Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (6)

 

 

Now let’s consider what it means to read the Bible as a pilgrim.

 

"A pilgrim learns about themselves, and you learn about yourself by leaving your home and looking at it from a distance, you try to get closer to God through your travels.” Rick Steeves.

 

I have asked over the years, “Does a fish know that it lives in an aquarium?” This question has been asked in many forms over the centuries, asking it can be quite the journey, a pilgrimage. Can we answer the question without leaving the aquarium?

 

It is a challenge to “leave your home and look at it from a distance.” Generally, this is discouraged by the folks at home (in the aquarium).  Whether it is a family, a business concern, a religious tradition that exalts its practices and doctrinal distinctives, an academic institution, a political or social movement…whatever the system may be, traveling a distance and looking back to gain understanding is typically considered a threat to the system, and threats are either subjugated and brought back to be good little boys and girls, ostracized, or just plain destroyed.

 

Jesus was constantly asking His hears to travel and look back, travel farther and look back, travel even farther and look back again. “An hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21, 24).

 

When Paul looked back at his impeccable Jewish pedigree, he wrote, “Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ…I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:7 – 8).

 

When we read the Bible as a pilgrim, we learn to read the Bible not through the lens of our religious tradition but rather learn to see our religious tradition through our reading of the Bible. In America, we have the additional challenge of learning to see our syncretistic Christianity through the Bible, seeing ourselves as Biblical pilgrims – passing through the United States just as we are passing through the world.

 

When we read as a pilgrims we read as an aliens, as people whose eyes are heavenward (Col. 3:1 – 4; Heb. 11:8 – 16; 1 Peter 2:4 – 12).

 

We ask the Holy Spirit to teach us about Jesus and about ourselves, with the Word of God piercing into the depths of our beings (Heb. 4:12 – 13). As we come to realize how intimately God knows us, we cry, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and led me in the Everlasting Way” (Psalm 139:23 – 24).

 

The greater the distance between us and home, the more we realize that home is not home, the more we realize that our Home is that City where the Father and the Lamb are the Light (Rev. 21:22 – 23; 22:5). Now this can be a problem, for few people want to hear this, speak this, know this, or practice this. We think the light is in our tradition, our doctrinal distinctives, the history of our movement. In America we think the light is in our syncretistic version of Christianity with its creation myth along with its justification for conquest, war, and extermination – and selling the souls of men (Rev. 18:13).

 

The farther we travel as pilgrims, the deeper God speaks to us about ourselves and where we’ve come from, and as we look back from a distance there may be things we are thankful for, things we regret, things we see in a new perspective, and things we dare no longer touch.

 

Pilgrimage is not encouraged; questions are seldom welcomed. Mystery is not acknowledged, and loose ends are quickly tied up or cut off. What do we fear? If Jesus Christ is truly the Head of the Body and we are under His authority, if He is indeed our Good Shepherd, then we can trust Him to care for us all on pilgrimage – we do not need all the answers, but we sure do need Jesus.

 

I seldom meet Christians on pilgrimage. I meet lots of Christians who care more about fitting in with their religious system but don’t think about fitting in with Jesus, about being conformed to His image. I have seldom heard a question asked in Sunday school or in a small group that was searching and penetrating and which had the potential to be life changing. True questions are not encouraged, on the contrary, it is more important to articulate the “correct answers” and to read the Bible in the image of our traditions, than to actually attempt to touch the hem of His garment and behold the Face of the Lamb.

 

We should not be surprised at this, it is our human condition, our center of gravity – it is a challenge to gain perspective, and it is most certainly a challenge to go against the grain of society and our associations. Perhaps this is particularly true when we are in religious and political environments, environments in which conformity is prized and insisted upon.

 

When we do sew a new piece of cloth on an old garment, or pour new wine into old wineskins, we soon have problems and find our actions quite unappreciated.

 

Ultimately, a pilgrim becomes a pilgrim – at least that is a possibility. What I mean is that the pilgrim may cross a point of no return in which his (or her) identity ceases to be that home county which he has left, and becomes rooted in that heavenly country which draws him with ever increasing desire.

 

The pilgrim realizes that the Jerusalem here on earth is in bondage; whether it is a city in the Middle East, or a flavor of doctrine, doctrinal distinctive, or particular practices – the possibilities are myriad, they all fall aside as the pilgrim beholds the Lamb. The pilgrim learns to live as a faithful citizen of heaven anticipating that blessed hope of eternal transformation (Phil. 3:20 – 21).

 

The city from which we departed appears dimmer and dimmer, indeed, without realizing it we cease to look back, it fades from our minds…as the glorious City of the Father and the Lamb descends from above into our hearts and minds, filling our souls, quickening our spirits, uniting us to the Bridegroom, opening its gates and calling us home – and we are pilgrims no longer.

 

“If they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a City for them” (Hebrews 11:15 - 16).