On Our Pilgrim Way
The Christian life, pastors and their families, and remembering while wending
In the last week, we’ve seen the scope of Christian life at church, and we see so much for which to give thanks.
The baptism of a beautiful baby girl on Sunday, a week ago. Giving thanks and receiving Christ in His sacrament on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. A young lady and young man we know being united in Christ, their wedding taking place at his home church in Iowa on Saturday. And the funeral of a pious, loving lady in our congregation on Saturday morning. Then again receiving Christ on the last Sunday of the church year yesterday, looking forward to eternity and Christ’s second coming.
These priceless moments in Christian life—baptism, marriage, funeral—are some of the few times the church recognizes Christ’s work toward specific individuals. Born with nothing, like baby Isabella, we receive Christ’s name and His work through water and the Word. From that moment, our lives are thus meant for pilgrimage, a deliberate Way toward our specific, heavenly end. For some of us, God will grant us marriage, like Rebekah and Aaron, giving us a wife or husband to walk with us through the days He provides for us. Regardless, no matter how long our earthly time lasts, Christ promises to be with us always—even, like Carol, through death.
Pilgrims are marked by purpose and steadfastness.
Anthony Esolen wrote about the word “Pilgrim” last Friday. “The Latin peregrinus means ‘somebody who wanders across the fields,’ and was adopted in the Middle Ages to refer to one who made the arduous trip overland—and finally over the Pyrenees—to the shrine of St. James at Compostela, in Galicia.” While we modern Christians are not necessarily making specific geographic journeys, the meaning of pilgrim still applies to us. For “[such] journeys are of the essence of Christian piety… [The] call of the pilgrim is older than the Middle Ages, older even than the New Testament. In a way, it is as old as creation, when the Word went forth from the Father, not to return in vain.”
Esolen refers to Adam and Eve as the original pilgrims. “It begins, certainly, with our first parents. The Lord expelled the first sinners from the garden, when, as Milton says, ‘The world was all before them, where to choose/ Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.’”
Enoch, Noah, Moses, Abraham, and so many others followed the same path. On the move, often straying out of their own folly, brought back to the one true God who never strays.
We pilgrims are the same. Living in our wildernesses, trying to remember why we are here. Time and experience, joys and suffering change us. Alas and also God be praised, things don’t stay the same. More Esolen:
The Christian faith is a faith on the move, secure in the kingdom of God that is already among us, but awaiting the kingdom to come in its fullness. We know that our homes are not here; we are all like Abraham, our father in faith, strangers in a strange land.
Yet it is liberating, that knowledge that no farmland however rich, no hills however green, no city however just can claim our final allegiance as our home. It frees us to forgive the stumps and stones, the abandoned machines, the burnt-out tenements, the buckled roads, the commissioners on the take, the mosquitoes from the marsh, the swelter in August and the frozen mud in February.
It is easier, in many ways, to leave our hands open to that which is not ultimately ours, to that which is precisely temporal. The cloaks, like Frodo’s and Sam’s, which are meant for wear on specific, arduous journeys. The covered wagon and cooking fires, like those of the Ingalls family, meant to sustain but not to keep bodies indefinitely. Yet we can also be thankful and, when God deems it right, to make homes pointed toward eternity.
Esolen writes that
We can be stable, steadfast—planted in one place. So were the monks who lived under Benedict’s rule. Because they were pilgrims, they knew that no one place here could satisfy the heart. So with a free conscience they took a vow of stability, and devoted their earthly attentions to one place, praying there, and clearing woods, draining swamps, tilling fields, and draping the hills with the vine.
With the same spirit of longing for home, and a similar care for their less than perfect new place of sojourning in a cold and harsh land, the Pilgrim Fathers stayed close to where they built their first village. Such a pilgrim is a patriot in the most perfect sense. He loves his land, and devotes himself to it, because it is a shadow of the patria he truly loves, and towards which he is always walking. The grace of the Father calms our hearts, and spurs us on, as the Father himself is ever in act, and ever at rest.
Beyond the memorable moments of church rites, we continue to receive Christ through His Word and Sacrament on other days, usually Sundays. And who is there for us in those times, as well as in baptisms, weddings, and funerals? A pastor, of course.
October was Pastor Appreciation Month, but any time is a good time to support your pastor.
Such a statement feels self-serving, since I’m married to one. But I mean it mostly self-referentially, mostly because Christ has blessed me with pastors through my entire life. Pastor Kirst, who came to hospital and gave my twin sister and I emergency baptisms the day after we were born prematurely. Pastor Bentrup, a mission pastor in eastern Kentucky who travelled long distances to preach and teach to a few Lutherans in Baptist county. Pastor Kloha, who lovingly and joyfully brought us Jesus, even as he sometimes preached and taught through tears (and it was a blessing to cry with him, too). Pastor Davidson, who confirmed me, married me and Jon, answered numerous random nighttime calls about theology, and still teases me in the few times I see him now. “Never let anyone tell you your baptism isn’t good enough,” I remember him saying in Bible class. I haven’t and won’t, Pastor.
