Luke 9:51-62
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them.56 Then they went on to another village.
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
I would like to dedicate these reflections to my dear friend Karl Pohrt.
The words from Luke today are known as tough teachings of Jesus. 'No you cannot say goodbye or bury your dead. And by the way you won’t have a place to lay your head if you want to follow me.' To make matters worse Jesus chooses to walk through Samaria rather than the safer and welcoming eastern side of Galilee. He chooses to walk through the territory of the ancient enemies of the Jews. And as we heard today he is not welcomed by the villagers. Jesus rebukes James and John when they suggest, “shall we call down fire on them.
We see a shift in Jesus, “when the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem”. He knows where he is going. Maybe the time of miracles is over. In these words today you sense that the crowd of followers might be thinning. Certainly they are challenged. “To follow me you too must turn your face to Jerusalem and you must give every up consolation, every attachment to your former life, your family, every idea of safety. And you must choose the difficult path, that path through Samaria, through the land of your familiar enemies.”
What does it mean to turn our faces to Jerusalem? Let us looking at the act of turning and what Jerusalem means in our lives.
I read these words before I embarked on three long trip to England and Turkey. I was expecting a tranquil spring walk over the rolling South Downs. These are chalk hills running south of London from the ancient city of Winchester to the Seven Sisters, the massive white cliffs at Eastborne on the south coast. My walking partner and I planned a pilgrimage through classic English countryside.
After two days and 30 miles up and down steep hills my feet were in agony, on fire. When I finally unpacked my feet in the B&B there were blisters the size of grapes despite moleskins. I thought I would pass out.
Turning towards my pilgrimage, towards Jerusalem stripped me of my romantic desires for a communion with my home country, England. I communed with my feet. I felt betrayed by the goodness of being. No saving Jesus or God that I could feel. I was alone during that night of crisis, of disappointment and fear. Would my feet get infected, would I loose my toes to gangrene? And what about my walking partner? I was letting him down. I felt angry at God, betrayed both by God and my body. And mostly I felt so very vulnerable. I was far from home, my feet were so messed up that I could no longer feel the ground. It must have been the early hours that I noticed I was sliding into a kind of despair. In this space the view becomes narrow. “To hell with the practice of presence. It is all useless. It didn’t protect me and it doesn't give me what I want".
It was at this moment of fitful sleep that I could feel I was turning away from Jerusalem. “What the hell Jesus, grace you are not saving me, so to I am done with you.” Something awoke in me. A quiet no. “Not going there. Yes I am despairing, yes I am suffering, yes I feel I am failing, yes I am deeply vulnerable, yes I am angry. But I will not walk away from my faith, my practice.” It was as though I was being ruddered back towards Jerusalem. I realized that turning towards Jerusalem means turning towards reality, one breath at a time, on footstep at a time. This is the practice of presence.
So we made our way to Suffolk and stayed with my family. I nursed my feet for a week. What kind of pilgrimage was this? I was mostly stationary with short excursions along the English coastline at Dunich. Salt water and lots of ibuprofin did wonders. But I was still fragile.
So by the time I got onto the plane for Istanbul I thought I was ready to take the next step of this pilgrimage into an ancient culture. I imagined the homeland of Rumi, the birthplace of Constantinople and the daily calls to prayer and most of all the mosque Hagia Sophia. But the pilgrimage took a sharp turn from the very beginning. In the taxi I started coughing. ‘Oh God am I getting sick?’ But when we saw throngs of people wearing masks and scarves we realized it was tear gas. We had landed in the middle of Occupy Gezi Park. Over the next few days the protest spiraled into a mass movement. The police action was violent. We received warnings from the State Department to stay away from demonstrations. This was not the bliss of Rumi or the wisdom of Sophia. This was the atmosphere of uprising, repression, hatred, and the groaning of rebirth. Any sentimental notions of Turkey were out the window. What I wanted was not to be. Turning to Jerusalem was more stripping away.
Jesus knew he was going to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. And most likely he knew the fate awaiting him. He was following in the foot steps of prophets who came before him. So his direction and maybe his destiny were clear. All I knew was that I was gingerly heading from England to Turkey. It seems that turning towards Jerusalem ought to mean, like Jesus, that you know where you are going. That there are no doubts, nothing in the way. Destiny lit up like a kind of runway. But it seemed that for me my destiny was humbling vulnerability. And most importantly it meant not turning away even though presence, grace seemed a million miles away. Presence can never be destroyed by external circumstances, whether it is the despair of wounded feet, or the turmoil of uprising. It means turnings towards what is real and away from sentimentality and away from romantic spiritual fantasies. Walking through Samaria is not for the faint hearted. All is stripped away. All that is left is turning and walking towards Jerusalem. Mostly we feel bereft and lost.
