Zechariah 9:9-10; Luke 19:28-42a
Palm Sunday: March 28, 2010
Today is the final Sunday of Lent. Throughout Lent we have been talking about ways to draw closer to God. We are diverse people, with different spirituality types. The ways we draw close to God differ, and each is as valid as the next. For that matter, the ways we understand the God to whom we would like to draw near differ greatly. But, the goal is the same – to connect with the divine as best as we can. We have talked about the head folks, the heart folks, the pilgrims, the servants and the mystics. Today, we will talk about the reformer types.
It is, of course, Palm Sunday, and Palm Sunday is especially apropos for the reformer types. We are facing holy week – a showdown between Jesus and the religious and political authorities. I think it’s worth our time each year to briefly set the stage on which our Palm Sunday texts take place. This is a parade that mimics, probably mocks, the royal parade of the king set to enter Jerusalem from the other side. And that is not lost on those present. “Blessed is the One who comes in God’s name!” they shout. This is King language. This is an ancient refrain used for the great kings when they pass by in a parade. They are calling Jesus the new King. And this king will replace the one who currently rules. There are two parades, and they are fated to meet in the middle of Jerusalem. In the minds of many gathered that day, this is the beginning of a coup.
Everyone knew this confrontation, this meeting of the current ruler and hopeful, new one would be violent, because the Romans did not take kindly to challenges to their authority. The Pharisees knew this; they were there that day too – watching this mock parade, and they pled with Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Whether they said this to protect Jesus and his disciples or because they, like the Romans, wanted to silence them, they give us proof that people knew this was an aggravating move on Jesus’ part. They knew it was a direct challenge to those in power. It wouldn’t go unnoticed. The other thing that was clear was that many gathered there that day, the crowds, the disciples and even the Pharisees, thought Jesus had a good chance of prevailing. That was good news to some and distressing news to others. But the fact remained, it seemed like this reformer might just win!
But Jesus proved to be a reformer of a different type. He would “win”, but not in the way many expected. In the telling of this Palm Sunday drama, Luke harkens back to the prophet Zechariah. Zechariah looks forward to the time when God will send a great reformer to reverse the oppressive systems of the day and restore all the tribes of Israel. But Zechariah knows that God’s reformer would be quite different than the militant rulers of his day. This reformer would be a humble ruler riding on a donkey who completely rejects the tactics of other rulers and nations.
Zechariah talks about how God’s ruler will deal with the invaders and oppressors of the Israelite people. Instead of engaging them in a war, this new kind of ruler will abolish war completely. Zechariah says this one will get rid of the military chariots and rid Jerusalem of war; not through violence but rather this ruler, to quote the prophet, “shall command peace”.
For Luke and the early Christians, Jesus was this new ruler. Luke was setting Jesus up as an alternative king to the Roman kings of his day. But, Jesus was Zechariah’s strange king. He is humble, riding on a donkey, and ready to meet the Romans and to engage them as no one had before. This Messiah was the one Luke foreshadowed from the very beginning of his gospel. Think back to the Christmas story and the words the angels spoke. Jesus was the son of humble parents, who came riding on a donkey, to give birth in the most humble of settings. And the angels sang not of his conquering power, but of the good news that he will bring peace on earth for all. This is the messiah Luke presents from the very beginning, and it’s not exactly the Messiah the people expected as they laid their coats on the ground in front of Jesus and sang Jesus’ praises, hailing him as a they would a king when he sat that day on donkey, ready to make his way to Jerusalem.
The seen is so ironic. The people are celebrating the Messiah, but they don’t know yet that this Messiah – the true reformer – is a collapsed figure on a cross. Their cheers are not just premature, they would quickly turn silent if they really knew what was about to happen. This new king of theirs was going to disappoint all of their expectations. The people did not understand this, making them seem a bit foolish in their grand celebration.
But Luke, the author and crafter of this scene, had already embraced Jesus’ way of life, even in light of his death on the cross. Luke writes from this side of the cross, and from his perspective, the “failure” of Jesus is his success. For Luke, what was coming next was, in fact, to be celebrated but not for the reasons the people assumed. Luke celebrates because Jesus would choose the way of peace – without compromise regardless of the consequences. And that way would be vindicated in the resurrection. For Luke, Jesus was the ultimate reformer – he would reform the world not by conquering the enemy, but by offering an entirely different way to engage enemies and powerful systems; Jesus wasn’t just reforming politics or religion, he was reforming human nature itself.
Luke had further reason to celebrate what Jesus was about to do. He knew that Jesus would not be the last reformer to choose such a path. This is what Jesus himself is saying when, in response to the Pharisees’ request that the disciples put a stop to the show, he says, “I tell you, even if they were silent, the stones would cry out!” And so it has been – many reformers of Jesus’ ilk have followed in his footsteps these past 2000 years. These reformers are the stones crying out. They cry out against injustice, against the oppressors and systems that dehumanize, and they choose the way of peace. No matter what happened that day, Jesus knew God was not done and that God’s word – God’s way – cannot be silenced or suppressed…at least not for long.
Jesus’ assurance that the stones would cry out leaves us, and every generation, with a question: Who will cry out now? Who will carry the message of peace forward with their very lives? Who will continue to reform human nature and offer that new way of being human in this broken world? This is where the reformer types among us come in.
Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, tells of an old rabbinic saying that goes like this: “The miracle of the Red Sea is not the parting of the waters. The miracle of the Red Sea is that with a wall of water on each side, the first Jew walked through.” Yes, we have the resurrection, which many would call a miracle, but maybe the real miracle is that with the cross waiting for him, Jesus got on the donkey and rode in to Jerusalem anyway. The knowledge that he might die if he stays faithful to God is Jesus’ version of stepping out when the walls of water surround him. And that miracle is replayed again and again when anyone follows in his footsteps. Jesus led the way – ending up on the cross. The miracle is when people choose to follow him.
Chittister goes on to write, “Just as surely as there was need for courage at the Red Sea, just as surely as there was need for courage on Jesus' last trip to Jerusalem, there is need for it here and now, as well.” The reformers are the courageous ones today – the ones who cry out – the ones who see where God parts the waters and then dare to walk through with walls of water surrounding them, threatening to consume them at any moment. All God can do is part the waters. We decide whether or not we will walk through the parting waters of our own lives today.
Now, I admit: It doesn’t exactly sound appealing, the way of the reformer. Jesus did, after all, end up on the cross, not on a throne with a jeweled crown upon his head. If you are thinking you are a reformer type, you might be frantically trying to figure out if you can change to something else. The life of a mystic sounds a bit more peaceful, you think to yourself. None of this confrontation with the powerful, give me sweet, mystical union instead. The way of Jesus is one big set up to lose in the end – to end up a collapsed figure on a cross. Why do it?
Because, as we see in Jesus, being a faithful reformer in the Christian tradition is not about “winning” and “losing”, even though that’s how the world often casts it. Being a reformer is a spiritual way of life, and if this is your spiritual type, the actions themselves draw you closer to God. You don’t have to “win” to please God. Success is measured not by “winning” but by being in relationship with all those who have hung on the cross with Jesus – to be in solidarity with all who suffer at the hands of the powerful. It’s the relationships that matter – it’s the relationships that truly change the world.
Being a reformer is answering the question, “who will cry out today?” with, “I will – that’s who.” And that alone is enough sometimes. That keeps the way of Jesus alive. Again, Chittister writes, “There are those who keep on shouting, who keep on telling the story even to those with no ears to hear. Over and over again they cry out. But is it worth it?” she asks. “Did the disciples on the road to Jerusalem make any difference at all?” And her answer comes: “It got our attention, didn’t it?”
The world needs reformers. Reformers are big picture people, and someone needs to be minding the big picture. Reformers give us all perspective; not just because they will compel us to address more systemic problems, but because the big pictures takes us out of ourselves. The life of faith is not just about us and the people we know. All of creation is broken, and although we can’t expect to accomplish it, we should be working to mend the cracks, and in this work we will get to know the God that suffers. We will know the God of the cross. And our deep knowledge of such a God will, in the end, enrich our knowledge of the God of the resurrection.
For reformers, the spiritual practices tend to be public ones. They engage the world, and the powerful. They engage the lives of the suffering who have been long forgotten. To nurture the reformer in you, you can do things like participate in non-violent protests and marches, lobby for systemic change, start grassroots movements. I also think a very basic practice is to find ways, both big and small, to cry out. To be a voice for peaceful ways in a violent world. To be a voice that points not just to the resurrection, but to the cross – to those who are still suffering even after the resurrection event so long ago. Reformers highlight the ways in which this world doesn’t match up with the realm of God. Crying out is how you will draw close to God. Being with the suffering and working to change it is to be with the God who suffers on the cross and the God who changes everything in the resurrection.
The life of a reformer can be hard. But if that’s your spiritual type, embrace it. We need you. “[W]e all find ourselves in a crowd on the noisy, sweaty road to Jerusalem, caught between the Pharisees and Jesus. Caught between the keepers of the system and the word of God. Caught between the stability of the past and the painful beginning of a new future where, deep down, we know we hear the deniers denying him and mourners crying for his absence and the question hanging in the air: Who will cry out?” And we answer: “The reformers: that’s who.” Amen.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Divine Union
Philippians 3:4b-14 ; John 12:`1-11
March 21, 2010: Fifth Sunday of Lent
During Lent this year, we have been talking about different ways we can draw closer to God, depending on what spiritual “type” we might be. We are not all the same, and so how we come to know God or understand God will look different for each of us. Some are head types, learning about God through study and reflection. Some are heart types, who find God in life’s experiences and relationships. Some find God on the journey, spiritual pilgrims on a sacred path. Others find God when they serve the least among us. Today, we find that some come to know God through mystical encounters.
