Ebenezer

Joshua 3:14-4:7, Matthew 28:16-20

September 9, 2007

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

God told Joshua to ask one man from each tribe of the Hebrew people to place a rock in the riverbed, to build a monument, an Ebenezer, to remind the people in years to come how God had been with them, leading them to the Promised Land. As the men went to find the stones, I can imagine Joshua himself picking up a stone from that riverbed and staring at it deeply. He would have seen not just the vision of the water of the Jordan moving aside for his people to cross on dry feet, but that other water, the much greater water of the Red Sea, parting for his people while the soldiers of Egypt and their chariots rushed to overtake them. The stones of the sea bed, worn smooth by the waters over many generations. Then the vision moved back yet farther, to the stones of Egypt, carved in the likeness of Pharaoh, the stones that the backs of Joshua’s fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts had carried and built upon, until their backs broke from the weight of stone and sadness. Now they were free of slavery in Egypt, and when they carried stones it would be to build their future. They would tell their children of the stones of Egypt, the wet stones under the red sea, the dry stones of the wandering desert, and finally these stones of the Jordan River, the gate to freedom and hope. All through these many years, not only were there stones, but there was the great Rock of Ages. God almighty, God all merciful, God all loving, guiding, giving laws and giving hope. Through Egypt when it seemed God had left them, and through the Red Sea and years in the desert, God had been there with Moses, with manna and quail and water, with the tablets of the law, with challenge and with promise. Joshua looked at the stone and saw the ever-present God. Then Joshua turned and walked into the Promised Land, risking belief against all probability of success.

Human beings love to build monuments, tangible structures to help jog our memories of the past. War memorials dot the greens of hundreds of New England towns, on our green here in New Haven we have the monument to Sengbe Pieh and the others who came here on the Amistad and simply wanted to go home and be free. This summer we stood at that memorial and remembered the story, and then launched the new Amistad on another journey about freedom. Earlier this summer a traveling version of the Vietnam Wall in Washington came to Hamden, and the objects placed under the names of those who died long before any of the children in the crowd had been born brought forth stories and memories, both of joy and pain. Even in a town like New Haven where so many work in deeply abstract concepts and theories and theologies and ideas that boggle the minds of many, we still can be moved by the concrete, something we can see and touch to remind us of the past, even if we were not alive in that past. That’s why whenever there’s been an accident in which someone has died, especially if it has been a child or a teen, you find quickly that a little memorial springs up with flowers and stuffed animals and signs along the road.

Joshua’s Ebenezer, and others like it that we read about in scripture, are like those monuments and memorials, but with a difference. The Ebenezer does not just remember a story or a person, but a time that involved the power and presence of God. It’s meant to jog our memories, not just of history, but of a relationship between people and God throughout history that has moved individuals and peoples forward. It’s meant not just to make us sad or thankful about the past, but to say to us, “God was with them; God will be with you now as well.” In a time where people are making the big bucks writing books proving God does not exist, perhaps it is a good time to build an Ebenezer to remind us how we have known God in the past and trust that God still acts now and will when our children are old and gray.

As Christians, we can build with stones, and we will in a few moments, but we are also called to remember that we have another kind of Ebenezer. Jesus. Jesus, who was flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, whose hands could touch and be touched and whose voice could be heard. Jesus was a sign to his people, so proud of the stones they had built in the Temple in Jerusalem, that God’s continuing presence could also be known in flesh, in a person, and after his death, in the people that were the church. For the church was never understood to be buildings, and we have gotten lazy in our language that way. The church is the people, the kin of Jesus, living Ebenezers of God’s continuing presence among us, a reason for thanks and for hope. You and I and others are Ebenezers for each other and for the world.

But human beings need to build things, like monuments and reminders in stone, and so it has been since long before Joshua. So in a few moments, we are going to enter into a time of prayer, prayer done rather differently than our usual pattern here. We are going to build an Ebenezer with our stones as prayers. Take your stone (and if you need one, there is a box at the back of the center aisle where you can go and get one while we sing). I am going to begin us in prayer, and then we will leave a time of silence. In that silence, I invite you to hold your stone and consider one time in the past year when you have known the presence of God and are so thankful for it. Remember the story and hold it close in thanksgiving. Then think of prayers you have for the present or the future for yourself or for other people or the world. See those situations and hold them with the stone as well. Then Larry will play through this wonderful old hymn that talks about an Ebenezer once and we will sing it after. When you are ready, I invite you to bring your rock forward and place it here, and we will join our prayers in an Ebenezer of thanks and hope, a powerful sign of the presence of God, past, present and future. Then, at the end of the service, while Larry plays the postlude, I invite you to come forward silently and take a rock with you back to your seat. It need not be the one you laid down, for all the stones up here will be so imbued with prayer and the presence of the Spirit that each will hold all our thanks and hopes. Take the stone home and find a place in your house to begin an Ebenezer for yourself. Add stones to it when God’s presence is particularly powerful to you. Everyday look at it and remember. Let us do as the hymn calls us to do: “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come, and I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.” Amen.