(by Jody)
Hope as pilgrimage
Luke 2:41-52
This wonderful story is the only one of Jesus’ childhood that we have in our bibles, though there are other non-canonical accounts. He’s 12, one year off being a man in Jewish culture, and he makes the annual pilgrimage with his parents to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. We know a bit about the significance of Passover from the Exodus story of God’s people escaping slavery in Egypt, and we know that the last supper, and therefore Easter, took place at Passover. It’s incredible to think of the commitment and effort required for a working family to leave home and livelihood for days on end, to make a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back again. And not once in a lifetime, but every year.
The main parts of the story focus on Mary and Joseph losing track of their kid, and on his desperate desire to stay in the temple, to learn and grow in that special religious environment, rather than to return home to his everyday chores and kin.
The temple at Jerusalem was clearly an anticipated destination, but also an impossible place to remain. We have to imagine the days of journey to get there: what Jesus might have thought about as he walked, what aspects of the journey with the people around him he found comforting and joyous, or challenging and causing him to yearn for something else. We have to imagine how he might have decided he would stay when everyone else kept going home – did he plan it carefully or did it just… happen? And we have to imagine what the trip home was like. Did Jesus come to any realisations about the clash between his desire to stay in the temple, and the need to nurture the everyday he had to return to? Or did he dream of growing up and going back?
So many fascinating details are not given. But what remains is a story of pilgrimage that does not lead the travellers to a magnificent new dwelling place, but to change within that equips them for more unknown journeys.
Pilgrimage is a subject we circle back to every few years here at PBC. In fact it would be interesting to know who has intentionally undertaken a pilgrimage at some stage, if you want to share in Free for all. Years ago Peter Lineham preached on John Bunyan as a possible Baptist saint, I’ve talked about pilgrimage in a few sermons, though I’ve never actually been on one, and our Paradise Point kids once spent a whole term making a large mural of landscapes and meanings described in Pilgrims Progress. CORT bus trips might be considered a recurring church pilgrimage, though we’d probably need more physical activity to really claim that.
When I was constructing the hope series I knew we needed to consider that hope isn’t a destination or achievement, a place to reach or goal to attain, in order to settle down satisfied and comfortable. Instead hope is always in process, unfolding, known precisely in the way we travel.
I also wanted to attend to the communal aspect of hope. The other week we talked about the importance of collective action, rather than lone heroes (Jesus excepted). Community can and must form as a hope draws us in and on.
There’s no one sermon that can be preached to give the full story of hope. Well, no one 15 minute sermon.
We know hope is conviction about who God is, not flimsy whimsy.
We know hope is surrender, not cherished outcomes.
We know hope is tenacious action and cooperation, not heroics.
Now we come to hope as a path that must be travelled together, not a destination. And so hope is pilgrimage.
When I emailed out the roster reminder on Tuesday Rob replied to say: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive” maybe…. I think sometimes I’d rather just arrive. Being a pilgrim people can be full of joy but has its losses and heartaches too.
Poet Wendell Berry says:
It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
…
hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
anymore than by wishing.
…
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Jessica Walsh submitted a thesis towards a Master of Psychotherapy at AUT this year titled “The Journey is the Destination: An Exploration of the Experience of Pilgrimage.” In it she reflects on the practice of pilgrimage and how it is capable of affecting change within people, and she seeks to make sense of how pilgrimage and psychotherapy can and do relate to one another. Jessica Walsh notes that pilgrimage affects people in three significant ways: it enables them to feel a healthy sense of community with their fellow pilgrims; it facilitates a profound inner journey, alongside their outer journey; and it fosters spiritual connection.
She came to pilgrimage during a difficult time in her life: someone told her about the idea and without much advance knowledge or expectation, off she went to walk the 800km Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James, from France into Spain and on to the shrine of Jesus’ disciple James, Son of Zebedee.
Pilgrimage isn’t a magic fix for anything, but it distils and embodies a human-life truth. As poet David Whyte puts it:
that, you were more marvelous in your
simple wish to find a way than the gilded roofs
of any destination you could reach
And while we’d like for hope to be a shiny destination that we could pinpoint, strive for, reach, and remain in, it is far more likely to be found in pieces, on the way, together.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis gave the theme for the Catholic Church Jubilee Year 2025: “Pilgrims of Hope.” I had no idea when I decided this week’s topic, but it’s worked out well for me due to the fascinating logo which we’ll come to in a moment.
