Sermon at St Michael’s St Albans 9.30am 13th March 2022
Readings: Genesis 15.1-12,17-18; Luke 13.31-35
Pilgrimage is a concept with a colourful and sometimes controversial history in the Christian tradition. During the High Middle Ages, shrines such as that of Alban in the Abbey up the hill from here would have drawn thousands of visitors each year, men and women, young and old. Pilgrims’ motivations were various: some were spiritual, others more secular. Many travelled to pray for particular causes that were associated with the saint whose relics they had come to venerate.
Sometimes these journeys were made over considerable distances, and pilgrimage sites came to be ranked according to the perceived holiness of the site and the ardour and expense necessary to reach the destination. For example, a pilgrimage to Rome was worth two thirds of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. But a pilgrimage to Rome was only considered twice as valuable as a pilgrimage to the tiny city of St David’s in Pembrokeshire. This is a fact which I have long suspected reveals less about the sanctity of David and more (both now as then) about the state of transport links to West Wales.
All this gallivanting to sites of pilgrimage came to a crashing end with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The reformers argued that prayers should be directed to God alone and that intermediary intercession by the saints was both unnecessary and implausible: how are the saints meant to hear us if they are in heaven, wrapped up in the beatific vision of the almighty? The medieval practice of pilgrimage became a collateral victim of this thinking: to the Reformation mindset, the notion of visiting a site associated with a saintly hero or heroine was decried at best as pointless and at worst as socially disruptive or spiritually corrupting.
The religious battle lines across Europe that were drawn up in the sixteenth century would last for decades, in some cases for centuries, even down to our own day. And yet… pilgrimage was one of those controverted concepts which witnessed an early if partial thawing of hostilities. The stand-out illustration here is John Bunyan. Bunyan, from nearby Bedford, was a firebrand puritan. He couldn’t even hack it in the Church of England because it was led by bishops. Nonetheless, Bunyan embraced the concept of pilgrimage, as evidenced by his spiritual classic first published in 1678, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory of the struggles of the Christian’s quest for God, from the worldly City of Destruction to the Celestial City of heaven.
We see in John Bunyan the emergence of two distinct strands of thinking about pilgrimage. Firstly, there is an outward pilgrimage of the body, a choice to walk, to cycle, or to otherwise visit a place of personal or corporate significance. And then there is an inner pilgrimage of the soul. This is the journey of a lifetime, the path of holiness which all Christians are called to follow, whatever our aptitude or ability for travel. John Bunyan of course was only interested in the second of these types of pilgrimage, the inward journey of the soul. He would have retained a distinct antipathy for travel to special places associated with dead Christians. Nonetheless, recent decades have seen a considerable revival in pilgrimage as movement of the body which can have the additional inner benefits. Members of this congregation have travelled along St Cuthbert’s Way between Melrose and Lindisfarne on the Scottish/English border. Others may have seen the film starring Martin Sheen called The Way or the BBC series called The Pilgrimage, both reflecting the recent growth of interest in the ancient routes to Santiago in northern Spain. Some here today may have walked the pilgrim trail put together a few years ago between the four medieval churches in St Albans (click here).
Our first reading today finds Abraham on a journey from Ur of the Chaldees in modern day Iraq to the land known today as Israel-Palestine. For Abraham and his wife Sarah it was a promised land, a physical destination. Yet behind the vast trek of these senior citizens was a spiritual encounter which was about identity and relationship and which took form in a covenant, and agreement of promises. God had enlisted Abraham and Sarah in his quest for a people who might know him as their personal God. For their part, Abraham and Sarah embraced this promise with spiritual trust. God
brought Abraham outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to Abraham, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abraham believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.
In addition to Abraham and Sarah, we hear during Lent about Jesus on pilgrimage. Last week he was wandering in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. This week our gospel reading jumps to the far end of his public ministry and his final fateful trip to Jerusalem, to the cross and beyond. Both these pilgrimages by Jesus were journeys with a deeper purpose. In the wilderness he gave up outward stuff in order to fall back on inward resources, deepening his appreciation of what really matters, his reliance on God, his relationship with our Father in heaven. And then, in that trip to Jerusalem, Jesus was steeling himself for his final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.
The twin pilgrimages of Jesus, into the wilderness and towards the cross, are the tracks which we follow during this season of Lent. We don’t give up chocolate or fags or booze to improve our waistlines, lungs and livers, but for bigger picture stuff:
That thaw of which I spoke in the Protestant attitude towards pilgrimage is certainly visible among English writers by the 1630s. Here is one of them, George Herbert, sharing his understanding of Lent.
Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more
May strengthen my decays.
Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.
This is the goal of a holy Lent: whether or not you need the outward stuff to do the inward stuff, be that journeying to a special place or embracing a period of abstinence, the purpose of the pilgrimage is the goal of sanctification, that inner quest of a lifetime to become more like Jesus, manifested in the outward turn from selfishness and towards the needs of others:
Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.