Looking Backwards Into the Future

 

Looking Backwards Into the Future

Looking Backwards Into the Future - Audio/Visual 

In the future your children will ask you, “What do these stones mean?”  Then you can tell them, “They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.” These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.” (Joshua 4:6-7)

Not long ago I watched Fiddler on the Roof again, a story about social turmoil that would soon break out into the Russian revolution. But Tevye, the main character, doesn’t know that. He only senses that the world is changing, and he’s got to find a way to balance who he is and what he believes against the realities of a changing world. For him, traditions gave stability to his life – an anchor point that can’t be touched by the prejudices of the people around him, by the persecutions against his faith, or even by the shifting whims of political leaders.

We don’t hear lot of talk about traditions today, at least in a good way. In fact, in our nation, even in many churches, “tradition” is used in a negative sense: it’s used to describe old, dead ways that stifle growth. It describes the lifeless past and is often contrasted with the new, freer ways of the present. Yet, the emphasis on present experience makes it difficult, at times, for us to understand the significance and power of past encounters with God. Many of the questions we face today are the same as they were for Tevye. How do we respond to a changing world? How do we balance our experience of the past with a world that didn’t even exist five years ago? How do we teach our children what’s important, when so much is changing so rapidly? How do we maintain a moral and spiritual balance amid the relativism of our modern culture? How do we face an unknown future?

The crossing of the Jordan takes two chapters at the beginning of the book of Joshua to describe from which I only excerpted two verses. The people have prepared for their entry into the land by sending out spies, and they’ve been assured by the spies, and by God, that they’ll be able to enter the land. Normally, the Jordan was a small river that could be crossed easily. However, during spring the melting snows in the mountains turned the river into a torrent, spreading out over the flood plain – as much as a mile wide in some locations. But Joshua assured the people that God was about to do something miraculous so that they might know that he was their God and that he was with them.

Undeniably, the crossing of the Jordan River is the central event of these two chapters. But throughout the story there’s an added dimension that catches our attention. Rocks. Rocks are an important part of the story. The people take stones from the river and place them in a great big heap on the riverbank. And the end of the story is not so much the crossing of the river, but the pile of rocks they raise and the significance they play. Rocks. Why rocks? Because the stones were to be a memorial of this event so that when those who came later and saw the stones and asked about them, the story of God's great act for his people could be retold. And the story’s told for a specific reason. It’s not just a story about national origins or something strange to entertain the kids. No, they’re to tell the story so that later generations would know who God is and what he can do. Sometimes, even the ones who’ve witnessed God’s actions first-hand need a reminder as well.

If we’re not careful, this event simply becomes a memorial to something that happened a long time ago and has little meaning to us beyond saying, "Yeah, that was cool. Nice story." And in that way, the rocks simply become another cold, lifeless monument to the past. So, what was so critical about this particular pile of rocks for the Israelites? Why was it so important that the people were to retell the story, and know its meaning? It’s because the Israelites will go on and enter the land, but it won’t be easy. As they move away from the Jordan River, things will never be the same again. Most of them were born in the desert and they’ve lived their whole life there. They know the desert. Now, they’re moving into an unknown land and an unknown future. They will face well-fortified cities. On foot, and armed only with garden tools for weapons, they will face fierce, chariot-mounted Philistines with an iron arsenal. Untrained in warfare, they will be outnumbered by skilled Canaanite warriors. And worst of all, they will encounter the religions of the Canaanites and be lured into the worship of Baal. In other words, they will forget God.

They face a rough future, for sure, but God will help them. Jericho's walls will fall; at Gibeon, the sun will stand still for Joshua; Gideon will rout a Midianite army with only clay pots and 300 men; and David will kill Goliath. God will do great things for his people. But in between the great acts of God, the people will have to live in a real world. They’ll have to grapple with day-to-day living. And they will get discouraged because after the great victory at Jericho will come their defeat at Ai; after the miracle at Gibeon will come the failures recorded at the opening of Judges; after Gideon defeats the Midianites, he will turn to building idols to Baal; and after David kills Goliath, he’ll have Uriah killed to hide his adultery.

