by Ian Doescher
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Luke 19:28-40
Have you ever walked a labyrinth? Would you know what to do if you were placed in front of one? Labyrinths are essentially mazes with no wrong turns. Unlike a corn maze or a garden maze, it’s impossible to get lost on a labyrinth. Generally, labyrinths are large circular pathways set in stone or found in nature but circumscribed by stones, so that you walk a pathway all around and inside of the circle, only to be delivered, at long last, to the center. Labyrinths don’t have walls, so you can see where you are headed from where you start. Though labyrinths are an ancient spiritual practice, they have found new life in recent Christianity. Maybe the most famous Christian labyrinth is found in Chartres Cathedral in France, set into the stone floor of the church. You can find a diagram of the Chartres labyrinth in your bulletin. My spouse Jennifer’s church, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Gresham, has a Chartres-style labyrinth outside the church that is open to the community at any time of day or night. A kiosk stands next to the labyrinth, with a guestbook of sorts for people to sign when they stop by and walk the labyrinth, whether they have come out of idle curiosity, spiritual practice, or deep need. The book has comments scrawled into it like, “Thank you so much for this. My mother is dying of cancer and I needed some peace.” Or just simply, “Please say a prayer for me.” It is a tremendous ministry St. Luke’s has offered to the people of Gresham and beyond.
Pastor, theologian and writer Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book An Altar in the World, talks about her first experience of walking a labyrinth. This is what she said: “Not too long ago I walked a labyrinth for the first time in my life. I had flirted with labyrinths for years, but my expectations were so high that I kept finding reasons not to walk alone. I did not want to hurry. I did not want to share the labyrinth with anyone who might distract me. I did not want to be disappointed. I looked forward to walking a labyrinth so much that looking forward to it kept me from doing it for years. Then one day I met a woman who showed me a labyrinth on her land. Set in a small grove of pines, it was made of found stones, with a large one as round as a pillow near the entrance. When the wind blew, invisible chimes tinkled in the branches overhead, while pine needles sifted down to pad the circular path below. Beyond the edge of the trees I saw a small pond sparkling in the sun, and two horses grazing behind a fence. I could walk the labyrinth whenever I wanted to, my host said, even if she were not there. I did not even have to call first. With all of my excuses gone, I returned one late summer afternoon, said a prayer, and entered the labyrinth. The first thing I noticed was that I resented following a set path. Where was the creativity in that? Why couldn’t there be more than one way to go? The second thing I noticed was how much I wanted to step over the stones when they did not take me directly to the center. Who had time for all those switchbacks, with the destination so clearly in sight? The third thing I noticed was that reaching the center was no big deal. The view from there was essentially the same view from the start. My only prize was the heightened awareness of my own tiresome predictability.”
From this telling, at first it seems like Barbara Brown Taylor’s experience of walking a labyrinth is unfulfilling, profoundly normal, totally the opposite of illuminating. I have to admit that the first time I walked a labyrinth, I had a similar reaction at first to the experience. I remember clearly, it was two years ago this week on Good Friday that I walked a labyrinth for the first time, the labyrinth out at St. Luke’s. After entering the labyrinth and taking the first switchback, I was on a path that looked like it was headed directly for the center, and I thought to myself, “This was too easy, I’m already bound for the center.” Only then did the path turn, just barely skirting the center and going around the pathway just left of center, and from there, I wound around for the better part of a quarter mile before making it to the actual center. And once I was there, I was sold on the idea of labyrinths.
Let’s leave Barbara Brown Taylor and me right there, in the center of the labyrinth, for just a moment. Why am I spending so much time in this Palm Sunday sermon talking about labyrinths? This week in the Christian tradition is called Holy Week, the week between and including Palm Sunday and Easter. It is the week that begins with shouts of Hosannas, continues through angry cries of “Crucify him!”, and ends with shouts of “He is risen indeed!” This is a tradition, a ritual, a celebration that repeats in Christianity year after year. Like a labyrinth, we can see the end from where we begin, so what is the point? We know—when we sing the triumphant hymns of Palm Sunday, go to the Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services—we know how the story will end, we know that Jesus is going to be raised again. Easter is the good news we can rely on, it’s the good news we have come to expect. So what is the point of Palm Sunday, what is the point of putting ourselves through sadness on Good Friday when we know where this is all going to end up? Growing up in the Church of Christ, which considers itself a non-denominational church, we never celebrated Easter much, but we sang songs about resurrection all year round. As a result, I grew up thinking that Palm Sunday, which I had heard of but never celebrated, had something to do with the palm of a person’s hand. The thinking in the Church of Christ was, Jesus is always and everywhere risen, so why make a special day out of it? Theirs was the thinking that says why bother with a quarter mile of one-directional maze just to end up at that point I can see twelve feet away?
