I had the opportunity to preach at my brother Karl’s church this past Sunday. Crossing Community Church is an ARP (Associate Reformed Presbyterian) church with a very talented worship team and a diverse congregation in a serious pursuit of Jesus. It was a delight to be with them. We arrived about a half hour early to the service so that I could get mic-ed up, get to talk to Karl and take care of some other preliminaries. A woman and two men greeted us as we came through the door. I said good morning and then Becky said, “are you Karl’s brother?” “Yes,” I said, “did you recognize the resemblance?” This is fairly common. There are five of us. I’m the oldest, Karl is best, Ed is the cutest, Will is the tallest, and Joe is the most athletic. But we all are unmistakably connected as family and easy to pick out in a crowd.
But the next words out of Becky’s mouth surprised me, “You both have similar walks. The gate of your stride is the same.” Having never observed this phenomenon, I didn’t know what she was talking about. I asked my wife about this, and she nodded her head and said, “all the wives know.” Intrigued, I asked her what is distinctive about it. “You all walk like you are walking on stumps,” and then she mimicked the cadence, “stomp, stomp, stomp” swaying her head from side to side with each “stomp.” “I said, “stumps” as in trees?” She said, “yeah.” Then she followed up moments later with, “you all walk like you are on a mission.”
I turned and looked at Karl, now coming up the sidewalk and approaching the door I had just come through. I watched his gate. “So that’s how I walk.” Hmm. Interesting.
I had a message to concentrate on, so I put these thoughts aside. But after the service, I found Karl again and watched his walk, his gate. I wondered what the cause was of our similar “walk”. Surely some genetic trait was partially responsible. Perhaps the fact that all of us had been catchers on our baseball teams growing up. Dad had been a catcher too, a good one. When he was 16, he was offered a contract to play professionally by the Philadelphia Athletics. Youngest brother Joe had hopes of following in those footsteps till a skiing injury destroyed one of his knees. Maybe being a catcher all those years ago had contributed to the similarity in our walks. Maybe watching our Dad walk is part of the answer. We all loved and admired him. Kids imitate their dads for good and ill, knowingly and unknowingly. Maybe we had all picked up the “walk” from him. I suspect that is a major part of the answer. I hope so. Dad lives with Jesus now but it’s fun to think that a little piece of him travels with us in the way we walk.
Walking is an important word in the Bible. One of my seminary professors taught a class called the Doctrine of Peripatology, the doctrine of the Christian walk, based on the Greek word for walk (Gr. Περιπατεω, peripateo). I think he coined the term but not the doctrine, that was always there in the pages of the Book. It’s important for Christians to know how to walk out the gospel in life. The word means simply to walk, to ploddingly put one foot in front of the other and make one’s way from one point to another. But in the New Testament, it is used to describe a pattern of life. This is confirmed by the Old Testament as well. Περιπατεω, peripateo is the word used in the LXX (Septuagint) to translate the Hebrew word, halak,
( הָלַךְ ) which carries with it the idea of “to regulate one’s life” according to a pattern suitable for a people who knows, loves and serves the God who created the universe.
Karl and I have a gate, (and according to my wife, my brothers Ed, Will and Joe as well), a way of walking, that declares us as family and is probably most recognizable as the gate of our father. We all walk in a way that marks us from others but also identifies us as belonging to a particular family.
The Christian walks to the beat of a different drummer than the non-Christian. We have a different “gate” and it ought to be discernible to others, even obvious, something that marks us as a part of a family, like the gate of the Schoenleber brothers, marks them as related to that bigger Schoenleber family that started with Dad and maybe his Dad too.
Wouldn’t it be both appropriate and wonderful if all Christians bore the gate of the Father, or the gate of Jesus declaring the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives and marking us as His in such a way that people would notice and conclude, we “had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).
Maybe we all need to take a doctrine of peripatology class. More seriously, maybe we all need to make learning to “walk the walk” a serious topic to study this year and for the remainder of our lives.
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