There is a road in southern Italy that begins in the city of Eboli and ends in the mountain village of Gagliano. To anyone who makes that journey, it is an ascent to hell. Gagliano is no more than a scattered cluster of fallen down whitewashed old buildings, hanging desperately to barren slopes near a rocky cliff. The village has been there for centuries and for as far back as the oldest person can remember, it has always been a place of severe poverty, unrelenting disease, frightening superstition, monotonous despair, and death. Oppressed and defeated by those conditions, it is said that the peasants of Gagliano do not sing and there is a saying among them that "Christ stopped in Eboli," that somehow God had forgotten them and Christ stopped at the other end of the road. Because hope and joy, the fullness of human life that God means for us to have, are not found there, the road to Gagliano is a road that leads to hell.

Likewise, there are some stairs in a New York City tenement that go up six flights to an apartment that houses a family of ten -- a grandmother, her two daughters and their seven children. Anyone who has climbed those stairs and shared in the experiences of that family this past year has made an ascent to hell. Unemployed, with few or no job skills, the family subsists on welfare payments and the meager wages one daughter brings home from work at a fast-food restaurant. Often the heat does not work and there is no hot water. Many days there is no food, for alcohol and drugs often eat up their money. Five days before Christmas, while the grandmother was down on the first floor to fetch the mail, one of the little boys climbed up on the gas stove, turned it on and set himself ablaze. While the rest of the world was singing "Joy to the World," that family, already dead to the world around them, mourned the painful death of one of their children.

In another part of the world, there is a trail in eastern Turkey that winds its way through the rocky barrens to the squalor of a refugee camp. Here thousands of people are housed in makeshift tents -- tattered blanket homes. If you were to take that road and visit those camps, you would hike yourself into hell. Sickness and disease are rampant there. Death is a frequent visitor where fresh water and food are scarce and sanitary conditions are unheard of. The people who live in those camps are trapped -- unable to move forward into Turkey and, because of war and fighting behind, unable to go back to their homes.

In this so-called modern world, which is supposed to be undergoing a revolution of change in the direction of a "new world order," so many of its roads lead not up, or forward, into the future, but back and down into hell. Death travels these roads in Ryder trucks, driven by paranoid patriots, loaded with fertilizer explosives. Sickness stalks the streets of Zaire under the name of the Ebola virus. In fact, all over our world there are streets and stairways, elevators and superhighways that lead to hell, places of evil where people are trapped in boredom, bigotry, loneliness, leukemia, poverty, psychosis, despair, and death.

Trouble is all about us and the words of Saint Paul ring true when he wrote, "Outwardly we are wasting away. Daily we are being given over to death." To us Jesus speaks this morning, saying, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid."

Jesus was preparing his disciples for tough times. He was about to ascend to the Father and they would be on their own -- left to find their way through this world alone. And yet, they would not be alone. For he would be with them in the presence of the Comforter, the Counselor, the Holy Spirit. In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan battled for an entire year to find a passage around South America. There at the very tip of the continent, in its icy waters he encountered some of the worst weather anywhere on earth. Raging seas, towering ice floes, and a mutinous crew plagued his efforts. When he finally made his way through those straits (which today bear his name -- the Straits of Magellan), he entered into a great body of water that lay beyond, and as he and his men lifted their faces to heaven and gave thanks to God, he named the new ocean "The Peaceful One -- the Pacific Ocean."

In his words this morning, Jesus desires to lead us in the same way to a place of peace. It is his hope to direct our feet and steer our lives from the paths that would lead to hell to his place of peace. "Let not your hearts be troubled," he says, "neither let them be afraid."

Those are important words because our world is filled with fearful people. Advice columnist Ann Landers receives something like 10,000 letters a month. When asked what seems to be the most common topic, she answered that most people seem to be afraid of something. They are afraid of losing their health, their job, or their family. They are afraid of upsetting their neighbor, alienating a friend, or committing a social faux pas. Many are even afraid when there is no reason to be afraid. Ours is a world of fearful people.

Psychologist Hugh Missildine says that among the earliest emotions that every human being experiences as an infant is the feeling of fear. And that fear can be grouped into three distinct categories: a fear of falling, a fear of loud noises, and a fear of abandonment. As we grow into adults, we are able to deal fairly well with two of those fears. For some, of course, the fear of heights still remains and even though as we grow old we regain that fear of falling and breaking a bone, it is not the same as the fear of falling that a baby experiences. Likewise as we grow older, we lose our fear of loud noises, even though many a parent has experienced it just the same -- this time, however, it's rock music coming from a teenager's room.

