When Joshua gathers Israel
together after their conquest of Canaan is complete, he talks to them about
their ancestor Abraham. He reminds them
of how God came to Abraham in the land of his ancestors beyond the Euphrates
River, and led him away from there, away from the gods of that land, and
brought him here --to Canaan. Joshua
tells the people this story because he wants them to understand the real
significance of the moment. He is not
only a great governor and military leader; he is also a prophet, one who speaks
for God. And he wants the Israelites to
know that this is not just a great event in the history of their nation. It is also a moment in the story of God.
For just as it was God
who led Abraham on his great migration, and God who gave offspring to him and
to Sarah, so also it is God who is bringing the story of his descendants to
this new climax. It was God who visited
the plagues upon Egypt, and brought Israel out of slavery and into the wilderness. It was God who spoke to them through Moses at
the foot of Mount Sinai and said, “If you will obey my voice and keep my
covenant, you shall be my own possession among all the peoples,… a kingdom of
priests and a holy nation.” And the
people all answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will
do.”
After that generation of
Israelites had passed away, and Moses himself was about to die, he called
together their children in Moab on the other side of the Jordan. He reminded them of their story, of all that
God had done for their fathers and mothers, and Moses gave them a choice, a
choice between life and death, blessing and curse, and he urged them to choose
life, for themselves and their descendants.
And now it is Joshua’s turn to speak to their children, on behalf of the
God who brought them across the Jordan, who defeated kings and armies and
delivered walled cities into their hand, so that they might live in houses they
didn’t build, and eat the fruit of vineyards they didn’t plant.
And Joshua also gives them
a choice. They can serve the gods of Mesopotamia, or
the gods of Egypt, or the gods of the Amorites, of the people of the land where
they have come to dwell. Or they can
renew their covenant with the God of Israel, whose story is their story. They have a choice, because God wants
partners and co-workers, not slaves.
It’s a choice that every generation of Israel has to make for itself, in
the light of its own risks and rewards, its own prospects for renewal of the faith
community, and its own fateful consequences of failure.
Most scholars agree that this
story was written down in its current form long after the events that it describes,
in a time when the people of Israel had been conquered and taken away to exile
in Babylon. So there is a bitter irony
in that part of the story where Joshua warns them about what will happen if
they forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods.
The people insist that they know what they are getting into, and that
they will be faithful. But the people
who wrote this story, and the people who read it, knew that they hadn’t been,
and that Joshua’s warnings had come true.
In this context they returned again to the stories of their covenant
with God, looking for meaning in the disaster that had come upon them, and for
a way out of their sense of guilt, and failure, and despair. They sought to remember who they were, the
sacred purpose for which God had called them into covenant. In that remembering they found their
freedom. They saw that they still had a
choice.
Some of us here at St.
John’s had an experience of the power of remembering our story just the other
night. At the urging of the vestry I’ve
called together a group of four people from our 8 o’clock service and four from
the 10 o’clock, to work together on a vision for liturgy and music in our
parish. We gathered last Tuesday night,
and I decided that a good place to begin would be to remember the story of how
we got to where we are today. I put a
time-line up on the wall, and we began to fill it in with what we could
remember of how we used to worship in the past.
We called forth a few sketchy details of times long ago, but mainly we
focused on the journey that began in early January 2007 with the rebirth of the
Episcopal Church in Petaluma from the ashes of schism.
Now nothing gets
Christians into a lather like their opinions about what music to sing in
church, or what words to say. The fact
that our two Sunday services have settled into patterns that are fairly
distinct in tone and style makes some people worry that we are two different
congregations working at cross purposes.
Others think that the way these services are now is the way they will
always be, which can be good news or bad, depending on their point of view. But going back and remembering the turning
points that got us to where we are, the circumstances and persons who shaped
the choices that we made, helped our Worship Committee see that our context is
always changing. It reminded us that we
have to revisit those choices frequently, and continually make them again. It also helped us remember that we are one
people with one story, and that underlying our differences of liturgy and music
is our common effort to be faithful to the mission for which God called this
parish back to life.
That is what it means to
be in a covenant. And at the heart of a
covenant is a story. The story of the
rebirth of St. John’s, Petaluma is a powerful one, and like many of you, it attracted
me and moved me to become part of it. And
because it is a covenant story, God has enabled us to accomplish a great deal
together. We re-established communion
with the Diocese of Northern California and the Episcopal Church. We reclaimed the historic parish property on
its behalf. We showed that this
congregation could include gays and lesbians, affirming their full personhood,
and their gifts for leadership in the church.
We grew in numbers and in strength to the point where we now can stand
on our own as a parish, and we have discerned God’s call to me to become the
Rector.
And as I have considered
whether to accept that call, it has become clear that there is a real choice
for me to make. What is at stake is not merely
the question of what’s best for me and my family, or even what’s best for the
parish. This moment is about making a
new commitment to being in covenant with God.
It means recommitting to the story of the resurrection of St. John’s,
not as something we did and can now sit back and enjoy, but as something God did
so we could remember who we are. What
has happened here is a sign that we belong, not just in this building, or to this
denomination, but to the covenant people of Jesus Christ. Our life together is a sign of his death and
resurrection, and it is as his body that we are sent on the mission of his
Gospel.
So I had to ask whether I
was ready to renew my commitment to that mission, as God is renewing it in this
community. Could I take new risks for
the sake of inclusion, to welcome our neighbors who are still kept out of this
church by barriers of language or culture or physical disability? Could I embrace a broader vision of renewal, going
to work with other churches and faith communities and partners in Petaluma to recover
our common story and do what we can in our modest way to rebuild a covenant
society? These were questions I had to
put not only to myself but to the Discernment Committee and the Vestry. And now I put them to you. As for me and my house, we will stay here at
St. John’s, Petaluma and serve the Lord, as long, and as well, as we are able.
No comments:
Post a Comment