A Exodus 10 SJUCC 2020
Exodus 32:1-14
November 15, 2020
Forever
gone, a huge loss by my way of thinking, is the Native American Wintu language. The Wintu language defined a people who were
wholly connected with their environment.
There was not right nor left when speaking about their hand or
foot. They used cardinal
directions. When the Wintu would be
walking alongside the river, the hills would be west, the river to the east,
and a mosquito bite on their west arm.
When they would return back alongside the same path, the hills to the
east, the river to the west, and now the mosquito bite on their east arm. It was a way of tracking their relationship
to the wider world—the trail, the river, the hills, the horizon, the
stars. God’s good earth is stable. It is we who are contingent. We are always moving through a part of a
wider ecosystem—a wider part of God’s economy on this good earth.[1]
In Rebecca
Solnit’s book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, she describes the
“getting lost” as the unknown appearing before you. It is not that the unknown itself was
lost. Indeed but that we are risking,
learning, and growing as we experience that which is undiscovered to us, that
which is new. And so it is incumbent on
all of us to “get lost.” For, glory
hallelujah, the universe is larger than our knowledge of it.
Although it
was the great explorer, Daniel Boone, who said, “I never was lost in the woods
in my whole life, though once I was confused for three days.”[2] Boone was saying that he knew how to even map
the unfamiliar and the new, the terra incognita, to get back to sources
of life and direction. Boone knew that
being in new, unfamiliar territory was not necessarily a scary thing or without
resource.
There is
the Hawaiian biologist who intentionally gets lost in the rain forest as a way
of discovering new species.[3]
I asked
the question from Meno, the philosopher, at the start of this sermon series, “How
will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to
you?” We find delight and joy being on
that aporetic journey, full of perplexities, unknowns, and questions that is
walking in the wilderness, to know the newness of landscape, God, and
ourselves.
By walking
in the wilderness and hiking up the mountain, we experience a God who is more
wild than we could have imagined. The
wilderness is the soul’s journey of leaving behind the baggage that does not
serve us, dropping what is not Divine, and of learning of the new sustenance,
the wandering that makes us aware of the need for ascent. The mountain is the soul’s journey of ascent
to values that serve ourselves, our community, and the world, of knowing that
we are more hardy and stronger than we ever could have contemplated without the
journey. This is the journey we have
been on. We learn of a love that is more
fierce than we could have imagined. We
find that both God and we, as a community of faith, are more free than we could
have ever imagined.
Our Jewish
sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, just celebrated this past September
the start of the Jewish New Year and the High Holy Days beginning with Rosh
Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur. As
a backdrop to all Jewish story and theology, is the seminal story we are
studying—the Exodus, the birth story of the Jewish people. With Rosh Hashanah the Jewish people declare,
“Today we celebrate the birthday, the creation of the world.” In the Exodus story, the Jewish people celebrate
coming into being, their birth as a people, when they were delivered and saved
from bondage, slavery, and oppression in Egypt to becoming the free people that
God intended. In celebrating the
birthday of the world, each Jew partners and participates with God every single
day in the creation of the world. That
partnership and participation begins when a Jewish person chooses how they are
to live in the world.[4]
The
creation, the birth of the world, happens in a grand collaboration with God as
the Jewish people choose not to live as enslaved but free people. In contrast to how our tradition has seen sin
and forgiveness, as too often grace for a fallen morality, the original sin
coming out of the Exodus story is to live like Egypt or slaves in Egypt and not
as those unique and peculiar co-collaborators with God in the creation of the
world. The Jewish people are sinful when
they lose sight of what delivers and saves them—so that they might live as
free.
What does
deliver and save us? After having walked in the wilderness for some time, The
Children of Israel have been waiting at the base of the mountain for forty
days. Forty of anything is the way the Bible says a good, long time. Moses has
been gone a good, long time. And not unlike the loss of a leader from many
movements, once Moses begins to fade from memory the movement's vision begins
to fade as well. The values for this new movement have been delivered in the
form of the Ten Commandments, but God has not been delivered to
them. This God remains full of awe, wonder, mystery, and freedom. God commands the Children of Israel not to
make any graven image or idol, anything which might suggest you can control the
Living God and make the Living God do your bidding.
