How Can We Go On Pilgrimage Away From Jerusalem?

A while ago I wrote a post asking the question, 'How does a Lutheran go on pilgrimage?' I'd like now to expand on that, not by elaborating on my answer, but by posing a related question: 'How it is that we, as Christians, can go on pilgrimage away from Jerusalem?'

After the political-religious consolidation of Kings Hezekiah and Josiah of Judah, Jerusalem became the sole legitimate pilgrimage site for the people of Israel. This, of course, had long been the vision, but the local shrines of the tribes and alternate sites of the first northern usurper king, Jeroboam, had fragmented Israel's religious centers.

Yet by the Second Temple Period, the time of John, Jesus, and Paul, Jerusalem was the center of the great pilgrim feasts: Passover, Shavout, and Sukkot. These three feasts celebrate the events of the Exodus and the desert wanderings of Israel, which was the prototypical pilgrim experience. Therefore, for each of these spring and summer festivals, the family heads would trek from throughout the land to Jerusalem to sacrifice and participate in the temple worship.

It seems, even, that Luke uses the pilgrimage to Jerusalem as an overall structure in his gospel. After traveling around Galilee for the first nine chapters, Jesus, in Luke, turns south and spends the remainder of the gospel on a journey towards Jerusalem. This walk, of course, culminates first in the triumphal entry, but then in the totally different Via Dolorosa, ending in the crucifixion and the tomb.

Just as Matthew emphasizes Jesus as a successor to Moses through his fine techniques in describing the Sermon on the Mount, and as John depicts the true-to-life movement between Judah and Galilee throughout Israel's thrice-annual pilgrim cycle, Luke wants to tell us that Jesus stands at the head of the law and the prophets. Jesus embodies Israel, and is yet more than Israel. The exodus is repeated.

However, this time, the exodus does not lead from the desert into the promised land, at least not at first. Rather, Jesus goes from the relative serenity of Galilee into the world of political turmoil and religious controversy. His exodus is not from captivity to the land, but an exodus into exile.

Yes, Jesus takes on the Babylonian exile: a foreign power (Rome) drags him from the holy city (Jerusalem) to a place outside its walls, where he dies the death of the suffering servant (the vocation of Israel). And specifically because he takes on the role of Israel, he does not replace Israel, but redeems her.

But let's back up, first.

I mention John the Forerunner (that's 'the Baptist') and Paul of Tarsus specifically because of their roles in reversing the direction of pilgrimage.

Whatever unprovable theories come up about John and his relationship to the Qumran community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is one fairly interesting thing we can say about him: he was the son of a priest who rejected that priestly heritage. This means that like the Qumranites, he somehow rejected his priestly heritage and the Jerusalem temple in favor of an ascetic lifestyle in the desert. Can Jesus' own attack upon the temple cultus be far behind?

Back to Christ himself.

His pilgrimage to Jerusalem and taking on of the exile has two correlates. In the first place, the exile into the tomb is not the end of the story. The story ends (or for us, continues) in the resurrection and Pentecost. In the resurrection, God's glory shines into this world in a way that the New Testament authors could not describe with any vocabulary short of 'new creation'- and Genesis 1 is nothing compared to it. At Pentecost, the Spirit that Christ's resurrection and ascension has released into this new creation brings the full-bodied power of God into the church in a way Israel's prophets only experienced in fleeting moments.

Second, the pilgrimage of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem is only one small part, and one insufficient icon of, the much larger pilgrimage that Yahweh himself makes into this world. For Yahweh comes to us in the flesh of Jesus Christ, and continues to make pilgrimage into this world each and every time we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion. And he does so, and can do so, precisely because the Father has poured our his Spirit through Jesus Christ- together all Yahweh- into the communities that celebrate the feast of the sacrament.

And what of Paul? Saul of Tarsus was not on pilgrimage when he was on his way to Damascus. Indeed, he was going there in order to force Jewish heretics (Christians) into doing pilgrimage the 'right' way: going to Jerusalem. Yet a pilgrimage is exactly what that mission ended up being. When he encountered the risen Lord, he met the same Christ who poured out his Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, to the Pentecost community. And thus how perfectly natural that the same Spirit who allowed the Christ-community to speak in the tongues of the Gentiles should enable Paul to make mission to the Gentiles.

And it was this same Paul, of course, who eventually went on to Rome.

For Luke's great gospel has a sequel. In the gospel, Luke begins by setting the events of Christ's birth in the context of the global empire of Augustus's Rome, and then narrows it all down to Israel, to Galilee, to Judea, to Jerusalem, to the cross, to the tomb; and from there, he begins an explosion that goes out to all corners of the earth, ending back in Nero's Rome. And this, then, is the message:

God has entered human flesh to consecrate the cosmos and indwell space-time with his transformative glory. And every time we proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacrament, we are graciously brought into that process of renewing creation; a process that will never be finished this side of the eschaton, but will be completed in a flash of triumph at the return of Christ.

In the meantime, because Yahweh has gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we can go on pilgrimage away from Jerusalem to all the world.