Sermon, Exodus/Wilderness Series, "Integrating what we learn in the Wilderness," November 8, 2020

A Exodus 9 SJUCC 2020 

Exodus 20 

November 8, 2020

You may remember last week I shared with you teaching that accompanies the Exodus story—the Wilderness.  The Wilderness story is a Wisdom tale, relates not how life is to be, but how life is when we have lost our familiar landmarks, forsaken our familiar food, and left behind our familiar roles.  Freedom is no easy path, the Children of Israel learn.  The Wilderness leaves them whining and complaining, “Moses, we want to go back to Egypt.”

What we learn from the Wilderness story today, however, is one of those big life lessons.  More times than not, God does not teach us how to live in liberation and freedom when we remain in slavery in Egypt or after we have crossed over the Jordan River into the promised land.  We learn how to live in the promised land, in the inbetween, when we walk in the wilderness. 

There is something about being dislocated and having to depend on O/others for our well-being that offers us a change in perspective, an opportunity to see the world in a different way.  I have seen this reality on any number of youth group mission delegations I have taken.  Leaving home, the dislocation, is important because we realize that we are much freer than we ever imagined possible--to be who we want to be, to be who God wants us to be--to incorporate a broader vision that would not have been possible just by staying home.  As any of you who have been on youth mission trips may have learned or taken trips to places like Back Bay Mission, the border at Nogales, or my favorite place, Chiapas, Mexico, dislocation and walking in a new place can transform your life.  You return home to see the everyday and the most mundane of your life at home differently.  Your whole value system is up for grabs.  Your return home leaves you disoriented and trying to figure out how you will incorporate your new knowledge and wisdom with your old life.  You may have shed your skin seeking something deeper, more integrated with the rest of the world.

Folks in the mission field refer to this as re-entry.  Those who have been on mission delegations to places like Haiti, Zaire, Zimbabwe, or stay for lengths of time on a Native American reservation in our own country, probably know what I am saying.  When you have been to a place with such basic need, such gut-wrenching poverty, walking into a grocery store with the almost obscene choices we have threatens to rip the fabric of your soul.  And we have to decide whether the ethical code we learned in the Wilderness, the life rules, the deeper truths, will hold in the homeland, a place of abundant milk and honey and . . . potato chips.  Can we integrate, the deep truths of life and liberation,  how we might maintain our freedom, what we learned in the Wilderness, or do we let it pass like it was a dream?

I have seen members of a youth group go to seminary because of such mission delegations, a work camp, or church camp experience.  At the same time, I have also seen youth try to distance themselves from such experiences, even the church.  So that they can return to their “normal” lives?  They exchange depth of soul for potato chips. 

Sometimes those mission delegations, for the first time in our lives, integrate us into the real world, into a world where we really see the world as God sees it . . . with poor and hurting people who are also strong and resilient.  For the first time, we might actually see ourselves connected to them.  And we return back to our homes, do re-entry, trying to remain integrated.  As we move further and further from that mission experience, it becomes tougher and tougher to integrate it into our lives.   Strong and resilient poor fade from our memory and we begin to dis-integrate.

Do we remember, remain integrated with our new experiences and new relationships, or conveniently leave those experiences and relationships behind because the culture or peer pressure makes it easier to forget?  Do we dis-integrate? 

In the same manner, do the Ten Commandments, given to the Children of Israel in the Wilderness, hold sway when David and Solomon reign over the greatest Empire on earth, when Israel is the most powerful nation? Can the Children of Israel continue to live integrated, with integrity, depth of soul, when they are the world’s number one super-power?  The whole David and Bathsheba story asks that very question.   Shall David, the King of Israel, be exempted from coveting his neighbor’s property?  The very person David is supposed to remember and protect as king, Uriah, the stranger, the immigrant, the alien, even more so his wife Bathsheba are the people David has raped and killed.

Remember, you were once strangers or slaves in Egypt.  Said 36 times.  And David forgets the lessons of the Wilderness.  He loses his integrity.  He dis-integrates.   In later Biblical story,  prophets believe that Israel was conquered and forced into Exile because what God gave the people in the Wilderness, that depth of soul, the rules for living the promised land, the Law, the Ten Commandments were forgotten.

We do that forgetting from a very young age, don’t we?  “God, I promise, God, if you just get me to the promised land,  help me make the junior high basketball team, the cheerleading squad, have that boy go out with me, cure my aunt, let my uncle live, spare ME!, I promise, I will be devoted, I will stop, I will do . . .”  And maybe, by chance, God as fairy godmother works this once, and the glass slipper fits, and once we are safely perusing our silver, we forget what life was like when we were sweeping cinders in the wilderness and miss out on what God would teach us.   We forget at a huge cost.  For the Wilderness is about shaping us for life in the promised land.

