These lessons we’re given on this 20^th Sunday after Pentecost when here at St. Philip we’re celebrating the saints who have gone before us and also our Reformation heritage are  pretty good ones for the occasion, I think. It’s also one week before our annual Stewardship Sunday and one week and one year, exactly, until we Americans will hold our next Presidential election.

I sniff some thematic convergences, which is to say I think we St. Philip folks (or, you St. Philip folks) and we Americans well may be at a kind of crossing the River Jordan moment when the times and land that lie ahead, though we want to believe are promised times and a promised land, are unknown really and kind of scary.

So here you St. Philip folks are -- and all of us patriotic Americans are -- poised at the edge of the great river carrying a kind of ark that has our history and culture and values and hopes in it, and you need to decide which direction to step as you search about for new pastoral leadership (and…new music ministry leadership, youth and educational ministry leadership, and now, associate pastor leadership), which direction to step with your commitments of personal resources next Sunday and, a year from now, which way to step as we cast votes for presidential leadership. Our present moment, like the moment the ancient Israelites were in on the eastern shore of the Jordan, is a not-quite-having-arrived-yet moment, and life needs to become better. But which is the way to make it better?

For our Israelite ancestors, the time for talking and debating and campaigning had come to an end, and it was time to walk…into the river. They were to walk right up to the deep and flooded Jordan River, dip their feet into its waters, and, incredible as it seems, walk somehow on ahead into the promised land, relying on God’s promise that they won’t drown before they get there.

In the case of the early Christian community to whom Matthew wrote, the walk they were to make was the walk of genuine piety, the walk of practicing what their new found faith in Jesus as Lord taught them – no more prideful phylacteries, no more long fringes, no more seeking after places of honor at the banquet tables because of the important people that they were and how they were born, no more expectations of the best seats in the synagogue or political perks or earmarks, no more insisting that they be called “rabbi,” or “doctor,” or “professor,” or “Pastor”.  No, now the walk was to be a humble one in the direction of the foot of the table and toward others’ needs rather than in deference to their own needs and wants. It was to be servanthood in deference to the best interests of others, which I take Jesus to be saying our walk as we decide how we will support the church next year, what kind of folks you will call to lead you in your faith journey, and how we will all vote as Americans next year, must be as well.

The lessons are pretty good ones as we perch on the edge of our own Jordan, about to make history as a community of God’s faithful people and as a nation people seeking to be faithful to our most important values. Remember, generally speaking, the mandate of these lessons to walk the talk of our faith has always been a fundamental principle of the Reformed faith tradition and basic to our understanding of what its stewardship really is. Martin Luther said faith without action that demonstrates faith is no faith at all. Faith that doesn’t issue in a willingness to plunge forward into the dark waters of the Jordan committing to a future that is more hope than firm fact and only vague in the perception of our weary eyes is no faith at all. It may be good business, but it isn’t faith. Calvin knew that and said it as well. So did John Knox.

Faith that is more fascination with the finery of festivals, phylacteries and long fringes, or with only the gorgeous music of the choir (or the polysyllabic words of the preacher), more that than commitment to giving expression to faith through our actions, is no faith at all. Luther and Calvin and Knox…and Mother Teresa…and St. Francis…and Martin Luther King…and Billy Graham all have know that…as have Bill Poe, Bill Forbes, Sam Lanham, Howard Reed, Guinn Blackwell-Eagleson, and John Craig. Faith that seeks only to preserve and protect rather than give away in the interest of the needs of others or in the interest of the stability and strength of God’s faith communities is no faith at all. Faith that always stands at the edge of the Jordan too timid to wet its feet expecting the worst to happen rather than anticipating the future and knowing that resurrection is assured in every moment and every experience, isn’t any faith at all.

