Friend, Friend Indeed

Jean-Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864),
"Christ's Entry into Jerusalem" (c.1845)

Luke 19:28-40 & Philippians 2: 5-11

Palm Sunday/ 24th March 2013

Today we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem, with palms in hand, and our shouts of “Hosanna” and “Blessed.”  It’s bittersweet.  Always is.  We know what the week will bring.  We know the stories, all of them:  Matthew’s and Mark’s, Luke’s and John’s. They each have their own slant, their own distinctive voice, with unique (even conflicting) chronologies and theological outlooks. This year the lectionary favors Luke’s version of Jesus’ entry into the religious and political powder keg otherwise known as Jerusalem, the City of David, the city of Yahweh’s shalom, Yahweh’s peace.  Was there ever such a misnamed city?  City of God’s peace?

            We all know what waits.  Even after all these years, this text, these stories of that fateful week that changed the course of history, of our history, the questions remain, the answers difficult to discern. Why?  For what?  What did Jesus’ suffering and death accomplish? What does it tell us about the nature of God? How we answer informs our faith commitments, Holy week, every week.

            During our adult education hour throughout the season of Lent we explored the various ways the New Testament attempts to “make sense” of the cross. One theme that I tried to suggest each week is that the New Testament does not speak with one voice regarding the meaning of the cross.  Even the creeds are silent.  Not silent about the cross, but what the cross means.  Instead, throughout its history the Church has generated metaphors, that is, ways to express its meaning, metaphors of atonement (victory, sacrifice, etc.).  But the metaphors should not be taken literally.  Metaphors should be revelatory; in other words, our metaphors or images of the cross should open up reality for us, they should allow the real, the true, the beautiful, to emerge. They should not close off reality, but open it.  Not provide less meaning, but more.  They should enlarge the soul, not diminish it.

            The fact that we have various metaphors, images, symbols, theologies of the cross tell us that what occurred that week was bigger than our metaphors.  It’s a story that we can’t completely tell.  Never will.  History as a science does not have the power or the authority to bear such truth.[1] 

            The New Testament gives us four gospel witnesses, but there were others, too, who experienced that awful week, who walked with Jesus into Jerusalem and watched him confront the powers that seek to undo God’s way in the world.  And so we must attend to this story lightly, gently; don’t think you have it all figured out, don’t assume you know what it all means – because you don’t.  Here and there we are given glimpses of the truth, discover a new angle or perspective that allows us to see things about the story that we never noticed before.  And sometimes, by the grace of God, we hear the story with an entirely different ear; we listen to the story with our souls and hear it as if for the first time.

            Speaking of ears and listening, I’ve had a hymn running through my head for the last week or so.  It’s the Lenten hymn, “My Song Is Love Unknown.”  The text was first a poem by the English Puritan minister, Samuel Crossman (1623-1683), written in 1664 while England was enduring yet another outbreak of plague.   The tune was written in 1918 by the English composer John Ireland (1879-1962).  The story goes that one-day Ireland was at lunch with Geoffrey Shaw (1879-1943), himself a composer and Anglican church musician.  Shaw handed Ireland a slip of paper and said, “I want a tune for this lovely poem by Samuel Crossman.”   Ireland took the paper with the poem on it, picked up a menu, and then proceeded to compose the tune, on the back of the menu.  In a few minutes Ireland handed it back to Shaw, with a casual remark:  “Here is your tune.”[2]

Both the tune and text have been working on me this week.  The part that grips and grabs me, that touches something in me occurs when tune and text come together in a striking way toward the center of the tune.  About halfway through Ireland intentionally deviates from the dominant or tonic key of D-Major. It’s a technique called chromaticism, modulating out of the dominant key; it’s a signature technique that Ireland loved to use.  He breaks out of tonality.  Inserts dissonance.  Producing a kind of twinge that then hooks us. The companion text for this part of the tune, the dissonance in each verse, is:  

            …O who am I That for my sake;….

            …But O my Friend, My Friend indeed;…

            …Then ‘Crucify!’ Is all their breath;….

            …Yet steadfast He To suffering goes;….

            …This is my Friend, In whose sweet praise….

            It’s here, at the heart of the hymn, at the heart of the text, it’s these lines that kept repeating, again and again, in my head:  Yet steadfast he to suffering goes.  Yet steadfast he to suffering goes.

