldest dowager on the journey with us. As a faith body Christians have been too busy running their mouths – instead of measuring their steps of bringing Christ into the world around us day by day by day.

Be Grounded

The final reason running burns more calories than walking, but creates the risk of injury was said best in an article by “Therunningplanet.com”

“The mechanics of running and walking are very different. When walking we always have one foot on the ground. Our body weight is always supported. Each stride results in a force equaling our body weight being applied to our leg muscles. When running you are completely airborne between foot plants. When your lead foot comes down, it is absorbing more than your body weight due to the effects of gravity.”

Did you see that? When walking we always have one foot on the ground! Now that’s the best advice for living the Christian life I’ve heard in a while. Stay grounded in scripture, stay grounded, 2 John says, in love. Have at least one foot rooted and supported by the holy spirit. The “gravity” of our humanity, of our culture’s materialism, esteem-driven satisfaction, and self seeking makes our faith have to absorb so much more than it should. We get a ticket and cry out in anguish, “Why does this happen to ME?” although we hear about a Chinese earthquake that kills 80,000 people and say mildly, “that’s sad. But what can I do?...” We are held down by gravity at every turn.

A Christian who is grounded in Christ knows that God is in all things, and will support us through the tickets, and the greater traumas – as long as we keep grounded in the Holy Spirit of the living God and know who we are, and how God expects us to live.

There’s a place in faith for us slow types. We don’t need to run, and we don’t need to fly over the world around us. We need to keep bearing witness to the God who walks us step by step through the healing process, the faith process, and the grace process.

I’ll close with a camp song (seeing how summer is starting and all…) – see if you can see 2 John’s words of walking in love shine through.

“Oh God, you are my God and I will every praise you
I will seek you in the morning, and learn to walk in your ways
And step by step you’ll lead me and I will follow you all of my days.”

Keep walking, my brothers and sisters, keep walking….