Pilgrimage: Why We Make the Journey
June 2, 2024 Second Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 63:1-8 and Psalm 84
“Pilgrimage: Why We Make the Journey”
Douglas T. King
A nerdy guy in a suit walks along a city street. He spots a car that he clearly believes to be his Uber. Without asking any questions he haplessly hops in the back seat. A second later two men wearing ski masks jump into the back with him, one on either side. As the car tears away from the curb, one of the men, who are clearly bank-robbers exclaims, “I thought we agreed no hostages!” A voiceover to the commercial announces, “wanna get away?” It is one of a series of ads for an airline that bring us extremely awkward situations and then offer us an escape from whatever in our lives we would like to escape.
As we begin the month of June the desire to make our way to other places is in the zeitgeist. With school letting out and the weather becoming lovely this is the time of year when many of us start making journeys, either to beloved favorite places or to brand new destinations. Taking a trip can be good for us. It can be therapeutic to be in a different space for a while, to see different things and to see things differently. It is an opportunity to let go of the daily rhythms that can leave us feeling stilted or stressed or both. The wanderlust we experience at times is a universal human response to a real need to experience something else, something new.
The two psalms we heard read this morning both speak to our innate spiritual need to journey, to go on a pilgrimage. Scholars have endlessly debated how to classify Psalm sixty-three, our first reading. Some have called it a psalm of thanksgiving, others of lament, still others as a psalm that accompanied sacrifices. I believe the Jewish scholar Konrad Schaefer gets it right. He refers to Psalm sixty-three as a love song. Listen to the second half of the first verse in an alternative translation, “…my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land.” The expression of love often includes both thanksgiving for the beloved and lament for the beloved’s absence. Psalm 63 names how entirely precious and valuable the presence of God is in our lives and how barren our lives can be without that presence.
Today is the first in a three-sermon series on the importance of pilgrimage, our need to intentionally journey in our relationship with the divine. We start this conversation by recognizing our need for God’s presence in our lives. In his book Pensees, Blaise Pascal writes of what has been subsequently named the God-shaped hole within us. We have an inherent need for God in our lives and are essentially incomplete when we are unable to experience God’s presence. Augustine expressed it in this fashion, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Emily Dickinson referred to this as the “tooth that nibbles at the soul.” I think of it as an existential emptiness.
The tricky part is that we do not always acknowledge this need, even those of us who show up for worship on a Sunday morning. We experience the hole within us, but we are not adept at naming what it is. For some it feels like unsatiated hunger; for others it is an ennui; still others a sense of subtle confusion they cannot quite shake. And not realizing that the hole can only be filled by the divine we attempt to fill it with other things. We attempt to fill it with worldly success. Once I achieve senior partner, or vice president I will feel complete. For others it is through pleasure that we believe we can fill that hole. We believe some magical combination of spa treatments, cocktails, and sexual satisfaction will fill us up.
Now there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things in and of themselves. Achievement and all sorts of pleasures can be gifts from God. The danger is when we believe they will fill the hole. Because they never will. There will never be enough worldly success or pleasure to fill the God-shaped hole within us. And if we keep pouring more and more of ourselves solely into such pursuits our need for them will grow and grow as ironically, the satisfaction they bring will lessen and lessen. We continue to feel that itch to get somewhere other than where we are but we find ourselves traveling in circles.
Psalm eighty-four, our second reading, names the destination we are called to be traveling toward. “How lovely is your dwelling place O Lord of Hosts!” It is believed to be one of the psalms that was “recited or sung by pilgrims as they made their way toward…Jerusalem.” (McCann Jr., p. 1012) “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young…Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise…a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
One scholar notes that “Psalm 84 is sacramental—visible actions become the means of grace and revelation of the presence of God.” (McCann Jr., p. 1015) The journey is a sacred and holy act in and of itself. Pilgrimage does not need to necessarily entail a journey to a geographic location, but there is a sense that all pilgrimages are embodied in some way. Just as the tangible gifts of the waters of baptism, and the bread and juice of communion invite us into recognizing and receiving Christ’s presence and blessing in our midst, the act of engaging in pilgrimage is done with all of who we are, body, mind, and spirit. It is a tangible acknowledgment that we are moving from what we know into a place beyond what we know.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales uses the vehicle of a pilgrimage to spin his many stories. My ability to recite Old English verse is a little shaky so I will spare you that this morning. But what he does make clear are two important aspects of the pilgrimage. First of all, it is done in community, and a community of a motley crew of folks, as we remember the vast cast of characters, everyone from the Miller to the Prioress and the wife of Bath. Secondly, pilgrimages are not just about the destination but also what becomes revealed about those who engage in the journey. In Chaucer’s classic, we remember all of the amusing and sometimes bawdy tales that illuminate each and every person on the trip. When we engage in pilgrimage we often learn just about as much or more about ourselves and others as we do the desired destination.
