Last Things

I spent time this morning sifting through the narratives of Jesus' last days with his disciples before the crucifixion.  I also bought train tickets for a trip from Madrid to Pamplona.  I am thinking about Maundy Thursday service, and Easter Sunday, and leaving my family and my church for forty days.  I am sitting here flipping back and forth between the journey of Lent as it comes to a close and the journey that will absorb most of the Easter season.  What do I need to say and do in the next week?
I'm feeling the urgency of Jesus' prayer for his disciples, I'm feeling a little bit of his anxiety about something really big coming up (though my big event is decidedly of a different character).
I also know I'm coming back again!
And that's part of what I'm wrestling around with as well.  What about this whole experience is going to be transformative?  Jesus probably had a better idea on that one than me.  At least according to the Gospels, he sort of knew what this was going to accomplish, but I think he had some doubts and anxiety of his own.  What if he was wrong?  What if this cross incident was every bit as foolish as it looked from this vantage point 2000 years ago?  What if God's plan really was to give the whole Messiah thing one more try, and Jesus was just missing his big chance?
Let's face it, the crucifixion makes walking five hundred miles seem like a trip to Disney World.  There was absolutely no guarantee that his death was going to accomplish anything.  Even after the resurrection, and for quite a long time actually, the way of Jesus sort of hung on by a thread.  An awful lot depended on random moments and what can only be described as an ongoing revelation of the Holy Spirit.  The story took shape, the Gospels were told and then written down.  People came to call Jesus Lord in the strangest places and when they did they seemed willing to devote themselves to that proposition, even if it meant putting themselves in harm's way.
Dad and I are sort of going through this flip-flop routine about how much to plan, how many reservations to make, how prepared to be.  For us, this pilgrimage is not about earning salvation (that's a verboten idea for a couple of die hard Protestants).  It's not even about earning some special favor or blessing (our theology doesn't permit that either).  But it is about more than just curiosity, and it is about more than just a particularly long walk.  It's a microcosm of the Christian story and the journey of faith.  We must give up a lot of our comfort and security, and join Jesus on the way.  Like the disciples, we don't exactly know what that's going to be like.  I'm quite sure that if we knew what change the Camino was going to bring to each one of us and if we could somehow just sort of learn those things without putting our bodies, minds and spirits through this ordeal, we probably wouldn't find this thing compelling enough to do.
Jesus faces the events this week with a knowledge that, while he doesn't really want to go, he must.  While he holds out some hope that there is another way, he knows that there is not.
Heaven, earth and the salvation of humanity do not hang in the balance when it comes to my father and I taking this journey, but we are going to find out some things.
The first of those things is what it's like to leave.