            That’s my image of Palm Sunday as Jesus faces Jerusalem, knowing full well what he was doing.  Steadfast. With unwavering commitment he sets his face toward a city he knows will reject him, as it did to so many prophets before him.  With firm resolution, rooted and grounded in unfathomable love, he chooses to go this way.  He chooses to suffer, to undergo what few of us are willing to endure.  It’s this act, this choice, this willful decision that’s so remarkable, that arrests us with awe.  He doesn’t go to conquer or defeat or annihilate or judge. He goes to suffer.  Not to celebrate suffering for its own sake, not to glory in suffering.  God forbid!  Echoing Isaiah from long ago, Jesus is one who serves by suffering, a “suffering servant,” (Isaiah 53), suffering for, suffering with, suffering through the pain and anguish of broken world, a world of broken hearts, suffering the sorrow of a wayward humanity alienated from God’s justice and love and hell-bent on self-destruction.

            This is who God is.  Not God omnipotent, blustering about with bravado, full of power and might, shock and awe, but a God who demonstrates a different kind of power, a power strong in weakness, as the Apostle Paul knew (2 Corinthians 12:9).  Or, as Paul wrote to the Philippians, “let the same mind (that is, way) be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  And what was that way?  Quoting from a hymn that would have been familiar to the Philippian church, Paul described the way of Christ:

            who, though he was in the form of God,

                        did not regard equality with God

                        as something to be exploited [or grasped],

                                    but emptied himself,

                                    taking the form of a slave,

                                    being born in human likeness.           

            And being found in human form,

                        he [as God!] humbled himself

                        and became obedient

                        to the point of death – even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-11)

            The Lord chooses to empty himself, to give himself completely, to surrender, to be a slave, a servant, steadfast, sure to suffering he goes, in love, even if love means all the way to death, all the way to hell and back – and not just death, the excruciating, dehumanizing death on a cross.

            Last week and this morning in adult education we read statements from two people without a lot in common – the playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) – writing from different centuries, from different professions, but both in love in Christ, both writing from a prison, in prison for very different reasons; both knew something about a cross.

            In a personal letter Wilde called De Profundis (Out of the Depths), from 1895, (never published in his lifetime), Wilde shares what Christ had come to mean to him.  Wilde compares Jesus to an artist. The life of the artist is one who gives expression to that which cannot speak.  “To [an artist] what is dumb is dead,” Wilde said.  “But to Christ it was not so.  With a width and wonder of imagination that fills one almost with awe, [Christ] took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece.  Those…who are dumb under oppression and ‘whose silence is heard only of God,’ he chose as his brothers [and sisters].  He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry on the lips of those whose tongue had tied….  And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom Sorrow and Suffering were modes through which he could realize his conception of the Beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate and is made an image, [Christ] made himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated Art as no Greek god ever succeeded in doing.”[3]

            And from Bonhoeffer, who discovered something profound after suffering through two world wars and now viewing the world from his vantage in a prison cell.  Our perspective must change, he said in July 1942: “…we have learned to see the great events of world history for once from below, from the perspective of those who are excluded, suspected, maltreated, powerless, oppressed, and scorned, in short the sufferers.” Later, not long before his execution in 1945 and reflecting upon Christ on the cross, Bonhoeffer wrote:  “God lets himself be pushed out of the world on the cross.  He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us…The Bible directs [us] to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.”[4]

            Pro me.  Bonhoeffer liked to say. All this was done, Pro Me, For me.  For you and me.  Jesus suffers, not in our stead, not because he’s taking the blows of an angry Father-Judge, blows meant for us, blows we think we deserve – No! Instead, Jesus demonstrates with his life: this is who God is; this is what God is like.  God is one who suffers with, who identifies with our struggles and sorrows, who participates in our pain, who bears it all – because we can’t! One who takes on and undertakes Death, to show that even Death has no power to separate us from God’s presence. 

            Yet, steadfast he to suffering goes.  Yet, steadfast he to suffering goes. The dissonance at this point in the hymn tune is matched, twice, with the image of Jesus as Friend. Two images, inextricably linked: the friend who suffers.  Jesus the friend, a true friend, who is with me all the way, all the way to hell and back, who suffers with me in all the dissonant and broken places of my life; Jesus our Friend who suffers – with us – and carries us along the way all the way, even to death, all the way, and back.     

            But O my Friend,

            My Friend indeed,

            Who at my need

            His life did spend!

