Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went (walked) up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

~Matthew 14:22-23

Walking

I’m a sports fan so I could not ignore the World Cup buzz over the summer. I also love a good story so I found myself listening for the most interesting ones that would come out of the largest sporting event in the world. There were many. One that I found very interesting connects with the title I chose for this piece, "Walking." 

The Athletic, a website devoted to sports, reported that Lionel Messi of Argentina, one of the greatest soccer players ever, spent 63% of this World Cup walking. This is not new for Messi; it is reported that he has always walked during matches. Of course it has increased as he has gotten older but he has always walked as a way to gather necessary information to help his team win. Argentina has now made it to two back-to-back World Cup Finals. The Athletic reports that Messi’s stillness plays into his preternatural game intelligence, giving him the calm perspective to digest the chaos around him and identify the vulnerabilities that he can attack on the field. Walking is a tactic in Messi’s style of play. In our text today, Jesus is also walking, not in a soccer game (though it would be amazing if we discovered an ancient etching of Jesus playing futbol!), but towards rest. 

In her article, "Ways to Walk," Debra Dean Murphy states that there are more than 200 references to walking in the Bible. She says that while some have to do the act of physically walking (“take up your bed and walk”), many are metaphorical, like Micah’s famous passage that ends with the phrase “walk humbly with your God.” She goes on to say that there is also much talk of paths — ancient paths and slippery paths, paths of the wicked and of the upright, crooked paths and straight ones. The earliest Christians were called people who belonged to the Way, which suggests that discipleship from the beginning was a collective movement, with fellow travelers bound to each other in mutual care and affection. 

Today’s passage begins with Jesus finally getting the long-deferred solitude he had been seeking since he first heard of his friend John the Baptist’s death earlier in the chapter. He dismissed the crowds and “went (walked) up the mountain by himself to pray” (v. 23). Before doing so, he “made” the disciples go ahead of him in a boat; this is the first time in Matthew that Jesus and the disciples are separated in this way. In this passage, Jesus retreats to the solitude of the mountaintop to gain a temporary reprieve from the affairs of the world and a brief opportunity to focus, undistracted, on matters of the spirit. 

Maybe there is a lot more to walking than we realize. Debra Dean Murphey says that as we walk we should walk mindfully — in our neighborhoods, on our campuses, and on the streets of our cities.  As we walk we should be attentive to the spaces, places, people, and creatures on the paths in front of us and alongside us. I believe we all know that regular walking carries great health benefits. It appears that walking also has a way of speaking to our souls.