A Pilgrim People:
The End of the World as We Know It

Luke 17:5-10

A few months ago I read an interesting suggestion in an article on death, the environment, and spirituality. It suggested an economically, environmentally sensitive alternative to cremation or embalming. The author offered the idea that one be buried wrapped in a simple cloth, underneath a tree. Given the great commercialization of funerals and the environmental degradation that comes with mass production embalming, maybe that is a positive alternative. What struck me as interesting was the rationale given – one’s body could be turned back to the earth from which it came to contribute to the on-going thriving of the earth. Decomposition could transform the body into the on-going life of the whole of the earth. Human life belongs as a part of a larger whole of the earth at the deepest level possible. Life to life, the part continuously turned over to the whole. We live in a society that thinks that spirituality celebrates passionately this sameness of human life as part of the on-going chemical processes that we are. We are one with, belong to the deepest reality there is.

We are taught us that there is nothing more important than to belong. Our life has significance, so we’re taught, in life’s very materiality. The ultimate flourishing of human life occurs in this age; the economic, political structures of the world around us define the significance of our lives. Maybe there is some talk of the age to come. But it is curiously separate from our lives in this age, some balm if we can’t flourish in the world around us. The mission of a congregations alternates bizarrely between the physical and the spiritual, helping people belong to the world or at least cope with it, offering heavenly bliss to come after our life of belonging. God is the icing on the cake of belonging in this age. Jazzercise for Jesus; Bread for Live.

Such an account of life cannot account for the life and teachings of Jesus given to us by Luke, nor describe for us our mission as a congregation. Jesus’ life in this world finds its coherence only in his life as a pilgrim, a sojourner, an alien, passing through this world in return to the Father. Our Gospel reading today takes place in the context provided by Luke 9:51: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus’ actions, his teachings on discipleship, his economics, all make sense only as Jesus, God the Son, found the end of his life on earth in the will of God the Father. We hear the end of Jesus’ journey in Jerusalem: “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” Jesus lives his life on earth as a pilgrim on a journey back to the Father. His life, his ministry in this world finds its end, its significance, its meaning beyond this world in God.

What was this ministry? Jesus declared it in Luke 4: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to bring good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus engages his work in the world as a pilgrim passing through to return to the Father. Jesus makes all the difference in engaging creation because he does not belonging to the world, but to God – the difference he makes comes in obedience to the Father. As a sojourner, an alien, Jesus does not take his marching orders from situations within the world. Jesus lives in the world in obedience to the Father because, like the rest of creation, the end of Jesus’ life is found in God the Father.

Perhaps now we can hear our Gospel reading. “The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, `Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you. . . . When you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, `We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'” What happened to the kind, compassionate, warm, fuzzy Lucan Jesus? The disciples request sounds reasonable. Yet Jesus seems to reprimand the disciples. Jesus answers their concern in a way that they do not anticipate. What to increase your faith? Increase obedience.

Why? Maybe because Jesus knew that his disciples would want to belong, want to try and make a difference. Maybe Jesus heard the request as his disciple’s temptation to forget that Jesus’ commitment to the world only sustained its significance in light of his obedience to the Father. Maybe it was to remind the disciples that they too, like Jesus, are pilgrims, strangers, aliens, immigrants in the world, deeply committed to the world, but in terms of the world’s true end in God. We feel the social pressures to belong. We feel our loyalties shifted to categories given to us by a fallen world rather than those given to us by God. Jesus reminds us that the difference we make only arises out of the difference that God has already made in the world in the presence of Jesus. We participate in this difference as aliens, pilgrims in this world as we live in loyally to Jesus in order to find our end, our significance in eternal life in God.

We have to understand ourselves as a congregation that we are a pilgrim people. We have to set our face to Jerusalem so that we too, in confidence, can say “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” Our enjoining the mission of Jesus to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free takes place not as an end in itself. We are pilgrims, committed to the journey where our life in the world cannot be separated from our end in God. Indeed, God takes the means, and elevates it, raises it and perfects it that we might find our end in God. We are, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, pilgrims traveling through this world to God. We don’t belong here. We are from God; we are for God. The Son became human so that in him, we might participate in God.

We are a pilgrim people. We quite literally are pilgrims, aliens, sojourners passing through. We’re mortal. This world is not eternal. Trying to belong fully to the world, we loose our suspension in God. We subtly deny the reality of death. Ironically, if death loses its significance, life does as well. Without death, there is no real distinction between life and death -- all life is death, and death life. Everything becomes merely a different phase of matter or spirit, a part of the One Whole that is ultimately nothing. If we lose death, we lose life for there is no life beyond this life, no end beyond what already is or will be. We merely become fertilizer for future trees or consumers and producers for the future economy or martyrs for the future existence of the state. We become caught in the endless repetition of the new and improved, so that we have nothing for which to live outside the present.

When all there is is the present, the present itself loses itself. By embracing the reality of our death as Jesus did when he set his face to go to Jerusalem, we recognize that we are pilgrims. All our life takes on significance, all life takes on significance, all creation takes on significance, because it has an eternal end in God. We can’t separate God from the world as if the world has significance to God – all the world bears significance to God because God is the creator of all from nothing. We can’t collapse God into the world as the meaning of the world so that the world becomes the end of God. We are pilgrims. As our end, God takes our lives, our actions, and raises them to an eternal significance in God’s own eternal Triune life of Love. As pilgrims, we don’t seek to make a difference; we seek obedience – and therefore we allow God to make the difference in the world as we participate in the Son, Jesus Christ.

