Exodus 12:1-14
My friend Marilyn often asks me, usually on Friday or Saturday, what the scripture is that I’m preaching on this week. Our conversation typically goes on to how I am going to treat the passage in my sermon. We sometimes have discussions about the passage that typically help me to clarify what I’m trying to get across. Time and again, naturally, this all occurs before I have actually plied pen to paper or, truthfully, pressed fingers to keyboard.
This week was no different. We had that conversation late in the week. But actually there was a difference this time. She couldn’t quite understand why I would want to preach from the Exodus passage for this morning from the lectionary; especially as I summed it up to her as being about the last of the plagues to be sent on Egypt, the one that killed all the first-born among the Egyptians, leaving out the majority of the passage which described the instructions about eating a lamb and having unleavened bread.
For some reason, this passage grabbed me though. And I wasn’t sure why; I couldn’t quite articulate it. Yes, it is the first celebration and instructions for that great Jewish festival of Passover which is celebrated every year with seders to this very day. And yes, it is the very edge of liberation and exodus for the Hebrew people, who had been enslaved in Egypt for decades and decades. But there was something more in those verses that was vying for my attention.
And then I realized that that something was possibly a something from my past; my distant past. I ruminated and figured out that I was remembering the scene from the 1956 movie, “The Ten Commandments” that recounts this very event that we just heard. The whole thing has been stuck in my head for all these years, ever since I saw it, undoubtedly on our black and white tv when the silver screen made it to the little screen and ended up in the Brague living room in the 60s.
Now of course, Cecil B. DeMille really drove home a point in this scene. If you remember, it was dramatically set. (Well, duh! DeMille and ‘dramatically set’ go together like horse & carriage, love & marriage, etc.) I recall especially the eerie mood with which he set up the scene. The Hebrew people had all received their instructions to put the lamb’s blood on their doorposts so the Angel of Death would avoid their homes.
Unless my memory is faulty, which we all know is an ever-growing possibility, there were shots of empty, shadowed streets with a mist or fog roaming ominously about, implying that this Angel of Death was on its route to do its job. The Hebrews were all in their homes, anxious but, finally, safe because they had done what they were told to do.
But, and this is the big but, in the background you could hear cries and shrieks in an ever-growing chorus; cries and shrieks of shocked and grieving Egyptian parents. Eventually, we saw Pharaoh, who had to this point been hard-hearted and immovable in the pleas of Moses to set the people free. But now we saw Pharaoh in pain, bent over the lifeless body of his eldest son, a young boy.
The formidable Yul Brenner (who was the Pharaoh to end all Pharaohs) gave way at this last plague and allowed Charlton Heston and the NRA, I mean, the Hebrew people, to go; which they did, but that is another reading from Exodus and another several scenes in the movie.
But those cries and shrieks; they live with me to this day. The cries of those broken-hearted Egyptian parents still ring in my ears. And, as a young boy, I undoubtedly found myself in Pharaoh’s son’s place: blameless except for the place of birth. (Of course, I was neither the oldest nor even the oldest son in my family, but that doesn’t stop me from empathizing.) But the pain portrayed in that eerie scene lives on. Why should these Egyptians suffer the most difficult thing that there is to suffer, the death of their child? In those days, of course, first-born sons were held in even higher esteem than they are today. So the grief would have been that much greater, though not for reasons we might want to acknowledge today.
And the worst of it is that God caused this to happen. God didn’t let this happen. God didn’t watch this happen. God, we’re told, made this happen. And yes, the liberation of God’s chosen people was at stake and this very event was the initial incident that, in succession, brought the people to the land that was promised to them and their ancestors.
But I’m stuck on that disturbing fact that God God’s-very-self came and caused the deaths of all those people, many of them innocent and likewise blameless and caused the grief that would have to be born. And frankly, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t actually know where to go from here.
There are many lectionary preachers today who just ignored this passage, I’m sure. If it was even read, they just let it pass by, uncommented on. But for some reason, God help us, I can’t.
And God does indeed need to help us, because you’re along for the ride too, as it were. If you’re expecting me to tie this narrative up and explain it away in a satisfying and neat conclusion, you don’t know me as well as you thought. Because I can’t do that. And I can’t ignore it. And I can’t make it all better and soothe the pain of those guiltless Egyptian parents millennia ago. And another thing: don’t we believe that they are God’s people too? (Well, that’s actually a modern-day concept that really shouldn’t be applied in this situation, but I’m a modern-day preacher with all my concepts nicely intact and in place, right or wrong.)
So I struggle; right here, right now, right in front of you. What am I to do? Do I reject God because of this incident of which I disapprove? Do I try to convince myself that the God of the Israelites is different from the God of my faith? Do I focus on the liberation aspects of this tale, knowing that God’s ends finally did come about because of this, knowing how important liberation is to my theology? Do I wiggle out and put the blame on Pharaoh? He could have averted this tragedy which struck his people and his own family had he not been so hard-hearted and stubborn, you know.
Maybe, I’m not giving God enough credit though. Through the tears and cries and shrieks of those grieving parents, right up to and including the unsettled feelings and thoughts experienced by a young boy on the floor of the living room watching actors play their parts on the television and who grows up to be someone who, from time to time at the least, wrestles with this God; maybe, just maybe, through all of that pain and time, God was grieving and crying and wondering “why, oh why?” too. Perhaps God wanted to find a way around the stubbornness of humanity as brought to fruition in a ruler whose name is forgotten by most if not all of us and God truly desired to avoid all this. Perhaps God, having given God’s creation free will, recognized that things would go badly at times and wept at the very thought.
Because a small band of oppressed people received their freedom after years of toil remembered to tell their children and grandchildren about how God saved them; and because those children and grandchildren kept telling that story, over and over and over, year after year after year, generation to generation to generation; and because someone, somewhere along the span of history, had actually learned to write and decided that this story was vital enough to be painstakingly captured word by word; because of all of that and more, we today ponder the workings of God not only in history but also in our midst.
Because God still weeps, I think. God weeps at the hard-heartedness of our leaders and wonders what next to do. God, from an incomprehensible vantage point of eternity, looks at us and remembers ancient, oppressive Egyptians and wonders if anything has really changed. But I believe, if I may be so presumptuous as to try to fathom God’s mind, that God still remembers those cries and shrieks of grief-torn families. God remembers, I pray, and says “no more; I can’t do that again.”
10 August 2008
So, here we are again at another sermon. Seems like the week just flew by. And, once again, I am drawn into the narrative from the Hebrew Bible. There were so many ways I could have taken this passage. And if I could only get the music from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" out of my head now...
Pace e bene,
Gerry
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Don’t you hate it when a good story gets cut off mid-narrative? There you are, on the edge of your seat, ready to find out what happens next. The tension is building. The hero or heroine is in a fix. Will he or she get out of it? How will she do it? Does he have a chance?
And then, it’s over. Well, not exactly over, but it’s finished for the time being. Come back next week to find out if Pauline gets off the railroad tracks before the train comes along in the old movies. Stay tuned tomorrow to know if Wilma’s amnesia will prevent her from recognizing Rocco and pinning the murder of her half-sister, Giselda, on him or will he convince her to marry him, in a modern-day tv soap opera. Just when you’re salivating for the denouement, just as you’re ready for some release from the stress of not knowing what comes next, just when you think you’ve figured it out, then, wham, whoever is telling the story stops, leaving you cold. Of course, on tv and in the movies, it’s to get you coming back.
But you’d think whoever puts the lectionary together would be nicer, don’t you? They put these readings together for us to follow every week; a scripture from the Hebrew Bible, a Psalm, a reading from the letters and other books at the back of the Christian Testament and a Gospel reading. If you pay attention, you might notice that sometimes the readings flow from one into another; where this week’s reading leaves off, next week’s often picks up.