The church is called to be a vessel that invites us on a pilgrimage together. Many churches, included the one where I grew up on the north shore of Long Island, have sanctuary ceilings that are constructed in a concave shape to look like the inside of the bottom of a hull of a ship. This serves to remind us that as a gathered community we are ever on a journey together.
Being faithful is never about being static and stationary. In my first Old Testament class at Princeton I was taught that the turning point of the entire Old Testament occurs in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with just two simple words. God speaks with Abram offering him the promise of great blessing and becoming the father of a great nation. But to receive the blessing to be the nation he must make a journey from his home and his family. Abram is left with a decision. Would he leave behind all he knows to follow God and receive God’s blessing? We know the choice he made, “Abram went.” And from those two simple words, the entire story of God’s people unfolded. “Abram went.” And in doing so he changed the world.
We too face a choice. Do we seek to stand in place, where we are in our faith? Do we cling to what we currently know and believe? Or do we venture forth into places we have yet to be? Do we go forward and thus continue to explore who we are, who God is, and who we are called to be? Do we step from what is known into what is yet to be known? Do we continue forward in search of our God and ourselves?
Wanna get away?
I say we go.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
McCann Jr., J. Clinton, The New Interpreter’s Bible: vol. IV,
Abingdon Press, Nashville 1996.
Schaefer, Konrad, Berit Olam: Psalms, The Liturgical Press,
Collegeville, Minnesota, 2001.
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 63:1-8 and Psalm 84
“Pilgrimage: Why We Make the Journey”
Douglas T. King
A nerdy guy in a suit walks along a city street. He spots a car that he clearly believes to be his Uber. Without asking any questions he haplessly hops in the back seat. A second later two men wearing ski masks jump into the back with him, one on either side. As the car tears away from the curb, one of the men, who are clearly bank-robbers exclaims, “I thought we agreed no hostages!” A voiceover to the commercial announces, “wanna get away?” It is one of a series of ads for an airline that bring us extremely awkward situations and then offer us an escape from whatever in our lives we would like to escape.
As we begin the month of June the desire to make our way to other places is in the zeitgeist. With school letting out and the weather becoming lovely this is the time of year when many of us start making journeys, either to beloved favorite places or to brand new destinations. Taking a trip can be good for us. It can be therapeutic to be in a different space for a while, to see different things and to see things differently. It is an opportunity to let go of the daily rhythms that can leave us feeling stilted or stressed or both. The wanderlust we experience at times is a universal human response to a real need to experience something else, something new.
The two psalms we heard read this morning both speak to our innate spiritual need to journey, to go on a pilgrimage. Scholars have endlessly debated how to classify Psalm sixty-three, our first reading. Some have called it a psalm of thanksgiving, others of lament, still others as a psalm that accompanied sacrifices. I believe the Jewish scholar Konrad Schaefer gets it right. He refers to Psalm sixty-three as a love song. Listen to the second half of the first verse in an alternative translation, “…my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land.” The expression of love often includes both thanksgiving for the beloved and lament for the beloved’s absence. Psalm 63 names how entirely precious and valuable the presence of God is in our lives and how barren our lives can be without that presence.
Today is the first in a three-sermon series on the importance of pilgrimage, our need to intentionally journey in our relationship with the divine. We start this conversation by recognizing our need for God’s presence in our lives. In his book Pensees, Blaise Pascal writes of what has been subsequently named the God-shaped hole within us. We have an inherent need for God in our lives and are essentially incomplete when we are unable to experience God’s presence. Augustine expressed it in this fashion, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Emily Dickinson referred to this as the “tooth that nibbles at the soul.” I think of it as an existential emptiness.
