No Short Cuts

Have you ever wished for a short-cut? You know, you’re driving someplace and wish you could just fly over the cars ahead of you like a magic carpet. Sometimes I’m driving and hear myself pray “Oh, God! Give me a sign.” Even a big green one will do!

In the fifty days of Easter, we hear all about Jesus’ resurrection appearances. And, you know what? Jesus never takes a short-cut. People’s eyes are opened, sure; and, yeah, people see the Risen Jesus. He speaks to them. He eats with them. But he never jumps in front of them arms wide saying “ta-da!” He doesn’t resort to cosmic card tricks or spiritual gimmicks. While some of us (like me!) would love that, and, sure, Jesus wants us to see and know that he is risen but look at how he goes about it. In the Gospels, the risen Christ accompanies folks and that changes the way they see.  And I don’t know about you, but looking back, I find that Jesus has been walking me my whole journey long, it’s just that I didn’t see it at the time. I’ll bet that that is true for you, too.

In today’s Gospel from Luke, look at what happens on the road to Emmaus. Two people, Cleopas and a friend, are headed home after a very hard day, actually a very hard week. It’s late afternoon on the very first Easter Day, the actual day of Jesus’ resurrection. But they don’t know that yet. All they know is that they have experienced some very disturbing things. Just a week before, they saw Jesus ride into Jerusalem in triumph. They saw him in the Temple. But they also saw Jesus get arrested, publicly tried, humiliated and then executed. What started out as a week filled with hope became a very sad and sour Passover celebration because they really hoped that Jesus would be the one to liberate the people from the very people who killed him.

But that’s not all: there’s news that two women saw that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and that they saw angels who told them that he is risen; two of Jesus closest followers checked it out and found the tomb empty; and now the grapevine is alive with rumors that Jesus had predicted that he would rise from the dead!

I suspect that for Cleopas and his companion it was all just too much…a real emotional roller coaster…and so many questions…it was, I suspect, too painful and too strange. Who can blame them for wanting to go home to someplace familiar, someplace quiet. But home is about seven miles outside of Jerusalem, so they have a long afternoon walk ahead of them.

As they head home, Jesus joins them and walks with them. And even though they don’t recognize him, he doesn’t jump up and say “Hey, guys! It’s me!”  Instead, he listens to their story. He listens to the news…and he listens to their hearts.

Even when he begins to open the scriptures to them, he does not tell them who he is. He explains what God has been doing through the whole history of the people of Israel. Most of all he shows them how scripture ultimately points to and is understood best through Jesus.

When they get to their house, Jesus does this little maneuver like he is still going on to the next town or tavern…when they invite him in to stay with them. Even now, Jesus doesn’t impose…he waits for them to invite him in.

Then, and only then, does he take the initiative, picking up the bread set before him and says the ancient Jewish blessing, then he breaks the bread and as he shares the bread, now—now! —they understand!

Notice how Luke’s Gospel bookends the passion with a meal at both ends of the passion. First, there is Jesus’ last supper in the upper room, where he says “This is my body” and now, after the resurrection, in Emmaus it is sealed with a meal. It is only after encountering the Risen Jesus that the Last Supper – and the Holy Eucharist that grew out of it – makes any sense at all. Instead of a testimonial to the dear departed founder, it is a living sign of the living, risen Christ.

Jesus does so much on the road with these two people but look also at what he does not do. He could have reassured them…instead he walked with them through their pain.  When he teaches them from the scriptures, he could have imposed himself on them…instead, he lets the word marinate—they remember it as “[burning] in their hearts.” When he picks up the bread, he doesn’t say “Hey, guys! Watch this!” No, instead he simply blesses it and gives it. Jesus never short-circuits the process but allows the encounter to unfold at its own pace until at last…they see!

There are no short cuts on the road to Emmaus. And thank God for it because in letting their encounter with the Risen Christ bubble up, these two followers of Jesus see for themselves that he is alive not by intimidation or magic or manipulation but by participation. They are participating in their own encounter with the Risen Jesus.

