Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-23-26

There. I got the pun (Rhodes Scholar, ha) off my mind. I thought today of roads real and metaphorical, partly because I am charting the itinerary of the postponed honeymoon of Mickey and me, a celebration delayed by an important book deadline, other weddings, and such. We will be taking perhaps a month to visit Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, and Italy.

We will not walk the Appian Way – an ancient road in Rome taken by St Paul to evangelize citizens in the belly of (to Christians of the day) the beast. He first proselytized at the Temple of Agrippa. We will not traverse that long road, except to visit Catacombs, but we will stand where Paul stood. This will not be a real pilgrimage – I have friends who have traced believers’ pilgrimages in Europe and the Holy Land – yet we are choosing significant roads to walk on.

We are all familiar with Robert Frost’s iconic poem The Road Not Taken (often mis-titled The Road Less Traveled). Whether literal or metaphorical, it opens: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth… We identify.

I also noted, today as I write this, that Neil Sedaka, the soft-rock star of recent decades, has died. Again: Roads. I once attended a publishing conference in Las Vegas and left so early it was morning but more like a Red Eye. In the small waiting lounge at the airport gate was Neil Sedaka, a fave from my teen years. He played Vegas a lot, and also had to fly east early that day. I introduced myself and we got to talking.

By a bizarre coincidence, he lived in my town, Westport CT, so we had things to chat about. When I told him that I recently had interviewed Jimmy Swaggart, Neil lit up. He was a Jew but said he had been watching Swaggart’s TV services and was taken with the Gospel piano of the evangelist (who was also a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis). The door opened, so to speak, and I shared Christ with him. I never learned what impact my conversation had on him, but I often think of roads that “cross” in such ways in life.

Nicole Shanahan, who was on RFK Jr’s ticket when he ran for president, recently confessed her conversion to Christ. The liberal former convert to Judaism spoke of a miscarriage, a near-death experience, and “opened eyes” about forces of spiritual warfare in America. The day before Trump’s inauguration she was water baptised and declared, “I had to live a lot of life to understand the true significance of trusting in this covenant of Jesus…. In order to fulfill a true relationship with God, it’s this recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.” A road with detours? Yes, but she found her destination.

The best-selling book in the English language after the Bible, we are told, is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, written 350 years ago, and that never has been out of print, now translated to 200 languages. The entire book traces the journey of Mr Christian (all of its characters are named by their personal traits) from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Another road… with many tempting detours to places like the Slough of Despond or Vanity Fair. It is a compelling book, with undertones by which all humans can identify. Especially about roads.

The Bible itself is the source of life’s roadmaps, warning signs, and directions. Scripture overflows with references to roads, paths, and ways to proceed through life. We all know how to ask strangers for directions; and many of us have GPS. That’s OK to attend your cousin’s retirement party, but not for God’s will for our lives. He charts our paths.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

My people have forgotten me; they make offerings to false gods; they made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into side roads, not the highway.

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way.

There is a road that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

I mentioned detours. Sometimes we can take alternate routes, or scenic drives, or choose to wander in some way, eventually to find our way home. That’s fine, as I said, except when it comes to God’s strongly stated destination. He does not allow us to stray an inch. Why would we? Yet… many do. Mr Christian was a Pilgrim, but he knew it was his duty to make progress. Not right in life, nor left; not backtracking but forward; not your own destination, but God’s.

On His travel plans for each of us, GPS means to stay on God’s Perfect Street.

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Click: Gospel Legends – Highway To Heaven

2-3-14

I recently have re-read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan (or re-re-re-read, actually forgetting the number of times I have read it). It is the most remarkable of books, once held to be the most printed book in the English language after the Bible. Despite our culture’s sudden and virtually total disassociation from it, that record might still hold.

Bunyan’s book is an allegory: the journey through life of the everyman hero, Mr Christian. It once was required reading in schools, beside the Bible – yes, in bygone times – but also for its masterful allusions, exquisite language, and impressive construction. The hero’s name, and those of myriad characters (Valiant-for-Truth; Worldly-Wiseman), were not crudely conceived of an impoverished imagination but to be clear about metaphors and symbols. Bunyan was teaching a lesson.

He wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress” while he himself presumably was being taught a lesson. The Englishman Bunyan, who lived 1628 – 1688, had been a poor tradesman of relatively loose morals, but was converted to Christianity when he heard the voice of God. Like Martin Luther more than a century previous in Germany, he became conscious of his sinful nature, and grew to faith in fear of God. He was moved spontaneously to preach, and attracted a following. But at that time, in England, it was forbidden to preach unless ordained by the Crown’s church.

During two prison sojourns Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The texts were received, the writer said, through visions, in the manner of St John transcribing the Book of Revelation on the Isle of Patmos.

Quotations from this great book strike us like lightning-bolts through the centuries. Its truths are still true. The nature of humankind – our needs and temptations and failures and hopes and triumphs? There have been no changes to our natures: we still need the message!

“What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it.”

“A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.”

“The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.”

“It is my duty to distrust mine own ability, that I may have reliance on Him that is stronger than all.”

But the most significant allegorical aspect of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” – in any event, the metaphor on which the narrative depends – is the Road. The Path. The Way. The journey’s channel; the Highway. Mr Christian proceeds amidst detours, roadblocks, false advice… toward the Destination, the Cross. To Heaven.

“Now I saw in my dream, that the Highway, up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.”

The Highway to Heaven is an allegory easy to comprehend. But it is hard to travel! As hard as the poor, beleaguered Mr Christian found it. Bunyan likely was under no illusions that his book would turn the world upside-down. Indeed it had great impact – it is possible that millions have accepted Christ because of it through the centuries – yet it can only be expected to speak to readers one by one. One by one.

Despite books of old and mass-media today, the personal appeal of the gospel, which in fact was the mode of Jesus and the Apostles, is just that: a PERSONAL appeal. God’s plan… Christ’s Great Commission… the Holy Spirit’s ministry. “Go and make disciples.”

It is a temptation of human nature, and a specific spiritual malady of contemporary Western culture, to think that knowing ABOUT the “Highway,” being generally supportive, is enough. Or that wandering down detours at least corresponds to good intentions. Or that “other” Highways are efficacious, if the traveler, after all, means to arrive at a similar happy place to where the cross stands.

These relativistic lies and deadly heresies will result not only in others (and ourselves) walking aimlessly through life… but being “lost.” Fatally lost. Eternally lost. The Bible makes clear that all other roads lead to destruction. God is a guide; the Bible is our road map; and millions of sermons, songs, allegories, and books like “The Pilgrim’s Progress” graciously have been laid before us as spiritual MapQuests.

Even more, God allows U-Turns, as my friend Allison Bottke has called her ministry. However, He doesn’t allow short-cuts. He has not cancelled, nor even postponed, our journeys. And to use another Web-Age reference, it is Jesus’s voice we hear in the GPS, reminding us that there is no way to Heaven – no other way – but through Him.

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“Walking Up the King’s Highway” is a standard song in many hymnals. It is a favorite of the Black church, written by the great Thomas A Dorsey and Mary Gardner. Here it is performed in rousing fashion by more than a hundred “Gospel Legends,” giants of influential Spirituals of the past half-century. The late Rev Donald Vails leads the singers. Billy Preston is on the organ.

Click: Highway To Heaven