The tricky part is that we do not always acknowledge this need, even those of us who show up for worship on a Sunday morning. We experience the hole within us, but we are not adept at naming what it is. For some it feels like unsatiated hunger; for others it is an ennui; still others a sense of subtle confusion they cannot quite shake. And not realizing that the hole can only be filled by the divine we attempt to fill it with other things. We attempt to fill it with worldly success. Once I achieve senior partner, or vice president I will feel complete. For others it is through pleasure that we believe we can fill that hole. We believe some magical combination of spa treatments, cocktails, and sexual satisfaction will fill us up.
Now there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things in and of themselves. Achievement and all sorts of pleasures can be gifts from God. The danger is when we believe they will fill the hole. Because they never will. There will never be enough worldly success or pleasure to fill the God-shaped hole within us. And if we keep pouring more and more of ourselves solely into such pursuits our need for them will grow and grow as ironically, the satisfaction they bring will lessen and lessen. We continue to feel that itch to get somewhere other than where we are but we find ourselves traveling in circles.
Psalm eighty-four, our second reading, names the destination we are called to be traveling toward. “How lovely is your dwelling place O Lord of Hosts!” It is believed to be one of the psalms that was “recited or sung by pilgrims as they made their way toward…Jerusalem.” (McCann Jr., p. 1012) “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young…Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise…a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
One scholar notes that “Psalm 84 is sacramental—visible actions become the means of grace and revelation of the presence of God.” (McCann Jr., p. 1015) The journey is a sacred and holy act in and of itself. Pilgrimage does not need to necessarily entail a journey to a geographic location, but there is a sense that all pilgrimages are embodied in some way. Just as the tangible gifts of the waters of baptism, and the bread and juice of communion invite us into recognizing and receiving Christ’s presence and blessing in our midst, the act of engaging in pilgrimage is done with all of who we are, body, mind, and spirit. It is a tangible acknowledgment that we are moving from what we know into a place beyond what we know.
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales uses the vehicle of a pilgrimage to spin his many stories. My ability to recite Old English verse is a little shaky so I will spare you that this morning. But what he does make clear are two important aspects of the pilgrimage. First of all, it is done in community, and a community of a motley crew of folks, as we remember the vast cast of characters, everyone from the Miller to the Prioress and the wife of Bath. Secondly, pilgrimages are not just about the destination but also what becomes revealed about those who engage in the journey. In Chaucer’s classic, we remember all of the amusing and sometimes bawdy tales that illuminate each and every person on the trip. When we engage in pilgrimage we often learn just about as much or more about ourselves and others as we do the desired destination.
The church is called to be a vessel that invites us on a pilgrimage together. Many churches, included the one where I grew up on the north shore of Long Island, have sanctuary ceilings that are constructed in a concave shape to look like the inside of the bottom of a hull of a ship. This serves to remind us that as a gathered community we are ever on a journey together.
Being faithful is never about being static and stationary. In my first Old Testament class at Princeton I was taught that the turning point of the entire Old Testament occurs in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with just two simple words. God speaks with Abram offering him the promise of great blessing and becoming the father of a great nation. But to receive the blessing to be the nation he must make a journey from his home and his family. Abram is left with a decision. Would he leave behind all he knows to follow God and receive God’s blessing? We know the choice he made, “Abram went.” And from those two simple words, the entire story of God’s people unfolded. “Abram went.” And in doing so he changed the world.
We too face a choice. Do we seek to stand in place, where we are in our faith? Do we cling to what we currently know and believe? Or do we venture forth into places we have yet to be? Do we go forward and thus continue to explore who we are, who God is, and who we are called to be? Do we step from what is known into what is yet to be known? Do we continue forward in search of our God and ourselves?
Wanna get away?
I say we go.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
McCann Jr., J. Clinton, The New Interpreter’s Bible: vol. IV,
Abingdon Press, Nashville 1996.
Schaefer, Konrad, Berit Olam: Psalms, The Liturgical Press,
Collegeville, Minnesota, 2001.
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