INTO THE PROMISEReading: Joshua 3
Moses, the great leader, was dead. For forty years he had led them and now, just on the edge of the new beginning, he’d gone, permitted to see the land of promise but not cross over into it. At first reading, it seems rather unfair, but, then, Moses was more than the journey, more than his vocation of leading the Israelites from slavery to freedom. The ‘more’ for him, as it is for us, was his relationship with God. It is never given to any human being to fulfil the entire purpose of God, but simply to do their best and then pass on the mantle.
It passed to Joshua. How was this new leader going to hold such a diverse and rebellious movement together and bring them through this next crucial stage to yet another new beginning? Forty years it had taken them to get to this point, largely because of their own stubbornness and brokenness, but at last the day arrived. Joshua exhorts them to prepare themselves in order to ‘receive the promise.’ They were to listen, to purify themselves and to follow. There were none now alive who remembered the crossing of the Red Sea except for Joshua and Caleb. The stories of that great deliverance had been handed on as sacred lore, but none, except these two, had had the actual experience. How would they cross the river Jordan, especially now when it was in full flood? As Joshua reminded them, this was new territory; they had never travelled this way before. They needed to make the affirmation of faith that how they would get across was God’s business, with the cooperation of their leaders. Once the priests stepped out in obedience and in prophetic action, the way became clear. The waters piled up and all the people crossed over on dry ground. But the religious leaders had to go first and to remain in the middle of the riverbed until everyone had crossed over. What a calling! What a risk! What an act of faith!
As the Church, as Christian people we are living in strange, testing, fearful times. To the majority of people we are largely irrelevant, having seemingly nothing to offer that would courage and meaning to the living of these days. We have been in the wilderness for a long time. We have lacked the courage, we have not given wise and visionary leadership, and prophetic word and action are largely folk memories of a golden age that will not come again. We are in a place where we have never been before. How will we survive as a movement? Perhaps the key to an answer lies in that one word – movement. Are we being challenged to get ourselves ready, to listen carefully, to purify ourselves, so that when the call comes to enter new territory we will do so with confidence – not in ourselves but in the God who has led us safely thus far? Do we need to be praying for our leaders in the faith that they may have the courage also to hear and to obey, to show true leadership by going first down into whatever cold and surging floods of doubt, despair, disillusionment, anguish and fear are threatening to drown us, and, by their prophetic words and actions, stay there until the entire people of God cross over to a new day for a Church that will be very different in form, though not in essence, from what we know now?