“Expanding the topsy-turvy kingdom movement”

Posted by David Ward on 07/07/2010
Posted in: Books/Articles, Pilgrimage, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
More of Charles Foster’s theology of pilgrimage:

5. When Yahweh became a man, he was a homeless vagrant. He walked though Palestine proclaiming that a mysterious kingdom had arrived. That was and is the gospel. He called people to follow him, and that meant walking. The kingdom that sprung up around his dusty feet was weird: it was a place in which the first were last and the last were first. This Yahweh-man, partly because he was an itinerant tramp and partly because that’s the way the kingdom always works, particularly fascinated the people on the edge of things: the underdogs, the despised. He wasn’t a big hit with the urban establishment.

6. Being a Christian (a word too contaminated by millennia of hypocrisy, violence, and downright error to be safe) means following the Yahweh-man and expanding the topsy-turvy kingdom movement (significant word, that).

Charles Foster, “The Sacred Journey”, p XV

My thoughts:


Kingdom movement; something grips me about the idea that being a follower of Jesus actually implies movement – so if we find ourselves, our churches, our Christian communities feeling static and stuck, maybe the problem is that we’ve ceased to be a movement, we’ve ceased to move. Jesus has purposefully wandered off somewhere else, but we’ve been too busy with ourselves, our organisational structures, our comfort…to realise that’s what has happened. The further away Jesus gets, the more we have to rely on the past, our own solutions and strategies, our own clever ideas, our networks, our circle of influence to get things done.

And worse still, we lose sight of the underdogs, the despised and the people on the edge. In short, we have become part of the urban establishment, and before long will start persecuting those who are still trying to move on in step with the spirit of Jesus, and we will cease to be good news people.

And I know from my own experience, personal and second-hand, that it happens all so deceptively slowly that it’s often happened before we are aware of it, and by then, it’s to late.

Fortunately, that’s often the time that Jesus wanders back into your life, community, church and says, “Follow me” as if you never did before and never stopped when you did.

God loves wanderers

Posted by David Ward on 02/07/2010
Posted in: Books/Articles, Pilgrimage, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

4. Yahweh’s preference for the nomads is understandable. Yahweh, whenever and in whatever guise he appeared, was a traveller. There are things about the nomad’s life that embody Yahweh’s values and character: life on the edges; indiscriminate and costly hospitality; solidarity with the marginalised (most of the nomad’s time is spent outside main centres and in the company of peripheral people); intimate relationships with humans and the environment; a new view at every step; the loosest possible hold on possessions. And although many nomadic societies are hierarchical, there’s an inevitable democracy among travellers. When everyone walks, no one’s king and everyone’s king. But let’s not get to romantic about the margin-people. They still need salvation. They’re just likely to find it easier to grasp than centre-people do. It’s notoriously hard for poor little rich boys to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Charles Foster, The Sacred Journey, p XIV

My thoughts:
A nomad/pilgrim isn’t necessarily marginalised or poor, but it’s true that they will often be found in the presence of the poor and the marginalised. Whether or not they have any chance of really identifying is questionable. When you are sleeping rough because you choose to, rather than because you must, when your money belt holds currency and cards, when you have the means to eat, drink and find shelter your solidarity is questionable. However, I guess the pilgrim may choose, for a while,  to leave such securities behind and truly learn how to be content with very little or to freely share all that they have with those in need.

And maybe, just maybe, leaving those things behind will make it more possible to hear the voice of God and to begin to exhibit the values and characteristics Foster writes about.

“Not all who wander are lost” – pondering a theology of pilgrimage

Posted by David Ward on 30/06/2010
Posted in: Books/Articles, Pilgrimage, Theology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Charles Foster writes:
“I have tried to articulate a theology of pilgrimage. Some will be hurt and offended by it, and I’m sorry about that. It goes roughly like this:

  1. Travelling is fundamental to the definition and the psyche of human beings. We can suppress the desire to move, but if we do, nasty things happen to our heads, our societies, our souls and our coronary arteries.
  2. Since earliest times there has been a bitter battle between settlers and nomads, portrayed, of course, in the story of Cain and Abel. Historically, Cain seems to have got the upper hand.
  3. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Yahweh is loudly and unequivocally on the side of the nomads. He was a pilgrim God, travelling in a box slung over the shoulders of refugees and worshipped in a tent.”

“The Sacred Journey”, p XIII-XIV

My thoughts:
So you could say that pilgrimage is: fundamental(…and beneficial) – a basic part of who we are and good for us, confrontational – settlers and nomads will always see things differently, and incarnational – a reflection of something of God’s character in us.