There will be times when they will not be sure if God is even present among them. There’ll be times of defeat, discouragement and despair. There’ll be times of no miracles. There will be times when their world is thrown into such chaos that they will be able to see no future at all. And it’s in those times that they’ll need a reference point. When they can’t prove God's presence by their own experience, and when they don’t know how to adapt to a changing world, they’ll need to be able to look back and know from past encounters that God is … well … God. They will need an anchor point.

And this pile of stones was to be that anchor point; a point of reference for later times when the path wouldn’t be so clear. These stones were more than a pile of rocks on the bank of a river. These stones were a heritage, a tradition. These stones were the "Fiddler on the roof," so to speak, the tradition that balances the known past with an unknown future. They were to become a beacon that shined far beyond the banks of the Jordan, far beyond the time of Joshua, and tell far more than just the parting of the Jordan’s waters. They were to be a signpost from the past to the future. They were to be a marker by which they could stand in their present, look to the past, and then draw a straight line into an unknown future. They were a way to define the present, and the future, by means of the past. They can’t know where to go until they know where they are. And they can’t know where they are until they know where they’ve been.

You see, our problem is that once we get out in the middle of life, we need a reference point. Although we may know, generally, where we’re going, we can’t always see how to get there. However, we can see where we’ve been. So, we use the reference point of the miracles of our past as a guide to the future. See the significance?

This pile of rocks was an anchor point. They told the people where they’d been. They told them who God was. And they told them what God could do. Those stones allowed them to draw a straight line from the past acts of God into their uncertain present, and beyond. And it will be a long journey between the exodus and the crossing of the Jordan. In that gap between the great manifestations of God in history, the people will have to live in a real world. They’ll experience times when they won’t be able to see by their present experiences that God is God at all. There’ll be times when they won’t be sure if God is even present. So, in those times, they’ll need an anchor point. When they can’t prove God's presence by their present experience, they’ll need to be able to look back and know from past encounters that God is God.

Notice, at the close of this story, what’s said in Joshua 4:23. "Yes, God, your God, dried up the Jordan's waters for you until you had crossed, just as God, your God, did at the Red Sea, which had dried up before us until we had crossed.” The curious thing is that the people to whom Joshua was speaking didn’t actually cross the Red Sea with Moses – their parents and grandparents did. So, they weren’t just remembering their heritage, they were living their heritage. They’d drawn a straight line from the exodus, through that pile of rocks on the banks of the Jordan, and on into an uncertain future.

So how do we face the uncertainty of a future that we can’t control, in a world not of our own making, and in the face of events we can’t bend to our will? We can’t always see God at work in miraculous ways. We know he’s there, but we don’t always know what decisions to make because we don’t know how things will turn out. Events change too fast. So, how do we face a future that we cannot imagine? We look back at the heritage of the Red Sea. We look back at that pile of rocks on the banks of the Jordan. And we listen to those who tell us of an empty tomb.

And so, before we knew firsthand for ourselves, we saw that pile of rocks and learned the lessons of heritage and tradition. Not the stale tradition of facts and ritual, but the tradition of living encounters with God, the heritage of living stones that speak to us of God and his work in the lives of his people. We can look at our piles of stones and draw a line from them to where we are so we can understand how we got here. And then we can better understand who we are, and what we must do.

Our task, then, is to take that line drawn through those piles of rocks in the past and extend it into a future about which we are uncertain. But it is a future that we can face with confidence because we have a reference point and faith: faith that even though we can’t see the end of the journey, we know where it’s headed because we can see the pile of rocks stretching behind us plotting our course. And, perhaps, that’s what faith’s all about anyway: to journey looking backwards into the future.

Grace,

Randy