St. Augustine once said, ‘The soul finds rest nowhere until it rests in God.’
A very powerful image and metaphor in the traditions of our faith, both from the experience of the Hebrew people and from the experience of the early church is that as a people of faith, we are a people on a journey traveling to be at home with God; to find our ‘rest’ in God.
This journey is both a physical journey of time and space, and a journey of the spirit where hearts and minds are transformed and reshaped. A vivid travelogue of some of these journeys is recorded in the Bible by our ancestors in the faith.
According to these ancient stories, our ancestors in the faith began their journey as ‘wandering Arameans’ - as nomadic peoples whose wandering led them to Egypt and eventually to enslavement. While in Egypt, they cried out to God, who heard their cries of suffering and promised them release. And so with Moses to lead them, these wandering Arameans embarked on another journey…a forty year journey, the journey of a generation. And on that journey of hardship and blessings, of failures and covenants, a new relationship was forged with God and they grew to become a new people and a new nation.
Out of the experience of these physical journeys, our ancestors in the faith recognized that they had also been on a journey of the spirit, a journey where they encountered God and deepened their understanding of what it meant to walk with God.
And so it comes as no surprise that the practice of going on a journey to deepen and strengthen one’s faith and to draw closer to God soon became a religious discipline. And over time, those who embarked on these journeys became known as pilgrims.
Many of the Psalms in the Bible were songs sung by these pilgrims as they traveled to the temple in Jerusalem or to any one of the many shrines in Palestine. Psalms 120-134 include fifteen ‘Songs of Ascents’ that were meant to be sung by pilgrims as they made their way up the steep incline to the Holy City of Jerusalem.
You can hear in these Psalms words of encouragement for the difficulties and dangers of the pilgrimage - Psalm 121, with its themes of God’s protection and guidance while traveling in the hills strikes a chord in many diverse cultures.
One of our EMUC folk loves it because it reminds her of the hills of Jamaica. It is a well-known and beloved hymn in our Voices United hymn book and one of the very few hymns written not only in English but also in Mohawk and Ojibway. Christians of many cultures and traditions have resonated with the words of the Psalm as they have hiked the hills of Canada’s north, the hills of Palestine or the hills of Jamaica.
Listening to a verse of Psalm 121 and you can imagine pilgrims singing in two voices, responding to one another as they travel to their sacred destinations:
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where will I look for help?
My help comes from God who has made heaven and earth.
God will not let your foot stumble;
the One who protects Israel will not slumber.
The one who protects you will neither slumber nor sleep.
Pilgrims were travellers on a sacred journey. Some traveled to these religious and sacred sites to find healing; some did it as an act of penance, seeking forgiveness; some came to retrace the steps of their ancestors so that they could feel in their own bones the memories and experience of those who had gone before.
In the passage we read today from Deuteronomy, it is evident that many pilgrimages were occasions to bring a thank offering to God. And although there were some varying individual reasons to set out on these religious journeys, the ultimate goal of all pilgrims was to encounter God, the holy, the sacred.
In the Middle Ages pilgrimages were central to the Christian experience. Pilgrims were held in high regard, for to go on a pilgrimage meant to leave behind the security of home and family and to embark on a long and often dangerous journey to a sacred place.
Many traveled to the Holy Land to walk where Jesus walked, to pray at the shrine of his birth-place or to stand vigil at the site of his crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Others traveled to sacred sites in Europe; many of the famous cathedrals across Europe were destinations on the pilgrimage routes. In fact much of the early literature of Europe was travel diaries or traveling stories told during pilgrimages, such as Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, which is a collection of stories told by pilgrims traveling together.
All of these medieval travelers undertook these pilgrimages with a purpose - to draw closer to God and to deepen their faith in the God they knew in Jesus Christ. And even though they traveled to places like Jerusalem, or to Canterbury Cathedral they traveled not so much with the goal of seeing the sights but rather with a hunger to more clearly see the face of Jesus in their lives.
Are pilgrimages just a thing of the past, of ancient Israel and the Middle Ages?
I would argue, as would many others, that the way of a pilgrim is practiced today and is truly an authentic way of living the Christian life.
This came home to me once again just before Christmas in an EMUC gathering of young adults and some of us who are not so young!
In addition to visiting and catching up on personal news from university life and new careers, some of the group shared their experiences of recent travel. And as their stories unfolded it was clear that these were not the travels of folks who saw themselves as tourists, but rather the travels of those who were on a pilgrimage.
Now I am not trying to give tourism or tourists a bad name - I’ve been a tourist from time to time as I am sure many of you have been …but there are limits to being a tourist. As tourists we are generally seeking a change of scenery - a time away from our ‘normal’ lives, a time of rest and play to refuel us and perhaps to give us a fresh perspective when we return home.
As tourists we often travel to experience something new, but we generally return home to our regular lives unchanged.
On the other hand, the journey of a pilgrim is the journey to becoming something new. A pilgrim travels, not to escape from life for a while, but rather to embrace life more deeply and to experience transformation.
