Our Place In The Story--September 26, 2022

 

Our Place In The Story--September 26, 2022

"I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." [1 Corinthians 10:1-4]

We have a hard time remembering that we aren't the beginning of things.  We enter into a story that has already begun, with people who have been wrestling with the living God for thousands of years longer than we have, and in which we only can dare to claim a place in by the grace of God.  We are, in a sense, the current baton-holders in a very, very long relay race--which began long before even the likes of Peter, Paul, James, or John.  Remembering that we find our place in a much bigger, much longer, and much more complex story than we often admit is a part of a deepening faith.  And it's just plain honest.  We are late into a story that began without us; a certain humility is called for.

It can be uncomfortable to let ourselves be humbled that way. It is hard, for example, for folks on this continent to do the honest research to find out whose land we are living on, what Native American nations and tribes lived here, and how they were treated and driven off of it in earlier centuries.  It is hard to admit that the history of this land and this country begins long before ships came across the ocean from Europe, despite the ways it makes us squirm to tell a fuller story that involves genocide, war, broken promises, and slavery.  In the history of the church, too, it is humbling to admit that our various denominations and traditions all trace back further to older ways of being Christian that grew and changed and thrived and messed up, all of them over and over again, long before "my group" appeared on the scene.  Even just in our own local congregations, it is humbling to admit how often we are stepping into a community that can reach back for decades, or even centuries--and the people who were there already will know some things that we may need to just sit and listen to, as we find our place in the family story.

Paul is doing the same here as he moves into this next section of his letter. He wants to make it clear that our arrival on the scene as Christians isn't the beginning of a story, really--we are a part of a saga that stretches farther back for thousands of years, even to the ancient story of the enslaved Hebrews who were set free in the time of Moses.  Paul wants us to see that we are a part of that longer relay race that includes the liberated Israelites who walked through the Sea at the Exodus, who travelled through the wilderness, and who trusted God along the way to provide manna, quail, and water as they went.  Now he's certainly going to remind us, too, of the ways those liberated Israelites also sometimes messed up--whether it was wanting to go back to Pharaoh's Egypt, or making a golden calf to worship, or complaining that God wasn't good enough to provide for them.  But even those episodes are part of the story that has to come before our arrival on the scene as followers of Jesus.  We can't have a place in the story or belonging among the people of God without all those who have gone before us. 

Just in our own lives, it is worth the effort every so often to stop and think of the people whose faith and life made yours possible.  It's worth a bit of grateful reflection for the people who, as Mr. Rogers once put it, "have loved us into being."  That list is a lot longer than we might realize at first--it includes parents, grandparents, and Sunday School teachers, and also Moses and Miriam, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ruth and Naomi, too.  We are here because of their story, and we have a welcome among the people of God because of those who dared to enter into relationship with this same God before us.  That is a realization to fill us with both humility [that we are not the starting point of this story] and also gratitude [that others' faithfulness made our belonging possible, too]. 

Maybe that's all that is needed in this day: just the recognition that none of us is the starting point of the story of faith in which we find ourselves, but that we belong to a great and beautiful chain of people touched by the grace of God, and to be appreciative of the names and faces, where we know them, who added their links so that there would be a place for ours to latch onto.  And maybe while we are thinking of that great chain of God's people that stretches through time and space, we might think right now, too, of how we will make room for those who will come to faith and to join the story because of us.  How will we make others feel welcome?  How will we nurture the humility to see that we are neither the beginning, nor the end, of this story?  How will we extend places for others grow and learn and connect as others did for us?  And who, on some distant day, will tell their story of faith and name you as one of the reasons they have come to faith in Jesus?

Today, it's worth looking backward and forward just like that.  This is our place in The Story.

Lord God, we thank you for all those who have gone before us whose faith and wrestling with you makes possible our own belonging among your people.