Journey to Resurrection

I caught up to her somewhere in the middle of Spain. I don’t remember her name, nor could I have ever pronounced it correctly if she had told me ten more times. She could have been my grandma. Not really, but she could have been my grandma when I remember the best times I had with grandma.

We were in the middle of a long and rather boring day so we struck up a conversation. She asked me where I had started my Camino. I quite proudly told her St. Jean, for that’s where snooty walkers think you should start your journey.  She smiled and told me how great that was. She also said how cute St. Jean was when she passed through it. Passed through it? “Where did you start?” I asked. Her response was something I wasn’t expecting: “My front door.” 

One day, this grandma simply walked out of her front door in the French countryside and began her pilgrimage to Santiago. She had been walking for months and only had a few more weeks to go. I asked her what made her begin her journey. Her answer is paraphrased below.

Three years ago I lost my husband after a battle with cancer. He was my everything. In part due to the care I provided him, I lost my job later that year. With no husband and no job, I could no longer afford our house. So I moved into a small apartment near my children. In just one year I lost my husband, my job, and my home. I lamented, I grieved, and I cried. I did nothing but cry for two entire years. Two years with nothing but tears! My children told me something needed to change. I needed to change. I agreed. I told myself that I either needed to end my life or I could start walking. A few days later I stood on my front porch, looked around, said my quiet goodbyes, and I began to walk.

Wow! She asked me why I started my journey. Somehow telling her that a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis was paying for me to do this for a Sabbath didn’t seem real appropriate so I switched the conversation back to her. I asked her, “and how has your walk been going?

She literally stopped, which kind of startled me and brought me to a halt. Looking me straight in the eyes she said “the Camino has been my resurrection.” She still misses her husband dearly, and she still longs for that old house. But in her words, she was dead, and now she is alive.

I, and many around me, find ourselves in a season of lament. We lament our country (USA) with its childish political rhetoric, its divisions, and its gun violence to name a few. I lament the divisions that have, are, and will happen in the denomination I am ordained in (Reformed Church in America), and the denomination I work in (Christian Reformed Church). I lament illness and broken relationships.

I am a firm believer in the power and healing that can be found in lament. So lament, lament, lament.

But there is also a time to let go, to turn the page, to move forward. There is time to let the past die even though we know it really never does. But there seems to be a time when the past no longer needs to control us. And by letting something we love die, maybe we are more open to experiencing our own resurrection.

I lament the last five years in the RCA. We have lost pillars like Gregg Mast, Al Janssen, and Norm Kansfield. We have seen a schism that has, at least in the short term, broken relationships and curtailed our effective ministry. I lament that. I lament the current state of the CRC, for there can be little doubt that schism is coming.

But maybe these important institutions need to die so that something greater can be resurrected. Of course I hope the RCA and CRC don’t really die. But what they used to be and what they have become might need to. I am committed to lamenting that. At the same time, I refuse simply to sit idle any longer. It’s time to move again into a kingdom that continues to march, walk, limp, and crawl along. Maybe this is what needed to happen so that a better RCA and CRC could be reborn. And by reborn I do not mean more in line with me but more in line with God. 

Of course I am not happy about the schisms. They are the result of sin, but the result of sin is death, and it’s only where death is that resurrection can be found. 

I hold the RCA and CRC dearly in my heart. They have formed into who I am. I do not disparage either of these beautiful churches. I am still trying to figure out what all of this post really means, if it even means anything? But I do think it’s time for us to turn the page and to start walking into an unknown future with a trust that knows that God, and thus life, is already there.