Sermon, Second Sunday after Epiphany, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 16, 2022

C Epiphany 2 BFC 2022

John 2:1-11

January 16, 2022

Ok, Biblical geek time.  This is a Scripture verse that begs us to see the deep meaning in Scripture not because we take it literally;  but because we engage Scripture to be understood seriously and literally.

John Dominic Crossan, early Christianity scholar, would regularly share this tongue-in-cheek observation about taking the Bible literally.  He would say in his great Irish accent, “We may take Jesus’s healing and miracles literally, but where does that get you?  Jesus did a miracle.  How nice for Jesus! We, in fact, miss the deep and poetic meaning when we take these things literally.”

I have regularly used the Scripture before us today for holy communion liturgy. It begins the public ministry of Jesus in the gospel of John. For a storyteller, this wedding feast at Cana story is a summary statement, a topic sentence, which expresses who Jesus is and what the author of the gospel of John thinks Jesus’s ministry and teaching are all about.

In the ancient world, there are Divine claims being made right and left. Augustus Caesar is the most well-known, claiming to be the Son of God, the divine Julius Caesar.  Caesars regularly claimed that the status quo showed off the will of the gods.  We conquered you.  Therefore it is evident.  The gods favored us—wanted our joy, our peace, our well-being.  The gods want us to be in charge. 

If this Jewish God's work is being made manifest in this time and place, Jewish peasants living in occupation, persecution, and poverty are not so sure if God is for them or against them. Wouldn't their present situation indicate that God was against them? If God is Almighty and chooses how the world runs, endorses the status quo, wouldn't our present suffering indicate what God intends for us?  Tough not to think that when Caesar’s message is blaring out at you from every piece of art, architecture, and heavily-armored centurion.

What does God intend for us? Marcus Borg, in his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, believes the author of John seeks to answer that question with the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And how we interpret Scripture, it matters here. For if this story is taken literally, it is simply a miracle story that has Jesus turning water into wine.  Then, as Crossan says, how nice for Jesus. If the story is taken literally, the meaning is that God can solve all of our most embarrassing conundrums. The wine has run out at the wedding. Pray to Jesus, and God, all-powerful, takes care of it. Is that how faith works?  If we pray hard enough, God eliminates suffering, struggle, and death from our lives?

I believe this Scripture passage, maybe more than any other, is a reminder that the Bible is written primarily in poetic language and not intended to be taken literally. 

And, as poet and educator, Dr. Elizabeth Alexander has said, good, poetic language is about words that shimmer and deep meaning.  “We crave truth tellers,” Dr. Alexander says, “We crave real truth. There is so much baloney all the time.” What we hear most of the time is like one of those comedy newscasts where the reporter, as they are reporting, has a ticker running underneath that says, “They’re lying.”[1] Dr. Alexander goes on to say, in one of her poems, “Poetry is the human voice . . . and are we not of interest to each other?”[2] 

Author Toni Cade Bambara reminds us that the role of the artist for those in power is to enforce the status quo with their columns and pyramids and temples and biographies.  But the job of the artist whose heart sings in the midst of an oppressed people, Barbara writes, “is to make the revolution irresistible.”[3]  The artist writes to help others see light happening in the deepest night, the ability to be born again when all seems dire and desolate.  Good, poetic language is about keeping our eyes on the prize, not losing track of what’s important, when politicians and media moguls use studies and statistics that confuse and hide truth.  Hear this countercultural poem said in a world that values only whiteness.

 

We break the hearts of our children,

The jewels that have been given to us,

When we stunt their teachers,

Forbid them frolic,

And tell them, “Hmmph, you know, your generation.”

When their refracted and reflected light

Off their many facets

Should tell us something

Of the divine

Shining shafts through floor boards and ceiling beams

And we say, “Ah, child, the color is not pure white,”

To beautiful browns and reds, blacks and golds,

All they need us to say is,

“Ah, child, light, warm light.”

Ever refracting and reflecting.

 

Hear in that poetic language values that will not be obfuscated by statistics and surveys, politics and pandering.  Our children are valuable as they are, in all of their diversity.  Deep meaning is conveyed. 

In contrast to the literal interpretation of Scripture, Marcus Borg believes this is the author of John trying to relate the character of Christ and his ministry. This is poetic language.  Again, although this story is not found in any of the other gospels, the author of John places it at the beginning of Jesus's public ministry.

What does God intend and what is it like to live with Christ? Here is the setting: a marriage, a time of celebration for the whole community, where diverse people come from different families to surround what will become a basic unit of community life, a family themselves.

