“What is your final destination?” asked the glowing blue sign as I dashed down the carpeted concourse toward my gate. I thought my eyes were playing tricks so I turned back for a closer look. Sure enough, in the center of the display was what looked like a yellow road sign and a figure kneeling in prayer. The bottom of the sign indicated that this was an ad for the Atlanta International Airport Interfaith Chaplaincy. It seemed at first blush to be playing into the notion that religions, no matter their stripe, are really just tickets to the afterlife – a play on the question “where are you going when you die?” Such a rendering of all faiths (after all the sign did purport to be “interfaith”) as being about pie in the sky left me a little frustrated and I turned on heel and continued toward my gate. “My final destination is home.” I said to myself.
We were about to board our plane back to St. Paul, and I couldn’t help the feeling that though we had only lived here for 6 months, we were in every way returning home to our place and our community. Back home was the house we had just purchased, a church we had come to love, and our new life. I was going home.
And, as I fumed for a moment over the silly sign, I couldn’t help thinking that this was what had me so frustrated. That so much religion geared toward the afterlife has us overlooking the very real destinations in which each of us live and move and daily have our being. Looking to the hereafter can cause us to overlook the here and now.
Still, whatever the impulse behind the message on the sign, it did seem to get one thing right. The question of a destination implies, at least to me, the existence of a journey. As a person of faith I do affirm that my life, especially my life in faith, is a journey sometimes toward and often away from the source of all life and faith. My final destination, my ultimate home, is not a place or a realm but a being whom we have come to know in the person of Jesus the Christ. My home is in God. And God, our faith affirms, is known in the here and now, in the present realities of our daily life. God is known in our community called the church, at St. John’s and beyond it in our everyday experiences. God is with us every step of the way of this journey – from our beginning to our ultimate end and everywhere in between.
Faithfully,
Jered