But one has to wonder what that group of scholars (or whoever puts together the lectionary readings) was thinking when they selected the verses from Genesis that we heard this morning. Was there some glee in their band knowing that the story we were to hear would be just like those early “Perils of Pauline?” Did they envision us sitting here and thinking, “what happens next?!?” Did they know that we would be on the edges of our seats wondering about poor Joseph?
Now, we do have to give them some leeway, those constructors of the lectionary. They do have a tremendous job to do. They have three years to the cycle of scripture readings. That’s it. And then it goes back and repeats itself. So that’s 156 Sundays they’ve got to work with. There’s no way they’re going to cover the entire Hebrew Bible in 156 readings. Not without enormously long readings on some Sundays. So stories do have to be broken up. Parts of stories and entire sections have to be, and are, left out. For instance, even in today’s reading, we skipped eight entire verses. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
But they did leave us hanging in this narrative at the end. What’s with that? We remember Jacob, perhaps, from last week’s reading. He was the wrestler we heard about. Well, now time has passed and Jacob, also known as Israel, is enjoying his family. And we meet Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons. But not just any old son; his favorite son. Out of the dozen sons Jacob fathered along the way (of course, the daughters don’t really count), Joseph stood out in his father’s eyes.
Now, I am not a father and am therefore wary about giving advice in regards to parenting, but… Well, let me ask you, those of you who are parents: even if you have a favorite offspring; even if you realize that fact that out of the two to how many ever children you have one of them has a most specialest place in your heart; do you tell your special one, that paragon of offspringdom, that he or she has attained that ‘most favored’ status in your life? And, not only that, do you tell this golden child’s siblings that they’re second rate? That they are all well and good as offspring go, but really, they just don’t stack up when measured against you-know-who? And furthermore, do you show your deeper love, affection and admiration for this special child by purchasing showy and expensive garments, which will proclaim to all the world the favored status of said progeny? Well, do you? I thought not.
Joseph was indeed Jacob’s favored one. Joseph’s brothers, who seemed to be a difficult lot to deal with in the first place, did not like this fact, it appears. Joseph, as we know not only from the Bible, but also from musical theater (so it must be true) was given by his Dad a beautiful coat; a multi-colored coat, if one pays attention to Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Tim Rice; an embroidered robe, with sleeves even. It was the fashion talk of all around those parts for a time there.
Now it wasn’t just the coat or the ‘favorite son’ status that were a problem. In the verses that we didn’t hear this morning is a recounting of how Joseph kept having dreams. He’d have these dreams and then describe them to the whole family. That doesn’t sound so bad in and of itself, but Joseph’s dreams didn’t help family harmony. Because he kept dreaming, in these fantastic metaphors involving wheat sheaves and astral bodies, that his brothers were going to bow down to him and pay him homage. And Joseph, apparently, did not hesitate to recount his dreamtime superiority. Right, just what a jealous sibling wants to hear from this coat-wearing, Dad-favored brother.
Is it any wonder then that this band of brothers decided that they had had quite enough of this berobed dreamer? Sibling or no, they began to plot. And just about that time, unwitting Dad sends Joseph off to the back forty to help these brothers with the sheep. Yep, Jacob unknowingly provides the initial tension for our story.
Of course, we heard what happened when Joseph got there. Fortunately, Reuben, the eldest brother, seemed to have some heart because he convinced his brothers not to kill Joseph on the spot. Instead, they tossed this 17-year old dreamer down a dry cistern while they figured out what to do and went back to eating dinner.
And then, watching some Ishmaelites, one of the tribes in that region, wander by with their camels in tow, someone in this fraternal company realized that there just might be money to be made in this situation. Ah, greed; always a good element to add to a story because every hearer can identify with it. Sure, we feel sorry for our hero, Joseph, and can imagine him down at the bottom of that well without food and drink, wondering what good the dreams he’s had are and what is going to get him out of this predicament, chilled to the bone because they’ve taken his coat from him and far from the protective sphere of his father. But the desire for some silver; for some shekels; some drachmas; for some rubles, rials or rupees; for some cold, hard cash; that desire, even yearning, is known, recognized and understood across time, culture and geography. Greed is something we all experience and is truly a universal language.
So for twenty shiny pieces of silver, the brothers get rid of the dreamer who has plagued them and who has stolen the affection from their father that was, after all, rightfully theirs. We can see them counting it over and over and dividing it up amongst themselves, as Joseph is led off to Egypt.
And that, right there, at that one suspense-filled moment in ancient near eastern history, is where they leave us. Oh great. You know it can’t be the end of the tale. You can tell that there is more to Joseph’s story, even if you haven’t seen Donnie Osmond capering about on stage, even if you haven’t read Genesis before. Because stories just don’t go like that. Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Even the most novice of writers and storytellers knows that. And we can tell that this story, the one we heard today, is clearly not at the end.
And we don’t like that, do we? We like endings and we prefer happy endings. We’re accustomed to happy endings, or at the very least endings with all the loose threads tied up. Not a story in which the guy we’re rooting for, even with all his faults, this dreamer is enroute to…to…to what? Egypt, that much we know. And right now, that’s all we know.
But how are we to make a moral out of half a story? All good stories have morals—some message that rewards us for at least sitting through the telling of the story. Right? But with half a story, in which the hero seems defeated and evil appears to have triumphed, what’s the point? I ask you, what indeed is the point?
Well, the point is that this is half the story. It’s not over yet. I’m not going to tell you how it does come out and what Joseph has to go through to get there. Some of you probably know already anyway. If you don’t, you’ll have to pick up a Bible and pick up where we left off this morning.
But here we are in the middle of Joseph’s story and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? And here we are in the middle of each of our stories and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? Because our stories aren’t done. Our stories aren’t over yet. Like Joseph, we’re wanderers and dreamers. We’ll end up, who knows where and who knows how. We’ll be tossed in pits and we’ll be betrayed by people we think we can trust and greed is going to enter in somehow and affect us.
But we don’t know the end of the story…not yet, not now. And we have to live with that. We have to deal with the uncertainties of life and just when we’re wandering around admiring our new apparel that shows how loved we are and dreaming of a bright future, we find ourselves in a pit or tied to a camel or learning that we’re worth a few pieces of silver.
You know, someone else in this Bible of ours ended up being traded in for a few pieces of silver. Circumstances were different from this narrative about Joseph and his brothers, but the two stories are not that far off from each other really. In both, someone trusted got paid to sell someone else out. Of course, I’m talking about Jesus and the money that Judas received for turning him over to the authorities. And that story, well, that story we do know the ending. We know that Jesus was killed but that the resurrection brought him back and that he lives and lives and lives. In fact, he lives in each of us, in our half-stories so far and in our futures yet to come.
And that is what makes sense out of our stories to date; incomplete though they may be. This Jesus, whom we find living out our stories for us, invites us into eternal life with him. It doesn’t matter where we are in our stories, we do know the ending. Unlike poor, young, frightened, powerless Joseph, tethered to some Ishmaelite’s camel headed east, we can see ahead and know some peace. Our God lives in and through us and will continue to do so, long after our stories have indeed ended.
Pace e bene,
Gerry
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Don’t you hate it when a good story gets cut off mid-narrative? There you are, on the edge of your seat, ready to find out what happens next. The tension is building. The hero or heroine is in a fix. Will he or she get out of it? How will she do it? Does he have a chance?
And then, it’s over. Well, not exactly over, but it’s finished for the time being. Come back next week to find out if Pauline gets off the railroad tracks before the train comes along in the old movies. Stay tuned tomorrow to know if Wilma’s amnesia will prevent her from recognizing Rocco and pinning the murder of her half-sister, Giselda, on him or will he convince her to marry him, in a modern-day tv soap opera. Just when you’re salivating for the denouement, just as you’re ready for some release from the stress of not knowing what comes next, just when you think you’ve figured it out, then, wham, whoever is telling the story stops, leaving you cold. Of course, on tv and in the movies, it’s to get you coming back.
