The Road Doesn’t Lead Back

"Beats and Beatitudes

11. The Road Doesn’t Lead Back”

Matthew 5:1-12

First Presbyterian Churhc

Donald E. Ray

August 31, 2008

Our journey with the Beats and Beatitudes this summer has in the spirit of Jack Kerouac’s novel, been an adventure On the Road. You may recall that we began with Tom and I respectively doing a sermon introductory to the Beatitudes and to the Beats. Then we have been together journeying through the eight beatitudes, even with typical of “on the road,” a surprise show and tell Sunday with Karen Lipinczyk. In our sketchiest of planning, that left this Sunday for a kind of wrap-up.

Jack Kerouac’s novel about travels on the road could appear to be a story of repeated return trips to New York . It would seem that wearied and insecure in his free spirited travels, “Sal” goes back home to recoup in the safety of the familiar. That would be a gross oversimplification, even misreading of the novel and of life. The road of life doesn’t lead back. Even if and when we may arrive again at the point from which we start, we are never the same for the shaping of our lives that happens along the journey.

In its postwar culture, Jack Kerouac’s novel wrestles with the issue of how to grow up. In Sal’s opening journey west, living on a child’s diet of ice cream and apple pie, he crosses the dividing line between the East of his youth and the West of his future. Dean Moriarty, born on the road only becomes more childlike in his travels. Dean races away from the messes he makes of his life. Sal tries to figure out how to, live amid the mess handed to him. Having once been drawn to Dean as a mentor and liberator, Sal, with his glimpses of God along his spiritual quest, now moves past him. Sal’s final view of Dean is from the backseat of a Cadillac, with Dean standing on a cold New York street , “ragged in a moth eaten overcoat.” Though criticized for no “happily ever after” conclusion, Kerouac stuck with his original ending for the novel. Sal, in an idealistic but nebulous relationship, is still “on the road.” It’s incidental that he is in New York .

In the Gospels, Luke’s in particular, Jesus journeys from stirring it up with the Temple establishment at age 12, past the fanatical Jordan River John the Baptist on the road in his spiritual quest to the Christ. Luke concludes with the Christ on the road yet—the road to Emmaus inviting Cleopas and his friend to journey in that glimpse of God.

We began this summer series with the Beatitudes—counter culture in their affirmation of the poor, bereaved, meek, and merciful. They are also counter to our expectations in results. The poor would like their share of the earthly pie. Mourners would like to not have reason for grief. The meek would like their bullies be avenged.

It is to grossly underestimate the word “blessed” to limit its meaning to health, prosperity, and happiness. I know I’ve said it before. But if Tom can revisit the Parable of the Prodigal Son, I can be permitted to revisit the Genesis creation story where in it’s first appearance in the Scriptures, “blessed” means the infusion of God—love—value—joy into creation. The beatitudes are seeded with a vision of God; the closest of all bonds defined as children of God; life in the kingdom of God . One cannot go back unchanged from that experience of “blessed.”

Matthew sets his list of beatitudes in the context of the sermon on the mount. He follows the blessings with directives that reflect a counter culture life style; don’t even harbor hateful thoughts; be true to your word; no retaliation; love your enemies. Some wrestling with the stringency of such directives have determined that Jesus must have been speaking only to his inner circle and not the church as a whole—it would be too much to expect of the masses. While as Paul realistically assesses, we all “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) to be blessed is to experience transformation, new vitality and value in life.

To live in God, experiencing any one of the beatitudes redirects our journey in life. Living through separation and divorce, I mourned the loss of much that had been loved and treasured in my family. The Benediction response closing worship at that time was Joyce Eiler’s “Go Ye Now in Peace.” Singing:

“In your time of trouble

When hurt and despair are there to grieve you

Know that the Lord will never leave you.

He will bring you courage.

Know that the God who sent his Son

To die that we might live

Will never leave you lost and alone

In his beloved world.”

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted was a whole new experience. Twenty some years earlier, the death of our infant son had left me questioning, agonizing, struggling to maintain what I thought was required of a pastoral image. It took years to find any kind of resolution at all. This time, the beatitude comfort in mourning brought peace that helped me be peacemaker, created merciful response to provocations, instilled purity—integrity that keeps a vision of God, love in focus.

Eight of the Sundays of this summer we have touched each of the Beatitudes. But the heart of the beatitudes each and all is: “Blessed are…for theirs (or) they will…” Poor, mourning, hungering and thirsting, persecuted; in our halting efforts to be meek, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, we will find gratification and renewal in our life in God. That’s what “blessed” means.

All that is on the road of life that does not lead back. Worship, the religious kinds of things we do serve as appetizers. The entrée is in the journey.

It is “on the road” that even Kerouac’s perpetual child, Dean Moriarty finds beatitude. Traveling from New York through Washington , DC at night, through the Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daylight; “Dean was tremendously excited by everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief. “And of course now no one can tell us there is no God….Everything is fine, God exists….And not only that but we both understand that I couldn’t have time to explain why I know and you know God exists. At one point I moaned about life’s troubles—how poor my family was…Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung up.” (1)

Eight beatitudes are actually four and four. Four are needs addressed. They might be the beat down side of the “Beats.” The poor, mourning, hungering and thirsting, and the persecuted are blessed by God in their troubles. Then there are the meek, the merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers. They might be the beatific, the beatitude side of the “Beats.” We tend to enter the beatitudes at the point we are beat down. We dare not come out at the point we went in, only lifted from or perhaps in our troubles. We miss the excitement of everything we see if we are only in our own strength meek, merciful, pure in heart and peacemakers.

Beatitude is a vision of God even to being perhaps out of our mind in trust. Beatitude is life in the kingdom of heaven—that is that life in love—God that is so humanly difficult to believe possible as to be relegated to the heavens. Matthew tells us Jesus began his work saying, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17) Blessed, he says is living in the life of that kingdom.

If you have read or might plan to read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and have not read John Leland’s “Why Kerouac Matters,” I recommend the latter. Leland observes that while the image of the “Beats” has been popularly defined by the fast talking, mad-driving Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise’s growing up, becoming an adult is the heart of the book. In the course of their travels, Sal learns and dispenses many lessons often in parables and revelations.

When On the Road was published in 1957, the best selling novel in America was Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place , a saucy indictment of mill-town American values. Her success followed Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, an indictment of suburban values and the rat race. Both books far outsold On the Road at the time and were made into movies. But while they have faded, On the Road remains a rite of passage because rather than an indictment of its times, it offers an affirmative response. Leland likens it to Scott Pecks, The Road Less Travelled; it gives readers something they can use.(2) The Beatitudes too, give the reader something we can use.

Beats and the Beatitudes—it’s been quite a journey on the road this summer. This is the “back to” weekend, but that road we have travelled this summer doesn’t lead back. The Beats have given us a taste of tasting life. Hopefully our appetites have been whetted for that adventure. The Beatitudes have blessed far beyond any expectations. The satisfying and comforting, the vision of God, of life in the realm of love, mercy and peace beckon us irresistibly.

Amen and amen.

(1) “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac, p. 120.

(2) “Why Kerouac Matters” by John Leland pp. 6-10

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