In that night in late December, each of modern day pilgrims who shared their journeys - Erin, Lara, Kofi, Ian, and Deb clearly saw their journeys as opportunity to embrace life more deeply and there was no question that each one of them had experienced personal transformation as a result.
Whether it was working with community organizations and partners to build or rebuild homes in Mexico, Nicaragua or New Orleans; whether it was traveling to isolated villages in Africa to be part of a health care team for malaria prevention or to join a group teaching and caring for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS; whether it was in the work of leadership development of young adults of diverse backgrounds here in Canada or in the work of developing business skills of young women in Ghana, each of these pilgrims had experienced change.
Changed by the people they had lived with, worked with and shared meals with during their journey; changed by the blessings and challenges of the different and unfamiliar landscapes and cultures that they were immersed in; changed by eyes that were open, not only to see the sites, but open to see the face of Christ in the faces of those they encountered along the way.
Each in their own words, spoke of how their faith had grown and deepened, how their values and assumptions were challenged, how their understanding and relationship with God grew as they shared in the suffering and the joys of the people they met; as they worked to plant the seeds of hope by building homes or in the work of teaching and healing; as they experienced the remarkable generosity of folks who had very little material resources to share; and as they lived out the great commandment of Jesus to love God with all their heart, mind and strength and their neighbours as themselves.
And each one of these people will tell you that you can’t be a pilgrim if you only stay in a four or five star hotel; if you eat only in certain restaurants; if you only travel in your air-conditioned bus on the main roads as you speed along to see as many of the sites as you can in one day.
For to be a pilgrim demands a different investment of yourself and your time. Pilgrims live as the ‘locals’ do, eating their food, walking in their streets, staying with them long enough to able to speak their names in love and friendship and to hear and to hold their stories with respect and trust.
Deb Siertsema told a story of her experience in New Orleans that helps me to distinguish a pilgrim from a tourist. In November, Deb traveled by bus with a Habitat for Humanity group to New Orleans to help in the clean up and rebuilding of homes in one of the neighbourhoods devastated by Hurricane Katrina. On the way to their destination, as her group traveled through some of these devastated neighbourhoods, their bus was boarded by a local community group who took a photo of them.
Apparently, since Katrina, New Orleans has a new tourist attraction, no it’s not the jazz or the night life in the Quarter, it’s not the annual Mardi Gras - it’s the photo opportunity for people who in air-conditioned comfort, drive through these ravaged neighbourhoods so that they can gawk at the high water marks, the peeling paint and mildewed walls; so that they can stare at the boarded up doors and windows, the broken trees and overgrown yards, and point out the local memorials and shrines that mark the death of one of the victims of the flood.
The impact of these tourists has been so upsetting for those who live in New Orleans, that they are making their own visual record of these bus tours as a way to protest this perverted tourism venture.
Even later on as Deb’s Habitat group was at work in one of the neighbourhoods, they were viewed with suspicion by one of the locals who asked, ‘Are you here to hurt or to help?’ It took quite a bit of persuading to convince him that they weren’t there to take photos or to collect souvenirs but rather to offer their time, labour and supplies to rebuild some of the homes.
While being a tourist generally means traveling for a change of scenery and the pace of life to relax and to experience something new (and sadly on occasion at great cost to others) being a pilgrim means traveling with the intention of becoming something new and with the intention of living life in a new way.
Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel - ‘follow me’ were an invitation to those first disciples to join him as pilgrims on a journey. This was not to be an adventure of seeing the sights and relaxing with cool drinks under palm trees. This was an invitation to experience the reality of God by going beyond the borders of their traditions and customs; an invitation to accept the company and hospitality of those who were often judged as having nothing to offer; an invitation to see and to be part of God’s work of healing and hope even in places of profound pain and suffering.
That same invitation of Jesus is spoken to us today. There is a pilgrim’s path waiting for each one of us to step out upon; a path that will lead us to a deeper experience of life; a path that will lead us to more fully discover our home; our rest in God. For some of us that path will lead us to some distant places; for others of us, the pilgrim’s journey will be closer to home but just as profound and transformative none the less.
For whenever we put down our nets and venture with Jesus outside of the confines of our usual routines, we set out on a path to eat with those whom Jesus would break bread with; to welcome those whom Jesus longs to be at home with; to stand beside those whom Jesus would befriend; to rejoice and affirm the presence of God wherever the journey will lead us; trusting that God is our help and will not let our feet stumble.
Pilgrim’s Prayer (from Wales)
God, you have called us to a pilgrimage of faith.
The light of your truth summons us,
and the call of faith is a constant challenge on our journey.
We give thanks for the desire to seek you:
we give thanks for the voices from the past that offer guidance,
for signposts pointing to the next stage,
for companions who share the journey,
for footsteps in the sand of pilgrims before us,
for the conviction that unseen but not unknown, you are with us.
God, keep us faithful to the vision, and steadfast on our pilgrimage
so that the distant goal may become a reality,
and faith at last lead to sight. Amen.
