“At the Crossroads”
Isaiah 43:18-19; Matthew 7:13-14
“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
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;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two road diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Terminator. Back to the Future. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure…. Time Cop….The Butterfly Effect…Hot Tub Time Machine…. And coming this fall on NBC, a new series called Timeless.
These are only a few of the multitude of movies—and now TV shows—about time travel. Some of them envision a time machine that can hurtle us into the future, inviting us to imagine new possibilities, challenging us to acknowledge the unanticipated problems that accompany those possibilities. Often adventure-filled, sometimes disturbing, these movies about the future touch our human yearning to know, and perhaps to control, what will happen next in our lives.
The movies I just listed envision a different direction for time travel—back into the past. Some are silly; some are thought-provoking; almost all of them address the question: if you go back in time and change one little thing, what is the ripple effect in the present? These movies tap into what may be an even deeper human longing—to be able to go back and correct our mistakes. Whether serious or absurd, these movies touch our natural desire for a do-over. We long to go back and get the words right this time around, maybe so we can win the argument, maybe so we can avoid hurting someone we love. We wish we could go back and take advantage of opportunities we have squandered. We can’t do it, so we go to the movies and imagine we can.
With no famous actors or cool visual effects, Robert Frost addresses this same human longing in his oft-quoted poem, The Road Not Taken. The last line has become so famous—“I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference,”—that we miss the wisdom of the rest of the poem.
Frost stands at a crossroads, wishing he could take both paths. For a moment he fools himself that he can come back another day and take the other path. Ultimately he acknowledges that it will probably never happen. Even if he were to come back another day, the crossroads would not be the same.
Frost chooses the road that is slightly less traveled, though only slightly, and then writes that his choice has made all the difference. His life is different because he chose that path and not the other one. He doesn’t know if it is better or worse, for he has no way of knowing what his life would have been like if he had chosen the other path. With a sigh, he acknowledges the loss of the possibilities on the other path, even as he claims the goodness of the path he chose.
The poem offers a gentle, musing expression of what can sometimes be a harsh truth about our lives. Every day we face crossroads—roads diverging, decisions to make, opportunities to seize. The choices we make really do make a difference. Our movie imaginations aside, the truth is we cannot go back. The stakes are high; there are no do-overs.
In our gospel reading, Jesus raises the stakes even more. Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, in a provocative passage, Jesus describes two roads diverging in two very different directions. There is a gate at each one. The easy road with the wide gate leads to destruction. The narrow gate opens out to a hard road, which leads to life. Most of us, most of the time, he suggests, choose the wrong road.
It is easy to imagine what he means by the wide path, the road that leads to dead-ends, to despair, even to destruction. There is the road of seeking meaning and security in things—a road that ultimately leads to emptiness. There is the wide tempting path of viewing the people around us as objects, or even stepping stones, on our journey to success—a path that ultimately leads to isolation. As communities and nations, we are tempted to walk the road of blaming our problems on people we name as “other,” of using the earth without regard for the future, of choosing brute power over the hard work of building trust. We have seen the destruction that lines those roads.
It may be easy to name the wide gates that tempt us onto paths that lead to destruction. But what is the narrow gate, the hard road, that leads to life? Some people use this passage to argue that the only way to salvation is through Jesus. That’s not what it says, though, and it doesn’t fit the rest of Jesus’ teachings.
Jesus’ life, his healings, his teachings—together they point us toward the road that leads to life. The gate is trust in the power of God’s love. On the road that leads to life, we are challenged to choose love over hate or indifference, to honor all creatures as God’s beloved, to be conduits of God’s healing, to let go of power and possessions that get in the way of God’s love and justice. On this road, we bake bread for a new neighbor. We learn from a stranger. We eat with someone we thought was our enemy. We welcome refugees and advocate for just wages. Jesus tells us it is a hard road. He assures us that it leads to life—to meaning, to hope, to community, to joy.
In his poem, Robert Frost stands at a crossroads and wonders, idly, about which path to choose. As we stand at the crossroads of our lives, our musings are far from idle. We worry about making the wrong choice. We fear what is down the path that we cannot possibly predict. Sometimes we panic at the magnitude of the stakes; sometimes we are paralyzed by our inability to know the right answer. As we stand at those crossroads, worrying or fearing, panicking or feeling trapped by indecision, Jesus’ sharp words don’t seem very comforting. At least not if we take this passage out of context.
The context for Jesus’ words is his central message that the realm of God’s love is at hand—the stakes are high because something so wonderful is happening. The context is his healing ministry, in which Jesus makes broken lives whole and embraces people who have been judged for their circumstances or their choices. Jesus preaches the same God Isaiah proclaims: the one who promises to make a way in the wilderness.
Sometimes the choices we make at the crossroads in our lives lead us into the wilderness, a wilderness of loneliness or emptiness, regret or guilt or despair. The promise of our faith is that God is with us in that desolate place. No matter how far we have strayed, God creates a way for us. A new crossroads, a new opportunity, a new path that leads to healing and hope, to life. It is not a road back to our original starting place, for we cannot undo the past. It is a path forward—acknowledging the past, taking responsibility for our actions, repairing what can be repaired, and moving toward something new. It is a hard road. It is worth the struggle, for it is a road that leads to life.
Every Sunday, we begin our worship with a prayer of confession and an assurance of God’s forgiveness. We do not fool ourselves that we can undo the past. Instead we acknowledge that the past as real. We name our desire to change our lives as we move forward. And we hear the promise that we are forgiven, the promise that our past does not define our future, the promise that God will make a way in the wilderness of our regret.
Every day we face crossroads—paths to choose, decisions to make. Jesus reminds us that the stakes are high, for there are paths that really do lead to destruction and paths that lead to abundant life. God is with us at the crossroads, urging us toward the path of life. God is with us as we make our choices and God is with us in the aftermath of our choices. When the road we take leads us into the wilderness, God is with us there—making a new way for us, a way that leads to hope, to joy, to life. There is always a new crossroads, a new opportunity to choose the fullness of life Jesus yearns for us to have.
May we face the crossroads of our lives with courage, trusting in the promise of God’s grace.
Amen.