“Are You A Tourist Or A Pilgrim

“Are You A Tourist Or A Pilgrim?”

Text: Exodus 34:29-35

© C. Edward Bowen

In New York City, just a few blocks from where the World Trade Center towers used to stand, is one of the oldest churches in the United States. It’s an Episcopal church called Trinity Church. And every year more than two million people stop by there to look around at the beautiful interior of the church and to walk through the adjacent historic graveyard. But the pastor of Trinity Church commented once, “I’ve got tourists galore. I want them to become pilgrims. I want them to connect, to know that there is something more.”[1]

Do you get what that pastor meant? Well, what exactly is a tourist? A tourist is someone who decides to take a break for a while from the “real world” to go on a trip somewhere. And on that trip tourists will take in all the sights and say things like, “Wow! Look at that! Isn’t that interesting? That’s really something!” But then when the vacation is over, tourists return back to their “real world” and pretty much pick up with their lives where they left off before their vacation. Even though tourists see and take in all kinds of amazing things on their vacation, when the vacation is over, that trip that they made doesn’t usually have any lasting impact on them. Oh, yes, tourists will have good memories about the things they saw and did. But for the most part, tourists return home pretty much the same people as they were before.

Well, then, what’s the difference between being a tourist and being a pilgrim? The problem, of course, when we hear that word “pilgrim” is that most people automatically think of those men and women who came over on the Mayflower, who wore big black hats and large belt buckles, and who ate Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians. Yes, we call those people Pilgrims. But in a more general sense, a pilgrim is anyone who goes on a journey. Or more specifically, a pilgrim is anyone who goes on a journey for a religious reason. A pilgrim is anyone who goes on a journey expecting to encounter God along the way and, as a result, to become a changed person.

For instance, when our mission trip goes to Washington, D.C., in July we are going to be hosted by a Presbyterian congregation called the Church of the Pilgrims. And it’s called the Church of Pilgrims not because it was founded or attended by the Mayflower Pilgrims – that’s because those Pilgrims lived up in Massachusetts, not in Washington. No, that congregation chose the name the Church of the Pilgrims as a way of reminding their members that as Christians we are all meant to be pilgrims. Throughout the course of our lives, we are all meant to be on a journey, a journey where we should be expecting to meet up with God along the way, and in the process to become changed people.

In a way, that’s what this story that we heard today from the book of Exodus is about. It’s a story that invites us to consider whether we’re really willing to be pilgrims or whether we’re quite content to settle for being tourists. It’s a story that invites us to consider whether we’re willing to let God into our lives and whether we’re willing follow God on a journey to such a degree that we become changed people, or whether we’re content to just occasionally look in God’s direction and say, “Yeah, that’s pretty interesting. Yeah, that’s pretty amazing,” but then eventually to turn away and return to our lives pretty much as they were before.

The book of Exodus, of course, is primarily about the Hebrew people’s exit out of slavery in Egypt. As you probably remember, after Moses led the people out of the pharaoh’s land, they came to a particular mountain called Mount Sinai. And it was there that Moses went up on that mountain to receive the Ten Commandments from God. But Moses was up there with God for quite some time, so many days, in fact, that the people back down below started to wonder if Moses was ever going to return.

And when week after week passed by and still there was no sign of their leader, the people started to get nervous and restless. In essence, they turned from pilgrims into tourists. They basically said, “We’ve had enough of following Moses and this God of his. Who knows where this journey is going to take us? Who knows what kind of future God has in mind for us? Yeah, we’ve seen some pretty interesting things along the way. We’ve seen God part the sea for us, and we’ve seen God make water come out of a rock for us to drink. We’re glad that we got to see those things. But enough is enough. Let’s bring this trip to an end and go back to the way that we were before. Life in Egypt might not have been perfect, but at least it was a life that we’d gotten used to.”

And so the people proceeded to gather together all the gold they had brought with them, and Aaron helped them turn that gold into a golden calf. And they treated that golden calf like a god. It was their way of saying, “We’ve had it with following Moses and his God on this journey to who-knows-where. We’re ready to bring this trip to an end and go back and be like everyone else. Everyone else seems to worship golden idols. So why don’t we just join the crowd and do the same?”

And it was at that moment that Moses finally appeared, walking down from the mountain, carrying two large stone tablets with him that had the Ten Commandments written on them. But when Moses saw what the people were doing, how they had decided to give up on God and go back, in anger he hurled the stone tablets to the ground, causing them to break into a hundred different pieces.

And that’s where the story picks up with the passage that we listened to today from the book of Exodus. With those original stone tablets broken, Moses went back up the mountain to get what you might call a replacement set from God. And Moses was up there with God for forty days and forty nights. But this time the people behaved themselves and waited.

But at the end of those forty days, when Moses finally approached the camp where the Hebrews were staying at the foot of Mount Sinai, the people looked at Moses and couldn’t believe what they saw. As they looked at his face, they could tell that it was Moses, but his skin was glowing – it was giving off a brilliant light. Apparently Moses had spent so much time in God’s presence up on that mountaintop, beholding God’s glory, that some of that glory had been transferred onto him, and it had changed him.

On the one hand, as the Hebrew people looked at Moses, they were amazed at what they saw. They were in awe of the fact that Moses had really been in God’s presence, that Moses had been so very close to God. But on the other hand, as the people looked at Moses, they were terrified by what they saw. They were unnerved to see what kind of changes God had brought about in Moses, and they weren’t the least bit sure they wanted God to bring about those kinds of changes in them.

That’s why Moses ended up deciding to wear a veil over his face. He did that because he realized that while the people wanted to draw near to him and hear what he had to say about God’s commandments for the people, there was a limit to just how much of God’s glory the people wanted to expose themselves to. And so as soon as Moses finished talking to them about God, he brought the veil back down so that they wouldn’t be able to see the light, so that they wouldn’t be able to see the glory that was beaming from his face.

When you think about it, we’re a lot like those ancient Hebrews. On the one hand, we want God to speak to us. We want God to tell us that God loves us and cares about us. But on the other hand, we don’t want God to speak to us. We don’t want God to speak to us because we’re afraid of what God might say. We’re afraid that God might ask us to do things that we might just as soon not do.

In the same sort of way, there’s something inside of us that would love to see God’s glory, to have the light from God’s face shine on us, like happened with Moses. But at the same time, there’s something inside of us that doesn’t want that light shining on us, because we’re afraid that if God’s light shines too brightly on us, then all of a sudden shadows are going to start to appear, those dark things in our lives that we would just as soon that God not know about.

Or there’s a part of us that wants God to be near to us, especially when we’re going through difficult and challenging times. But there’s another part of us that doesn’t want God to be too close, for fear that God might discover those things about us that we try so hard to keep hidden from everyone, including God.

You see, just like those Hebrew people back in the time of Moses, we struggle with the tension of wanting God to be there in our lives and at the same time not wanting God to be there in our lives. And we experience that tension because we know that if we allow God to speak to us, and if we allow God’s light to shine on us, and if we allow God to come close to us, then at some point we’re going to find our lives forever changed. And the problem is, we’re not always entirely sure that we want to change.

When it comes to the Christian faith, are you a tourist or are you a pilgrim? When it comes to God, do you just nod in God’s direction every once in a while and then quickly turn around and go about your life pretty much as it was before? Or when it comes to God, are we willing to walk with God in a lifelong journey of faith, a journey that will eventually cause us to become changed people? Dare to be a pilgrim. Dare to enter into that on-going journey in God’s presence. And even though we might know for sure where that journey might lead us, stick with God, and discover for yourself what it is that God has in mind for you.