Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a season in the church calendar where we are bidden to engage in self-denial, fasting, prayer, repentance, and reading of Scripture — to prepare our minds and hearts to receive the gifts of Holy Week and Easter. One thing we don’t emphasize as much any more, but which historically has been an important part of Lenten piety, is pilgrimage, and especially pilgrimage to the Holy Land where the events of the Gospel took place.
Nowadays we have planes and buses and cars that make the journey a lot less painful. But pilgrimage in the ancient world was a two or three year undertaking, and nearly always hazardous. Depending on where you started from, you could have to undertake dangerous sea voyages, then walk or ride long distances; you probably experienced several life-threatening illnesses; odds were even you’d get robbed by bandits; there would be language difficulties, and always at least one unpleasant travel companion. You were totally dependent on the locals for food and water, and the locals weren’t always friendly. Pilgrimages were hard, but they were regarded as working miracles in the lives of pilgrims, most importantly the miracle of repentance and forgiveness.
We speak about Lent in pilgrimage language. In a few minutes, the choir is going to sing Hal Owen’s lively setting of Amazing Grace How Sweet the Sound, where all of life is portrayed as a kind of Lenten journey: “Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.” For our recessional hymn today we’ll sing, “Eternal Lord of love, behold your church walking once more the pilgrim way of Lent.”
So on this first Sunday in Lent, I invite you to take a journey of the imagination with me, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. We walk the via dolorosa, the street winding through Jerusalem’s old city with the fourteen Stations of the Cross (like the fourteen stations here in our church). We pause at each station to contemplate the story of Jesus’ suffering and death. We walk this way of sorrow in Lent so that when Easter arrives our hearts will be prepared to hear the good news of His resurrection.
The last four stations of the cross are located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which makes it the climax of our pilgrimage. The church has a labyrinthine floor plan, a result of fifteen centuries of destruction and rebuilding and expansion. Going west from the main entrance we come to a huge, domed interior space so large it actually contains another smaller building, which enshrines Jesus’ tomb and the stone rolled away from it.
If we go east instead of west, we wander in a maze-like part of the building. Little chapels are everywhere. Stairs lead up to sacred places on a second story; other stairs descend to chapels deep below the entry level. At the bottom of one set of stairs is the grotto and chapel where Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena is said to have found pieces of the True Cross. Graffiti crosses and words have been carved into the limestone walls and pillars by thousands of anonymous pilgrims over the millennia.
Back up at the main level, we go up another set of stairs to the Golgotha shrine, where the altar stands above a limestone outcropping that was thought to be the place of Jesus’ crucifixion. As you might expect, the shrine is resplendent with gold, icons, and jewels. But part of the stone of Golgotha has been left bare, and pilgrims line up by their thousands to touch the stone that received the blood of the crucified Christ. If we go back down the stairs and walk underneath the shrine we just visited, we find a small altar, bare and undecorated, set in a niche in the wall. There’s a window just behind the altar looking at the lower reaches of the rock of Golgotha, and with a little imagination we can see a skull. Tradition has it that this is the skull of Adam and this the very place where Adam was buried. That skull-like rock has a rust-colored stain on it, which tradition says is a blood stain from the crucifixion. The architecture presents a theological truth: the blood of Jesus flows down over “the place of the skull” and redeems “the whole of Adam’s race.” That miracle of redemption is strong enough that singers can actually be thankful for Adam’s transgression since that is the reason for Jesus’ entry into our world. Our pilgrimage leads us to gratitude for the best, and even for the worst, of ourselves and our world.
The pilgrim’s journey is indeed a sort of microcosm of the whole Christian life. It’s a road through ordinary space; a dirty, wearisome road, often boring and disappointing, but punctuated all along the way by encounters with the Holy One. The ancients would travel for a couple of days, thirsty and hungry and tired, until they came to the next holy site. The place where Jesus taught the beatitudes, the place where Peter acknowledged Jesus’ divinity, the place where Jesus walked on water. There must be hundreds of these little shrines and holy sites, and many of them can seem like ancient tourist traps … with about that much authenticity. But it doesn’t matter. At these shrines the holy stories are told, keeping our eyes raised towards our destination and refreshing us with little tastes of the joys yet to come. We feel the ashes on our foreheads and realize that we’re all “dead in our trespasses.” Arriving at our destination, we recognize our own faces in the skull of Adam. We sense with wonder the blood of Jesus flowing over us, washing us clean and preparing us to rise again to new and unending life in Him. Then, in the Easter Vigil, while it is still dark, we find ourselves among a great cloud of witnesses standing under the giant dome that covers the place of Jesus’ tomb. We stand expectantly with unlit candles in hand, packed so tightly that we can hardly breathe.
A flame is kindled, begins to be passed from candle to candle. Light begins to fill the room. Then a sound from somewhere, starting small then filling the whole space: Someone is singing, “The Light of Christ!” The candlelight grows brighter and brighter as many thousands of candles are lit. And we return the response in overflowing gratitude to witness the miracle: “Thanks be to God!” And the Bishop announces “The Lord is risen!” to which we respond, “He is risen indeed!”
But that celebration is still 36 days hence. Here we stand just at the beginning of our Lenten pilgrimage. Jerusalem and Holy Week still far away in the mountainous distance. As the poet says, “I lift my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” The journey won’t be easy, but if we undertake it in faith God will meet us there and bring us to new life. Let’s start on the journey, prayerfully and with repentance and self-denial, full of the hope that we will reach the end in joy. We’ll experience in our own bodies some analog to the suffering and death of Jesus, and then the resurrection of Jesus, a foretaste of the final salvation to which we’re destined.
First Sunday in Lent Lessons: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
