Sojourning: Moving Towards Water

 

Let us help one another according to the Creator’s intention of putting us on this planet. This is a line from the Mi’kmaw, Honour Song, which I understand acts as a sort of national anthem. Keep these words in the forefront of your minds:

Let us help one another according to the Creator’s intention of putting us on this planet.

 

At National Church Council meeting last weekend, one of the presenters in their slide presentation used a map showing the Continental Divide of North America and North America’s six water basins. Instantly the image connected in my mind to our Lent theme of ‘Sojourning in the Land.’ 

Although I am sure that I learned the water basins at some point in my life – this time the visual clicked. When North America receives rain or snow, the water starts its journey downhill to eventually enter an ocean (in all the basins except for the Great Basin which is landlocked): West Coast waters journey to the Pacific, East Coast waters journey to the Atlantic, the Mississippi and outlying areas of that river drain to the Gulf of Mexico; the North drains to the Arctic Ocean; and the Central North basin waters journey to Hudson Bay. Conceiving  North America in terms of water basins changes my thoughts on sojourning in the land.

            The image totally draws attention from the land, moving outward to the oceans, deep seas.

Sojourning in the land is in the end a journey to water.  Some may find it sobering, others exhilarating, that eventually when our bodies die, and are laid to rest -and as our particles return to the earth- slowly the particles are washed to the nearest ocean. I find comfort in this continual cycle of death and rebirth through the cycle of water.

The image relates to my understanding of Ephesians “for by grace you have been saved through faith, this is not your own doing; it is a gift from God”   -like the water cycle: first lifted from the immensity of the ocean (God), rains down (grace); the journey is then faith filtering, finding God, then returning to the great I AM.  Life is cyclical, continual, renewing – water in many forms; changing, flexible, in tune with its purpose in each part of its cycle.

 

The map of the Continental Divide has affected how I hear the story from Numbers. The Israelites find themselves journeying in the wilderness. The book is full of stories of rebellions and complaints, arguments with Moses, and annoyance with God; we hear of their encounters with various enemies; and new-to-them prescriptions (rules) interspersed along the way. The people are not so happy. The journey is not so comfortable – the slavery they left is looking better than the wilderness. Today I think I get it.

Of all the water basins in North America, there is only one that is completely different. The Great Basin, located primarily in the states of Nevada and Utah, is landlocked. Water in the form of precipitation does not go to the ocean, instead it collects in lakes or swamps, to evaporate and make salt lakes. There is heat and desert. For those living in other water basins this anomaly is interesting and confusing. To live in this water basin – to sojourn there requires a different set of rules and ways of being.

Now think about the Israelites.  Before finding themselves in the wilderness, they were living in Egypt where life, weather, health, commerce were depended on the Nile River.  The Nile provided water, food, a way to make bricks to build shelter. This water basin provided a known order and routine; seasons, with the water eventually getting to the ocean via the Mediterranean Sea.  The Israelites had lived along the Nile and on its flood plain for generations – this is all they knew.

And then they find themselves in an anomaly. Consider that the wilderness journey was like plucking us up (from the East Coast Basin) and depositing us in the Great Basin without a guide book to help us journey across this strange land.

How do you travel through an unknown land; one you do not intend on settling in because you have a destination on the other side; this journey is a pass through.  You find the land inhospitable: you know not the customs or language of the people whom you meet; the weather patterns are different; the floral and fauna are unusual; you have no idea the potential dangers; or what you need to know for survival. No wonder the people act as they do. The situation really bites!

 

And according to the story – with the appearance of snakes- literally does bite!

In the wilderness the people’s new normal has been to take their complaints to Moses, and ask Moses to pray to God on their behalf; God responds in a saving manner. In this case God suggests to Moses that he craft a bronze serpent on a pole for the people to look at when bit and they will be saved.  It sounds awfully simple, and full of hocus-pocus; like God has a magic wand in the eyes of the people. It is a sign – God works a miracle as God imbues the snake sculpture as the magic wand.

Perhaps it was not the wand at all. It was Moses turning back to God at the behest of the people to take their concerns to God. The miracle, the health of the people, was in a shift of thinking and focus, no longer on their plight but rather the taking steps to move towards grace (God).  

The bronze serpent on a pole worked as a sympathetic kind of magic; meaning the human consciousness causes one to believe in magic based on the connection of an image to the thing that it represents.  The people believed that the pole would bring healing, so it did.  The people were afraid of the landscape they were journeying in; complaining about no water, no food—and what food there is, is griped about as detestable; and to top off the situation they are impatient and annoyed with God. Snakes come into their midst --- in some ways creations of their own making; all the whining and complaining, being afraid and annoyed are certainly biting. And then the bronze serpent steals away their attention, and offers a focal point of hope, to move the people beyond complaint, fear, annoyance; their biting at Moses and at God.  In this place the serpent makes sense – and with some reflection perhaps we can understand as we live through pandemic.  I am sure there are items that have become focus shifters for you; hope builders; items that help you cope day to day. For the most part, these things that save us, are good.

The trouble is however, sometimes we get stuck moving towards grace.  We get stuck and stop moving towards the ocean. That’s what happened with the bronze serpent on a pole, when the crisis was over, the people decided not to leave it behind in the wilderness as they moved on.  The reminder of the crisis – the serpent- came along, and so too the reliving of the trauma of the event; over and over again. Eventually the serpent was idolized and became a revered relic.  After the 40 years in the desert, as the people began to settle, the serpent pole was set up on a holy hillside;  and there it remained even after the Temple was built. By the time of King Hezekiah – that is - people had been in the land for a really long time and those who had lived through the situation in the wilderness had passed away generations before;  the book of 2nd Kings records that people were making offerings to the serpent pole and had named it Nehushtan. Something that represented a saving action, had now became destructive.

 

It’s as if for some, settling in the land prohibited the thought of journey – or sojourning. It is like drawing a line in the sand and saying here I am, I am not crossing over; and then setting up shrines to mark certain pieces of history – generally shrines to having supposedly come out the other side of a traumatic experience; where the shrine is a trigger to pull one back to continually relive the trauma; that doesn’t sound like a healthy, life-giving way to live.

 

Sojourning in the land, moving towards grace, is an important concept for the worlds’ peoples today. Through pandemic we have found those things that brought us through, ‘saved’ us. But so help us God, if we now carve in stone these same things.

The story from Numbers should remind us, wake us up, that some things work for a time; only a time, so don’t assume it always will-  if pandemic has taught us anything, it is that things do not work in all times, places, and circumstances.

 

I return to the Continental Divide and the image of moving towards the ocean – moving towards the waters of creation and the Creator. Sojourning in the land means being purposefully part of the water cycle: taking care of it, living grace, filtering faith and seeking God, returning to God to start all over again. The stories of the Israelites in the wilderness remind us that along the way we can get stuck and loss our purpose; we can experience trauma and end up in a salt lake, wandering there for decades; and we have also witnessed journeying through to the other side because salvation and hope were offered at just the right time.

In this time -  as sojourner in the land, flow towards the ocean of God, and along the way bring others with you, especially those who have hardened into salt.

 

Let us help one another according to the Creator’s intention of putting us on this planet.