In just a couple of weeks a very small group of us will be heading north for a shortened week of wilderness canoeing. We’ve begun describing the trip as the “almost Canada” canoe trip – we’ll be going into the Boundary Waters, a reminder of yet one more change caused by our world’s current challenge of trying to navigate the best path forward in a continuing pandemic. We have been grieving our inability to embark on the trip to Canada due to border restrictions. We are grieving as we encounter the changes in outfitter, and menu, and restrictions for travel. At some point along our journey, we may be almost close enough to see Canada… but we won’t get there this year. We are reminded that we are still journeying in that liminal space.
I have found myself repeatedly being drawn to the story of the Exodus as we’ve navigated the challenges of the last couple of years. The narrative can touch our journey of faith in lots of different ways – the theme that I keep hearing is that of moving from a people who are enslaved to the life-sucking-ways of being brick builders for Pharaoh, into being shaped into a people who are freed in order that they might learn to follow and serve God. That call to a different life orientation is at the heart of our story of faith. That call also constantly becomes one of the greatest challenges for any us as we journey with God. Like the Israelites, we are quick to proclaim the vision and value of freedom, but we are slow to embrace a vision that is about freedom for a path in service to something greater than ourselves and not merely freedom from a circumstance that we don’t like. It’s very easy to grieve change and complain about all the things that we don’t like or don’t have. It’s much harder to turn to God and give thanks for what we do have and to keep our focus on the direction toward which God is leading us.
On that Exodus journey the people keep looking back and they keep grumbling and they keep doubting that they will arrive in the promised land. Indeed, their lack of faith, and their inability to work together with one another and with God at one point leads God to that proclamation in Number 14:11 that reads: “The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them?” God wants to wipe the slate clean and start over… but Moses convinces God not to give up on God's people. Perhaps you remember God's compromise, that the people would wander in the wilderness for forty years before arriving in that promised land. The people needed a generation to learn to work together and to trust in God... and even then it was often a struggle.
We are living amid a world that I think God might judge in very similar fashion to that whining, selfish generation in the wilderness. There’s a desperate need for us to pull together, to work together, that we might choose to make meaning and strengthen our relationships with one another and with God during our wilderness journey. But that requires choosing a constructive attitude at every step along the way.
We’re going to head into the wilderness with our little group, and I’m sure that there will be plenty of opportunities for us to whine about how our experience won’t be like what we’ve had in the past… or, we can choose to encourage one another to celebrate a long awaited chance to engage God's creation with one another. We can choose to let our time and our journey feed our souls and deepen our relationship with God. Every time that we do something as a group we are reminded of how much more fun, powerful, and rewarding it is when we work together.
Around church lots of things are becoming re-energized. We are making plans for things like VBS, Sunday School, a Pignic, the Chancel Choir, Confirmation, Adult Faith Formation opportunities, and a Children’s Christmas program all to be unfolding in the next few months. Even as we return to soul-feeding opportunities that seem familiar, they will be different. Lots of activities may shift their times in the schedule. One of the things that many of you have noted is that a year ago when we were worshipping in the park on the first Sunday of each month that Communion shifted to the first Sunday instead of the last. By the end of the summer, we were talking about how much sense it made to align ourselves with most of the rest of our denomination and continue celebrating Communion on the first Sunday of the month. And so, we’ll continue with that new schedule for the future.
My deep prayer is that as we continue this journey together, we all remember the power of working together. I also pray that we keep reminding ourselves and one another that our faith is about moving forward, and it is about humbling ourselves in loving God and loving our neighbor first and foremost. We are called to responsibility to all of God's people and creation. As a people of God, I pray that we can keep pulling together to bear witness to that freedom for which God has called us: the freedom to love like Jesus.