One of the basic symbols of this story is wine. Jesus turns the water into wine at the wedding feast.  Wine is that mythological symbol that represents joy, frivolity, and play. So Biblically, what does joy mean? 

I know, culturally, “joy” is strongly tied to the organization of our material surplus. If you remember organizing expert, Marie Kondo with the popular show, “Tidying up with Marie Kondo,” we are told to organize our lives by keeping only the material possessions that spark joy.   That is where we are.  We are making it a spiritual practice to determine what material possessions spark joy.  Though I know there is wisdom in what Ms. Kondo shared, I’m not sure “joy” is the word I would use for this practice.

Rather, joy sustains us for the difficult journey, the action we need to take on behalf of each other and God’s good earth.  [W]hen [we] face a politics that aspires to make [us] fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a final act of insurrection.[4] 

For the Jewish people, wine represented a messianic joy, the understanding that the whole community would share in a liberation and freedom God intends for them.  Throughout Scripture, the Biblical meaning of joy is to be in God's presence, to know God is at work--that Go may intend something different than the status quo.

The moment in this poetic story is made even more poignant when the wine runs out. Is this what God intends? Is that all there is? Is this not a symbol for what the Jewish people are experiencing? God's will for their liberation and freedom runs out.

But with and through Christ, not only is there wine in abundance, the best wine is yet to come, the wine never runs out. What John is trying to convey is—life with Christ is like a marriage feast where the joy never ends, where God's will for our liberation and our freedom does not run out.

Nowhere in this story is a requirement for intent. All we have to do is invite God's presence to the feast, make space for God moving among us, join in the feast. God is there to be noticed, for us to be aware of God's presence. All we have to do is lift the veil that has us believing we do not deserve God's will for our joy. Understand, this is a radical statement that says the status quo is not the will of God. God does not will the occupation, persecution, and poverty of the Jewish people. God intends joy.

In the midst of societal suffering and pain, do we believe this is God's intent? And, if not, do we believe it is intrinsic to God's character, to overtake, capture, and wrestle to the floor anything that gets in the way of God's will? What is the nature of God's work? How does God work? In the Gospel of John, a Samaritan woman, excluded from her community, becomes the teller of God's good news to that whole community. A blind man, from his birth, begins to share the good news of God's will for him with all the religious authorities who want to tell the man whose eyes are opened that this cannot possibly be God's work. A person who is crippled to the point where he could not seek his own healing finally experiences the stirring of God's healing power for him. A community, wondering where they will find something to eat, finds that bread shared becomes bread abundant. God intends joy!

The scary part is that they lived in a system invested in these wretched of the earth never believing that they are worthy of joy.  Joy was never intended for them. Christ changing the water into wine unmasks the foundations of a system and structure of domination that profits from keeping these Jewish peasants in place. No longer will these Jewish peasants believe that God wants them to be without inclusion in community’s soul force, without healing when there is no recourse, without bread when there is no resource.

Christ initiates struggle and protest. The world as it is, this is not God's intent. This is not what God wants. If God does not intend, want, or will it, in fact, if it is the opposite of what God intends, wants, or wills, then why should we accept it?

Some time ago I got to see one of my heroes, famed educator and healer, Jonathan Kozol speak, at a local high school amphitheater.  One of Kozol's most well-known texts is, Ordinary Resurrections, a chronicling of his experience in inner-city public schools where, too often, money and resources are missing and environmental poisoning in communities is rampant. Kozol begins Ordinary Resurrections by talking about the tough work of desegregating public schools in the 1960s. He speaks of a small, African-American girl who walked courageously to the entrance of her new school, escorted by police officers. White folk ringed the area, shouting insults and racial epithets her way. One woman seemed particularly strident in spewing hatred at the child. Looking to the sky, knowing that her life mattered to the Living God, the little African-American girl smiled. Disarmed and surprised by her smile, the woman addressed the child with the “n” word and asked, “Why are you smiling?” The young girl responded, “Because I see Jesus smiling at me.” The woman was left speechless.

God intends joy. It was the message and ministry of Christ, the message and ministry of Dr. King, and the message and reality of a small, African-American girl who knew the will and work of God.  The status quo told her she had no right to smile.  She knew differently.

I arrived late to see Jonathan Kozol, and the place was packed. Kozol talked about several children he had written about in his books and related the grave differences between the investments we make in our schools. Public schools, without money and resources, Kozol concluded, put school children in situations where to succeed is the exception and to fail is the rule. We have built a world where we act like God smiles on some of us because of our virtue and does not smile on others because they somehow “deserve” injustice.