Yes,     This is my Friend,

            In whose sweet praise

            I all my days

            Could gladly spend.[5]

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[1] Kenneth E. Kovacs, The Relational Theology of James E. Loder:Encounter and Conviction (New York:  Peter Lang, 2011), 113 ff.

[2] Muriel Searle, John Ireland, the Man and His Music (Tunbridge Wells:  Midas Books, 1979), cited in LindaJo H. McKim, The Presbyterian Hymnal Companion (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 72.

[3] Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, cited in Anthony W. Bartlett, Cross Purposes:  The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement(Harrisburg:  Trinity Press International, 2001), 177.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. Eberhard Bethge, ed. (New York:  Macmillan, 1971), 360-361.  Emphasis mine.

[5] John Ireland, “My Song Is Love Unkown,” The Presbyterian Hymnal (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1990). 

Welcome Home

Rembrandt (1606-1669), Return of the Prodigal

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Fourth Sunday in Lent/ 10^th March 2013

Do you have a life verse?  Do you have a favorite verse of the Bible?  One that you turn to for inspiration, affirmation, comfort, strength?  Is there one text or one story that sums up what it means to be a child of faith, a follower of Christ, alive in the Spirit? For some, it’s John 3:16 and 17.  A dear friend from New Jersey often signs her cards and letters with Matthew 5:16: “…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

Growing up, especially during my teenage and college years, Proverbs 3:5, 6, was one of mine:  “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  Acknowledge him in all your ways and he shall direct your paths.”  

            As an adult, there’s one verse that probably sums up the gospel for me, that captures the heart of my faith and ministry. It’s 2 Corinthians 5:17-19, particularly verse 19. I think this is the core of the gospel:  “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.”

            Why these verses?  Paul goes right to the heart of what he experienced in his own life.  Paul’s epistles are written with a pastor’s heart. And while we might not agree with everything he says, he’s strongest when he’s writing from the heart of his experience: when he speaks movingly about who Christ is to him, when he speaks eloquently of the new man he had become through this same Christ, sharing his strong conviction that God had accomplished something new for him and for the world through the cross, of the transformation that took place in his own life, being the former persecutor of Christians, and thus holding out for us the same experience: to become new people in this new age of resurrection.

            When Paul talks about being a new creation in Christ, he’s not talking hypothetically from a vacuum, he’s not offering a religious idea and asking us to just believe it or accept, and he’s not making a philosophical argument. Instead, he’s talking about what he knows to be true, and he’s trying to be faithful to it with every ounce of his being, every bone in his body, and with every intellectual means possible, to serve this new creation with all his strength. He knows – he doesn’t have to struggle with belief or unbelief – he knows it, in his heart, in his spirit, in his gut, in his blood, sweat and tears.  He knows that when you get mixed up with Jesus of Nazareth you’re changed, you’re never the same. In fact, you feel like you’re someone new, or different, that something new and different has occurred deep within your soul that’s you, yet not you, but Christ (see Galatians 2:10-20). And because of this “something,” this shift, this re-creation within, you find that your perspective has changed. You’re outlook has changed. You no longer see the world the same way, you can’t. We no longer see issues – especially social and political issues –the same way. And you no longer see your sister or brother the same way. Your feelings have changed. Your thoughts have changed. Everything that appeared old and stale and empty of life now appears new and fresh and full of vitality.

            This is what Paul is getting at – it’s his experience of transformation at the heart of the Christian experience. It’s not dissimilar to what Jesus said to Nicodemus when he said, “You must be born again” or literally, in the Greek, “You must be born from above” (John 3:3).  “To be born from above” speaks to the other thing that Paul knew – this new life, this new creation, this new world he discovered in Christ had nothing to do with Paul, it had nothing to do with what Paul could confess or believe, it did not come from living a good life or trying to be a good person or trying to follow the Ten Commandments or the Law. The new life broke into his life the moment Christ blinded Paul with the truth that threw him to the ground on the Damascus Road – his life would never be the same again (Acts 9:1-19a). He didn’t go looking for this new life; he didn’t expect it. Much of his life was in open rebellion against God. But God made the first move, reached across the void of Paul’s separation and alienation from God, in order to set right a life set off on the wrong course: to heal a broken fellowship with God.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – reaching across our alienation from God to bring us home, prodigals all that we are.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – putting right a life full of wrong so that the wrong can never again hinder our connection with God.

            That’s what God was doing through Christ – reconciling the world to Godself and not counting – not counting! – our trespasses, our debts against us.

