I read a story about a newlywed couple who for their honeymoon decided to travel across the country for six months seeing all the sights. And before they left, the wedding party wrote in big bold letters on their rear window, “honk if you support our marriage.” And from New England to New Mexico, people would honk and wave, sharing their excitement, showing their encouragement, and they loved all the attention from friendly strangers.

Well, when the six months was up and they were back home in the midst of ordinary life, going to work, paying the mortgage, one night the husband decided to clean off the rear window, but he didn’t mention it over dinner. And the next morning, his wife was in a rush to get out the door and to get to work, and she didn’t notice the rear window was now clean. And because she was in a rush on the way to work, she made an illegal U-turn, accidentally cutting someone off in traffic and the driver behind her started to honk furiously and she turned around with big smile on her face and said thank you I love you too but the other driver was not smiling that as we navigate the road in front of us, we need to foster a wider awareness. which is part of the invitation of Lent. It is what Saint Ignatius calls “an examined life.”

And Abram and Sarai teach us about this journey. It is a journey that inevitably changes us. It is why Abram and Sarai’s names became Abraham and Sarah. that they packed their bags and they left home. And they didn’t have the luxury of a travel agent writing out each step of their itinerary. They simply logged on to Google Maps, but when they tried to pull up the directions, there was no destination listed. That they left Haran, the place that they knew. And they went to an unknown destination where there was not a mint on the pillow or a robe in the closet. They went into an unknown place. That God simply called them to go and they followed. and God would bless them and they would become a blessing for others. that we do not always know where the journey will lead us. But God travels with us. And if we pay attention, God reveals to us a wider world.

But there are hardships and challenges along the way that can make us question the journey itself. In 1965, Martin Luther King asked for volunteers to march from Selma to Montgomery. And Viola Liuzzo, who was a wife and mother in Detroit, traveled all the way to Alabama. She was like Abraham and Sarah. Her husband justifiably did not want her to go. He was worried. He didn’t want anything to happen to her. He kept saying, Viola, this is not your fight. But she kept saying, “This is everybody’s fight.”

And on that landmark day, which would bless future generations, she marched those 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery. And after the march, she offered a ride to a young man, a civil rights worker. She was driving back to Selma and he needed a ride. But along the way a car full of Klansmen saw them became furious that this white woman was driving a black man and they started shooting. The young man survived. Viola did not. She was only 39 years old. Later in her daughter’s life, when her daughter was in her 70s, said of her mother, “My mother actually believed it when Christ said that the suffering and needy are our people. Mom saw all other human beings as her people.”

And we might not be called to such a hardship as this. But we don’t know where the journey will lead us. And there are moments when it directs us in ways where we will not be sure about what to do.

In the words of Psalm 121, we’re meant for a journey. It’s a Psalm of ascent. They were oftentimes memorized and recited by those traveling to Jerusalem. And as people traveled back then, there was not always a Motel 6 to leave a light on for you or a Buc-ee’s where you could buy a brisket sandwich. It’s why hospitality was so essential, why we hear about it over and over again throughout the pages of scripture. Taking in a traveler or giving a meal to a traveler was an essential practice of faith because oftentimes people would sleep underneath the stars, taking comfort only in a campfire, knowing that they were vulnerable to all sorts of threats.

That’s why the psalmist says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And there are two ways to understand the hills in this song. It might be when a traveler looks up in front of them and sees the hills and knows they will have to climb them and face the dangers within them. It was a word of warning. The second way is that these hills refer back to the hills of Mount Zion. where God met the people in the wilderness after they had escaped Egypt, that you can look up and see the hills and know that God will meet us there.

It’s like when Jesus wandered out into the wilderness facing temptation, but relying on God. Or how Jesus sent out the disciples without food, bag, or money, relying on God’s presence.

Throughout this psalm it says, “God will keep us six different times.” And God will keep us because, as scripture says, God’s righteousness or God’s faithfulness. But as Richard Lisher reminds us, there are two different ways to understand God’s righteousness. The first way is a righteousness that is so pure that it has to stand alone. That it always protects itself because it doesn’t want to be contaminated so it sequesters itself. But this is not the righteousness of Jesus. The Word became flesh. Where God comes to us, God is not sequestered from us.

So the other kind of righteousness is so good that it cannot help but reach out and share its goodness with others. It’s the righteousness of love. A love that packs its bags and goes to those in need. A love that offers a ride to a young man back to Selma. It’s the righteousness of Jesus where love has this inherent propensity to give, not to guard, to reach out and not to reject.

And it comes to us through the shared journey because it fosters in us this wider awareness. It’s why Jesus calls the disciples together but sends them out to travel with one another. And it’s why a church is more of a verb, than it is a noun. A church worships, prays, serves, shares, gives, receives, hopes, grieves, celebrates: we are made up of all sorts of verbs.

And in order to remain aware of God’s steadfast love, we need others who will share it with us. It’s the shared journey: someone who will gently lay a hand on our shoulder when we are hurting, so that we can see more than just our grief. Someone who prays for us when all we can see is the dangers in the hills and not God’s companionship with us. Or, someone who will stand next to us and sing when our voices are weary, drawing our attention to God yet again.

We need to gather, serve, celebrate, grieve together. It is part of the blessing, and the blessing of others in the shared journey of faith. Amen.