This is a lesson that we need to learn over and over again. We live in an age where so much communication is “directed,” tested, and designed to illicit a particular response. It’s hard to even go buy a loaf of bread and a carton of milk without feeling like we are some kind of Pavlovian dog, enticed and steered towards a particular thing or outcome. We are so media-addicted that we even have a president who came up in sales, hosted a game show, and communicates by social media. It hard in this world of relentless information to imagine what it is like to simply be accompanied by Jesus, who respects our dignity enough to allow each of us respond to the Spirit in our own way.

I suspect that when the eyes of Cleopas and friend were opened, it was like a flash of light. A moment of insight when everything suddenly made sense! It felt new and exciting. A great and marvelous “A-ha!” And that is wonderful! Ask any teacher who sees student light up with recognition when they get it. They will also tell you that these eye-opening moments come after long, sometimes painful, cultivation.

That “A-ha!” comes at the dinner table, when Jesus takes up bread and offers a blessing.  I wonder if Cleopas and his friend had any idea when their journey began that their unexpected dinner guest would become their host.

In remembering this encounter, the Gospel of Luke invites us to connect the Eucharist we do in our communities, whether a simple meal around a table or a High Mass, with what Jesus did not only on the road, but also in the upper room, the cross, and resurrection as we walk with Christ on our journey of faith.

Early Christians were sometimes called people “of the way.” I like that because we are all on the road, and that road takes us to the cross and from there to an on-going, always new encounter with the Risen Jesus. All of us are walking home. We may wish for a shorter route and we might be disappointed that it’s not always a mountaintop experience, because in fact most of our journey is rather, but wonderfully, ordinary. A saying attributed to St. Benedict of Nursia goes “Always we begin again.” But however we journey, we never walk alone. Jesus walks with us…even if we don’t know it…and we travel in Christian community. Luke’s Gospel shows us that the way Jesus walked with the two on the road is exactly the way he walks with us on our journeys.

Look at us! Here we are, gathered from all kinds of places--our homes, our families, our work and our school--and we all have a story. We have stories of poignancy and possibility, stories of victory and setbacks. We bring all of that when we gather as the people of God around a table… yeah, a little fancier, and we are arranged a little differently than our meals at home… but gathered around a table just the same.

A few years ago, my wife and I joined a group of Episcopalians and other people of faith, in walking the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, from east to west across northern Spain. In following this ancient pilgrim path, every one of us were invited in our way to both seek and walk with Christ. Our hosts for this pilgrimage were folks from The United Thank Offering (you know, the blue boxes!) and the Iglesia Española Reformada Episcopal, the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church. Their goal was to establish a chapel in Santiago, Spain, so that pilgrims who’ve walked the Way of St. James might be able to receive Communion… the traditional end of a pilgrimage… but who might have felt excluded in the Catholic Basilica at the end of the pilgrim way. The Anglican Pilgrim Center exists today just a few steps away from the traditional end of the route.

Every pilgrim on the Camino keeps a “passport” that is stamped along the way and is given a shell signifying their journey. As I walked the pilgrim way, I found myself singing the South African liberation song “We Are Marching in the Light of God.” On the first part of the journey, I imagined being Cleopas and his friend walking with Jesus. For the rest of the journey, my meditation turned to imagining Cleopas and friend racing back along the way they just came to tell Jesus’ friends and apprentices “We have seen the Lord!”

In our sacramental living, we are tuned to see God at work all around us. Our eyes are opened.  We see the risen Christ. More important we know the Risen Christ and show the Risen Christ.

So now we go back into the world, renewed, reconciled, recreated…exactly as we were and yet totally new, and we will tell our friends “We have seen the Lord!” … that he is known to us in the breaking of the bread. It’s true: there are no short-cuts on the road to Emmaus but that’s okay because all along the way, the Risen Jesus is walking right beside us. 

+ + +   + + +   + + +

This is the Bulletin for Worship for 3 Easter, Year A, Sunday, April 19, 2026 at Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 3 Easter Sunday, April 19, 2026.

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Learn more about the Anglican Pilgrim Center here.

Dust

Think about dust.

We think about dust as something you clean up. If something sits around too long, it gets dusty.