            That’s what Paul discovered was in the heart of God, and he saw into the heart of God through the face of Jesus Christ, the same Jesus who says that God is like a parent who welcomes a wayward child home (Luke 15).

            This was an exceptionally rich week for me.  On Monday and Tuesday I was with 650 other Presbyterians in Charlotte, NC, attending the NEXT Church Conference, with Presbyterians trying to figure out what God is up to in the world and trying to discern what’s coming NEXT for the PC (USA).  It was an invigorating experience.  It became clear that what we’re looking for, what the world is really looking forward to is reconciliation.  To know that one is reconciled to God, God to humanity – humanity to God, and an experience of reconciliation with our sisters and brothers.

            Yesterday, we hosted the Covenant Network of Presbyterian Baltimore/DC Regional Conference around the theme of hospitality.  Henry Brinton, pastor at the Fairfax Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA, was our keynote speaker.  He stressed the fact that one of the fruits of the Christian life, one of the fruits of embodying the gift of hospitality, of welcome, is the experience of reconciliation.  It stands at the heart of the gospel.[1]

            We are reconciled to God – all debts paid, all delinquent accounts settled.  We are reconciled to God – we didn’t do it, it’s been done for us; we didn’t earn it, it’s merely ours to receive; it’s ultimately not about us, but about this new act of God raising Christ from the grave, inaugurating a triumph over everything that hinders us from God, everything that alienates us from what our hearts long for more than anything else – to be close to God, to be at peace with God, to be at home with God, to be whole and wholly in God.

            This might appear too good to be true, too simple. There’s something within us, maybe as Westerners, as Americans, that feels that we have to work hard and earn this reconciliation, that we have to prove that we are worthy of such a welcome. Lots of people believe this, even folks who have been in the church all their lives believe this way. They might sing “Amazing Grace,” but they don’t really believe it.  We assume we have work for and earn our welcome – this is just rubbish.  Yes, God’s grace might sound too good to be true, but maybe it’s too good not to be true?

            The gospel has power, above all other philosophies and probably most other religions, because it speaks to the plight of the human condition. The gospel offers good news to humanity lost in a swirl of bad news. It provides a way of healing for the broken, alienated heart, a healing that can’t come from within the human condition.  It can’t come from within the human condition, but must come from beyond it, outside it, from God. That’s why reconciliation cannot come from within us, within our alienation from God, each other, and our alienation with ourselves. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), many existentialist philosophers and theologians have taught us this. We’re too broken for that, all of us.  We are too trapped in ourselves, caught in our circumstances to heal ourselves, to save ourselves. That’s why it has to come from outside us.

            One of the wisest philosophical minds of the last century got right to the heart of the matter, to the heart of Paul, to the heart of the human condition. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) said, “Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean a theory about what has happened or will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.”[2] And that something is reconciliation, transformation, redemption, salvation – call it what you will. It all speaks to the healing of the human heart that every heart is crying out for. It’s about God making broken people whole.

            Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) once told a story to illustrate the popularity of the Spanish name Paco and in doing so showed something else. “A father journeyed to Madrid to put an ad in the local paper that read: PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON WEDNESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA. The next day the authorities had to muster a squadron of the Civilian Guard to disperse the mob of 800 young men who massed on the street in front of the inn.”[3]

            We’re all Pacos, hungry for forgiveness, hungry to be reconciled to God, to others, to the past, to ourselves, hungry for that welcome.  Peace with God and with others and ourselves. This is the ministry entrusted to the church. This is why we exist. If this has been your experience, then you’re called to be its witness, you’re called to be its servant, wherever you live and work. Restoring broken fellowship wherever you find it, restoring broken communities, here we witness the presence of Christ here with us. Into a world such as ours, when we open our eyes and see the ruin of broken lives strewn everywhere, especially in war and terror, brutality and violence – into this world, we have been entrusted with this hope, this experience. This is what we are called to do. This is God’s good news. Amazing, indeed.

---

[1] Brinton's keynote is based on his recently released book:  The Welcoming Congregation:  Roots and Fruits of Christian Hospitality (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012).

[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1977), cited in Fergus Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein (Oxford:  Blackwell, 1989), 182.

[3] Cited in Donald W. McCullough, The Trivialization of God:  The Dangerous Illusion of a Manageable Deity (Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1995), 100.

