What's it all for and how does it happen?

 

Exodus 15:22-16:36, Exodus 19:1-20::21. Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Leviticus 25 David Brooks recently had an article in the Atlantic where he said he’d been obsessed with two questions: Why are Americans so sad? and Why are Americans so mean? He says, there are lots of theories, most of them at least partly true. But, he opens, “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.” He writes that restraining our selfishness, welcoming our neighbor, disagreeing constructively, and finding purpose in life are not things our culture is currently intentional about learning and passing on. We don’t collectively address the question, what is life for? Humans need practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. We need moral formation -  to be formed into something and for something.   In our ongoing narrative, the Israelites have been led out of slavery into wilderness. These are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah: blessed to be a blessing to the world. But for centuries they’d been formed as slaves, for the benefit of the empire. They were disposable, existing for work by a system that stripped them of personhood and gave them daily patterns of living that reinforced this definition. They were slaves. They knew how to do this. Now they’re free. How do you be free?  They’ll need a new understanding of what life is for, and some practical guidelines for a meaningful existence.   The first time I preached on the Ten Commandments at Lake Nokomis, Owen was four and Maisy was one. The day before, in a fit of frustration with his baby sister, Owen threw a Star Wars action figure at her.  “No throwing things” isn’t a rule we’ve needed in our house for a long time, and time-outs are a faint memory (except for self-imposed ones), but back then, throwing things led to an immediate time-out.  After Owen’s grueling four minutes on the time-out chair, I knelt down in front of him and asked him if he knew why he had to sit there – my line of the often-repeated script. He avoided looking at me and parroted his line of the script,  “Because I threw something at Maisy. Sorry.”  But something stopped me this time, and since I had his attention, I asked him, “Owen, do you know WHY we don’t throw things in this house?”  He looked at me, big eyes and pensive stare, “Why?”  “We have that rule because we want this house to be a safe place for everyone to play, a place where everyone is protected and free to have fun.  You, Maisy, Mommy and Daddy, and even people who visit us.  If people were allowed to throw things here, nobody would be safe or protected or be able to play without being afraid.  That’s why we can’t have any throwing.   Do you think that is a good rule for us to have?” And he paused, then he nodded.  Then he said, with a very concerned face, “Mommy, that’s a good rule. But I forget! I forget what to do when Maisy touches my things! So I just throw things at her!”   And I promised that next time she touched his things, I would help him remember to tell her NO, then ask me to help get her away.  Because just as we don’t throw things, we also don’t take other people’s things without asking.  And he left satisfied.  That first year this blew the Ten Commandments wide open for me. Because the ten commandments are not actually grammatically commands  - they are descriptive – they portray the way life in the household of God works. In this house, we do not throw things at people, we don’t take other people’s things without asking. Here is what life looks like when people are honored and respected, all people, in a safe place where everyone can grow, and play, and not be afraid.   This is not just a list of rules, it’s not even just helpful moral formation, it’s a relationship upheld by God. You are no longer slaves, you are children.  So first, before even the words themselves, God claims them as children by caring for them in the wilderness. The first story today is about how God gave the Israelites manna for breakfast and quail for dinner, and provided water where there was none. Every day God gave them just what they needed for that day, and no more. If they tried to save it up it went rotten. But every seventh day was for rest, so the food from the sixth day could carry over. We’ve called this period in their lives “Trust training school.”  For 40 years they practiced being cared for, received belonging to God – I am trustworthy, I will take care of you. And then, in that place of upheaval and unknown, God gives them a word. Like the word that spoke creation into being, and the word that will become flesh and dwell among us. God’s word always brings life.  