But you’d think whoever puts the lectionary together would be nicer, don’t you? They put these readings together for us to follow every week; a scripture from the Hebrew Bible, a Psalm, a reading from the letters and other books at the back of the Christian Testament and a Gospel reading. If you pay attention, you might notice that sometimes the readings flow from one into another; where this week’s reading leaves off, next week’s often picks up.
But one has to wonder what that group of scholars (or whoever puts together the lectionary readings) was thinking when they selected the verses from Genesis that we heard this morning. Was there some glee in their band knowing that the story we were to hear would be just like those early “Perils of Pauline?” Did they envision us sitting here and thinking, “what happens next?!?” Did they know that we would be on the edges of our seats wondering about poor Joseph?
Now, we do have to give them some leeway, those constructors of the lectionary. They do have a tremendous job to do. They have three years to the cycle of scripture readings. That’s it. And then it goes back and repeats itself. So that’s 156 Sundays they’ve got to work with. There’s no way they’re going to cover the entire Hebrew Bible in 156 readings. Not without enormously long readings on some Sundays. So stories do have to be broken up. Parts of stories and entire sections have to be, and are, left out. For instance, even in today’s reading, we skipped eight entire verses. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
But they did leave us hanging in this narrative at the end. What’s with that? We remember Jacob, perhaps, from last week’s reading. He was the wrestler we heard about. Well, now time has passed and Jacob, also known as Israel, is enjoying his family. And we meet Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons. But not just any old son; his favorite son. Out of the dozen sons Jacob fathered along the way (of course, the daughters don’t really count), Joseph stood out in his father’s eyes.
Now, I am not a father and am therefore wary about giving advice in regards to parenting, but… Well, let me ask you, those of you who are parents: even if you have a favorite offspring; even if you realize that fact that out of the two to how many ever children you have one of them has a most specialest place in your heart; do you tell your special one, that paragon of offspringdom, that he or she has attained that ‘most favored’ status in your life? And, not only that, do you tell this golden child’s siblings that they’re second rate? That they are all well and good as offspring go, but really, they just don’t stack up when measured against you-know-who? And furthermore, do you show your deeper love, affection and admiration for this special child by purchasing showy and expensive garments, which will proclaim to all the world the favored status of said progeny? Well, do you? I thought not.
Joseph was indeed Jacob’s favored one. Joseph’s brothers, who seemed to be a difficult lot to deal with in the first place, did not like this fact, it appears. Joseph, as we know not only from the Bible, but also from musical theater (so it must be true) was given by his Dad a beautiful coat; a multi-colored coat, if one pays attention to Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Tim Rice; an embroidered robe, with sleeves even. It was the fashion talk of all around those parts for a time there.
Now it wasn’t just the coat or the ‘favorite son’ status that were a problem. In the verses that we didn’t hear this morning is a recounting of how Joseph kept having dreams. He’d have these dreams and then describe them to the whole family. That doesn’t sound so bad in and of itself, but Joseph’s dreams didn’t help family harmony. Because he kept dreaming, in these fantastic metaphors involving wheat sheaves and astral bodies, that his brothers were going to bow down to him and pay him homage. And Joseph, apparently, did not hesitate to recount his dreamtime superiority. Right, just what a jealous sibling wants to hear from this coat-wearing, Dad-favored brother.
Is it any wonder then that this band of brothers decided that they had had quite enough of this berobed dreamer? Sibling or no, they began to plot. And just about that time, unwitting Dad sends Joseph off to the back forty to help these brothers with the sheep. Yep, Jacob unknowingly provides the initial tension for our story.
Of course, we heard what happened when Joseph got there. Fortunately, Reuben, the eldest brother, seemed to have some heart because he convinced his brothers not to kill Joseph on the spot. Instead, they tossed this 17-year old dreamer down a dry cistern while they figured out what to do and went back to eating dinner.
And then, watching some Ishmaelites, one of the tribes in that region, wander by with their camels in tow, someone in this fraternal company realized that there just might be money to be made in this situation. Ah, greed; always a good element to add to a story because every hearer can identify with it. Sure, we feel sorry for our hero, Joseph, and can imagine him down at the bottom of that well without food and drink, wondering what good the dreams he’s had are and what is going to get him out of this predicament, chilled to the bone because they’ve taken his coat from him and far from the protective sphere of his father. But the desire for some silver; for some shekels; some drachmas; for some rubles, rials or rupees; for some cold, hard cash; that desire, even yearning, is known, recognized and understood across time, culture and geography. Greed is something we all experience and is truly a universal language.
So for twenty shiny pieces of silver, the brothers get rid of the dreamer who has plagued them and who has stolen the affection from their father that was, after all, rightfully theirs. We can see them counting it over and over and dividing it up amongst themselves, as Joseph is led off to Egypt.
And that, right there, at that one suspense-filled moment in ancient near eastern history, is where they leave us. Oh great. You know it can’t be the end of the tale. You can tell that there is more to Joseph’s story, even if you haven’t seen Donnie Osmond capering about on stage, even if you haven’t read Genesis before. Because stories just don’t go like that. Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Even the most novice of writers and storytellers knows that. And we can tell that this story, the one we heard today, is clearly not at the end.
And we don’t like that, do we? We like endings and we prefer happy endings. We’re accustomed to happy endings, or at the very least endings with all the loose threads tied up. Not a story in which the guy we’re rooting for, even with all his faults, this dreamer is enroute to…to…to what? Egypt, that much we know. And right now, that’s all we know.
But how are we to make a moral out of half a story? All good stories have morals—some message that rewards us for at least sitting through the telling of the story. Right? But with half a story, in which the hero seems defeated and evil appears to have triumphed, what’s the point? I ask you, what indeed is the point?
Well, the point is that this is half the story. It’s not over yet. I’m not going to tell you how it does come out and what Joseph has to go through to get there. Some of you probably know already anyway. If you don’t, you’ll have to pick up a Bible and pick up where we left off this morning.
But here we are in the middle of Joseph’s story and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? And here we are in the middle of each of our stories and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? Because our stories aren’t done. Our stories aren’t over yet. Like Joseph, we’re wanderers and dreamers. We’ll end up, who knows where and who knows how. We’ll be tossed in pits and we’ll be betrayed by people we think we can trust and greed is going to enter in somehow and affect us.
But we don’t know the end of the story…not yet, not now. And we have to live with that. We have to deal with the uncertainties of life and just when we’re wandering around admiring our new apparel that shows how loved we are and dreaming of a bright future, we find ourselves in a pit or tied to a camel or learning that we’re worth a few pieces of silver.
You know, someone else in this Bible of ours ended up being traded in for a few pieces of silver. Circumstances were different from this narrative about Joseph and his brothers, but the two stories are not that far off from each other really. In both, someone trusted got paid to sell someone else out. Of course, I’m talking about Jesus and the money that Judas received for turning him over to the authorities. And that story, well, that story we do know the ending. We know that Jesus was killed but that the resurrection brought him back and that he lives and lives and lives. In fact, he lives in each of us, in our half-stories so far and in our futures yet to come.
And that is what makes sense out of our stories to date; incomplete though they may be. This Jesus, whom we find living out our stories for us, invites us into eternal life with him. It doesn’t matter where we are in our stories, we do know the ending. Unlike poor, young, frightened, powerless Joseph, tethered to some Ishmaelite’s camel headed east, we can see ahead and know some peace. Our God lives in and through us and will continue to do so, long after our stories have indeed ended.
Sermon for 3 August 2008
It's been a while since I've posted a sermon because our church has had a discussion series over the past few months and I haven't had to write one since April. But I'm back in the saddle again.
The image to the left is a picture I took at the Tate Gallery in London a few years ago. It is Jacob and the Angel by Jacob Epstein and is based in the scripture reading.