Food for the Journey

El Camino de Santiago de Compostella (The Way of St. James)

Isaiah 55:1-9

Third Sunday in Lent/3^rd March 2013

Isaiah wastes no time. He gets right to the point.  How did your perspective get so skewed? he says.  How did your values become so misplaced? How did your attitudes become so twisted, distorted, warped? How? Or, deeper, why?

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?  Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?  Why do you invest your life in that which does not feed your life?  Why do you exert energy and waste your time on that which does not bring life, satisfy your soul? 

            Isaiah is calling Israel­­ – calling us – to a time of honest soul-searching.  It’s time to take stock of what matters and what doesn’t; time to reevaluate the way we live our lives, invest and spend resources; time to question our values, what we hold dear to our hearts.  It’s a time to listen to our hearts, be attentive to the soul, give up a superficial life on the surface and go deep.  Now is the time. That’s what Lent is for.

            Isaiah is calling them to conduct a moral examen, self-examination, calling Israel to take stock of their lives.  And in love, with grace, he asks them: Why are you sabotaging yourselves?  Why are you undermining yourselves, saying that you want one thing, but going after another?  Why are you looking for love in all the wrong places, as it were? Why are you striving after that which in the end will only leave you disappointed? Their moral compass is broken.

            Isaiah’s questions are all rhetorical.  He’s not asking because he doesn’t know the answer.  He’s posing the questions, an effective tool of rhetoric, to move the argument forward, to make a point, to cause the listener to stop and consider. He’s not waiting for Israel to answer.

            He offers the answer; it’s contained in the question. Israel’s search for and striving after something, expending a lot of money and time and effort in the process, suggests that Israel really lacks something at its core.  There’s a desire and hunger at work here that cannot be satisfied, gratified, fulfilled.  It’s that hunger and desire that Isaiah wants them to be attentive to.  He wants them to feel the depth of their hunger, to feel the depth of their desire, the desire of their hearts.  For what do you really hunger?  What do you really desire? These are critical questions because our hungers and desires inevitably push, move, direct us down either one road or the other, one way or the other.   In this sense, Isaiah is calling them to evaluate what’s really driving their lives, what’s shaping their desires, what are they really hungry for?  What’s really driving you? If you compass is broken, who knows where you’ll end up?

            What’s ultimately missing, the hunger they crave (or maybe afraid to acknowledge) is their hunger for God; one need they lack (or a need they won’t acknowledge) is a need for God and for the kind of life, purpose and meaning that come with a life rooted and grounded in God.

            Isaiah cries to them, “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters,” extending the invitation to us all.  The invitation stands: the water of life is there. But do you thirst for it?  Or do you have other thirsts?  For what are you thirsty? Are your thirsty for this water?  Desire it? Long for it? Dream about it? 

It’s important to remember this bit of wisdom running through scripture:  need, want, lack are all required in the life of faith.  If you think you’re self-sufficient, need nothing, want for nothing, lack nothing, then don’t be surprised if God seems absent or unnecessary.  There’s a direct correlation between wealth and self-sufficiency and the decline of faith, particularly North America and Western Europe.  There is a direct correlation between the rise of secularism and the growth of enormous wealth in the West.

            What Isaiah is offering God’s people doesn’t come through us or within us, it doesn’t come from what we can buy or because we’ve earned it; we don’t own it.  What we’re really looking for, hungry for, and need, cannot be found or fed or met within ourselves or what we have. We have to acknowledge that we are poor, because what God gives cannot be bought.  You don’t need money for this.  We don’t have the “currency” to obtain this.  What you need is your poverty, to confess what you lack.   Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). In Matthew, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).  Isaiah says, “You that have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” 

            And so Isaiah calls them to acknowledge their impoverishment, their need for God; he reminds them of God’s covenant with them, and he invites them back.  “Seek the LORD while he may be found…let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy…” (Is. 55:6-7). Seek and return.

            In many ways these two words – seek and return – in their ebb and flow, sum up the life of faith.  Seek and return and seek and return and seek and return…here we discover the rhythm of the Christian life.  It’s not surprising that our life as Christians has been described as a high adventure, a journey, a quest, a pilgrimage; then disciples become pilgrims, explorers, travelers on the road, on a mission, an expedition. 

