This year, starting in the Fall, Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, MCEC, our area church conference, offered a unique opportunity for MCEC pastors to join a pilot program they have called a ‘Pastor’s Learning Circle.’ These are groups of 5-6 pastors who gather once a month for an hour over Zoom to support and encourage each other in ministry, to strengthen the call to ministry, to share openly the struggles and joys of ministry, and to pray for each other. The idea intrigued me when the invitation was sent out in June. There were a few topics to choose from within these groups, and I was drawn to the title ‘Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership,’ a circle that would use a book by that same title by Ruth Haley Barton (InterVarsity Press, 2018). We have a great group and I have very much appreciated this once a month Zoom call and the depth of sharing and trust already.
Each month we read a chapter of this book in preparation for our conversation. The book is looking at leadership, but really is applicable to anyone and their life situation. The premise of the book is that for ministry leaders, for church institutions, and for the church itself, it is easy in the middle of ministry, to lose one’s soul – to become too busy, too distracted, too focused on the mundane, too overwhelmed by compassion fatigue, too caught up in institutional life, that one forgets one’s soul, what is really important and undergirds everything else. Her basic question is ‘how is it with your soul?’ (p.24) How does she define the soul? It is ‘the part of you that is most real – the very essence of you that God knows… the ‘you’ that exists beyond any role you play, any job you perform, and relationship that seems to define you, or any notoriety or success you may have achieved. ‘ (p.13) The question ‘how is it with your soul’ invites all of us to honestly look at what is grounding us, to what is at the core, and to a spiritual transformation in the presence of God. It is encounter with God, often in solitude and in mystery, that gives us space for God to work on our souls. How can leaders and the very church itself lead consistently from the soul, from that place of encounter with God, especially when one is already in the middle of everything? (p.25)
As Haley Barton explores all of this, she keeps coming back to the character and example of Moses – in each chapter. There is so much fruitful reflection coming out of Moses – not because things come easy for Moses, but because of his struggles, his ‘hard-won strength of soul forged in his encounters with God… his reliance on God that he might not have pursued had it not been for his great need for God… He literally had no place else to go!’ (p.30).
We see this perhaps most clearly in our Scripture passage for today – in the story of the burning bush. Don’s sermon last week, and Sue’s opening words remind of us of the context before this story – the long journey of Moses from his mixed up, living between two worlds childhood and growing up in the palace of Egypt for 40 years, to the next 40 low profile years of life after killing the Egyptian and fleeing to Midian, now keeping watch over the flocks of father in law Jethro. In all these years God is slowly working on Moses as he sorts through questions of identity, abandonment, trauma, and purpose. We have been reminded that these were 80 long years, that these questions of identity and purpose take their sweet time to work themselves out.
For Moses, Midian represents a middle season of life. There is a kind of stability to it – a settled-ness. He is married, has a family, has a job, has routine, has a predictable way of life. He can avoid or ignore all that growing up drama and unfinished business. But I wonder in Midian how he would have answered the question ‘How is it with your soul?’ Was he consciously working things out in that part of him that is most real? Was he in conversation with God? Or was he simply in maintenance mode?
Janet passed along another book to me this week that delves into the Moses story – a fascinating book by Anna Carter Florence called Rehearsing Scripture – Discovering God’s Word in Community (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids Michigan, 2018). Anna encourages people to rehearse and encounter Scripture in community – to read it out loud many times – to rehearse it, and open ones ears to what might be discovered together. In some ways this is what our junior youth have been doing for a couple of weeks with our passage today – as they read it, studied it, asked questions of it, figured out props for it, and literally rehearsed the text, practiced it. They know if from the inside out, and it interacts with and informs their real lives. They did such a great job sharing the script with us! A key part of this scriptural rehearsal for Anna Carter Florence is to ask us to pay attention to the verbs in a passage – the tense of the verbs, the immediacy of verbs, their ability to cross cultures and be understood by all, and then to ask what that might reveal. (p.20) I found it neat that in the instructions before the junior youth script for today, it asks the youth to draw a box around all the verbs in the Reader’s Theatre. The first verb is passive – Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro in Midian. Was keeping is a kind of maintenance verb (p.149) As she says, ‘Like getting up on an ordinary Wednesday: breakfast, dishes, morning commute, office: keeping appointments, keeping to the schedule and the budget, keeping up with the to-do list, keeping an eye on the kids and social media, keeping the peace at the committee meeting, and dinner table… keeping things going… in a middle season, in ordinary times. Moses was keeping the flock.’ (p.149) Midian is this middle season of life.
