April 3, 2011
What To Do at the Crossroads - 1 Samuel 15:34-16:3
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI was riding my bike recently around my hometown of Campobello, South Carolina, on Mt. Lebanon Church Road. I had honestly forgotten where exactly Mt Lebanon Church Road led until I hit a stop sign at Good Join Road, and realized that I was in the familiar territory of Little Chicago, SC. She may not know this, but one of our esteemed saints at Central, Kay Patterson, has spent a fair amount of time in Little Chicago. Her college roommate, Vicky Culbreth, lived very close to Little Chicago. Little Chicago is the crossroads of, as I said, Mt Lebanon Church and Good Join Roads. That’s all that little Chicago, SC is. It’s a crossroads with closed down old filling station on the north side and a newer filling station on south side. The thing that makes Little Chicago, SC somewhat famous is this sign that sits just to the north of Bloomer Williams old filling station that points the direction and mileage of every major city in the country, and even the world (to our chagrin, Charlotte is not on the list). If you wanted to go to Paris, for example, that sign directs you to keep going straight, east, down Mt Lebanon Church Road, for another several thousand miles. If you wanted to go to Los Angeles, you would need to turn around and go west for about three thousand miles. If you wanted to go to New York, you’d need to hang a left on Good Join and go north for a while, and if you were headed to Miami, you’d need to go right and head south on Good Join. Little Chicago is famous for that sign.
Israel was at a major crossroads in 1 Samuel 16. Israel had come a long way from when the wilderness experience that we discussed last week. Not only had they entered the promised land of Cana, but they had even established a country, and then even a kingship. King Saul was the best looking man in the world according to chapter 9. He was a very gifted leader, a brilliant general at war, an eloquent speaker. He was everything you would want in a leader, and he led Israel very, very well. But it what I regard as one of the saddest chapters in the entire Bible, Saul lost his way in chapter 15, and by the end of that chapter, Saul was completely washed up. And Israel was in bad, bad shape. I liken it somewhat, maybe, to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. We were right on the brink of total anarchy then.
Israel was right on the brink of that here in Chapter 16. It looked very much like this whole experiment that God had had with Israel had completely failed. At the very least, Israel was at a major, major crossroads, and it had no idea in the world of what to do. The wisest person in all of Israel, who actually had ruled Israel himself, who had anointed Saul king in the first place, was utterly despondent. “Samuel grieved over Saul,” we read, “and the Lord was sorry that he made Saul king over Israel.” Never will you read a sadder sentence.
Crossroads are often very difficult. Crossroads always involve change. They always require that we leave something behind, and that we embrace something new. Crossroads, therefore, always involve a mourning process. That’s what mourning literally is, the process of letting something or someone go, and embracing something new, or reinvesting that energy somewhere else. Anybody who has ever mourned anything, and we all have, knows how difficult that is. The hardest part about a crossroads, though, is that we don’t even know what we’re leaving behind. The hardest part of the crossroads is that we just do not know. We never know all that we would like, and that’s not our fault. It’s not God’s fault, either of course. It’s that we’re human. We’re limited. We simply do not know what we would like to know.
Leah and I moved to Texas when we got married in 1999. I served in the Army, and then felt called to ministry. We were Methodist at the time so I started ministry in the United Methodist Church. We loved Texas. We even flourished in Texas. It was very exciting for us to be blazing our own trails out there. But we knew that we wanted children, and we knew that we’d probably like to be closer to home when we finally had them. I’ll never forget driving home from my Church in Mooreville and Leah telling me that her company had offered her a really good position in Charlotte.
We had come to love Texas. We had come to love our Church, like we love this Church. We had friends out there. We had a good life out there. Leaving Texas would be very hard. And besides, what would happen if we moved to Charlotte? What would I do? I hadn’t even finished seminary. What would the Methodist Church do? It’s kind of hard to announce to your bishop, especially if you’re not even ordained yet, that you’re skipping town. What if I moved to Charlotte and couldn’t find any employment? I can still very clearly remember the uncertainty of it. I am also naturally impatient, which made matters worse. If we were going, I wanted it worked out, now. But it didn’t happen now. It happened over time. I remember vividly leaving Texas in my little Honda CRV and wondering what in the world I would be doing out here.
Crossroads are hard. Samuel didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do. Many of you are at a crossroads, and sometimes you come tell me about whatever it is, and you’re probably disappointed that I am almost always fresh out of answers. That’s the whole nature of the crossroads, though. We just don’t know. So what do we do? Samuel listened to God. Actually, I’m not all that sure that Samuel listened to God or not. But God got his attention and led him on this outlandish, crazy journey that ended in a new king named David, whose dynasty would last for a very long time.
Three and a half years ago, you told me and the Presbyterian world that Central Steele Creek was at a crossroads. We were at a crossroads then, and I think we sort of still are. The gist of your Church Information Form was that Central is an old, established church with a very storied past, in a rapidly changing community. That is very much the case, and we are still very much at the crossroads of that. I’ve learned a lot since I have been here, but one lesson is that being at that crossroads is much harder than I thought. What are we supposed to leave behind? What are we supposed to take with us? How do you get everybody on board with whatever direction that you take? And, what if you fail? What if you make the wrong decision? What if you make the right decision? What if you succeed, and you’re so successful that you really reach out the community and the next thing you know, this is a radically different Church? What if the Church changes as much as the community? Success might sound good, but it’s hard. And it takes time. That’s lesson number two. It takes a lot of time to cross a big crossroads. I started crossing that road in Texas that I told you about in the fall of 2004. I didn’t really cross that crossroads until I was ordained here in March of 2008. And that’s just me. Institutions take a lot longer.
We have a number of options. We can deny that we’re at a crossroads. We can find some very easy answers, which are almost always wrong answers. We can go pay somebody thousands of dollars to find the hard answers for us, which has mixed results at best. Or… we can do like Samuel did, and we can listen for God’s small, still voice. For the record, I like #3 the best. But, that’s going to require a lot of work on our part, all of our parts. We’re going to have to be more intentionally spiritual in how we make our decisions. Session meetings are almost always like board meetings. Bob Jack told me that when he got to Pleasant Hill, his session meetings were pretty much business meetings with a little bit of God thrown in there. Now, he says, they are pretty much prayer meetings with a little bit of business. I think that may be part of the solution for us. Either way, we’re going to have to pray a lot and really listed for where God is calling us to go.
If our experience is anything like Israel’s, then we’ll have a few surprises along the way. And, it’s not going to happen overnight. 1st Samuel has thirty chapters in it. It took Israel every one of those chapters to cross that crossroads. I have been on this kick all year, from a sermon that I gave on January 2 about submitting to God. As I see it, this is all part of it. And I hope and pray that when the chapter is written about the crossroads that Central Steele Creek faced in the early part of the 21st Century, that our grandchildren will be able to read that we listened to God, had some courage, and crossed the street, right over just a little closer to the Promised Land.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