But the
absence of Moses, leads to the loss of the vision. The people grow impatient
and want God to act on their timetable and at their will.
They then turn away from the leader to the clergy and ask Aaron to give them a
god not so full of mystery, awe, wonder, and freedom. The clergyperson, as
always, more worried about keeping the congregation happy and being liked,
rather than leading the congregation down the difficult path God is calling
them, acquiesces. Aaron tells them to bring all of their gold, all of their
wealth, so that it can be melted down and made into a golden calf. Aaron is
bullish on the future of Israel.
Understand.
This is not a competing god Aaron offers the Children of Israel. Aaron tells
the people that this golden calf is the god or gods who delivered and saved you
from Egypt. The golden calf, a symbol of wealth, male strength and virility, is
the thing that saved you from Egypt. This,
this thing, is Yahweh.
Theologian
Dan Clendenin writes, “Idols lure us with powerful
illusions and misplaced hopes. They make seductive promises. These false gods
come in all sizes and shapes. They promise much but deliver little. Our personal gods are so petty and pathetic that they would
be laughable if they weren't so insidious and corrosive.”[5]
But national idols. National idols. “Personal idols are child's play compared
to national idols,” Clendenin states. “[National idols] wreak far more violence
upon humanity than our household gods.”[6] They screw up our priorities and displace our
devotion.
God
knows. God knows that this misplaced
devotion will only chain the people to illusory idols and unhealthy
relationships with “things.” And God is ticked. God interrupts the conversation
with Moses to send him back down the mountain knowing, like a passionate lover,
that the people have betrayed the relationship. God is hot with intense
passion. The people have been found in
bed with their own gold.
This
Exodus narrative foreshadows the relationship God will have with the nation of
Israel throughout the Biblical story. The mysterious and living and free God
wants to keep the Children of Israel delivered and saved and free. In response,
the Jewish people and their kings vacillate between this alternative vision of
how they shall live in collaboration with the God of mystery, awe, wonder, and
freedom or the values and vision of every other nation that seeks to save
itself with idols of wealth and war.
Who and what delivers and saves us? Are we free enough that whatever wealth or
money we have is a tool for mission and ministry in collaboration with God in
creating the world? Or are we enslaved
to our wealth and money in such a way that we are not the peculiar and unique
people God intended us to be? Are we
free?
Again, that journey always begins with the word, “remember.” Thirty-six times in the Torah, the Jewish
people are enjoined to remember the Creator of the Universe and how that
Creator acted. “Remember, you were once immigrants,
strangers, slaves in Egypt.” This is how
you should be in relationship with the world.
In Jewish tradition
and mythology, remembrance is a spiritual practice which leads to action. Several different Jewish rites and traditions
are about providing cues, mnemonics, prompts to remember God’s acts of awe and
wonder as a way of then determining how one should act in the world. Among many practicing Jews, strings are found
at the end of their garments as one of those prompts. In ancient times, one string, signaled a
particular prompt. That string is the
color of blue, the shade, the rabbis say, that would lead the Jewish people to
recall the sea and the sky. Remember the
sea and the sky and how they move you in the world.
When we look at the
vast expanse of the sea, perhaps when we are lucky enough to sit on a cliff
overlooking the Pacific as the water crashes into the rock, spraying
everywhere, our bodies tell us what our reaction is. We catch our breath as we say, “Ahh.” We breathe in awe at the enormity, the
expansiveness, and the utter possibilities that come with the sea—tides totally
unbidden by human beings. We cannot
control the way that there will always be rogue waves. There will always be water that will torment
and torture human beings because we cannot contain the power of the sea. We look at the sea and we remember to live in
awe.
The blue string also
prompts us to remember sky. What does
the sky remind us of? What does our body
say when we have been locked up inside for far too long? When we finally are released to look up for
the first time at the great expanse of the sky, we look up and say, “Wow.”