We could go on and on, couldn’t we? The fact is, the Christian life is always based more on faith than on certainty. The fact is, our life in faith is always going to be based more on trust and hope than on absolute certainty that our officers who will use the resources we give them will always make the decisions that we think are the right decisions. Calvin knew and preached that, and so do I, and so do Alice and Kristy and every minister, elder and deacon who takes seriously the meaning of his or her ordination. The fact is, our life together is always going to be a matter of our standing at the edge of the scary River Jordan staring at the murky, dark water and deciding to take the next step anyway, trusting that God’s Spirit will always blow the dark waters to the side and into a heap and that, in fact, we will not drown, only our feet will be wet, and we will arrive safely in the end one day in the promised land, not yet but one day.

And that leads me to the particulars of this new St. Philip Presbyterian Church. It seems to me that at this precise moment in time, St. Philip Church, a community of God’s people perched in the middle of a huge city at an advantageous site also stands at the edge of a fearsome river, a river of foreboding water and other stuff plunging past it. Like ancient Israel, you’re early in your life as a newly merged and reorganized community of God’s people. Israel had been in its infancy, childhood, and adolescence during its first 40 years and at the time it finally emerged from the wilderness of beginning to be a people to become a people with strength, and identity, and purpose, and power, who stood at the edge of the Jordan. You’re in your infancy as a newly merged church. The scary river that rushes between you and your future is a river of lots of stuff and lots of questions, among them questions of age and energy, intelligence, imagination, and love questions. Do you have enough energy to ford the river and move into the future beyond? Do you have enough wisdom? Do you have enough imagination? Do you have enough love? Do your leaders?

The questions that fill and overflow the river that rushes past you and separates you from the future you see and want are the same that we Americans confront every time there’s an election. The river that flows before us is filled with ethical and responsibility questions. There’s a river full of those kinds of questions flowing past our doors out there.

The river that flows before us this year and in front of the doors of most American households is a river with a huge, hungry catfish in it among other threats that it contains, maybe it’s a killer shark, one named the global economic crises of the 21^st century.  How can we take a next step into a river that is as serious a threat to our respective abilities to provide adequately for our loved ones and ourselves as are the depressed numbers about the job market in this country? The river we’re called to take the next step into when Stewardship Sunday comes a week from today is deep and wide. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a promised land and a promised future on the other side, I guess, because it could be we’ll get more than our feet wet. Could be we’ll drown, because frankly few of us can swim well enough in a sea of financial instability.

Could be, I suppose. But faith is never a matter of the negative possibilities. Faith, rather, is always a matter of doing the best we can based on the best planning we can muster and the best decisions we can make, and then trusting in God’s promise never to be separated from God’s love, the promise that is shown to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. I want to report to you, with a little pride, I guess, but you’ll have to forgive me for that, that the officers of this church, our Session members and Trustees have done and will continue to do the very best with the resources you have given them in responding to God’s call for St. Philip church.

Also, they have planned well for the future. There are no frivolous phylacteries or long, ostentatious fringes in the plans the Session and Trustees have made, I think. But there is a determination to be a servant church, and there is a commitment to continue to be engaged in mission and in ministries of love toward one another and toward all humankind, which is what the world needs now perhaps more than anything else.

But we’ve come to the end of the talking. Now you must walk…and decide which direction to walk as you seek new leadership for this community and as you consider how you will support this church next year. It’s the same question all Americans will need to make next November, I think. Will you walk boldly into the river with all the threat it represents, or will you walk parallel up and down the bank always fretting about the promise that’s on the other side but never doing anything about it?

Next Sunday each of you as individuals or as a family will need to decide whether to keep on yakking about what is or what isn’t or what might be, or just to stop the yakking and take the next step into the big, old river across from which Almighty God’s future lies, the river that we are called to walk into while God’s spirit heaps the water to one side. You will be safe no matter what’s in the river. You will be safe, as the saints who preceded you also knew, I think, and as the Reformation faith that we celebrate today teaches. You will be safe. We all will be safe. We know it because it’s the gospel truth.  Amen.