Wouldn’t it be convenient if there were always a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire showing you the way God wants you to go? Anytime you had a decision to make about which fork of the road to take, you just check where the pillar is. “Well, the pillar took the left-hand fork, so I guess that’s where God wants us to go.” No discernment necessary. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to decide for yourself. You just follow.
What happened, God? Once in a while, a pillar would come in handy pointing the way.
But immediately you see the issue: no sense of choice. No discernment—and no learning in the process. Just blind following.
Consider the discernment, the delight in wondering what might have been, as Robert Frost stands at that fork in the road in his poem “The Road Not Taken.”
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
[Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged, ed. Edward Connery Latham (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979), 105.]
The discernment process makes us who we are. The road less traveled is often the most interesting. And the Israelites are certainly taking the road less traveled.
After 430 years, they are ending their sojourn in Egypt and heading to the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey, the land of the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and a lot of other people who already happen to live there. (Small problem, small fly in the ointment. The Pilgrims ran into this small problem, too. The people of Israel and the people of Gaza have been having this same discussion for some 75 years now—the latest iteration of a land tug of war that has been going on for millennia. But I digress.)
How are we wandering in the wilderness? What road are we choosing? What do we have in common with the ancient Israelites as they fled their home of four centuries to live in the wilderness?
Well, I see a few parallels. First, we as a congregation have worshipped in the sanctuary of this building for a century, and in this building’s predecessor since 1908. Prospect has been Prospect in this very place for longer than any of us individually can remember. We’re used to “doing church” in certain ways that we have developed over time. We’re used to sitting in a familiar spot in the sanctuary, to seeing familiar people, to singing familiar songs with Kia. It’s all very known, very comfortable, very familiar. I’m saying “familiar”: it feels like family. Kind of like the bar in the TV show “Cheers”—everyone knows your name—only with less alcohol. And now we’re having to do something different while our sanctuary ceiling undergoes repair. Shakes us out of our well-traveled path. So we as a congregation are wandering in the wilderness for the coming weeks, probably until the end of September.
We are also wandering in the wilderness in the sense that we are wondering what comes next for this congregation. How long can we keep going? And what happens after that? We had a Thriving Prospect conversation back in January and have been trying a number of the ideas generated at that meeting. We will check back in on the Thriving Prospect conversation after worship on September 22.
So those are some ways in which Prospect is wandering in the wilderness, facing some forks in the road. In the big picture, the nation is in uncharted territory. I suppose that’s almost always true to some degree, but the election this fall just feels as if so much is at stake, and no matter which presidential candidate wins, a whole lot of people in the other party are going to be angry and say the election was stolen. We are walking into a wilderness time where anything is possible. The ground is shifting under our feet. Four years ago after the election we got January 6. Who knows what’s going to happen this time? So we’re living into edgy, uncertain times.
A pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire might come in handy now, guiding us forward, reassuring us that God is present in our midst.
Where are you, God? It would be nice to have some certainty. Perhaps we are like the father of the possessed son who says to Jesus, “I believe! Help me in my unbelief!” Yes, we believe—and we have a lot of questions, a lot of uncertainty. Anne Lamott writes,
I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me—that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. [Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (Riverhead Books, 2006).]
So here we are, noticing the mess, living with the emptiness and discomfort, the uncertainty, and yearning for assurance of God’s presence in our midst, God’s guidance showing us the path through the wilderness.
The wilderness, as I have mentioned several times recently, is where people do encounter God. On mountaintops, sometimes. Jacob falls asleep in an ordinary place and dreams of a ladder that has angels ascending and descending. He wakes up and says, “God is in this place—and I didn’t even know it!” So God is with us in this wilderness wandering. And maybe God is leading us to something new, if are paying attention.
This summer we have experimented with multiple ways to center ourselves in God, to open our eyes and ears and hearts to God’s presence. Take a sabbath. Find God through art. Write prayers with God at the center of the page, and tie all your other prayers back to God. Do a centering prayer for just two minutes. Go out into nature for 20 minutes or more and just notice things. These are all avenues that open us to the Divine Presence in our midst and in ourselves at all times.
On NPR’s weekday program “Marketplace,” the host is always reminding us that the stock market is not the economy. Similarly, our church building is not the church. We are the church, wherever we meet, wherever we are. If we’re meeting in the sanctuary, we are the church. If we’re meeting down here, we are the church. If we’re meeting at Kia and Jerry’s or at the farm, we are the church. If we’re meeting with Keystone, as we will several times in September, we are still the church, even if they have a slightly different liturgy and some faces we don’t recognize. It’s all good. We might discover some new ways to be the church, to follow God and be God’s people.
Perhaps you know that the word “goodbye” is a compressed form of “God be with you.” It is a blessing. We are blessing each other all the time. “God be with you.” So as this sermon draws to a close, I do not say “goodbye” to end it (not that I would anyway—I’m not going anywhere); I say, “God be with you.” Because God is always with us, if we will but look and listen and open our hearts. We may feel that we are wandering in the wilderness—as a congregation, as a nation—but God has not abandoned us. We may just have to look for God doing a new thing. Look around this circle of faces. God is here. So practice keeping your eyes open, ears attentive, heart awake. And know that, even if we can’t see a pillar of cloud or fire, God is with all of us. Amen.