My grandmother kept a really, really clean house. Not spec to be found anywhere. And I can remember that even in her house, on a bright sunny day, when the rays of light just poured into the room, I could see little bits of dust floating around in the air. I was little, so I didn’t get it but when I would point this out, she was not a happy woman. To her this was bad news, these little points of light floating around. To me, it was wondrous.

Think about dust.

It’s everywhere. Not just on our bookshelves but in the air. Have you ever seen a forest fire or a brush fire? What one notices is the smoke rising in the air and eventually the wind dissipates that smoke, but the ash and the unburned material in that smoke is blown about and goes everywhere.

Archeologists can look at layers of rock and find whole epochs that change from one era to another. And those dividing lines in the dust are defined by layers of ash.

It is said that the very building blocks of life might have arrived on this planet as dust that hitched a ride on some comet or meteor that then struck the earth. The meteors and comets themselves are nothing more than the dust and debris from the big bang itself.

When you think about dust, the image in Genesis of God forming us out of the dust of the earth and animating us with the breath of life is not so hard to imagine. We really are made of dust.

Typically on Ash Wednesday, Christians put ashes on our foreheads. But not this year. Everywhere the drawing of ashen crosses on foreheads is discouraged because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some places, people are sprinkling ashes over the head and shoulders of penitents (in manner once done in the middle ages), in other places the celebrant draws the cross on her or his own forehead on behalf of the people, and in still other places, people are given little containers filled with ashes to impose on themselves.

I am kind of taken with the last choice. It seems to me that if we are going to sit, even for a day in the ashes of our truth, then it seems right that we should own it and do our own smudging. 

But the idea of dust raining down on us puts me in mind of that cosmic dust ball that may have caused life itself to spring up, and this intrigues me, too.

Ritual notes for this day aside, putting on ashes is an old custom. At one time, not everyone in the Christian congregation placed ashes on their head, but only those who were acknowledging and confessing egregious sins. They made public their confession with these ashes. But in the Middle Ages, it became the practice for every Christian to submit to the ashes. The season of Lent became a time of public penitence for the whole church.

Today, the ashes mean these things, but many more. The ashes are a reminder of our origin from the earth. “Remember,” we say, “that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We are not the self-assured, comfortable, live-forever people that we try so often to look like. We are going to die, all of us; we know that. Ashes are a sign of that ultimate reality.

The ashes are also, of course, a sign of sin. We are tainted, stained, by our constant falsehoods and wrong actions. We are a people who know better, but who make wrong choices. It was not someone else who made us do it. It was not the fault of Satan. We were not possessed by demons. It was not the fault of our parents. It was not the fault of society. It was not our peer group or the culture around us. It was us.  

We are responsible. We have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

But today, I propose another meaning for these ashes. Out of these ashes, these signs of our mortal nature, comes something else. Once we recognize our own responsibility for wrongdoing, once we acknowledge our mortal and dusty nature, the ashes also become a sign of fertility.

If we are truly repentant, and truly cleansed, and open to the reality of God around us, then we are also fertile, ready to give growth to greatness.

When fires rage through a forest, everything is devastated. After a bad fire, everything is ruined. But over time, something miraculous happens. Trees that were thought to be dead sprout branches. Ground thought to be dead, brings out flowers and ferns and mosses and animals and birds. Soon a forest or a grassland devastated by fire becomes even more fertile and prosperous than before. The very ash makes for a richer soil. What was destroyed becomes the food for new life.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are, likewise, the burning and clearing of our Christian lives. We enter a time for confession, for penitence, for realization of our earthly nature. But this is also a fertile day, a time for self-examination and self-preparation. Today is getting us ready for something.

Just as ground is prepared in the Spring for luscious growth, today the ground of our lives, the soil of our souls, is being prepared. Maybe through our confession and mortal acknowledgement, we are emptied, opened, made ready for something. We will mark our lives with ashes, but they also point us to the resurrection we are preparing for this season. These ashes point to death. They also point to new life.

We are preparing our souls for the presence of God. We are going to do that by walking with Jesus to Jerusalem, by sharing in His passion and death, by sitting in the darkness of the tomb, and we will prepare for the new life to come.

But it takes time. It takes cultivation. The dense forest of our complicated lives is too thick. It is time to burn it away and make ready the fields for new growth.

