The importance of the story
we heard today from the the 24th chapter of the Book of Joshua in the arc of the Old Testament
narrative cannot be overestimated. It’s a new beginning. It’s a moment of
covenant renewal. And yet I bet it’s not in most Sunday School curricula, and
maybe not even in the top one hundred moments in Old Testament history that you
could come up with if we had done a little pre-worship quiz today. Maybe it’s
for just that reason that I’m drawn to it on this November morning, not as just
a nice little lesson in Biblical theology, but perhaps a moment that St. John’s
might attend to and then even read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, in order
to hear a Word of the Lord today.
One could argue
that the Book of Genesis is really a kind of prequel to the most important book
of the Torah: Exodus. As you may remember, Genesis ends with Joseph and his
brothers landing in Egypt during a time of famine. And then, just a few verses
into the Book of Exodus, a new Pharaoh arises “who didn’t know Joseph and his
brothers…” And so it came to pass that the Hebrew people are enslaved. From
there: the people cry out to God, Moses is called at the burning bush and given
a mission to go tell old Pharaoh to let God’s people go and then there is the
first Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, the dramatic escape. All of that
gets remembered each year by Jews at the Passover Seder. It’s important stuff
and if you’ve ever attended a Seder you know it’s not taught like something
that happened a long time ago. It’s more like every Jew is transported back to
that key event to cross the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit.
And then forty
years in the wilderness where the Torah is given, better translated as Teaching or Instruction than Law.
That takes us all the way to the end of the Pentateuch, to the very end of the
Book of Deuteronomy, where an aged Moses looks with this band of ex-slaves
across the Jordan River toward the Promised Land. As they prepare to enter this
land “flowing with milk and honey,” Moses cautions them that in the midst of
economic prosperity they will be tempted toward amnesia: they will begin to
think that they have achieved all these things on their own. He urges them to
“remember” all that Yahweh has done for them when they were living one day at a
time in the Sinai wilderness.
So that’s the “Cliff
Notes” version of the first five books of the Bible! Then comes the Book of Joshua,
from which we read today. At Jericho, General Joshua leads the people in a
series of battles and the walls come “a tumblin’ down” as they seek to claim
this Promised Land, which it turns out is a contested piece of real estate that
already has people living in it. That’s another sermon, for another day. In any
case, at long last they enter the Promised Land. They stand on the dawn of a
new day. And this takes us to Shechem. Joshua
gathers up all the tribes of Israel and summons the elders, the heads, the
judges, and the officers of Israel. You can still go there today. I was there a
couple of years ago. It’s now called Nablus and it’s in the northern West Bank,
under Palestinian control. Nablus is known for their knafah, a delicious sweet pastry made with pistachios and rose
water and cheese. Being there makes a moment like we read about today not feel
like it happened a long time ago, but very much present-tense.
Even so, we might ask: what
does Shechem have to do with Williamstown? What we see in today’s reading is
that God’s people pray, and they give
thanks, and they renew their commitment to a vision and a dream. That’s why
Joshua has gathered them together. Joshua reminds them, as Moses had at the end
of Deuteronomy, that serving God will not be an easy matter and that in many
ways it really will be harder in the Promised Land than in the wilderness,
because there will be lots of distractions and lots of other gods that vie for their
attention. But he makes it clear that he and his family will serve the Lord.
Together, the people recall their story, and all that the Lord has done: how
God brought them up “from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and protected
them in the wilderness.”
So here they now stand, promising
that they, too, will serve the Lord. There is no reason to doubt their
sincerity. And yet we all know that the rest of the Bible is about how people
fail to keep their promises to God, even when God remains faithful. Because those
other gods are often too hard to resist.
I believe there may indeed be
a Word of the Lord here for you, St. John’s. Let me first be clear what I don’t
mean. I don’t want to suggest that Peter Elvin was Moses! Direct Biblical
correlations are rarely exact or helpful and no rector, no matter how good,
ought to be compared with Moses. And it would be untrue to say that the thirty
years that Peter was here was like wandering in the wilderness. Or that the
next rector is going to lead you into battle. So I don’t mean that.
Even so, you know better than
most congregations in our diocese what it’s like to have one leader for a very long
time. You’ve been through a lot together. In the past year or so you’ve gotten
to know Libby, who is at CREDO this weekend. I think she’s a wonderful person.
But beyond that, I think she’s been the right priest for you all to find your
way to where you are today. Close, we hope, to calling a new rector. I don’t
consider that work done until the ink is dry on a Letter of Agreement, but
we’re gaining on it.