“Mystic” is not a word that makes it into our every day speech that often. Certainly not like “head”, “heart”, or “servant”. Even “pilgrim” finds more familiarity in our conversations. We do have Thanksgiving, after all. “Mystic” seems more distant as a concept and more formal in nature. When speaking of some of the great mystics of the middle ages, the word is almost a title, like priest or monk. Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Gregory the Great, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, to name a few. These men and women were mystics in the formal sense of the word. They had extraordinary experiences that they then wrote about, leaving behind volumes of beautiful prose describing their encounters with God.
The goal of their lives was union with God. And union is not a word these people took lightly. It was ultimate intimacy. When you read some of their accounts, you find almost uncomfortable or embarrassing language describing their connection with God because it’s so intimate. Julian of Norwich, a 14th century mystic, writes: “And our Lord showed Himself to the soul…saying sweetly: “My darling I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; and now seest thou my loving and we be oned in bliss.” “Oned in bliss.” It’s the language of courtship and marriage.
Mystics spent much of their lives in contemplation waiting for God to draw them into this union. Quiet, prayer, meditation, solitude. These are a part of a mystic’s life – often a large part when we are talking about the middle ages. Many were monks or nuns. Many spent years in solitude only to emerge after having one or more mystical experiences.
The other thing mystics share in common is that they all affirm the absolute mystery of God. It is even a little strange to talk about how a mystic best comes to “know” God. One does not ever know God. One is united with God and takes on, for a period of time, the nature of God. In fact, all mystics, in writing about their experiences, struggle to find the right words for God and this union. Ultimately words fail, because ultimately mysteries cannot be described with mere language.
Paul’s letters are filled with mystical language. We aren’t really trained to listen for it, because we think of Paul as being so dogmatic. But in this passage at least, his language is anything but…he’s trying to describe to people what he has experienced since his conversion on the road to Damascus, and he tries all sorts of images, words, and phrases. And they are poetic, imaginative and certainly mystical. He talks about being found in Christ, becoming like him, sharing his sufferings. The word translated “sharing” when Paul speaks of sharing sufferings is koinonia. Koinonia is incredibly evocative. It means fellowship, but it can also mean intercourse. It is extremely intimate. Obviously Paul is not talking about literally having intercourse. He is trying with words to describe something – a union or connection – that cannot be described with words alone. Paul had a mystical connection to God through Christ.
The scene with Mary and Jesus is equally as intimate; equally as uncomfortable for those gathered that day as it is for us to hear Paul use such intimate language about Christ. This is a mystical moment between Mary and the divine. In symbolically preparing Jesus for his burial, she is prefiguring his transformation from Jesus to Christ, and announcing her intention to join him in that transformation. Of all the people there – including Lazarus, who Jesus had just raised from the dead – Mary is the only one operating on this higher, mystical plane. She understands something the others do not…that this is the divine, and to be in relationship with Jesus is to be united with the divine. And that relationship, for her, is seen in intimate terms and found through touch and smell, passion and extravagance.
Of course, looking at the actual mystics of the bible and the middle ages only helps us understand this spirituality type a little bit today. Most of us will not have such experiences or spend our lives like these men and women did. Yet I still think there are people who can be described as mystic types in our day and age, even likely there are mystics among us here. “Mystic” needs to be looked at from within our own context. The themes will be the same – quiet, meditation, prayer, time “away” – but the way that looks in our daily lives will differ greatly.
We find some help from people I think are “modern day mystics.” I think of people like Thomas Merton, and Kathleen Norris. Marianne Williamson and Frederick Buechner. It’s true that some of these people spent some time in monasteries, but they also worked, were married, had children, and faced the daily joys and stresses we all do. What makes them mystics is not that they retreated from society and life full time, but that they talk in terms of mystery and union with God. They speak of experiences where the Holy Spirit moved them or reached out to them, even as they struggle to find the right words to describe it.
One of these modern mystics is a woman named Carter Heyward. I first “met” her while she was clearly in her “head” spirituality time of life. I read her dissertation, and in her thinking I found new understandings and theologies that helped me connect to God. Had I not read her most recent book, “Flying Changes”, I would have counted her as a solid “head-type” spiritual person. But, she started riding horses. For years and years, she read, wrote, taught, rethought, and wrote some more about God. All of which she still does. But, at one point – fairly late in her life – she started riding horses. And now, “mystic” is really the only word that describes her spirituality.
For her, the retreat from the world and the meditation and the prayer all happen through her relationship with horses. And instead of living in a monastery, where connection to God happens during the mundane, daily routine of prayer, quiet, work, worship and sleep, she goes to the stables. Heyward writes, “a mystic is, at heart, a girl who prays while mucking out a stall, the boy who meets God in the body of a horse, the woman who experiences time in slow motion while riding, the man who listens to horses.”
For Heyward, the divine is not only “out there” somewhere. The divine is present in all of creation – in you and me, in horses and the wind…everywhere. Mystical unions with anything in creation are unions with the divine. “Once in a while,” she writes, “the horse and the rider will seem to merge: to become the same living, breathing, moving organism. For the human rider, it’s an experience of sheer grace, a momentary immersion in the mystical realm of God.” To become the same, living, breathing moving organism. This is the kind of intimate union of which the old mystics speak. This is the kind of union Paul shares with Christ.
The key to mysticism for Heyward is what happens to time when she is riding and tending to the horses. She steps outside of the pace of the world into a “slow” time – a meditative time; a relational time with one of God’s mystical creatures. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be horses. It could be dogs or spiders, or music or cooking, or running or painting. Different people have different ways of slowing down. But, as Heyward says, “we must learn to wait quietly and patiently if we are to be loved by others.” And that includes God. We must learn to wait quietly and patiently if we are to be loved by God. Not because God will only love us if we are quiet, but because – as with any living creature – we won’t know that love until we stop long enough to know what that love feels like, what that love does to us and evokes in us.
Mystics draw close to God by slowing down and connecting to the divine through some transcendent experience. And so, the practices that make sense for mystic types are ones that cause them to slow down. Principally and most commonly that happens in prayer, meditation and retreat. And mystics know you do these things regularly, often, without fail, even when it’s hard or when it doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything at all. Julian of Norwich wrote that God told her to, “Pray inwardly, even though you think it is not worthwhile; even though you don’t feel, even though you don’t see; pray, even though you think you can’t. For in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in feebleness, then is prayer well.”
For mystics, prayer is not only saying words or asking God for things. It’s stepping out of time and space and trying to harmonize your soul with God’s. It’s trying to conform your breath to God’s breath. To synch up your heart beat with God’s. One mystic writes, “Prayer unites the soul to God, for although the soul may always be like God in nature and substance, it is often unlike God in condition, through human sin. Prayer makes the soul like God.”
Another spiritual practice for the mystic type is patience. As Carter Heyward writes, “there is nothing more important to human, creaturely and divine life than patience. Patience is a way of experiencing the movement of time. It’s a way of experiencing time as a passage more deeply into life itself and of experiencing life more fully as an opportunity to know and love ourselves, others and God, all in relation to one another. The greater our patience, the more connected with are with one another.” And again, Heyward finds this patience through riding horses. So mystic types should ride, or paint, or dance, or spend time with spiders watching them weave their webs. Anything that draws you into the practice of patience has the potential to draw you into the mystical knowing of the divine.
Even those of us who aren’t mystic types are invited by the church into mystical practices every now and then. The sacraments of baptism and communion are meant to take us out of ordinary time and space and connect us to language and images that point us beyond what we know logically and connect us to the holy and divine. Our sacraments are of the mystical realm. And today, we baptize a baby. Like Mary’s hair on Jesus’ feet, the water on the baby’s head is a lavish act of love and grace.
In baptism, we say that we die to sin and become alive in Christ. We go under the water with Jesus and emerge a new person. Not literally, obviously. But we proclaim that we can unite with Christ – just as Paul talks about. That Christ’s nature is ours, God’s nature is ours. We clothe ourselves in Christ. Julian of Norwich writes, “God is our clothing; the love which wraps and enfolds us.” That is what baptism is. The uniting of a baby to the very nature of Christ, reminding us all that we are in Christ – like Christ. Our former selves are gone and a new nature is affirmed.
Next week is Palm Sunday. Now is the time we should start to get a little nervous on our journey with Jesus during Lent. We are moving closer to the cross, and we remember where the cross is and what happens when we get there. You may have been walking steadily along with Jesus until now, but don’t be surprised if the urge to distance yourself from Jesus begins to grow the closer we get to Jerusalem. It is in those moments when we feel like distancing ourselves from Jesus, or from a God who demands too much of us, that mystics persist, irrationally and aggressively trying to “tie” themselves to God even as God walks into pain, suffering and death on the cross. Mystics are not fainthearted. Their goal – their prayer – is that God’s soul becomes theirs. And they know the whole story- they know what they are asking. But they trust that union with God is what the life of faith is all about. May God’s soul become ours. May we be clothed in Christ – may God’s love wrap and enfold us. Amen.
March 21, 2010: Fifth Sunday of Lent
During Lent this year, we have been talking about different ways we can draw closer to God, depending on what spiritual “type” we might be. We are not all the same, and so how we come to know God or understand God will look different for each of us. Some are head types, learning about God through study and reflection. Some are heart types, who find God in life’s experiences and relationships. Some find God on the journey, spiritual pilgrims on a sacred path. Others find God when they serve the least among us. Today, we find that some come to know God through mystical encounters.
“Mystic” is not a word that makes it into our every day speech that often. Certainly not like “head”, “heart”, or “servant”. Even “pilgrim” finds more familiarity in our conversations. We do have Thanksgiving, after all. “Mystic” seems more distant as a concept and more formal in nature. When speaking of some of the great mystics of the middle ages, the word is almost a title, like priest or monk. Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Gregory the Great, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, to name a few. These men and women were mystics in the formal sense of the word. They had extraordinary experiences that they then wrote about, leaving behind volumes of beautiful prose describing their encounters with God.