The majority of the Ten Commandments address Who is this God and what is God up to? “I’m the God who saved you and called you my own and cared for you and looks after you. I give you your name and identity and freedom. I am trustworthy and I expect you to trust me. I can’t be possessed or controlled, only encountered. I am who I will be, and I say who you are – not anything else that would enslave you or totalize you. So respect me. And then God says, you’ll forget you belong to me, and forget who you are for each other and what life is for, so every single week every single person stops working, to enjoy life and rest, just like I did when I created the world, because life is for joy and connection. You are not slaves defined by endless production, you my are children held in my love and called to bless the world. And then the commandments turn to, What is a good life and how do we live it? The moral formation part, practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. And with simple “We don’t throw things here” language, they talk about how to treat each other: in this house we hold one another as sacred and valuable, we uphold other’s dignity and personhood and treat people with respect, honesty and fairness instead of jealousy, greed or envy. In this home, God says, everyone has what they need, and we practice belonging to each other. But to notch it all up a level and really hit the message home, we’ve got another story from the law where God commands that every 7th year is a big, year-long sabbath for the soil, and every 49 years this sabbath thing becomes a mega sabbath jubilee celebration year. The whole gameboard gets wiped clean and reset. Master and marginalized, insider or outsider, generational wealth or poverty, it all disappears. Momentum crushed, balance sheet zeroed out. Only God can tell us who we, not what we’ve achieved or lost, not how people see us or our role in society, not our smart investments or poor choices. We are children, not slaves. And the earth is God’s beloved creation, also not meant to be endlessly worked. So in case we begin acting like what we do is more powerful and permanent than it is, God writes in a reset button. Come back home. You are my children, here to bless the world.  When God gave the law, God said, Here is what life is for. Here is how you live it. This is not hypothetical and idealistic. This is concrete and practical. The only way to life fully human, fully alive, fully who you are made to be, the only way to be free, is inside the perimeters of God’s love and order. Anything outside that makes us into slaves, steals our joy, binds us in patterns of destruction and division and isolation. For 16 years I’ve loved the ten commandments and insight I received from the experience of Owen’s time out.  But this time through I hear something different in that story. I hear a four year old's honest cry of anguish, how he knows it’s wrong to throw things, but when she takes his stuff, he forgets.  And I feel that part.  We’re sad and we’re mean. And we can wish we weren’t sad and try not to be mean – but most of the time we forget what to do. We agree they are good rules: let’s be kind and forgiving and generous. Let’s restrain selfishness and disagree constructively and welcome our neighbor. Yes, yes to all of it. Let’s do those good rules. Let’s practice them and be formed by the practice. But I still forget. I forget when a stranger is short with me, or something doesn’t work like it should, or people say dumb false things, or when I feel judged, or even when I’m just in a hurry.  I forget when I’m insecure or afraid, and I forget most often with those closest to me. When I’m interrupted or impatient, when I get stressed or anxious about things outside my control, when life feels overwhelming, I forget.  We need moral formation. Thank God for the places we learn to practice kindness and civility. Seriously, thank you, God. How will we ever remember unless we practice? But more than practice, I need a savior. I need someone to bring me back home, because sometimes I can’t find my way. I’ve practiced striving and self-protection so much for so long, that it’s hard to just choose to live what I know to be true. I forget.  But God gives more than good moral formation. God gives God’s very self.  To the Israelites God said, I will care for you, I will lead and guide you, and you will care for others. You are no longer slaves, you are my children. I make that so. You are those whom I am with. We are children of God in the household of God. We are those whom God is with. And Christmas is the concrete promise come to fruition in flesh and blood, God is with us. GOD is with us. The word made flesh to dwell among us. Jesus comes to make us fully at home in love. And when we are fully at home in love, that feels like joy.   Joy is a gift, we can’t make it happen. Jesus said that the point of all his teaching is that we have his joy. His joy – not that we try to act joyful or produce joy out of thin air. Jesus enters our death, our impossibility, our deep, existential forgetting, and takes it into himself. And Jesus give us his life. Jesus is fully at home in love, and the inner life of Christ’s own complete belonging to God and belonging to the world is for us. We can be at home in love. Even in pain and suffering. Even in disappointment and confusion. Even in our failure to live up to the values we believe. We drawn into life that doesn’t come from us and will not end with us, that is beauty, and wonder, and mystery, and awe, and delight and sorrow shared, poignant and powerful. And those moments when life eternal breaks through tangibly grabs us, we taste joy. We forget to forget. And we are remembered into life by God who is with us. So together we will practice. Freedom instead of slavery. Rest instead of relentlessness. We will turn our hearts to our creator and seek to trust in the I AM who holds the world, and we’ll help each other with the  kindness and generosity and peace too. But we will undoubtedly also forget.  So, Jesus, God with us, be with us here and set us free again. Speak a word that brings life. God who comes in, come into our places of stuckness and forgetting, remember us into life and bring us back home into love. Amen.

