Shall we go and sit under the broom tree?
If we do choose to sit together under the broom tree, we will be in good company.
We will find Elijah there, as we just heard. Elijah has given up hope. There is a price on his head, and he is fleeing in fear. In his flight from danger into the wilderness (where, if anything, there is even more danger), he forgets the truly awesome experience he recently had, when God passed by, extremely close by, in the sound of sheer silence. He forgets that God gloriously helped him in a political triumph. Exhausted, harried, at his wits’ end, Elijah crumples to his knees and sits down under the broom tree.
The singer of Psalm 120 will greet us under the broom tree, too. Their song connects the broom tree with deep distress and anxiety.
Hagar is placing her toddler son under the broom tree. Thrown out of Abraham’s house following the triumphant birth of Isaac, Hagar and her son Ishmael are decidedly not welcome. In her desert despair, she places her son under the broom tree and staggers away, sobbing, so that she does not have to watch him die.
Moses doesn’t turn aside to look at the broom tree in flames, exactly, but the dazzling thornbush that draws the attention of Moses, aflame with God’s presence, is a similar desert plant: God’s flames lick around its sharp needle leaves and rough bark, and even as it burns without being consumed, the roots of this wondrous desert bush plunge deep into the rocky soil to find the water lurking far below.
An old legend says that the wood of a broom tree was burning near the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was praying to God in agony. Maybe this legend gathers all the references together: the burning thornbush, the human misery, and the dry, harsh, scorching nastiness of all these wasteland encounters with God.
So maybe we don’t want to sit under the broom tree.
But watch what happens!
When Elijah sits under the broom tree, tasty hot biscuits and luscious water appear there for his nourishment, and God’s messenger touches him gently, urging him on, like an elegant waiter, or a sensitive home-health worker.
Hagar is consoled and her son’s life is saved.
Moses is sent on a terrible adventure, to be sure, but he becomes a friend of God, and helps rescue God’s people.
And Jesus? Well, his story, as the new Moses, is of course not all sweetness and light, but it does culminate in triumph, and justice, and deep gladness, now and in God’s future. The story of Jesus continues right here, in and with you, and me, and all of us in this room, and all of us online and beyond.
So let’s go ahead and do it. Let’s take a moment to sit under the broom tree.
Some of us are, like Hagar, staggering with grief. Others of us are, like Elijah, just sick and tired of being sick and tired. And … I think a few of us may feel fairly okay, overall, or at least stable and steady. Here at Grace, alongside the delta-variant surge (a highly distressing stage in the immense global transition of covid), here at Grace we are beginning another transition of clergy leadership. That alone has a sit-under-the-broom-tree vibe to it.
So let’s sit under the broom tree and talk for a moment about transitions, big and small, global and local. While we talk, God’s messenger will prepare bread for our nourishment.
Transitions. William Bridges is an organization development consultant who specializes in transitions. In one of his most famous models, he shows how, in an organizational transition, three things are always going on: he calls them “endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings.”
Let’s start with endings. Throughout our local transition of leadership, and not just at the beginning, Grace Church will be marking an ending - the ending of our pastoral relationship with Wren, and the ending of dreams we may have had for more years with her. Even a few weeks into the new ministry of the next permanent rector, even then a little bit of our energy will be taken up with endings. This isn’t sad or bad or wrong. It’s actually kind of lovely, in its way. And it is abundantly natural and expectable. It honors our love for her, and our love for one another, in God’s loving embrace.
Then there’s the neutral zone. The neutral zone is the broad middle of a transition, when we have more questions than answers, and we do some of the hard work of taking stock of things, deepening our self-understanding, and deciding who we want our next rector to be. But the neutral zone, like the other two dimensions of transition, isn’t just in the middle. A little bit of our energy will be taken up with the neutral zone at the beginning and the end. And again, this is natural and expectable. In some sense we live our whole lives in the neutral zone. We never know everything for certain. Life is inherently transitory.
And then there’s the new beginnings, plural. Not just a new rector X number of months from now, but new visions, new takes on old things, new ideas about old plans, new members and new perspectives, new promise and new hope. And these are always with us, too. Even now, under the broom tree.
So as grim and hard as these stories sound, if we listen more closely we can hear all three of the marks of transition in them. Even as Elijah flops down in despair, God’s messenger is already setting bread dough on the hot rocks. Even as Hagar wails in grief-stricken desperation, God’s messenger is approaching with life-saving companionship and assistance. Even as Moses marvels at the bush aflame, God sees far into the future and knows that God’s people will find their way home.
Early in his ministry, long before the resurrection (and the dreadful events that led to it), long before the apostles knew who they were and leapt forward across the known world to preach the Good News, long before anyone knew anything about anything, Jesus broke bread, fed the multitudes, and offered himself as the Bread of Life.
Even now, as we begin our transition at Grace; even now, as all of us, each in our own ways, cope with the changes and chances of life; even now, as the whole world round is grappling with enormous challenges — even now, as we doze sadly under the broom tree, we feel a gentle tap on the shoulder, and we hear God’s messenger say to us, gently and elegantly —
“Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”
***
1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
Preached on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14B), August 8, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
For more on the Bridges Transitions model, click here.