The goal of their lives was union with God. And union is not a word these people took lightly. It was ultimate intimacy. When you read some of their accounts, you find almost uncomfortable or embarrassing language describing their connection with God because it’s so intimate. Julian of Norwich, a 14th century mystic, writes: “And our Lord showed Himself to the soul…saying sweetly: “My darling I am glad thou art come to me: in all thy woe I have ever been with thee; and now seest thou my loving and we be oned in bliss.” “Oned in bliss.” It’s the language of courtship and marriage.
Mystics spent much of their lives in contemplation waiting for God to draw them into this union. Quiet, prayer, meditation, solitude. These are a part of a mystic’s life – often a large part when we are talking about the middle ages. Many were monks or nuns. Many spent years in solitude only to emerge after having one or more mystical experiences.
The other thing mystics share in common is that they all affirm the absolute mystery of God. It is even a little strange to talk about how a mystic best comes to “know” God. One does not ever know God. One is united with God and takes on, for a period of time, the nature of God. In fact, all mystics, in writing about their experiences, struggle to find the right words for God and this union. Ultimately words fail, because ultimately mysteries cannot be described with mere language.
Paul’s letters are filled with mystical language. We aren’t really trained to listen for it, because we think of Paul as being so dogmatic. But in this passage at least, his language is anything but…he’s trying to describe to people what he has experienced since his conversion on the road to Damascus, and he tries all sorts of images, words, and phrases. And they are poetic, imaginative and certainly mystical. He talks about being found in Christ, becoming like him, sharing his sufferings. The word translated “sharing” when Paul speaks of sharing sufferings is koinonia. Koinonia is incredibly evocative. It means fellowship, but it can also mean intercourse. It is extremely intimate. Obviously Paul is not talking about literally having intercourse. He is trying with words to describe something – a union or connection – that cannot be described with words alone. Paul had a mystical connection to God through Christ.
The scene with Mary and Jesus is equally as intimate; equally as uncomfortable for those gathered that day as it is for us to hear Paul use such intimate language about Christ. This is a mystical moment between Mary and the divine. In symbolically preparing Jesus for his burial, she is prefiguring his transformation from Jesus to Christ, and announcing her intention to join him in that transformation. Of all the people there – including Lazarus, who Jesus had just raised from the dead – Mary is the only one operating on this higher, mystical plane. She understands something the others do not…that this is the divine, and to be in relationship with Jesus is to be united with the divine. And that relationship, for her, is seen in intimate terms and found through touch and smell, passion and extravagance.
Of course, looking at the actual mystics of the bible and the middle ages only helps us understand this spirituality type a little bit today. Most of us will not have such experiences or spend our lives like these men and women did. Yet I still think there are people who can be described as mystic types in our day and age, even likely there are mystics among us here. “Mystic” needs to be looked at from within our own context. The themes will be the same – quiet, meditation, prayer, time “away” – but the way that looks in our daily lives will differ greatly.
We find some help from people I think are “modern day mystics.” I think of people like Thomas Merton, and Kathleen Norris. Marianne Williamson and Frederick Buechner. It’s true that some of these people spent some time in monasteries, but they also worked, were married, had children, and faced the daily joys and stresses we all do. What makes them mystics is not that they retreated from society and life full time, but that they talk in terms of mystery and union with God. They speak of experiences where the Holy Spirit moved them or reached out to them, even as they struggle to find the right words to describe it.
One of these modern mystics is a woman named Carter Heyward. I first “met” her while she was clearly in her “head” spirituality time of life. I read her dissertation, and in her thinking I found new understandings and theologies that helped me connect to God. Had I not read her most recent book, “Flying Changes”, I would have counted her as a solid “head-type” spiritual person. But, she started riding horses. For years and years, she read, wrote, taught, rethought, and wrote some more about God. All of which she still does. But, at one point – fairly late in her life – she started riding horses. And now, “mystic” is really the only word that describes her spirituality.
For her, the retreat from the world and the meditation and the prayer all happen through her relationship with horses. And instead of living in a monastery, where connection to God happens during the mundane, daily routine of prayer, quiet, work, worship and sleep, she goes to the stables. Heyward writes, “a mystic is, at heart, a girl who prays while mucking out a stall, the boy who meets God in the body of a horse, the woman who experiences time in slow motion while riding, the man who listens to horses.”
For Heyward, the divine is not only “out there” somewhere. The divine is present in all of creation – in you and me, in horses and the wind…everywhere. Mystical unions with anything in creation are unions with the divine. “Once in a while,” she writes, “the horse and the rider will seem to merge: to become the same living, breathing, moving organism. For the human rider, it’s an experience of sheer grace, a momentary immersion in the mystical realm of God.” To become the same, living, breathing moving organism. This is the kind of intimate union of which the old mystics speak. This is the kind of union Paul shares with Christ.
The key to mysticism for Heyward is what happens to time when she is riding and tending to the horses. She steps outside of the pace of the world into a “slow” time – a meditative time; a relational time with one of God’s mystical creatures. Obviously, it doesn’t have to be horses. It could be dogs or spiders, or music or cooking, or running or painting. Different people have different ways of slowing down. But, as Heyward says, “we must learn to wait quietly and patiently if we are to be loved by others.” And that includes God. We must learn to wait quietly and patiently if we are to be loved by God. Not because God will only love us if we are quiet, but because – as with any living creature – we won’t know that love until we stop long enough to know what that love feels like, what that love does to us and evokes in us.
Mystics draw close to God by slowing down and connecting to the divine through some transcendent experience. And so, the practices that make sense for mystic types are ones that cause them to slow down. Principally and most commonly that happens in prayer, meditation and retreat. And mystics know you do these things regularly, often, without fail, even when it’s hard or when it doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything at all. Julian of Norwich wrote that God told her to, “Pray inwardly, even though you think it is not worthwhile; even though you don’t feel, even though you don’t see; pray, even though you think you can’t. For in dryness and in barrenness, in sickness and in feebleness, then is prayer well.”
For mystics, prayer is not only saying words or asking God for things. It’s stepping out of time and space and trying to harmonize your soul with God’s. It’s trying to conform your breath to God’s breath. To synch up your heart beat with God’s. One mystic writes, “Prayer unites the soul to God, for although the soul may always be like God in nature and substance, it is often unlike God in condition, through human sin. Prayer makes the soul like God.”
Another spiritual practice for the mystic type is patience. As Carter Heyward writes, “there is nothing more important to human, creaturely and divine life than patience. Patience is a way of experiencing the movement of time. It’s a way of experiencing time as a passage more deeply into life itself and of experiencing life more fully as an opportunity to know and love ourselves, others and God, all in relation to one another. The greater our patience, the more connected with are with one another.” And again, Heyward finds this patience through riding horses. So mystic types should ride, or paint, or dance, or spend time with spiders watching them weave their webs. Anything that draws you into the practice of patience has the potential to draw you into the mystical knowing of the divine.
Even those of us who aren’t mystic types are invited by the church into mystical practices every now and then. The sacraments of baptism and communion are meant to take us out of ordinary time and space and connect us to language and images that point us beyond what we know logically and connect us to the holy and divine. Our sacraments are of the mystical realm. And today, we baptize a baby. Like Mary’s hair on Jesus’ feet, the water on the baby’s head is a lavish act of love and grace.
In baptism, we say that we die to sin and become alive in Christ. We go under the water with Jesus and emerge a new person. Not literally, obviously. But we proclaim that we can unite with Christ – just as Paul talks about. That Christ’s nature is ours, God’s nature is ours. We clothe ourselves in Christ. Julian of Norwich writes, “God is our clothing; the love which wraps and enfolds us.” That is what baptism is. The uniting of a baby to the very nature of Christ, reminding us all that we are in Christ – like Christ. Our former selves are gone and a new nature is affirmed.
Next week is Palm Sunday. Now is the time we should start to get a little nervous on our journey with Jesus during Lent. We are moving closer to the cross, and we remember where the cross is and what happens when we get there. You may have been walking steadily along with Jesus until now, but don’t be surprised if the urge to distance yourself from Jesus begins to grow the closer we get to Jerusalem. It is in those moments when we feel like distancing ourselves from Jesus, or from a God who demands too much of us, that mystics persist, irrationally and aggressively trying to “tie” themselves to God even as God walks into pain, suffering and death on the cross. Mystics are not fainthearted. Their goal – their prayer – is that God’s soul becomes theirs. And they know the whole story- they know what they are asking. But they trust that union with God is what the life of faith is all about. May God’s soul become ours. May we be clothed in Christ – may God’s love wrap and enfold us. Amen.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Heart’s Response
Psalm 32; Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32
Fourth Sunday of Lent: March 14, 2010
As we come to the fourth Sunday of Lent, as the cross continues to move closer to us, we continue to reflect on ways we can in our own lives draw near to God. As one theologian put it, “Lent is a time for life with God. In Lent we may draw away from public life enough to give energy to this relationship with the God who hears and answers, who summons, who forgives.” (Walter Brueggemann) I fear that when we leave church on Sundays and plunge into the rest of our week, we tend to get distracted – busy, stressed, lonely, overwhelmed – and we too easily lose any connection we might have made during worship with the holy or divine. I don’t mean this is a criticism at all. I think it is just a reality of life that we all face.
My hope is that we can use this Lenten season to try to find ways to stay connected to the divine in the midst of our daily lives. The reason I have chosen this sermon series – looking at all of these different spiritual “types” – is because I believe we sometimes need practical suggestions about how we might connect with God. At the same time, I’ve noticed that, in the church, practical suggestions generally come in a one-size-fits-all kind of way, leaving many of us frustrated and feeling inadequate.
So I am exploring different types of spirituality hoping you resonate with one or more of them, at least a little bit. Then I give practical suggestions of things you can do to draw closer to God – suggestions that are particularly suited to each spiritual type. The past three Sundays we looked at people who are head types, pilgrim types and servant types. Today, we will talk about “heart” types.