In Jewish tradition, the jubilee was one year in 50. You can read the details in Leviticus, but slaves and prisoners were to be freed, debts to be forgiven, land to rest from aggressive farming, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. The Catholic Church have had a jubilee every 50 or 25 years since 1300, and it is a time of mercy, reconciliation, solidarity, hope, justice, and commitment to serve God.
Pope Francis wrote in his letter announcing the 2025 Jubilee:
In the last two years, not a single country has been unaffected by the sudden outbreak of an epidemic that made us experience first-hand not only the tragedy of dying alone, but also the uncertainty and fleetingness of existence, and in doing so, has changed our very way of life. … All of us saw certain freedoms curtailed, while the pandemic generated feelings not only of grief, but also, at times, of doubt, fear and disorientation. … We are fully confident that the epidemic will be overcome and that the world will return to its usual pattern of personal relationships and social life. This will happen more readily to the extent that we can demonstrate effective solidarity, so that our neighbours most in need will not be neglected, and that everyone can have access to scientific breakthroughs and the necessary medicines.
We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us, and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.
Here's the logo.
(Description edited from this news article.) It was created by Giacomo Travisani, and shows four stylized figures to indicate all of humanity from the four corners of the earth. They each embrace one another, indicating the solidarity and [kinship] that must unite peoples. The first figure is clinging to the Cross. The waves are choppy since the pilgrimage of life is not undertaken on calm waters.
The lower part of the Cross is elongated turning into an anchor, which dominates the movement of the waves, because personal and global circumstances require hope secured in God.
(Anchors are apparently often used as metaphors for hope.)
The image indicates the pilgrim's journey is not individual, but rather communal… and the Cross is not static but dynamic, bending toward and meeting humanity, offering the certainty of its presence and the reassurance of hope.
At 12, Jesus thought he’d like to stay in the temple, impressing and being impressed, but as his life unfolded, he knew it was his journey to the cross and back that would give the hope God’s creation needed.
Hope as pilgrimage
Luke 2:41-52
This wonderful story is the only one of Jesus’ childhood that we have in our bibles, though there are other non-canonical accounts. He’s 12, one year off being a man in Jewish culture, and he makes the annual pilgrimage with his parents to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. We know a bit about the significance of Passover from the Exodus story of God’s people escaping slavery in Egypt, and we know that the last supper, and therefore Easter, took place at Passover. It’s incredible to think of the commitment and effort required for a working family to leave home and livelihood for days on end, to make a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back again. And not once in a lifetime, but every year.
The main parts of the story focus on Mary and Joseph losing track of their kid, and on his desperate desire to stay in the temple, to learn and grow in that special religious environment, rather than to return home to his everyday chores and kin.
The temple at Jerusalem was clearly an anticipated destination, but also an impossible place to remain. We have to imagine the days of journey to get there: what Jesus might have thought about as he walked, what aspects of the journey with the people around him he found comforting and joyous, or challenging and causing him to yearn for something else. We have to imagine how he might have decided he would stay when everyone else kept going home – did he plan it carefully or did it just… happen? And we have to imagine what the trip home was like. Did Jesus come to any realisations about the clash between his desire to stay in the temple, and the need to nurture the everyday he had to return to? Or did he dream of growing up and going back?
So many fascinating details are not given. But what remains is a story of pilgrimage that does not lead the travellers to a magnificent new dwelling place, but to change within that equips them for more unknown journeys.
Pilgrimage is a subject we circle back to every few years here at PBC. In fact it would be interesting to know who has intentionally undertaken a pilgrimage at some stage, if you want to share in Free for all. Years ago Peter Lineham preached on John Bunyan as a possible Baptist saint, I’ve talked about pilgrimage in a few sermons, though I’ve never actually been on one, and our Paradise Point kids once spent a whole term making a large mural of landscapes and meanings described in Pilgrims Progress. CORT bus trips might be considered a recurring church pilgrimage, though we’d probably need more physical activity to really claim that.
When I was constructing the hope series I knew we needed to consider that hope isn’t a destination or achievement, a place to reach or goal to attain, in order to settle down satisfied and comfortable. Instead hope is always in process, unfolding, known precisely in the way we travel.
