Waiting is an act of hope, a way of being present with expectant anticipation of God’s redemptive and immaninent life, always with us and waiting to emerge again and again. – Elizabeth Caldwell (Pause: Spending Lent with the Psalms)
In the fifth week of Lent, Caldwell invites her readers to reflect on the idea of pilgrimage, this ancient practice of moving towards the temple, the sacred and holy destination which frames the hopes and expectations of second temple Judea.
A journey framed, in context of the larger story, by waiting. For the ancient peoples of the second temple era, the temple is juxtaposed against the backdrop of exile, a reality that frames waiting as a longing for the people of God to be restored, and within this anticipated restoration finally mark the arrival of the promised king/kingdom as liberaton for the whole of creation.
As pilgrims then, this waiting is not simply an exercise of personal growth and fulfilmment, but of cosmic need. This reality we presently occupy is reflective of what is not right about our world. Creation itself is enslaved, and this enslavement is the Sin (and Death) that Israel needs to be liberated from. This is the necessary language of exile, otherwise understood as enslavement to the Powers of Sin and Death. The freedom to name death is the crucial point here, which frames the pilgrimage as a movement “in sin and death” towards something other- a new creation reality in which what is wrong about our world is made right. The movement for a pilgrim was about being actively purified from sin and death on the way to the place where God is said to dwell in their midst. it is here, at the temple, that they would then be rewnewed by the promise of transformation.
A new reality breaking in. A reclamation of the whole. The naming of Life in a world defined by Death.
Growing up I always saw the whole Easter season as an uncomfortably sombre affair. So much focus on sin and death. What’s strange about this is, the older I got the more aware I became of a specific critique of Christianity that accused it of ignoring the reality of death in favor of its illusions of religious hope, reward and heaven. Even stranger that what I’ve come to find on this side of my own journey is quite the opposite- it’s the only place where I find Sin and Death actually being taken seriously.
The only place where one is free to truly name Death, and thus become able to name Life.
In Psalm 130, one of the Psalms Caldwell notes would have been memorized and sung on the pilgrimage to the temple, it reads in verse 7,
Israel, wait for the Lord! Because faithful love is with the Lord; because great redemption is with our God. He is the one who will redeem Israel from all its sin
Caldwell notes that the phrase “wait for the Lord” (Hebrew: yachal) is not simply waiting, but hoping. It is the call of the Psalmist to the whole (Israel) to wait and hope. Hence why the pilgrimage is shaped by two things similtaneously- reflection/purification and forward movement towards this hoped for transformation. Reflection on that which strips this world of hope, but still moving forward in the face of this contrary word in expectation of what has been promised in God’s faithfulness. Thus as we journey, our vision of this world begins to be reshaped by an invitation to participate not according to the language of Death, but according to the language of Life. Our view of the world is being reshaped, and thus we are being reshaped by this new vision of the world.
Lent of course brings a new dynamic into this concept of the pilgrimage- Jesus. The Gospel writers depict Jesus as the raised temple which, by way of the Spirit, defeats the Powers of Sin and Death and comes to dwell in the whole. Jesus is the raised cosmic temple (creation) in whom and by whom we participate in the promised new reality having broken in, to borrow from N.T. Wright, to the middle of history. Thus we wait and hope now as new creation people. Lent becomes not simply a necessary reflection on the way reality is, but it becomes an invitation to live out this new reality in the here and now as a “realized” hope. This is the tension of Paul’s already-not yet theology. Lent is the marriage of the journey (the pilgrimage) and the destination (the arrival of the kingdom) expressing itself in the present through the risen Christ. The overlap of the ages making itself know in the practice of the Christian life as the resurrected people of God.
Which, unlike the experience of my young self, while needing the story of exile to name Death, need not be languishing in the sombre realities Easter brings to the surface. Where the Psalmist sings “faithful love is with the Lord” and “great redemption is with our God,” the Easter refrain joins the hopeful expression by answering the declaration “He is the one who WILL redeem Israel from all its sin” with the proclomation “Jesus HAS redeemed Israel from all its sin.” God’s faithful love is now dwelling with us AS the answer to the problem of exile, a word that was made synonymous with Sin and Death in the ancient world. God’s redemption is now realized with and in us. In this hope we journey forwards towards the fullness of time, bringing the redeemed story of Israel forward into this new creation reality as the definite expression of God’s saving work in our present.
The Stories of my Life 