But then the verb changes and it makes all the difference. Moses led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. This is an active verb – Moses led his flock. No more maintenance. No more keeping. And he led his flock beyond – beyond the wilderness, beyond the known, beyond the familiar and comfortable. He led into new territory! And this is where the story gets interesting. This is where he notices this burning bush that was blazing but not consumed. This is where he pays attention. Again some active verbs – I must turn aside and look at this great sight… and when Moses turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush… Come no closer. Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Moses had to turn aside – and pay attention. It is there that Moses sees Yahweh face to face, and it scares him! Then there is that key verb when Moses asks what God’s name is. ‘I am who I am’, the Hebrew verb ‘to be’ ‘hayah’, very close in sound to the name Yahweh, which in Hebrew is a more elusive verb tense, and could just as easily be translated ‘I will be who I will be’ – future tense – God’s active and helpful presence – God will be with you. (Exodus, Believer’s Bible Commentary, Waldemar Janzen, Herald Press, 2000, p.64)
And this is where the work and mystery of God can happen. This truly was holy ground. Moses is reminded of his core identity, of his passion for justice, of his leadership skills, of the unique personal history that positioned him to make a difference. Moses is forced to ask the why questions of why he is here and what his core identity is all about. Moses is called out of that middle Midian to follow a new path and calling, which had been present all along. Back to Ruth Haley Barton – she gives this summary of God’s call to Moses out of the burning bush ‘I know the question about your identity has been a little confusing for you, but I have always known who you are. You are a Hebrew. No matter where you live, no matter who raised you, no matter how anyone tries to beat it out of you, no one can take that away from you. You know what it is to be displaced. You know what it is to live your life on someone else’s terms, to see the injustice of it all and want to do something about it. In the very essence of your being, you are someone who is not willing to let injustice go unanswered; your care for your people and their well-being is deep and genuine. Now that you know who you are, I am calling you to do something out of the essence of your being. You have submitted to the rigors of the wilderness. Come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring my people out of Egypt.’ (p.73). In the burning bush, Moses is asked ‘How is it with your soul?’ and in answering, in getting in touch with his real self, in that encounter with the living God, in seeing face to face, there is a spiritual transformation.
Now, it would be such a neat tied up story if it just ended there with the burning bush and God’s call – and Moses enthusiastically grabbing hold of this call. Instead we get objection after objection. The people won’t believe me, they won’t listen, I have a bad reputation and tainted history, I am suspicious because of my life as an insider. I am not a good speaker. My tongue is slow and I stutter. I am not adequate. I am not enough. I don’t have it in me. O my Lord, please send someone else! And there is this whole sequence of little miracles – a staff turning into a snake, a diseased hand as white as snow restored, water from the Nile turning to blood – and the offer of brother Aaron as a spokesperson and the promise of the words that will be needed. God will provide. And yet there is a familiar honesty here by Moses if we look into our own lives. We all carry our inner objections and our sense that we are not adequate for our callings. On Thursday, we had our Pastor’s Learning Circle. The particular chapter we had read named a whole bunch of our inner anxieties and unconscious reflexive responses that can keep us from healthy living and ministry – loneliness, abandonment, loss, perfectionism, the need for approval, unrealistic expectations, anger, fear, low self worth. Do any of these sound familiar? Her challenge to us in this naming, like it was for Moses, is not so much to fix or change all these things about ourselves, but to accept our limitations and recognize that God still calls us from within who we are and will provide. Ruth Haley Barton writes ‘Some of us will wear ourselves out trying to change ourselves before we realize it is not about fixing; it is about letting go – letting go of old patterns that no longer serve us… All we stand to lose is the false self – the adaptive behaviours that are ultimately in opposition to the life of love and trust and being led by God that our hearts long for.’ (p.53) Even here with Moses and his objections, God is asking ‘How is it with your soul?’