Blessings,
Gerry
Genesis 32:22-31
I remember a conversation I had that goes back to high school, which is a very long time ago now, as you know. I was talking with my usual group of friends, four of us who hung out together a lot, and Barb Lynch, in response to who-knows-what, said “Whenever I’m angry, I yell at God. I know he’ll understand.”
Now my little quartet of friends was a somewhat religious group I do admit. All of us were active in church and we were at the edge of that era when faith was an unstated assumption. Of the four of us though, I was the only Protestant. The other three, Barb, Maureen and Bill, were all active in the local Roman Catholic parish, singing in the folk group that was going at the time and sundry other churchy pursuits. I must admit that this young Presbyterian (at the time) was a little jealous of all that these friends of mine were doing in their church. This was small-town Pennsylvania and I had few, if any, Presbyterian friends at my church.
I don’t recall a lot of religious or faith conversations among Barb, Maureen, Bill and me in high school. So this memorable statement on Barb’s part seems a little surprising, but maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly. Or perhaps, she hit on a theme that speaks a truth; a truth that goes back for centuries, even through the ages to the time of our Genesis reading this morning. Maybe it’s that truth that has haunted humanity from Jacob right up to Barb Lynch and beyond that stays with me.
Barb’s words shocked me that day. I never thought, as a good, half-German, grandson of a minister, Protestant boy that you should or could yell at God. Ever. That was a preposterous notion! God was to be revered. God was to be prayed to. God was worshipped. God was…well, God simply was. God was out there somewhere. We had a nice polite relationship, God and me. I would no more yell at God than I would yell at my grandmother, for crying out loud! It just wasn’t done.
But here’s this friend of mine, someone I like and respect and spend lots of time with, saying she does just that. Now there was the fact that to me at the time, her religious practices, as well as Bill’s and Maureen’s, were somewhat exotic. She was Catholic. My goodness. In a school system that had one, that I recall, Jewish family, to me Catholics were indeed exotic and mysterious.
Did that explain this “yelling at God” business—her exotic faith? Perhaps that was a part of it, but I doubt that it was the whole of it to me at the time. Because something about her statement stuck with me, obviously, across the decades since we all were sent out into the world by the Dallas School District. It remained in my accessible memory, dredged up every few years as my own faith grew and changed and matured; remembered when something inside me clicked just right.
You don’t yell at God, I thought at the time. And neither do you wrestle with God. You just accept God as God is. Right? Again, I would no more wrestle with God than I would with either of my grandmothers. But now….? Well, I still wouldn’t wrestle or yell at either of my grandmothers, neither of whom are with us any longer. But God, well, God is definitely a different story now.
I’d say that in the years that have passed from my high school days, our relationship, God’s and mine, has changed, helped, no doubt, by Barb’s insight. But I changed too and part of that process of changing opened me up to the possibilities of not treating God as a porcelain cup on a shelf or a likeable but distant acquaintance.
Because I did, as you know, eventually leave the safe confines of Northeastern Pennsylvania and ventured out into the world. And little by little, I started noticing things around me. Some of it, like we explored in our worship service last week, was beautiful. I knew where God was in all of that; God created beauty. God was in the flowers and the trees and the birds and all of that.
But I began noticing other things too. The Vietnam War, which took the life of one of my cousins, had ended while I was in high school and the questions about it, and war in general, still swirled around and in me. People you cared about could be addicted, I found out. As I grew, society changed. Suddenly, it seems, the fact that everyone had a home and a place to live was not a given anymore. Difference in race in our culture did make a difference, not just a difference, but a discrepancy and racism not only existed, it affected and infected everything. (Beside the one Jewish family that I remember, my school district, at that time, had one African-American family. I did indeed have much to learn and discover.)
So where, I began to ponder, is God in all of that? If God is all-knowing (if I can see these things, certainly God must be able to do so) and all-powerful (if God can create the universe, certainly God could do something about the state of affairs I found around me), why doesn’t God do something? “Why don’t you do something???!!!”
Indeed, Barb had unknowingly provided that chink in the faith armor, which I had built up, that allowed me finally to yell at and wrestle with God. There was no moment that I can recall in which a light bulb went on and I thought, “hey, I can yell;” “I can wrestle.” But it was more like a realization of a memory that that’s exactly what I had been doing.
Jacob, you know, was no paragon of virtue. He scammed his brother Esau and plotted with his mother against his father and brother. He was such a lowlife that he had to hightail it out of the homeland to his mother’s kin for fear of his life at one point. There he acquired two wives (granted, the account of that happening makes Jacob the victim) and had kids with the two maidservants mentioned in today’s reading. But he too evidently grew up some along the way. Because when we find him today, he’s on his way back home; back with his wives and concubines, with his kids and with all that he’s accumulated; back to face his brother who has really gotten a bad deal over the years from Jacob. He’s in, what one might call, transition and he’s nervous about this little family reunion that’s going to happen, with good reason. That’s where we find him in today’s account: on the road, wondering not if but how hard Esau is going to slug him on first sight.
The story is a little odd, I admit. It’s like there are details that we’re supposed to know already; some things that our culture doesn’t get that the original hearers of this tale would supply on their own. It might even be two separate tales smushed together. Who knows? But the lasting impression is indeed that Jacob, all alone, removed from the safety of family, wrestles. And the account leaves us feeling that it is God with whom Jacob wrestles.
Now, unless you’re a high school athlete or a professional actor, I mean, wrestler, you probably haven’t wrestled, physically wrestled, lately. But I bet that if each of us here thinks about it, we’ll all realize that we have done some wrestling in our time. We’ve struggled and twisted and turned and fought against some unknown opponent and then all of a sudden, it turns out to be God, we realize. We all know Jacob’s story, because, in many ways, we’ve lived it too. I bet each of us can think of a time that we have mightily wrestled with God. And you know what? That’s all right. We each can wrestle, in whatever way is necessary, wrestle with this God of ours. We can yell and question and challenge God. God can take it.
Now, I do admit, it can be scary, this wrestling-with-God thing. And it happens when we’re alone often. In fact, that may be what brings it on. But, like Jacob, we can face this elusive opponent and we can hold on; hold on for dear life and extract a blessing for all our struggles.
It’s somewhat unfortunate, but I’m no longer in touch with Barb Lynch. Like many friendships from the past eras of our lives, we move on and lose touch. Last I heard she was in North Carolina with a family. I wonder, though, from time to time, if indeed she is still yelling at God. I sure hope so.
6 April 2008
Dear Readers (if indeed you are out there),
With this sermon begins a series based on chapters from the book "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diana Butler Bass. Because we are discussing the topics along with a sermon, my sermons are much shorter. Hope you enjoy.
Gerry
Hospitality
Romans 12:9-21
When I was younger, which of course is any time so far but the present but I’m talking much younger at the moment, I remember seeing signs in the front windows of houses in one of the communities near where I lived in Pennsylvania. This was one of the “city” communities; not the more rural one like mine was. The signs said “SAFE HOUSE.” I initially didn’t know what this meant but it was explained to me that these were homes that kids as they walked to or from school could go to if they felt threatened in any way. (As a more rural community, most of the students in my school district were bussed, so there really wasn’t a need for such a program. Plus, we liked to think, we didn’t have problems such as this like those city areas had.)
The memory of these “SAFE HOUSE” signs came back to me as I thought about today’s chapter on hospitality from our book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us” by Diana Butler Bass, as we embark on this study of her 10 signposts for renewal. For the next several months, we’ll be taking a closer look at each signpost in some depth; thinking about them in terms of our life here at Chalice. How do we measure up in regards to them; how we could do better on them; when we can pat ourselves on the back; what they mean to us as we seek to transform ourselves into a vital and viable community of the people of God.
SAFE HOUSE does suggest some sort of hospitality. It says, “come here when you are threatened or abused or frightened, and we will take care of you.” Safety is definitely a part of hospitality, but clearly, it involves more.