Our desire for spiritual guidance runs deep. I have been getting up before dawn since I returned home. I am been reading a 100 day journal by my former Buddhist lama. A friend dropped it off this book during my absence. The words are penetrating in ways they never did while I was his devotee. The familiar pull to rush over and throw myself at his feet, to show myself in all my specialness, the prodigal daughter coming home and to be seen and welcomed is powerful. But this time it is not about rejecting him or rushing to find him again, but to let pierce these living words. This is not about recreating the personality dance of finding the perfect, super special daddy, but letting the mystery pervade the morning silence, trusting that no seeking or rejecting is needed.
Fifteen years ago after 4 years of intense Tibetan spiritual practice I hit the wall. Alone in my room I heard my own voice-- no booming voice of the Lord-- insisting that I take down the beautiful altar that lay before me. Down came the icons, the mandala covered with rice, the image of Vajrasattva. All that was left was a blank wall and a small statue of a Black Madonna. Turning to Jerusalem then meant taking down a whole life, a whole spiritual path. For three years, I called them my desert years, I meditated, but there was no teacher, no path, no formal practice, no community. There seemed to be no destination, no Jerusalem. And then one day I asked. Two weeks later a book showed up and new life began to surge. So a book arrived in this last week. It is tempting to make it into something. Something really big, a terrific turn towards Jerusalem. It is so easy for the desires of ego, of attachment to become Jerusalem. To become the idea of pilgrimage.
So what are we to do. We are pulled in so many directions. Towards our addictions, to the market place of spiritual paths, to our fantasies, to our unexamined desires.. We want to know the way of Jesus, the true way. If only it were simple and clear. Thomas Merton writes.
"My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I 'think' I am following Your Will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please You
does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this,
You will lead me by the right road---
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore, I will trust You always, though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You are ever with me,
and will never leave me to face my perils alone."
So I come back to the simple practice of sensing into my body. That is all I know. This is my kind of prayer. It is silent, distracted, welcoming, boring and totally necessary. What matters are not the dead ends, or mistakes but remembering what holds all struggle, all dangers. Presence lives whether I feel it or not. Faith is the umbilical cord to this presence.
And as we stumble towards Jerusalem sometimes we walk through the gentle hills along side the Sea of Galilee. The hills drop gently down to the edge of the Sea and all is well. And sometimes we must go through Samaria these lands of familiar rejection. My Samaria was physical suffering, uncertainty, danger and the temptation to loose faith. And we will be rebuked for whining about no place to rest, no place to put our weary heads. And we are told we can't go home to pack a suitcase with the right gear, and say farewell to our loved ones. No comfort, simply the harsh reality of pilgrimage. And along the way we are told to love each other as we love ourselves. To be kind in the face of rejection and to turn towards a destiny that we don't know. This is tough spiritual practice and the tough teaching of Jesus.
Pilgrimage, this life of spirit is about dying before we die. Sometimes we are worn down layer by layer and sometimes grace tears into us like a jack hammer.
Hafiz writes:
Tired of Speaking Sweetly
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
-If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
-Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
-That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
-Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
-God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
-The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
-Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
-But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
This pilgrimage to reality shook a lot of nonsense out of me.
Yesterday a second toenail fell off painlessly. This was a vivid reminder of the walking pilgrimage. It is weird to hold a whole toenail in your hand that used to be such a part of your body. A small dead shell of former protection exposing skin that has never felt air before. The skin is pink, like primordial skin, like the skin before we are born. This is like the dying ego shell that was once such a cherished part of us. It is torn away, falls away, dissolves away, revealing the pink, fleshy receptivity of the soul. Open and vulnerable we open to the mystery of Jerusalem, to death and rebirth.
The creeping daylight of dawn and the symphony of birds draws me into quiet contemplation and knowing that I am being opened. The joy of a heart yes has returned.
May we remember to turn our face to Jerusalem, may our turning be merciful, may we be bear being lost, for we are never abandoned and never forgotten. Amen
In my recent reflections (my previous post) I ended with my sensing an opening to the 'yes' of the heart. This 'yes' is a deep and growingly unconditional love of the truth, as difficult as that may be. But the fruits are so sweet, so tender, so empty and ultimately so mysterious. In this journey of inner transformation it is possible that the grist of suffering becomes the fuel-- literally-- for an alchemical combustion. In the heating up, in the friction of the shearing away, the story line of suffering, the self pity of the victimhood, the drama of it all, is burned away. And when the ash blows away, space begins to breathe and wake up. The heart begins its quiet song of 'yes', 'yes', 'yes'. I have noticed this subtle arching back in my chest as though my heart wants to offer herself up in surrender, in sacrifice to this burning fire of love, masquerading as suffering. 