With and Without [Proper 12B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Ephesians 3:14-21
With and Without
Long before the introduction of the Doomsday Clock, before
weapons were capable of mass destruction, back when the world had four corners
and the seas were populated with monsters, a man called Paul, well Saul, but
then Paul, thought the world was about to end.
With a blast, not of bomb but of trumpet. And not into oblivion but into something new –
like rebirth, like resurrection. Any day
now… The clock was ticking; creation
groaning; redemption coming. Any day now…
I stood still and just stared at a wall. Is that pilgrimage? Halfway between me and Paul lived a man named
Herbert, a monk who bought the Episcopate and built a cathedral. The very cathedral in which I stood and
stared at the wall. I was looking at his
name.
One thousand years stood between Herbert and Paul. One thousand years stands between Herbert and
me – me, a pilgrim standing upon the stones of his vision. One thousand years later, and it was still standing
and I was still standing and trying to imagine a thousand years and people
separated by a thousand years. Herbert
lived in the days of dragons and yet he wasn’t a fairy tale, not just a story,
but a man made of flesh now long gone and bones now long unclothed. His name was Herbert and he lived in Norwich
one thousand years before pilgrims from Colorado Springs – a city founded eight
centuries after the founding of this Christian community in England – arrived to
sing, arrived find whatever pilgrims are looking for.
And what was I looking for?
I’m not sure. But I am pretty
sure I found something – though admittedly the exact description of my
discovery is still unraveling itself in my soul. I traveled far to touch, see, smell things
that seemed to be, upon further review, embedded. This is for me pilgrimage. For near is where you’ll meet what you have
wandered far to find.[1]
Vacation is different. And this wasn’t that. In a sense vacation takes you away – from life
and busy and stress and the chores that seem to order time like how the church
seasons keep repeating and keep telling you when to stand and kneel and say
Alleluia.
But pilgrimage is something other. It does not take you away; it brings you
closer to something that is mysteriously both close and hidden.
Pilgrimage helps you remember your story. Not your autobiography. Your story.
It sets you in context. Like the
time I saw my family name scrawled across old Scottish memorials. Or the graves of Anglican priests in
cathedral floors. And Herbert: somehow I
knew that Herbert and I shared a story – a story that continues to unfold –
because the world did not end. Not once.
And while the world continued – even as it waged wars and
survived plagues – people stacked stones.
Stones that would stay stacked long after the builders turned to
dust. There is something about the old
stones – somehow both ordinary and holy, given supernatural meaning through
organization. They didn’t mean to, but still
they carry the stories. They house the
ghosts that still walk the halls – like the Benedictine monks those stones protected
from the cold East Anglian winds of the middle ages, those Benedictine monks
whose names are still read during Evensong – keeping them alive by remembering
that they are dead.
There is something about pilgrimage and story and old stones
built into churches that thin out the divide between the living and the dead,
between Creation and the End of the World.
How somehow sitting in Lady Julian’s cell – just a ten-minute walk from
the Cathedral – I could feel the history of the place, the agony and the ecstasy. Spirit is as complex as encountering it. More than a pile of stones, more than a cell,
it was enchanted, alive with spirit, charged.
It wasn’t just the places; it was what the places did to
time. As if maybe pilgrimage is
traveling through space to think about time.
Finding that old things are also present. Finding that things just go on. That the story continues – with and without
us. Because the story is not one that we
own; we are not the stars. The story is
bigger – written in the heart of God, a heart much broader and much deeper than
we have the power to comprehend – and we are just privileged to make a cameo. Remember that you are dust and to dust you
shall return.
And so the cast of characters change. The end of the world comes and it goes. And the great divine story continues to
unfold in this world. God’s mission goes
on.
And perhaps all of this is obvious. Maybe I am telling you something you already
know. Maybe. But this is what I went so far – across oceans,
across centuries – to remember. God’s
mission goes on. The story is still
being told. And the story is ours, as is
the mission, but also, the story will continue after us – with and without us.
It feels big: people of dust, in buildings of stone, charged
with the critical work of an ancient God.
And it is. It is the stuff of epic
poems, the stuff of timeless wonder set in a world that solves mystery and builds
strip malls. We are the people through
whom the timeless salvation story continues.
We re-tell the stories that the saints first told. We tell the ancient tales of an impossible love
to a world that has lost the ability to believe in miracles. God is entrusting us with the same mission
that Paul and Herbert and Julian once held in their hands and hearts.
The task with which God entrusts us feels weighty, enormous. But we are not the first or the last
missionaries, just the most recent. And I
find that liberating. In the way that Christians
have always just carried on, how the calendar keeps bringing us to the manger
and the cross and the empty tomb, to the font and the altar – no matter how much
the end of the world presses in on us.
Like how the people of St. Bride’s, London still sang hymns and shouted
Alleluias during that one week in the 17th century when 243 of their
members died of the plague. And when
that week was over, through their tears, they still sang hymns and shouted
Alleluias. And how today, in London,
they will still sing hymns and shout Alleluias.
The cast has changed but the mission of God carries on.
Like how the people of Norwich Cathedral still prayed their
prayers and changed their altar hangings, and lit candles while a millennia of
war sounded outside the gates. How they still
opened their doors and offered comfort as plague and disease threatened
annihilation. How they set up coffee
hour and polished silver while lightning flashed and tempests raged. Because the Church’s mission carries on –
always has, always will. Not even the
end of the world can stop it.
I have no sense of what this means to
you, so little sense of what to make of it myself.[2]
But I think I found something – over there. I found other chapters, earlier chapters, to
a story that is my story but does not belong to me. It is a story that is as old as time – maybe even
older. It is a story that defies the
impatient immediacy of our age, that goes on and on – with and without us, with
and without us.
One day, I suppose, someone will find a name, in a church,
carved into a wall. And perhaps that
person will just stand there and stare.
Is this pilgrimage? And that name
will be attached to a person half way between Herbert and a 31st century
pilgrim. Because the story, like the
mission, goes on: world without end.
Amen.
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