Heart types connect best with God through experience, emotion and relationships. And the goal for the heart type is to rest in the heart of God. It is to seek a relationship with God that connects heart to heart until the human heart takes on the quality and character of the divine heart. In other words, in drawing close to God, heart types both seek to understand God’s heart and they begin to take on God’s heart as their own. They are especially open to this because, as the saying goes, they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Their heart is open and exposed, and so it is particularly available for both a relationship with God and for being transformed by that relationship.
We can’t ever completely know God’s heart. That is a mystery. But in telling the parable the prodigal son, Jesus does give us glimpse of the heart of God. And we see God’s heart in the experience of both the parent and the son. In the first we see the depths of God’s mercy, and in the second we see God’s willingness to go the distance with us.
This parable is commonly called the prodigal son. “Prodigal” means extravagant and reckless – which surely describes the behavior of the son. He takes what he can from his family, then lives recklessly until it is all gone. But, as one author pointed out, it may be just as apt to call this parable “the prodigal parent”. (Kate Huey) The parent in this story might also be described as recklessly extravagant in how he offers forgiveness and love. This forgiveness doesn’t seem deserved or fair – it is not appropriate. It is reckless. In fact, isn’t that the complaint of the older brother?
When the son returns from his life of sin, he never even gets out his confession that he intended for his father in order to beg for forgiveness. While the child is still far off, before he ever utters a word, the parent runs out to meet him with unconditional love. It’s not just forgiveness, as in “I forgive you, even though you were bad.” Instead the forgiveness comes when the child is completely vulnerable with no way to hide his poverty, his shame, his desperation. In this state, he walks home right into his father’s heart and finds extravagant, reckless love. The “bad” part of his life becomes entirely incidental to the story as soon as the child is home and back in relationship with his family.
If one of the lessons of this parable is that in the actions of the parent we see the nature and character of God, then we have a prodigal God as well. God’s heart is defined by reckless extravagant love and forgiveness. When we are vulnerable and know we deserve judgment – or when we have just plain been beaten down by life – we can turn to God. When we do – when we start walking home, while we are still far off, God abandons all decorum, dismisses conventions, and runs to us, arms open wide. We are given forgiveness, we’re met with compassion and our lives are celebrated with joy. All that matters is that we are seeking, moving closer to God in some way, and are making our hearts vulnerable to whatever God has to offer.
The second aspect of God’s heart that we find in this parable is what many have called the “pathos” of God. Pathos is the willingness of God to open God’s heart to us – it’s God becoming vulnerable to the world and it’s pains. It is God experiencing with us, and suffering with us, and rejoicing with us. God’s heart is on God’s sleeve and so it too is especially available for connection with us and for being changed through relationship with us.
I have suggested before that if the parent is meant to be God, maybe the son is meant to be Jesus. I know it’s hard to think of Jesus being so irresponsible and manipulative and greedy. But the point is that Jesus is human. And Jesus entered fully into the world – he did not stay back protected by home and family. And he was completely vulnerable to all life had to offer. In the traditional language of the gospel writer, we have the father and the son - the first and second person of the trinity – and the son – the human aspect of God – sets out to experience the world.
At the very least, I think we can imagine Jesus going with the son when he leaves home. Notice that this parable is told because Jesus is telling his critics why he spends so much time with sinners. Luke writes, “the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” This parable is about being with sinners. If Jesus is nowhere to be found with the sinner in this parable, the parable doesn’t exactly make sense as a response to the accusations of those questioning Jesus.
God sent Jesus into this world – to be with us wherever we are. Our God is not a God that simply “stays home” metaphorically speaking, sitting back and waiting for us. If that were the case, God would not have come in human form, leaving home and going out into the world. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s heart. And whether he is the prodigal son or is with the prodigal son, the experience of the son gives us insight into God’s heart. It has suffered, it has broken, it has felt shame – just like all of our hearts at one time or another. God’s heart is not protected from all the world has to offer.
That’s how this passage shows us the heart of God. Now, if the goal is to connect with that, how might someone with a heart spirituality do that?
Just as God did in Jesus, the path is found in opening and exposing your heart. It’s risky and inevitably invites some pain. But if you learn through your heart, you will need to let your heart be in relationship with God and others. And that requires pathos – the willingness to feel things deeply and know the depths of human nature and experience as fully as you can. This will lead to a broken heart at some point – just as God’s heart was broken when Jesus suffered on the cross. But pathos – suffering with our brothers and sisters – is the way to draw near to our God – because our God does exactly the same thing.
The heart can be opened in many ways. One thing heart types might try is opening the heart through prayer. Specifically, prayer that focuses on connecting you to God and others. Holding in prayer the experience of others might allow compassion to stir in your heart. Praying for those who need healing, forgiveness, hope, will soften your heart to their experiences. Once your heart is softened, and you begin to take their experiences into your own being, you will know God better – because God is right there feeling everything you are.
Another way you might expose your heart is in confession. We see this so well in our Psalm this morning – And Psalmists are heart people to the core. In their hymns, we see them lay themselves open in complete honesty before God. We call it confession. Confession is not just cataloging sins. It is making yourself vulnerable to God so that you may be touched by the extravagant, reckless forgiveness and love of God.
To keep parts of yourself hidden from God is to shut off your path to God’s heart. When the author of this Psalm kept his heart hidden, he says, “my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” But then he goes on to write, “I confessed my true self to you, and I did not hide anything from you…and you forgave me fully!” And that brought tremendous joy, and it brought him into a close personal relationship with this forgiving God. He felt engulfed by God, guided by God and known completely by God.
So there’s prayer, there’s confession, but mostly in this spirituality type, hearts are opened, and lives are connected to God, through experience – through relationships with others. Heart types learn from these, they see God at work in others and themselves when they take time to pay attention. This might be doing devotions, or journaling, reflecting on one’s experiences of being lost, experiences of being lavishly forgiven, and experiences of the pain of others. Heart types trust their experience as a valid way of knowing and learning about human nature and the divine creator. That is their path to the heart of God.
Just as with all the spiritual types, the non-heart folks need the heart folks. We need to see their passion, their emotion, their joy. We need to be reminded to look for God in our daily lives and relationships. The most beautiful thing about this type of spirituality is to watch the heart’s response to encountering the prodigal God. This response of the heart types gives us a window into God’s heart that we might otherwise have difficulty seeing. Again we turn to our Psalm. The Psalmist describes what happens when he has been met with God’s extravagant forgiveness and love. He says, “My heart is glad in God and rejoices and shouts for joy.”
The response is a heart that is “glad in God.” It’s a heart that knows God and the joy that comes from that. The Psalmist believes once we make ourselves vulnerable to God, the relationship will follow – because of God’s love for us. And in this relationship with God, heart types are able to sense the heart and will of God – they are open to God’s guidance. “I will instruct and teach you the way you should go;” God says in the Psalm. “I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” When someone who lives life through their heart connects with God, their response is just like that of the prodigal God. They are reckless and extravagant in their love for others – they feel deeply, and rejoice immensely.
It’s Lent, and Jesus is on his way to the cross. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s heart, and so if we walk with Jesus to the cross, we will know God’s heart. We will know what God wants for us, how God feels with us, and ultimately how God rejoices to be in relationship with us. If we walk with Jesus, we dwell in God’s heart, and when that happens, our hearts will leap in response – we will become the embodiment of God’s heart here on earth. Amen.
Psalm 32; Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32
Fourth Sunday of Lent: March 14, 2010
As we come to the fourth Sunday of Lent, as the cross continues to move closer to us, we continue to reflect on ways we can in our own lives draw near to God. As one theologian put it, “Lent is a time for life with God. In Lent we may draw away from public life enough to give energy to this relationship with the God who hears and answers, who summons, who forgives.” (Walter Brueggemann) I fear that when we leave church on Sundays and plunge into the rest of our week, we tend to get distracted – busy, stressed, lonely, overwhelmed – and we too easily lose any connection we might have made during worship with the holy or divine. I don’t mean this is a criticism at all. I think it is just a reality of life that we all face.
My hope is that we can use this Lenten season to try to find ways to stay connected to the divine in the midst of our daily lives. The reason I have chosen this sermon series – looking at all of these different spiritual “types” – is because I believe we sometimes need practical suggestions about how we might connect with God. At the same time, I’ve noticed that, in the church, practical suggestions generally come in a one-size-fits-all kind of way, leaving many of us frustrated and feeling inadequate.
So I am exploring different types of spirituality hoping you resonate with one or more of them, at least a little bit. Then I give practical suggestions of things you can do to draw closer to God – suggestions that are particularly suited to each spiritual type. The past three Sundays we looked at people who are head types, pilgrim types and servant types. Today, we will talk about “heart” types.
Heart types connect best with God through experience, emotion and relationships. And the goal for the heart type is to rest in the heart of God. It is to seek a relationship with God that connects heart to heart until the human heart takes on the quality and character of the divine heart. In other words, in drawing close to God, heart types both seek to understand God’s heart and they begin to take on God’s heart as their own. They are especially open to this because, as the saying goes, they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Their heart is open and exposed, and so it is particularly available for both a relationship with God and for being transformed by that relationship.
We can’t ever completely know God’s heart. That is a mystery. But in telling the parable the prodigal son, Jesus does give us glimpse of the heart of God. And we see God’s heart in the experience of both the parent and the son. In the first we see the depths of God’s mercy, and in the second we see God’s willingness to go the distance with us.
This parable is commonly called the prodigal son. “Prodigal” means extravagant and reckless – which surely describes the behavior of the son. He takes what he can from his family, then lives recklessly until it is all gone. But, as one author pointed out, it may be just as apt to call this parable “the prodigal parent”. (Kate Huey) The parent in this story might also be described as recklessly extravagant in how he offers forgiveness and love. This forgiveness doesn’t seem deserved or fair – it is not appropriate. It is reckless. In fact, isn’t that the complaint of the older brother?
