9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14C

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.” i. These are actually the chapter headings in the book The Soul of a Pilgrim: 8 Practices for the Journey Within by Christine Valters Paintner. ii. Attributed to Gene Lowry.