People of Hope

Exodus 7-15 

Episode 7: Moses & The Exodus

On Wednesday I attended the funeral of a woman who died of cancer, a mother of two sons, the youngest 13. Her devastated husband was shaken to the core to lose this love of his life. Who am I now? he asked, without her? Impossible. This thing he must do now, to live into a future without her? It’s impossible. 

Today begins Advent, a season of waiting for the arrival of our Savior. This first week of Advent is framed by hope. Hope is trusting in a future we can’t see right now.  Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King’s closest friend and advisor, said “I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.” This is hope. 

When our story opens, Moses is an 80 year old shepherd, who fled Egypt decades ago after murdering an overseer who was beating a Hebrew slave. After a dramatic childhood, he has lived out most of his days in the relative quiet and obscurity of the wilderness, tending sheep. When, from the bush that burns without being consumed, he is addressed by the God of his ancestors, and told that God has heard the people’s suffering, that God will be sending Moses to the pharoah to demand their freedom, and draw them into them a different future, Moses asks, “Who am I to do this?’ 

Who am I to do this? Who are we to bring about the future we think needs to happen? Or to stand against the future we dread coming?  Who are we to move forward in impossibility and make a life of it?

God answers Moses’ question with God’s own name, “Tell then I AM Who I Am has sent you,” and then, what gets translated “I will be with you,” God’s next statement is actually more like, “You are the one I am with." Then God says, "Watch what I can do." 

I Am Who I Am, and you are The One I Am With. Watch what I can do.

The baby whose life was spared by Shiprah and Puah, and saved by Jochebed and Miriam, who was first named “Drawn Out of the Water” by the pharoah’s daughter, is now called “The One Who I Am With” and summoned by God to join in as God delivers God’s people from slavery. 

Moses is not the protagonist of this story. He is not the savior, he’s the sidekick. What is about to happen is not from anything Moses can do, it never has been, not with Moses or Joseph or Jacob or Sarah and Abraham – it’s always been God’s work -  God’s choosing and God’s equipping, God’s plan and God’s action. Moses’ work is to surrender in obedience to God – to join in God’s work and trust that God will bring it about. Moses is called into a future he can’t see and can’t possibly make happen. But he must first know who it is who holds the future.

So God gives Moses God’s name. 

This name, Yahweh, is ambiguous in that it is both outside time and timefull – past, present and future are all wrapped up at once in the word. It could be, I am who I am, I am who I will be, I am who I was, I was who I will be. God is always present, past and future, outside of time, but fully entering time with us.

The name is an action word, exist, cause to become, and come to pass are all wrapped up inside of it.  We don’t know what the vowels are so we guess, and say Yahweh, or Jehovah, but to speak it alone almost sounds like breathing. It’s shortened Jah, like Hallelujah! Or, Praise God! The angels announcing God’s coming into the world sing their hallelu to Jah with the startled shepherds. The crowds waving palm branches shout their hallelu to Jah at the man on a donkey, praising the God who was, and is, and always will be right there in their midst. 

Even though the name Yahweh is written 7000 times in the Old Testament, it was not spoken aloud from even shortly after the Exodus. It felt too intimate, too sacred, so it is instead translated Adonai, and everywhere it appears in our bibles it’s instead written “the Lord” in small caps. It seemed too easy to exploit, to manipulate the name of God for our own purposes, to act as though the power is ours rather than God’s. Access to God is on God’s terms, not ours, and not to be taken lightly, made into a platitude, or assumed for our own ends.

God sees the people’s suffering; God opens up God’s own self to share the suffering and makes Godself vulnerable. When God gives Moses God’s name, God says, I am for you, and you may address me, I will be here. God invites relationship. Invites trust.  God comes into our broken places as God’s self. Not a nameless king or pharoah lording power over us, but I AM Who I Am, here in it with us. 

“I will teach you what you are to say,” God tells Moses, who is so worried about speaking. And I will give you someone to speak with and for you, your brother Aaron. In other words, Show up. I’ll take it from there. And you are not in it alone.