Some time ago, Nelson Mandela, the same person who went from political prisoner of South Africa to president of South Africa, wrote his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, with help from author Richard Stengel.   Stengel shared in a Time magazine article about Mandela: 

 

Ultimately, the key to understanding Mandela is those 27 years in prison. The man who walked onto Robben Island in 1964 was emotional, headstrong, easily stung. The man who emerged was balanced and disciplined. He is not and never has been introspective. I often asked him how the man who emerged from prison differed from the willful young man who had entered it. He hated this question. Finally, in exasperation one day, he said, "I came out mature."[1]

 

I came out mature.  Though the Wilderness may be more about just real life than what God wills, what we learn from this story over and over again is how we are to live our lives in the promised land by walking through the Wilderness.  The Ten Commandments, the Law, are given in the Wilderness.  We come out mature.

That is why I bristle a little bit when someone tells me they like the God of the New Testament better than the God of the Old Testament.  To me, the God of the New Testament seems almost unattainable while the God of the Old Testament seems much more real, seems about some of the true life grit I experience. 

And the Ten Commandments passage, here in Exodus 20, is one of those Hebrew Scripture passages folks hold up to say that the Old Testament God is much more scolding and vindictive than the New Testament God or Jesus.  But such a statement ignores the context of the Ten Commandments, does not recognize that the Law is received by the Children of Israel as they come out of slavery in Egypt to walk to the promised land in Canaan.  Slaves live by the whim and fancy of their taskmasters, more broadly, by the whim and fancy of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.  So how are these newly freed slaves to live in the promised land without the death-giving edicts of Pharaoh?  What will be their values?  Their code?  How shall they distinguish themselves from not only Egypt but the peoples who surround them?

Along with seeing that Hebrew Scripture God as much more scolding and vindictive, I have heard a few sermons upset about the fact that the Ten Commandments are about “Thou shalt nots!” 

(valley girl voice) I mean, like, God is so negative.  If God in the Ten Commandments would just chill.  I mean, like, be positive. 

But again, remember the context.  And the context of the Ten Commandments is to, “Remember, remember that you are not to be like Egypt.”  We could sum up the Ten Commandments in that way.  “Thou shalt not be like Egypt.” 

“Do not build up for me,” God declares, “these huge monuments or graven images, or chase after gold to build statues in my honor--pyramids, temples, palaces and pretend that is what I want.”  Thou shalt not be like Egypt.  Do not become enslaved by these behaviors.  To live free in the land, this is how you shall live.[2]  Thou shalt not be trapped by such pursuits as the Egyptians were.

Do not work the land, or yourselves, or your slaves, or your animals, or your immigrants 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  To do so is to return or force someone else or some other part of creation to return to the very existence you left as slaves in Egypt.  Do not go back.  Thou shalt not become slaves like you were in Egypt.

Do not covet, the word “covet” used again and again in the Ten Commandments.  The Hebrew word literally means “to seize” or to steal using position or power or influence to get what really belongs to someone else or community at large. Hebrew Scripture scholar Robert Gnuse writes that “Property and land were given to be used for the glory of Yahweh and the good of all.  The command not to steal spoke against those who sought to appropriate communal possessions for their own private use.”[3]  The latter meaning of the commandment was ’do not reduce a person to slavery by monopolizing the wealth.’” At a time, during pandemic, when we have witnessed the devastation of so many families and the explosion of wealth for the uber wealthy, we should ask if we are continuing to promote a slave economy.[4]  At a time when we have  a rent crisis spurred on the by the pandemic, where Wall Street investment firms have turned eviction into their new billion dollar baby, landlords find it easier to evict than get rent, and housing courts are designed for people to fail,[5]we should ask if we are continuing to promote a slave economy. 

The purpose of the commandment not to covet was to curb those who steal from society at large by amassing great wealth, for such theft will ultimately break down that society.[6]  Society will begin to dis-integrate and relationships will unravel.  Why would former slaves, seeking to keep their integrity, foster an economic system that would lead people into economic slavery?  Thou shalt not use your riches or your royalty or your power over someone else like the Egyptians did.

Thou shalt not!  This is not a scolding, vindictive God.  When you hear the Ten Commandments in their context, this God sounds like a mother lion defending Her people from the dangers of the world--willing, desiring that they become more than what they left in Egypt.  She will defend the freedom of Her people. 