Early Christians practiced hospitality; as did Jesus, when he knelt to wash the disciples feet. Hospitality implies care of the other; seeing to the other’s needs; providing not just safety, but comfort and warmth. As Butler Bass points out, it is more than a church program. It is an essential Christian spiritual discipline and an end unto itself. We’re missing the point of hospitality if we are doing it to gain new members. And it’s not really hospitality when we only provide it for those who are like us, those who fit our own mold. The hospitality that we provide should be modeled after God’s radically inclusive welcome, the same welcome that is extended to each of us.
I liked the verse from Romans that we just heard. In it, Paul is writing to the wildly diverse congregation in Rome and is really giving instructions about how to live; how to respond to this wild idea of God’s grace. And I like the phrase that was in the midst of it all in verse 13 about hospitality: “be inventive in hospitality.” The NRSV, the version I usually read up here, just says “extend hospitality to strangers,” which is all fine and good. But I like to think that the version I read from, The Message, really gets to the heart of what Paul was on about. “Be inventive in hospitality.” Don’t just practice everyday, ho-hum, run-of-the mill hospitality! Anyone can do that. Be inventive. Extend yourself when you extend hospitality. Reach out, yes, to the stranger to be sure, but reach out to that stranger who is so unlike you and so foreign to everything you know.
When you can extend hospitality…real inventive, from-the-heart hospitality…to that person
--to the goth teenager,
--to the mentally ill homeless person,
--to the bisexual, sado-masochistic Republican (or Democrat, depending on your point of view)
—then indeed you are following the call that God issues to us to practice hospitality.
With this sermon begins a series based on chapters from the book "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diana Butler Bass. Because we are discussing the topics along with a sermon, my sermons are much shorter. Hope you enjoy.
Gerry
Hospitality
Romans 12:9-21
When I was younger, which of course is any time so far but the present but I’m talking much younger at the moment, I remember seeing signs in the front windows of houses in one of the communities near where I lived in Pennsylvania. This was one of the “city” communities; not the more rural one like mine was. The signs said “SAFE HOUSE.” I initially didn’t know what this meant but it was explained to me that these were homes that kids as they walked to or from school could go to if they felt threatened in any way. (As a more rural community, most of the students in my school district were bussed, so there really wasn’t a need for such a program. Plus, we liked to think, we didn’t have problems such as this like those city areas had.)
The memory of these “SAFE HOUSE” signs came back to me as I thought about today’s chapter on hospitality from our book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us” by Diana Butler Bass, as we embark on this study of her 10 signposts for renewal. For the next several months, we’ll be taking a closer look at each signpost in some depth; thinking about them in terms of our life here at Chalice. How do we measure up in regards to them; how we could do better on them; when we can pat ourselves on the back; what they mean to us as we seek to transform ourselves into a vital and viable community of the people of God.
SAFE HOUSE does suggest some sort of hospitality. It says, “come here when you are threatened or abused or frightened, and we will take care of you.” Safety is definitely a part of hospitality, but clearly, it involves more.
Early Christians practiced hospitality; as did Jesus, when he knelt to wash the disciples feet. Hospitality implies care of the other; seeing to the other’s needs; providing not just safety, but comfort and warmth. As Butler Bass points out, it is more than a church program. It is an essential Christian spiritual discipline and an end unto itself. We’re missing the point of hospitality if we are doing it to gain new members. And it’s not really hospitality when we only provide it for those who are like us, those who fit our own mold. The hospitality that we provide should be modeled after God’s radically inclusive welcome, the same welcome that is extended to each of us.
I liked the verse from Romans that we just heard. In it, Paul is writing to the wildly diverse congregation in Rome and is really giving instructions about how to live; how to respond to this wild idea of God’s grace. And I like the phrase that was in the midst of it all in verse 13 about hospitality: “be inventive in hospitality.” The NRSV, the version I usually read up here, just says “extend hospitality to strangers,” which is all fine and good. But I like to think that the version I read from, The Message, really gets to the heart of what Paul was on about. “Be inventive in hospitality.” Don’t just practice everyday, ho-hum, run-of-the mill hospitality! Anyone can do that. Be inventive. Extend yourself when you extend hospitality. Reach out, yes, to the stranger to be sure, but reach out to that stranger who is so unlike you and so foreign to everything you know.
When you can extend hospitality…real inventive, from-the-heart hospitality…to that person
--to the goth teenager,
--to the mentally ill homeless person,
--to the bisexual, sado-masochistic Republican (or Democrat, depending on your point of view)
—then indeed you are following the call that God issues to us to practice hospitality.
Palm Sunday, 16 March 2008
Matthew 21:1-11
I got an email from my brother, Dave, this past week. Dave, you might remember, is ordained also and is the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, in Pittston, PA, not far from where we grew up. He wrote this piece as a Lenten devotion and, since we are still in Lent, I’d like to read it to you:
“How many of us would rather just skip over Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, give passing regard to Good Friday and move from Palm Sunday right to Easter? Who needs the morbid and depressing thoughts of "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"? Or the thought of picking up our crosses and journeying to Jerusalem makes us want to go in the other direction? We believe that our crosses are the sum of our worries like rising gas prices, who to vote for and if our pants are too tight. And the prosperity preachers have us believing that the path to new life isn’t one that must first go by the way of death.
“This is not only true for us as individuals, but it is also true for us as churches. Our crosses in the church tend to be about financial concerns, grumpy members, and "what hymn will the minister pick this week that we don’t know!" Or we think that to solve the church’s problems, to remove our crosses that we bear as a community all we have to do is follow this plan, or reach out to those young people, or maybe sing the old time hymns. And through it all, we never think or believe that for the miracle of new life to happen, something must die.
“We in the church hold onto old patterns of doing, ways of thinking, and relating with each other out of comfort, control and power. The Holy Spirit isn’t allowed to move, let alone breathe new breath into us. As I have seen old patterns and ways of thinking and relating die, God has raised to new life people and possibilities in the churches I’ve served and worshiped with over the years. Folks have stepped forward to lead worship or teach Sunday School or serve that wouldn’t have if something hadn’t died. As old patterns of comfort, control and power have died, God has provided new life. We’ve tended to forget that God is the giver of life, new life, and that the church is God’s.
“I sometimes make the mistake of referring to Second PC as ‘my church.’ Usually shortly there after a humbling experience occurs and I am reminded that this is God’s church, not mine or even the folks who worship here. God is the one who is the author and giver of life, new life. But to experience the new life that God offers, death must come first. May your time of Lent as a church be one of bearing our crosses, going to Calvary, and then know the resurrection life of Easter.”
This is Palm Sunday, the end of Lent, the day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem…on the back of a donkey. It’s the day that begins Holy Week for us; that week which commemorates Jesus’ last days on earth before his crucifixion and death. We see the approach of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The shadows of crosses darken our paths. We know what awaits in the coming days.
Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey: a simple beast of burden; not the great steed of a conquering warrior returning to the adulation of the crowds. His entry was, though, in its own way, triumphant. Followers welcomed him in a procession in which they laid their garments on the road before him and waved tree branches. It must have indeed been quite a spectacle.
How we’d like to stay here. How we’d like to remain with the cheering crowds and remember the Jesus who heals those who need healing; the Jesus who associates with outsiders and outcasts; the Jesus who feeds huge crowds; the Jesus we’ve come to know and love.
But as my wise brother points out, we can’t. We have to face the events of this coming week, remembering with joy that entry into Jerusalem. For it is the start of the new life of which Dave wrote; the triumph, not dimmed by the events of this week, shines brightly, guiding us on.
The deaths we face--of Jesus, of things the way we like them, of our own ways of doing things, of oh so many things--are all necessary. For in those deaths there is new life. In Jesus’ death, we know we find the resurrection on the other side, though that is for next week. Don’t jump ahead too fast. We must go through this death thing first. Ignoring it will only leave us empty and with a feeling of shallowness inside.