We are all pilgrims because we are all mortal – we will die and find our end in God, one way or another. Here in this congregation we are also reminded that we are pilgrims by lives that move in and through – and sometimes even back to – this congregation. Many pass through on our ways to other places geographically. Olivia Roche. Deb Price. Tim Chung. Kim and Carey Charles. Dave and Anya Fernandez. Matt and Brenda Alexander. Ken Oakes. Norma Rossi. Jeff Blythe. Ben and Joelle Powers. Will Ryland. Theresea Luginbuhl. Bill and Erin McCoy. David Shellhammer. Monty. Justin Brown. Ron and Janice Benefiel. Brian Becker. Billy. Jason and Maya Evoy. Kelly Tirrill. Bill and Nancy Zumwalt. David Overholt. We are in a particular location and social network that brings human beings as a stop amid their broader pilgrimage.

Sometimes this movement of pilgrims causes us certain problems. We share the peace and are never really sure if we should know each other or not. It’s difficult especially if you come into the congregation without a social network. Yet we celebrate, we’re thankful, we enfold. We encourage you all to stick around, set up shop, so to speak here. But we send. We know that we are all pilgrims. We don’t encourage a careerism that cuts social ties by the transience that arises from living life to belong. For those who pass through, we too recognize that we are pilgrims as well for we share a common end by faith and hope and love.

When all we do is belong, we don’t need the skills of hospitality. Here we do. We practice hospitality along the way and accept the hospitality of others – necessary skills for pilgrims. As Christ engaged his life as a journey to Jerusalem, to commend his Spirit to the Father, we do too. We find a common end with all the saints in God. This congregation is a congregation of pilgrims. We don’t belong here, and those who move in and through us help us remember that important fact.

Third, we are reminded that we are a pilgrim people in that God has gathered us in this place with many who have passed from other places to join us here in this strange place. The stories that exist in this building are moving. Listen to Pastor Anthony speak of the conversation with his mother in response to accepting his call to the ministry. “But son, if you accept that call, Baby Doc will kill you.” “I know. “Go in peace.” Mr. Ky in the Cambodian Congregation who survived Pol Pot because he could prime the village pump; he and his wife losing two children to starvation from the work in the camp. Listen to Pastor Marcos Garcia of the Spanish congregation who has a PhD in New Testament from Fuller talk about the struggles of Latinos negotiating through various cultures in today’s world. Listen to fellow pilgrims from Africa who recognize that the American society to which we want to belong is so dangerous, so strange, so dehumanizing. A history of people that faces a society that threatens to steal their young adults by making them “individuals” outside their commitments to their families. We live with brothers and sisters who have been excluded from belonging, who don’t really want to belong, just survive as pilgrims along the way as they journey towards Jerusalem to find their eternal end in God.

We are pilgrims, aliens, strangers in a strange land. We must remember that the biggest difference we can make, the most effective response is to not belong, but to live in obedience in participating in the life of Jesus Christ, and therefore in God. No Jazzercise; no Bread for Life. We are about the Bread of Life – we seek as aliens, as persons living without green cards to participate in Jesus Christ through Word, Sacrament, and Works of Mercy as people God has drawn together on a common pilgrimage following Jesus Christ in the world.

One Sunday morning, eight years ago, the phone rang. Guttchuk Tut’s beautiful broken English was on the other side. We had been through many adventures with Gattchuk. He had been shot in his village; he played dead surrounded by the corpses of his brothers for several days before the government troops moved on. He walked from Sudan to Ethiopia, from Ethiopia to Kenya, from Kenya to Egypt, flew from Egypt to San Diego. He was a pilgrim, a sojourner. Seven months later we rejoiced with the birth of his daughter. He and Nyluak, his wife, taught us by how he cared for his “sons”, Robert and Charles, teenage war orphans, by accepting responsibility for them as their “father”.

That morning, though, his words floored me: “I’m sorry Father John. I’m leaving to go the Salt Lake City this morning. Forgive me and let me go in peace.” What do you say? I forgave him, let him go in peace, and wept. Christmas day two years later, Robert and Charles sat in our living room when Gattchuk happened to call from Maine. I couldn’t understand a word that was said, but the joy, the laughter, the life that really is life for it arises out of a common participation in God through Christ, was profoundly evident to me, the joy of pilgrims at a brief stop together at a way-station.

I’ve lost contact with Gattchuk, with Robert and Charles too. Sometimes I wonder when we gather if they all might reappear. Yet I know even then, the life we shared here, we share in this world only for a little while. It bears great significance, however, for this life sustains its importance because of our common life in God yet to come. And then, sharing in hope for that eternal life in the fullness of human flourishing in God, we give thanks for sharing in this journey together within this congregation where we remember that we don’t belong here – we ultimately belong in the Triune God. As a congregation, and individually members of it, we are a pilgrim people. Let us participate by faith in food for our journey . . . the gifts of God for the people of God.