The Journey Is Home- Wendy McCormick
“The Journey Is Home”
Rev Wendy McCormick
First Presbyterian Church, Granville
February 4, 2024
I spent a good chunk of last summer cleaning out the attic. Sorting, purging, giving things away, throwing things away. I’m sure many of you have been through this experience. I was sorting through the umpteenth box of children’s artwork and school papers when I found a booklet a thoughtful Sunday School teacher had prepared at the conclusion of a unit on the Exodus. The children were small – probably preschool or kindergarten. Each page was printed with one simple sentence summarizing what they had learned and capturing a few of the comments the children had made in that day’s discussion. The children had decorated the pages, and it was all put together into a take-home book. The booklet fell open to the page that told about how God’s people had to leave in a hurry to go on a big trip. What would you take with you on the trip, the teacher asked: Charlie will bring his blanket, Joanna will bring her bear, each one added something, and there was a camel pasted on the page. On that hot summer day of purging, I had no idea where I was going or that I would end up here. But as I lingered over that booklet, a seed was planted.
What would you take with you if you had to leave in a hurry? What if you set off on a trip but you didn’t know exactly where you were going – more of a vague idea than a destination? And what if you knew you were never coming back? What might you take then, especially if you couldn’t take much?
The Exodus is the foundational story of the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament. It shapes the identity and the faith story of God’s people from earliest times and up to the present. The themes of God’s commitment to liberation and freedom and the metaphors of journey and wilderness are central to our faith, and Judeo-Christian literature is filled with these metaphors. For countless generations God’s people have understood faith . . . and earthly life itself …. as a journey, and at our best we realize that the journey is as important as the destination.
Today marks the official beginning of the pastoral transition at First Presbyterian Church, and it’s a good time to draw on this metaphor from both Exodus and Luke. We have a particular destination in mind – the arrival of your next pastor --- and a vague sense of the overarching direction for the next few years. But there is wilderness ahead.
You may have noticed that in recent years this “interim” period and the “interim pastor” have begun to be referred to as transitional. The national network shifted from calling themselves an Interim Ministry Network to a Transitional Ministry Network. And the agreement between this congregation and me is governed by a document now called a covenant for a Transitional Pastor relationship. We could probably agree it’s not a big difference. And I am happy to be referred to as your interim pastor. But I couldn’t help reflect on the difference. The dictionary says Interim – whether noun or adjective refers to the time -- the intervening time. It tends to connote waiting. Transition, on the other hand, refers to a change of state or condition, -- it connotes that something is happening beyond the passage of time. When we are in transition, we aren’t just sitting here marking time. We are moving, travelling, journeying together through a change.
And it reminds us that to one degree or another we are always doing that – transitions in our personal lives and our families, all sorts of transitions in the world around us. Over the past week, two individuals in the congregation have made the same remark to me, “I’m not very good with transition.” With all due respect, who is?! Who among us chooses change if we can help it? And even the changes we welcome – think new baby, new house, exciting job opportunity – even those are not without the bumpiness and the discomfort and the uncertainties of transition.
You probably know the general outline of the Exodus story – led out of bondage and slavery in Egypt by Charlton Heston AKA Moses, God’s people spend 40 years in the wilderness journeying toward the land God promised to their ancestors – Abraham and Sarah. It goes without saying that our journey is not from slavery or bondage or oppression. That’s not what we have in common with our forebears. But it is a journey from the familiar and the known to and through the unknown, and that can have a lot in common with the wilderness.
Those former slaves who wanted nothing more than freedom famously complained relentlessly to their leaders. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, . and we detest this miserable food.” --- think about it --- there is no food . . . and we detest this miserable food.
How much more are you and I likely to detest the unfamiliar and the unknown when what we remember and look back upon is such a good and rich past. How much more will we cry, “I want it the way it used to be ---- PLEEEEZ can’t we go back?”