The sea which is the
great inhale, awe. The sky which is the
great exhale, wonder. An inhale and
exhale of breath like the name of the Jewish God—Yahweh. So the ancient Jews would wear blue strings
at the end of their garments to remember how to live life—in awe and wonder.[7] It says that the possibilities, the
aspirations of life are limitless. And
we use that in our language. “Let’s blue
sky this. Let’s imagine what is possible
if there was nothing to contain us.”[8] We are laborers on a project that we will not
see completed in our lifetime. We live
in the midst of a half-done project, a project in which we are collaborators
with awe and wonder. We remember the
world in awe and wonder.
And in remembering to
look at the world in awe and wonder, we are moved to gratitude, knowing that we
have been blessed. We remember that we
are blessed by the Creator of the Universe, the Living God, and are called to
act in blessing ourselves. We are
blessed by the mysterious, awesome, wondrous, and free God. In freedom, we co-create the world by extending
blessing back out into creation.
What the stories from
Exodus and Wilderness teach, however, is that though right relationship with
God and the world is found in awe and wonder, we find ourselves forever fearful
of living in a world so undefined, uncontrollable, and uncontained. We want a God or a symbol of God that is
easily manipulated, at our bidding, contained, and controlled. We narrow the possibilities. Gold and wealth no longer become tools for
mission and ministry. Gold and wealth become
an idol, an end to themselves. We turn
from the sea and sky to worship what is of our own creation.
As we come to a close
of this sermon series, I know very well that St. John’s United Church of Christ
must learn the love of God as it walks in this wilderness of pandemic and
loss. We say that we will seek to be a people
of God that affirms the blessings of a God who is not to be manipulated and
controlled but full of mystery, awe, wonder, and freedom so that we might be
free to be a blessing to the world.
I have heard the
generation that holds the wealth and gold of churches referred to as “the
builders”, the ones who invested in the church building and have historically
provided for the annual budget of the church.
As members of a Christian community, however, author Paulo Coelho has
said that the term “builder” is inappropriate.
“Builders” are those who act in a way that construct edifices to their
own glory, to capture and concretize the Divine. Builders, Coelho writes, build and are done
in their creating and collaboration.
Coelho urges us to be gardeners. Gardeners are never released from the demands
of the garden. By the constant demands
of the garden, the gardener’s life becomes a great adventure.[9]
While God invited the
Children of Israel to collaborate in the creation of the world, as gardeners in
a great adventure, the Children of Israel, long in the wilderness, long
awaiting Moses at the bottom of the mountain, choose to become builders of the
golden calf to contain and control a God who remains, to this day, mysterious
and free. Stewardship begins with that
single string of blue, calling us to live in such a way that we remember the
awe (“Ahh”) and wonder (“Wow!”) of God and live and give in gratitude.
We are moving to that
time when we move to that time of Advent, when John the Baptist begins the
movement of God’s Beloved Community out in the wilderness eating locusts and
wild honey. He tells them that they, as
people made in the image of God, are not to be contained and controlled. May we all hear the call, in awe and wonder,
to receive the vast, limitless, uncontainable blessings of God so that we as a
community once again return to the demands of the garden of downtown Jackson,
the State of Michigan, and the world God forever seeks to garden with us. So that we may know a God who is more wild
and free and fiercely loving. So that we
may be known as a people and congregation who are more wild and free and
fiercely loving. Amen.
[1] Rebecca Solnit, A Field
Guide to Getting Lost (New York:
Penguin Books, 2005), p. 17
[2]Ibid, p. 13.
[3] Ibid, p. 21.
[4] “Interview with Rabbi
Sharon Brous,” On Being with Krista
Tippett, September 2, 2010
[5] Professor Daniel
Clendenin, “Journey with Jesus: Weekly Notes to Myself.” October 12, 2008. http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20081006JJ.shtml.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Rabbi Sharon Brous, “Like
Waves and Wind,” IKAR LA Podcast,
June 26, 2014.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Interview with Paul Coelho,” On Being with Krista Tippett, August 14,
2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment