September 3, 2006: PILGRIMAGE HOME
Mark 7:1-23; Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 42:1-2, 6-9

Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Presbyterian Church

Teachers may no longer have this attitude, but it used to be that grade school teachers actively discouraged "best friend" relationships. Maybe they were disturbed by the apparent exclusivity, but I never understood their position. What is the harm in focusing on the company of another? It's a normal part of growing up to have best friends -and to change them periodically as you grow older. I'm willing to bet that most of you have had several best friends in your life, and that each one was an all-absorbing interest for a time. Maybe your friendship was even as intense as the one described in Song of Solomon today. But most friendships don't stay that intense. Who could live with such an absolute "being with" as the focus of life? OK, maybe saints can live like that toward God, but most of us have bills to pay and meals to get on the table.

But wouldn't a relationship that beautiful be great? So much mutuality, a relationship in which expectation and delight fills your days-whether we're describing friendship or marriage. But into every life some rain must fall. In relationship, we call that "argument." Even with the closest friends and most perfect marriages, arguments happen. It's the rare relationship where everyone always agrees. Arguing-debating, if you will-is a fact of life. Call it a "free exchange of ideas," but disagreeing with each other is normal. Lockstep agreement reflects something else. Even in a "perfect" relationship, people change, the dynamics of life together changes, and partners need to renegotiate the terms. If a couple or friends haven't learned how to argue, they will have some catch-up to do. But, normal as it is, there are times when the two parties realize they are going at it tooth and nail, arguing about different things.

It's not just marriage, it happens in other venues, too-political debate, teens and parents, coach and umpire, Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees think they're arguing about hygiene and religious purity. And well they should. The Reform party of a conquered people under Roman oppression, their mandate was to maintain Jewish identity through piety and spiritual discipline. Religious purity not only hastened the day of the Messiah's coming, it kept Jews clear of pagan heresy. Jesus, on the other hand, thinks they're arguing about his message. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus commits outrage after outrage against religious piety. Consistently, his message is, "Be wary of hyper-religious observances that get in the way of your living into the heart of the Law"-loving God and neighbor. Jesus isn't "anti-religious;" he's "pro-relationship." We have a vivid example of Jesus in human relationship when we see him with his best friends, Mary, Martha, Lazarus. Their relationship, according to one scholar, is like the relationship in the Song of Solomon-deep love, mutual trust and support, a relationship secure enough to allow for disagreement.

So, the Song of Solomon is a great way to wind up a summer of using the metaphor of pilgrimage. I've been telling you that "pilgrim" is who we are, "pilgrimage" is what we do. Life is a journey, but not mindless tourism. Pilgrimage is supposed to leave a mark on our lives as we intentionally move toward sacred place. Thomas Merton speaks of the journey inward to find ourselves, growing and deepening toward "an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts." This is what we mean when we sing, "This land is not my own, I'm just a-passin' through." Despite that song, our home is not pie-in-the-sky-in-the-sweet-by-and-by. As we journey in the here-and-now, our sacred place is an ever-deeper relationship with our Beloved. With God.

The Pharisees are all wound up about looking and acting Jewish. How they travel is their pilgrim identity. We ought to be concerned about our identity, but not if it's only defined in terms of how we travel. If I say, "Greyhound Bus" you can imagine who is traveling. If I say, "older gray Buick" you imagine someone else. If I say, "walk across America" or "Harley Davidson" or "white water rafting" you have different ideas about who is traveling-but very little about their destination. The Pharisees' travel method was "Clean hands mean clean heart." Now don't get all superior, because our motto is "Cleanliness is next to godliness." We buy anti-bacterial soap and use a paper towel to open the public restroom door and we never ever drink out of the same glass as an AIDS patient, let alone breathe the same air.

Jesus' point is to be wary of anything that gets in the way of loving God and each other. Anything. Including spiritual disciplines. When are Joys and Concerns gossip and bragging and playing "ain't it awful"-and when are they the voice of community, rejoicing in God's goodness and begging God's mercy? When is reading scripture in its socio-cultural context good scholarship-and when is it the way to avoid a personal word for living today, a head trip to avoid the journey to the heart? When is staying off the streets avoiding temptation and protecting the integrity of witness-and when is it avoiding the inconvenient lost and the messy poor? When is our sympathy supportive-and when does it lock ourselves or others into a course of action by making definitive statements about motivations? When are we expressing concern for another and when are we pumping them for details we can spread around?

It is fitting to end a summer's preaching metaphor on pilgrimage with a discussion of "home" because it helps us examine who we think we are. Some people say home is where they have to take you in. Others say home is where most of your junk is. Frederick Buechner tells us what it is when he defines "Homelessness" in his book, Wishful Thinking. He begins by first evoking a cozy at-home-tucked-into-bed setting, and then contrasts it to the thousands of homeless people, many of whom are children. Then he reminds us that, even when we have homes, many people do not really feel at home in them. He says, "To be really at home is to be really at peace, and there can be no real peace for any of us until there is some measure of real peace for all of us. When we close our eyes to the deep needs of other people whether they live on the streets or under our own roof-and when we close our eyes to our own deep need to reach out to them-we can never be fully at home anywhere."

Answering the question, "What is home?" can't be done in isolation, as a single individual. The hot-button question for Presbyterians these days is, "Can we remain in fellowship with people whose practices are different than ours?" This is exactly what the Pharisees asked. Jesus just gives us a warning: when things that are supposed to bring life and health become barriers to reaching out in love and justice, that isn't "home." Home is relationship like the Song of Solomon, a place when we are so focused on loving each other-God and humans-that the whole world feels on the verge of fruitfulness. We humans are prone to ask the meaning of life-what am I doing here? The Westminster Catechism has one answer. Abbot Marmion says it a little differently: "The reason you are here is because you love God." This, friends, is home. Because you love God. Welcome home.