Take Hold of Life

If one asks a participant why, after a long pause there will come some partial phrases, many of which do not make particular sense to the questioner, or perhaps even to the speaker.

The attraction of the Camino is very difficult to put into words, partially because the participants are starting at very different points in a faith-journey, or perhaps a no-faith journey.

It is easy enough to describe some of the kinds of things that happen, and the sights one sees, but why this in important is much more difficult.

As with any human institution, there is greed, there is evil, there are many things less than perfect on the Camino, but the intent that is lived out is quite different than that.

For a brief time, and in fleeting ways, there is a hint of a different kind of human community than in our ordinary daily lives.

“...do good, be rich in good works, generous, ready to share....a good foundation....” is what Paul sees.

And with regularity, that is what happens on the Camino.

I'll give just a few samples:

My walking companion sat down and took off his shoe to examine where his bunion had turned into a nasty blister.

Within a minute, the next person on the path stopped, unpacked her medical kit and tended to the problem.

She was a South Korean nurse, traveling alone, with not a word of English, but she had the skill, the opportunity, the supplies, and the smile to do what was needed. And then she was off and we never saw her again.

A senior woman trying to traverse a swampy area lost her balance with her heavy pack and fell backward into a thorny mess and literally could not move.

Two men came along a short time later, and themselves became quite muddy and scratched as they managed to extricate her from the thorns.

A Scotsman on his second Camino just had to talk about things that happened in the past and although it was not quite a private setting, his conversation with me came close to being confession about the wrong in which he participated, and his relief at what a different sense of joyful community he was experiencing as we traveled.

A man from Chicago had forgotten that that particular day was his wife's birthday, and she, walking with him, was not going to let him escape unscathed.

So he declared that night to be a party, invited 10 of us to join the two of them at table, and we had a rousing good time, complete with toasts for the lady, and appropriate speeches from walking companions.

He not only rescued himself from the doghouse, he cemented friendships and community around the table.

It had been a long and tiring day as we walked steadily uphill for 20+ kilometers in a withering rain that threatened to turn to sleet.

We stumbled into the auberge, tried to get dry, tended to our feet, and wondered what the night would be like in this harsh setting.

The owners made a grand paella, more than enough for us all, as two German women practiced their halting English on me and I got a few sentences of German strung together from classes 40 years ago.

A Swiss woman with both German and English helped with translation for us all, amid much laughter at our language stumbles.

And then one of the residents, looking a little seedy, went and got out a guitar, someone else got castanets, and third had a hand drum, and soon the room was filled with South American folk music to which the locals knew the refrains and sang lustily, and added a teasing dance.

The rain fell, the wind blew, but what a fine time we had inside that auberge high in the mountains.

As we struggled up a 4,000 foot slope, the rain cleared and we could look around at incredible beauty with entire mountainsides covered in magenta heather, and below that lush green pastures for dairy and beef cattle.

I have tried to hold onto those and many other sights with photographs of flowers wild and domestic, of mountains and valleys, of the gorgeous excesses of ecclesiastical art in churches and museums, and of pilgrims greeting one another in the square in front of the cathedral at journey's end.

Oh there were hard things; wind and rain, and sleet, and blisters, personal animosities, and wondering whether we could continue, lack of time for everything that could have been explored, and so on... but those troubles were kept in check by the kind of events which I have been describing.

For that brief time and in those special ways, we were living in a different way.

It was a hint, a sampling, just a bit of the caring, helpful, companionable, celebrating community that will be present in the completed kingdom of God.

Not everyone would be willing to acknowledge that reality, but those who do will keep working on the rest of the folks in hopes that they finally will catch on.

There is a tremendous yearning for us to experience that feeling and that knowledge again and again.

I know that I have been very privileged to be able to go there, now not just once but several times.

I have a daughter, son in law and grandson who give me a good reason to return to Spain, and a wife who encourages me to explore.

But even for those of us who do not yet or may never have such an opportunity, we have others close at hand.

--A three-year old who stops dead in his tracks to watch an ant crossing the sidewalk.

--A rainbow that appears in the sky over the sewage plant.

--The amber waves of grain we see in our mind's eye as we sing a dear American song.

An unending list could be extended.

But much more even than these is the event for which we gather in these moments.

It is not just natural beauty and not just human community that we celebrate, but the presence of the Lord of beauty and community.

The sharing of the bread with the promise This is my Body is the now and not yet of God's kingdom.

It is the reality and the anticipation of the way things will finally be,

when the stewardship of places and things and people is complete,

when we finally and fully take hold of life that really is life.

And that is true joy for us all, now and forever. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.