Sunday, July 15, 2012

Walk up the Beach

The crunch of the stones on St. Columba's beach is a sound that will stay with me forever.  Under foot the rubbing together of the stones sounds like the crunch of icy snow, only louder and more connected to the earth.  The sound of each foot step radiates from one ocean rounded stone to the next as they clack together to settle under the pressure of the pilgrim's step.  The crunch sound walking down to the ocean sounds different than the crunch sound walking back up the beach. Perhaps that is because the Iona Pilgrims walking back up the beach are different as well.

One day within the ten days of our pilgrimage to Iona, that small island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland and home of spiritual heart of the Iona community, one day is a pilgrimage around the island.  The middle of seven mile hike is on St. Columba's beach, the place he is reported to have landed on his missionary journey to carry Christianity from Ireland to Scotland.  To land in a new place, one must first leave an old place behind.  So pilgrims on the day of hiking, in the middle of their journey around the island are invited to pick up a stone from the beach that represents something we want to leave behind.  Then, each pilgrim holding her or his chosen stone ranging anywhere from the size of a walnut to the size of a football, hurdle the stone away into the sea. Like Columba, on that beach we cast away from an old place in order to land in a different place.  We are different when we walk up the beach to resume our pilgrimage.

We are different because we already believe we can be different through a life in Christ. As the letter to the Ephesians tells us this morning,  "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love." (1:3).  Our transformation begins for us, from the beginning of the world.  Our lives are not a sum of what is past but a promise to always move forward.  Our relationship with God is not one full of holes but full of love that God from the beginning intends for us. The rock into the ocean is swallowed up into the infinite expanse of God's love for us.

This letter to the Ephesian through the centuries has been used to justify Christian triumphalism. That believers in Christ are literally chosen in the sense of being singled out by God, picked as the favorite ones to live the holy and blameless life.  In this interpretation, even believers cannot help themselves to either be good or bad because God has already made the distinction.  The meaning of chosen is weighted with fate, inevitability, and destiny.

However, God choses not to single out and set apart.  God choses to form a new adoptive family, a new way that everyone is encompassed in the life of a loving God. God's choosing is into spiritual blessing. God's choosing is before the foundation of the world to include the whole of humanity.

What shape would your life take if you began from the place of being affirmed, chosen, loved by God? There is a well known quote from Desmond Tutu when  a man challenges the Archbishop by saying, "I don't believe in God."  "That's OK," the Tutu responds, "because God believes in you."

Sometimes I wonder if we spend too much time trying to figure out what is wrong in our lives rather than celebrate what is right.  We spend time trying to accomplish love rather than let love accomplish and complete us.  We spend time looking for the one rock on the beach that needs to be cast away rather than listening to the crunch of the rocks under foot as we walk back up the beach to a new place.