Do You Need a Pilgrimage? | The Gospels | Matthew 4:12–17
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Welcome to Ten Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. In the medieval world, Christians practiced the spiritual discipline of pilgrimage. They would travel to the shrines of nearby saints or even board ships and visit Rome and Jerusalem. Sometimes they did this as an act of penance, sometimes to seek healing, and sometimes just out of a longing for spiritual renewal. Now, crudely understood, we could look at pilgrimage as a cheap form of works righteousness. In other words, someone goes on a physical journey to reap spiritual rewards. And I'm sure that there were some people who became pilgrims for precisely this reason. In fact, the reformer Martin Luther famously described his own pilgrimage to Rome as exactly that.
He said it was an effort to pay for his sins. But then he discovered that's a futile effort.
What is the historical background of medieval Christian pilgrimage?
We humans can add nothing to what Christ did for us on the cross. He paid for our sins fully. But that's not the only way to see a pilgrimage. In fact, there was a far richer, far less transactional understanding of pilgrimage in the ancient world. It's an understanding that makes us modern people feel a little itchy because it doesn't fit with our mechanistic, materialistic view of the universe. This richer view of pilgrimage was rooted in the idea that some places are different, that some places are thin, that in some places the veil between heaven and earth is almost penetrable. And they also understood that the normal doldrum of human life could become an anesthetic, numbing us to ourselves and preventing us from seeing what's happening in our souls.
I've seen this in my own heart and in the lives of many. We become so entrenched and ingrained in our present reality that we stop growing. It's not that we want to stop, but we can't see how to move forward. And the reason why is because we never step out of our ordinary world, our ordinary time. A pilgrimage was a way of doing exactly that, a way of stepping out of ordinary space, ordinary life, ordinary time. To step into God's space, God's time, God's life. It was a way of seeking an encounter with the living God. Jesus in some ways actually modeled this for us. And when he goes on these pilgrimages, Matthew presents it oftentimes as a kind of prophetic pattern and fulfillment. In other words, as Jesus moves through space, through geography itself, the old story of Israel is retold in his movements.
It's re-narrated. It's filled up and it's given a newer, fresher meaning. Places take on newer, fresher meanings. And here's why I say that. Because Jesus could have stayed in Nazareth. He could have just stayed there and healed people and taught. If he had a phone, he could have just posted his videos and podcasts online and stayed put. But Jesus didn't stay put. Because in Matthew's mind, and I think in Jesus' mind, geography isn't just space. There aren't just places. To Jesus' mind, to Matthew's mind, geography has a far richer, far deeper. Texture. Thus, we saw in yesterday's passage Jesus entering into the wilderness to be tested by the devil for forty days. The geography really matters here. I mean, after all, why did he travel over 100 miles on foot when he could have just let the devil tempt him in the foothills of Nazareth?
Well, I think it's because the location mattered, the pilgrimage mattered. The wilderness was the place where God tested Israel, and Israel failed. But Jesus went to be tested in the wilderness to succeed on their behalf. The wilderness was the place where David became a man after God's heart, and Jesus exits the wilderness as a king who's greater than even David. The wilderness was the place where Elijah sought the Lord's voice as a prophet, and Jesus himself leaves the wilderness as the greatest prophet to ever live. The wilderness wasn't just a symbol, it was a thin place, a place for Jesus' soul to be laid bare, a place to find strength from the Lord, a place to be tested and strengthened and prepared for ministry.
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