The Song of a Pilgrim

Text: I Kings 8:46-51, Psalm 84

Have you ever been homesick? I mean really homesick? I don’t mean just missing someone you are away from, but the kind of homesick that so overwhelms you that you can’t do anything but think about home, and tears flow down your cheeks and you can’t stop them. You can’t eat or sleep and you ache inside and it won’t go away, and you think this is the worst pain you have ever felt, and no one else has ever felt what you’re feeling. That kind of homesick.
In my own experience I had never been homesick. I always loved going too much. It was exciting to me to see new places and meet new people. For me, that was the greatest of all adventures. My Dad was a U. S. Engineer during the war and we went from place to place. Oh, I never liked leaving friends behind, but that was always outweighed by the joy of thinking about the new adventure that was just around the corner.
My biggest dream while I was growing up was to become a foreign correspondent and travel the world over. "Far Away Places with Strange Sounding Names" was my theme song. I remember the words to this day:
Far away places with strange sounding names
Far away over the sea
Those far away places with strange sounding names
Are calling, calling me
Going to China or maybe Siam
I want to see for myself
Those far away places I've been reading about
In a book that I took from the shelf
I start getting restless whenever I hear
The whistles of a train
I pray for the day I can get under way
And look for those castles in Spain
Oh they call me a dreamer
Well maybe I am
But I know that I'm burning to see
Those far away places with strange sounding names
Calling, calling me
And besides, home was always "back there" and I could go home anytime I wanted. And then came "Hugo."
I was living in Atlanta going to school when Hugo hit. I was having the time of my life. I had not traveled the world over like I had dreamed, but in Atlanta the world came to me. What an adventure I was having. People from all over the world had converged there, and through them, every day was filled with new things to learn, new things to see, new things to understand. My mind was so stimulated that I think I floated around on Cloud Nine all the time. Oh, I missed my home and my family, but I was not homesick.
But that night of September the 21st, my world changed. All night long I walked the floor of my little apartment and watched through the long hours Hugo’s fierce winds and rain pound my home. All night long I heard the bell that stood in my son’s backyard tolling the death and destruction of what was, and what would be no more.
I saw the destruction of the Low Country for the first time from the air as the plane on which I was flying prepared to land. From that vantagepoint, our beloved trees appeared as tooth picks or matches someone had just dumped out on the floor. They lay this way and that, thousands of them. And after we landed and my husband took me about to see the remains of Hugo’s trail close up, we entered familiar places and neighborhoods and I did not know where I was.
I returned to Atlanta and to school, but I did not want to be there. I longed for home. For the first time in my life, I knew what real homesickness was. Home and family was all I could think about, it was all I longed for, it was all I ached for. And the tears would not stop flowing. I wept night and day. I wept tears of mourning for what we had all lost, tears of grief for what my family was suffering, and tears of guilt for not being there.
And so, my soul yearning, indeed fainting for home, I went about the tasks of attending lectures and writing papers and reading assignments like an empty shell of a person.
Today’s psalm expresses this kind of longing for home. We do not know the time and circumstances under which it was written. Some say it was composed during the time of David’s flight and exile from Jerusalem on account of Absalom’s rebellion. For it voices the language of a person who is sighing after the courts of God, but is, for some reason, barred from approaching them. David’s experience might very well have brought forth such an outpouring.
David mourned in those days, not only because of the deep mortification he felt at being driven from his throne, but also, because of his exile, he could not come before the Lord, as in times past. He therefore envied the very sparrow and the swallow that could take up a happy abode beneath the altars which his soul so longed to approach.
And doubtless, there was another feeling, which pressed upon him—and that is, that his own sin is what had driven him into exile. Thus, David felt not only the sorrow of not being able to approach God’s sanctuary, but this suffering was deeply increased by the guilt and shame that he had brought upon his own head.
Yes—this psalm might well have been written by David at such a time as was this.
Others say this psalm was composed during the time of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon. These exiles also longed for home and the courts of the Lord, but they were captives and could not return to the familiar places they loved. In exile, they remembered with great sorrow the pilgrim feasts when they went up from all over their land to worship at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. Their mourning too was deeply increased by the knowledge that their own sin had driven them away from their land.
By the rivers of Babylon
There we sat down and there we wept
When we remembered Zion—
How can we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land?
This they would cry.
It really doesn’t matter at what time or under what circumstances this psalm was written—it speaks for all of us who have ever experienced the depth of such a longing. The unidentified pilgrim in the psalm who longs to be in the presence of God could be any one of us, or all of us.
Spiritual longing is very much a part of the human experience. People everywhere have a deep hunger for God. St. Augustine described it as a heart that can find no rest, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of it as an inner distress—I hear my own soul tremble and heave, he said.
To appease their spiritual yearnings, many seekers turn to book publishers for relief. More "how-to" books, however, will never provide the kind of balm needed to soothe the pain of spiritual longing. As Psalm 84 tells us, such longing can only be satisfied in one place.
This unidentified pilgrim knows that all-human satisfaction and fulfillment lies in nearness to God. He considers how "blessed" are those—who dwell in the house of God—from the priests to the lowly birds. The poor, the powerless, and the lonely who find a home, as do the sparrows, "near God’s altars," will "sing" in the presence of the LORD.
Place and Presence also have an important role in the Christian tradition as they did for Israel. However, for Christians the yearning for God’s presence is not centered in a holy place, like the temple in Jerusalem, but in a holy "person"—the person in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell (Col. 1:19). This Jesus of Nazareth, who declared to us the promises of God, now comes to us as the risen Christ. And those who, like the pilgrim, "long" for the presence of God will find peace and joy in Him.
To the pilgrim nothing is more desirable than to be in the presence of God. God’s presence is "life" to the believer. This presence is now with us in spirit, but one day we will behold the face of the LORD (Rev. 22:4). In that day the LORD will guide us to springs of the water of life and will wipe away every tear (Rev. 7:17), and there will be no more longing, for we, like the pilgrims to Zion, will finally be home.
Amen.