I read in a disturbing news article this week that people in our mainline American churches do not have a sense that God is present with us.[1] One of the researchers quoted in the article writes, “The loss of morale [in a shrinking church] creates an environment where many say: 'It doesn’t feel as if God is in this place.'”[2] According to this survey, high spiritual vitality in our mainline churches declined from 43 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2010. Interestingly, along with the feeling that God is absent is a clear decline in the emphasis given by members to spiritual practices such as prayer and scripture reading. The reasons cited in the survey for the slump in spiritual practices are that declining financial health in the recession is sapping peoples’ morale; that aging members are not open to new forms of worship; and that social service work is encouraged, while prayer and scripture reading are not.
At first glance, the triumphalist take on the entry of the people of Israel into the Promised Land created by the authors of the Book of Joshua was the last thing that I wanted to preach on this week. The book of Joshua, with its vision of leadership that is tied to divinely sanctioned war and violent conquest and genocide, is not my favorite book of the Old Testament. As I studied our text, however, I was struck by the author’s repeated insistence that Joshua be exalted before the people so that they will know that God is with them. Reading our lesson for today, I can, in my imagination, almost hear the discouraged Israelites expressing a familiar anxiety: “What will become of us now that Moses is dead? Moses always knew what to do. God was with him and spoke to him. Moses was pretty full of himself sometimes, calling us a stiff-necked people and all, but he interceded with God on our behalf whenever we went astray. He got the manna for us when we were hungry and water for us when we were dying of thirst. But now he’s dead, and we’re not yet at the end of our journey. Tomorrow we have to cross a river in order to enter into this wonderful new land that is supposed to be ours, but we don’t really know what is on the other side. OK, compared to the Red Sea, this river that we are supposed to cross looks pretty tame, and we don’t have the Egyptian army chasing after us with their chariots, but the water is awfully high right now …What if I slip and start to drown? Will the others leave me behind or will they stop to pull me out? What if one of the priests drops the most holy Ark of the Covenant, and God’s Law disappears under the water, never to be seen again? Without the binding action of God’s covenant with us in God’s Law, then surely God would abandon us, and all would be lost… All that I really ask is to know that the living God is still with us as we go into this new land, into this wide-open future.”
Like the desert wanderers emerging from the Sinai, we, too, want concrete reassurance that the living God is still with us in times of change. Before I cross a boundary from which there is no return, entering uncharted territory, I sure would like some proof of God’s strength and favor. If we were to follow the model of the Deuteronomistic Historians for our church leaders, perhaps we should be looking for the Holy Spirit to appear in tongues of fire upon Bishop Terry at Diocesan Convention in two weeks? We would know that God is with us then! Or what if Bishop Katherine in New York produced a document attesting to the conversion of a million new Episcopalians in one day? We would know that God is with us then! I would jump into the Church’s future with both feet, if those impressive things happened. That would be proof for the history books! Indeed, this week’s Old Testament lesson made me wonder when God is going to come and fill the pews at St. Thomas to overflowing in order to put a divine stamp of approval on my own leadership here.
We long for leaders exalted by God, clearly marked with divine favor, people who will prove to us by their power and success that God is with us … but wait—there is another leadership tradition that runs through the Bible. What about Isaiah’s prophecy that we Christians know so well: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel:--God with us. Isaiah spoke of this child during a time of war, a time as bloody as the Conquest of Canaan, except this time the people of Israel were the victims. It was a time when the heavy boots of invading soldiers could be heard pounding back and forth across the country, leaving bloody cloaks and mangled bodies in their wake. This child was born in a land in which God’s people had lost hope; wherever they looked it was as if they saw only “distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish.”[3] The birth of this baby, however, became a sign of hope for his people. Isaiah anchored God to the people’s hope in a name made everyone dance and sing with the delight and joy usually reserved for the celebration of a bountiful harvest or a great triumph in battle. It was a name born of hope, a name born from God’s passion for the impossible: God with us.
We Christians of course took Isaiah’s hope and found it again in Jesus of Nazareth, “God with us” in that stable in Bethlehem and forever more. All of us who follow Jesus will find that proof of God’s presence with us does not necessarily go along with success and glory. As a matter of fact, we hear in our Gospel lesson today just what Jesus thought about the successful religious leaders of his day, these successors of Moses who love their grand titles and their piety and their honor among men and women. In Matthew 23, God does not exalt God’s leaders for our benefit. Rather, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Remember, too, that Jesus found himself, like Joshua, at the River Jordan. He, too, was crossing into an unknown future, beginning the ministry that would lead to his crucifixion. Jesus, however, does not hold back the waters with one hand and walk across the river on dry ground. Jesus does not even command John the Baptist to kneel before him for a blessing. Instead, he submits himself to John’s Baptism, letting himself be submerged in the dark waters of the Jordan in baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And it is God’s love that greets him as he rises from the waters: This is my Son, My beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.”
My favorite book on Christian leadership is by Roman Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen. Nouwen writes that a Christian leader is actually called “to be completely irrelevant … to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.”[4] In the secular world, we know that we need a competent doctor when we are sick and a competent CPA when we need to do our taxes. We save our spirituality for times in which our secular competence fails. According to Nouwen, however, modern science has rendered us quite competent on our own. We no longer need spiritual answers to practical questions, questions that can be answered just fine by psychologists and doctors and political scientists. But that does not mean that spirituality has no place in our lives. We are still hungry for it, for we are still broken, despairing people who need God’s love and care and a sense of belonging to God and to one another. According to Nouwen, Christian leaders are to depend on three things: Prayer, so that their ministry stays connected to God’s Love; Confession and forgiveness, so that their ministry remains communal and mutual; and strenuous theological reflection upon the scriptures, which will allow us to discern where we are being led, especially since a true servant leader is often led where he or she does not always want to go.[5]
Prayer, confession, theological reflection on the scriptures: are these not the spiritual practices that our recent poll says are missing from the church? Rather than focusing on growth and numbers in our churches, what if we turned our anxious energy to sustained prayer, confession, and reflection on the scriptures, at home, as well as in community? It’s not quite yet Advent, but I invite us all to engage consciously in such spiritual practices at least for a trial run this Advent. If we do, God—Emmanuel--will indeed be with us as we cross the churning river into the future.
[1] Peter Smith, “Struggling Churches Missing the Obvious.” http://blogs.courier-journal.com/faith/2011/10/26/struggling-churches-missing-the-obvious/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
[2] “Religious but not Spiritual.” http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/religious-but-not-spiritual-the-high-costs-of-ignoring-personal-piety/
[3] Isaiah 8:22
[4] Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 30
[5] Nouwen, 85.
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