The gifts of God are intended for us. Such that we might know God's gifts to us day by day, throughout the year. I believe those gifts are communicated through this community we call Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ. This community of faith seeks to communicate God's inclusive gift that no matter who you are or where you are on your journey you are welcome here. This community of faith seeks to communicate God's gift of healing love by the way we say that we are invested in joining hands with others to piece together a stronger and more resilient community through care packages for migrants, food baskets for the indigent, and clean water for those facing systemic injustice. This is Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ, a gift of God to Berrien County and the wider world. We are a gift . . . and if you haven't already received the message by the Passing of the Peace, the wisdom shared by our children during Children’s Sermons or while coloring, or the playfulness found in goofy Christmas pageants, there is a playfulness in everything we do . . .

For here, in this place, we intend God's joy to be ever refracting and reflecting.  A warm light . . . ever refracting and reflecting.  Praise God. Amen.

---

[1] “Elizabeth Alexander on Words that Shimmer,” On Being, January 17, 2013, http://www.onbeing.org/program/elizabeth-alexander-words-shimmer/transcript/4993#main_content.

[2] Ibid. 

[3]Toni Cade Bambara, “An Interview with Toni Cade Bambara: Kay Bonetti.” Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), p. 35

[4] Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark:  Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities (Chicago:  Haymarket Books, 2016), p. 24. 

Sermon: Exodus/Wilderness Preaching Series, "A God more wild, free, and fierce," November 15, 2020

 

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.

 

Sermon, Exodus/Wilderness Series, "Impossible to get a handle on God," November 15, 2020

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 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.” 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.[8]

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 hone.. 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. 

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[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] “Interview with Paulo Coelho,” On Being with Krista Tippett, August 14, 2014.

 

Sermon, Exodus/Wilderness Series, "Moses, we want to go back to Egypt," November 1, 2020

A Exodus 8 SJUCC 2020 

Exodus 17:1-7 

November 1, 2020 

The story is told of the Spanish conquistador Cabeza de Vaca who was lost with his men in the Americas, around what is now the state of Florida.  Only four of the six hundred men who set out on their expedition from Spain had survived from violence, illness, hunger, or were not left behind as slaves or adopted members of the Native tribes.  Cabeza de Vaca talked about welcoming death as his ship’s navigator asked him to steer, the navigator believing he, himself, was soon to die.  After a shipwreck, Cabeza de Vaca then himself became a slave of two different Native peoples.  Without clothes, he became accustomed to walking around naked in the scorching sun.  As a result, he and the remaining survivors would effectively shed their skin twice every year.   

Escaping slavery and heading west, Cabeza de Vaca became interested in curing every malady, learning the medicinal properties of every plant and herb.  As his party traveled, Cabeza de Vaca offered healing to everyone he encountered.  He therefore became seen as a sacred being, among the indigenous peoples, a miracle worker—receiving gifts of copper rattles, turquoise, and, in one village, the offering of six hundred deer hearts.  They had been wandering for nine years when Cabeza de Vaca entered what was called the Village of Hearts—in New Mexico.  In New Mexico came slave-hunting Spanish conquistadors who acted like Spanish conquistadors do.  The Native people refused to believe that Cabeza de Vaca came from these very same people of killing, slaving, and greed.  Cabeza de Vaca had shed his skin to become a man of healing, humility, and generosity.  The conquistadors were who Cabeza de Vaca had been when he landed in Florida. 

Cabeza de Vaca may have been lost.  But being lost opened a door for him to become a healer, learn several Native languages, and identify with the Native people as a transformed person.[1]  The wilderness stripped him of all that was unimportant:  his armor, his material possessions, and an allegiance to the State that should be reserved for God’s alone.  Stripped of all this, Cabeza de Vaca became a healer. 

It was Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great Church saints, who described the wilderness as the place of threat, vulnerability, and danger.  But it is also the place where we meet a love we never would have imagined.  The God of the wilderness may not be safe.  But She is good.[2]

The philosopher Meno asked one of the deep life questions that seems very appropriate to ask while walking in the wilderness, in the midst of a pandemic, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”[3]  In the midst of the wilderness, this pandemic, it feels like we are trying to figure out how to live life in a new world which seems totally unknown to us.  Right?  We don’t even know the right questions in the wilderness.  We feel lost.  And with being lost, comes this hypervigilance that can be just exhausting.  Our souls are on swivels trying to figure out who we are now. 

The word “lost” comes from the old Norse, los, which is about soldiers falling out of formation to disband and go home, the truce complete with the wider world.[4]  In los, soldiers fundamentally changed who they were, fell out of formation, to become civilians in their families, neighborhoods, and communities.  In falling out of formation came this crisis of identity for armies that also provided an incredible opportunity for the now-civilians to remake themselves. 

