Learning from Hagar and Sarah (Sermon preached 21 June 2020)

Given all that has been happening in this country in the last few weeks around racism and injustice, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it, that the reading from the Old Testament for today, two days after Juneteenth, involves Hagar and Sarah, a Black slave-woman and her mistress.

 

Earlier this week, as I was marveling about that fact, I remembered a conversation I had maybe 18 years ago. I was in my early 40s and back in school, commuting from the small town where we lived in north-central Pennsylvania to the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia, which is all the way down in the southeast corner of the state. Driving across Interstate-80 through rolling farmland, up into the Poconos, and then down the northeast extension into Philly’s northern suburbs – Conshohocken, Plymouth Meeting, tony Chestnut Hill; and then under the railroad tracks into sketchy Germantown...(read more)

An Invitation

Nearly two years ago, I walked some ninety miles along the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago over seven days. The Camino dates back to medieval times, when pilgrims from all over Europe made their way on foot to the Cathedral of St. James in Compostela, Spain. There, it was believed, lay the remains of the apostle James, called by Jesus along with his brother John at the outset of his ministry. James was martyred in Jerusalem in 44 AD.

 

In an article I later wrote entitled (Learning to) Walk (click here) I shared two realizations from my pilgrimage. One was that walking is as essential to my spiritual journey as breathing. As exercise, as practice, as prayer, as metaphor, hitting the trail or the pavement brings me insight, understanding, and sometimes just plain relief when I can’t figure things out and I don’t understand. And the other was that when I am unsure of where I am going, time and the companionship of fellow travelers tend to work together to show me the way forward.

 

Over the past three months, as COVID-19 has disrupted just about every area of our lives and as, more recently, the deep wounds caused by racism and injustice in our country cry out for long-overdue reckoning and healing, it seems that my pilgrimage experience has yet another thing to teach me.

 

And that is this. Sometimes even with the company of friends and even with the willingness to wait, the route still remains unclear. Sometimes I am just plain clueless as to where and how I am to go. And when that happens, it doesn’t mean that I have lost my way. Not at all. It simply means I must somehow learn to accept and embrace what is: journey as journey; pilgrimage as pilgrimage; not knowing as not knowing. The challenge, and the opportunity for deeper communion with the mysterious Ground of Being that holds your lives and mine in an infinitely intricate cosmic tapestry, is to say yes to that.

 

As I looked back through the photos I took that week on the Camino, the most striking ones captured moments that, had I been more concerned with getting to where I was going, I would have missed. Now, credit where credit is due, my closest friend on the journey is an artist. She made sure that we paused often to notice what was right there in front of us. A heavily laden grape vine. Early morning mist. A silhouette. A doorway. A yellow spray-painted arrow. These images, I now realize, are not only striking. They are sacramental. They reveal a Reality behind and beyond themselves. They invite me into meaning making.

 

I suppose I should not be surprised that these days, when the world feels so frightening and unstable, I find myself tying on a pair of sneakers, snapping the leash onto Gracie’s collar, and heading out my door and down the hill. Allowing the rhythm of my breath, of left-then-right, putting one foot in front of the other, to remind me once more that the living of the days you and I are given on this earth is a matter of accepting what is known and what is not. Of offering myself, in my creatureliness, to that Love that is both beyond me and within me. Of noticing and taking in what is right in front of me in this present moment. Capturing it. Maybe even learning from it.

 

So I’m (still) walking. And I’m inviting you to join me on the way. My hope and dream for this space is that it may be a place where images and insights from the journey are shared. Moments of awareness, of awakening, of noticing. Moments when what is before us is both what it is and more. Moments that usher us into that Presence in whom we live, and move, and have our being.

Photo by Betsey Rice