The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost--The Rev Melanie Lemburg
9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14C
August 7, 2022
There are some songs that you have known
for so long, that you don’t even remember the first time you hear them. You know the words by heart, and sometimes,
because you have sung the words so many times, you don’t even really think
about what the words mean at this point.
The Servant Song is one of those
songs for me. I must have sung it
thousands of times in my 46 years in the church. I’ve sung it at baptisms, at weddings, at
funerals. I’ve sung it at most Maundy
Thursday services. (One year, when we
didn’t sing it, I received a friendly critique from my elementary-aged daughter
when she said, “It just doesn’t feel like Maundy Thursday if we don’t sing the
Servant Song during the footwashing.”) And
I have sung it at countless regular Sunday morning services, with so many
different of the faithful across many dioceses.
For those of you who don’t have this song inscribed on your hearts—it
goes like this:
“Won’t
you let me be your servant?/ Let me be as Christ to you/
Pray
that I may have the grace/ To let you be my servant too.”
The verses talk about what it means to
be together in Christian community, about holding the light of Christ for each
other in dark times, in caring for one another and sharing in joys and in
sorrows. It’s so familiar, I’ll confess
that I hardly think about it much anymore (although it will catch me unawares
occasionally and raise a lump in my throat).
This week, I found myself humming it,
and when I stopped and paid attention to the part of the song that was rolling
around in my mind, it was actually the second verse, that I found myself
singing over and over throughout the week:
“We
are pilgrims on a journey/We are travelers on a road/
We
are here to help each other/ Walk the mile and bear the load.”
I’ve been thinking this week about
pilgrimage, about the difference between travel and pilgrimage, about why
people for centuries have gone on pilgrimage.
I know of so many churches, including our own, who have gone on
pilgrimage this summer, and I’ve been thinking about what that verse of the
Servant Song means. If a pilgrimage
usually entails a journey to some far-off place, then what does that mean when
we all sing together in this place—"We are pilgrims on the journey/
We
are travelers on the road/We are here to help each other/
Walk
the mile and bear the load.”
I was fortunate to get to talk to two of
my seminary classmates this week who both led pilgrimages this summer. I listened as they compared notes and then I
asked them what the difference was between a pilgrimage and a trip, as I
continue to think about and process some of my own travels from this
summer. And as I listened to my two
friends talk about pilgrimage, here is what I heard. That many people go on pilgrimage to try to
find God in some traditionally holy place.
And many people discover, that if they participate in pilgrimage fully,
then they find God has been with them all along, every day. Sometimes, however, it helps to step out of
the ordinary, out of our day-to-day rhythms and routines, to subject ourselves
to some of the unpredictability and vulnerability of travel, to begin to see
God present and at work in our lives and around us always.
My friends talked about the stages or
characteristics of pilgrimage that others have written about: “The Practice of
Hearing the Call and Responding; The
Practice of Packing Lightly; The Practice of Crossing the Threshold; The
Practice of Making the Way by Walking; The Practice of Being Uncomfortable; The
Practice of Beginning Again; The Practice of Embracing the Unknown; and The
Practice of Coming Home.”[i] They talked about how the crux of pilgrimage
is noticing what is present in and around you and intentionally focusing on God
who is already with you along the way.
I’ve used this lens in looking back on
some of my own travels this summer, and I find I can remember some of the
pilgrimage moments better than most because those were the times when I either
encountered the unexpected or I was really paying attention: when Jack and I were sitting on the stoop of
a shop while David was inside buying clergy-wear in Vatican City, and we looked
up, and there was a really old, toothless lady waving at us out of her third
story window above us. And when I waved
back, she smiled broadly and started blowing us kisses. About how our Dutch canal tour guide and
boat-driver named Klaas, intentionally built community out of a group of
strangers on his tour, and we made new friends from around the world. A handful of special meals when I was really
paying attention, truly present—Mary Margaret’s birthday dinner in front of the
open windows in a lovely restaurant in Paris with the rain pouring down outside,
sitting across the table grill at a Korean bbq in London and watching Jack cook
his dinner; date night with David at a restaurant in Rome with our table out on
the sidewalk of an old, curvy Roman road.
These were the moments when I encountered God in unexpected ways because
I was paying attention.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus
talks about this act of paying attention, or being alert to the presence of
God. He talks about how sometimes we
have to strip away those things that keep us too comfortable—the possessions,
the routines, the comforts—so that we can encounter God who is always with
us. Or as another preacher puts it, we
find God more regularly when we “position ourselves to be surprised.”[ii]
So, what does that mean for us as
individuals and what does that mean for us at St. Thomas—"pilgrims on a
journey, travelers on the road, we [who] are here to help each other walk the
mile and bear the load”? My friends who
led pilgrimages talked a fair amount about being the leaders of their groups;
both agreed that their greatest challenge was the couple of people in each group
who were most focused on getting to the destination point each day with the
most speed/haste, so much so that they would often leave behind the rest of the
group. They were so focused on the end point
that they didn’t pay attention to what was happening all around them on the
way. I’ll confess that in life this is
often my own sin as well. I’ll get so
caught up in tasks and to-do lists that I will miss the presence of God that is
right in front of my face, fully present in another person or walking right
beside me. What if our call as
individuals and as a church is to slow down and pay attention to the ways that
God is already showing up in and through and among us? What if our call is to look for those who are
getting left behind in the journey of faith, and to slow down deliberately and
wait for them? What would that even
mean? What might that look like?
“We
are pilgrims on a journey/We are travelers on a road/ We are here to help each
other/ Walk the mile and bear the load.”
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