And once we know this to be the character of our God, the Ten Commandments then become self-evident for how we should treat our neighbor.  As Jewish Law becomes further and further elaborated on, the major concern becomes how the Jewish people shall prevent their neighbors from falling into debt slavery—that injunction still resounding in the heart of Christ:  “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

One of my favorite theologians, Dorothy Soelle, puts it best, describes the desire of God within the Ten Commandments, “God dreams for us today. Today, at this moment, God has an image and hope for what we are becoming. We should not let God dream alone.” 

God’s desire is that the Children of Israel would truly become a free people through the Ten Commandments—to not worship God through gold and pretend that this was what the Living God required of them, to not work and be anxious or force others to work and be anxious all their days, and to not seize what each person needed for the bases of life.  God had an image and hope, an image and hope for a legacy that they would leave their children and grandchildren of what they, as a people, could become. 

So let us remember our story so that we do not lose our integrity.  So that we do not dis-integrate. On this Stewardship and Legacy Sunday, may we remember that God dreams for us today. Today, at this moment, God has an image and hope for what the congregation of St. John’s United Church of Christ  is becoming. We should not let God dream alone.  Amen.

---

[1] Robert Stengel, “Mandela: His Eight Lessons of Leadership,” Time (Wednesday, July 9, 2008).

[2] David Gill, “Ten Words on Life, Love, and Justice,” The Journey with Jesus:  Notes to Myself  http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20080929JJ.shtml .

[3] The Hebrew word for “covet” is hmd.  Robert Gnuse, You Shall Not Steal:  Community and Property in the Biblical Tradition (New York:  Orbis Books, 1985), p 6.

[4] “Wealth and Income Inequality and Covid-19,” https://inequality.org/facts/inequality-and-covid-19/.  As ordinary people around the world suffer from the health and economic impacts of the pandemic, billionaires have actually seen their fortunes expand. According to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Forbes data, the combined wealth of all U.S. billionaires increased by $821 billion (28 percent) between March 18, 2020 and September 10, 2020, from approximately $2.947 trillion to $3.768 trillion. Of the more than 600 U.S. billionaires, the richest five (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk) saw a 59 percent increase in their combined wealth during this period, from $358 billion to $569 billion. 

[5] Megh Wright, “Patriot Act Returns to Terrify You about an Eviction Crisis,” May 18, 2020, https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/patriot-act-netflix-hasan-minhaj-rent-eviction-crisis.html.

[6] Gnuse, “You Shall Not,” pp. 7-8.

Third Sunday of Advent, "The women among the begats," December 15, 2019

A Advent 3 OL BFC 2019

Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 1:1-17

December 15, 2019

I wanted to offer a trigger warning this morning knowing that we are going to talk about rape.  It is spoken about to neither glamorize or trivialize but to recognize it as the violence done to others.  Please be good to your own emotional and mental well-being as I share.  (Prayer)

In 1962, the son of a tribal chieftan, an attorney, member of the African National Congress and founder of the powerful Youth League within the African National Congress was arrested.  South African security police arrested Nelson Mandela for his opposition to the white government and its apartheid ("separateness") policies of racial, political, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority. In 1964, the government brought further charges including sabotage, high treason, and conspiracy to overthrow the government. At the opening of his defense in the 1964 trial, Mandela made a statement that would result in him receiving a sentence for 27 years.

He began that speech by speaking about the basis for his authority before the South African court.

In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defence [sic] of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. This is what has motivated me in all that I have done in relation to the charges made against me in this case.

Later in that same speech, as he defined who he was and his political position, Mandela said,

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. After all, I was born in Umtata, forty-six years ago. My guardian was my cousin, who was the acting paramount chief of Tembuland, and I am related both to the present paramount chief of Tembuland, Sabata Dalindyebo, and to Kaizer Matanzima, the Chief Minister of the Transkei.

We may think genealogies in the Bible the most boring and unimportant information found, other than the number of cubits God gave Noah to construct the ark. But in the ancient world, genealogies communicated important information. Much like Mandela defines himself through his family history, ancient genealogies were about a “claim to authority, to place, to political or civil rights, various social roles, or even the right to speak. Genealogies justified privilege, provided a written pedigree, and a long genealogy was a mark of honor. Genealogies were guides to social interaction” and where one ranked in the world. In keeping with a male-dominated society, genealogies like the one in Matthew were traced through Joseph and established a man’s social status in the world.  But there is something odd going on in the Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy.