So God makes Moses into a minister, as God is. Then, God invites the pharoah to minister as well, which is to say, to come back to his humanity. We are made in the image of a ministering God, and we live that truth out when we minister to others. Again and again, God commands the pharaoh to let the people go, and again and again Pharoah resists. His heart is hardened, whether by God, or his own stubbornness, or both, and he does not submit.  

He will not win. God will prevail. Pharoah is used to power and control, but his power is nothing against the maker of the universe - it was no match for the trust and obedience of the lowly midwives through whom God spared the Hebrew babies and set Moses on his path. The pharoah can’t stop any of this from happening. He could help it happen, but he chooses not to, so it happens over and against him instead of with him.

When the people have fled Egypt - when the story of the Passover that becomes the meal that feeds them with memory and gratitude for centuries to come, turning their hearts to who God is and what God is up to and helping them watch for God’s coming, when the frantic departure has happened and they’ve begun the journey, hemmed in from before and behind, protected and guided by Yahweh, and it seems like they’re in the clear - then the real terror descends.

Suddenly they’re pinned between the watery chaos of the sea that is the death in front of them and the raging armies bearing down that is the death behind. Now the impossibility is stark – What are they to do? Nothing. They can do nothing. Only God can act. 

When we are trapped in impossibility, when death is all we can see, there is nothing we can do to pull ourselves out or to save one another.  There is nothing we can say to fix or change things for someone in that place. Who are we to make anything happen? 

The command comes to them there, in that utterly hopeless place, Do not be afraid, Be still. Be still and see what God will do for you.

And then God acts. God parts the waters of death and leads them into new life. And when they’re safely across, and the impossibly powerful force of destruction that is the entire Egyptian army is utterly destroyed in their wake, sister Miriam, the now-elderly prophet, leads the people of God in singing their hallelu to Jah and praising the God who saves.

The future, and our futures, are held by I Am Who I Will Be, who calls each of us One Whom God Is With. 

God comes in to be with us. Both cosmically, to save us all, and personally, to lead us through all the deaths of our lives into new life, again and again. The one who brings being into being, has come, is here. Jesus Christ is God with us. Born into this life of dying, Jesus takes our impossibility into the very heart of God.

In Christ, we are made bearers of hope in the world, and for the world. We become people through whom God brings about God’s future.  People who go into impossibility alongside others as those God is with and we wait there for God to act.  

We are drawn into the timefulness of Yahweh. With eyes wide open, we see the world as it is -  without hiding in denial or fleeing to optimism - but we also know that what is is not all there is or will be. Trusting this, as Rev. David Wood said so beautifully a few weeks ago in his letter about hope: instead of reactive we become responsive. Instead of anxious, we become available.  And instead of distracted, we become attentive, watching the one who holds the future to be now who God has been. 

Our story is not our own, it is God’s. It is the story of those gone before and those to come, it is memory and gratitude, water and naming, impossibility and deliverance. It is the story of the God right here with us, who sees and bears our suffering, who sends us to be ministers to one another and receive the ministry of others, without knowing how we will do this, only promising to be with us and to tell us what we are to say. It is the story of the God who is turning the world around in hope and can be joined but cannot be stopped. 

Who are we to bring about the future we think needs to happen? Or to stand against the future we dread coming? Who are we up against death and despair?  When all is lost and we can’t see our way forward, when the impossibility is most stark –we can do nothing. Only God can act. And God says, Don’t be afraid. Be still and watch what I will do. 

Together, for others and for this world, we trust in a future we can’t yet see, because we know who holds the future. We are people of hope.

Amen.

Where we've been - 

Episode 1: The Beginning

Episode 2: Noah (conversation - so this sermon is from 2014)

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah 

Episode 4: Jacob

Episode 5: Joseph

Episode 6: Brave Women of Egypt

"Be Still and I'll Show You"

 

Devotion for Being Apart -
September 13

I will share new devotions from time to time,
and invite you to browse through devotions that have been posted on this blog.