The Children of Israel leave Egypt only to be seemingly lost in the wilderness.  What the wilderness offers is a place to be undone—to be stripped of all the false layers that have “made” us.[5]  What the wilderness offers us is the opportunity to remake ourselves as individuals, as a community, and as a nation.  But being lost in the wilderness is hard.  So hard.  Moses and the whiners.  Sounds like the local 80s cover band, doesn’t it?  For two nights, this week, at the Dew Drop Inn, Moses and the whiners.   But no, it is the title for the sermon this week.

           Too often we read Scripture with lots of “shoulds” and “oughts.”  We come to Scripture with that bias.  The Scripture passage we have before us today is tailor-made for a Christian “I should” or “I ought.”  I should stop whining.  God will provide.  I should stop complaining.  God will be there.  I do not want to be like one of the Children of Israel, a grumbler.  Even in the worst of circumstances, when things look dim and bleak, I should trust that God will provide.

           That’s nice.  I’m not so sure, however, that is real life.  And if there is anything Scripture is about, it is about real life.   Now there is quite a bit to critique in Scripture.  But the stories that are authoritative, are authoritative, are True, in every age. 

Take the Exodus story.  There are Pharaohs in every age—countries and world leaders who think they are all that and a bag of chips.  There are peoples in every age—folks who work as slaves without Sabbath or rest, who cry out for liberation over and against their oppressors.  And in every age, God is working out, willing and desiring, the liberation and deliverance of these people.  I recently saw a rabbi, Rabbi Jonah Geffen, who posted a social media picture of his new Co-Vid mask which said, “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh!”  The Exodus story is one of those deep stories that is True in every age.

The hymn “Go Down, Moses” is an African-American spiritual because those slaves in our own country believed, no, not just believed, they knew that the story was not just about way back when in Egypt.  Those slaves trusted, had faith that the lessons of that story were authoritative, were True for them in their day and age. 

The oldest tradition within Scripture is the wisdom tradition or literature.  Wisdom literature is not about “shoulds” or “oughts”, but about how life really is.  We commonly hear wisdom literature through proverbs, both Biblical and non-Biblical:  “a stitch in time, saves nine”; “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”; or “it ain’t over till it’s over.”  Again, that is not about “you better do this” or “if you really love God, you ought to do this.”  Those wisdom teachings are to say, “We’ve done a lot of livin’, a lot of laughin’, a lot of cryin’, and for right or wrong, this is life.”  You might hear some of that wisdom teaching in some good country western songs by Patsy Cline or Hank Williams.  

Patsy Cline sings, “Crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you.  I’m crazy for cryin’, and crazy for tryin’, and I’m crazy for lovin’ you.”  That’s not about should or ought.  That’s about how life is with jilted love--just plain crazy. 

And Hank Williams in “Cool Water” sings, “Dan’s feet are sore he’s yearnin’ for, just one thing more than water . . . cool, clear water.  Like me I guess he’d like to rest where there’s no quest for water . . . cool, clear water.”  That is really the wilderness story we have before us today as told by Hank Williams in his song “Cool Water.”  Life is hard.  I’m wishing and hoping that life were more than just wondering whether I’ll get my next drink of cool, clear water.

Though later Scripture writers and Christian tradition may have come to look at the wilderness story with “shoulds” and “oughts” to talk about the unfaithfulness of the Children of Israel, the original story recognizes that grumblin’ is a part of moving through and getting lost in the wilderness.  Lament and complaint are a strong part of the Jewish tradition.  When a basic necessity of life like water is at issue, complaint and lament are an essential part of real relationship with God. 

Complaint and lament are an important part of the prophetic tradition.  We begin by demanding the basic necessities of life from God.  God, in turn, honors our complaint and lament and turns us in complaint against the systems and structures of injustice.

For lack of a better phrasing, complaint and lament are about a “come to Jesus” meeting with God.  “Hey!” we shout at God.  “Hey, I trusted in you.  I took a big risk out here with you.  So I expect you to keep your end of the bargain.  I expect a God like you to act with integrity.  Hey.  Hey!  Where are you?  I am out here in this mess and you have left me alone!”  And then the prophet turns right around and asks the world to honor the integrity of God.  “Hey!  If you said you were the people of God, why are you, why are we not acting in accordance with the way of God?  Hey!”

That is how life is.  We are headed to the place of promise, the place God is leading us.  But before we can get there, we have to go through this time of being lost in the wilderness—a place where the landmarks are all different, where we were fed and nurtured is different, that actual food we eat is different, the places we depended on for meaning are all different, the way we are asked to live is different.  We are stripped of our old clothes and stand naked enough to shed our old skin.  All of what we knew and was dependable, even if it was bad, and wrong, and unhealthy is tough on us as it changes.  We human beings, particularly faith communities, are so good with change.  Right?  Right?  No, not really.