Much like you might know me as from the ancient clan of Mulberries who were hallowed kings and prolific speakers, known for stirring speeches and calls to virtuous lives. Revered and praised for his silver-tongued soliloquies and referenced as the first-ever Renaissance man, the Grand Duke of Dansbury, Pip Mulberry, was known as a teller of stories, baron of commerce, and a maker of a great souffle. Isn't that what we're all looking for when we put together those family genealogies?

Yeah, well, the real story is that James Mulberry was caught stealing a silken handkerchief, was brought before the English court, and told that he could either go to Turtle Island as an indentured servant or be hung for his crime. Luckily, my good man, ancestor James, may have been a criminal, but he was not stupid. The Mulberry clan settled in the lands of the Shawnee and Cherokee as indentured servants and moved north through lands of the Osage, Miami, and Peoria. I'm sure Mulberry royalty is somewhere back in the history.   If our family genealogist had only dug a little deeper . . .  Maybe.

One of the things Scripture teaches is that God does not see the world as we might see it.  Too often, we see things as they are and do not recognize what might happen if viewed through the eyes of God, when God arrives.  Isaiah 35 relates that transformation where wilderness and dry land bloom and blossom, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap, and violent predators are nowhere to be found.  Salvation has come.  The land is now a safe place for community life and conduct.  It is almost as if joy cannot be known unless we know the flip side of suffering and struggle.  One has to know how vast and empty the wilderness is to know how bountiful it is when pools appear, springs of water show, and color and blossom break out.  God arrives in the messiness of the wasteland. 

By the same measure, today we have the genealogy of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew.  Matthew’s genealogy is different than Luke’s in some significant ways.  For example, Matthew includes four women in his genealogy.  And they are all women who are sexually suspect.  Tamar’s name appears two other times in Scripture.  She disguises herself as a prostitute to have sex with her father-in-law in Genesis.  In another incarnation, in I Samuel, Tamar is the daughter of David who is raped and abducted.  The second female name is Rahab who is a prostitute and a foreigner who helped Israelite spies.  The third female name is Ruth who was a foreigner from Moab and offered herself sexually to Boaz to protect herself and her Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi.    The fourth female name mentioned is the foreigner Bathsheba who was raped by King David only to have the child born as a result of that rape, die.  Finally, Mary of Nazareth is mentioned among all these women who are sexually suspect in a patriarchal world.  Almost all the women are not ethnically Jewish.  What is the author of Matthew trying to say about the unwed, pregnant Mary?  And why wasn’t she stoned for presumably breaking Jewish Law by having sex before marriage?  Maybe some historical background would help. 

Shortly before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Herod the Great, a much-disliked, paranoid territorial ruler, died. Herod the Great, known as the King of the Jews, was so paranoid he even had one of his sons executed for high treason. He was so ruthless that the Romans would say of him, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son.”  Herod’s the Great’s economic, political, and religious policies put a huge strain on Jewish peasant life.  For he was known as a city builder, and building opulent cities mined the resources of Jewish communities to export out and demanded higher taxes of the rural populace.  He built these cities for the lifestyles of the rich and famous and named one of those cities after Caesar himself.  In today’s world,  caring nothing for the remainder of the populace, we might say that Caesar was “politically smart” and knew how to keep his head on his shoulders by serving these wealthy and elite interests.  When Herod the Great died, Jewish rebels and revolutionaries saw a power void and an opportunity.   Jewish rebellion, which had been simmering just below the surface, exploded upon Herod's death.

One of the leaders of that rebellion was Judas the Galileean, his father killed by Herod the Great.  One of the centers of that rebellion was the city of Sepphoris, four miles north of the rural, backwater town of Nazareth. 

Following Herod the Great’s death, Augustus Caesar divided the territory of Herod’s kingdom up among three other sons.  But the military forces of Herod's sons could not quell the Jewish rebellion. As a result, Rome took notice. The military commander Quinctillius Varus had been set up in Syria to provide a boundary to Rome's greatest military threat to the east—the Parthian Empire. You may know the Parthian Empire by the names of their independent royal spiritual advisors—the Magi.

Varus had up to 36,000 soldiers at his disposal and he moved in with all of his Roman legions and burned the cities of Sepphoris and Emmaus to the ground. Two thousand men were crucified. All other able-bodied men were enslaved and/or sent to the galleys where they were kept just barely alive, chained in the dark, living in their own filth, probably surviving less than a year. All of the girls and women in the Roman military path would have been raped.