I also wanted to attend to the communal aspect of hope. The other week we talked about the importance of collective action, rather than lone heroes (Jesus excepted). Community can and must form as a hope draws us in and on.
There’s no one sermon that can be preached to give the full story of hope. Well, no one 15 minute sermon.
We know hope is conviction about who God is, not flimsy whimsy.
We know hope is surrender, not cherished outcomes.
We know hope is tenacious action and cooperation, not heroics.
Now we come to hope as a path that must be travelled together, not a destination. And so hope is pilgrimage.
When I emailed out the roster reminder on Tuesday Rob replied to say: “It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive” maybe…. I think sometimes I’d rather just arrive. Being a pilgrim people can be full of joy but has its losses and heartaches too.
Poet Wendell Berry says:
It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for hope must not depend on feeling good
…
hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
anymore than by wishing.
…
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Jessica Walsh submitted a thesis towards a Master of Psychotherapy at AUT this year titled “The Journey is the Destination: An Exploration of the Experience of Pilgrimage.” In it she reflects on the practice of pilgrimage and how it is capable of affecting change within people, and she seeks to make sense of how pilgrimage and psychotherapy can and do relate to one another. Jessica Walsh notes that pilgrimage affects people in three significant ways: it enables them to feel a healthy sense of community with their fellow pilgrims; it facilitates a profound inner journey, alongside their outer journey; and it fosters spiritual connection.
She came to pilgrimage during a difficult time in her life: someone told her about the idea and without much advance knowledge or expectation, off she went to walk the 800km Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James, from France into Spain and on to the shrine of Jesus’ disciple James, Son of Zebedee.
Pilgrimage isn’t a magic fix for anything, but it distils and embodies a human-life truth. As poet David Whyte puts it:
that, you were more marvelous in your
simple wish to find a way than the gilded roofs
of any destination you could reach
And while we’d like for hope to be a shiny destination that we could pinpoint, strive for, reach, and remain in, it is far more likely to be found in pieces, on the way, together.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis gave the theme for the Catholic Church Jubilee Year 2025: “Pilgrims of Hope.” I had no idea when I decided this week’s topic, but it’s worked out well for me due to the fascinating logo which we’ll come to in a moment.
In Jewish tradition, the jubilee was one year in 50. You can read the details in Leviticus, but slaves and prisoners were to be freed, debts to be forgiven, land to rest from aggressive farming, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. The Catholic Church have had a jubilee every 50 or 25 years since 1300, and it is a time of mercy, reconciliation, solidarity, hope, justice, and commitment to serve God.
Pope Francis wrote in his letter announcing the 2025 Jubilee:
In the last two years, not a single country has been unaffected by the sudden outbreak of an epidemic that made us experience first-hand not only the tragedy of dying alone, but also the uncertainty and fleetingness of existence, and in doing so, has changed our very way of life. … All of us saw certain freedoms curtailed, while the pandemic generated feelings not only of grief, but also, at times, of doubt, fear and disorientation. … We are fully confident that the epidemic will be overcome and that the world will return to its usual pattern of personal relationships and social life. This will happen more readily to the extent that we can demonstrate effective solidarity, so that our neighbours most in need will not be neglected, and that everyone can have access to scientific breakthroughs and the necessary medicines.
We must fan the flame of hope that has been given us, and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision.
Here's the logo.
(Description edited from this news article.) It was created by Giacomo Travisani, and shows four stylized figures to indicate all of humanity from the four corners of the earth. They each embrace one another, indicating the solidarity and [kinship] that must unite peoples. The first figure is clinging to the Cross. The waves are choppy since the pilgrimage of life is not undertaken on calm waters.
The lower part of the Cross is elongated turning into an anchor, which dominates the movement of the waves, because personal and global circumstances require hope secured in God.
(Anchors are apparently often used as metaphors for hope.)
The image indicates the pilgrim's journey is not individual, but rather communal… and the Cross is not static but dynamic, bending toward and meeting humanity, offering the certainty of its presence and the reassurance of hope.
At 12, Jesus thought he’d like to stay in the temple, impressing and being impressed, but as his life unfolded, he knew it was his journey to the cross and back that would give the hope God’s creation needed.