Exodus 14:10-14, 19-31

My wise friend Peter recently asked, “Why do we always act like ‘sustainable’ is a positive thing? There are a lot of things that are sustainable that are not good.  Racism, clearly is sustainable. We’ve sustained it for a long time.” Then he asked, “Instead of asking if things are sustainable, why aren’t we asking if they’re ‘life-giving’?”  “The broken systems that perpetuate injustice in this country are sustainable, but they sure are not life-giving. And a frenzied, way too busy pace of life that drains my soul, I sustained that just fine. But it wasn’t life-giving. “ 
 
When we’ve lived in brokenness for so long, it shapes our understanding of what’s possible for a good life to be. We stop asking what a good life is, what is life-giving, what brings wholeness or fullness to our lives and to the world. We shrink down within the walls of our collectively enslaved minds and hearts and we grasp the tiny reprieves and little escapes that keep our lives sustainable.
 
But when we find ourselves in unknown territory, forced out of our sustainable patterns, possibility opens up for something previously unimaginable.  And there are some experiences so significant, so deeply formative, that they change how we define ourselves and become a lens for how we see the world from then on out. 
 
The Red Sea moment is that for the Israelites.
 
All of our scripture – all Judaism and Christianity in fact – comes through the lens of this story. Even the things that happened before it are seen in retrospect through this part of their story. It’s the starting point: God is the one who delivers. We are the people of a God who saves.
 
So it’s almost impossible for us to imagine what it was like in the moments before this moment, because we are not given anything from that angle.  But I want us to try to imagine it anyway.  Because before this moment, their trust in God was hypothetical trust, it was trust in theory, inherited more than personal. The stories of creation, and the ancestors--Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Leah, Rachel, Jacob and Rebekah--were a long time ago, far removed from daily life. 
 
They practiced their faith every day and they believed that God was real and they were the people of God. That was true in the big picture.  But what was true for them on the ground, day in and day out, and had been for their parents and grandparents and grandparents’ parents before them, was that they were slaves of Pharaoh.  They were valued only for their capacity to labor, cherished less than a chariot horse.  They belonged to God, sure. But really, actually, daily, they belonged to Pharaoh for a life of constant work and no rest. 
 
So yes, they’d seen the seven plagues that convinced Pharaoh to release them, they’d seen themselves spared from the angel of Death. Moses said God was leading and they were going to follow Moses. They were ready to be free.  Let’s do this.  But their trust in God was more abstract then applied.  Their right-now-God-is-real-and-God-has-got-me-and-I-am-in-God’s-hands muscles were just starting to get exercised.
 
So it might have been that they set out on this escape with some brand new baby hope, tentatively trying on, inside themselves and with each other, a new identity that does not involve slavery but is something else, something ancient and true, wondering a little awed about what this might mean.
 
But now that Pharaoh has unleashed the entire Egyptian military against them, and is running them down in rage, with mighty chariots racing and terrible weapons drawn, they tend to agree with Pharaoh.  Who do they think they are to go against the Empire and imagine they could be free? Of course Pharaoh is going to come after his property, his workforce!  And of course he is angry! 
 
And now they find themselves on the banks of the Red Sea, with nowhere to turn, and the Egyptian army fast approaching. There is no escape, and they are terrified.  And—I love the sarcasm that often comes through, revealing across the centuries the feisty personalities of the Israelites—they say, ‘Hey Moses, were there no graves back in Egypt you could bury us in? You have to drag us into the wilderness to die? Didn’t we say, just leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? Huh? Didn’t we say that?” 
 
Life in Egypt was sustainable.  This feels like sure and certain death.
 
When we are in a dark and terrifying place, we’d rather go back to what was, even if what was sucked out our souls. Even if we lived like slaves, working for what doesn’t matter, wasting our lives for something we don’t believe in, grinding away for survival far removed from our deepest belonging and highest calling, with no real rest.  Because as bad as that is, at least it’s not death in the wilderness.
 
And when God is a religious concept that we hang onto but don’t really experience as a real, all-powerful, all-loving being who hangs onto us, it makes us much less thrilled about the risks of really living, and much more willing to settle for merely being alive.
But Moses answers the terrified Israelites, "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, you have only to keep still."

