Lent 2 / Year C
We had an
early-afternoon appointment with our OBGYN a week before the due-date of our
second daughter. My wife was experiencing
“back labor”, which apparently is uncomfortable. Because Abbey was scheduled to be a C-section
delivery, the doctor said, “You have gone long enough. Let me call the hospital and see when they
have an OR available.” The word came
back… 5:00 PM. We went home, packed a
bag, made arrangements for friends to care for our older daughter, fed the dog,
and headed to the hospital. One the way
we stopped at a camera shop to pick up a couple of rolls of film and video tape
to record the momentous occasion. I still
recall looking at my watch. It was
3:30. How odd, I thought, in 90 minutes
our lives will never be the same; odd not that it was happening, but to be in
possession of such knowledge down to the exact minute.
Life’s major
transitions don’t always come so neatly scheduled, but some do. Graduation.
Moving into a new house. Starting
a new job. Your wedding day. Relocating to a state. Your last scheduled day of treatment before
being given a clean bill of health. Turning
16, 18, or 21, with all the new opportunities each age confers. Retirement.
As I noted in Friday’s e-news, transitions come in many shapes and
sizes; expected or unexpected; rapid or drawn out; anticipated or dreaded;
embraced or resisted.
In today’s first
lesson, we read about a transition which has been a long-time coming. God’s people, once enslaved in Egypt, cross
the Jordon River and return to the Promised Land. It has been forty years since the Exodus. No adult whose feet touched the dry bottom of
the Red Sea is still alive. This is a new
day for God’s new people, who bear the stories, traditions, heritage, and
identity of their ancestors. Some of it
will translate into their new environment.
Much of it will not.
I remember
graduating from seminary in Mid-May of 1987.
While it was a goal I worked hard to achieve, I had an overwhelming
sense a significant part of my life was dying.
The community I had joined would never again be together in the same
form or fashion. Many of the daily
routines and rituals I had come to enjoy would be left behind or drastically
altered. I was no longer a student
receiving the wisdom of the church’s best and brightest. It was now time for me to produce… something…
somehow.
The next few weeks
were a feverous whirl of events. Moving
back to Ohio. Sleeping on a friend’s
couch until I could rent a place of my own.
Being ordained a deacon. And
then, about fifty days after leaving the hallowed grounds of Virginia Seminary (affectionately
known as ‘the Holy Hill’), came Day One of working in a church. I sat in my office, which overlooked an
alleyway, stared at the typewriter lounging on my desk, and wondered to myself,
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Clueless, I took out a calculator, pencil, and paper and counted the
number of Sunday’s until the day I retire – 2,444, give or take, and maybe
something like 14,600 days.
Our very brief
reading from the Book of Joshua belies the significance of the event it
describes. As if the transition from
wilderness wandering to settled occupation was not enough, this day also
represents the fulfillment of the promise Abram received from God centuries
earlier when he lived in the region of Ur – “Take up family and possessions and
go to a land I will show you. I will be
with you there and your descendants will prosper.” This part of the story weaves through three
generations in the Book of Genesis, makes its way to Egypt and several more
generations in the Book of Exodus, and lumbers on through four decades of
aimlessness in the Sinai before concluding with today’s reading.
The concise
description of this time rings true to life.
Joshua and God’s people must decide what from their past is useful in
their present and will translate into their future. They decide to undergo the rite of circumcision
(the sign of the covenant) and to celebrate the Passover Meal (reliving the
events delivering their parents and grandparents from bondage to freedom). They also decide to bring with them sacred
objects accumulated on the way; chief of which is the ark with the Tablets of
Law. And finally, we learn some things
from the transitional time are no longer appropriate, needed, or available to
God’s people; specifically, the manna (or food from heaven) ceases and each
person must now live off the fruit of his or her own labor.
I
suspect if you contemplate some of the transitions in your own life you will
see a emerge a pattern similar to this – the holdovers, the new acquisitions, what
is going to be left behind, and what has to be taken on.
After
two years, it feels like we are at a transitional point with the pandemic. While there is not a specific date or event
marking the moment, the past few weeks have seen a dramatic change, haven’t
they. Although most of us reside in the
same physical space and many of us hold the same job as before, so much about
life has changed. We have lost some
folks to the virus. Some relationships
have drifted apart. We have aged and
become more isolated. Some are bitter at
what has been lost. Some bristle at the
sacrifices required to see us through. Some
are more anxious and uncertain. I don’t
know about you, but I start to wretch when I hear a modern-day ‘prophet’ tell
me everything about the world has completely changed or there is no going back
to the way things used to be.
This
transition will be like all that have come before. We will figure out the most important
memories and rituals to carry into the future.
We will figure out which of our pandemic adaptions will be useful as we
move forward. And we will discern what
it looks like to pick up and carry on as a new day dawns. God’s unfailing and unflagging promise to us
remains the same… to be with us to lead us to a new day and a new place. What was, was… wonderful, missed, mourned at
times. But our God is the God of what
will be.
Edgar
Guest was a Detroit newspaperman and popular people’s poet of the first half
and the last century. One of his works
titled The New Days pairs well with the crossing of the Jordon:
The old days, the old
days,
how oft the poets sing,
The days of hope at dewy
morn,
the days of early spring,
The days when every mead
was fair,
and every heart was true,
And every maiden wore a
smile,
and every sky was blue.
The days when dreams were
golden
and every night brought rest,
The old, old days of youth
and love,
the days they say were best
But I--I sing the new
days,
the days that lie before.
The days of hope and
fancy,
the days that I adore.
The new days, the new
days,
the selfsame days they are;
The selfsame sunshine
heralds them,
the selfsame evening star
Shines out to light them
on their way
unto the Bygone Land,
And with the selfsame arch
of blue
the world to-day is spanned.
The new days, the new
days,
when friends are just as true,
And maidens smile upon us
all,
the way they used to do.
Dreams we know are golden
dreams,
hope springs in every breast;
It cheers us in the dewy
morn
and soothes us when we rest.
The new days, the new
days,
of them I want to sing,
The new days with the
fancies
and the golden dreams they bring;
The old days had their
pleasures,
but likewise have the new
The gardens with their
roses
and the meadows bright with dew;
We love to-day the
selfsame way
they loved in days of old;
The world is bathed in
beauty
and it isn’t growing cold;
There’s joy for us
a-plenty,
there are tasks for us to do,
And life is worth the
living,
for the friends we know
are true.
This morning we gather on a new side of the Jordon and give
thanks for the promise and hope of the new days.
