Tuesday, April 12, 2005

No God-Forsaken Places

I'm working my way slowly through George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards. What I've come to know of his ministry intrigues me. After a long pastorate (more than 20 years) in Northampton, Mass., his congregation dismissed him. These days the pastoral literature calls it "forced termination." Bottom line: he got fired. Strangely, since the congregation couldn't quickly locate another minster, Edwards and his family remained in the parsonage and he continued to serve as their "interim" for nearly one year after his dismissal. That's a hard one for me to get my head around given what I've witnessed in similar situations today - but it seemed agreeable to Edwards and the congregation at Northampton.

Eventually Edwards had to move on - but where? Lots of pastors today ask the same question. The answer for Edwards was a mission outpost in western Massachusets. A place called Stockbridge. The demographic of the area was hardly the stuff of a church planter's dreams. Native Americans were the primary evangelism "target." So here's one of the most brilliant theological minds of the time (or any time for that matter) ministering the Word and caring for a little gathering of Indians who are learning what it means to believe and follow Jesus.

The questions come quickly to mind: How did a guy like him get to a place like that? Was he ever angry about it? Were there days when he despised Indians? Did he snap at his children and wife when the pain of resentment and disappointment leaked out of his lacerated soul?

From all I can tell, the answer is simply "no."

As I understand that period of Edwards' life, it was particularly fruitful with regard to his thinking and writing. He just kept doing what God had called him to do.

Most of us don't do too well with the God-forsaken places in our lives. And the way we define that place includes more than our latitude and longitude on a map. We understand place in terms of "position" - our ranking among our peers or our status in the corporate structure. We understand place in terms of our circumstances and our inner life. We say things like "he's ina bad place right now." That has nothing to do with location and everything to do with what's happening to us or around us or within us.

And, of course, location matters. How many people have been transferred to cities they don't want to live in? How many pastors are wondering about the next call? How many of us secretly believe that the next move will get us to the place we've always wanted to be and then we can settle down?

Long before Jonathan Edwards, a prophet by the name of Elijah found himself in what seemed to be a God-forsaken place. In true prophetic form he had spoken the word of God to Ahab, King of Israel. It was fiery and confrontational. He spoke with the authority proper to a prophet of Yahweh. "No rain until I say so." That was a way of talking smack about the god that Ahab had allowed the people of Israel to worship - a god who supposedly controlled fertility and growth, even rainfall.

But after this explosive debut in Israel - Elijah's first sermon a far as we know - God does a strange thing. Elijah is instructed to go to the Kerith Ravine and hide. This is not an exciting call for a prophet. When a message burns like fire in the bones, the prophet needs to speak. But at the Kerith Ravine, there's no one to speak to. No one seems to be sure where the Kerith Ravine is - a large ditch somewhere east of the Jordan. But wherever it is, it not a place where a prophet can have a successful career. It's a God-forsaken place, or so it seems.

The stories of Elijah the prophet and Edwards the pastor suggest that there really is no such thing as a God-forsaken place. There are certainly hard places. Without doubt there are places that we would gladly forsake if given half a chance. But those places are not void of God. The hard part is being able, or even willing, to discern what God is doing in the places where God has us right now: the places we live, the jobs we have, the circumstances we're dealing with. There are no God-forsaken places. Elijah and Edwards both came to know that God has something to do with us, and something for us to do, in places like Stockbridge and the Kerith Ravine.

More on that later.

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