And then, against all instinct – both as slaves defined by their labor, and as people filled with terror and adrenaline – they are still. They stand still and watch.  And before their eyes a re-creation happens. Hemmed in by light and cloud of darkness, there is evening and there is morning, a new day, and this God who formed the earth moves again and the waters are separated, and dry land appears. 
God makes a way where there was no way.  
And they are brought from death to life.
And then, not only does God save them, but in front of their eyes, God destroys all that would destroy them.  God wipes out the enemy entirely, with a bodies-scattered-on-the shoreline kind of finality.  The invincible powers dominating them for centuries as an indisputable fact of life were obliterated by the hand of God.
 
You are MINE. God says decisively. Be still and I will show you this is so.  

On either of the Red Sea, life is no picnic. Life is full of hardship and unknown. There is struggle and pain in life no matter what. But on one side fear is dominant, and God seems a nice, sustainable notion while the tangible threats to our stability feel far more powerful than an unreachable God.  On that side we are slaves who never stop, whose life is only for existing, whose worth is defined by our doing, who have settled for a small, rigid world with emaciated hope.

But when we pass through the waters to the other side—when, in a moment of terrible need and difficult stillness, God comes to us, and saves us from what was certain to destroy us--we are redefined as people held by God no matter what. We are led into something new and also returning to our identity, ancient and true: we belong to this God. We belong to each other.  Heading into the wilderness, as hard as that will be, we are made free. 

God begins us in love, and ends us there too. And along the way God grows in us enduring trust, and forms in us expansive hope. God shapes us for a good life—a life of belonging to God and to each other. This life cannot be earned or lost, but only received and enjoyed.
 
The other side of the Red Sea is not about what is sustainable, but about what is life-giving.  Salvation is described in scripture as resting in God’s care.  And this is trust too.  As the continuation of the Israelite’s story makes clear, learning to live as the people who rest in God’s care, who trust in God, never ends.  But it begins here:  God saves. God saves us. We are those who are saved by God.  We belong to the God who acts to save us; we are the people who rest in God’s care. That is who we are. That is our story.  
 
There is no mustering that faith, or crossing that sea on our own.  God must do that.  God will act for us.  That’s who God is. That’s what God does.  So when we are ejected from our sustainable patterns into the unknown, when it feels like persistent and powerful fear will undoubtedly capture and destroy us, when death feels sure and certain, don't be afraid, be still.  God will make a way make a way where there is no way.  The terrors we face today will not prevail.  The Lord will fight for you.  You need only Be still. 
 
Amen.

 

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we can pray in this way, and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

A simple way of praying that frees us from having to figure out how God should solve things, and allows us to grow in trust that as we hold people and situations up to God, God hears and will act.

This works especially well as a walking prayer.

Here now,
with you,
for _______

For example:

Here now,
with you,
 for those sick with covid.

Here now, 
with you,
for those fighting fires.

Here now,
with you,
for the hungry and afraid.

Here now,
with you,
for (name).

The Wilderness of In-Between

Image from a stunning collection by Clare Benson

This reflection draws from all of Exodus...

but especially Exodus 1:6-22 

& Exodus 15:20-6:8

And the Hebrew people are delivered from slavery in Egypt to…?

No, not the Promised Land. Not just yet, anyway.  

First, the wilderness.

What’s the point of the wilderness? What is God up to? What is the reason for the wilderness?  In the story of the exodus, the story that defines a people and a God, the actual exodus - as in the leaving itself - is never separated from the wilderness.  The wandering in the wilderness is somehow part of the deliverance.

There is this word that came up for me around this story, Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"). Originally studied as a middle part of a rite of passage, "a liminal place is defined as “a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes.”

...It refers to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty regarding the continuity of tradition and future outcomes”.

So I am intrigued by the wilderness, this “in between” they get delivered to. This threshold.

 

When Andy and I graduated from seminary I was awarded the “Parish Pulpit Fellowship” for excellence in preaching and commitment to parish ministry.  What it basically meant was that some anonymous donors were awarding us $21,000 to travel and study, to supplement what I had learned in seminary with a broader, experiential education utterly of my own choosing.

