The American poet, Robert Frost, ended his famous poem The Road Not Taken, by writing,
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Those words have captured minds and hearts since they were written in 1915 as they evoke the imagery of a fork in the road, where we must decide which direction to walk. I think it stirs us because we know that it’s true – there are going to be watershed moments in our lives that we look back on that give definitive shape to the lives we live.
The move we made or didn’t make…
The job we took or didn’t take…
The school we decided to go to…
The proposal we decided to say “yes” or “no” to…
Life is the sum total of the decisions we make.
That’s what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. He states there are two different paths, true and false prophets, and two kinds of foundations we can build our lives upon. The hearers of Jesus’ sermon have to decide what they’re going to do with his words. I’m struck by the fact that there are only two choices – Jesus and everything else. It’s here that as moderns, we often want to push back suggesting there has to be more than two choices. Isn’t life more nuanced than this binary Jesus presents? Does this sound too reductionistic to you? We live in a world that’s filled with options. You go to the grocery store and have 10 different kinds of spaghetti sauce to choose from. We’re often more comfortable with the idea that there are several good options. However, Jesus doesn’t leave us with that possibility.
Jesus is reinforcing his exclusive claim to be the way to life, a claim that he makes throughout the gospels. In John 14:6, Jesus said,
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus doesn’t say it’s hard to get to the Father apart from him, he says it’s impossible. He doesn’t claim to be a way, he claims to be the way. He ends the Sermon on the Mount in the same way, forcing his hearers to decide what they are going to do with his words. Will they hear them and put them into practice or will they build their life on their own wisdom? Will they trust Jesus or will they trust their surrounding culture?
The same choice is in front of us. Two roads are diverging in the woods. The Jesus path is less traveled, but it’s the way to life and joy and peace. Choosing him makes all the difference here and now and throughout eternity.
Pastor Ryan Paulson