When I survey...

Since 2006, the world has witnessed the downfall, capture, or execution of Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and just this week, Moammar Gadhafi. Leaders in the Middle East and North Africa who faced the demise of their reigns, their lives, or both. All ended in disgrace and failure. All ended as a perceived means of justice. All ended as a celebration of liberty and freedom. Yet, to some, they were martyrs. People who willingly gave up their lives for a righteous cause. The simple rebuttal to that claim is that being found in a spider hole, a drainage pipe, a fortified villa, or on the run is hardly the stuff of martyrdom.

In one case, the American government took careful steps to assure that a burial site would not become a shrine and instead the body of Osama bin Laden, after being prepared in the Muslim tradition, was offered to the sea.

The avoidance of an enshrined burial site is not reserved for the tyrannical or the maniacal alone, but apparently extends even to the most revered and faithful of God’s servants.

The death of Moses is described in quite different terms than the demise of the aforementioned despots and is one of the most tender of passings noted anywhere in the Bible.

God leads Moses, aged surely, yet not infirm, to the cusp of the Promised Land and allows him to survey the promise kept. Their eyes, in sync, marvel at the vista before them—from the furthest point north, as far as anyone could see, to the land to the south. Moses takes it all in, relishes perhaps he accomplishment of leading the people from slavery in Egypt, through the desert wandering, and now, to the final step of their long and arduous journey.

Perhaps Moses, in his last moments, allows his gaze to turn inward, to recall his remarkable and tumultuous life – the risk, the frustration, the anger, the disappointment, the success, and the failure. If Moses were an ordinary person he’d be thinking about the people in his life – the relationships formed, strengthened, and nurtured. He’d recall the friends and colleagues along the way, he’d also think of those who tested his patience and pushed his limits, who were determined to undermine his leadership and authority. Most of all, his mind would be filled with the people who were lovely – I think those are the most indelible of recollections.

A poignant moment few can imagine: standing at the cusp of seeing his life’s work completed successfull knowing he was at the brink of death.

It’s a powerful image.

What would, I wonder, the completion of our life’s work look like? Where might we stand and in which direction might our gaze be directed?

• Might we stand on the threshold of our home and survey the family we created?
• Might we gather in the vestibule of a company in which we had labored?
• Might we assemble in the classroom of our minds as we take roll of the students we had taught and mentored?
• Might we index and collate the works of music, poetry, or prose – private journals or a published catalog – and muse over our creative output?
• Might we simply take inventory of the challenges to health, sanity, or employment and know that we survived thus far by some mixture of grace and grit?

What would, I wonder, the completion of our life’s work look like? Where might we stand and in which direction might our gaze be poised?

When the day arrives that the wrecking ball comes to 11^th and Market and our beloved white marble temple is reduced to rubble, carted away, and the lot scraped clean for its next incarnation – I wonder how those assembled the day before the dumptrucks arrived – might reflect on the life’s work of First & Central?

Would they survey the people who gathered in the pews, or were served on the streets? Would they hear music and song from a pipe organ long ago left for ruin? Would preaching or prayer be recited? Would they recall a wedding or funeral or baptism? My guess is that they’ll think about people and they’ll recall with varying degrees of fondness those with whom they worshiped and served.

It’s not easy to think about the day that First & Central is no more, yet if we know anything, it’s that nothing lasts forever – Moses can tell us that! Nothing, that is, except God’s faithfulness, God’s company, and God’s love.

For when it was all said and done for Moses – he died the way he lived – in God’s care, and call, and claim.

And that’s how I hope this church lives, and when it’s ministry is complete, how this church ends its days.

In a few minutes, we’ll have the chance to participate in a national survey of churches. We’ve been selected because we are a congregation that’s swimming against the current, that’s bucking trends, that’s doing the unusual: we are a growing church. Not by leaps and bounds, surely to some of your great disappointment; but in a day and age when the norm is declining membership, such is not the case here. What’s also not the case here is that we don’t take it for granted.

We will gather sound data and important opinions from the surveys – both about this church in particular and others like it. The results will inform our future and give grounding with which to reflect on our past. We’ll extrapolate cause and effect hoping to live another generation of faithful service to God, neighbor, and the community. Like everything else – we do it in the context of worship.

First & Central shall live to see another day and likely another generation but let us remember that our task is not to build a shrine to the great accomplishments of our past, but to take in the vista of our future, to take account of work undone, and to lead people to lives of faith and wholeness and potential – people in these pews and of equal importance, the people outside these walls upon whom our gaze must focus.

Let it be said, when our days are complete, that never since has there arisen a bunch like those on 11^th and Market Street. May we know God. May we know each other. May we know those whom God sends.

Amen.