Originally published in the Fall 2021 Mailing.
Dear Friends in Christ,
As we near what we hope and believe is the end of this pandemic wilderness, the struggles of isolation, the losses we’ve endured, and the wrestling with what it all means, it is apparent that each of us is carrying something. Have you felt that too? Have you wondered what it is that you’ve learned, what was left behind, what was gained? This moment of transition is significant and weighty and deserves something that can mark and name it for what it is. In many ways, this moment is not all that dissimilar from the moment of the Israelites crossing out of their long 40 year wandering in the desert.
In their best selling new release from Wipf & Stock, Crisis & Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy, co-editors and authors Dustin Benac and Erin Weber-Johnson draw parallels from Joshua to now, to this present time of crossing over from the pandemic, the political instability, the divisiveness, the violence of the past four years, as a wilderness experience, making this present moment our own time of crossing over into a new reality. They write:
“In our haste to find resolution and the comfort of stability, it might be easy to brush past the ‘crossing over’ moment in the narrative. We like to know the end and, so, our imaginations are reluctant to linger in this moment of liminality, rushing instead to the outcome. But, the narrative seems to linger here, pausing to note the manner in which they are to cross over. Joshua invites a newly constituted people to cross the river into a new land, and on the way charges each of the leaders of the twelve tribes to pick up a stone from the river. They are to carry these river rocks with them as weighty markers—as a memorial. And, in fact, these are to be a sign provoking future generations, to ask ‘What do these stones mean?’
Just as children will ask about Passover so they can hear the story of deliverance from slavery in Egypt…so they will ask about these stones and hear how God dried up the waters of the Jordan River and their safe passage across…They will recount the losses and the grief. They will remember the systems they chose to reject. They will recount how God delivered them from the crises of flood and famine. They will remember God’s faithfulness time after time and, in so doing, reclaim their collective identity as children of God.”
Over the summer, our preachers each week were parishioners who gave voice to that question of “What do these stones mean?” They answered for themselves, and perhaps for you as well, what this time has meant, what the wilderness revealed about our lives, about society, about the church. In many ways the pandemic was more than wilderness, it was an apocalypse, an ending and a revealing. There were some ugly things about the world that were exposed, seen by some of us for the first time – truths about systemic racism, greed, and human suffering and disconnection. There were beautiful revelations too about the resilience of the human spirit, our ability to lean into generosity when called upon, and about our willingness to manifest the abundant and transformative love of God to one another.
So, what does your stone mean? What gift or burden were you given in the pandemic, what learning or wisdom did you receive, what insight or unveiling did you experience, and what are you carrying with you at this late stage in the pandemic? I hope you will take time to pray about this question, to ponder and meditate on it, and to begin answering for yourself what your stone represents. And, then I would like to invite you to set that stone down.
On September 18 and 25, from 9am to noon, you will have two separate opportunities to come to church and help us in creating our own monument to this past year and a half, marking with stones what this time has meant, how God sustained and supported us, and how we have been shaped and changed by this shared experience of crisis. We will have lots of river rocks delivered to the Holly Street Garden for you to paint, mark, or write on, to capture in stone what we’re all carrying – each and every one of you. We’re calling this collective community art project “Washed, Marked, and Sealed”.
The week before the project the rocks will be gathered and a group of us will convene together to wash them thoroughly in preparation for your pictures and words to be painted and written on them. After they dry, you will have the opportunity on those two Saturdays to mark them. Then, once each rock has dried, we will seal them to ensure the image or words you’ve inscribed will be there as a lasting reminder. Perhaps you’ve noticed an echo in the language of “Washed, Marked, and Sealed” with the language of baptism. We noticed it too. Call it holy synchronicity or providential, but it was hard to ignore the overlay in these three actions and the ministry of baptism. Each baptism in our tradition begins with a washing, in the waters of the font. Then the celebrant administers the chrism oil, the oil of baptism, in the mark of a cross on the forehead saying “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Undoubtedly the Israelites would have noted connections from the crossing over moment at the Jordan and their previous experience of liberation through the waters of the Red Sea in the Exodus. We too draw these parallels in baptism, connecting our own crossing over moment in baptism, from death to new life in Christ, with the same stories of our forebears in faith on the banks of the Red Sea and the Jordan where Jesus himself was baptized. So we gather up rocks washed in the river, mark and seal them, and they will serve as a lasting reminder of our own wilderness experience and God’s providing and sustaining presence with us through it all.
Both Saturdays will be punctuated by opportunities to share with one another, to reconnect over our own stories and learnings, and around it all will be the words of scripture in the form of the Joshua story helping ground us in the shared narrative of our faith. We hope you’ll make time to join us, to mark this time, to help us remember “what do these stones mean?” as together we cross over into a new way of being church together again. Over the year ahead we will return to these stories and stones and begin to imagine together how we can retain what these stones are teaching us and ensconce that learning in some lasting way in our congregation to last for future generations to ask and learn too how God brought us through.
Faithfully,
Jered+
