A couple years ago, I wrote a post about the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo in which I mentioned some Biblical references in "I Am a Pilgrim." I wrote that the lines "If I can just touch the hem of His garment, good Lord / Then I'd know He'd take me home" reference the woman "healed from a discharge of blood after touching only the fringe of Jesus' garment" recounted in Matthew 9, Mark 5, and Luke 8.
Recently, though, I read part of Matthew 14 and found an-other passage that could just as well be the referent for those lines. After feeding the five thousand and walking on the water, Jesus (with His disciples) "came to land at Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized him, they sent around to all that region and brought to him all who were sick and implored him that they might only touch the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well" (Matthew 14:34-36). There's a parallel account in Mark 6:53-56.
Where both of these Scriptural accounts deal with healing rather than - as it is in "I Am a Pilgrim" - being taken home (that is, taken to Heaven, "that yonder city... not made by hand... Over on that other shore"), they do both mention "touch[ing] the fringe of his garment," which is also what's in the song.