So we packed up everything we owned into a 15 x15 storage unit, surrendered our apartment, forwarded our mail to a PO box, put our student loans on hold, and filled a few bags with just a tad more than we could carry and essentially dropped off the grid for six months.

We traveled around the whole world, heading west.  Beginning in Fiji and Hawaii, we stopped off in Australia for three months, and then progressed through Egypt and Israel to Europe, where we bounced around from country to country, currency to currency, language to language with nothing but the packs on our backs for two months, ending in Britain, and eventually returning to Southern California via New York City.  When we left for the trip we had been married just over a year.

But here’s the thing – it sounds really exciting, and it was, at times. At other times it was incredibly boring. We were living on a shoestring and spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week with each other. We had no bills to pay, or errands to run, no communities we belonged to, no family, no friends, no expectations on us whatsoever, and at times the time seemed to stretch on forever.  The adrenaline withdrawal in those first four weeks was nearly enough to drive me mad.

Not only was the experience foreign to anything we had ever known, and without all the normal things of a normal life, we were living in true liminality.  The season of life we had been living in was concluded, and our future had not yet unfolded. Nothing awaited us when we returned- we did not have a home or jobs to come back to, and all of our friends had graduated when we did and moved away to start their new lives elsewhere.

The life we had known as students with part time jobs and full time studying and a breakneck pace had come to a screeching halt when we boarded that plane.  And what would greet us upon our return remained a mystery.

But some things happened in that liminal space.  Parts of me that had died before I left were let go, and the space opened up within me to see myself in a new way, to be redefined, reoriented, rearranged.   

After the exhilaration of Fiji and Hawaii, we landed in a flat in Melbourne, Australia for a couple of months.  While we were there Andy was working on his second graduate degree, so he was studying 7 hours a day and I was alone to occupy my time in a strange city with no connections or routines.  Having been through a painful and difficult time in the months before our trip, I didn’t trust God much when we set out on this journey.  And now, when I wasn’t distracted by sightseeing or spouse, I was stuck alone with God for hours and hours every day. 

I would walk through parks and sit in a coffee shop called “Lana’s” with my journal and vent my jittery anxiety and restlessness until I was settled enough to sit still.  And then I would feel open and alert. 

I can still remember the feel of the air on the streets of Melbourne, and the sound of the streetcars and the smell of the eucalyptus trees.  I was awake.  Present.  Coming back into myself, meeting God again.

And on that trip, in our extended liminal state, Andy and I learned a ton about living with each other.  We learned how to share.  We learned how an introvert and an extrovert can coexist; how to respect each other’s space, and how to find space for ourselves in unfamiliar terrain.  We learned how to budget, down to the penny, how to keep track of expenses and juggle plane tickets and train tickets and meals on a set amount that needed to stretch the globe. 

We discovered that most of our fights happened when we went too long without food, and that anger is often directly triggered by hunger and fatigue.  Without alarm clocks or obligations, we learned our own and one another’s sleep rhythms, and our most productive times of day, and we discovered just how much capacity we each had for adventure and ancient ruins before we’d need a big mac and internet cafe. We learned who was better with the map and who was better with the train timetables and how to tell each other over someone’s head with just a look that no, this hostel is probably not where we want to stay and yes, I’m right behind you if you bolt for the door right now. 

Through sea sickness and homesickness and heartsickness and tons of laughter and a few tears and lots and lots of walking side by side we learned things about life together in relationship that would have taken us years to figure out if the lessons were diluted with jobs and friends and schedules and bills and all the joys and struggles of ordinary life.  But in this intense liminality they were melded into us our being, and our being with each other, deeply and wordlessly, simply by the heat of constant proximity and duration.

And when we came home, without really knowing how I got there, I knew who I was and where I was going.  It was on this trip that I knew I was going to come back and be a minister. And we knew we would both surrender our hodge podge religious backgrounds and become Presbyterian. And Andy knew he’d do a Ph.D. and go on to teach. It took us all of 18 hours from the time our plane touched down to find an apartment and sign a lease.  And by the end of the weekend we were moved in and filling out applications, so eager we were to begin the next phase of our lives.

