A Message from Mark

On Faithfulness and Hope in Trying Times

Mark McCormick, General Presbyter

The Hebrew Bible reading for this past Sunday offered an exciting opportunity for this old Hebrew Bible scholar: The Call of Moses in Exodus 3! It was only the first fifteen verses, so there is much more to read, but this segment is such an exciting start! I had the opportunity to prepare a sermon to contribute to the worship service at First Presbyterian Church in Alexander City on a fifth Sunday, which meant covered dish luncheon after worship! How lucky can one minister get? Preach on such a profound passage of scripture and get to sit down afterwards at a church covered dish lunch? Sign. Me. Up! It was a joyous opportunity to get to know new people who have faithfully served the Lord and ministered in their community and, for the last three years, have done so while searching for an installed pastor!

In Exodus 3 God promises Moses presence. That’s it: God will be present with Moses in the mission to bring the Israelites out from Egypt. But it is a presence to be confirmed for Moses only after he has accomplished the mission! Moses finds this rear-view mirror confirmation dubious, to say the least. In the conversation between the “I will be with you,” of Exodus 3:12, and the giving of the name “I Am who I Am,” of Exodus 3:14, Moses angles to get a more concrete confirmation by asking for a name. Instead of a name, God grants a riddle. But it is a riddle that has no answer to be guessed; it is a riddle pointing to an awareness that can only be lived into.

In this I AM is a promise of presence not limited by time or by space. It is not constricted by location or by form. It is as though God told Moses, “I AM with you, but only as I AM with you.” It is a promise that tells Moses that God is present with him whether he can see a flaming bush or not. It also admonishes Moses not to think every bush on fire has God in the flame! It is presence whose confirmation Moses must live into and then look back upon to realize that he was not alone after all. And that is something that we can spend our whole lives learning and relearning. Because, ultimately, it is a reliance upon God’s faithfulness to do what God promises to do; it is holding confidence in the face of shifting circumstance.

Three years can seem like a long time to search for a pastor! It can feel like a wilderness wandering where threats and the unknown reside around the corner and limited resources can challenge one’s sense of confidence in God’s promise of presence. But the elders and members who are First Presbyterian Church in Alexander City, AL, provide an unflinching and powerful testimony to faithfulness as they maintain their ministries in the community and their weekly worship in the sanctuary. They have adjusted, to be sure, but those adjustments have not diminished their confidence in God’s grace and God’s presence that continues to invite them to new ways of serving. This confident adaptability to the current circumstances of their congregational life is confirming evidence of God’s presence and blessing manifested each week! It may not look just like it did the last time, but the presence of God meets anyone who enters to serve. Thanks be to God for the faithfulness of First Presbyterian Church, Alexander City and the committed service lived there!

Friends, God comes to us, abides with us within the moments we need, as we need. This is a sure hope for all of us. For what if we let go of hope? Wendell Berry, recently joined with Dolly and the saints, offered an inspired a response to this query. When we may feel our hope is draining, the testimony of God’s good world offers us encouragement to squint our eyes a little harder, perhaps, to see God’s presence in a new way.

Shall we do without hope? Some days

there will be none. But now

to the dry and dead woods floor

they come again, the first

flowers of the year, the assembly

of the faithful, the beautiful,

wholly given to being.

And in this long season

of machines and mechanical will

there have been small human acts

of compassion, acts of care, work

flowerlike in selfless loveliness.

Leaving hope to the dark

and to a better day,

receive these beauties freely

given, and give thanks.

Hopefully,

Mark