LOOKING BACK/LOOKING FORWARD
or
BACK TO EGYPT/FORWARD INTO THE PROMISED LAND!


Nearly a week has passed since our farewell weekend for Pastor Bruce. It was quite a time, full of wonderful memories, acknowledgements, humorous moments (Bruce’s driving, Arie Roest’s colorful stories!), sincere tributes, visual histories, a celebration of the many good things that occurred under Bruce’s pastorate. It was an emotional time too, as the realization that “This is it!” truly sank in. Pastor Bruce is, indeed, retiring; leaving as senior pastor of our church after 28 years; no longer the spiritual leader that we have known, grown accustomed to, and relied on.

It really struck me the previous Sunday during the Confirmation service. As I watched Bruce interact with the students and heard their stories of coming to faith, I got that empty feeling in the pit of my stomach that always signals EMOTION! I felt a wave of sadness and loss sweep over me. It hit me hard, that I will no longer experience the many things that Bruce and I have been through together, from the daily routines (worship planning, ministry discussions, practical details, etc.) to the bigger occasions (holiday planning, special events, Holy Land tours, etc.). I will no longer be able to count on the familiar patterns and habits that characterized our working relationship, and our friendship. All of the unspoken awarenesses and understandings that we’ve developed over 28 years are now over, and will have to be consciously begun all over again with someone new/someone different. Wow! This is difficult. A huge unknown. A seismic shift. A time for new behaviors, attitudes, understandings, patterns.

A part of me just wanted to freeze the proceedings, halt the action, and hit REVERSE. To take back all we’ve been through as a congregation recently, back before Bruce even mentioned the word “retirement,” back into a comfortable bubble of familiarity full of “knowns,” assumptions, customary patterns and habits. It was so much easier then! So much less unsettling that way! Remember when... Remember how... Remember the...

But nice and warm and fuzzy as those thoughts and desires may be, they are not reality. We can never truly go back to what was. We know this--we really do! And we know that the past we want so much to recapture was never as pristinely perfect and delightful as we imagine it to be. The challenges, the discomforts, the bad stuff that was also part of “back then” falls away when we recall “what was,” leaving just the “good bits” for us to dwell on and long for: a reality that never was truly real at all. (Makes you wonder if you can even trust anything that historians tell us about our past, doesn’t it?!)

This week in my Bible reading I was continuing through the book of Numbers when I came across something that got me thinking about where we are as a congregation these days. It’s from Numbers 11 and 20:


“Now the people complained about their hardships. The rabble with them began to crave other food and again the Israelites started wailing, ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.’”

“The whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin. Now there was no water for the community, and the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord! Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink.’”

Earlier in Exodus, not long after they passed through the Red Sea and away from their slavery in Egypt, we read of similar complaints and familiar memories:

“The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve the entire assembly to death.’”

Not much later in Exodus:

“The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephadim, but there was no water to drink, and they grumbled against Moses: ‘Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children die of thirst?’”

It occurred to me that we, as a church in this extended time of transition, are in a kind of “desert” between what we knew so well (Egypt) and where we are headed, into something new, different, unknown (the Promised Land). It is not pleasant here in the “desert” either! What we’ve counted on in the past, assumed to be available and present for us, felt in control of--whoosh! It’s no longer here. We are vulnerable, surrounded by uncertainty, very much the way the Israelites in the hot, dry, barren desert were vulnerable. They no longer had their homes, the food and water they had always taken for granted, their familiar routines, their usual patterns of living--no! Now they were adrift in the desert, wandering around, only able to rely on what was present in that moment, for that one day. The Promised Land, and all the good things that it held (“a land flowing with milk and honey”) seemed far far away, completely unreal and unattainable; an impossible goal. In the midst of the many discomforts of the present, they harkened back to what they thought was a much better existence in Egypt--totally forgetting the oppression, the hardships, and the cruelty of slavery that was their lot in that previous place. In the middle of the desert--that in-between place of uncertainty and not knowing--their memories captured their hearts, grew bigger and stronger than their hopes and dreams of what lay ahead, dampening the incredible, wonderful promises that the Lord had in store for them in Canaan.


But as we learned through the Veritas process, “If your memories are bigger than your dreams, you are on the path to death!”

Now before I say anything more about this Egypt/Promised Land analogy, let me make it abundantly clear what I am NOT saying! I am not insinuating that our “Egypt” here at Hilmar Covenant was negative and bad, the way “Egypt” was for Israel. Of course not! Nor am I implying that we are like the rabble in Numbers, wailing about our current situation and grumbling about what has taken place. No! I’m using “Egypt” as an attitude or perspective, and the “desert” as an image of vulnerability and insecurity. (I feel I have to spell this out because sometimes people jump to conclusions, make wrong connections from what I am trying to say, and think I’m being negative, cynical, or critical in some way...)

My point is simply this: It is very easy, in the midst of a “desert” experience like the transition time we are currently in as a church, to wish for the past; to harken back to “what was;” to avoid the discomfort, uncertainty, and painful change that are called for in a more fluctuating, moving, “nomadic” existence, like the one we are living in right now. It is hard to keep our “preferred future”--our Promised Land--in view when we are experiencing the continuous uncertainties of these transition times.


Human beings crave stability. We like predictability. We prefer certainty, what we can expect, the assurance that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” (Julian of Norwich) Thus, it is natural for us to feel nervous, unsure, even frightened--both about our current state in this “desert” of transition and about what the Promised Land actually holds for us in the future. (Remember: some of the spies said “There are giants there!” Ahhh! Scary...)

My hope, and my challenge to all of us here at Hilmar Covenant, is to embrace fully this journey that we are on together right now, to trust that we are solidly in the midst of God’s plan for us, no matter how unclear it might seem to us right now, and that He will continue to direct us, just as He did His own chosen people from Egypt through the desert to Canaan. Let us go forward as a strong, united, committed community of faith, and not be like those Israelites who grumbled, trusted other things than God (think “golden calf”), and doubted that the desert was the perfect place for them to be: the place where their faith and relationship with God would be forged even stronger, deeper, and made more real. This is our opportunity during this time of transition too: to see our faith and relationship with God strengthened, deepened, and made more vibrant as well.


And always, it will be about making us ready to enter a new chapter--a new, promising reality--as a congregation: a truly revitalized, healthy (“pursuing Christ”) missional (“pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world”) church here in Hilmar.

The journey has begun...

(Watch our church website for a photo gallery of Pastor Bruce’s many farewell moments!)