Nashon’s Quiet Courage – September 8, 2024. G. Percesepe. Numbers 7:12-17
In his book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ron Heifetz claims that good leaders induce learning by asking hard questions and by recasting people’s expectations.
As a physician, Heifetz understood the difference between a technical solution and a condition. If you break a bone, the technical solution is to reset the bone and immobilize it with a cast. But there are medical issues without solutions such as chronic illness or terminal disease. These are not problems to be fixed, they are conditions. A condition is something one needs to learn to live with. When you’ve been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes there is no technical fix, but one can adapt and learn to live with the condition. It’s called adaptive change, and it’s been practiced for millions of years in the natural world, as various life forms, including humans, adapt to a changing environment. The people of Mākena in this land section known as Honua-ula demonstrated a genius for adapting to living in this microclimate where water was scarce, wind overwhelming, and the sun brutal. They learned to use the upper undulating slopes for living space, building agricultural terraces with mulching spaces to capture the water; they knew the moon’s phases: what moon to lay net to fish, what moon to harvest. They understood their indigenous science, and even when westerners came, they continued to adapt, growing corn, sugar cane, even Irish potatoes by 1848; they mastered the work of the cowboy and excelled at raising and driving cattle to the Landing. They were a resilient and adaptive people and their kupuna have much to teach us about adaptive change in this wilderness season of the church if we have ears to hear.
Today’s leaders need to ask, “How will we now be with God? Who are we, now that we no longer are flush with money from two worship services packed with western visitors? Our kupuna founded a church for farmers, fishermen, and cattlemen; they practiced ‘aina aloha, they understood malama and kuliana of our natural resources. There was no separation between ‘aina and kanaka (land, place, or people). They lived here in Mākena and walked to church. But who now are our neighbors? Do we know them? Do they know us? What are the consequences of not knowing, not engaging, losing connection with Hawaiians of lineal descent? How do we relate to new neighbors who may know nothing of the history of this sacred ‘aina or of our church. How will they hear? Who will take the lead in extending Christian hospitality? Who will curate and interpret for them the customs and traditions that have shaped relationships in Mākena for centuries before their arrival?
Leadership implies that a people are on a journey to somewhere. The Israelites were on a journey to the Promised Land. Where is God asking Keawala’i to go?
Nashon, son of Amminidab, was a prince of the tribe of Judah. He was with Moses as the Israelites fled slavery in Egypt and wandered in the wilderness before arriving at the banks of the Red Sea. Hebrew Midrash provides detail that isn’t in the biblical text. Midrash is the stories and reflections of the rabbinic scholars. Where the text of the Torah was sparse, the rabbis filled in with tantalizing stories. Like the story of Nashon.
When the Israelites reached the Red Sea the waters lay before them unparted. There was much anxiety. The Red Sea in front of them, the Egyptian Army behind them, bearing down on them with chariots. They were trapped. To lead the people into the water would be to drown, but to wait without action would be to give themselves to the capture and punishment of the Egyptians. What do you do, church, when you don’t know what to do?
Someone needed to be the first to go into the water to test God’s promise of deliverance. The Midrash tells us that the leaders of the tribes of Israel all gathered at the water’s edge, sat down, and argued with one another about who would go into the water first. I have often joked that I have been to that Church Council meeting many times myself! Action was needed, but the leaders did what they knew how to do and so they had a committee meeting instead. No decision was forthcoming, and anxiety mounted. Finally, Nashon, son of Amminidab, remembered God’s promise that brought them there. He stood up and began to walk into the water.
He walked into the water up to his ankles and it did not part. He walked into the water up to his waist and the waters did not part. Up to his shoulders, up to his chin, and the waters did not part. As he took the step that would have put his nose under water, the waters parted. The quiet courage of Nashon. It is fitting that his name in Hebrew means “stormy sea waves.”
In February in my first sermon as your Kahu I said that good leaders get off the dance floor from time to time and climb up to the balcony to reflect on the purpose and the practices of the institutions they lead. We have arrived at that moment. We are making progress, Keawala’i, but we are still in the wilderness. Some will lose heart and want to go back to the days of Egypt, forgetting that the way backwards is certain death. Others will want to debate technical solutions to a chronic situation that cannot be fixed. We need to stop asking, “What do I need to get out of church,” or “How can the church make me feel better,” or grumbling “but we’ve never done it that way” and instead prayerfully ask: “Where is God asking us to go and who is our neighbor?” That’s the right question.
Somewhere, God is stirring the heart of someone in this congregation with the memory of how God has led us in the past, and some Nashon in this church is ready to say, “Kahu, will you teach us more about adaptive change in churches, are there examples of churches here in Hawai’i who have made adaptive changes and are flourishing?” And the answer to those questions is: YES.
But someone here at Keawala’i must be willing to be the Nashon of this church, ready to do whatever it takes to learn more about adaptive change, someone to step into the deep waters and see if anyone follows. Is it you? Amene.