'Hodos' - the journey of a life time

Well I'm back from holidays and flat out catching up with everything so I thought I'd throw my church newsletter reflection on, just for something different. The interfaith stuff can get intense and it hurts my brain thinking about it so much. Excuse my phonetic spelling of the Greek:


A little while ago I reflected on the edginess of life, on a snowboard. You know what I found as exhilarating as the journey down the mountain? The ‘journey’ back up the mountain. What goes down must go back up for another crack at it, and in this case the way up the mountain was on a chair lift. The chair lift ride was a much longer journey than the ride down the hill. It gave me time to meet new people I wouldn’t other wise talk to, really nice people too, and we’d talk about all sorts of things. One European guy with a very thick ascent offered me a drink of his flask to ‘warm me up’. I politely declined. However, the journey was valuable, I found myself having conversations and interacting with people in ways I normally wouldn’t with people I normally wouldn’t talk to.

I’ve begun riding my bike to the office as much as I can. However I don’t ride straight to the office, I’ve begun to appreciate the ‘journey’. On the ‘way’ I stop off at a Café in Mountain Gate to have coffee with a friend. Then instead of taking the direct route to the office I ride with my friend to his work place in Boronia. This unorthodox way of travelling to work in the morning is totally counter cultural to my experience. We are all always in a rush to reach our destination. A trip that could take me 15 minutes takes me an hour and a half. After I wave goodbye to me friend I have an amazing ‘journey’ on the ‘way’ to my office. I never thought there were so many friendly people to talk to in Ferntree Gully and Boronia who were also travelling the same ‘road’ as me. The new ‘way’ I ride to work has helped me appreciate the journey and the different people I can get to know, whom I wouldn’t normally talk to.

In The Gospel of John Jesus is recorded to have said ‘ego aimi hodos’ (Jn 14:6). ‘I am the way’ in the NIV translation. The Message translates as, ‘I am the road’. The Greek word ‘hodos’ can mean way, road or journey. This brings a greater richness into what it means for Jesus to be the ‘way’ for me.

Jesus encountered many people on ‘the’ journey and the results of each encounter are unique, inspiring and uplifting for each person. For example, Bartimaeus, after being cured by Jesus of his blindness, followed him on the ‘hodos’ to Jerusalem. Or take Jesus’ encounter with a Canaanite woman for example. On his way to Tyre & Sidon, an unlikely journey for a Jew to take, he stops to converse with a Canaanite woman, also an unlikely thing for a Jewish man to do. As a result, amazing things happen with Jesus on the ‘hodos’.

To many of the people Jesus met on the journey, he said ‘follow me’. Jesus is the road, the way, the journey – think about it!

Shalom
Mark