The church, and wider society, has experienced huge change particularly in the last few decades, an observation that will be greeted with little surprise.

For some this experience of change has been felt like the crumbling of the known and reliable and has been a frightening experience indeed.

For others, particularly those who have had negative experiences of the church, I imagine that as the church fades from prominence in dominant culture this has been greeted with some sense of relief or even satisfaction.

The issues facing the church in our current context, and the issues facing society as a whole, are complex. Instead of seeking to summarise these, reducing their complexity to a glib list of “challenges” or solutions, I would like to remind us of a touchstone, ancient and central, for people of Christian faith.

Even though at various times, and in various manifestations, parts of the church have believed (or continue to believe) that they have “arrived” – that they have all the answers and are the destination, Jesus doesn’t say this.

Instead, Jesus points to faith and life, coming to freedom and wholeness, as a journey. Jesus, the Holy Human One, speaks of a way of being which is not about arrival-but of travel: “Come follow me” Jesus says.

According to sacred scripture, Jesus doesn’t refer to himself as King, or Ruler, images that have to do with certainty and power that we might be most comfortable with.

Instead in sacred scripture the language and images that Jesus uses to describe himself have much more to do with journey. Jesus refers to himself as the shepherd, the living water, the way.

It is interesting to note, that the movement of people who were first “heart convinced” that Jesus was the Holy Human One were called people of The Way.

And we do well to remember this.

Especially as so many of those things that were certain before about how we do church appear to be changing before our eyes.

This image of the church as always journeying with God, not of imagining that it has arrived, is central to Uniting Church understanding. In our founding document, the Basis of Union it states clearly:

The Church is a pilgrim people,
always on the way towards a promised goal. (Para 3)

There is comfort and challenge in this.

Comfort that we are always called forward by the Divine to new insights and deeper love, and that even though things change and crumble around us, Loving God is present and calling us on.

The challenge is that in order to actually go the way of pilgrimage we need to leave behind some of those things that we most cherished about the past.

Over the coming weeks our lectionary leads us through the ancient journey of Exodus: out of Egypt and slavery and into the frightening unknown of freedom. However as we follow this journey we will see that freedom and the unknown, are not always easy, comfortable or even welcome and at times the people resist this way wildly. Often we can be the same. It takes courage to think about what might need to be left behind.

In recent worship services in the Highlands people reflected together on what might need to be left behind in order to go the way of pilgrimage; people shared that this may include our past preconceptions, prejudices, even the way in which we use our buildings.

We also reflected on how we will know God is with us as we leave behind old certainties and ways about being church. Again peoples reflections bore much wisdom: That we will know God in our experience of God’s presence with us, we will know God in love, in peace, in stillness. These things will not change, even though so many other things might.

As pilgrim people we are called to travel lightly, into the way of authentic freedom and we are not asked to travel alone.

This is good news.

Rev. Sally Douglas