When the son returns from his life of sin, he never even gets out his confession that he intended for his father in order to beg for forgiveness. While the child is still far off, before he ever utters a word, the parent runs out to meet him with unconditional love. It’s not just forgiveness, as in “I forgive you, even though you were bad.” Instead the forgiveness comes when the child is completely vulnerable with no way to hide his poverty, his shame, his desperation. In this state, he walks home right into his father’s heart and finds extravagant, reckless love. The “bad” part of his life becomes entirely incidental to the story as soon as the child is home and back in relationship with his family.
If one of the lessons of this parable is that in the actions of the parent we see the nature and character of God, then we have a prodigal God as well. God’s heart is defined by reckless extravagant love and forgiveness. When we are vulnerable and know we deserve judgment – or when we have just plain been beaten down by life – we can turn to God. When we do – when we start walking home, while we are still far off, God abandons all decorum, dismisses conventions, and runs to us, arms open wide. We are given forgiveness, we’re met with compassion and our lives are celebrated with joy. All that matters is that we are seeking, moving closer to God in some way, and are making our hearts vulnerable to whatever God has to offer.
The second aspect of God’s heart that we find in this parable is what many have called the “pathos” of God. Pathos is the willingness of God to open God’s heart to us – it’s God becoming vulnerable to the world and it’s pains. It is God experiencing with us, and suffering with us, and rejoicing with us. God’s heart is on God’s sleeve and so it too is especially available for connection with us and for being changed through relationship with us.
I have suggested before that if the parent is meant to be God, maybe the son is meant to be Jesus. I know it’s hard to think of Jesus being so irresponsible and manipulative and greedy. But the point is that Jesus is human. And Jesus entered fully into the world – he did not stay back protected by home and family. And he was completely vulnerable to all life had to offer. In the traditional language of the gospel writer, we have the father and the son - the first and second person of the trinity – and the son – the human aspect of God – sets out to experience the world.
At the very least, I think we can imagine Jesus going with the son when he leaves home. Notice that this parable is told because Jesus is telling his critics why he spends so much time with sinners. Luke writes, “the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” This parable is about being with sinners. If Jesus is nowhere to be found with the sinner in this parable, the parable doesn’t exactly make sense as a response to the accusations of those questioning Jesus.
God sent Jesus into this world – to be with us wherever we are. Our God is not a God that simply “stays home” metaphorically speaking, sitting back and waiting for us. If that were the case, God would not have come in human form, leaving home and going out into the world. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s heart. And whether he is the prodigal son or is with the prodigal son, the experience of the son gives us insight into God’s heart. It has suffered, it has broken, it has felt shame – just like all of our hearts at one time or another. God’s heart is not protected from all the world has to offer.
That’s how this passage shows us the heart of God. Now, if the goal is to connect with that, how might someone with a heart spirituality do that?
Just as God did in Jesus, the path is found in opening and exposing your heart. It’s risky and inevitably invites some pain. But if you learn through your heart, you will need to let your heart be in relationship with God and others. And that requires pathos – the willingness to feel things deeply and know the depths of human nature and experience as fully as you can. This will lead to a broken heart at some point – just as God’s heart was broken when Jesus suffered on the cross. But pathos – suffering with our brothers and sisters – is the way to draw near to our God – because our God does exactly the same thing.
The heart can be opened in many ways. One thing heart types might try is opening the heart through prayer. Specifically, prayer that focuses on connecting you to God and others. Holding in prayer the experience of others might allow compassion to stir in your heart. Praying for those who need healing, forgiveness, hope, will soften your heart to their experiences. Once your heart is softened, and you begin to take their experiences into your own being, you will know God better – because God is right there feeling everything you are.
Another way you might expose your heart is in confession. We see this so well in our Psalm this morning – And Psalmists are heart people to the core. In their hymns, we see them lay themselves open in complete honesty before God. We call it confession. Confession is not just cataloging sins. It is making yourself vulnerable to God so that you may be touched by the extravagant, reckless forgiveness and love of God.
To keep parts of yourself hidden from God is to shut off your path to God’s heart. When the author of this Psalm kept his heart hidden, he says, “my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.” But then he goes on to write, “I confessed my true self to you, and I did not hide anything from you…and you forgave me fully!” And that brought tremendous joy, and it brought him into a close personal relationship with this forgiving God. He felt engulfed by God, guided by God and known completely by God.
So there’s prayer, there’s confession, but mostly in this spirituality type, hearts are opened, and lives are connected to God, through experience – through relationships with others. Heart types learn from these, they see God at work in others and themselves when they take time to pay attention. This might be doing devotions, or journaling, reflecting on one’s experiences of being lost, experiences of being lavishly forgiven, and experiences of the pain of others. Heart types trust their experience as a valid way of knowing and learning about human nature and the divine creator. That is their path to the heart of God.
Just as with all the spiritual types, the non-heart folks need the heart folks. We need to see their passion, their emotion, their joy. We need to be reminded to look for God in our daily lives and relationships. The most beautiful thing about this type of spirituality is to watch the heart’s response to encountering the prodigal God. This response of the heart types gives us a window into God’s heart that we might otherwise have difficulty seeing. Again we turn to our Psalm. The Psalmist describes what happens when he has been met with God’s extravagant forgiveness and love. He says, “My heart is glad in God and rejoices and shouts for joy.”
The response is a heart that is “glad in God.” It’s a heart that knows God and the joy that comes from that. The Psalmist believes once we make ourselves vulnerable to God, the relationship will follow – because of God’s love for us. And in this relationship with God, heart types are able to sense the heart and will of God – they are open to God’s guidance. “I will instruct and teach you the way you should go;” God says in the Psalm. “I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” When someone who lives life through their heart connects with God, their response is just like that of the prodigal God. They are reckless and extravagant in their love for others – they feel deeply, and rejoice immensely.
It’s Lent, and Jesus is on his way to the cross. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s heart, and so if we walk with Jesus to the cross, we will know God’s heart. We will know what God wants for us, how God feels with us, and ultimately how God rejoices to be in relationship with us. If we walk with Jesus, we dwell in God’s heart, and when that happens, our hearts will leap in response – we will become the embodiment of God’s heart here on earth. Amen.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Joy of Serving
Isaiah 55:1-13; Psalm 63:1-8; Luke 13:1-9
Third Sunday of Lent: March 7, 2010
As you might remember, during the season of Lent we are looking at different ways we might draw near to God – however we understand God. The first Sunday in Lent we talked about people who connected with God best through their heads – through study and reason, through scientific exploration and analysis. Last week we looked at how people find God – meet God – on all sorts of journeys. This week we will look at the “servant” types. These are people who find themselves in touch with the divine when they are engaged in direct service out in the world.
These are the people who can relate to the land owner in our parable who comes upon a fig tree that is not producing any fruit, and hasn’t for some time. Fruit is a visible sign that something is alive and growing. Servant types think service is like the fruit. If it is absent, their faith is dying. If it is present, they feel alive. Teaching, feeding, helping, healing, driving, visiting, working in the kitchen, serving on a committee – these things give servants life and energy. When that is missing, they feel dead. They get impatient with a lot of talk that doesn’t lead to direct action. For these folks, words and worship, prayer and study can take them to foggy places where God feels distant. Their clarity of purpose and connection with God comes in the doing.
Maybe you recognize yourself right away in this. Think about where you find your energy, your sense of purpose? If it is in the hands on, nitty gritty of life, your call is first and foremost to go serve.
And that would be a nice, neat – not to mention short – little sermon, but we can’t stop there. There is an important distinction to make when talking about service as a Christian practice: Some people serve to find God, and some people find God through other kinds of practices and then have the energy to go serve. This might seem like a minor distinction, but the importance of this distinction can be found in the really uncomfortable, harsh part of our gospel passage this morning; the part before the fig tree where Jesus tells people if they don’t repent, they will perish. [I think Jesus is making this distinction between serving to find God and serving because you have connected to God through some other spiritual practice. And the harshness of his words alone should indicate to us the importance of such a distinction.]
Because these texts are uncomfortable, we sometimes just ignore them and move on. But I don’t think this is the most helpful thing to do. To begin with, I think we can learn something about ourselves, and dare I say even Jesus and God, if we sit with our discomfort and struggle with our questions and concerns about how we hear these words. But more importantly, we can learn something by going even deeper into the text – stepping into the story and sitting with those who heard Jesus that day, with those who wrote this all down, and with those who would have heard the gospel read soon after it was written. If we set aside our own discomfort, which is really born out of our own fears and idiosyncrasies, we might see this passage from a different point of view and hear it in a new way.
Think for a minute about the people who told Jesus about all the death they had seen. There was blood in the streets. The Galileans were afraid – they were afraid of death. And this was true not just of those who lived when Jesus did. Those who wrote these gospels and heard them read had lived through the destruction of the temple – a bloody and violent clash with Rome when the Jews were nearly wiped out. All of these people were face to face with death in a way most of us are not.
When Jesus talks in stark and explicit terms of death and life, he names the elephant in the room. In a very pastoral move, Jesus addresses their fears and anxieties directly. It might seem harsh to us, but given the realities of their daily lives, might it not have been welcome talk to those living with death all around? They wanted to know how to move from living in fear of dying to just living. Kindly, directly, Jesus spoke to their deepest fears and greatest longings. And his words broke through old beliefs and assumptions that were getting in the way of life – the life he knew they yearned for.
First, the people believed you avoided death – or at least untimely death – by being good. Sin was the cause of death, and so following each letter of the law was the way you avoided death. Jesus names that anxiety immediately: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” And his answer is unequivocal and impossible to misinterpret: “No.” The bad news in this is that you can’t control whether you live or die by being righteous. But of course, the good news is no one deserves to die just because they can’t follow the letter of the law in every moment. I’m taking a wild guess here, but that might have sounded as good to the many sinners in the audience then as it does to this sinner standing up here now.
