Luke 16:19-31
Proper 21 / Year C
I am trying to get
my head around the fact two weeks from today I will be crossing from Portugal
into Spain… on foot! This will be the
third pilgrimage I make with friends from our diocese and it has been three
years in the offing; postponed in 2020 and 2021 by the pandemic. On previous pilgrimages I have learned how,
in this age of interstate highways, jet planes, and space travel, we humans are
still hardwired to engage the world at a walking pace. Anything more than this, while efficient, is
not natural to who we are. So I look
forward to being with friends and living for nine days at a speed for which we
all are ideally suited.
I am not looking
forward to the process of getting to Portugal or returning home. Maybe it is due to limited travel since the
onset of Covid, or maybe I am just getting old and set in my ways, but the flight
itinerary – along with getting to Dulles Airport and going through customs –
feels daunting. There is a part of me
that just wants to stay home.
We get why Laura
Ingalls Wilder held “home is the nicest word there is.” And now, with the days getting shorter, our
homing instinct is becoming stronger.
Home is a place which can be both a safe haven and stifling, all at the
same time. Home, at its worst, is a place
to hideout, disengaging from challenge and growth.
An author once
wrote this after witnessing a bald eagle swoop down and take a fish out of a
lake:
That magnificent
bird had emerged from its fragile shell, as helpless as we were at birth. But it survived, because of the nest. Then feathers grew. The eyes brightened. The talons strengthened. One day the bird stood poised upon the nest
and all the future of its life lay before it, the vista vast, the glorious
rivers and forests and fountains of the earth.
To take possession of it, however, he had to stretch his wings, take the
daring leap, trust the air, have faith in whatever great eagle gods there are
and go! The instinct to fly and the
instinct to nest met in that moment.
There comes a point in everyone’s spiritual life when that issue is
joined and must be faced.
“Home,” T.S. Eliot
observed, “is where one starts from.” It
is not necessarily a place to stay. Bob
Dylan once said, “I was born a long way from where I belong and I am on my way
home.” I was born a long way from where
I belong. Warsan Shire, a Somali-born
British poet, posits, “At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never
have been.”
Walking pilgrimages
have only served to reinforce for me this possibility. It is why the metaphor of pilgrim and
pilgrimage is one of the most popular ways to think of the Christian faith and
life. “Life,” Paulo Coelho holds, “is a
long pilgrimage from fear to love.” We
are on a journey from where we are from to where we are going.
We here this
morning come from different places, backgrounds, and experiences, but we are
all on a pilgrimage to the same place.
We are all headed toward our heavenly home. And we hope, over the course of our
pilgrimage through life, our lives will become more and more reflective of the
way life will be lived when we are at home in God. Our hope for this life, so beautifully
expressed in today’s collect, is by God’s grace we who are running to obtain
God’s promises may become partakers of God’s heavenly treasure. Or, as Paul admonishes his protégé Timothy in
today’s second lesson, “take hold of the life that really is life.”
I share all of this
with you as a way to enter into this morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke
– the parable of the Rich Man (who feasts ‘sumptuously’ at every meal) and
Lazarus, a poor, ailing beggar who day after day lays outside the gate of the
rich man’s house, hoping for just a scrape of food to fall his way. We can say of the rich man he is ‘home’,
which is to say he is certain there is nothing more beyond what he already
knows and has. He estimates he is where
he belongs. He is on his way to
nowhere. There is nowhere he wants to
go, which is a way of saying there is no one he feels a need to become.
But, no matter how
much he fails to consider the possibility, there is a home beyond his earthly
home. And even though his present home
has its pantries stocked with the finest foods and its closets stuffed luxurious
linens, there is a heavenly home which far surpasses this; not because it has
grander material possessions, but because it is steeped in the glory of God and
teems with pure affection for one another.
The Rich Man in the
parable misses out on this not because of his wealth, but because of his indifference. He displays none of the qualities Paul encourages
Timothy to cultivate: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and
gentleness. And some of Timothy’s flock
must have been fairly well-to-do, because Paul writes this to the young pastor:
As for those who in
the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes
on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with
everything for our enjoyment. They are
to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus
storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future.
None of this is
possible until you leave the secluded privilege of your present setting in
order to move toward the place and the person God would have you become; until
you become aware of what is happening outside the door of your sheltered environment
and respond to it. Ernest Kurtz, author
of the wonderfully titled book A Spirituality for the Imperfect, writes “A
journey becomes a pilgrimage as we discover, day by
day, that the distance traveled is less important than the experience gained.” May you, day in and day out, experience
something of your heavenly home and may it more and more become who you are,
how you live, and what you have to offer to others.
