Pilgrimage: Travelling Forth

June 16, 2024  Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Psalm 121 and Joshua 3:7-17
“Pilgrimage: Travelling Forth”
Douglas T. King

If you are about to undertake a very long road trip in the car, I believe there are three essentials.  The first is a hearty supply of snacks.  Some of you may think of carrots and celery sticks, but if you do, you are wrong.  A long road trip throws appropriate nutrition out the window and demands junk food, savory or sweet, or the best-case scenario, both.  Bring on the potato chips and M & M’s!  The second essential is music.  I am all in favor of musical soundtracks, everything from Hadestown, Rent, and Hamilton, to Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
 
Today’s first scripture reading is part of a road trip soundtrack.  Psalms 120 through 134 are known as the Songs of Ascent.  It is believed they are a collection of songs that pilgrims sang as they journeyed to Jerusalem for festival celebrations.  They are relatively short so it is assumed they were memorized and sung as people traveled by foot on the road together.  

The 121st Psalm we heard read this morning has been called a “Psalm for Sojourners” (p. 1182) and “an eloquent profession of faith in God’s providence and protection.” (p. 1180)  Today is the third sermon in our series on pilgrimage.  We have been discussing our need to ever be journeying toward the divine and the route by which we get there.  Today we are considering how we get started.  Because the thing about a pilgrimage journey is that it involves stepping beyond where we are right now.  A pilgrimage journey means that we are on the move forward.  And leaving the place where we are to a new place can be a little intimidating, even if we are solely speaking metaphorically.  Any journey in which we engage brings with it not just a change in location but a change in us.  And in the case of spiritual journeys, a change in our understanding of God.  It may involve letting go of previous assumptions and understandings.  The spiritual director Christine Valters Paintner writes this, “it is only at the point of relinquishment of our images for the divine that God is then revealed in entirely new ways that bring more spaciousness and possibility and honor mystery.” (Paintner, pp. 35-36)

Change is hard.  And when we are thinking about the possibility of change in terms of our understanding of God, that can be immensely hard.  The way we think about our God and our faith are often foundational pieces that have carried us through times both good and bad.  The thought that those things are subject to change can be distressing.  But our journey with God is never about standing static in the same place throughout our life.  God is ever pressing forward into the future and if we want to experience the presence of God we must move into that future as well.
 
When I began this sermon I said there were three essentials before you can embark on a long road trip.  After the junk food and the music, you need a basic trust in the mechanism of the trip, your car.  It is essential to know that you are getting behind the wheel of an automobile that is reliable, that will get you where you need to go.  

The soundtrack we heard of Psalm 121 this morning is the vehicle in which we need to put our trust to engage in pilgrimage.  We need to place our trust in God, in the one who is our “keeper…our shade at our right hand…,” the one who “neither slumbers nor sleeps,” ever watchful over us.

Our reading from Joshua this morning is an interesting narrative on this question of trust.  After forty years of wandering in the wilderness it is finally time for the people of Israel to cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land.  To make the crossing the Lord must stop the river from flowing.  But before God will stop the river, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant must step into the river.  It is only then that the river will be stopped and the crossing may occur.  

This story is mirrored in Jewish midrash.  As this story shares the completion of the Israelites freedom from slavery, the story that began their journey to freedom, their escape from Egypt, shares a similar expectation.  It is written that when the escaping Israelites found themselves trapped with the Red Sea in front of them and the rapidly approaching Egyptians chariots behind them, the waters of the Red Sea would not part until the first Israelites walked into the river up to their noses.  Only then, did God part the sea and escort them to freedom.

As we seek to engage in our own pilgrimages of faith, it is incumbent upon us to take that first step forward into the unknown, into something new.  This is how we will continue to grow in our faith.  If you have never attended a Bible study, perhaps it is time to try one of those.  Perhaps it is time to try volunteering at Isaiah 58 or the food pantry at Trinity Presbyterian.  Perhaps it is time to try a new spiritual discipline, such as lectio divina, or meditation, or daily scripture reading or Qui Gong.  What would be your first step into the future of your relationship with the divine?  
 
I find these two mirrored stories of water crossings to be both powerfully convicting and comforting.  I am convicted by the need for the people to step out into risk before God can lead them the rest of the way on their journey to liberation.  In our prayer lives, more often than not, we begin with something like this “Hey God, why don’t you do something to fix this.  And then when you do something I will jump on your coattails.”  We want to see God at work before stepping forward.  It takes a deep level of trust to step into the rushing waters of the river before God parts the way.  It takes a deep level of trust to leave behind what you know to step into a largely unknown future with God.
 
But as much as these stories are convicting they are comforting as well.  They remind us that whenever we take a step forward we do so with God’s abiding providential presence.  Those first steps both led to a parting of the waters and a continuation of the journey to freedom.

When we start a journey, spiritual or otherwise, we may have a destination in mind but there are no guarantees about the nature of the trip.  Today we baptized Michael.  He is at the very beginning of his life’s journey.  No one can predict the twists and turns that may be presented to him as he grows and his life unfolds before him.  

But there is an essential gift he has received.  What I said a moment ago is not exactly true.  Those Israelites who stepped into waters of the Red Sea and the ones who stepped into the Jordan were not making the first move and trusting in the divine’s response.  They had already been chosen and blessed by God.  God’s blessing, God’s decision to claim us as beloved and precious children of God always comes first.  This is why, in our tradition, we baptize babies.  We acknowledge that God’s love and care for us comes before you and I can make any choice to turn toward God.

There will not be a moment in Michael’s precious life when he will not be claimed as one of God’s beloved children.  It is the one and only true essential to all of our journeys.  At the Dalton school where my wife Marta teaches they have a motto.  It is, “Go forth, unafraid.”  They believe they have given their students all they need to face the challenges life will bring.  We too have been given a promise that we have received all we need to face the challenges life will bring.  This promise of being God’s beloved and chosen allowed those Israelites to enter into the waters of the Red sea and the river Jordan.  It allowed them to journey all the way to freedom.  This promise will also rest upon Michael’s head for each and every day that awaits him.

And it is the essential that will allow us to journey forth in pilgrimage, that we may explore what awaits us in the days ahead with our God.  I would say almost as important as potato chips and M & M’s.  Almost.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.            

McCann, J. Clinton Jr., The New Interpreters Bible vol. IV, 
 Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1996.
Paintner, Christine Valters, Breath Prayer, Broadleaf Books,
 Minneapolis, 2021.

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