Walk with Me | April 19, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
I want Jesus to walk with me.
All along my pilgrim’s journey
I want Jesus to walk with me.
When I’m in trouble, walk with me.
When my heart is almost breaking
I want Jesus to comma walkin’ with me.
In my trials, walk with me.
When my head is bowed in sorrow,
I want Jesus to walk with me.
In this Easter season, I continue to contemplate the meaning of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. I shared a few of the Stations of the Cross painted by my son when he was a child. This was Jesus’ journey, yes, but it was also my son Fred’s journey. It took him over a year to complete and he worked closely with his art teacher.
I continued to contemplate this journey…the one Jesus took and how it may symbolize our own journeys in life. This is a question posed to me many times by my father, who for some reason thought I might know something about it. For many years it seems, I felt embarrassed by the question. I was not any more qualified to speak to it than I felt he was…the man who raised me…who gave me my spiritual foundation.
Then I encountered Howard Thurman. Reading Jesus and the Disinherited gave me permission to contemplate this again. I sent my father the words from the Epilogue to that book:
To some he is the grand prototype of all the distilled longing of humanity for fulfillment, for wholeness, for perfection. To some he is the Eternal Presence hovering over all the myriad needs of humanity, yielding healing for the sick of body and soul, giving life to those whose weariness has overtaken in the long march, and calling our hidden purposes of destiny which are the common heritage…he belongs to no age, no race, no creed. When one looks into his face, they see etched the glory of their own possibilities, and their hearts whisper, “Thank you and thank God!”
At the time I sent these words, it was probably too late for him to take them in. Still, they may have been some comfort to him and perhaps to my mother. What I walked away with after reading them again was the profound importance of the journey…the journey of life and the fact that we do not need to walk it alone. Interestingly, my father’s favorite song was, I think, Just a Closer Walk with Thee.
The history of this song reveals that it was recovered by a man named Kenneth Morris, who heard it at a railway station being sung by a porter, William B. Hurse. The lyrics to this song resonate deeply with our opening reference to our journey…our companionship with Jesus of Nazareth (as illustrated by Fred’s journey). It is a mutual journey and as we see, a journey in which we suffer. The song and others like it, is perhaps a lament…an outpouring of grief and sorrow regarding the troubles of the world.
Of course, this is writ large in our consciousness right now. The troubles are real. So many are suffering and the reality of it is often too difficult to face. We often feel overwhelmed and want to give up. But Franz Kafka warned us that…
You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something we are free to do…but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.
What is he saying? How can he say that. It is a safety mechanism to shut down…part of our polyvagal system to hold ourselves back…to hide…much like the animal that plays dead rather than being eaten by a predator. But this decision to shut down, in reaction to the dread we feel, says Joanna Macy, can take a heavy toll.
Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life – flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic – but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.
So, it seems that this holding ourselves back can rob us of our resiliency and our creativity. We are unable to take in the information needed to actually find solutions or even healing for the suffering. It may also further isolate us from others who might share our plight. Our fresh visions and strategies are also held back. Now, I’m not saying that we should get stuck in the suffering, but we do have to address it. Many of our ancestors knew this, especially the authors of the Negro Spirituals. Thurman wrote about this in the Ingersoll Lecture entitled, The Negro Spiritual Speaks of Life and Death, published while Thurman was at this church, in 1947. He cites many examples of songs that contained a rich testimony concerning life and death because he said…
…in many ways they are the voice, sometimes strident, sometimes muted and weary, of a people for whom the cup of suffering overflowed in haunting overtones of majesty, beauty and power!
Thurman examines the process taken on by the writers of the Spirituals…the process of lamentation and grief from which they could not hide. They could not shut down their awareness of the fact of death and the spirit was, in Thurman’s words: …stripped to the literal substance of itself. He observed that there are tremendous emotional blocks set up without release that cause us to limp through the years with our griefs unassuaged. Not so with the creators of the Spirituals, says Thurman. Instead, they even understood that there were worse things in life than death, as disclosed in the song, Oh Freedom.
Of course, this was an important testimony and perhaps it goes back to the story of Jesus of Nazareth walking to his death, carrying that heavy cross, passing by his loved ones and eventually being hung on the cross with others that were condemned to death.
I get the feeling that this was part of what grabbed my father’s attention…his imagination. He often wondered if his life was valuable…he was even suicidal at times. But he sensed, I think, the companionship of Jesus…the fact that he was walking with Jesus. He saw at times the glory of his own possibilities. He was able to lament at times and this caused him to keep fresh before himself the moment of his high resolve…not everyday, but at times.
And this is what each of us needs. We need to lament…to mourn our trouble…our sufferings…the suffering of the world, including the natural world of which we are a part. Arne Naess, the developer of the concept of Deep Ecology said that we can perform beautiful acts in life…acts that benefit all life. We can do this because we understand ourselves to be part of life…all life. We are not just caring for the Earth because it is our duty (although it is), instead we are doing this because we cannot do otherwise. Like Jesus and like our disinherited ancestors, we cannot banish our despair. We must acknowledge it and lament it…grieve it. Only then can we develop the capacity to do right by our world, much like we do right by our families.
May each of us walk with the Great Spirit of existence…in the person of Jesus of Nazareth or other great religious spirits whose fellowship with God was the foundation of their fellowship with all. May we go on, trusting in the power of the all-pervading presence…to see what the end will be.
Thurman says this Spiritual can help us envision life as a Pilgrimage…a journey. Godspeed for the Journey!
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