Second, Jesus addressed their fear of mortality – of death itself. They forgot that usually when Jesus talks about how to move away from death and into life, he understands those terms differently than most people. He really didn’t spend much time on death in the individual sense. Jesus spoke in larger ways: he spoke of a culture of death verses a culture of life. He spoke of new life as a new way of life – a whole new world that abolished the culture of death, the cycles of violence and revenge. He offered not freedom from their own personal death, but freedom from a world filled with death – both literal and metaphorical.
Jesus draws on the prophets like Isaiah when he speaks of this new world. In Isaiah, God tells the people – people also trapped in a culture of death – that your ways are not my ways. God assures them that there is another way, another possibility, and that this new way leads to life. Isaiah tells the people that new life begins with God’s abundant mercy. When you turn from the old ways toward God, mercy rains down on you, watering the soil of your soul until you become the bedrock of life that sprouts and produces and feeds.
When we’re honest with ourselves, we know we can’t avoid out own death – it’s a given. But what a joy to think we can, during the time we have, be a part of the source of life that will remain and grow long after we’re gone. And Jesus tells us how to get there. Repent, he says. Repentance is a big theme of Lent.
But, when Jesus says you will perish if you don’t repent, he doesn’t mean death is the punishment for not cataloguing your sins and saying you’re sorry. It’s not about punishment – at least not divine punishment. It is the reality these people face. “Look around,” he says, “it’s not exactly workin’ for you, is it.” They are locked in a cycle. If they don’t turn from the way things are, repent and turn toward God, the culture of death will continue. It’s a cycle with which we are more than familiar. Whatever we are doing is not working – so let’s turn from it to disrupt the culture of death.
The question is, “how?” How do we turn from the way things seem to have always been done? How do we turn toward God? Remember, Jesus makes it clear that this is not about not sinning – earning this new life by doing exactly what we think we should be doing. And this is where we reconnect with the servant spirituality type.
The idea of service as spiritual practice runs the greatest risk of all the spiritual practices of landing us into the trap of the Galileans, who believed you earned life through good works. “Works righteousness,” the reformers called it. It’s true that for some, service is what leads them, connects them, to God, and that brings life. For others, if this is the route they try to take purely out of obligation, thinking you have to work your way toward being a good Christian, it generally leads to frustration, resentment, tiredness, weariness of spirit. In short, not life.
Remember from Isaiah, new life starts with mercy. Not works. We need to bathe in God’s mercy. To live in God. In other words, to draw close to God. The life of faith begins by encountering the abundant mercy of God. Again, for some, they find this mercy in acts of service. But, some find it more easily in other ways. It’s just as important to discern for yourself if you are not a servant type than to decide that you are. And if you are not, then what?
Figure out what type you are. Start there and trust that as you draw closer to God – in ways that make sense for you – God will rain mercy on you, and you will respond with your life not out of obligation, but out of hope for this new way – for God’s way – for this culture of life.
If we find the ways we are best able to draw close to the divine, I have no doubt that the closer we get to God, the more we will all repent - turn from a culture of death toward a culture of life. I trust that the more we are in tune with the divine, the more we will serve others without being drained of life. I trust that when we find our new life in God, we will take that new life to others in myriad ways.
Isaiah understood this so well that he wrote a poem about it: “You shall go out with joy and be lead back in peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth before you, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.” When you draw close to God and are fed by God’s mercy and life, you will go out in joy and the world around you will change – from a culture of death to one of life and peace. Instead of the fig tree that could not produce fruit, the trees will come alive and clap their hands. Instead of the streets running with blood, the mountains and hills will burst forth with life. So let’s find our way toward God. Let’s draw closer and closer to God as we walk this journey with Jesus. And then let’s go out in joy that the world might be led back in peace. Amen.
Third Sunday of Lent: March 7, 2010
As you might remember, during the season of Lent we are looking at different ways we might draw near to God – however we understand God. The first Sunday in Lent we talked about people who connected with God best through their heads – through study and reason, through scientific exploration and analysis. Last week we looked at how people find God – meet God – on all sorts of journeys. This week we will look at the “servant” types. These are people who find themselves in touch with the divine when they are engaged in direct service out in the world.
These are the people who can relate to the land owner in our parable who comes upon a fig tree that is not producing any fruit, and hasn’t for some time. Fruit is a visible sign that something is alive and growing. Servant types think service is like the fruit. If it is absent, their faith is dying. If it is present, they feel alive. Teaching, feeding, helping, healing, driving, visiting, working in the kitchen, serving on a committee – these things give servants life and energy. When that is missing, they feel dead. They get impatient with a lot of talk that doesn’t lead to direct action. For these folks, words and worship, prayer and study can take them to foggy places where God feels distant. Their clarity of purpose and connection with God comes in the doing.
Maybe you recognize yourself right away in this. Think about where you find your energy, your sense of purpose? If it is in the hands on, nitty gritty of life, your call is first and foremost to go serve.
And that would be a nice, neat – not to mention short – little sermon, but we can’t stop there. There is an important distinction to make when talking about service as a Christian practice: Some people serve to find God, and some people find God through other kinds of practices and then have the energy to go serve. This might seem like a minor distinction, but the importance of this distinction can be found in the really uncomfortable, harsh part of our gospel passage this morning; the part before the fig tree where Jesus tells people if they don’t repent, they will perish. [I think Jesus is making this distinction between serving to find God and serving because you have connected to God through some other spiritual practice. And the harshness of his words alone should indicate to us the importance of such a distinction.]
Because these texts are uncomfortable, we sometimes just ignore them and move on. But I don’t think this is the most helpful thing to do. To begin with, I think we can learn something about ourselves, and dare I say even Jesus and God, if we sit with our discomfort and struggle with our questions and concerns about how we hear these words. But more importantly, we can learn something by going even deeper into the text – stepping into the story and sitting with those who heard Jesus that day, with those who wrote this all down, and with those who would have heard the gospel read soon after it was written. If we set aside our own discomfort, which is really born out of our own fears and idiosyncrasies, we might see this passage from a different point of view and hear it in a new way.
Think for a minute about the people who told Jesus about all the death they had seen. There was blood in the streets. The Galileans were afraid – they were afraid of death. And this was true not just of those who lived when Jesus did. Those who wrote these gospels and heard them read had lived through the destruction of the temple – a bloody and violent clash with Rome when the Jews were nearly wiped out. All of these people were face to face with death in a way most of us are not.
When Jesus talks in stark and explicit terms of death and life, he names the elephant in the room. In a very pastoral move, Jesus addresses their fears and anxieties directly. It might seem harsh to us, but given the realities of their daily lives, might it not have been welcome talk to those living with death all around? They wanted to know how to move from living in fear of dying to just living. Kindly, directly, Jesus spoke to their deepest fears and greatest longings. And his words broke through old beliefs and assumptions that were getting in the way of life – the life he knew they yearned for.
First, the people believed you avoided death – or at least untimely death – by being good. Sin was the cause of death, and so following each letter of the law was the way you avoided death. Jesus names that anxiety immediately: “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” And his answer is unequivocal and impossible to misinterpret: “No.” The bad news in this is that you can’t control whether you live or die by being righteous. But of course, the good news is no one deserves to die just because they can’t follow the letter of the law in every moment. I’m taking a wild guess here, but that might have sounded as good to the many sinners in the audience then as it does to this sinner standing up here now.
Second, Jesus addressed their fear of mortality – of death itself. They forgot that usually when Jesus talks about how to move away from death and into life, he understands those terms differently than most people. He really didn’t spend much time on death in the individual sense. Jesus spoke in larger ways: he spoke of a culture of death verses a culture of life. He spoke of new life as a new way of life – a whole new world that abolished the culture of death, the cycles of violence and revenge. He offered not freedom from their own personal death, but freedom from a world filled with death – both literal and metaphorical.
Jesus draws on the prophets like Isaiah when he speaks of this new world. In Isaiah, God tells the people – people also trapped in a culture of death – that your ways are not my ways. God assures them that there is another way, another possibility, and that this new way leads to life. Isaiah tells the people that new life begins with God’s abundant mercy. When you turn from the old ways toward God, mercy rains down on you, watering the soil of your soul until you become the bedrock of life that sprouts and produces and feeds.
When we’re honest with ourselves, we know we can’t avoid out own death – it’s a given. But what a joy to think we can, during the time we have, be a part of the source of life that will remain and grow long after we’re gone. And Jesus tells us how to get there. Repent, he says. Repentance is a big theme of Lent.
But, when Jesus says you will perish if you don’t repent, he doesn’t mean death is the punishment for not cataloguing your sins and saying you’re sorry. It’s not about punishment – at least not divine punishment. It is the reality these people face. “Look around,” he says, “it’s not exactly workin’ for you, is it.” They are locked in a cycle. If they don’t turn from the way things are, repent and turn toward God, the culture of death will continue. It’s a cycle with which we are more than familiar. Whatever we are doing is not working – so let’s turn from it to disrupt the culture of death.
The question is, “how?” How do we turn from the way things seem to have always been done? How do we turn toward God? Remember, Jesus makes it clear that this is not about not sinning – earning this new life by doing exactly what we think we should be doing. And this is where we reconnect with the servant spirituality type.
The idea of service as spiritual practice runs the greatest risk of all the spiritual practices of landing us into the trap of the Galileans, who believed you earned life through good works. “Works righteousness,” the reformers called it. It’s true that for some, service is what leads them, connects them, to God, and that brings life. For others, if this is the route they try to take purely out of obligation, thinking you have to work your way toward being a good Christian, it generally leads to frustration, resentment, tiredness, weariness of spirit. In short, not life.
