Pastor John Wright

Last Sunday we spoke together about our life as a congregation, our lives plain and simple, spent as “A Pilgrim People.” To be honest, I had not looked ahead yet to this week’s readings, but I am fascinated at God’s providence in moving to the book of Ruth and, of course, Jesus still “on the move” toward Jerusalem in Luke.

It is tempting to think that pilgrims do not care about geography because they are on a journey. Yet pilgrimage is all about geography, about place and about the people one meets along the way. Pilgrims must recognize the differences of place, the importance of place as they live their fragile existence far from home.

It might be good to start with Ruth, move to the Gospel, and then to the Epistle for the bible study.

Ruth 1:1-19a
Plot out the characters and the movement in this section of Ruth and the economic status that accompanies the characters on the way. Why does Naomi become a “pilgrim”? Why does Ruth join Naomi on her pilgrimage and Orpah not? What is the role of “Bethlehem” in the story? Why do they end up in Bethlehem?
Luke 17:11-19
Notice all the movement in the passage. Who is going where, when in the story? Why does the place of the meeting matter? Notice that the leprosy had made Jews and Samarians joint pilgrims. Why would the political commitments of each other no longer matter to the lepers? To show themselves to priests would have meant that the Jews would head to a priest in Galilee, the Samaritan to Samaria – the healing happens in the “between” – the place of pilgrims. Why is thankfulness along the way before returning home important for “foreigners” who have met Jesus at an “in between” place?

2 Timothy 2:3-15

How does the author assume that he and his readers are pilgrims? What is the attitude towards suffering and hardship in this text? Why does the text seem to assume that it will take place? How does the text exhort us to remain “centered”? Why must he warn us as pilgrims to “avoid wrangling over words” at the same time exhorting us to “rightly explain the word of truth”?

I can’t help but read these passages with the book of Teresea of Calcutta on my mind. She was a pilgrim; she engaged her life satiating the thirst of the suffering Christ on the cross in the bodies of the poor; she enfolded there suffering into her suffering, and her suffering into the suffering of Christ as she built specific areas for the poorest pilgrims to live in their journey.

In the rule of the Missionaries of Charity, there is a section on “The Home for the Outcasts of Human Society.” Here is what is written:

“There are those that are not wanted amongst the poor-the lame—the blind—the sick.—For them when the Bishop thinks fit—will the home be opened—and there the sisters will take care of their body and soul.—This of course is only for the little children.”

Does the work and vows of the Missionaries of Charity, establishing a place for the “outcasts of human society” help our imagination to hear these Scriptures today? Maybe it does not help at all, but I keep wondering who we would become if we would understand ourselves in the same way with a similar mission as the Missionaries of Charity.