There are so many others, more than I could possibly name, and some whose names I don’t remember but who gave me pastoral counsel and care when I desperately needed it.
And these pastors’ wives and their families were blessings, too. Lou, who was steadfast and caring. Nancy, who was generous with her time and table, treating us like we were her kids when we’d come over to hang out with Pastor and the Kloha girls. Luann, who gave so much good advice to me in high school and college and enfolded our family into hers many times. With extended family far away, often pastors and their families truly became our family, having us over on holidays when it would otherwise have been just us.
Likewise, the gifts congregations can give their pastors and families can sometimes be measured in physical gifts, often amazing ones, but their gifts extend far beyond those. Laura Henry, who is the wife of Pastor John Henry in rural Minnesota, wrote eloquently about this recently.
I haven’t seen the bottom of my deep freezer since we moved into the country parsonage almost four years ago now. Our farming members keep us well stocked on local raised pork, beef, chicken, fish they’ve caught, veggies they’ve raised, etc.
We’ve had butternut squash, sweet corn and flats of tomatoes and pumpkins and other veggies show up on our door or the front seat of the car.
Sometimes I look around my table in awe of how much of our daily bread really came directly from God’s people in our congregation. [This is truly] humbling and a great blessing.”
This is for real! We have been given so much meat—beef, antelope, elk, bison—here in Wyoming, not to mention the zucchini and tomatoes and other garden goodness people have shared. Pantry showers and meal trains, countless full and delicious meals, plus breakfasts and desserts (Lutherans are so good at this!). And so many other gifts, too! Gift cards, surprise tickets to special events or concerts, flowers and wine (that’s been for me). And so many other items. A family tree wall with frames, a patio swing, an enormous camping tent. Cornhole boards. Tools. Even clothing and shoes. The variety and sheer enormity of the abundant giving has been truly overwhelming.
As Laura pointed out, “not all the blessings are so tangible, monetary or edible.” Church leadership learning with and supporting the pastor, particularly in hard situations. Members who care for our children by coming over and staying with them, providing meals and fun and stability for them. Men who fish and hunt with their pastor and help him process meat; who help with our home improvement projects, from remodeling basements to porches; who step in and clean and shuffle furniture when flooding happens. People who have given us rides, loaned us vehicles in a pinch, who have helped us move. Their work and their hands have blessed us immeasurably.
And sometimes such acts seem small but are very poignant. Laura notes the gifts in “[a] simple hello, an invitation, a warm smile or words of kindness and encouragement, gentle understanding that we all have human limitations and cannot ‘do it all.’” Handwritten notes. Texts and calls. Hugs in the Fellowship Hall. Hand clasps in the Narthex. Eye contact, a few words, and human touch can provide for us in ways we can’t articulate.
It's true, as Laura says, that ‘[there] is a lot of heartbreak involved in ministry. First leaving family and “home,” and then leaving congregations and people you love so deeply when God calls you elsewhere.” One of the greatest challenges in the life of a pastor’s family is “following when you are sent and not knowing what lies ahead.”
And here all pilgrims can relate with Laura.
“How do you lay down roots when God might send you somewhere else at any moment? It can be a very hard and lonely way to live.”
Amid the loneliness and distance from parents and siblings and other family, pastors and their wives and children are so incredibly blessed by our church families, in ways I’ve mentioned above and in ways I haven’t considered or imagined. For God provides for all of us, not only in His richest gifts, but through each other.
Personally, my life’s pilgrimage has been incredibly enriched by church families. Since my family growing up was transient, moving every several years until I was twelve, I felt prepared—as much as an inexperienced young woman can be prepared—for an uncertain life with my husband as a pastor. We didn’t know where he would end up after seminary or for how long, or where he might be called after that. But pastors as well as congregations in my youth, as I mentioned above, showed my non-native family great welcome and generosity. I assumed that all churches were like this. I was wrong, and that lesson proved hard and lonely. But there have always, always been loving church members who remembered us at Thanksgiving and invited us into their families to share a feast, who had also known or at least understood being pilgrims and not having a long-known home in a particular place.
Like Laura, I’ve also heard from the pious pastors I know that “the thing they appreciate the most is seeing their members in church pews, receiving God’s gifts.” Here is a comforting truth for all believing Christians: we are all pilgrims together. Pastors and parishioners, sinners and saints. Showered in abundance and the great riches of Christ, no matter where we were born or where we have lived. And being brought together, in joy and in sorrow, in reception and thankfulness, blesses us on our pilgrimages. From baptism until our deaths, or until Christ comes again, we all go on, knowing our places here will someday pass away. All the time, He holds on to us, providing us with faith and defending us when life ebbs, as “from exile home we are wending” (LSB #768, verse one).