Most people learn to deal with those two fears. But the fear of abandonment, of being left alone, of having no one who cares about us, is a fear that all people share, and for many it just grows more acute the longer we live. To us Jesus says this morning, "That can't happen. I will never leave you alone. I am going to my Father, but I will send the Holy Spirit to be with you."

Every basketball fan knows the name Larry Bird. An All-Star player for the Boston Celtics for many years, Larry Bird won nearly every award a basketball player can win. And yet he still remembers what it was like to be overlooked and unappreciated. In his senior year in high school, Bird was chosen for the Kentucky/Indiana All-Star Games. Now those games are a big deal in basketball crazy Kentucky and Indiana. However, the only reason Bird was chosen was that usually there was a representative from southern Indiana and they needed someone to fill that slot. They made that clear to him when he was selected. So from the very beginning, he was placed on the second team.

In the practices, however, the second team outplayed the first. And in the first game of the All-Star series, the Indiana team was up by eight points when the second team with Bird on it was sent in. They blew the game wide open. The same thing happened in the second game. This time the Indiana team was trailing in the first half when Larry's unit went in and again they went crazy and took complete control of the game. However, as the second half started, the coach put the first team back in.

Later, when it was time for the second team to go back in, the coach put everybody in except Larry Bird. He was left there, alone at the end of the bench wondering what was going on. Finally with about two minutes to play, the coach came over to Larry and said, "Hey, I forgot all about you. Why don't you go in now?" And Bird refused. "Too late, coach," he said. Years later he reflected on the event and said, "I know I overreacted because I was young. However, if I had it to do over again, I'd do the same thing because I remember how embarrassed I was. Even though my values have changed and my outlook is different, I still remember how I felt -- completely forgotten and totally unappreciated."

Friends: if one of the greatest basketball players of all time can feel forgotten, how about the rest of us who are not blessed with the talent and skill that he has? We know how it is to feel forgotten and unappreciated. We've been down that road.

But the good news this morning is that God will not forget us. God tells us that we are somebody -- and in baptism God calls us by name. God puts God's mark upon us and makes us God's own. God sends us the Holy Spirit, to comfort and counsel us in life.

As Jesus called those disciples to him in the upper room and spoke the words of the Gospel reading to them, Jesus wanted them to know that they were his. He gave them a new identity and a sense of inner peace that the world could never take from them. And that's what he wants to give to us: a sense of peace, a new identity, and a direction for living so that our footsteps will not wander onto the roads to hell.

Highly esteemed author Alvin Toffler once said, "You've got to think about the big things while you are doing the small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction." And that's true. If we are to be effective and successful and happy in this life, we need to have something bigger than ourselves to strive for. Companies today urge their workers to write out a mission statement. What is our purpose in doing business? Whom do we seek to serve? How can we do it? In the same way, it would be helpful if each of us had a personal mission statement. What drives our lives? Whom do we serve? What is our purpose for living? And here's a possible answer: To live my days making my life and the lives of those around me more pleasing to God. Or: To enrich someone else's life with the love that God gives me. Or: To use my gifts, abilities, and opportunities to the utmost for God's glory. Would that kind of mission statement make a difference in how we live?

In 1991 an Air Canada flight ran into big trouble. Passengers were enjoying an in-flight movie on the Boeing 767 when the jumbo jet's massive engines abruptly stopped. At first only those without earphones on noticed anything. However, soon it was apparent the jet was in trouble. The pilot came on the speaker system and announced that Flight 143 would be making an emergency landing. The 69 people on board were trapped in an agonizingly slow but inescapable descent to earth.

For several minutes a desperate silence hung over the cabin. Then fear gave way to screams of anxiety as the landing neared. All the latest technology could not keep the jumbo jet in the air. What had happened was this. The electronic digital fuel gauge was out of order. So the flight crew had depended on the figures given them by the refueling crew before takeoff. But someone on the refueling crew had confused pounds with kilograms. Therefore, eight hundred miles short of its destination, that mighty jet simply ran out of fuel and was forced to make an emergency landing. Fortunately no one was injured.

A multimillion dollar airplane, headed in the right direction, but running out of fuel. That's what's happening to a lot of people today. They have everything in life going for them -- a new car, a wonderful home, a good education, and a good job -- and one day they wake up out of fuel. At the center of their lives there is an emptiness. They don't know why they are living. There is nothing outside of themselves to live for.

Don't let that happen to you. Jesus tells us that the power for successful living comes from God. It is the promised gift that Jesus offers us. "Peace be with you," he says. "My peace I give to you, not as the world gives you. Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me." In Jesus' name. Amen.