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A labyrinth is a tricky sort of pilgrimage.
It’s not that the way is hard to find, or to follow, strictly speaking. Unlike a maze with dead ends and obstacles you have to avoid, a labyrinth has only one path. It just swirls and swerves in such a way that you can never quite tell how close you are to the center. You seem to be getting close, and then the path takes you back to the edge again before you can land where you were going.
And even once you find that center space, we may find that its promise was deceiving. The center offers itself as the goal, the destination – but really, it’s just a way station. Because once we have found the center, we still have to go all the way back out again, accompanied by whatever gifts, obligations or promises we have encountered in the center.
A labyrinth is a Lenten sort of pilgrimage, I think.
This Sunday, we hit the center of our Lenten labyrinth, “Laetare Sunday,” from the Latin imperative laetare, “rejoice!” that once introduced the liturgy for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. The readings are a bit lighter, offering themes of return and reconciliation. We take a moment to breathe, to rest, to be refreshed.
The timing feels especially appropriate this year as Lent maps with our rector transition: as Lent began, we started a new journey without John as rector, and behold! By Laetare Sunday, Devon has joined us as our interim rector. At least for staff and vestry, but I suspect for many of the rest of you too, it’s a source of refreshment and relief on multiple levels to have Devon with us at St. Paul’s.
So this week we take a deep breath and notice the gifts of this moment.
Then, together, we will turn and walk back through the labyrinth – a little differently than we did it on the way in, but following the same path: God’s Way of Love.
The way that will lead us to the parades and protests of Palm Sunday. The way that will lead us to the belovedness and betrayal of Maundy Thursday. The way that leads us to the foot of the cross of Christ, to the starkness of the sealed tomb, and finally, finally, to the glory of Jesus’ resurrection.
The same way Christians have walked each year for millennia, walked for the first time with new companions, new eyes, new hearts.
This Lenten labyrinth is a rejuvenating sort of pilgrimage, in the end. I hope you’ll walk this back half with us.
Faithfully,
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