The Pilgrim | A Sermon on Trusting God and Journeying On
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (C), October 23, 2022.
Luke 18:9-14
I began my spiritual journey in a fervor of prayer, asking God to give me the companions I needed for the road. The voice in my heart was gentle but firm. “Name your needs.”
Ah, but that was easy. There were three whose company represented my constant longing. “Wisdom! Compassion! Holiness!” I cried.
So begins New Zealand author Joy Cowley’s profound short story, “The Pilgrim” [1]. It continues:
I wasted no time but set out, delighted that I had found favour in God’s eyes . . . but my companions did not appear. I looked for them along the road. I called their names in vain. Indeed, I was so concerned with finding them, that at first, I didn’t notice the three ruffians who followed me at a short distance. They were travellers of the worst kind, ragged, shifty-eyed, probably thieves and possibly murderers. I tried to outpace them, but they walked faster.
Eventually, the pilgrim, growing increasingly frustrated with her unwanted, undesirable companions, demands to know who they are.
The first, a man with bandaged hands, reveals his name: Error.
The second, a woman with matted hair and a crooked back: Pain.
The third and oldest, a man with no hair and thick glasses: Doubt.
Error. Pain. Doubt.
The pilgrim is horrified, until she has an epiphany. Certainly, these three had been sent to test her –a pilgrim walking the way of Christ such as herself. Christ who also met evil in the wilderness. Why shouldn’t she too expect the same kind of trials?
And Scripture proclaims: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt (Luke 18:9).
Who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.
The pilgrim, setting out on what she believes is a righteous venture, imagines herself in the place of Christ, trusting herself to know what she needs, and so she looks back and down upon her companions with contempt.
There is a certain self-righteousness. A certain lack of humility about it all. This becomes even clearer as the Pilgrim makes her way and Error, Pain, and Doubt continue to shuffle along behind her, growing closer with each passing day.
“The fact that I was continually aware of their presence interfered greatly with my prayer and songs of praise,” the pilgrim complains.
And as the story goes, one night, in deepest despair, the pilgrim called out in prayer, “Help me to get rid of them!” And God responds, “Why don’t you listen to what they have to say?”
“You can’t be serious!” the pilgrim cries.
And you can almost see the Pharisee in today’s Gospel nodding along conspiratorially. How frustrating it is to seek wisdom, compassion, and holiness amid such unwelcome distractions.
‘God, I thank you [the Pharisee prays] that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income’ (Luke 18:11).
And, it goes without saying, that our friend the Pharisee goes to temple. is where he thanks God for his goodness in the face of such an unwanted, undesirable companion: the tax collector.
And what we noticed in the pilgrim is obvious in the Pharisee: self-righteousness and a lack of humility. An inability to see in the other, some thing, not to mention someone, of value.
The Pharisee takes one look and knows the tax collector is all wrong. A fate to be avoided at all costs. You can imagine that he steers clear, avoiding the very air that the man breathes. His eyes never making contact. His lips curled in disgust. His steps hurried. Shrouded in a righteous contempt.
The parable of the pharisee and the tax collector appears to be a contrast in two characters. As one commentator puts it:
The Pharisee was religiously righteous, the tax man extorted revenue for the Roman oppressors. The religious expert was smug and confident, the outsider was anxious and insecure. The saint paraded to the temple, the sinner ‘stood at a distance’ . . . the righteous man stood up, the sinful man looked down. . . The Pharisee puffed out his chest in pride; the publican beat his breast in sorrow [2].
I don’t know that I need to make this any clearer for you than that. The punch line is pretty obvious for any who know Jesus –even a little bit.
For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted (Luke 18:14).
The Gospel of Luke is full of this message. So, we can look with some confidence at the pilgrim and at the pharisee and simply say, in the words of my people, “Bless their hearts.”
God, I thank you that we are not like them. Am I right?
Of course, I’m not. We are them. You know this. I know this. We are them. We are the pilgrim. And we are the pharisee.