As much as we might want to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter, we can’t and we shouldn’t even try. For the struggle involved in coming to terms with the events of this coming week are important to our faith. And in like manner, the struggles involved in becoming a new church, in transforming ourselves, are just as important. Some things must change. Some old ways of being have to go.
We may see light ahead, but we’re not there yet. We’re still up on this triumphal energy, much as some of us have become energized about Chalice over the past several weeks. We have to stay with it though and see it through, maintaining this energy in spite of what may change as we grow and become more faithful.
The events to come may want to sap us of energy. No doubt Jesus felt that way as his last week unfolded. Betrayed, denied, flogged, humiliated. That’s more than just flagging energy. We certainly won’t face such things in our lives. But we shall have things to overcome and work through. And it may not be easy.
Through it all, we know that God remains with us. Through it all, as we move towards new life, we will have the Spirit accompanying us on our journeys. And that will be a very good thing to keep in mind.
I got an email from my brother, Dave, this past week. Dave, you might remember, is ordained also and is the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, in Pittston, PA, not far from where we grew up. He wrote this piece as a Lenten devotion and, since we are still in Lent, I’d like to read it to you:
“How many of us would rather just skip over Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, give passing regard to Good Friday and move from Palm Sunday right to Easter? Who needs the morbid and depressing thoughts of "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"? Or the thought of picking up our crosses and journeying to Jerusalem makes us want to go in the other direction? We believe that our crosses are the sum of our worries like rising gas prices, who to vote for and if our pants are too tight. And the prosperity preachers have us believing that the path to new life isn’t one that must first go by the way of death.
“This is not only true for us as individuals, but it is also true for us as churches. Our crosses in the church tend to be about financial concerns, grumpy members, and "what hymn will the minister pick this week that we don’t know!" Or we think that to solve the church’s problems, to remove our crosses that we bear as a community all we have to do is follow this plan, or reach out to those young people, or maybe sing the old time hymns. And through it all, we never think or believe that for the miracle of new life to happen, something must die.
“We in the church hold onto old patterns of doing, ways of thinking, and relating with each other out of comfort, control and power. The Holy Spirit isn’t allowed to move, let alone breathe new breath into us. As I have seen old patterns and ways of thinking and relating die, God has raised to new life people and possibilities in the churches I’ve served and worshiped with over the years. Folks have stepped forward to lead worship or teach Sunday School or serve that wouldn’t have if something hadn’t died. As old patterns of comfort, control and power have died, God has provided new life. We’ve tended to forget that God is the giver of life, new life, and that the church is God’s.
“I sometimes make the mistake of referring to Second PC as ‘my church.’ Usually shortly there after a humbling experience occurs and I am reminded that this is God’s church, not mine or even the folks who worship here. God is the one who is the author and giver of life, new life. But to experience the new life that God offers, death must come first. May your time of Lent as a church be one of bearing our crosses, going to Calvary, and then know the resurrection life of Easter.”
This is Palm Sunday, the end of Lent, the day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem…on the back of a donkey. It’s the day that begins Holy Week for us; that week which commemorates Jesus’ last days on earth before his crucifixion and death. We see the approach of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The shadows of crosses darken our paths. We know what awaits in the coming days.
Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey: a simple beast of burden; not the great steed of a conquering warrior returning to the adulation of the crowds. His entry was, though, in its own way, triumphant. Followers welcomed him in a procession in which they laid their garments on the road before him and waved tree branches. It must have indeed been quite a spectacle.
How we’d like to stay here. How we’d like to remain with the cheering crowds and remember the Jesus who heals those who need healing; the Jesus who associates with outsiders and outcasts; the Jesus who feeds huge crowds; the Jesus we’ve come to know and love.
But as my wise brother points out, we can’t. We have to face the events of this coming week, remembering with joy that entry into Jerusalem. For it is the start of the new life of which Dave wrote; the triumph, not dimmed by the events of this week, shines brightly, guiding us on.
The deaths we face--of Jesus, of things the way we like them, of our own ways of doing things, of oh so many things--are all necessary. For in those deaths there is new life. In Jesus’ death, we know we find the resurrection on the other side, though that is for next week. Don’t jump ahead too fast. We must go through this death thing first. Ignoring it will only leave us empty and with a feeling of shallowness inside.
As much as we might want to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter, we can’t and we shouldn’t even try. For the struggle involved in coming to terms with the events of this coming week are important to our faith. And in like manner, the struggles involved in becoming a new church, in transforming ourselves, are just as important. Some things must change. Some old ways of being have to go.
We may see light ahead, but we’re not there yet. We’re still up on this triumphal energy, much as some of us have become energized about Chalice over the past several weeks. We have to stay with it though and see it through, maintaining this energy in spite of what may change as we grow and become more faithful.
The events to come may want to sap us of energy. No doubt Jesus felt that way as his last week unfolded. Betrayed, denied, flogged, humiliated. That’s more than just flagging energy. We certainly won’t face such things in our lives. But we shall have things to overcome and work through. And it may not be easy.
Through it all, we know that God remains with us. Through it all, as we move towards new life, we will have the Spirit accompanying us on our journeys. And that will be a very good thing to keep in mind.
24 February 2008
Exodus 17:1-7
We’ve been to the desert before during this Lent. It was just two weeks ago, in fact at the start of Lent, that we encountered Jesus in the desert during his 40 days there. Why would I choose to bring you back to it again through our Hebrew Bible reading this morning? Haven’t we had enough of this dry, arid land? Can’t we move on to oases and life?
That’s a tempting proposition. Let’s just ignore the desert and the wilderness experience. Let’s spend our time talking about life and refreshment. But we too often ignore the desert and the desert experiences we may encounter in our lives. And so, once again, we trek back to the desert. This time though with Moses and the Hebrew people.
We all know the story of the exodus. How the Hebrew people had become slaves in Egypt and Moses was called by God to lead them out. How Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff, allowing the Hebrew people to escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army followed close at their heals. How they came to be a wandering, nomadic people as they waited to find themselves in the land promised to them by God.
You know, we’ve all heard how dense Jesus’ disciples can be at times. I’ve even preached on it myself on occasion. Well, I think that they’re not the only group in the Bible who are portrayed as not getting it. As a whole, the wandering Hebrew people are often just as dense and just as often don’t get it.
Today’s reading from Exodus is the third time that the Hebrew people complain to Moses and to God about their conditions. They complain first, in chapter 15, about water. At that point, Moses turns bitter water into sweet drinkable water. Then, in chapter 16, God provides quail and manna for the hungry hoard. Finally, here in chapter 17, they’re once again thirsty.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m really on their side. I understand that water is essential to life as much as they did. I’ve been in the physical desert myself. I lived for a time on the driest continent on the earth, Australia. In the desert there, there are rivers that run less than once a year; sometimes only a few times in a century. The Aboriginal people who inhabited that parched, dry land passed from generation to generation songs that told where water could be found, so that their people could continue to survive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving land, that, though beautiful, can kill easily, all for the lack of water. Without water, life ends. It’s that simple.
We all hate to be thirsty. It’s a simple fact. Our bodies are set up to remind us that it needs a drink. In the outback of Australia, where conditions are drier than anywhere else on earth, the need for water is essential. And so it was for the Hebrew people. Knowing that death would come quickly without it, they cried out for water.
But they did more than cry out. They quarreled. They fought against Moses. They quarreled against God. They were a quarreling, bickering lot. Even with the past two times that Moses and God had taken care of them, even with the miraculous exit from Egypt behind them, even though the chains of slavery had been removed from them, they bickered and quarreled. Because they were thirsty and didn’t want their children and themselves to die.
