In a recent Mission Moment, Pam Brucker from the Center for Community Justice, spoke about the experience of entering our church building. She told us that when she walks in with children who are hurting, they are awed by the sense of love that pervades our building. She attributed it to generations of people at prayer and in worship. I want to add that people have been loved, accepted, and affirmed in this space for many years, and that changes the energy too.

God’s work has been done here. This space has seen nearly countless baptisms, communion tables, and celebrations of life. Preludes, postludes, and anthems have filled the air with wonder.

God’s work has been done here. Not perfectly, but consistently. Love has been shared. Gifts have been given. People have been seen and heard. Welcome has been extended. Grace has lived.

Pam’s words reminded me of the wonder of space, and how important space can be for our connection to God. For the most part (in moments other than the miraculous), I think we have to be open, vulnerable even, to connect with the Divine. That happens either when we feel safe or when we are beyond our capacity to hold up own own barriers. There are truly miraculous moments with God breaks through our walls, but that’s another story for another day. The need for vulnerability that we don’t worship as well in just any space, and that prayer can be easier in some spaces and harder in others. It isn’t that God is more present in some places than others, it is that we can get our guard down to connect to the always present One more in some places than others!

I’ve often wondered if an experience of God that happens in a place then opens that place to greater trust and therefore more God experiences. I think it might be so. In any case, like Pam, I’ve experienced the sense that the air itself is different in places where people have prayed, been open and vulnerable, sought God, worshipped God, and shared love consistently over the years and it helps to open my heart to God as well.

It seems that this is the crux of our story today. After generations of wondering in the desert, the people FINALLY came into the Promised Land. The Bible says the people wandered for 40 years which is Bible for a LONG TIME. Archeologists think that perhaps the people who came into ancient Israel with the story of an experience of God in the desert were a motley group of nomads who had wandered for countless generations. Either way, its been a while that they’ve wandered in the desert. The Bible says that they learned dependence on God in the desert, which makes sense. The Bible calls the desert the wilderness, and understands the desert wilderness to be a place where life can’t survive without God’s help.

The people were ready for a change. They’d been the desert for a long time, and they were dreaming of stopping their nomadic ways, settling into their own land, and becoming farmers. They felt drawn to a particular land. The crossing of the Jordan River was the entrance into their land, a significant transition point in their communal lives. The nomads are about to have a home. Their wandering days are coming to an end.

The transition between their many years of desert wandering, kept alive only by the Spirit of God, and the settled life they yearned for happened at the River. They were on the western side of the River. Their life as a settled people would start on the Eastern side. The crossing represented a change in identity for the entire people.

The story indicates that they experienced God as present in the transition as God had been on the journey. The way they tell the story, God says, Joshua commands, and the 12 men DO. God says to Joshua that the men should take 12 stones, carry them over, and lay them down in the encampment. Joshua tells the men to take 12 stones, carry them over, and lay them down in the encampment. Then the men took, carried, and laid the stones. It happened as it was supposed to happen.

The stones become the reminder that God was with them on that day, although I suspect they also held the memory of God’s presence with them in the desert as well. As it is remembered, God stopped the flow of the River so they could pass safely.

The image is particularly striking. The priests carried the Ark of the Covenant, which physically contained the 10 commandments, but was understood to contain the very presence of God. They went first. The river parted as they walked. They then stood in the middle of the river, the presence of God holding the River back, until the people had all passed through. The priests are standing on stones, holding up the Ark. It seems to me that this indicates the river bottom might have been left a bit mucky, even in the midst of the miracle 😉 Or, even, that the memory of the river STOPPING was a later development, but that the priests still led and their presence holding the Ark helped the people trust they could cross over.

The stones are the safe place where the priests are confident they won’t slip, fall, or drop the Ark of the Covenant. Joshua has one man from each tribe gather a stone to remember the occurrence. They take the stones, carry them out of the river, and lay them down on the far side where the people sleep for the night. Its funny, isn’t it? The transition from being homeless nomads to entering the Promised Land was complete, but not immediately impactful. The first night they camped, like nomads, on their land. The houses weren’t build, the wells weren’t dug, and the seeds hadn’t been planted. Their lives had changed forever, but at first it wasn’t so different.

The stones that had held up the priest so that the priests could hold up the Ark, so that the presence of God could assure and hold up the people, were the symbols that they brought with them from that transition. They carried the stones a safe distance from the river to the place they laid their heads, and then they put them down to mark the first night of their new lives together.

In later generations the stones would reconnect the people to the faithfulness of God and the ways that God cared for them when they could not care for themselves. The day it happened, though, it seems carrying the stones served as a physical symbol of the transition that had transpired. It was necessary, because without the stones, one side of the River might quickly have looked like the other side of the River.

For the generations to come, the place the stones were laid was a holy place, a space where they knew that people had connected with God, and thus a place they went to seek out God. It may be that it felt like entering this place, or another holy space, and that with the prayers piled on top of each other, it became more holy with time. The first ones who camped there had an experience of God that day, and used the stones to mark the place so others could find it in the future. The first ones of the ancient Israelites who camped there held onto the stones that had steadied them as they embarked on the next part of their lives together.

This story is the opening narrative that will be used at our Camp and Retreat Centers this summer. The camp curriculum will use it to teach campers that we , “designate special places as sacred and created physical reminders of our relationship to those spots. Anywhere we notice and are aware of God’s presence with us can be such a place – especially at camp.”¹ They also intend to talk about the ways that the stones were present to many generations – the ones that placed them, the ones who came back to see them, and the ones who asked questions to their parents about them. The stones became a way to pass down the stories of faith, even as they were a thin place for people to connect to God. So too, at its best, are our Camp and Retreat Centers. They are even filled with buildings with names that come with stories of our ancestors in faith. They are filled with art from those who came before. At times, there are even symbolic stones. When I was a camper my group walked a large stone a long way, and painted it with our names. It still stands, lo these many years later, and when I walk by it I still smile. The stone brings me back to people I love and a time that was saturated with God’s presence.

Those ancient stones from the riverbed were all set down TOGETHER. 12 men from 12 tribes each carried one. Even then the people were united and yet distinct. It would not have been enough for one stone to be carried. The 12 marked the fullness of the people, everyone was included with the 12. Conveniently, the 12 also made a much longer standing marker of the holy place than any one stone ever could have.

A long time ago a friend (I’m no longer sure which one) told me of a sermon they’d heard, I have no idea from whom. That friend’s pastor had told the people, “When the going gets tough, go to the water.” I’ve held onto the idea so long now, that it likely doesn’t mean what it started out as meaning. However, I have understood it as an encouragement to go to a body of water, and sit, and allow your soul to let go. I’ve never thought the water was the holy part, although it may be for some. My version of this is, when the going gets tough, go to a place where stones mark the spot.

When our souls are weary and needing solace, when we are lost in confusion and can’t find our way, when we are restless and ill at ease, it isn’t easy to connect to the Holy One we need most in those moments. Thus, we need to seek out the Holy Places that will help us be safe enough to led our guards down and become vulnerable. In those places we can connect to our own wisdom, and heart with the Divine who is already with us.

It might be that the places you seek are entirely unique, but for many of us, they’re places that have already been set in stone, sanctified by those who came before, and marked so you can find them again.

Thanks be to God for those who take the stones, carry them to the sacred places, and lay them down so we can find them.  Thanks be to God for the places we can go when the going gets rough, to sit with the Sacred and simply be. Amen

1“The Vine” 2017 Camp Curriculum used by Upper New York Camp and Retreat Centers.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 21, 2017