Now granted, we were not in a “wilderness” –as it is often described - I have known in my life times of suffering and loss, wondering where God is and what could possibly be the meaning of this.  This had been a time of healing and rebuilding for me, not one of tearing down.  And there are lots of ways to explore the wilderness as just that, as the Dark Night of the Soul and the place of loss.  But I am fascinated, at this telling of the story, by the wilderness as a liminal place, by its function as a threshold, an in-between spot, where both tearing down and building up occur.  And how often God’s movement of us from slavery to freedom, for whatever reason, involves wilderness.

In order to be the people of God, the Hebrews have to stop being the people of Pharaoh.  You can take the people out of bondage to oppression, fear and mistrust, but it might take a wilderness to take the bondage to oppression, fear and mistrust out of the people.  That is to say, just because God saves them doesn’t mean they are suddenly fundamentally different.  The wilderness is filled with complaining and fear.  The urge to self-preservation is intense, the lack of cohesion and unity is palpable, and the distrust of God and Moses incessant.

So here they are, in this in-between place, for 40 years.  Letting go of the old, not yet ready to step into the new – existing between two existential planes- their identity in suspension, the death of all they’ve known behind them and the future yet unborn. They are no longer slaves. They are not yet free.

The wilderness is their detox, their reset button, their school of identity and purpose. They need to meet God again. They need to meet themselves again.

The people are going to have to get to know God out here where it is just them and God, face to face, for an extended period of time without any distractions, good or bad.  Who they are and where they go from here depends on this.  They cannot live as free people in a promised land if they carry their slavery within.  They must rely on God, and come to trust in God’s love and care for them, God’s relentless FOR-them-ness, God’s promise to be a different kind of Lord than the Lord they have known in Egypt. 

The wilderness is the place where there is complete dissolution of order as they have known it – and bad as it had been, at least it was order!  But in the process, the new structures are being constructed within them that they do not yet realize.  

And later on, they will look back and decide that this time – as hard as it was, as disorienting and uncomfortable and confusing as it was, was the most formative experience of their entire corporate existence. That all of who they are and how they live together came from this time.  

And even more, this time defined for them who God is.  No longer is God “the God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. Now God is “I AM the God who delivered you out of the land of Egypt,” The God who will continue to care for them, even in the times when the promises seem hard to see and they feel all but forgotten.

And then, throughout the rest of scripture and through Jewish history the story of God’s provision in the wilderness became, especially during the exile, a source of great hope and identity.  It defined them as a people cared for by God, and taught them how to be this people with each other.  And it reintroduced them to God who is steadfast, even when we can’t see the way.  God who provides when it all looks hopeless.  God who leads us and never lets us go, even when we doubt and question and test. Remembering this story that defined and shaped them sustained them through future times of struggle, hopelessness and the unknown.

Who is God? Who are we? Who am I? Those are the questions that God’s story continues to explore, answering them in different ways as the story changes. But when our liminal stages come, – whether huge, drop off the grid-type wilderness experiences, or small, ordinary ones like the school ending or jobs beginning or new circumstances arriving on the scene - these are the questions that get front and center treatment.  “Who am I? Who are we? Who is God?” echo all throughout the thresholds and in-betweens. 

And most especially when it feels like we’re not going anywhere, when we’ve lost a sense of purpose, and what used to be is impossible to return to, (and even if it wasn’t that great we long for it because it was familiar), and what’s ahead is undefined and intimidating, but mostly we’re sick of feeling like we’re treading water and going nowhere -

Take heart.

You’re on a threshold. You’re in between. Something is dying and something new is being born.  Something is being worked out of you to prepare you for what you’re meant to be and do.  

The real struggle and challenge and promise and invitation of the wilderness is trust. Trust in the steadfast love of the God who is leading you.  Trust that you will not lose yourself forever. Trust that you are being held in the purpose of God, and that on the other side of this you will be changed.  

And even when you don’t feel trusting, and you can’t really say you know God is there, (for THIS part of the journey anyway), you’re not in charge and you can’t just step out of the wilderness when you feel like it.   So settle in for however long a haul it turns out to be with the God who is relentlessly FOR you.  

And don’t be scared to dwell for a time in the questions of the liminal state, for they are ultimately a gift: 

Who is God? 

Who are we? 

Who are you?