Most all of us become whiners and complainers.  Maybe, just maybe, in that wilderness the church has stopped playing all those hymns I used to love and is singing a bunch of those new hymns.  Or the church has lost the traditions that it made it all warm and fuzzy and comfortable for us.  “Moses, we want to go back to Egypt,” we complain, grumble, and whine.  We fall out of formation to become less like an orderly regiment of soldiers to become more like a seemingly chaotic murmuration of starlings.  And in contrast to many church folk, I find that chaotic murmuration to be not only life-giving but also beautiful.

In the church Tracy and I served in New Hampshire, I wrote a children’s sermon for my first Sunday there that had the refrain, “Moses, we want to go back to Egypt.”  The Chancel Choir began using this as a mantra every time the choir director asked them to sing a new anthem or song they would rather not sing.  Somebody would grumble or complain about how hard the anthem or song was, then it would filter throughout the rest of the choir, and, finally, someone would smile and start the refrain that would be finished by the whole choir, “Moses, we want to go back to Egypt.”

By using this little refrain, the Chancel Choir gave everyone in their group grace to grumble and complain, but they also gave permission for the choir director to try new things.  Nobody ever gets to the promised land without getting lost in the wilderness, risking a journey, stepping out to try new things, and shedding some skin to be a new person or people in the promised land..  Perhaps what it also says is that if we refuse to risk, stop from stepping out, are unwilling to walk, because we hear grumbling, complaining, and whining, then maybe we miss out on what God promises, what God has waiting for us.  We should acknowledge that a new place, an unfamiliar place will lead to grumbling.  But the grumbling and whining and complaining should not deter us from risking a new day and a new way.  If we are cognizant of that, maybe we give permission for us all to move to a new place.

We know this Scripture verse is not a morality tale, not about “shoulds” and “oughts” because when the people do grumble, God does meet their needs.  God provides quail, manna, and water from the rock.  God does not punish the people because they whine and complain.  God actually responds to their grumbling.

Also, if we get caught up in “shoulds” and “oughts” then we have to cast blame on the grumblers and complainers, or on those who are perceived to be causing the grumbling and complaining.  Remember in the story that Moses turns back to God and says, “What am I going to do with these people?”  That’s part of what happens in the wilderness too.  Leaders in the wilderness do some whining and complaining of their own wondering whether God has led the people out to sacrifice their hide for doing what they thought God had called them to do.  “I mean, come on, God, you wanted me to lead them to be a vital, healthy congregation, and every time I try to lead them in that direction, they build the platform, make the noose, and schedule the time for my execution!” 

In our day to day lives, growth rarely happens without some grumbling and complaining of our own.  If we can acknowledge whining as just part of the process, we do not undercut the necessary growth to journey to a new place and be a new people.

So it is as we continue to build this new relationship as pastor and congregation.  I think the wilderness story is a good one for us all to remember.  You may hear me whine and complain about how I just cannot get something to move off center, and I hope you will realize, that comes with the wilderness territory.  I may hear you whine and complain, because this is not how you have experienced the love of God in the past, and I pray I will be healthy enough, in a good enough place, to know that is part of the wilderness territory.  Hopefully, however, as we walk in the wilderness together, I have faith that that whining and complaining will give us each permission to walk in the wilderness, risk, and step out to a place God has promised all of us.  

So let’s practice, say it with me, “Moses, we want to go back to Egypt.”  Let it be known in Jackson, Michigan, as a people find their way through this wilderness of pandemic—this wilderness that gives us an incredible opportunity to remake ourselves, to be about the raw-boned honesty the wilderness of this pandemic demands.[6]  Any whining and complaining we may do in this place will not stop us from the journey God intends for us.  We are the saints at St. John United Church of Christ, people who complain and grumble enough about how the world presently is so that we all might imagine the way God wants it to be, how God wants us to be—like Cabeza de Vaca—a more healing, kind, and generous people.  We will continue walking even while lost, risking, and stepping out knowing that God has promised a good and broad land to us.  Amen.

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[1] Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (New York:  Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 66-71

[2] Belden C. Lane, Desert Spirituality and Cultural Resistance:  From Ancient Monks to Mountain Refugees (Eugene, OR:  WIPF & Stock, 2011), pp. 27-29. 

[3]Solnit, A Field Gude, p. 4.

[4] Ibid, pp. 4-5.

[5] Lane, Desert, p. 31.

[6] Lane, Desert, p. 34.