The original holy week—when Jesus was actually celebrated, then killed, then raised—all took place in the context of the week of the Jewish Passover. If you know anything about how the Passover is celebrated, or if you have ever been to a Seder meal, you know that part of the Passover tradition is the asking of four questions, or as they are known in Hebrew the mah nishtanah. Mah nishtanah means “what is different?”, because the primary question at the Seder meal is, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” And from that, the four questions spring up: “Why is it that on all other nights during the year we eat either bread or matzoh, but on this night we eat only matzoh?” “Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only bitter herbs?” “Why is it that on all other nights we do not dip our herbs even once, but on this night we dip them twice?” and “Why is it that on all other nights we eat either sitting or reclining, but on this night we eat in a reclining position?” The answers to all of these questions recall the Israelite exodus from Egypt, and the first Passover instituted by God. I called this sermon “Why is this week holy?” to emulate and draw on that tradition of Passover questions. Because in a tradition that repeats itself year after year, that ends up repeating the songs and the rituals and even the emotions over and over, we might forget why this week matters at all, why it’s important to remember Jesus being lauded like a king as he entered Jerusalem, his Last Supper with his disciples, his crucifixion, and his miraculous resurrection. Why is this week holy? Why is this week different from all other weeks?
There are two reasons why I think it is important to honor and celebrate the days of this week, why I think this week is indeed a holy week. And the two reasons complement each other. The first is put in a helpful way by Barbara Brown Taylor. When she first explains what labyrinths are, she writes, “the path goes nowhere. You can spend an hour on it and end up twelve feet from where you began. The journey is the point. The walking is the thing.” The journey is the point. The walking is the thing. Part of the joy and the pain of holy week is that we get to imagine ourselves on a journey with Jesus, walking with him as people shout, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” We imagine ourselves as Judas, moved by anger and jealousy and fear to betray our beloved teacher. We imagine ourselves as Peter, guilt-stricken and despondent after we have denied three times that we knew our friend, just as he knew we would. We imagine ourselves as the women at the foot of the cross, looking up at their rabbi and lamenting the waste of such a promising life. We imagine ourselves approaching the empty tomb early in the morning, our eyes still adjusting to the light, hoping against hope that what we see is true, that the broken body is indeed gone and that Jesus’ promise has become reality. It is the journey through this week, the journey we make intentionally each year, that makes it holy. Like pilgrims on their way to Bethlehem, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Canterbury, or Iona—like anyone on a pilgrimage in search of God, we walk this road because to do so is to tread on sacred ground.
The second reason this week is holy is because after we have journeyed with Jesus and made our way to Easter, the story doesn’t end. A few minutes ago I left Barbara Brown Taylor and myself at the centers of our respective labyrinths. When I first walked the labyrinth two years ago, I reached the center and sat down for a few minutes. I closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks. I had experienced such peace, such renewal as I walked toward the center of the labyrinth, that it was something of a shock to realize that I now had to leave the center and walk out. Feeling protected in the center and changed by the process of walking the labyrinth, I had to walk back through the pathway and reenter the world. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about something similar. She was unimpressed by the time she got to the center, writing as I quoted a minute ago that “My only prize was the heightened awareness of my own tiresome predictability.” But then she goes on, “I thought about calling it a day and going over to pat the horses, but since I predictably follow the rules even while grousing about them, I turned around to find my way out of the labyrinth again. Since I had already been to the center, I was not focused on getting there anymore. Instead, I breathed in as much of the pine smell as I could, sucking in the smell of sun and warm stones along with it. When I breathed out again, I noticed how soft the pine needles were beneath my feet. I saw the small mementos left by those who had preceded me on the path: a cement frog, a rusted horseshoe, a stone freckled with shiny mica. I noticed how much more I notice when I am not preoccupied with getting somewhere. When the path delivered me back to where I had begun, I lay down with my head on the stone pillow and dreamed the same dream Jacob dreamed, the night he saw the angels of God climbing up and down a ladder right where he lay. Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” Both Barbara Brown Taylor and I were transformed by our first experiences of walking the labyrinth. To draw the parallel between this week and walking the labyrinth once again, this week is holy because the story goes on past this week, and we are transformed by it. After having reached the center of the Holy Week labyrinth, Easter, we rest and we rejoice for a moment, but we do not and cannot linger in the center forever. The good news of the resurrection, which even from this moment on Palm Sunday we can see, calls us back out into the world where we shout hosanna to the son of David, where we tell the story of a teacher, healer and Lord who ate with his friends and died to set people free, where we witness to God’s resurrection in Christ’s life, in our lives, and in the lives of those around us. So having said our prayers in the center, we open our eyes, take a deep breath, walk our first steps out toward the world, and practice resurrection every day, through this Holy Week and beyond. Amen.
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