And once again, through Moses, God provided. There in front of the elders of Israel, Moses did as he was told. We went to the rock at Horeb and struck it with his staff; the very same staff with which he struck the Red Sea previously. And there, in front of the gathered elders, water came forth. In that dry, arid, dusty place, water poured forth. And once again the Hebrew people were cared for; once again they drank deeply and revived their strength.
So why is it that we are in the desert again this week? Why do we return here for a word that will spur us to go on? Why do we have to be cognizant of our thirsting, aching souls in the midst of spiritual aridness?
I would bet that most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a spiritual desert in our lives. Times when prayer seemed like a joke and God was distant, if that close. There may be some who never experience that. For them, their faith is a lovely picnic beside an ever-flowing stream. There may be people like that, for sure.
They may make you feel a little jealous perhaps; a little less than faithful, in your desert experience. They, who don’t know the parched feeling of needing a drink, may wonder what you’re talking with your desert experience.
Those of us who do have these desert experiences in our soul, know them too well. They may go on for days, or weeks, or months, or even years. We feel disconnected and empty. And we wonder how we can go on.
The same may be true for our church at the moment. We are thirsty and needing a drink of water, perhaps. We are in a desert experience. We’ve left Egypt, sometimes known as First Christian Church of San Mateo, and we find ourselves wandering toward something promised. But along the way we become thirsty. We yearn for some refreshment. We need water. Perhaps for us, that water takes the form of someone who will take on an empty leadership position. Perhaps, it’s someone who brings special skills that we need. Perhaps, the drink of refreshing water is not a someone but a something; an idea or a plan or a thought.
But we are yearning, gasping, aching for that drink. We wonder if God has really brought us out of our particular land of oppression, simply to die. We find it hard to believe that, but the aridness which surrounds us tells us otherwise. And so we feel like quarreling; quarreling with God. Wondering what sort of God it is that would do this to us. Even challenging God; defying God.
We want results and we want them, oh so badly, now, if not sooner. We want our thirst quenched and our souls revived.
You know, if I were in the desert, and I were searching for water, I would probably bypass tons of rocks. I know that water doesn’t come out of a rock. It wouldn’t make sense. So I would just pass them by; rock after rock. I wouldn’t even try striking them with a stick. I would sensibly be searching for a water hole, or an oasis, or a well, or something. Something that looks like water.
But that’s not God’s way. And we have to remember that. We have to keep in mind that the water that’s going to refresh us may come from the most unexpected of places; the most unlikely of sources. We can’t think about this logically or normally, perhaps. We have to try to find the way that God thinks about this and act like that’s going to happen.
We’ve been to the desert before during this Lent. It was just two weeks ago, in fact at the start of Lent, that we encountered Jesus in the desert during his 40 days there. Why would I choose to bring you back to it again through our Hebrew Bible reading this morning? Haven’t we had enough of this dry, arid land? Can’t we move on to oases and life?
That’s a tempting proposition. Let’s just ignore the desert and the wilderness experience. Let’s spend our time talking about life and refreshment. But we too often ignore the desert and the desert experiences we may encounter in our lives. And so, once again, we trek back to the desert. This time though with Moses and the Hebrew people.
We all know the story of the exodus. How the Hebrew people had become slaves in Egypt and Moses was called by God to lead them out. How Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff, allowing the Hebrew people to escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army followed close at their heals. How they came to be a wandering, nomadic people as they waited to find themselves in the land promised to them by God.
You know, we’ve all heard how dense Jesus’ disciples can be at times. I’ve even preached on it myself on occasion. Well, I think that they’re not the only group in the Bible who are portrayed as not getting it. As a whole, the wandering Hebrew people are often just as dense and just as often don’t get it.
Today’s reading from Exodus is the third time that the Hebrew people complain to Moses and to God about their conditions. They complain first, in chapter 15, about water. At that point, Moses turns bitter water into sweet drinkable water. Then, in chapter 16, God provides quail and manna for the hungry hoard. Finally, here in chapter 17, they’re once again thirsty.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m really on their side. I understand that water is essential to life as much as they did. I’ve been in the physical desert myself. I lived for a time on the driest continent on the earth, Australia. In the desert there, there are rivers that run less than once a year; sometimes only a few times in a century. The Aboriginal people who inhabited that parched, dry land passed from generation to generation songs that told where water could be found, so that their people could continue to survive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving land, that, though beautiful, can kill easily, all for the lack of water. Without water, life ends. It’s that simple.
We all hate to be thirsty. It’s a simple fact. Our bodies are set up to remind us that it needs a drink. In the outback of Australia, where conditions are drier than anywhere else on earth, the need for water is essential. And so it was for the Hebrew people. Knowing that death would come quickly without it, they cried out for water.
But they did more than cry out. They quarreled. They fought against Moses. They quarreled against God. They were a quarreling, bickering lot. Even with the past two times that Moses and God had taken care of them, even with the miraculous exit from Egypt behind them, even though the chains of slavery had been removed from them, they bickered and quarreled. Because they were thirsty and didn’t want their children and themselves to die.
And once again, through Moses, God provided. There in front of the elders of Israel, Moses did as he was told. We went to the rock at Horeb and struck it with his staff; the very same staff with which he struck the Red Sea previously. And there, in front of the gathered elders, water came forth. In that dry, arid, dusty place, water poured forth. And once again the Hebrew people were cared for; once again they drank deeply and revived their strength.
So why is it that we are in the desert again this week? Why do we return here for a word that will spur us to go on? Why do we have to be cognizant of our thirsting, aching souls in the midst of spiritual aridness?
I would bet that most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a spiritual desert in our lives. Times when prayer seemed like a joke and God was distant, if that close. There may be some who never experience that. For them, their faith is a lovely picnic beside an ever-flowing stream. There may be people like that, for sure.
They may make you feel a little jealous perhaps; a little less than faithful, in your desert experience. They, who don’t know the parched feeling of needing a drink, may wonder what you’re talking with your desert experience.
Those of us who do have these desert experiences in our soul, know them too well. They may go on for days, or weeks, or months, or even years. We feel disconnected and empty. And we wonder how we can go on.
The same may be true for our church at the moment. We are thirsty and needing a drink of water, perhaps. We are in a desert experience. We’ve left Egypt, sometimes known as First Christian Church of San Mateo, and we find ourselves wandering toward something promised. But along the way we become thirsty. We yearn for some refreshment. We need water. Perhaps for us, that water takes the form of someone who will take on an empty leadership position. Perhaps, it’s someone who brings special skills that we need. Perhaps, the drink of refreshing water is not a someone but a something; an idea or a plan or a thought.
But we are yearning, gasping, aching for that drink. We wonder if God has really brought us out of our particular land of oppression, simply to die. We find it hard to believe that, but the aridness which surrounds us tells us otherwise. And so we feel like quarreling; quarreling with God. Wondering what sort of God it is that would do this to us. Even challenging God; defying God.
We want results and we want them, oh so badly, now, if not sooner. We want our thirst quenched and our souls revived.
You know, if I were in the desert, and I were searching for water, I would probably bypass tons of rocks. I know that water doesn’t come out of a rock. It wouldn’t make sense. So I would just pass them by; rock after rock. I wouldn’t even try striking them with a stick. I would sensibly be searching for a water hole, or an oasis, or a well, or something. Something that looks like water.
But that’s not God’s way. And we have to remember that. We have to keep in mind that the water that’s going to refresh us may come from the most unexpected of places; the most unlikely of sources. We can’t think about this logically or normally, perhaps. We have to try to find the way that God thinks about this and act like that’s going to happen.
10 February 2008
Matthew 4:1-11
I‘m going to begin this sermon by quoting two somewhat longish paragraphs from a website I visit frequently when preparing sermons. They’re from the United Church of Christ website one page of which gives some starting points or ideas for sermons based on the lectionary. I felt they were so appropriate for today that I would just quote them directly.