Our God awaits our openness, our fertile ground. God comes into our lives with forgiveness, with deep love. Christians walk to the altar twice on Ash Wednesday.  Once when we receive ashes, signs of our mortality and penitence. And Christians receive bread and wine, the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, the signal and presence of Christ who has risen from the dead. We receive the sign of our mortal nature, but we also receive the sign of fertile and abundant life.

Another pesky kairos moment

There has been a lot cynical eye-rolling and snide remarking about President Trump's recent comment to the press which amounted to an attack on Governors in those states observing strict physical distancing guidelines including the closing of non-essential businesses and organizations. He said that they ought to "let" the churches be open.

Several religious leaders respectfully cleared their throats stepped up to the mic and said "we got this."

Of course, this was a typical off the cuff remark without reference to the actual guidelines the states have put out, completely unconscious of the guidelines most religious leaders have set out which are often more stringent than the governmental regulations. 

In our parish, this has meant that we have not met for formal corporate worship in our church since the Fourth Sunday in Lent... we are now (as I write this) in the Seventh Sunday of Easter. 

Those remarks raised a host of legitimate questions about church-state entanglements and the role of the president in encouraging expressions of faith, and so on. But that is not what caught my attention.

When I heard the President remark that governors ought to allow us to reopen, my first response was "Wha? You call this closed?" 

That is, after I looked up from whichever screen I was on while interacting with a parishioner or having a meeting or Bible Study or putting together worship or holding an on-line prayer service or writing something for one of our parish electronic or dead-tree publications.

Of course, and I am not the first to observe this, the problem is with an understanding of what "church" means. If you read the New Testament accounts and pay attention to history of what the Church does best-- heck, if you look at the soup kitchens, food banks, pastoral visiting, on-line & televised worship (even before the pandemic!) and small groups you discover that we Christians are a magnificent hybrid. We are hard to pin down.

That's because we, the Church, are a community that is at once gathered and sent. We are tight knit body that meets in time and space, and is also dispersed into society and the cosmos. We form institutional expressions of every size and shape--from magisterial to town-meeting to face-to-face-- and we are intimately personal and relational. 

What do you expect from a community simultaneously founded on incarnation and eschaton? Where we journey through parted seas, wander in the desert, revel in God-with-us while looking forward to meeting the Lamb at the Throne -- all at the same time! From the immediate, intimate relationship between the holy and the human; that balances a rich history, the immediacy of the present, and the vastness of unfolding future, Christians travel in the places where kairos (God's time) and chronos (our time) meet. 

So how can a virus close that?

There is a little line in the Episcopal Church's Burial Office that always catches my breath. I always try to put a little extra "oomph" into my spoken delivery hoping that it will not be a throw-away or bounce off the emotional armor that grieving people must necessarily build. It found in the Proper Preface of the Holy Eucharist for "The Commemoration of the Dead" and it goes like this:

"For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed not ended...."

We generally interpret this in much the way it's seen in a Tom 'n' Jerry cartoon. You know, when Tom uses up one of his nine lives and out floats a ghostly version of himself and he will be issued either a harp or a fire extinguisher.

But the Christian Hope is that in Christ all things will be filled, fulfilled, completed, and made whole. This is much more than harps in heavenly clouds; but when God, who has overcome sin and death in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, gathers to Godself all creation and finally and fully heals all the breaches between us and all humanity, creation, and God's own self. I believe that this is not just a once and done deal, but an ongoing, always unfolding experience. It is at the same time wondrous and bewildering, because we are stuck in chronos while participating in kairos. 

This epidemic has caused all kinds of disruption. The business leaders and economists who preached disruption theory as the key to innovation must be getting impatient-- maybe even eating their words?-- because right now disruption doesn't come in an explosive moment of insight and energetic invention. 

Nope. Disruption has arrived in the requirement that we do... nothing. In a society built on progress or innovation which is understood to be dynamic and in motion, being still and being solitary is at best weird and at worst painful. The novelty has worn off and we are getting antsy. 

