T hose of you who followed my sabbatical blog know that on my last day in California, the day before Cheryl and I took the red-eye home and my sabbatical came to a rather abrupt end, I drove through the Santa Cruz mountains to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, which is about a hour or so south of San Francisco. It was an amazing drive through miles of winding roads when suddenly you emerge into a dense forest of ancient redwoods that tower hundreds of feet above your head, some measuring more than a dozen feet in diameter. I stopped at the ranger station and asked about a two hour hike I might take. There were several to choose from, but the ranger recommended Buzzards’ Roost, which takes you up to the top of Pine Mountain, and affords 360◦ panoramic views of the park as well as the Pacific Ocean in the distance. It sounded just right, but then another ranger warned that the hike might take as much as three to five hours, and was a fairly steep climb. I hadn’t brought lunch with me, I wasn’t wearing hiking boots, I hadn’t had much exercise in the past two weeks, and I really didn’t have that much time to devote to a hike– but I just couldn’t resist the idea of one final “mountain top” experience before my sabbatical came to an end. So after purchasing a sandwich at the camp store, and buying an extra water bottle, I threw caution to the wind, and headed off up the trail.

       It was totally worth it. Not that I hadn’t had enough mountain top experiences already– climbing a live volcano in Guatemala, driving the back roads of southern Burgundy with Andrea, trekking across the Scottish Hebrides on Iona and Staffa with Kelsey. Nevertheless, I know of few other experiences that are as exhilarating as reaching the peak of a mountain and suddenly being able to see in every direction. I can’t remember when I had the first such experience, but they have always had an appeal to me that always makes the hard climb to the top worth all the effort. It turns out that this climb wasn’t nearly as bad as the ranger had warned. Worried about the time, I moved at a pretty good clip and reached the top in less than an hour, which gave me plenty of time to enjoy the view, eat my sandwich, and reflect in the silence and the solitude about what an adventure these past twelve weeks have been.

       So it’s certainly easy for me to sympathize with Peter in our story for this morning. Who doesn’t want to build a moment to our mountain top experiences? Yet Jesus doesn’t linger much on the top of the mountain. No sooner has the cloud moved away, then Jesus is off down the mountain, into the city, into the middle of the crowd, into the midst of human need.

T here is something of a parallel between this transfiguration story and the history of Iona, where Kelsey and I spent a week last month. Saint Columba’s voyage in the 6^th century from Ireland to Iona is one of the great foundational journeys of Western Christianity. He is credited, through the monastery he founded there, with the spread of Christianity throughout the British isles. Yet there is some dispute about why Columba set sail in the first place. Columba was already an established leader in the growing Christian movement in Ireland. But there had been some violence, and Columba may have played some role in it. It’s not clear whether Columba embarked on a self-imposed exile or if he was asked to leave, but either way, when he and twelve followers boarded their little leather-bound boat known as a coracle, they were living out an already established Irish Celtic tradition of exile– or pilgrimage– understood as making a sacrificial journey for Christ’s sake. Legend has it that Columba and his followers landed on several islands in the Scottish Hebrides before settling on Iona, because it was the first island from which they could no longer look back and see Ireland.

       Known by the Latin word peregrinatio, which means pilgrimage or wandering, this ascetic discipline of pilgrimage or retreat was central to Celtic spirituality. Voyages were an important form of perigrinatio, which were understood primarily as a spiritual journey, where people set out, as the Celtic Christians put it, to “seek the place of one’s resurrection.” (Not a bad way to think about the purpose of a sabbatical!) Soon after Columba established his community on the west side of Iona, it became itself a place of pilgrimage, where visitors and pilgrims would come from across Europe to receive the hospitality of Columba’s barefoot monks, and join them in contemplative prayer and their sometimes severe penitential practices– such as sleeping on bare rocks or reciting the psalms while standing up to your neck in cold water– all of which were intended to focus one’s mind on the will of God (also not a bad image for a sabbatical).

       Still today on Iona there is on an isolated circle of stones called the Hermit’s Cell, which testifies to the need in our lives for times of withdrawal. Iona continues as a place of retreat where pilgrims– such as Kelsey and me– come from all over the world to spend a week in Christian community at Iona, and join in the daily prayer and reflections. Yet Columba did not establish his community on Iona primarily as a retreat center, but as a base to reach out to the mainland population. Columba and his followers traveled through out Scotland preaching the gospel. The monks won people over not at the point of a sword, but through their simple lifestyle, and their devotion to prayer, the sick, and the poor. It was their reputation for hospitality, compassion, forgiveness and healing that drew people to Iona. As important as the idea of retreat is to Celtic spirituality, the purpose of perigrinatio is to return. You withdraw for a time in order to return rededicated to living out the gospel in your daily life. So when George MacLeod re-established Iona as a place of retreat in the 20^th century, it was always to prepare Christian pilgrims to return to their own communities, rededicated to seeking the inbreaking of God’s kingdom wherever they found themselves. Or, as one of the long-time volunteers at Iona put it, people come to Iona seeking peace and quiet. Hopefully they leave seeking peace and justice.

T hat’s not a bad image of the church. We come to worship for all kinds of reasons. We’re seeking the presence of God in our lives. We’re going through a tough time. We’re looking for deeper meaning or purpose. We’re looking for friends. Sometimes all of those things at the same time. Yet slowly and subtly– well, sometimes rather quickly and directly– we find ourselves moved beyond our own concerns and involved in such things as feeding the homeless, or caring for the sick, or protesting the genocide in Darfur, or pushing the Mayor to invest more in low income housing. It’s not that we leave our own concerns behind, but that we find a deeper part of ourselves in the process of giving ourselves away. We discover that the healing of our own lives, and the healing of the world, are deeply intertwined.

       It’s kind of funny, in the past four days since I’ve been home, lots of people have said to me, “Well, back to the grind” or “Back to normal.” I don’t really feel that way. First of all, I have no interest in things going back to normal, whatever that means (although I will confess I am very glad to be sleeping in my own bed next to my own wife). Second, I don’t feel like I’m going back to the grind. Maybe that’s the difference between going on a sabbatical and simply taking a really long vacation. To be sure, I had lots of vacation-like experiences in my travels. It’s hard to drape a lot of theological meaning on going out to dinner with Andrea in Paris, or visiting wineries with Cheryl in California. But the best parts of my travels were those moments that mysteriously brought me back here, that helped me to see more clearly and more deeply who God is calling me to be as one of the leaders of this little group of pilgrims at the corner of 22^nd and P. One of the worries, in fact, of a lot of clergy, is that their sabbatical will be just long enough to make them realize that they never want to go back. That wasn’t my experience. Time and again, I had moments on my sabbatical that made me more clear than ever that I am in exactly the right place.

       So on this first Sunday back, I thought it might be good for us not only to share together at the Lord’s Table, but also to reaffirm our common vision, by standing and reading our mission statement together:

       “We are pilgrims,

              together on a spiritual journey,

              trusting God to show us the way.

       We follow Jesus,

seeing God's image in every face, inviting all people into the circle of God’s grace.

We joyfully worship in song and in prayer, and eagerly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and in deed:

       by caring for each other,

              serving neighbors in need,

              and seeking peace with justice.”              ✞

© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel