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"Between
Moses and Joshua" October
13, 2002 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there
in the land of Moab, at the Lord's command.
He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no
one knows his burial place to this day. Moses
was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his
vigor had not abated. The
Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of
mourning for Moses was ended. Deuteronomy 34:5-8 After the death of Moses, the servant of the
Lord, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, "My
servant Moses is dead. Now proceed
to cross the Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to
them, to the Israelites. Every
place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I
promised to Moses. From the
wilderness and the Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all
the land of the Hittites, to the Great Sea in the west shall be your territory.
No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life.
As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or
forsake you . . ." Joshua 1:1-5 Good morning! How's
the sound? Is it good?
OK. We were having a little
dialogue about that and it looks like we got that problem solved.
I'm really excited to be here--microphone working and everything!
I get to be (this is a role that I very much enjoy) I get to be your
Interim Pastor. An Interim Pastor
is a pastor for . . .
an interim! And I've chosen
for my message this morning "Between Moses and Joshua" because an
Interim Pastor comes right into that place between one head of staff and another
head of staff. As I said, it's a
role that I very, very much enjoy. Every religious institution has taboos, and the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) has some taboos. And one
of the most sacred is that Interim Pastors may not apply for the permanent
position to come. There are some
good reasons for that. One is that
the belief is that if I were to come into your midst and were to try to sort of
feather my nest, as it were, in terms of trying to make it so you would really
like me and want me to stay long-term, then I might not do what Interim Pastors
are supposed to do initially. Do
you understand that? So what is it
that Interim Pastors are supposed to do? Well,
this morning we're going to look at that period between Moses and Joshua, and
look at what interims do as sort of falling into that place.
I get to call your attention to the fact that heads of staff, and all
church leaders and seasons of church leadership, tend to be very, very different
from one another. When you think about Moses and Joshua, those two Bible characters,
each was very important. Each one
had a vital role to play, but they weren't very much like each other.
Moses was very reluctant as God summoned him into leadership with the
children of Israel. You remember
that story of God appearing to Moses and Moses saying, "No, no, no.
Not me. Huh-uh.
I don't want to. Send
somebody else. Make my brother
Aaron do it." Moses was
surprised by the call of God and did not feel himself ready for God's call. Now Joshua is entirely different. The Word of God tells us, in what
we just read, that Joshua was understood to be Moses' aid, Moses' assistant, the
second-in-command, sort of the vice-chairman of the board being groomed to sort
of step up into the role of leader. So when the mantle came to him, Joshua was not a bit
surprised and did not try to get out from under it.
And so right there we see a big, big difference between the temperaments,
the personalities, of these two leaders. Now, can God use the one who has been groomed for leadership and is
ready to step up and assume it? Yes,
God can. Can God use the reluctant
one who said, "No way! Huh-uh.
I'm not the right one. Go
burn in some other bush because I'm not interested."
Can God use that one? Yes.
God can use a variety of types of leaders. And part of the role of the Interim is to tell us, "Now,
Moses can have been wonderful, and Joshua can come along and be different, and
that's OK." It can be OK for
the one leader to be different from the other leader. A commonplace sentiment is, "Why are you even telling us this?
We already know this." Well,
churches tend (groups of people, and certainly churches) churches tend to sort
of fall into thinking, "Oh, Moses was it, therefore Moses' successor has to
be just exactly like Moses." In
how many different ways? Well, when I first became a pastor I was a youth pastor on the
staff of one church in Nebraska. Shortly
after I arrived on the scene, I had just graduated from seminary, so I was a
little insecure, and one of our eighth-graders came up to me and said, "My
mother says you can't be a good minister."
And I was, you know, a little insecure and I thought, "What?
Oh, my gosh. Can she see
that I'm not spiritual enough? Can
she tell that I'm, you know, just starting out and am really pretty
ignorant?" I said,
"Kathy, you've got to tell me more. Why
does your mother say this?" "No, no, it's too embarrassing. I can't tell you." (Now you've really got me wondering!) "Why did your mother say that?" "No, it's too embarrassing.
I can't tell you why my mother said you're not good enough to be a
minister." I said, "Now, c'mon. You've
got to tell me!" So finally she said, "OK.
My mother said you can't be a good minister because you're too
short." Because my predecessor had been a sort of, you know, big football
quarterback type. You know, the guy
who stands up in front of the junior highers.
And, I'm sorry. As far as
this mother was concerned, I could not be a good minister because I did not have
the physique that she was sure was required. We--all of us--can fall into that, unless we're sort of prompted
and challenged--to assume that a certain personality type, a certain mold of
leadership, has to be the one that God will forever use thereafter.
When we look at Moses and Joshua, they are very, very different.
Very, very different. Again, not just temperament-wise.
Moses, I think we can tell, pretty much on every page where Moses is
involved, had a self esteem problem. A
poor self-image. When something
went wrong, Moses usually blamed himself. Now
Joshua did not have self esteem problems! You read the end of Joshua and Joshua thought he was right
for the job--he just thought the Israelites were wrong for the job!
"You can't do it!" he's telling them.
This is not a person with a failing ego!
So they're very, very different in style. Probably more important than that, the circumstances in which Moses
operated and the circumstances in which Joshua operated were dramatically
different. The children of Israel
were in bondage, in slavery down in Egypt, and God sent Moses down there to
bring them up out, and then to lead the Israelites through the wilderness for 40
years, and bring them right up to the point where they were about to cross over.
And then God said, "OK. The
Israelites are going to cross over, but Moses, you may not cross over with
them." And then leadership was
handed over to Joshua and Joshua took the Israelites in.
It was a new set of circumstances, a new set of assignments.
Before, there was the problem of coming out from under the yoke of the
Egyptians and then surviving as a community for a generation.
Now under Joshua, they had come into the holy land.
The holy land had to be parceled out.
The kings that they confront have to be defeated.
The assignments have to be made to the different tribes. Cities had to be set aside for special functions.
So it's a new circumstance. Some
new decisions have to be made under the new circumstance.
But temperaments were different, self esteem levels were different,
circumstances were different. Roll
it all together and say what God called Moses to do was different from what God
called Joshua to do. And the hand
of God on Moses' life was just different from the hand of God on Joshua's life.
And therefore the way that the two behaved was not the same, though there
was a perfect continuity in the will of God, a perfect continuity of what God
wanted to happen under Moses and what God wanted to happen under Joshua. Now, an Interim gets the assignment not to try to be Moses, not to
try to be Joshua, but to do things like we're doing right now, where we call our
attention to the fact that one leadership style can be very, very good, and
useful, and fitting for its time, and another leadership style can come along
and can also be good, and fitting, and fine for its time.
My suggestion is--and I'm making this suggestion because this is a
mistake that churches sometimes make. Mistake number one is to say, "We want a new pastor exactly
like the one that just left." That's
a mistake. Why is that a mistake?
Well, number one, it's an impossibility, right?
Unless you've got like an Elvis in one pastor and then an
Elvis-impersonator in another pastor . . .
If you really, really want the person to behave exactly the same, then
you're asking that person not to be true to himself or herself, but simply to be
an impersonator. But, it's also not a good idea for a church to say, "We want a
pastor just like our last pastor," because the church will encounter new
situations, new challenges, and new opportunities. And to say, "We want someone to behave exactly like the
last person" is to say, "and we intend to be blind to the new
challenges and the new opportunities. We're
going to refuse to recognize that God is going to move us across the river into
a new circumstance. We're not going
to see today as offering us some challenging opportunities that yesterday did
not offer." So that was the
first mistake--and I'm advising you, "Don't make that mistake."
But the second mistake is, "Oh, we want someone totally
different than the last pastor. We
want someone very, very different." Because
oftentimes even if you have the most beloved pastor--and as an interim, this is
what it's my opportunity to see--that even with a very, very beloved pastor, if
there's a long enough stretch of years, churches--and this is the wonderful
freedom that I have: I don't know
your last pastor. I wouldn't
recognize him if he came walking down the street. I wouldn't recognize him if he came strolling into the church
building. So I get to say all these
things and I have no idea how close I'm coming! But always, in every church, you appreciate the strengths, but over
time you start to recognize
. . . let's not say "weaknesses" . . . you appreciate the
strengths and recognize the "less-strong areas" of a person's ministry (Was that delicate enough?) and to say,
"Oh, we want somebody dramatically different."
Unfortunately, churches sometimes do bring in someone dramatically
different--too dramatically different--and someone who's not able to sort of
appreciate the continuities from yesterday into today and into tomorrow. So my advice is that you don't worry about "very much the
same" or "very much different," but instead you look for God's
person. The Israelites in Moses had
God's person. The Israelites in
Joshua had God's person. And my
advice is that that be the content of your prayers.
You know, "Lord, send us your next person to be our head of
staff." Let me kind of illustrate that by just talking about my wife Nancy
and I and how we came to a decision recently.
This is my fifth interim. You'll
hear me say a lot that it's a role that I very much like.
I feel like it plays to my strengths and doesn't play to my
"less-than strengths" (or however I said that).
The four interims previous have all been in southern California or
Arizona. At the end of the last one
Nancy and I were not praying, "Lord, send us to another church just like
the last one." And we weren't
praying, "Lord, send us to a church that is nothing like the last
one." We were praying, "Lord, send us where you want us to
go." And there were several
churches that were sort of looking at us, some seriously.
But the top two churches were about this size, for an interim head of
staff position. This was one.
The other church was in South Carolina.
On the beach . . . And we prayed a lot and just very much felt that God was saying,
"South Carolina at the beach? No.
That's no good. Minneapolis
area, Minnetonka--yes." Now,
it helps if on your first day of driving to work in the snow . . . and it's
October 7th . . . and you know that the thing you said "No" to was
South Carolina . . . at the shore . . . it helps to be able to say, "This
is what God called us to do. This
is the one. This is right. This is it!" It
helps very, very much at times like that to be very settled and not think,
"Did we maybe not listen to God? God
maybe was really saying South Carolina and we . . ."
No! We feel very, very
comfortable with the notion that God wanted us to be here with you guys for this
particular season. Now because of that, I want to close with just one point relevant
to the idea that God sends us Moses-types, and God sends us Joshua-types, and
being faithful to God under the leadership of Moses and being faithful to God
under the leadership of Joshua involves being willing to let the one leader be
who he or she is and the other leader be who he or she is.
I want to call our attention to a commonplace saying which is
profound in its own way, but insufficient, and that commonplace saying is this:
"The church in every generation has the assignment of taking the
eternal gospel, the eternal Word of God, the message from God that does not
change but in every generation is the same, to take that and to relate it to, to
connect it to, what is going on in the times, which is always shifting.
The circumstances that we find ourselves in are never the same.
Things very much alter, they very much ebb and flow.
And that's fairly commonplace. Any
of us who have ever taken a preaching class are instructed, "Your job as a
preacher (and oftentimes preachers to congregations, "Our job as a
church") is to relate what is eternal and unchanging to what is temporal,
and in flux, and ever-changing." Well,
that's a terribly profound idea. (I'm
going to disagree with it in just a minute, but it's definitely a terribly
profound idea!) Just because the church finds itself in a new circumstance that
we've never faced before, that doesn't mean that we can throw the Bible out the
window, that we can throw those things that seemed like they were constant
previously, that we can jettison those in order to flex, right?
And on the contrary, just because we have some things in the Bible that
are eternal and never change, that doesn't mean that we can ignore the world
that we find ourselves in with all of the tumult, and all of the agitation, and
all of the "yes" today and "no" tomorrow, that we can just
ignore that and sort of gather together in our little, comfortable life and say,
"OK. We've got the Bible and
that's it." You know,
the very profound notion is that what is changeless and what is changing have to
be brought into conversation with each other. Now, my addition to that is that the church in every generation
needs to be able to relate the eternal to what is shifting, to relate the rock
to the shifting sand--under the influence, according to the priorities set
for us, by whomever the leaders are that God sends our way.
And if we take the leadership component out of that, then we'll be sort
of at a loss because we don't know--I don't think that we know how to relate
what is eternal to what is temporal and in flux except as God anoints particular
people who are able to say, "Hey! Let
me tell you. Pharaoh's doing us dirty, Makes us get our own straw for the
bricks. It's not fair and I'm
getting us out of here!" And,
boom! Out we go! And if God doesn't send us somebody anointed by Him who is able to
articulate the way out-- the name "exodus," literally, "ex
hodos," means "the way out." If God doesn't send us that person who is anointed
("Here's how we'll get out of here"), the rest of us as Presbyterians
will form committees and then they'll form another committee to kind of
communicate how the last one did. And
as Presbyterians, you know, without anointed leaders we'd still be in Egypt
under the pharaohs! Because committees . . .
(Well, I'm sorry. I probably
shouldn't even finish that sentence! ) OK. The way out.
A generation later God anoints another leader and this is the leader who
will show us the way in. The way
across. The way into the promised land and what we're going to do.
We need God's anointed leaders to show us ways out and ways in.
And it's as we have those that we, as a people, are enabled to take what
is constant and what is shifting and bring those into conversation with each
other, bring those into communication with each other.
It's the leader and it is the leaders that help us know how to do that.
What do we want from leaders who are going to be able to help us like
that? Well, we want someone who has the constancy of character not just
to be influenced by whatever is the latest fad at the moment.
The constancy of character, the integrity (maybe that would be a good
word for it), to be able to sort of stand fast and not be thrown off by whatever
the world is sending our way. But
also with the humility to be able to say, "You know what?
I may have integrity as people go, but I'm not God.
I may have some wisdom from the life experiences that I have gathered,
but I don't have God's perspective." So
if you've got a leader who is too tapped into the culture, they've got no
integrity. Do you understand?
Because whatever is popular today, that's what they're going to do.
If you've got someone with no humility, they're able to say,
"Me and God. We've got it
together. If you agree with me and
God, then you can have it together, too. Don't
you want to agree with me? Because
then you're agreeing with God, and then God will like you better."
We want someone who can sort of be in that middle place--neither so
shifting as the world is, but not under a delusion that I am eternal, that my
perspective is eternal. That's what
you want. When you have that, then
you've got someone anointed who is able to say, "Hey, this is the way
out," and "This is the way in." This is going to be a really fun time together.
My wife and I are both very excited to be here.
What we get to do is make the transition from having Moses, as it were,
to having Joshua. Let's pray. Dear
Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for being a wonderful God.
We ask that you would anoint us for this season of transition.
Lord, we ask that you would give us the good sense to follow you. And it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray.
Amen. The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
worship service on October 13, 2002.] |
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