Remember from Isaiah, new life starts with mercy. Not works. We need to bathe in God’s mercy. To live in God. In other words, to draw close to God. The life of faith begins by encountering the abundant mercy of God. Again, for some, they find this mercy in acts of service. But, some find it more easily in other ways. It’s just as important to discern for yourself if you are not a servant type than to decide that you are. And if you are not, then what?
Figure out what type you are. Start there and trust that as you draw closer to God – in ways that make sense for you – God will rain mercy on you, and you will respond with your life not out of obligation, but out of hope for this new way – for God’s way – for this culture of life.
If we find the ways we are best able to draw close to the divine, I have no doubt that the closer we get to God, the more we will all repent - turn from a culture of death toward a culture of life. I trust that the more we are in tune with the divine, the more we will serve others without being drained of life. I trust that when we find our new life in God, we will take that new life to others in myriad ways.
Isaiah understood this so well that he wrote a poem about it: “You shall go out with joy and be lead back in peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth before you, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.” When you draw close to God and are fed by God’s mercy and life, you will go out in joy and the world around you will change – from a culture of death to one of life and peace. Instead of the fig tree that could not produce fruit, the trees will come alive and clap their hands. Instead of the streets running with blood, the mountains and hills will burst forth with life. So let’s find our way toward God. Let’s draw closer and closer to God as we walk this journey with Jesus. And then let’s go out in joy that the world might be led back in peace. Amen.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
A Pilgrim People
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 13:31-35
Second Sunday of Lent: February 28, 2010
“A wandering Aramean was your ancestor.” What an odd thing to remind people of when they are finally coming to be in the promised land. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Hebrew people had arrived at the destination, the land flowing with milk and honey. They were about to begin the golden age of their history. They would have land, tend it, eat from it, be owners and rulers and authors of their own destinies for the first time since they were enslaved in Egypt. And Moses tells them the first thing they are to do is to bring an offering to Yahweh and then recite a confession beginning with the words: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” It’s as if to say, “Even thought it seems that this promised land is your destiny, remember that you are always pilgrims – wanderers in strange lands; that is your identity. It is imbedded deep in you even if you live in one place for the rest of your life.”
Journeys are part of the life of faith. There is really no way around this – not if the bible is to be believed at all. This is the second Sunday of Lent. Lent is a season based entirely on a journey. “Today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way,” Jesus says in our passage this morning. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus and his followers go on a long journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. And every year we take that spiritual journey with them.
But faith is not a journey without direction. It is not without meaning and purpose. In fact, listen to what follows the confession that “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” It recounts the journey: “We went down into Egypt and lived there as aliens…and then became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us…we cried to Yahweh….who brought us out of Egypt…and then brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” That is a history, but it is also a description of the constant journey of life in God. We are called to move from alienation to reconciliation, from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan. We’re called from Galilee to Jerusalem, from brokenness to wholeness, from death to resurrection. That is the journey God wants us to embark on in every moment of every day.
But, this is not always an easy journey. Even when we are in Egypt, suffering in some way, yearning to get out, we know that between us and liberation lays the wilderness. The people were freed in the Exodus, freed from Pharaoh. But they soon found out that before they could settle in the promised land, they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. That is where they found God, heard God speak and learned what God wanted for them and their lives. Journeys are not without detours, setbacks and adventures. But without the wilderness, there is no promised land. Without Jerusalem and the cross, there is no resurrection. Without the journey, there is no growth – no deepening of faith.
God calls us to the journey; because there is always alienation and slavery, there are always some in Egypt and there is always the possibility of Canaan. This is true for all of us – and for many of us, we find this call difficult and at times have to be dragged kicking and screaming along the journey. We have to force ourselves to stay in the wilderness and not turn around and run back to what we already know, slavery or not. The journey is the task, not the prize. But for others, God does not just call them to the journey, God is revealed on the journey. The journey itself is the joy, the richness and the way to find out who God is and what God wants. These are the pilgrims.
During Lent, we are looking at many different ways we draw close to God. Given our differences in personalities, life experiences and capabilities, it stands to reason that we all do this is different ways. Last week we talked about folks who most readily find God through their head – in study, reflection, scriptures, sermons, etc. This week, we look at people who find God on the journey.
We’ve all heard that life is what happens along the way. Pilgrims know this intuitively. Jesus lived this with his heart and soul. When you look at the gospels, you see that Jesus’ entire ministry happened “along the way.” The flow of the narrative may be from Galilee to Jerusalem, but it’s what happens along the way that makes up the compelling message of Jesus’ life. As he walked, he healed, he loved, he stayed with and ate with people on the margins of life. The journey becomes the context for the true, meaningful ministry.
What God intends is revealed as Jesus passes by people, moves through towns and goes on his way. He needs the destination: Jerusalem. That frames the narrative and gives meaning to the journey. But in the end it’s the journey that speaks to our hearts and imaginations. The journey reveals the story of a compassionate, loving Christ and becomes the story we seek to retell with our lives.
There’s another wonderful example of what it means to be a pilgrim in the novel, “Monkey”. The novel is a fictionalized version of an actual historical pilgrimage made by a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang in the 6th century AD. The purpose of both the historical and fictional pilgrimage is to get new Buddhist scriptures from India and bring them back to China. The novel gives our pilgrim three disciples – Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy. Each comes with their own faults and foibles, and they help Xuanzang in his quest for these scriptures. Over 2/3 of the novel is spent detailing their journey and all the things that prolong them getting to their final destination. They encounter eighty “problems” along the way that they must help solve before they can get to the scriptures.
After we go with these pilgrims from China to India and spend all the time in each of these problems that we encounter, we are just as anxious as they to get to the final destination – the reward. We wonder why Monkey, who has vast magical powers, can not just lift the four sojourners onto a cloud and take them directly to the mountain where the scriptures are housed. So, when they finally get to the mountain and meet the Buddha and obtain the scriptures, we can’t wait to see how that will affect these four disciples and all of China for that matter.
We expect, partly because it is the expectation set by the author, that these scriptures will allow the four disciples to finally reach Enlightenment. What we find, along with Xuanzang, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy is that when they arrive is that the scriptures are empty. There are no words on the pages they have to take back. You see, it was the journey itself that brought each one to Enlightenment. Each problem helped them grow in their abilities. Each set back actually deepened their faith.
Everything in the end points back to the journey as the real story. This is how it is for the pilgrim types. They are not preparing for an event that happens at a point in time, nor are they motivated solely by a destination. They set out not just for a holy site, but on a holy journey, knowing God will be found along the way. It’s the newness of things, the strangeness, the freshness, the challenges that give them an openness to hear God’s new, fresh word for them and the world.
Pilgrims are identifiable by their openness and searching nature. They are known for tolerance because they find in the differences of others new journeys to take. A 2008 study on the long-term effect of participating in the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, called “the Hajj”, found that Muslim communities become more open after the Hajj experience. Specifically, the report states that the Hajj "increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and Islamic community and that the pilgrims show increased belief in peace, and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions." For those who are pilgrim types, the spiritual journey is an opening, expanding experience.
But the journey is not without peril. Interestingly, the Hebrew word translated “wandering” in our passage this morning – as in a wandering Aramean was my ancestor – is the same word used for death. Moses tells the people to not only affirm that they are rooted in a pilgrim story, but that the pilgrimage has brought them to the brink of death and has left them wandering, at times, lost. Pilgrimages are perilous. This is true literally. The same Hajj experience that encourages openness and peace has been the scene of danger and death. There have been many incidents that have led to the loss of many hundreds of lives.
But it’s true metaphorically as well. It is hard to know when we have gone from being on a pilgrimage to wandering lost in the desert moving only toward death. When is what we are doing a sacred journey, and when are we just trampling one another along the way? It’s perilous and risky, but pilgrims know that the risk is part of the richness of the journey and even those times of being lost can be fruitful.
Remember what it is that gives the spiritual journey meaning. It’s not the destination that matters most, it is the movement toward freedom, wholeness and redemption that ensures the journey is not just a wandering on the brink of death. Being lost can be a part of the spiritual journey, but not if we forget that we are ultimately headed for Canaan. The wilderness was hard, but it was also fertile soil for growing in relationship to God. It was where one learned who Yahweh wanted them to be and how Yahweh wanted them to live. Without the wilderness, Canaan would have just been another Egypt.
Given the nature of pilgrims types, the spiritual practices that are most likely to help them draw closer to God or learn more about God and God’s plan for their life, are active practices. An obvious spiritual practice would be to make a pilgrimage – to set out on a journey to a holy site of some kind and then pay attention to what happens along the way. Millions of people make such pilgrimages every year. Some go to the holy land, some to Mecca, some to Buddhist temples in China or Japan.
But, we can’t make such pilgrimages every day. So those who are of this spiritual type have to find other ways to journey in their daily lives. Some people have found incredible meaning in walking a Labyrinth. A labyrinth is a symbolic pilgrimage. It is a ritual path that has you journey to a center point and then out again. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. For pilgrims, there is something about moving the body…taking a physical journey. Even just taking a walk becomes a time of meditation that provides something sitting in one place cannot.
Another practice for pilgrims that can be incorporated into daily life is to simply take a new route to familiar places. Ask yourself the question, “How do you encounter God when you are not doing what you have always done?” Finally, pilgrims also learn about the divine by walking in the shoes of others. Many pilgrims find spiritual growth in journeys exploring other faith traditions and talking with people from all walks of life.
If you see yourself in this – if you know that you are a pilgrim, Lent is a great time for journeys. Take as many journeys as you can. Open your eyes, ears and hearts to God along the way. Set out on a sacred path and open yourself to the promise of Canaan, the hope of the resurrection, the joy of being in relationship with a God who wants us to be free.
