Strangers and Pilgrims of Faith

Good morning, everyone! It’s wonderful to be worshipping with you here at St. Andrew’s. Thank you to the Session and the Interim Moderator, Rev. Laura Kavanagh, for this opportunity to share.

Today is Pentecost – 50 days after Easter and it marks the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out on all believers, fulfilling Jesus' promise that he would send them another advocate. And this Advocate, the Holy Spirit, accompanies us throughout our life’s journey and is at work in our inner and outer life, giving us the grace and ability to love God, follow Jesus and share this Good News with those who are seeking. We truly cannot journey in this life of faith without the Spirit’s power and guidance. I’d like to share today about this pilgrimage that we are on through my experience on the Camino de Santiago.

In 2022, I walked the Camino de Santiago - the Way of St. James - in Portugal and Spain. It’s a renowned pilgrimage that began as a way of penance in the Medieval age over 1000 years ago. Legend has it that the Apostle St. James the Great (an apostle of Jesus and son of Zebedee) was a missionary to modern-day Spain after Jesus’ resurrection. His bones were buried there and discovered by a monk many years later. They built a cathedral overtop of it and it has since become a site for Christian pilgrims. Millions of people have walked the trail over the centuries with the hope of knowing God better or coming to know God in a new way. This age-old spiritual practice is currently undergoing a revival. This past one was my second pilgrimage on the Camino and I walked over 330 km on the Portuguese Way Coastal Road from Porto, Portugal to Camino de Santiago, Spain.

Now, you may be wondering: “Why on earth would anyone do this!?” Thomas Merton said, “The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.” Pilgrimage is less an activity than it is a compulsion and calling. We are compelled to something calling beyond what we can see, like the passage says. What is it that we are called towards?

Hebrews 11:13 says: “…admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.” The King James Version translates this as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” The modern-day phenomenon of travel and tourism has really changed our understanding of travel, but before travel was fun and convenient, it was treacherous. There were no Google maps, AirBnB apps or cell phone reception. It was even before hotels and information centres. In the ancient world, it was dangerous to leave home - to go through unpaved roads, bare the elements, come up against thieves, and rely on the hospitality of strangers. Because it was so tough, people were suspicious of you if you were far from home. They thought, “There must be a desperate reason why you left, whether you did evil or were ruined!” Joseph’s family did so because of the famine, Jesus’ family did so because of a death threat.

The Greek word xenoi/xenos (in verse 13) is translated to stranger, foreigner and refugee. It’s the root of ‘xenophobia’ and describes how strangers and foreigners were regarded with hatred, suspicion, contempt and despised. To dwell in a foreign land was a humiliating thing in ancient days and a foreigner in any country had a stigma attached to them. An ancient saying is: “However poor a home, it is better to live at home than in a foreign country.”

Parepidemos (in verse 13) describes a pilgrim, an alien alongside, a resident foreigner and a stranger. It’s a person who was staying temporarily but had a permanent home elsewhere. The stay was strictly limited.

And yet there were those crazy enough to set off from their home into the unknown, putting their lives at risk – they walked by faith. Pilgrimage is a spiritual practice deeply ingrained in our Scriptures and Hebrews 11 spells out those who walked before us. Adam/Eve were the first to journey out of Eden and all humanity is basically walking, wandering and longing to return to the full presence of God. Abel, Enoch and Noah lived in a way that the world deemed as irrational, irresponsible, selfish. But they walked by faith. Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, Moses, Israelites, even Jesus went through the wilderness – they walked by faith. Every person of faith has a story of journeying by faith towards a reality that they could not fully see yet trusted was there because God called them forward. They took the risk of becoming foreigners, strangers and pilgrims because they knew what they were walking towards was worth the risk of losing what they were leaving behind.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others to do the same.”

We’re not talking about Christian escapism or to be foolishly other-worldly, detaching ourselves from the life and work of this world. We are called into this world as salt and light, to pray for God’s kingdom to come here on earth as it is in heaven. But we always remember that this is not our final destination and we are people on the way. Our soul longs for full union with our God, face to face, finally arriving and living in the joy that we cannot yet see. For our soul’s home. This is what the writer of Hebrews calls FAITH.

