I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost…I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

III I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in. It is a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

IV I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

V I walk down another street.

So here we sit. On the verge of, yet again, another ending of another school year. This time of year means something different for every one of us. And, yet, for every one of us—it surely means something. To my younger friends, it means summer is coming—sleeping late, summer sports, summer jobs, no thought of pencils or books or teachers anything. To my high school senior friends it means the ending and beginning of something big. The road they have traveled for a lifetime is changing—what was once a residential street with a low-posted speed limit now appears to be an on-ramp…..to something that isn’t quite clear, but is clearly quite big. The same is true, in many ways, for my college graduate-ing friends…..the sign up ahead says REAL WORLD….and there is no turning back or slowing down—except for maybe graduate school. For those of you who are parents or grandparents and the like or whoever—this time of year means something different—maybe vacations are on the horizon—or far-off visitors are set to invade or life just takes on a different kind of pace. Regardless of our place and position, summer is coming. And summer means something. Like it or not, the ending of the school year—the beginning of this sweltering season--signals a fork of some sort in almost all of our roads. Which way will you choose?

Maybe this summer you will decide to finally complete that project at home or begin the one that has been on your list for three years. Maybe this summer is when you finally decide to go see your family. Maybe this summer is when you really do catch up on some reading. Maybe this summer is when you really do start exercising or at least moving your body a little every day. Maybe this summer you really do write them a letter. Maybe this summer you really do decide to slow down and get serious about God. Maybe this summer is the time when you decide to show your kids that church is a priority. Or maybe this is the summer when all of those things just continue to go undone—ending up on a tattered "to-do" list.

So what do we do? Which road do we follow? Which way do we choose?

"I am the way," Jesus said. I am the road. And, in some way or another, we are all on the road that is his—that is he—or at least that’s what we hope and pray. That is why we are here. There is not a single shoe in this place that does not contain a foot of clay—a foot that drags, a foot that stumbles--but it is on just such feet we all seek to follow God’s road through a world where there are many other roads to follow—and hardly a one of them that is not more clearly marked and easier to tramp and toward an end more known and more assured. But we have picked this road—or it has picked us.

"I am the way," Jesus said, "the truth and the life." We have all come this far along the WAY. And from time to time, when we have at least some sense of a clue, when our hearts are in the right place, when nothing more exciting or pressing shows up to distract us, we have glimpsed the TRUTH. From time to time when the complex and tiresome and seductive busy-ness of living doesn’t get in our way our pulses have quickened to the pulse of that LIFE. Who knows—anyway—what the mysteries of our faith mean? Who knows what the Holy Spirit means? Who knows what the Resurrection means? Who knows what he means when he tells us that whenever two or three are gathered together in his name he will be with them. But –what at the very least they all seem to mean is that there winds through life a WAY of life—a way TO life—that is so vastly realer still that we cannot think of God—whose WAY it is—as anything less than vastly alive.

It is by GRACE we are on that way…….by grace we feel in our bones what it is like to be on that way. Our clay feet drag us to the bedroom of the sick woman—to the alcoholic who for tenth time has called as we sit down to supper—to the Bible study group or Sunday School class where nobody has done any studying—to the Xerox machine. We don’t want to go. We go in fear of the terrible needs of the ones we go to. We go in fear of our OWN emptiness from which it is hard to believe that any word or deed of help or hope or healing can come. But we go because it is God’s way that leads us. And again and again we are blessed by our going in ways that we can never anticipate and our going becomes a blessing to the ones we go to because when we follow the way of Christ—we never really go entirely alone. And it is always something more than just our selves and just our emptiness that we bring.

Our business is to be the hands and feet and mouth of one who has no other hands or feet or mouth except our own. So many of us it seems—have two jobs, then. Or four or twenty. Because our business is to work for Christ as surely as men and women work for presidents of banks or managers of stores or principals of schools. Whatever salary you draw from your job—wherever or whatever that may be—whatever benefits you receive –your true compensation will only come from Christ. Whatever real success you have will be measured finally in terms of not how well you please anyone else in the world—but only Christ. And I suspect that the successes that please him best are oftentimes the ones we don’t even notice.

All along Christ is there with us…..with us on OUR WAY as surely as the way itself is there that has brought us to this place. IT has brought us. We are here. God is with us—that is our faith—but in unseen ways as subtle as air. TS Eliot says it as poignantly as anybody—