We are pilgrims on a journey,
We are travelers on the road,
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.
These are familiar lines to some of us.
I can remember singing this song countless times in my
parents’ living room on Sunday evenings
when people from the community would come over for Bible
study.
What I like about these words is not merely that they
describe the spiritual life as a journey,
That’s a helpful metaphor and I’m sure one that many of you
have heard before.
But it describes it as our
journey. We are pilgrims on a journey.
It recognizes that I’m not alone in trying to find my way in
21st century America
towards a life that is free and a love that is genuine,
towards a wholeness in God.
One thing I’ve learned about going on a journey is the need
to pace myself. I say I’ve learned this,
but that just means I’ve recognized its importance. Putting this into practice is a lifelong process.
And this is why it can be dangerous for me to read something
like what Paul wrote to the Philippians in today’s reading.
“Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what
lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of
God in Christ Jesus.”
It can be dangerous for me to read something like this
because I can easily hear it as “try harder” – like the coach in the locker
room giving a pep talk – “you can do it – don’t stop now – keep going”
I hear these words of Paul’s as telling me to keep pushing
forward in my efforts to achieve whatever goals I have made for myself.
But the more I have sat with this text, the more I don’t
think that’s what’s going on at all.
Everytime I hear this, I always think about someone running
a race – eyes fixed on the finish line, pushing through any kind of weariness
you might feel to get to the end.
I think I want to imagine it as a race, because I am an
American and am prone despite my better judgment at times to be very
competitive and ambitious – Our culture rewards ambitious and competitive
people.
And I want to go fast – ever since I was a little
hyperactive boy, I’ve been finding it preferable to run places where I could
just as easily have walked.
This is another thing our culture values and rewards. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how one
theologian put it that modern Western culture has three cardinal virtues:
“productivity, efficiency, and speed but the greatest of these is speed.”
It can be unhelpful to think of the spiritual life as a race
in our time because we have so many unhealthy cultural practices related to
competition and speed.
But I don’t think Paul’s necessarily talking about running a
race here. There are other places in his
writings where he uses the metaphor of running a race.
But here he had been talking about his past – and then in a
moment of resolution, he looks forward and says in so many words, “all of that
is past, what’s important now is for me to continue on the journey towards the
prize that awaits at the end.
To walk a road, to make a journey in Paul’s time was the
opposite of running a race. It required
times when everything came to a dead stop so that one could rest and be
renewed.
The spiritual journey as a long walk is a metaphor I prefer,
but it is certainly one that is more foreign to our modern imagination.
We retain this idea of walking in our stories – like the
hobbits in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings
And we go on hikes – and I really enjoy walking on the
various old roads that have become our Acworth trails.
But there was a day not too long ago where all of our travel
was either by foot or by horse.
Our horsesheds out back here testify to that truth.
And we can easily overlook the fact that when the scriptures
were written, this was the mode of transportation.
People walked, they did not have the means to rush from
place to place faster than a horse could carry them. Now I realize that horses can go quite fast.
But it made of different mode of life.
Life for many people was lived by the speed at which we walk
– 3 miles an hour.
Mark Koyama was here a couple of Sundays ago –
And many of you know that Mark’s father
was a professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in
New York.
Mark’s father published an essay called, “Three Mile an hour
God”
Near the end of that essay he writes, "God walks
'slowly' because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster.
Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a
different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are
accustomed. It is 'slow' yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the
speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not,
whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the
speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks."
God goes slowly with us in our journey, the speed at which
we walk or stumble, or stop. There God
is with us – offering us in the present the ability to recognize God’s love and
to take hope again, take courage and go on with a renewed sense of peace into
the future.
This is how I hear “press on” – not as a kind of dutiful
striving, but as a response to the grace of the present – the realization that
God’s love is a gift and not earnt – and that God is present with us walking
with us at 3 miles an hour – not rushing past us or always ahead of us
discouraging us with God’s boundless energy.
With us and beside us, giving us renewed vision in the present of who we
are and where we are going.
And if we are going to continue on the journey, we will need
some wise advice from someone like Paul.
And one thing he says here that I think is really important
is “forgetting what lies behind”
We often carry the past with us like heavy backpack.
Not just the regrets but also the nostalgia for good times
becomes a way of keeping us from being truly free in the present.
We need memory to help us understand ourselves as a
continuing unfolding story, but it is when attachment to the past dictates our
actions in the present that we can forget that we are pilgrims on a journey.
By grace you are free from your past – that does not mean
that you do not still live with consequences good or bad from past events and
past decisions – but it does mean that today you are a new person and not
determined by what you were then or what you have always done or been. This is liberating for Paul who was once
someone who persecuted the church, arresting and having executed leaders of the
early Christian movement – he recognizes that the past has no control over the
present and he can realize himself as a new person in the present and walk
forward into God’s future for him.
So he also says, “straining forward to what lies ahead, I
press on toward the goal”
What is the goal for Paul?
It is communion with God, it is resurrection life, fullness of
fellowship with God and with human sisters and brothers.
Paul strains forward – I imagine squinting eyes looking
toward the horizon
And renewed in a sense of who he is as beloved of God as
free from the past and loved in the present,
Paul can begin to walk forward, continue on the road at 3
miles an hour,
With the 3 mile an hour God walking alongside him.
God walks with us, we walk with one another – and we squint
towards the goal of God’s love made complete in us.
But sometimes we come to a full stop on this journey – and
in those times we need one another in a very different way than when we are
walking and talking.
We become a gift of vision and strength to one another in
our times of greatest difficulty. When
all of the speed of life and the competition of the world becomes meaningless
and we are able to glimpse in a real and genuine way the real stuff that holds
us together as a community with God and one another.
I remember singing “We are pilgrims on a journey, we are
travelers on the road” and I’ll never forget it – at Bill Keegan’s bedside with
other members of the Bible study group a day or two before he passed away. I was in 8th grade or 9th
grade. And we continued on from that
verse to the next one:
“I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night-time of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you
Speak the peace you long to hear.”
I remember losing it at that point, choked up with the
emotion of realizing that in some ways we were holding the Christ-light for
Bill. Speaking peace to him, assuring
him that he was still on the journey – and that God was still with him, even
though he was no longer able to walk.
What gives us a renewed hope in our journey towards
communion with God?
I think it is the moments in the present when we slow down,
stop and in prayerful meditation remember that grace that speaks to us in the
present, “my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.”
That love that knows no limits or boundaries – nothing we’ve
done, nowhere we’ve been, and nothing that the future holds can separate us
from the love of God.
And in the present, the moment of someone holding our hand,
or our prayerful sitting or walking,
We can be reminded that we don’t need to rush about,
compete, or try harder to find spiritual fulfillment.
In many ways we need to release what has come before,
realize God’s 3 mile an hour love in the present, and squinting continue with
one another along the road towards greater peace and joy in the Spirit.
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