So then HOW? How do we walk this life like we are pilgrims on the way to our home? To walk in faith? Let me share a few stories of my pilgrimage to illustrate my points.

Me and some new friends I had met along the way stopped one morning at a cafe for breakfast and other pilgrims were doing the same, so we needed to make room for them at our table. A young person was moving the backpacks and turned to our table to say, “Who’s backpack is this?!” I sheepishly admitted that it was mine and he responded with, “It’s SO heavy!” I didn’t spend a whole lot of time preparing for the Camino - both in training my body and planning what I was taking with me. I didn’t realize that the weight of my backpack was too heavy, and this means everything when you carry everything you own. Everything I packed was like insurance for me – I packed everything from home that I thought I’d need. But a fellow pilgrim I met on the road had this pack. I assumed she had booked a service that picks up your backpack and drives it to that evening’s destination. But she told me that this was all she was carrying. Her assumption was different - she assumed that she’d be able to get whatever she needed on the way, whether through a credit card or through the kindness of others. She also assumed that what she had was enough - not for comfort, but to walk simply.

I wonder how many of us are tired/exhausted on the way because we’re carrying loads that are much too heavy, ‘just in case’ packs with too much insurance. And we didn’t even mention that many of us are carrying not only for ourselves, but for others too. Yet how can we grow trust, not only in God but also in the kindness of fellow pilgrims?

What was the result of my backpack being too heavy? On the end of the second day, an extremely hot day of walking, I found a rash on my legs and I could no longer walk. I went to my online community for help and found out that it was a Disney Rash! Exercise-induced vasculitis where blood vessels were inflamed. It’s commonly called the Disney Rash because it’s common among visitors to Disney World. It forced me to slow down and I was frustrated, but then I thought: What if this limit is my companion towards the meek and lowly life Jesus called us to imitate in Matthew 5 that promises true rest? That’s how I decided to understand it. So I found a place to stay for two days near the beach. I got a ride and ate, slept and went to the ocean each day. And if I’m honest, those two days were my favourite days of the whole Camino! It was a lesson in humility, healing, gratitude and joy.

Oftentimes, the very things that we didn’t want are what become our greatest gifts. The disappointments, failures, closed doors and illness; the beautiful grace of Christ is that he redeems them to become what we needed and longed for beyond our own understanding.

But, even with so much in our pack, sometimes we don’t have what we need. That was the case for me when I found out that I didn’t have one essential thing – a light! One morning, I left at 6am because the walk was over 30km that day. The first part of the road was to walk through a forest with no street lights and my cell phone light barely shed any light in that darkness. There was a lot of self-talk, praying and singing hymns! Then I saw a faint light in front of me. There were other pilgrims! So I walked faster, caught up with them and asked if I could join them. That group of women became my crew for the second half of the Camino.

On the last night before we arrived at our final destination, we found ourselves in the dark again, but it was a totally different experience looking up at the stars together while sharing why we walked with tears and silence at the mystery of God’s ways. Even now we are still in contact and message each other once in a while! Our good Shepherd promises that we will not be in want and we can trust in God’s promises. God not only gives us light but also friends for the journey. Being a stranger and pilgrim is isolating – we can’t go alone because it’s too easy to be discouraged and give up on the way.

When looking around, to your left and right, with those you worship with here – can we thank God for the gift of companionship, especially in those dark times (and each of us goes through such times) when we need someone to carry a light for us?

Faith is trusting in our Good Shepherd who promises that we will not be in want for our pilgrimage. And the Spirit of God accompanies us, guiding and empowering us to walk with faith when everything else seems to say otherwise. So wherever your journey leads you, leads this congregation, may we have the grace to be confident in what we hope for and assured about what we do not yet see. And at the end of the journey, may we, like our spiritual ancestors, be commended for not what we did, but for the trust we had in our God.

Amen.