By Todd Blackham

I was walking through the dry grass on a hillside overlooking the Sea of Galilee with a group of young adults when an image of Jesus walking along and talking with his young friends crystallized for me in a brand new way. I could feel that sense of companionship, adventure, and excitement. As I continued to travel around the Holy Land with this group, we kept encountering all the places I had read about and preached about for years, but suddenly there was an added dimension, it happened here! Right here. This new context that I could sense with my whole body began to breathe life into stories that I had always believed but could now know in a more concrete way.

Pilgrimage does things for us that our imagination and our intellect can only begin to approach. These bodies we’ve been given by God teach us in more than words when we put them in a new place. Pilgrimage allows the body to catch up with what the mind believes. The stories don’t become more true because we stand where they happened, but they can become more tangible. The distance between “there and then” and “here and now” begins to collapse. We draw nearer to God for whom all time is present.

That’s why pilgrimage is such a fitting image for discipleship itself. Jesus never simply asked people to understand him. He said, “Follow me.” Christian faith is caught along the way, one foot in front of another, usually in the company of others. We leave what is familiar, discover that we are not entirely in control, and learn to pay attention to the God who meets us on the road. We can’t know what we will encounter until we set out, but we have the promise that Jesus will accompany us. That’s worth taking the first step into the unknown.

The Rev. Todd Blackham is Associate for Whole-Life Discipleship at Christ Church Denver and is a member of the Cedar team.