Our Campfire Religion

FPC Vandalia 6-11-17 (Trinity A)

Joshua 4:1-9; Matthew 28:16-20

Our Campfire Religion

At Presbytery this last Tuesday, we celebrated 20 years of camping ministry at Covenant Point - a part of that celebration involved us having the very first camp director come back to share some of his experiences and of what camp meant to him.  Something he said has stuck with me through the whole rest of the week - so much so that I had to change the texts I was working with a little.  He told the people gathered at worship that morning that Christianity is a campfire religion, a religion of the outdoors - and it dawned on me that while in many ways, this was stating the obvious, it was also a wonderful reminder to be given.

We don’t always think about it in this context, but I invite you to picture it: the sun is setting and you’ve gathered with the rest of your tribe to make camp for the evening.  As your father fastens the last of the lines and ensures that the tent is secure, double-checking to make sure that the front opening is faced inward toward the tabernacle, you’ve been ushered toward the center of the camp.  The fire blazes and crackles as everyone finds a comfortable place to sit.  There’s the murmur of hushed conversations - cousin Benjamin’s goat finally gave birth to a healthy kid, old Talia has just about finished her newest dress and what a chore it had been collecting all the berries to dye it just that most beautiful shade… and then the conversations are hushed as old Oren, the tribe’s elder, takes his place, clears his throat, and waits for quiet.  Everyone’s eyes are turned to him as he begins:

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good…”

Storytelling is at the heart of our religion - long before the temple was built, long before there was ever such a thing as a three-point sermon, we gathered together around the campfire to listen to stories about God.  We listened to the stories about how God created the heavens and the earth, how God walked in the Garden with Adam.  We heard the story of how God saved Noah and his family from the flood, how God led Abraham to become father of an entire nation, how God called Moses up out of the bullrushes and spoke to him in the burning bush… the stories go on and on, and each generation added their own story to the narrative, telling how God had brought them to where they were, how God had been with them and would always be with them - and in those stories, we were and are reminded first and foremost of God’s unending love for and interest in us, as well as the kind of life God calls us to live in response to that love.

We see an incredible example of this storytelling campfire religion as we look at the passage from Joshua - as Joshua takes over the mantle of leadership passed down to him by Moses, God tells Joshua that God is going to help remind the Israelites that God is still with them even as they follow a new leader, so God tells Joshua to command the priests to carry the ark ahead of the people as they prepare to cross the Jordan river to enter the new land into which God is leading them, the land that God has promised.  And as the priests go ahead of the people, carrying the ark, the waters of the Jordan are cut off entirely, allowing the entire nation of Israel to walk across on dry land.  As the last of the people cross the dry land and the priests are still in the midst of the river, before they leave and the waters can resume their flow, God tells Joshua to take one man from each of the twelve tribes and to have each of them take a stone out to the middle of the river and to place them in the spot where the priests had stood with the ark as a visual reminder of what had happened in that place.  As Joshua gathers the twelve men to place the stones, he tells them - “When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord. . . So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever.”

Joshua tells the people of Israel to tell a story - he tells them to pass that story on to their children, because their children will want to hear that story and know, not just what those stones mean for the people of Israel, but about what God did in that place that warranted putting the stones there at all.  And that story was told, time and time again, to the point that even after the exile as those campfire stories were finally being written down and put onto scrolls for further future generations, that story survived and mentioned that the stones were still there.

There’s a certain power to the stories we tell, as well as the way we tell and experience them - how many of Jesus’ parables and teachings did he give from the inside of a synagogue?  When you think about the most powerful moments of Jesus’ ministry - the sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the 5,000, calming the storm, praying in the garden of Gethsemane… Jesus’ ministry was one that primarily happened outside and using outdoor imagery: the sower and the seeds, the vineyard, the fig tree, people building houses and workers in the field…

Even the Great Commission in Matthew’s Gospel happens after Jesus directs them to meet him on a mountain - and in this great moment of Jesus reminding them of his continuing presence with them, this powerful scene of Jesus charging the disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Triune God… in this great moment, we see the formation of the first confirmation class, the first Christian Education committee, the first church outreach and fellowship events.  It’s this moment in which Jesus hands down the Book of Order… right?  I mean, otherwise, how would the disciples have known quite how to go out into the world and make disciples?

Or perhaps in all our progress, all the good things that we have built for ourselves within the church, we’ve also somehow managed to overcomplicate the task of discipleship and evangelism.  Perhaps we need to reclaim the words in our hymnal - “I love to tell the story, ’t’will be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.”

What is your story, and how is God calling you to share it in our world today?  When your children ask you, “What does this place mean to you?” what story will you tell them?  And how will they come to know and experience God at work in your story? May God bless you, and each of us, as we learn together to find ourselves in God’s story, to share that story with others, and to live out God’s story for each of us.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.