            It all begins with a desire to seek, to search after God.  St. Augustine (354-430) said, "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement."  On order to find God one must desire God.  And for some, for most, the desire doesn’t emerge until we begin the journey, go after God, leave home, and venture forth toward unknown territory.  The inward search for God was, and is, often matched by the outer journey. The outer journey helps to clarify what is going on inwardly, clarifying the desire. Sometimes you have to just set off on the journey and along the way discover what you’re looking for, discover your true compass, discover the One who is seeking after you. This is why pilgrimage became so important early in the Christian experience, particularly in Europe.  Medieval Europe was covered with pilgrimage routes to shrines and cathedrals.

            I was very conscious of this living in St. Andrews, Scotland, with its ancient cathedral dedicated to St. Andrew, once the destination for pilgrims who arrived from all over Europe to worship near the relic of Andrew.  Many ancient pilgrimage routes are being restored for modern-day pilgrims; there’s talk of building one from Iona in the west of Scotland to St. Andrews in the east.  Actually, it’s happening all over Europe, the rediscovery of pilgrimage.  The most famous route is the one that stretches from France, down across northern Spain to the Cathedral of St. James in Compostella. El Camino de Santiago de Compostella  (The Way of St. James), crossing hundreds of miles, is gaining in popularity, with more than 180,000 pilgrims receiving their Compostella, the certificate awarded to those who have traveled 62 miles on foot or 124 miles on bicycle on consecutive days and who are prepared to testify that they made the journey for religious, spiritual, or religious-cultural reasons.[1] One day I, too, hope to walk the camino.  It’s on my bucket list.

            There’s a good movie about the camino that came out several years ago with Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, called The Way (2012).  Martin Sheen plays an American doctor from California who heads overseas to recover the body of his estranged son who died in a storm in the Pyreness while traversing the camino.  When the father arrives in France, he decides to take the pilgrimage himself, although he really doesn’t understand the point of it all. As he walks he soon discovers that he’s not alone, there are others like him on the journey, people grieving, people searching for meaning, for healing, for purpose, for God.  The journey helps the father break free from what he calls his “California bubble life,” and he begins to fathom something his son said to him, the last thing he ever heard from his son, he said there’s a difference between “the life we live and the life we choose.”  What we choose.  And so we’re back to hunger and desire.  What informs our choosing?   Sometimes it takes the journey to discover what we’re really searching for, what matters most in life.

            The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) expressed the central purpose of pilgrimage this way: 

                        The point of traveling is not/ to arrive but to return home

                        Laden with pollen, you shall work up

                        Into honey the mind feeds on.[2]  

The purpose of the journey is to return, to arrive home a changed person.  T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) said something similar:                                    

We shall not cease from exploration,

                        and the end of all of our exploring

                        will be to arrive where we started

                        and know the place for the first time.[3]

            My good friend, Ian Bradley, who teaches at St. Andrews and has written extensively on pilgrimage.  (Ian will be visiting with us in early May.) Ian makes the point that the goal of pilgrimage, of the journey, is not necessarily a cathedral or shrine, or a particular destination; it’s the journey itself, because in the walking, in the searching itself we are changed.  Pilgrims who attempt the camino often describe the final arrival in Santiago and the return home this way; “el regreso es la salida (the return is the departure), in other words, “the Camino, the way, begins in Santiago.” That’s where the real journey begins.  “As one pilgrim put it, ‘You are not the same when you return as when you started out.  Your very soul is on the move’…  The physical journey concludes in Santiago where the real spiritual journey begins.’”[4]

            Seek and return.  We don’t have to travel to Spain or France. There are other routes to take, other ways to be on that journey. What matters most is that we see the life of faith as a journey. We’re on a road and the Spirit is trying to take us somewhere.  It’s our task to engage in the search, to seek after God – the God who is always elusive – and so we search and in searching arrive, returning home, home to God’s mercy and goodness and grace.  This is the real “currency,” grace, goodness, mercy, that allows us to buy and eat food that nourishes, bread that feeds and satisfies us, drink that revives us.

            And so Jesus gives us this table, with bread and wine, to remind of us of God’s sheer grace, free grace;

here is food for our journey toward him,

 food for our journey in him,

food for our journey for him. 

For if we seek him we shall most certainly find and in finding him know we are home.

           

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[1] Ian Bradley, Pilgrimage:  A Spiritual and Cultural Journey (Oxford, UK: Lion Hudson, 2009), 99.

[2] Cited in Bradley, 22.

[3] T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets.

[4] Nancy Fey, Pilgrim Stories On and Off the Road to Santiago (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998), 4, cited in Bradley, 110.