According to the gospels, the journey of approximately three years of Jesus and his followers had as its ultimate destination Jerusalem and the events of Holy Week. Occasionally, Jesus would point that out, but nobody got it. Their journey – which was called The Way – capital W -- was criss-crossing the region of the Galilee sharing the good news of the kingdom of God. It too offers a metaphor – the Way is not just travelling around, it’s also the life of faith, it’s following Jesus. The followers of Jesus were instructed to travel light – really light – pretty much ‘don’t bring anything’ was what Jesus said. I remember a Bible study on this passage from Luke years ago when our friend Margaret who was well known for her fabulous sense of style and her amazing wardrobe said simply, “I just don’t think I could go!” We laughed as we imagined the band of disciples pulling a trailer for Margaret. Why might Jesus have given that directive? Flexibility and spontaneity, perhaps, being truly open to focus on the people they met, the people they were being called to love and care for. To not be bogged down with their own stuff so to speak. As we think about what we are bringing with us, metaphorically, from First Presbyterian Church’s history and heritage, from our beloved traditions and customs, we will be wise to be selective, to travel light. Not because our stuff is bad or our past isn’t rich but to be truly able to focus on the people and the future that God puts before us.
As you and I make transitions, what does it look like to bring the best of our past while still being unencumbered?
Another takeaway from the journey metaphor is that we are not on a solitary or individual journey. It’s easy to forget in our uber-individualistic-you-do-you society that our faith is communal, that we called together into the Church, a unique and quirky community we love and couldn’t live without and that also sometimes drives us crazy.
We do not travel – or transition – alone. We are always part of the Church, this band of friends and fellow travelers called the Body of Christ.
We know that being church isn’t easy, perhaps especially in transition. Just as we long to be settled and to feel the familiar, we are being asked for our cooperation and our forbearance and to share of ourselves – our talents, our time, our money, our giftedness – and especially our faith. Especially in transition, it will take all of us to offer to the whole our hopes, our prayers, our own individual sense of God’s leading. Being church asks us to speak up, to contribute – even those who really prefer to be back-benchers, who like to be in the background, who like to take a ‘wait and see’ approach.
One more takeaway from this transitional journey metaphor – and the most important: God’s people know that on a journey in which we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we really, really need God. We need God in a way we may not when everything is comfortable and stable and settled the way we like it.
We need God every step of the way. The people of the exodus literally had no idea where they were going. Can you imagine? They had a very lofty vision of a wonderful and bounteous destination called the Promised Land, but they didn’t know how to get there.
Their only hope was to follow God’s leading:
As we read today: “The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.”
They were never, ever without God’s guidance and presence and leading, even when they were full-on traveling in the dark. It will take each of us and all of us to pay attention to the direction of that pillar and to help bring one another along. Like when you get so caught up in your own concerns that you don’t even see that great big cloud ahead. Come on, it’s time to break camp, we are on the move. Take a look around and make sure we aren’t leaving anyone behind. God is always beckoning and lighting the way.
The promise of these stories is that God will provide what we need ---- not more but definitely not less --- it may not be exactly what we want and as my dad used to say way too often, especially on family trips, “nobody said it was going to be easy” --- but the promise is so rich ---- the one who said so many generations before, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” is the same God who promises to point the way forward for this little band of hopeful, apprehensive followers in a place called Granville.
I suspect that our time together – approximately one year – will go quickly. At the same time, I imagine that the search for your next pastor will seem to take forever. Our attention will be on the day-to-day of living faithful lives and being a faithful church. And sometimes the day-to-day will seem to crowd out everything else as we watch and wait for the interim to be over. We may need to remind one another that it’s not just an interim, but a transition, nudging each other to pay attention to the movement and to watch for that pillar, beckoning and reminding us not to get too settled in our campsite because before we know it, we will need to move again.
We can expect there will be moments of resistance even among those of us who are the most deeply committed to the goal --- we’ve never gone that way before, a bunch of us don’t want to do what’s being suggested --- this way feels completely wrong --- does anyone have a compass – surely that isn’t where God is directing . . .
We need to travel light, choosing carefully what we bring from our past into our unknown future. Imagine all of us sitting around that Sunday School room like those innocent 4 and 5 year olds ---- and hearing about going on a big journey and being asked, if you could only bring one thing, what would it be? And like those children, imagine taking the hand of someone you know and trust most and assuring one another that God will never abandon us.
That’s transition. That’s exodus. That’s faith. That’s church. Amen.
