I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked

There is an old hymn that has followed me for many years: I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked.

The hymn was written from the perspective of a pilgrim walking through the Holy Land, remembering the places associated with the life of Jesus. I have always loved it.

Years ago, when I was a pastor, I used the hymn in a play about the Bible. I also used it as a dramatic sermon. I dressed as a traveler—a pilgrim who had walked through the places where Jesus walked—and told the story as though I had been there.

The interesting thing is that I have never had a great desire to visit the Holy Land.

I don’t need to.

When I hear that hymn, I can walk there in my imagination.

I can travel to Bethlehem and think about the birth stories in Matthew and Luke. I can sit on the hillside and listen again to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

I can follow Jesus into Gethsemane and sit with the agony of his prayer. I can think about his arrest, the beatings, the crown of thorns, and finally the hill of Calvary.

For me, I Walked Today Where Jesus Walked has become a spiritual pilgrimage. It is something I experience in meditation and in the silence before God.

But this isn’t the only music that does that to me.

Sometimes when I am troubled, I can still hear my mother singing.

She would sing while she was shelling peas. In the Sweet By and By. What a Friend We Have in Jesus. In the Garden.

I noticed that Mother often sang when something was troubling her.

All these years later, when something troubles me, sometimes I hear her singing again—not with my ears, of course, but somewhere deep within me.

Daddy had his song too.

I can remember him picking cotton in the field and singing Farther Along.

“Farther along” seemed to express something about life that I wouldn’t fully understand until I had traveled much farther down the road myself. There are things we simply don’t understand when they happen.

Then there are other voices.

When I hear George Beverly Shea sing How Great Thou Art, something within me responds to the wonder and greatness of God and God’s creation.

When I hear We’re Marching to Zion, I don’t picture a solemn procession. I see a parade! I feel the excitement of a child standing beside the road watching the parade come by. There is music, movement, anticipation, and joy.

And sometimes the music that speaks to my soul isn’t a hymn at all.

When I hear George Michael perform Freedom! ’90 in concert, I hear freedom.

My imagination travels to Exodus and the Hebrew people walking out of slavery in Egypt. I think about enslaved people in America finally hearing that they were free. I think about my own freedom—the freedom to love and to be loved, and the freedom that comes from discovering that God’s love isn’t something I have to earn.

Sometimes I even think about David dancing before God with such abandon that dignity didn’t seem terribly important at that moment.

Freedom!

I have finally realized something about myself.

I don’t divide the world very easily into “sacred” and “secular.”

Life is sacred to me.

That doesn’t mean everything human beings do is good. We are capable of terrible things. We hurt one another. We exploit people. We damage creation. We distort what God has given us.

But underneath all of that is something I have gradually discovered along my pilgrimage:

I am standing on holy ground, among holy people whom God loves, in a universe created by God.

Maybe that is why music, theater, dramatic readings, piano solos, organ solos, history, nature, Scripture, silence, and ordinary people can all speak to my soul.

I am learning to look for God everywhere.

Sometimes God meets me in church.

Sometimes God meets me in the Daily Office or at the Eucharist.

Sometimes God meets me in the memory of my mother shelling peas.

Sometimes in the memory of Daddy singing in a cotton field.

Sometimes through an old gospel hymn.

Sometimes through George Michael singing about freedom.

Sometimes through a person whose life, background, beliefs, or experiences are very different from mine.

And sometimes God meets me in silence.

Perhaps that is why one of my prayers has become:

Lord Jesus Christ, teach me to see.
Lord Jesus Christ, teach me to hear.
Lord Jesus Christ, teach me what to say.
Lord Jesus Christ, teach me where to walk.

Years ago, I dressed as a pilgrim and pretended that I had walked where Jesus walked.

I smile when I think about that now.

I didn’t know then that one day I would call myself the Curious Pilgrim.

And I have come to understand that walking where Jesus walked doesn’t require a trip to the Holy Land.

Jesus walked toward people.

Jesus walked toward the rejected.

Jesus walked toward those who were hurting.

Jesus walked across boundaries.

Jesus walked in mercy.

Jesus walked in love.

Jesus walked toward Gethsemane and eventually toward the cross.

So perhaps my question has changed.

I no longer ask, “Will I ever walk where Jesus walked?”

I ask:

“Am I willing to walk where Jesus is walking?”

And maybe that’s what pilgrimage has become for me.

I am standing on holy ground.

I am surrounded by people God loves.

I am living in a universe God created.

My task isn’t to go somewhere else to find God.

My task is to keep my eyes, ears, heart, and mind open enough to recognize the God who is already here.

And so this Curious Pilgrim keeps walking.

What if you are standing on holy ground too?

What if the person beside you is already beloved by God?

And what if God isn’t nearly as difficult to find as we sometimes imagine?

Maybe we just need to learn to see.