Caesar Augustus appointed Herod the Great's son, Herod Antipas, to govern Galilee. In a display of patronage, and in keeping with the city building tradition of his father, Antipas rebuilt Sepphoris as a thoroughly Roman city with marble palaces, colonnaded streets, a theater, and Roman baths, such that Sepphoris became known in the Roman Empire as the “jewel of Galilee.” While the rural area around Sepphoris remained Jewish, Sepphoris was the city set upon a hill, four miles north of Nazareth, that reminded Galileean Jews of the opulence, oppression, and cruelty of the Roman Empire every day.

That is the context for Matthew’s genealogy.  Every day, the people of Nazareth could look four miles to the north, where they could see the city of Sepphoris and remember the Roman legions as they marched toward them.  Every day, they could look four miles north to see Sepphoris, the city set upon a hill, and know that the city was being re-done in Rome’s image.  The Nazareth farmers who were left, probably only older men, would never pose a threat to a Roman centurion.  Many of those farmers had lost their land due to leveraged debt.  The former farmers would make their way to Sepphoris and make a little money by re-building the city, a city where they had probably lost countless friends and relatives.  Every day, Roman imperial presence was in the face of those Jews remaining in Sepphoris or coming to town to ply their trade from rural backwater towns like Nazareth, all who had survived the military massacre wrought by Quinctillius Varus. 

In this wilderness and wasteland, stands Mary of Nazareth.  The Virgin Birth may be important to many of you and your faith understanding.  If that is important, I don’t want to take that away from you.  But in the messiness of our own lives—the imperfection, sometimes the wilderness and wasteland, the places where trauma and pain and the impossible are held, God arrives.  God arrives.  And because we have known suffering, wilderness and wasteland, we might also know joy.  (long pause)

One of the projects I had the most fun doing in my almost 30 years of ordained ministry was using a Senior High Youth Group to retell the Christmas story through video camera.  Mary and Joseph are dating at Olivet Nazarene College in Kankakee, Illinois, when just around the holidays Mary confirms that she does indeed see a plus sign on the home pregnancy test.  Joseph is in disbelief.  Must have been some other guy but it wasn’t me.  Our Mary was great at giving Joseph “side-eye” when he delivered these lines.  Our angel was Mary’s sister, Beth, who convinces Joseph that he does need to go home with Mary for the holidays and face the music.

Mary and Joseph return home to Morton, Illinois, on school break, where they chatter with Mom and Dad about how school is going in stilted sentences, until . . . Mary blurts out, “Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant.”  A TV news director helped us splice together the minivan passing by, screeching to a halt, and then dad throwing luggage and Joseph and Mary out into a nearby cornfield.  Joseph and Mary try to get into one of the nearby hotels but an impending Barry Manilow concert makes it impossible.  Mary and Joseph ask the pastor of our church if they can use his garage.  We just happened to do it on the night of Church Council meeting so the last shot is Joseph and Mary and the babe and the Church Council behind them singing “Silent Night,” all done in the Senior Pastor’s garage.  The kids loved it, and they remarked that they had never thought through how scandalous and messy the Christmas story truly was. 

Some adults hated it.  And they let me know.  I had rubbed the romance off the Christmas story.  But that’s the difference, right?  Many of us want a story that makes the holiday more bright and cheery.   And some of us need a story that saves our lives, that identifies with the pain and suffering, trauma and wasteland that is our lives.  Some of us need a story that reminds us that God arrives into the mess, however painful and scarred, wilderness and wasteland, fragile and vulnerable to create a space for us.  Where in the world does the story have to remain romantic so that transformation never happens?  And where does the story become real so that transformation is possible, because people have been waiting to hear that good news in painful, waste, and suspect places?

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary of Nazareth magnify the Living and Holy God with an understanding that their stories do not end when all seems lost.  As the author of Matthew observes, this is not one-time thing.  God keeps arriving.  In the midst of the suffering, pain, and trauma of your life, my prayer is that those wildernesses have opened your eyes for joy.  Because God keeps arriving.  God keeps arriving.  During this season, we desperately need a story that does not make things cheery and bright.  We need a story that saves us.  God keeps arriving.  Amen. 

Sources:  Richard L. Rohrbaugh and Bruce J. Malina, Social Science Commentary on the Gospels  Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2002;  Article by Jona Lendering, http://www.livius.org/q/quinctilius/varus.html; Rev Dawn Hutchings, December 17, 2012  http://pastordawn.com/tag/advent-sermon-mary-of-nazareth-raped/; www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14647-varus-quintilius