Abstract
Pilgrimage. I wonder what images that word conjures up in your mind. In the last year or so, a radio broadcaster here in New Zealand, called Marcus Lush, undertook an epic walking challenge, which went by the name of ‘Skirting Auckland’. Each day, Marcus walked his way around the edge of New Zealand’s largest city, posting observations and photographs on the social medium of Twitter. In my more idle moments at my desk (honestly, I don’t have too many of those!), I checked in on his progress, and found myself strangely and quite profoundly moved by his pilgrimage. Why? I think because he reminded me of what it means to journey on the edges, in places of discomfort, identifying objects that were discarded or just plain strange, but also places of abandonment and gathering. From broken letter-boxes, out-of-place statues of the Virgin Mary, to his ‘daily newsagent’, Marcus picked his way round the city pointing us towards uncomfortable realities of poverty and wealth.
The proclamation of the Gospel begins in the places where we are, and grows beyond the limits of our comfort zone. If the good news of Jesus Christ is to make a real difference to our lives and to the lives of our neighbours then somehow we need to find a way of enabling the resurrection light to take hold beyond the bounds of our imagination. Or, to put it another way, to those places on the edge, the places, people, and objects that we so often ignore, not wilfully, but sometimes simply because we are too busy to notice otherwise.
Rowan Williams has said that the task of ministry is to watch, interpret and weave. The strands of theology that are woven together create a tapestry that can bear two sides, the front pattern which looks amazingly beautiful, and the reverse, which is less glorious but which none the less bears the signs of hard work.
So, as you go about your daily pilgrimage, try to notice things around you, perhaps things that might ordinarily escape your notice. Make a mental note of what you see, maybe write one or two things down to reflect on. And when you return home, do likewise, on your street, in your community. Wherever you go, pilgrims progress; even progress that can feel you are not going anyway, is still progress.
I wonder if like felt a bit like that sometimes for the disciples. Their journey with Jesus was a commitment to the unknown. Although Jesus knew the end-point would result in death, he also knew, indeed dared, to trust in God his Father that beyond that lay the resurrection. So Jesus taught his disciples to notice the edges, the people by the road side, hurt, begging, cast out because they were not ‘perfect’ or clean, the lilies of the field, the mustard seed. Jesus’ teachings were filled with those things that ordinarily would not warrant much attention. But it was precisely there, in those places, that the Kingdom of God was to be found.