Jesus is the master pilgrim. When you read the gospels, it seems like he never stops moving – never stops walking. And it is not wander-lust. His ministry happens along the way – from Galilee to Jerusalem. His life embodies the creed of his people: A wandering Aramean was my ancestor. Jesus moves people from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, from brokenness to wholeness. His physical journey sets the people he meets on journeys of their own – journeys to God. When he gets to Jerusalem, the cross is kind of like the empty Buddhist scriptures. It’s not what we expect – it even seems disappointing. But it points us both back to the journey, and to the fact that it was through his life, his healings and love, his compassion and justice that resurrection really happened. Even before the empty tomb, resurrection was a reality because of the way Jesus journeyed through life.
For Lent, we all become pilgrims with Jesus and with each other. It’s a chance to learn what some know without being taught: if you dare to take the journey, God will meet you every step of the way. Amen.
Second Sunday of Lent: February 28, 2010
“A wandering Aramean was your ancestor.” What an odd thing to remind people of when they are finally coming to be in the promised land. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Hebrew people had arrived at the destination, the land flowing with milk and honey. They were about to begin the golden age of their history. They would have land, tend it, eat from it, be owners and rulers and authors of their own destinies for the first time since they were enslaved in Egypt. And Moses tells them the first thing they are to do is to bring an offering to Yahweh and then recite a confession beginning with the words: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” It’s as if to say, “Even thought it seems that this promised land is your destiny, remember that you are always pilgrims – wanderers in strange lands; that is your identity. It is imbedded deep in you even if you live in one place for the rest of your life.”
Journeys are part of the life of faith. There is really no way around this – not if the bible is to be believed at all. This is the second Sunday of Lent. Lent is a season based entirely on a journey. “Today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way,” Jesus says in our passage this morning. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus and his followers go on a long journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. And every year we take that spiritual journey with them.
But faith is not a journey without direction. It is not without meaning and purpose. In fact, listen to what follows the confession that “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” It recounts the journey: “We went down into Egypt and lived there as aliens…and then became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us…we cried to Yahweh….who brought us out of Egypt…and then brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” That is a history, but it is also a description of the constant journey of life in God. We are called to move from alienation to reconciliation, from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan. We’re called from Galilee to Jerusalem, from brokenness to wholeness, from death to resurrection. That is the journey God wants us to embark on in every moment of every day.
But, this is not always an easy journey. Even when we are in Egypt, suffering in some way, yearning to get out, we know that between us and liberation lays the wilderness. The people were freed in the Exodus, freed from Pharaoh. But they soon found out that before they could settle in the promised land, they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. That is where they found God, heard God speak and learned what God wanted for them and their lives. Journeys are not without detours, setbacks and adventures. But without the wilderness, there is no promised land. Without Jerusalem and the cross, there is no resurrection. Without the journey, there is no growth – no deepening of faith.
God calls us to the journey; because there is always alienation and slavery, there are always some in Egypt and there is always the possibility of Canaan. This is true for all of us – and for many of us, we find this call difficult and at times have to be dragged kicking and screaming along the journey. We have to force ourselves to stay in the wilderness and not turn around and run back to what we already know, slavery or not. The journey is the task, not the prize. But for others, God does not just call them to the journey, God is revealed on the journey. The journey itself is the joy, the richness and the way to find out who God is and what God wants. These are the pilgrims.
During Lent, we are looking at many different ways we draw close to God. Given our differences in personalities, life experiences and capabilities, it stands to reason that we all do this is different ways. Last week we talked about folks who most readily find God through their head – in study, reflection, scriptures, sermons, etc. This week, we look at people who find God on the journey.
We’ve all heard that life is what happens along the way. Pilgrims know this intuitively. Jesus lived this with his heart and soul. When you look at the gospels, you see that Jesus’ entire ministry happened “along the way.” The flow of the narrative may be from Galilee to Jerusalem, but it’s what happens along the way that makes up the compelling message of Jesus’ life. As he walked, he healed, he loved, he stayed with and ate with people on the margins of life. The journey becomes the context for the true, meaningful ministry.
What God intends is revealed as Jesus passes by people, moves through towns and goes on his way. He needs the destination: Jerusalem. That frames the narrative and gives meaning to the journey. But in the end it’s the journey that speaks to our hearts and imaginations. The journey reveals the story of a compassionate, loving Christ and becomes the story we seek to retell with our lives.
There’s another wonderful example of what it means to be a pilgrim in the novel, “Monkey”. The novel is a fictionalized version of an actual historical pilgrimage made by a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang in the 6th century AD. The purpose of both the historical and fictional pilgrimage is to get new Buddhist scriptures from India and bring them back to China. The novel gives our pilgrim three disciples – Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy. Each comes with their own faults and foibles, and they help Xuanzang in his quest for these scriptures. Over 2/3 of the novel is spent detailing their journey and all the things that prolong them getting to their final destination. They encounter eighty “problems” along the way that they must help solve before they can get to the scriptures.
After we go with these pilgrims from China to India and spend all the time in each of these problems that we encounter, we are just as anxious as they to get to the final destination – the reward. We wonder why Monkey, who has vast magical powers, can not just lift the four sojourners onto a cloud and take them directly to the mountain where the scriptures are housed. So, when they finally get to the mountain and meet the Buddha and obtain the scriptures, we can’t wait to see how that will affect these four disciples and all of China for that matter.
We expect, partly because it is the expectation set by the author, that these scriptures will allow the four disciples to finally reach Enlightenment. What we find, along with Xuanzang, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy is that when they arrive is that the scriptures are empty. There are no words on the pages they have to take back. You see, it was the journey itself that brought each one to Enlightenment. Each problem helped them grow in their abilities. Each set back actually deepened their faith.
Everything in the end points back to the journey as the real story. This is how it is for the pilgrim types. They are not preparing for an event that happens at a point in time, nor are they motivated solely by a destination. They set out not just for a holy site, but on a holy journey, knowing God will be found along the way. It’s the newness of things, the strangeness, the freshness, the challenges that give them an openness to hear God’s new, fresh word for them and the world.
Pilgrims are identifiable by their openness and searching nature. They are known for tolerance because they find in the differences of others new journeys to take. A 2008 study on the long-term effect of participating in the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, called “the Hajj”, found that Muslim communities become more open after the Hajj experience. Specifically, the report states that the Hajj "increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and Islamic community and that the pilgrims show increased belief in peace, and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions." For those who are pilgrim types, the spiritual journey is an opening, expanding experience.
But the journey is not without peril. Interestingly, the Hebrew word translated “wandering” in our passage this morning – as in a wandering Aramean was my ancestor – is the same word used for death. Moses tells the people to not only affirm that they are rooted in a pilgrim story, but that the pilgrimage has brought them to the brink of death and has left them wandering, at times, lost. Pilgrimages are perilous. This is true literally. The same Hajj experience that encourages openness and peace has been the scene of danger and death. There have been many incidents that have led to the loss of many hundreds of lives.
But it’s true metaphorically as well. It is hard to know when we have gone from being on a pilgrimage to wandering lost in the desert moving only toward death. When is what we are doing a sacred journey, and when are we just trampling one another along the way? It’s perilous and risky, but pilgrims know that the risk is part of the richness of the journey and even those times of being lost can be fruitful.
Remember what it is that gives the spiritual journey meaning. It’s not the destination that matters most, it is the movement toward freedom, wholeness and redemption that ensures the journey is not just a wandering on the brink of death. Being lost can be a part of the spiritual journey, but not if we forget that we are ultimately headed for Canaan. The wilderness was hard, but it was also fertile soil for growing in relationship to God. It was where one learned who Yahweh wanted them to be and how Yahweh wanted them to live. Without the wilderness, Canaan would have just been another Egypt.
Given the nature of pilgrims types, the spiritual practices that are most likely to help them draw closer to God or learn more about God and God’s plan for their life, are active practices. An obvious spiritual practice would be to make a pilgrimage – to set out on a journey to a holy site of some kind and then pay attention to what happens along the way. Millions of people make such pilgrimages every year. Some go to the holy land, some to Mecca, some to Buddhist temples in China or Japan.
But, we can’t make such pilgrimages every day. So those who are of this spiritual type have to find other ways to journey in their daily lives. Some people have found incredible meaning in walking a Labyrinth. A labyrinth is a symbolic pilgrimage. It is a ritual path that has you journey to a center point and then out again. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. For pilgrims, there is something about moving the body…taking a physical journey. Even just taking a walk becomes a time of meditation that provides something sitting in one place cannot.
Another practice for pilgrims that can be incorporated into daily life is to simply take a new route to familiar places. Ask yourself the question, “How do you encounter God when you are not doing what you have always done?” Finally, pilgrims also learn about the divine by walking in the shoes of others. Many pilgrims find spiritual growth in journeys exploring other faith traditions and talking with people from all walks of life.
If you see yourself in this – if you know that you are a pilgrim, Lent is a great time for journeys. Take as many journeys as you can. Open your eyes, ears and hearts to God along the way. Set out on a sacred path and open yourself to the promise of Canaan, the hope of the resurrection, the joy of being in relationship with a God who wants us to be free.
Jesus is the master pilgrim. When you read the gospels, it seems like he never stops moving – never stops walking. And it is not wander-lust. His ministry happens along the way – from Galilee to Jerusalem. His life embodies the creed of his people: A wandering Aramean was my ancestor. Jesus moves people from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, from brokenness to wholeness. His physical journey sets the people he meets on journeys of their own – journeys to God. When he gets to Jerusalem, the cross is kind of like the empty Buddhist scriptures. It’s not what we expect – it even seems disappointing. But it points us both back to the journey, and to the fact that it was through his life, his healings and love, his compassion and justice that resurrection really happened. Even before the empty tomb, resurrection was a reality because of the way Jesus journeyed through life.
For Lent, we all become pilgrims with Jesus and with each other. It’s a chance to learn what some know without being taught: if you dare to take the journey, God will meet you every step of the way. Amen.
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