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was hard to pick them out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
The church dug deep into its faith story, recalling the time (always with the number forty involved) that Israel, Elijah, and Jesus each spent in the desert, wandering and suffering, longing and learning: hungry. "So the church announced a season of Lent…an invitation to a springtime of the soul," Taylor writes, "Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone…to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves." Then as now, folks had their "pacifiers," as Taylor calls them, all the things and ways that we keep ourselves from feeling what it means to be human, even if that means being in pain or being afraid. Our pacifiers can convince us that we don't really need God. In fact, Taylor believes that just about all of us struggle with an addiction, "anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying" (Home by Another Way). (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-10-2008-first.html)
So here we are, friends. At the beginning of another Lent; the start of another wilderness experience in the spiritual seasons of our lives. Of course Lent began last Wednesday and some of us began our observances at the Ash Wednesday service at which we were marked with ashes and reminded that we have come from dust and to dust we shall return. We face our very mortality this time of year. We face the desert. We face the dry empty feeling inside us that, as Barbara Brown Taylor observed, only God can fill.
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, we’re told in today’s gospel. Sometimes we hear that he was driven there by the Spirit. What comes directly before this event is his baptism in the Jordan. Combined, it’s a narrative of contrasts: the wetness of the river with the arid dryness of the wilderness to which he was led; the crowds who witnessed his baptism versus the solitude in which he found himself there; the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son against the deafening quiet of the desert.
For forty days, we’re told, he was there in the wilderness; alone and fasting. Certainly by the end of that time he would be famished, as our translation puts it; famished not only for food but for companionship; for relief from the unending landscape of the barren land in which he secluded himself. And that’s, of course, when temptation enters in. That’s when we find Satan coming to him. The devil seeks out Jesus and tempts him three times. Jesus resists these pulls, even in the midst of his emptiness and hunger.
So here we are at the start of our 40 days of Lent this year, 2008. What wilderness experience do we expect to be driven into? It’s easy to ignore it, what with the busy lives we each lead: I’ll get to the wilderness later, you might think. I’ll face the deprivation of being mortal later.
But we lose out if we take that attitude. We miss something valuable. Because, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, there is an emptiness within each of us that is there just for God. We seek to fill it, and thus avoid the wilderness, with worldly things: money, tv, the internet…things. But it is God-shaped and only God will fill it. It’s a God-shaped emptiness that each of us carries around. And Lent is a time to discover that emptiness; to go to that emptiness, that wilderness which is within each of us sitting here.
Avoiding the wilderness won’t hurt you. You’ll be comfortable, after all. You won’t know the emptiness. But you’ll be foiled if you try to fill it with anything but God. The world will seduce you into thinking that it can fill it. Our culture is good at finding things that look like they will fill that emptiness. But it’s all chimera; fantasies that may work for a while and then will disappear and eventually leave us with that empty feeling again.
We as a congregation observe Lent together, which is good. For Chalice is entering its own period of Lent. Our congregation finds itself in the wilderness experience right now. We find ourselves, much like our spiritual ancestors the Hebrew people, in the desert, wandering, unsure of home, not certain to where we’re headed.
What is the emptiness within us corporately that we are trying to fill? With what are we being enticed? How are we being seduced? Who or what is extending a long slender arm and slowly crooking its finger at us, luring us to try to fill our empty place?
The desert is an interesting place. Its beauty is often hard to see; the dangers are hidden. But we are called there, both individually and corporately. We are called there to find those empty places; to seek out the emptiness within us. We are called there to be away from the inducements of our world, of our culture. We seek out God there in the deprivations we find all around us.
Empty yourself. Here at the start of Lent, empty yourself and find the place for God at the very center of your being. Turn away from the inducements that are lures. It’s not easy; no one ever said it was. Live your life, at least over the next six weeks, as though you were trying to fill that God-shaped emptiness within you with only God.
May God bless us all on this Lenten journey.
I‘m going to begin this sermon by quoting two somewhat longish paragraphs from a website I visit frequently when preparing sermons. They’re from the United Church of Christ website one page of which gives some starting points or ideas for sermons based on the lectionary. I felt they were so appropriate for today that I would just quote them directly.
In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was hard to pick them out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).
The church dug deep into its faith story, recalling the time (always with the number forty involved) that Israel, Elijah, and Jesus each spent in the desert, wandering and suffering, longing and learning: hungry. "So the church announced a season of Lent…an invitation to a springtime of the soul," Taylor writes, "Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone…to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves." Then as now, folks had their "pacifiers," as Taylor calls them, all the things and ways that we keep ourselves from feeling what it means to be human, even if that means being in pain or being afraid. Our pacifiers can convince us that we don't really need God. In fact, Taylor believes that just about all of us struggle with an addiction, "anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying" (Home by Another Way). (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-10-2008-first.html)
So here we are, friends. At the beginning of another Lent; the start of another wilderness experience in the spiritual seasons of our lives. Of course Lent began last Wednesday and some of us began our observances at the Ash Wednesday service at which we were marked with ashes and reminded that we have come from dust and to dust we shall return. We face our very mortality this time of year. We face the desert. We face the dry empty feeling inside us that, as Barbara Brown Taylor observed, only God can fill.
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, we’re told in today’s gospel. Sometimes we hear that he was driven there by the Spirit. What comes directly before this event is his baptism in the Jordan. Combined, it’s a narrative of contrasts: the wetness of the river with the arid dryness of the wilderness to which he was led; the crowds who witnessed his baptism versus the solitude in which he found himself there; the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son against the deafening quiet of the desert.
For forty days, we’re told, he was there in the wilderness; alone and fasting. Certainly by the end of that time he would be famished, as our translation puts it; famished not only for food but for companionship; for relief from the unending landscape of the barren land in which he secluded himself. And that’s, of course, when temptation enters in. That’s when we find Satan coming to him. The devil seeks out Jesus and tempts him three times. Jesus resists these pulls, even in the midst of his emptiness and hunger.
So here we are at the start of our 40 days of Lent this year, 2008. What wilderness experience do we expect to be driven into? It’s easy to ignore it, what with the busy lives we each lead: I’ll get to the wilderness later, you might think. I’ll face the deprivation of being mortal later.
But we lose out if we take that attitude. We miss something valuable. Because, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, there is an emptiness within each of us that is there just for God. We seek to fill it, and thus avoid the wilderness, with worldly things: money, tv, the internet…things. But it is God-shaped and only God will fill it. It’s a God-shaped emptiness that each of us carries around. And Lent is a time to discover that emptiness; to go to that emptiness, that wilderness which is within each of us sitting here.
Avoiding the wilderness won’t hurt you. You’ll be comfortable, after all. You won’t know the emptiness. But you’ll be foiled if you try to fill it with anything but God. The world will seduce you into thinking that it can fill it. Our culture is good at finding things that look like they will fill that emptiness. But it’s all chimera; fantasies that may work for a while and then will disappear and eventually leave us with that empty feeling again.
We as a congregation observe Lent together, which is good. For Chalice is entering its own period of Lent. Our congregation finds itself in the wilderness experience right now. We find ourselves, much like our spiritual ancestors the Hebrew people, in the desert, wandering, unsure of home, not certain to where we’re headed.
What is the emptiness within us corporately that we are trying to fill? With what are we being enticed? How are we being seduced? Who or what is extending a long slender arm and slowly crooking its finger at us, luring us to try to fill our empty place?
The desert is an interesting place. Its beauty is often hard to see; the dangers are hidden. But we are called there, both individually and corporately. We are called there to find those empty places; to seek out the emptiness within us. We are called there to be away from the inducements of our world, of our culture. We seek out God there in the deprivations we find all around us.
Empty yourself. Here at the start of Lent, empty yourself and find the place for God at the very center of your being. Turn away from the inducements that are lures. It’s not easy; no one ever said it was. Live your life, at least over the next six weeks, as though you were trying to fill that God-shaped emptiness within you with only God.
May God bless us all on this Lenten journey.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