Still, we must "sit and stay" before we can get our treat. So let's use our antsy feelings and turn that energy into something. There are active things to be done: walking, running, excericising; and also bringing food to the homebound, to soup kitchens, and pantries; making calls to the lonely or isolated; sending cards; and so much more. And there are the things we never had time to do, or could not clear the decks to get around to: contemplation, prayer, writing or journaling, painting or drawing, learning new music, even trying new radio or video experiences. This disruption of our rhythms is also a chance to re-set.

And in all this, the Church doesn't just happen, it is. We are. We have another moment of free grace-- that used to just arrive when we stood in line or was stuck on hold-- where we can choose between exasperation or presence, between impatience or appreciation. Between profanity (in the truest sense) and holiness. 

So for those whose notion of church has not yet grown past the big gathering in the big room, this is a chance to experience something more. Of course, for those who never really delved into the meaning of things, for whom life is nothing more than reactivity and chance, this will seem strange, even laughable. Their impatience is understandable. But, as Scrooge would eventually learn after his own Christmas pilgrimage, it's better that they have their malady in laughter than in more disagreeable forms. 

I can't wait for the moment when we can all gather back in our big rooms and beautiful churches and have worship with all the loud singing, proclamation, and praise we can muster. For now, though, here is our chance to revel in the mystery and wonder of living in an in-between time.

Good Adventure to You!

Whoa, Nellie! Did you hear last Sunday’s Gospel. Boy, oh boy, Jesus really ups the ante, doesn’t he?

In the portion of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (5:21-37), Rabbi Jesus takes what we’ve always known and take for granted and ups the ante. He makes it more intense, more real, and in so doing drives us into the heart of the matter.  So while his teaching might have sounded like an appeal to perfectionism, he is in fact urging to think… really think… about what it means to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So, Jesus says, “you’ve heard it said that ‘you shall not kill,’ but I say don’t kill your neighbor with hateful, disdainful, or dismissive thoughts.”

And, Jesus says, “you have heard it said ‘don’t commit adultery,’ but I say don’t use the gift of your sexuality to use, abuse, or objectify another person.”

Then Jesus says, “it is customary for a man to decide when, where, and how to divorce his wife; but don’t let your power be an occasion to cause another person’s sin.” Okay…I’ll admit. I just threw the Apostle Paul’s interpretation of love and the Law into the Gospel… but I do that because the problem in Jesus’ day was that men held all the cards when it came to marriage, and Jesus was calling men out on making their spouses disposable. So, I think Jesus is saying, in effect, “you’ve heard it said that men can divorce his wife whenever he wants, but I say to you ‘don’t make people disposable.’”

And then Jesus says, “you have heard it said ‘don’t swear falsely.’ But I say to not only tell the truth, but avoid obfuscation and hair-splitting, but let your speech and your conversation be authentic.” As Jesus says, “Let your ‘yes’ be yes, and your ‘no’ be no.

I must admit that I get a little panicky when I hear Jesus talk like this. Everything about this passage makes our modern-day alarm bells go off: Rules! Judgementalism! Perfectionism! Ack!

Okay. We need to take a breath and think about Jesus’ words differently. Let’s start where Jesus started: Remember what he said were the two Great Commandments? Love God with all your being… heart, soul, and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.

We are so tempted to nod sagely as say “You’re so right Jesus.” But in this Gospel, Jesus moves into new territory essentially asking “what does loving God and loving neighbor really mean? How would it look?”

And that would mean that our “yes” would be an authentic yes, and our “no” an honest (if sometimes sad) no. That our word would reflect our authentic self.

It would mean that we would treat our neighbors, our family members, our spouses, and loved ones with respect and dignity.

It would mean that we would so honor our sexuality and value intimacy that we would work for honest and authentic relationships, even if that means being vulnerable and giving up our prerogatives in the name of love.

It would mean not just avoiding killing (or doing any kind of obvious evil) but respecting and preserving the dignity of every human being in every encounter and relationship we have.