We walk through life justifying ourselves, trusting in ourselves, judging ourselves up and against everyone and everything. This parable holds up a mirror, bringing us face to face with who we are up and against who God has created us to be.
It is not about condemning us as a pharisee or begging us to be the tax collector –it is about situating us between the two and asking us to listen to what they have to say. They too are companions on our journey.
And to listen is to acknowledge that we know not what we do. That we cannot trust in ourselves, justify ourselves, live only for ourselves. That we need. And want. And lack.
This is vulnerable work, to let all the sources of our worldly confidence fall away. To acknowledge that our GPAs, resumes, jobs, income, zip code, families, health, safety, beauty, youth, good works, and even right living will not inoculate us from error, pain, or doubt. They will not grant us life everlasting. Even religion can’t do that, my friends. Only faith. Only God.
The Pharisee and the tax collector may be polar opposites in theory, but they are not in fact. Because they are both lost, both broken, both in need of God and in need of one another. Both seekers, but somehow stuck.
Our pilgrim is much the same. Stuck, until she begins to speak with her companions. First with Doubt, who notices her pilgrimage is uphill even before she does.
“Getting steeper,” said Doubt, “but the views are getting better.”
Pain comes next.
“No one wants to walk with me,” she notes. “. . . There was only one who welcomed Pain with wide open arms and even he had some misgivings.
She goes on. “Pain, you know, is part of the wholeness of God.”
This makes the pilgrim angry.
“What do you know about God?”
Pain drew her hair back to look directly at the pilgrim. “Not as much as God knows about me,” she said.
Finally, it was Error’s turn.
“I might be unpopular,” he says, “but . . . if you haven’t known error how can you choose good? But . . . most people don’t see it that way . . . they want to see themselves as good. . . . Let me tell you something. You think there are evil people in this world? The evil you see out there is done by people convinced of the goodness of their motives. They never learn, you see. They pretend they don’t know me.”
“That’s because they see you as the enemy,” the pilgrim replies.
Error shrugs. “I’m the enemy of pride. I’m the friend of spiritual growth. If pilgrims value my guidance, I show them how to find the compass needle that points to true North.”
The pilgrim journeys on and begins to speak more and more with Error, Pain, and Doubt. Better yet, she begins to listen. And to learn. And to realize that these companions were not as miserable as she once thought. In fact, they were not even who she once thought them to be.
“Haven’t you worked it out yet?” asked Doubt.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Worked what out?”
“Our other names.” Doubt put his hand on Pain’s shoulder. “This is Compassion,” he said. Then he held up Error’s scarred hand. “His other name is Wisdom.” I looked at Pain and Error and felt their truth in my heart. “And you?” I asked Doubt.
He chuckled. “Yep. I’m Holiness.”
Friends, we are the pharisee and we are the tax collector. We are lost, broken, and in need of God and each other. And we are also called to be the pilgrim –who does not remain stuck in place by own our pride or self-reliance but pushes on, in ignorance sometimes, sure. Self-assured sometimes, certainly. And yet always in process.
Flannery O’Connor puts it best:
Once the journey is begun . . . you must continually turn inward toward God and away from your own egocentricity. You have to see the selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it. I measure God by everything I am not. I begin with that.
And here it is: the Good News.
We cannot run from Error. Pain. Or Doubt. But we are not meant to –instead we are to rely in all things and at all times in a God who does not need proof of our goodness or our worth. Because He is a God for us –sinners and self-righteous saints alike. To free ourselves from our tiring attempts to prove ourselves, to become unstuck so that we might journey on, we need only make our song that of the tax collector, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Alleluia. Amen.
*Image is of a woodcut for "Die Bibel in Bildern", 1860. Reproduction of a painting that is in the public domain because of its age. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schnorr_von_Carolsfeld_Bibel_in_Bildern_1860_200.png
[1] https://www.joycowley.com/The%20Pilgrim.pdf
[2] Dan Clendenin, “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector,” Journey with Jesus, 16 October 2016, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1148-the-pharisee-and-the-tax-collector.
