Psalm 84
The Rev. Drew Henry
August 27, 2006

Our second reading today is a different version of the same Psalm we just sung together. I’ll be reading from Eugene Peterson’s translation of Scripture, The Message. Listen, for God speaks to us through Holy Scripture…

I grew up in Selma, Alabama. When I was five my parents moved our family into a house that was built in the 1890’s. They were very interested in the historic preservation of homes, and our home along with many others was featured periodically on an annual tour that was held each spring in Selma. This tour was called The Pilgrimage, and as a child growing up that event was the main reference I had for this word.

My comprehension of pilgrimage was lacking though, because you see, I wasn’t going anywhere. I was staying home. My perspective as a child, which has self as the center, prohibited me from understanding that it was those who came to visit these historic places that actually gave The Pilgrimage its name.

Our psalm today, Psalm 84, is a psalm of pilgrimage. It likely was recited or sung by our ancestors who were making their pilgrimage journey to the temple in Jerusalem. While pilgrimages have remained an important part of other great world religions, we somehow seem to have lost contact with this practice as a piece of our Christian journey of faith.

Some of you are familiar with the labyrinth, a form of walking prayer in the shape of a circle with one winding path that leads to a center and then back out again. These labyrinths have been found tiled into the floors of some very old European cathedrals. It is believed that they were used as a form of pilgrimage, when making an actual pilgrimage to Jerusalem became too dangerous.

For you see pilgrimage is a part of our heritage. It is in the spiritual DNA of our faith. It is for that same reason I believe that rediscovering the labyrinth has been powerful for so many. Walking that well-traveled path strikes a cord of resonance somewhere deep within, putting us in touch with a place that before many of us did not even know existed within. Or maybe you too have heard the stories of people who have actually visited "The Holy Land." Their experiences and stories are told with such deep power. Might this too not be related to our pilgrimage past?

Being pilgrims, sojourners of faith, is key to our Biblical identity. It is a constant theme of the Hebrew Scriptures. It could also be seen as the core reality of Jesus’ life and that of his disciples. However there is a distinct difference in pilgrimage as understood from a historical and from a spiritual perspective. You see a historical pilgrimage, like the one I knew in childhood, has a place or a destination as its goal. Being there, the visitation itself is the culmination of the journey.

Yet in the spiritual realm, the destination or the goal is not an actual place. A place only serves as a means, an access point through which we seek to enter into communion with God’s abiding presence. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we have lost pilgrimage as a practice. For we easily confuse the location to be our destination. When actually our destination is simply being with God-alive, being in God’s presence.

And communion with God is not a means to another end. It is our end in and of itself. Our chief and highest end is to glorify God and to enjoy God forever. (Question 1 – Shorter and Longer Catechisms) Herein lies another danger of our spiritual journey. In our utilitarian world so often we see God or our worship of God as a means to another end. If you don’t believe me, how many of us have ever said, "I come to worship because it makes me feel good"? Or on the flip side, "I don’t think I’m going to worship today because I’m really not getting anything out of it lately." So we seek God for our own ends and not as an end in and of itself.

That is our adult embodiment of a child’s perspective. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child…"(1 Cor. 13:11). Yet as we become adults that becomes childish, our self as the center becomes self-centeredness. However the words of Psalm 84 offer us a path of healing today.

The beautiful place, the temple of God, sought out by pilgrims and sparrows alike is only a place to help us to enter more fully into communion with God. The Message says, "How blessed they are to live and sing there!...And how blessed all those in whom you (God) live, whose lives become roads you travel. They wind through lonesome valleys, (yet they) come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn – Zion! God in full view!"

Friends, we are all on this journey. Pilgrimage is part of our biblical inheritance. It is both a lifetime enterprise and a daily experience. Let’s let God be our goal. Let communion with God be our center and not our own selves. Cynthia Bourgeault says when we begin to make that communion our practice, it feels like a place we go to. But as we become more established in this practice, communion begins to flow out into our lives, and it becomes more and more a place we come from.

Lest you think this is just about you and God, it has been said that the spiritual life can be likened to a wagon wheel. God is at the hub, and we often find ourselves on the outer wheel. It is along the spokes that we travel to get closer to God. The farther away we are from God, the farther away we are from each other. As we get closer to God, we become closer to each other.

I’d like to close today a bit differently than usual. Psalm 84 closes, "All sunshine and sovereign is God, generous in gifts and glory. He doesn’t scrimp with his traveling companions. It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies." Psalm 84 also gives us a clue as to how to be traveling companions with God. "O God of Jacob," it says, "Open your ears – I’m praying!"

It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, "To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing." We all know life without breathing is impossible. So is pilgrimage without prayer. So I’d like to invite you now into a time of intercessory prayer using a prayer form I shared recently at a Living Prayer workshop at the Main Event.

Our psalm says, "All sunshine and sovereign is God." So I want to ask you to imagine God as light, the glory of God as the warmth of the sun…close your eyes now, envision and enjoy that light…now I want to ask you to think of and hold a person or a situation for whom or which are concerned…if it helps your visualization to cup your hands in front of you, please feel free to do so…now remembering that person or place and the magnificent light of God, I invite you to lift them into God’s light…let them rest there, basking in God’s light and warmth…let God’s healing light shine into any darkness…let that light embrace and fill them…and then trusting in God’s light and mercy, leave them there. Now I invite you to think of and hold our world… visualize it… what tugs at your heart?...Now lift our world into the light of God…let it rest there, basking in God’s light and warmth…let God’s healing light shine into any and all darkness…let that light embrace and fill our world…and then trusting in God’s light and mercy, leave the world there…Now lift our church into the light of God…let it rest there, basking in God’s light and warmth…let God’s healing light shine into any darkness…let that light embrace and fill our church…and then trusting in God’s light and mercy, leave us there…and finally now lift yourself into the light of God…rest there, basking in God’s light and warmth…let God’s healing light shine into your every darkness…let that light embrace and fill you…and then trusting in God’s light and mercy, leave yourself there.

For these people and places for whom we have prayed, for all of the needs we have lifted up and for all others who need our prayers, we ask your blessing, O gracious God. May we be pilgrims along your way, and may our lives become roads you travel. And let the people of God say...Amen!