Today’s story invites us to ask the same question of ourselves – ‘How is it with your soul?’, and to do so from the middle of our Midians, the middle of our own lives, wherever they may be at right now. Often this Scripture has been used to look back to that wonderful moment of life when we experienced a holy ground burning bush experience like Moses – a calling early in life, a mountain top experience, our baptism, a time at summer camp, a pivotal spiritual moment, a turning point in life. Those are significant holy moments, and we can go back to them. But for some of us those moments may not be so clear and defined, or you wonder if they have even happened. Or they feel far back in our life history. I appreciated Sue Shantz’ personal story to start the service – being able to identify some significant burning bush moments in life, but only in retrospect, and that they were not over the top, but slow realizations – that could happen at a few points in life. I like Anna Carter Florence’s description that we have seasons in life not at the beginning, but in the middle of our callings – mid-career, mid-life, mid-semester, mid-marriage, mid-work, mid-congregational life (p.147). It is Moses in Midian with the pressure to keep things going, with maintenance so seductive. She asks ‘I wonder if this text is meant to be played more than once. Rather than asking each other about our call stories – those burning-bush moments from long ago and far away – we should start asking each other about the last time we left Midian… Our call is to find a path to the mountain of God, over and over, so that even in the middle of wherever we are, we can be interrupted by a great sight and another sending’ (p.153-4)
On Thursday, I was able to meet up with my best friend from growing up in Edmonton – James Friesen. He lives in Winnipeg and is the Principal of students like Charlie and Lucy Derksen at Westgate Mennonite Institute, where Pam is also working. They are doing great and I said to say hi! He was here for a Cams Mennonite School’s Council meetings hosted by Rockway. We went out for coffee to catch up. James is one of those friends where you don’t have to keep in touch much in between, but right away pick up again at a deep level of friendship. You can skip the small talk. Way back in 1992, we called to tell each other we had been dating and we were each getting married, and discovered that our weddings were scheduled a week a part – Rachel and mine in Bluffton, Ohio, and his and Leanne’s the next Saturday in Winnipeg – I guess our exotic honeymoon destination as we each joined each other’s wedding parties. So on Thursday we dived right into our lives. In a sense it was the kind of conversation asking ‘how is it with your Soul?’; how is it with your real self. We acknowledged how much we are in the middle of things – mid-life, mid-career, mid-family life. We even admitted we were more old than young. We had an interesting conversation about some of our early young adult years and how each of us struggled at certain points to find our way, to know life directions, to get over confusion and anxiety, while we each had thought the other had things all together. We named significant marker points, turning points, and people at that stage that made a difference in life directions and callings – some early burning bush times really, in hindsight. But then we also realized and named how engaged we are with our current callings, our Midians – him as an educator and principal, and me as a pastor – and how much we enjoy and are energized by our work, our settings. Both teaching and pastoring, schools and congregations, have changed so much since we each started. The situations and questions and dilemmas and struggles are so different than when we began, and in many ways more complex, but then again, we are different people too, and have grown and learned and continue to be so curious about the worlds we are in and the difference we can make. We have our objections to things in our lives and in our world. But there is a shared sense of life and energy and calling in this middle time. Just sitting down with a trusted friend, who has known me all my life, felt sacred and holy. It reminded me again of holy callings and the burning bushes in my life.
So… how is it with your soul? Where are the safe places, the trusted friend or spiritual companion or support group or solitude spaces and prayer, where you can ask the important questions about your real life, your real self, and be listened to, whatever you are in the middle of? Where can you sort through the heavy things you carry, your histories, your vulnerabilities, your old patterns, even your questions and objections to God? Where can you sit back and see the larger picture of God’s slow work in your life? Where can you see God face to face? Wherever that place is, remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.
I invite us into prayer, taken from the end of the chapter this week in our Pastor’s Learning Circle, from Ted Loder:
O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.
Keep me in touch with myself, with my needs, my anxieties, my angers, my pains, my corruptions,
That I may claim them as my own rather than blame them on someone else.
O Lord, deepen my wounds into wisdom; shape my weaknesses into compassion; gentle my envy into enjoyment, my fear into trust, my guilt into honesty.
O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me. Amen.