We are pilgrims

Christ both sends us and leads us in this world

Editor’s note: Look for a sermon or lesson from Houston’s diverse faiths every week in Belief. I don’t try and be obsessive about too many things in life. And, in general, I think I’m pretty easy-going, but there is one thing that I am absolutely obsessive about: My family’s passports are always up-to-date.

This is partly because I worry that there are some countries — nations that I probably will never go to — that you cannot travel to if your passport is within six months of expiration.

There’s something about passports that is amazing, romantic, powerful, freeing. Perhaps it goes back to the first passport that my father got for me in 1980 while preparing for a trip to China, the country of his birth. Perhaps it was the awe and the importance that I heard in his voice, the pride he had in being an American citizen by choice and not by birth, when he handed me my passport and said, “This is the most powerful document in the world.”

Of course, there’s a level of exaggeration in this statement, but when you are 10 years old and your dad says something is serious, you take it seriously.

Where have you been? What’s stamped in your passport?

I don’t ask these questions to encourage a sense of insecurity or braggadocio. I’m talking as much about a symbolic or “faith” passport as a literal passport. I’m not looking for this to be a list of all the amazing places you have visited, for even the most well-traveled person can have the most provincial of worldviews.

Perhaps the better question is, how big is your world? Where have you traveled? What have you seen? Where do you hope to go?

I know that the world seems too big these days, with access to so much information that it’s overwhelming. To quote William

Wordsworth, the world “is too much with us.” I need the world to be a little less with me.

Even the most stalwart activist or optimist can get overwhelmed or desensitized by the weight of it all. It’s easy to go into fortress mode, circling the wagons, when that happens.

So, how do we act in the world, when there’s so much world to be in and to act in? Especially in a world that, at times, seems to want to do us harm?

Well, I think we can look to the letters of Paul.

These letters contain the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians is the oldest piece of writing in the New Testament, written somewhere between 50 and 60 A.D., years before any of the Gospels were written, with the Gospel of Mark written somewhere between 65 and 80.

His letters are the source of theology, history, foundational documents in the development of the early church that affect us today. And his Letter to the Romans, dated around 60, stands as the tourde-force of his writing.

Paul was about as welltraveled as you could get; his missionary journeys took him across the eastern Mediterranean basin. From Italy to what is now Syria, across all of Asia Minor, he spread both encouragement and admonition to fledgling congregations. He saw a big chunk of what he thought the world was, though we know that there was much more “out there” than he could have fathomed.

Romans 12 is the beginning of a significant shift in tone and subject matter for this letter. Up until Romans 11, Paul’s struggle and his lengthy debate about salvation for the Jew and Gentile dominates the letter. And then, there’s this shift, a mighty summary for the transformation of the human mind and for the ethic that such a transformation demands.

But more than anything else, it is a call for how we are to make our way in the world. I love Romans 12 because it is about both preparation and action, that our minds are transformed, and that transformation leads us to action.

We need to figure out how to make our way in the world, a world that we will never see in its totality, but a world that we believe we are connected with and obliged to.

So where are we going? What is our place in this world as people of God? A lot matters on the language we use.

I was an English teacher for six years, and during that time I learned that words count. So there are some words I want to rethink and recapture.

I want to re-think the idea of a church home.

I pastored churches for eight years, and the idea of a “church home” is a very common one. Which one is your church? Oh, it’s the one on the corner. Oh, so-and-so is your pastor? We ask people to find a church home, or to make our church their home. And this is a comforting and important thought.

But I think churches need to be outposts as much as homes. These are the places where we get equipped and re-equipped, where we meet with fellow travelers on their own paths, as a place where paths meet, where we hear of the adventures of other pilgrims on their journeys, and then we go back into the world checking in with this outpost.

Not just a home where everyone knows us as family, but as an outpost where we meet fellow travelers on our journeys of faith. Because, you are not meant to stay here.

I want to reclaim the idea that we are all pilgrims in this world, not tourists.

We aren’t here to sightsee; we are on spiritual journeys, and we need to be fellow travelers and companions to one another. No one is on the same path, but we are led by a common savior who has said two things, “follow me,” and “go.”

It doesn’t matter where you live; a larger world is a matter of heart and soul and curiosity about other people, and a sense of fearlessness. It’s not about travel, through that of course can help. It’s the matter of finding ourselves in the world by finding Christ in the world, the one who both sends us and leads us, who both goes before us and walks with us.

I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led — make of that what you will.