You see, to really understand Jesus, we must understand that merely following the rules is not enough; faithfulness that changes lives, that changes hearts, comes from the willingness to change from within. Holiness means developing an inner congruity where our actions reflect our heart and our heart is molded by our actions. It is choice renewed every day to seek God in the everyday and (this is very important!) to see the image of God in every person we encounter every day. It is the choice to accept the grace to move from reactivity to attentiveness, from self-centeredness to companionship, from isolation to community. It is a life-long process of lining up our everyday choice and ethics with Jesus’ (and Moses’!) basic command to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor with everything we’ve got.

We are so tempted to turn this passage into a screed about perfectionism, or to make the Christian life so personal that it is reduced to a mere hobby. Perfectionism has a way of writing off other people or at the same time we must avoid a fake piety that only pumps up our egos and confirms our worst impulses. Instead, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of what it means to live within the reign of God’s peaceable kingdom.

I am humbled by the example of the martyred Bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. Soon before his assassination in 1980 by hit squad sent by his right wing government to silence him for his encouragement of the poor and his condemnation of the rich and powerful, saw this passage not as a placebo to quiet the yearnings of his oppressed flock, but as the basis, the cornerstone, for their quest for justice, dignity, and equity. To live lives grounded in the command to love God and love neighbor, means to accept the dignity and worth of the people God sent Jesus to liberate. If you listen, really listen, to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, then you will find that rather than passivity, Jesus wants our participation in every aspect of God’s redeeming work.

When the powers that be heard that Bishop Romero was conferring on the oppressed people of El Salvador the dignity that Jesus taught, and later confirmed in his passion, death, and resurrection, they sent soldiers to kill him at the altar during Mass.

A friend and colleague of Romero’s, a Presbyterian minister the Rev. Jorge Lava-Braud, looks at Jesus’ beatitudes through the lens of his native language, Spanish. He says:

Let me take advantage of my native language, Spanish (the language of God and the angels), to get more deeply into the meaning of beatitude. In Spanish the word is translated bienaventuranza, literally "good adventure to you." We all know that adventure means risk, the courage to defy the odds, the refusal to play it safe. 

Listen, then, to how the Beatitudes would sound if we turn them into bienaventuranzas and if we paraphrase a bit: 

Good adventure to you whose hearts are genuinely with the poor: you are under God's protective rule. Good adventure to you who are without power: the whole world shall be yours. Good adventure to you who are hungry and thirsty for justice: your cup will be filled. Good adventure to you who look for truth with singleness of heart: you shall see God. Good adventure to you who work for peace: you shall be called children of God. Good adventure to you who are persecuted for the sake of justice. You, too, are already under God's protective rule; rejoice, be very happy, when others say evil things about you falsely because you are mine. God is preparing a great reward for you. Don't be surprised, prophets have always been an endangered species. 

I think the key to understanding this passage, perhaps Jesus’ hardest teaching on the Sermon on the Mount today, to really take part in “the good adventure.” Remember that for Jesus everything begins and ends with those first two commandments: “Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Once we decide, really decide, to allow in God’s grace, to listen for God, and to live our lives in concert with God, then Jesus will cause us to confront ourselves: to replace the parts of us that always wants to win with a commitment to love; to look at the parts of us that always wants to be gratified, and to be present in simplicity; the parts of us that always want to be in charge and at the center of things, and to choose to live as servants; the parts of us that always are worried that we’ll be forgotten or written off or discounted, and rest in the knowledge that God is always with us. Confronting those parts of us requires honesty and a gentle heart, so that we may listen and look for God in our relationships, in the world around us, and in the people God gives us everyday. To discover that God’s love, holiness of living, and justice are all part of God’s “good adventure.”

Blessed are you! Bienaventuranza!

Pilgrimage

This fall, Peg and I will be joining about thirty other Episcopalians from all around the Church in a ten-day trek across Northwest Spain known the Camino de Santiago de Campostela, or “the way of St. James of Compestela”, or more simply "The Camino."

The pilgrimage will take place on October 5 -14, 2019, and is sponsored by the United Thank Offering and the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana. It combines portions of walking the Camino with visits to UTO grant sites in Madrid and Northwest Spain.

Each year more than a quarter of a million people walk all or part of the Camino de Santiago de Campostela, with the number of Pilgrims steadily increasing since the mid-1980’s. This resurgence has been credited to many factors, including the fostering of faith communities and connectivity between pilgrims as they journey on various treks around the world. You may have read about it in books or magazines, seen television travelogues or perhaps you've seen the 2010 Emilio Estavez film starring Martin Sheen called “The Way.” 

