Tourists, Pilgrims, and 40 Year Journeys

Frederick Buechner once said something about coincidences being a way God gets our attention. In the coincidences, or perhaps providences, of this day, I found myself thinking about faithful, life-long obedience, which then spurred me to look for a quote in a book by Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Then, when I looked at today's lectionary passages and read from Moses' words to the Israelites as they prepare to cross the Jordan River and enter the land of promise, I found myself again thinking of long obedience.

Deuteronomy is as "second" hearing of the Law, a reminder to Israel of who they are and what their calling is. Moses instructs them one last time before his death, and in today's passage he says, "Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments." A long, forty years way to an unseen and unknown destination, a destination of great hope and promise, if you could trust what God had said.

Peterson's book speaks of our world's aversion to such long journeys. He writes, "Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site when when have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church. For others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences."

Speaking of the people he has pastored, Peterson continues, "They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But a pastor is not a tour guide... The Christian life cannot mature under such conditions and in such ways." Finally, as a setup to developing images of disciple and pilgrim as preferable alternatives to tourist, he draws on Friedrich Nietzsche. " 'The essential thing in heaven and earth is... that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which made life worth living.' It is this 'long obedience in the same direction' which the mood of the world does so much to discourage."

I recently had a conversation with a Christian who is a recent immigrant from Africa. He was talking about the similarities between worship in this congregation and what he knew back home. It was all quite familiar, he said. The order of worship and such was much the same. "Except it is much shorter here," he added. He went on to talk about how people often walked for hours to attend worship, and how such an effort demanded more than a brief interlude of worship. "People are always in a hurry here," he said. They don't have time, and so they squeeze in a bit of worship. And in a turnabout that had never occurred to me, he spoke of how, prior to getting a car, it took a very long time for him to make his way to our church site, and how it didn't seem worth the effort required to get here for our brief, "touristy" worship.

He didn't use that word. I'm thinking of Peterson's term, but I think it fits perfectly with what this young, African man was describing when he spoke of people in his home country having "the gift of time," something we have lost, leading to the tourist forms of religion and faith necessary for people with no time.

Many pastors and writers have been working for decades to help people in churches think of themselves as "disciples" rather than as "members." I include myself in that number and long for the day when congregations speak of "disciples" and no longer use the language of "members" and "membership." But today I'm thinking we may need to claim "pilgrim" as well. Both as individuals and as congregations, we need to think of ourselves as people who are headed somewhere, on a journey toward what Jesus called "the kingdom," a journey that will not be done in our lifetimes, a journey that cannot be taken during our leisure time or vacations.

We Americans are in an awful hurry. Living inside the beltway of Washington, DC, this hurry appears even more awful. But it is not at all clear to me where the hurry leads. Sometimes it reminds me of the prophet Amos' famine of hearing the words of the LORD. "They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it." (Amos 8:12)

Do you ever wonder where you're headed? Are we headed anywhere, or are we, as the saying goes, simply going nowhere fast? Sometimes all of us who so easily wear the label "Christian" would do well to recall that before that easy label arose, a more descriptive term was used: "The Way." Sounds like people who were headed somewhere.

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