There is one thing people all over the world seem incapable of, and that is to simply stay home. Even if their home is comfortable, their community safe and all their needs are catered to, people still want to take breaks from their normal existence. They accept the discomfort and dangers of travel, foreign climates and primitive accommodations just to escape whatever is normal for them.
Humans are funny in that way. We are always looking for something. And that something we expect to find outside our normal routines and environments. Long before ordinary people had the luxury to go on holidays for fun, people would still set out from their homes on journeys with meaning. In all religions, people go on pilgrimages. Some walk around a black stone in Mecca, others dip in holy rivers in India or stick little papers with prayers in an ancient wall in Jerusalem.
A pilgrimage is a journey with spiritual significance. The pilgrim sets out, not to hang out in a resort and get a tan, but because something is itching inside them. They have a longing to get closer to God, to find healing, peace, perhaps forgiveness.
In the Old Testament we read of the tribes going up for the annual feasts to Jerusalem and the temple on mount Zion. Imagine the roads filled with pilgrims, who have left their daily work and are now preparing to come into the presence of God and celebrate before Him. They sang as they walked, the songs of ascent which we can still find in the book of Psalms.
We also read of people who were called personally to start a journey with spiritual significance. Abram, who was called away from Ur to the promised land; Moses, who had to leave his safe haven in Midian to go back to Egypt and deliver his people; the disciples, leaving their boats to follow Jesus around. For them to find God’s purposes, they had to leave something behind. And when people go on a pilgrimage, this same principle is at work.
In order to hear the voice of God speak to us more clearly, we may have to get away from the voices around us that drown Him out. We have to leave the security of our own homes, and face the vulnerabilities of the journey, to learn dependence on God again. And we open ourselves up to the experiences and people He may bring on our path. With new insight and inspiration, we return home.
The church of the reformation was not a fan of pilgrimages. Understandably, because during the Middle Ages pilgrims often went to holy sites associated with saints, which were venerated. It could verge towards idolatry, or become an industry which could exploit pilgrims. Because of this, Christian pilgrimages became a casualty of the reformation in protestant areas.
But the pilgrim itch is too strong to repress, and protestants have found their own way of going on pilgrimages. They descent in their thousands on the Holy Land, calling it a holiday, but having very similar goals to the pilgrims, trying to get spiritually closer to Jesus by physically going to the places where he walked. Or they go to conferences where ‘evangelical saints’ speak, hoping to find inspiration and renewal.
But I wonder if another modern protestant form of pilgrimage is the short-term missions trip, or vision trip. People set out with a spiritual goal, getting out of their comfort zones, hoping to meet God in a new way and see his work up close.
It is not a crazy idea. Pilgrimage and mission are closely connected. Jesus’ earthy ministry was both. He went from place to place, giving up the security of home, and doing the works that God gave Him to do on the way. He sent out his disciples in much the same way. Taking nothing for the journey, dependent on God, they set out, doing what they had seen their Master do. Celtic monks in medieval times set out in the same way, calling themselves ‘Pilgrims for Christ’, crossing Europe on foot and spreading the Word as they went. And the early Back to Jerusalem movement was a movement very similar, of pilgrims setting their faces towards Jerusalem and crossing deserts and mountains on foot, preaching as they went.
As Christians we are all on a spiritual journey, having left the kingdom of this world and with our hearts full of that other Kingdom that has begun and is to come. Often, going on a physical pilgrimage can help to come to a deeper understanding of this reality, as we leave behind the concerns and securities of our normal life. But as we do so, we can find we are transformed into missionaries, inviting others along the journey as we meet them, and taking part in the work of God as we encounter it.
If you feel it is time for a pilgrimage, but you don’t know where to go, why not join us on our vision trip to central Asia? Take time to listen, see and witness the work of God. Meet other pilgrims, and open you heart to what God brings on your path! Email fieldoperator@backtojerusalem.com for more information about this trip.