Whoever that person is, and
whenever that person arrives here, there will be an opportunity to do something
like gathering at Shechem. We call it a Celebration of New Ministry. It usually
happens a couple of months after a new cleric arrives. Often, in addition to the
parish, some neighbors come by as well including, usually, some Berkshire area
clergy, both Episcopal and ecumenical. It’s a chance to look to what lies ahead
and covenant to work together. You’ll
pray, and give thanks, and renew your commitment to a vision and a dream.
What I’ve learned in this
work I’ve now been doing as Canon to the Ordinary for about four and a half
years now is this: the hardest work of calling a new rector is not behind you,
it’s ahead of you. No one ever believes me when I say this but it’s the truth. The
arrival of a moving van in Williamstown and the first Sunday of a new rector will
be terribly exciting. But that doesn’t mean the work is done. The hard work
that lies ahead will be for the new
rector to just become the rector. And that takes both time and commitment. I’m
sure that even at Shechem some folks were whispering about Joshua: “he’s no
Moses!” The work that lies ahead isn't just for the vestry or a profile committee or a search committee; it's work that belongs to all of you.
You see those red Prayerbooks in your pews? They first got
put there in 1979, nearly forty years ago! They’ve been there as long as the
Israelites wandered around Sinai! And yet there are still folks who refer to it
as the new Prayerbook! Transitions take
time. I think the wisdom of Joshua (coming on the heels of the long ministry of
Moses) is that he wants to be clear with
God’s people that a new chapter is about to begin. That it will be both
different and the same. There will be different challenges and he won’t try to
walk in Moses’ shoes; he’ll wear his own. He’ll try to be Joshua because, quite
honestly, that’s who he is. Moses had his time and it can be honored without
trying to keep duplicating it. And the context is different: they are no longer
in the Sinai Desert scraping up manna for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They are
in Canaan, which will present its own challenges.
On the other hand, same God,
same Torah. The story of who God is and what God has done is remembered and
rehearsed and retold. Some things are new but the old story continues to
unfold. That is why Joshua says, “are you with me?” and keeps pressing the point:
are you sure? He doesn’t ask people
to swear allegiance to him. In fact,
he reminds them (to paraphrase St. Paul many centuries later) that they weren’t
baptized into Moses or Joshua, but that they have been claimed and marked and
sealed by the living God. That is whom they are called to served.
So, in my work, I get to
attend a lot of Celebrations of New Ministry and they are always a joy. They
mark a new beginning. Recently I’ve been to liturgies in Oxford and Holyoke and
we have another coming up in Sheffield this month. And before you know it I’ll
be coming back here for one. It will be exciting. And a little scary, too.
The bishop requires new
clergy to attend a program called Fresh
Start for two years after they come to our diocese. It’s a program that
meets monthly and is co-facilitated by my colleague, Pam Mott and me. It’s a
chance for new clergy to get to know each other and the diocese, a movable feast that each cleric has a chance to host over the course of their time in
Fresh Start. It’s also, we pray, a safe place where they can share not only
their successes but their failures and disappointments, toward the goal of
turning those into opportunities for growth. I also make it a point to schedule
a Mutual Ministry Review with the new cleric and the vestry at some point later
than six months in, but before a year is up so we can ask together: what’s
going on? What have been the surprises? Where is some re-negotiation needed?
Notice those are all
questions. Questions are better in that first year of a new ministry than
declarative statements like “this is how we’ve always done it!”
Here is the thing: most
people here don’t remember the first five years when Peter arrived here. Even
if you were here then, you still remember it filtered through the rest of the
story. But comparing Peter’s last five
to the first five of a new person won’t
be helpful for anyone, especially for your new rector. New beginnings are just
that. Joshua wasn’t Moses and he wasn’t called to do things the same way.
So I don’t want this sermon
to lapse into becoming a report on transition ministry and maybe I’ve already
crossed that line. So let me bring this to a close: it seems to me that the Holy Spirit likes to do new things.
That doesn’t mean we don’t value tradition. Lord knows we Episcopalians love our
traditions! But if tradition is to avoid lapsing into nostalgia for the past, then we need to stay alive to the new thing
God is about to do. We need to cultivate an openness to where God is leading us
next. We need to be a people who remember that God doesn’t rest on past laurels,
but is always calling us to be faithful in this time and place. That means a
willingness to share the news and the work with our children and our children’s
children more than building a shrine to our parents and our parents’ parents.
Pastoral leadership
transitions mark an invitation and a new opportunity for clarity about vision
and mission. If not exactly a re-set button, then they at least mark the beginning
of a new chapter in a still-unfolding story. I think that is what was going on
in Shechem with Joshua and a people who needed to get ready for the next thing,
even as they remembered the lessons of Sinai. And I think that is what is soon
to happen here at St. John’s, by God’s grace. Choose, then, whom you will
serve. Choose to stick with the living God who has brought you this far, the
God who continues to be faithful from generation to generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment