Teaching and Testing

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Exodus 17:1-7  

 

Something always gets messed up in a move.

This time, for me, it was the Brita filter. You know, the water thermos with a special compartment at the top that filters out impurities contaminating the water from the tap. [I don’t actually know a lot about water filtration. I just know that I had a Brita filter in Tucson, and I liked it, and I expected to have the same one here in San Antonio.]

For two weeks I unpacked kitchen boxes with dedicated perseverance, savoring in my mind the sediment-free stream that would flow from its spout the moment we were reunited, anticipating with ever-greater enthusiasm the moment I would finally pull my one and only Brita filter out of the last box of kitchen items to be unpacked . . . on Tuesday . . . late afternoon . . .

It was cracked.

A long, thin, irreparable crack from top to bottom. Goodbye Brita filter. Hello a few choice words from a frustrated yours truly! [I will not repeat them from the pulpit.]

Let’s just say I sympathize with the ancient Hebrews, wandering in the wilderness, wondering from where in the world their next drink of water will come. If I was this upset about a broken Brita filter after a remarkably easy move, imagine what it would be to find yourself in a land you have never known, swept up with a pack of runaways you have barely met, with no United Van Lines to get you and your belongings safely from Egypt to the Land of Promise and Plenty.  

“What in the world were we thinking?” was the phrase on the lips of just about every Hebrew making the journey. [Including a few more words we won’t say from the pulpit.] Yes, Egypt was bad. Egypt was really bad. But at least we knew where the next bottle of water was coming from. Here there is nothing to drink!

And Moses, their leader, is at his wits end to respond. It does not matter that this ragtag bunch of escaped runaways has passed through the Red Sea unscathed. It does not matter that God has just rained bread—manna from heaven—to provide for the hunger of this group of people Moses has come to lead. What matters is this present moment of life and death, this dry and weary land where there is no water to put in even a cracked Brita filter. And they honestly do not know if God is with them or not. And maybe it would have been better to have just stayed put in Egypt after all.

At least that’s what the ancient Hebrews say in the present moment of panic. And let’s face it, that’s what we all say in the present moment of whatever panic currently terrifies us, even though God has already proven over and over again that God will provide in the wilderness: through the Red Sea, through the manna from heaven, through the quail. And God continues to prove it, as God leads Moses and a group of elders to a gushing stream from a rocky place in a nearby mountain, to an abundant waterfall that was there all along, but just didn’t happen to come from the Brita filter covering the contaminated tap water flowing abundantly from their enslavement in Egypt.

Something always gets messed up in the move, but God somehow always finds a way to make it better. That is what God is trying to say to the ancient Hebrews wandering in the wilderness. That is what God is trying to say to all of us wandering in the wilderness.

Because the story of the ancient Hebrews wandering in the wilderness is the classic story of pilgrimage, of setting out on a journey of faith with all of the twists and turns, the teaching and testing, the leaving behind and the embracing of the new that are necessary when God invites us to band together on a journey of grace to a place we do not yet know but that we have been told holds promise and opportunity, abundance and wholeness, milk and honey. Peace.

We are part of that pilgrimage every Sunday when we gather in the name of Christ, celebrating the goodness of what God has already done for us and for our people, naming our present panic—a job on the line, or a child that is sick, or an anger that refuses to abate, or a faith that has come crashing to its core—and finding somewhere in this holy hour in this holy space a river of life to sustain us on the journey, just like the Hebrews did in the waters of Meribah. A word of hope in the Call to Worship, a note of grace in a song of trust, a conviction revived in a prayer or a reading, a challenge or opportunity from the meditation on the Word.

When we come to worship every Sunday, we remember this pilgrim journey we are on—this pilgrim journey God’s people have always been on—and we trust that somehow, someway, God will bring us home.

And God does!

I think that is why your “Bienvenidos” is so important to you, why you demanded it back at the beginning of your worship service after you felt like it was taken away. The presentation of the gifts is kind of like the tabernacle the ancient Hebrews carried across the desert, forming the center of their campground from one movement to the next, the place they could always count on, no matter where in the wilderness they found themselves. And I applaud you for it. It is the hallmark of who you are at Madison Square Presbyterian Church, welcoming God’s pilgrim people to whatever home we can find as we wander our way through the wilderness that is our very lives.

So now here we are, settling in to our third week together as interim pastor and pilgrim people, and the welcome is genuine and heartfelt . . . and it seems timely to step back a bit and reflect for a minute on what it is we are actually doing together in this “interim” ministry. Or, perhaps more appropriately, what it is God might be doing with us on this particular pilgrimage that is ours in this season at Madison Square.

Like the ancient Hebrews, we, too, are setting out on a journey of faith through an unknown land to a promise of hope on the other side, are we not? Or, more accurately, we are meeting at Mount Sinai to journey the rest of the way together. We are a group of people—like them—joined by a common heritage, bound together by a sense that a just and generous God wants freedom and wholeness and abundant life for all God’s people, bound and determined to find that grace by any means necessary, bound and determined to find a “permanent” pastor who will not lead this community back into Egypt, bound and determined to prepare this community to receive that new pastor well.

Like the ancient Hebrews, we may hit a few bumps in the road—and perhaps we have already—and it may take a little longer than we really think it should—and perhaps it has already. But this is a pilgrimage, not a sprint to the finish . . . a way of life, not something to “get through” so we can start the “real” living again. And there is much to be learned along the way if we take the time to pay attention.

The Hebrews needed a census of the people they actually had traveling with them—not unlike our own efforts to update our membership rolls, so they took the time to stop and count. And they needed a set of shared guidelines to organize their daily living—not unlike our newly adopted bylaws, so they took the time to stop at Sinai and receive the Ten Commandments. And they needed a new class of elders and deacons trained in the ways of the wilderness, so they took the time to re-organize their leadership in patterns that served their needs more effectively and fairly.

And they needed to work through their disagreements and head off the opposing tribes trying to send them back to Egypt, so they took the time to debate their differences and stand firm in the face of backlash and mistrust. And they just plain needed to let go of what was no longer working for them in order to receive a new opportunity for something different to emerge—not unlike me letting go of my Brita filter. So it took them a while. And it will take us a while. But once we are ready for the Land of Promise and Plenty, we will really, truly be ready!

Because what the ancient Hebrews realized through their pilgrimage in the wilderness—and what I hope we will learn right along with them—is that the journey was, in fact, the destination. Everything they learned in the wilderness sustained them in the land to come. Pilgrimage became a way of life, not just a practice in the moment, and the trust in God to provide for them and strengthen them through whatever wilderness they found themselves in became the walk of faith that is ours still today.

Are you really with us, God, in this journey through an unknown land? they wanted to know. Yes, I really am, and I will be with you to the end, God responds.

That was what God was teaching them in the wilderness. That is how they were testing God in return. And that is what God is teaching us, too, here at Madison Square as we work our way through “The Developmental Tasks of the Interim Period,” which is what we call the intentional transition from one installed pastor to the next. Like the ancient Hebrews, God really is forming Madison Square Presbyterian Church as a whole new people, a whole new community, in a new place with a new way of relating to one another—and, I would dare to suggest, even a new way of relating to God. And it is going to take some time to figure that new way out, just like it did for the ancient Hebrews.

What I want to offer you, as your interim pastor, is the stability and trust and joy that comes with embracing this pilgrimage as a way of life, rather than a means to a destination, learning over and over again that God will find a way to provide for us just at the moment we have given up hope. That God will fashion us into a new community, just when we have decided we cannot belong. That God will teach us and test us, just when we have caved in to the cloud of unknowing. That in these times of pilgrimage, we discover more deeply who we are, and we trust more intently whose we are, and we become more fully who God created us to be. In fact, that is always our invitation as a people of faith. It’s just that now we get to pay closer attention to it.

What I have learned from you in these few short weeks is that you already have everything you need to sustain you on this pilgrim journey: you have la fuente de identidad, the water of your baptism . . . reminiscent of that passage of freedom through the Red Sea . . . grounding us in the promise of God’s grace for the journey; you have la mesa de sustento, the meal of manna and unfiltered water flowing from the most unlikely places . . . nourishing us just at the moment we have given into despair; and you have el libro de memoria y promesa, the stories of God’s walk with our people in the past, encouraging us in the present toward the future hope that is life eternal in that Land of Promise and Plenty.

In the weeks and months to come on this pilgrim journey that is ours together, I will simply remind you of what you already know: that God is still with us even now; that prayer and perseverance will see us through whatever panic emerges along the way; that who we will become may yet be even more exciting than who we have been; and that at the end of the day, God will always . . . always . . . always welcome us home.

This is always what it has meant to be God’s pilgrim people. With or without our Brita filter. Amen.