In the Middle Ages people began to walk The Camino to go and venerate the shine and relics of St. James the Greater, the apostle and brother of St. John, one of the “sons of thunder.” James is the patron saint of Spain.

During the Middle Ages, the Santiago de Compostela was considered the third most holy site in Christianity, behind Jerusalem and Rome. There are Anglican Centers at these other two holy places, and this new one will serve as a vital place that will embrace ecumenism, outreach hospitality, youth development, spiritual formation, and interfaith dialogue.

It is traditional for the pilgrims to end their journey with a Holy Eucharist at the Church of Camino de Santiago de Campostela in Galicia, Spain, where it is believed that St. James the Apostle is buried. (You may have seen pictures or videos of this church… it’s the one with The Really Big Thurible suspended from the ceiling and which takes six people to swing as it fills the church with clouds of incense!) But we won’t end our journey there but someplace else… someplace new on this ancient route!

The United Thank Offering and our Anglican Communion partner church, the Reformed Episcopal Church in Spain, is opening a hospitality center and chapel as a place of rest and refreshment for pilgrims of all faiths and traditions, and it will be here where we will wrap up our journey by dedicating this center. 

Protestants now outnumber Catholics in walking the trail. Up until now, only Catholics could receive Communion at the mass in the Cathedral. With the opening of the Anglican Centre, many others will now have the ability to celebrate the Eucharist at the conclusion of their journey, which will benefit many pilgrims in a deep way.

A pilgrimage is a spiritual journey, an extended physical prayer. Walking on a pilgrimage is a kind of prayer, an offering, that involves the whole person, body, mind, spirit. It is at once a trip going from one place to another, and it is also an experience where the walk itself is the purpose and the prayer.

It is the custom of those who take the journey to bring back with them a scallop shell as proof of their journey. But the grace of the pilgrimage is found in the going, not just the arriving. We will be going to new places, experiencing new sights, discovering new truths, raising new questions as we walk. And, if my trial runs are any indicator, we will be asking more mundane questions along the way, as well: thinking about where we’ll eat, how our feet and our joints feel, and making sure we have enough water. 

Peg and I have been training for this journey for a little while now. We are walking every day, and at least once a week, we take a "big walk" on farther and farther distances to get ourselves in shape. We've bought our day packs, our walking poles, and are breaking in our walking shoes. 

The funny thing is that I have already learned something in this process.

Before packing a single bag and with having my passport stamped, I am already on the pilgrimage! I have found myself thinking, praying, settling into a new routine. My perspective on daily living has shifted a bit… certainly I am organizing my time around the dates I will be away, but more than that, I find myself asking “is this another step on the way?” and more and more often “what is God showing me in this moment?”

So, while I am looking ahead to the journey, I find myself being drawn more and more to the present. I found myself thinking these words written by the late Fr. Henri Nouwen, who was a spiritual director, writer, as well as a priest. He wrote:

Praying means, above all, to be accepting of God who is always new, always different. For God is a deeply moved God, whose heart is greater than our own. The open acceptance of prayer in the face of an ever-new God makes us free. In prayer, we are constantly on our way, on a pilgrimage. On our way, we meet more and more people who show us something about the God whom we seek. We will never know for sure if we have reached God. But we do know that God will always be new and that there is no reason to fear.

In this strange mix of the mundane and the holy, we are already learning that in our baptisms, in our daily walk with Christ, we are able to meet and know God more fully as the Holy Spirit animates our walk. True, everyday things might distract us from God; at the same time (if one has eyes to see), they might be pointers to deeper grace, love, and faith.

My prayer as a pilgrim, is that the formal pilgrimage will enliven and inform this daily, more ordinary, walk with Jesus.  And my prayer also is that you, in your journey with Jesus, find him more and more as God goes with you in all you do every day!

See you “on the way! Buen Camino! 


You may donate to the work of the Anglican Centre on the Camino here.

Written for the September, 2019 newsletter of Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, PA.