Sermon, 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 6, 2021, "Give us a king!"

B Proper 5 10 Ord Pilg 2021 

Samuel 8:1,3-20

June 6, 2021 

            As the father of a college-age daughter, long ago, oh too long ago (beginning to weep), I remember the onslaught of princess movies that were fed to my daughter throughout her childhood by the Disney and Barbie universe.  One of the basic truths of those princess movies was that there were, yes, people who were mean-spirited and evil who often had false claims to the throne.  But . . . the insidious lie that was told is that there are also heroic and benevolent dictators who were good and righteous and fair.   That’s all we needed—just the right authoritarian ruler—not an end to authoritarian rule.[1]

Jewish scholar, Everett Fox, notes that most every culture has a tradition that builds the idea of kingship on a “firm popular foundation.”  The stories share the king’s savoir faire and charisma, his many military exploits—killings, conquerings, all aligned with his cultural identification.  The Bible, however, does not follow this ancient cultural tradition.  The Bible begins the description of a king with a sense of dread and misgiving before anything else happens.[2] 

           .  To supplant all kings, pharaohs, and sovereigns, God is made king.  In establishing a covenant with the people, God acts as ancient kings acted in establishing some form of treaty or agreement with their people.[3]  This idea of God as King was such a basic understanding in Judaism that far out into the future, Jesus juxtaposes the Kingdom or Empire of God over and against the Kingdom or Empire of Caesar. 

           But Yahweh, the Living God, was to be of a different character than the kings, pharaohs, sovereigns, and Caesars the Jewish people would inevitably encounter in the ancient Mediterranean world.  The Ten Commandments established a covenant to reflect a loyalty to not only God but one’s neighbor.  While earthly kings and sovereigns drew the land and its resources to themselves, the Living God, as true creator and owner of the land, established the land as a relative to human community for their mutual welfare and well-being.  The word “salvation,” in fact, was closely tied to “liberation,” as in the liberation of the Hebrew people from their religious, political, economic, and institutional enslavement to Pharoah and the Egyptian empire.  The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary defines “salvation” as a broadening or enlarging of space for community life and conduct.[4]

           Sewn into Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith are democratic concepts of a nation of priests, the priesthood of all believers, the Body of Christ which values the most vulnerable, social justice, economic equality, and sovereignty reserved for God alone. 

In the 10 Commandments, God does not deliver the Children of Israel from Egypt only to be just like Egypt.  For example, “Do not steal,” or commandments against theft did not serve to protect private property.  Rather, important possessions belonged to the entire community.  Communal possessions were not to be taken for one’s own private use.  As Hebrew Scripture scholar, Robert Gnuse has written, “The purpose of the command [do not steal] was to curb those who steal from society at large by amassing great wealth, for such theft will ultimately break down that society.”[5] 

Communal property, the land, the object of promise, was not for individual ownership.  In ancient time, the land was effectively, as our New England sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, might say, “the common”—the shared place of public use and thriving. 

In the Exodus story, Pharaoh sought to bring all resources to him, for everything to flow through him.  The true Sovereign of Israel, their Liberator and Deliverer, sought to bring the Children of Israel to a broad space for not only all of the people to thrive but, in particular, for the most vulnerable—the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the land—to be protected. 

           So when the Children of Israel shout to the prophet Samuel, “Give us 

a king!” it is a direct insult not only against the one who delivered them from Egypt.  But against the values of the Living God.  Sovereignty is to be reserved for God alone.

And God knows how this story goes, how these values will lead to ruin.

The Biblical passage before us today is a great foreshadowing of what is to come for the people of Israel; how kings shall rob the people of the very resources that God has given them in liberation and salvation.  Over and over again, we hear the words, “The king shall take away your sons.  The king shall take away your daughters.  The king shall take away your slaves.  The king shall take away your animals.  The king shall take away your land.”  The king shall take.  The king shall take.  The king shall take.  Heck, after the king finishes “taking”, there is hardly anything left for Israelite freedom and enjoyment.  They return to being slaves under their own Israelite king.  Later, in I Samuel, in Chapter 12, Yahweh, the Living God, makes it clear that as Sovereign of Israel, the Living God never took a darn thing from you.[6]  Storming against the people, Yahweh asks, “Whose ox have I taken?  Whose donkey have I taken?  And whom have I defrauded?  Whom have I oppressed?  And from whose hand have I taken a bribe so that justice might not be done?”

           The king shall reverse the very values instituted by God to keep the resources for life and people of Israel, particularly the most vulnerable—the economically poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the land--free, delivered, redeemed, and saved.  Once instituted, priests and prophets attempted to offer a corrective to the king’s office by making him the one particularly responsible for protecting these vulnerable populations.  The coronation psalm, Psalm 72, states:

 

¹²Let it be so, because the king delivers the needy who cry out,
    the poor, and those who have no helper.
¹³ The king has compassion on the weak and the needy;
    the king saves the lives of those who are in need.
¹⁴ The king redeems their lives from oppression and violence;
    their blood is precious in his eyes.

But this psalm was more “hoped for” than it was reality.  As even the heyday of great kings in Israel’s history showed, most often the king takes and takes and takes.

           I feel like I now need to use a “Law and Order” sequitur to say, “ripped from the headlines.”  Whether it be the mammoth amount of money made by the pharmaceutical industry or how the profits of behemoths like Amazon have skyrocketed, governed by what Michael Piketty calls patrimonial capitalism or plutocracy, lobbied and bought by large corporations, industrial agriculture, or the multinational finance industry, or the vaunted and reverential status and absolution of any responsibility for the United States military, we are ruled and all power flows to the king.  And it is killing the common.

God . . . God opposes kings and pharaohs and Caesars who strategically direct the flow of resources to the throne.  God opposes kings because their oppressive power takes and takes and takes to keep the people subjugated and enslaved.

In 2019, according to Inc., Amazon made 11 billion dollars in profits, paid no taxes, and received a $129 million tax rebate.[7]  During pandemic, Jeff Bezos income increased by 86 billion dollars.[8]  Meanwhile, injuries in Amazon warehouses were 80% higher than its competitors.[9]  Indeed, “[t]he combined wealth of America's 657 billionaires grew by 44.6% — $1.3 trillion — during the pandemic.” 

Meanwhile, “[f]rom March 2020 to February 2021, 80 million people in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million Americans fell into poverty.”[10] At a time when we should be bearing one another’s burdens and speaking to the needs of the most vulnerable, the king takes.  

It was Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who was quoted as saying, “We can have democracy in this country or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”[11]

If there ever were a time when we would be reminded that we are all sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins to one another, this time of pandemic should have revealed that to us.  For we know that as long as the pandemic rages in another nation, the greater possibility there is for a variant to occur--which may make vaccinations many of us have received less effective. 

Cases are rising in at least 14 African nations. Hospitals are overwhelmed in some nations.  Others are reporting a third wave.  The World Health Organization is warning that vaccine deployment in Africa has come to an almost complete halt.  The People’s Vaccine Alliance estimates it could take 57 years to fully vaccinate everyone in low-income nations.[12]

Anne Marriott, Oxfam's health policy manager, stated, "These vaccines were funded by public money and should be first and foremost a global public good, not a private profit opportunity.”  Yet vaccines makers refuse to waive patent rights so that vaccines might be made more locally in poorer countries.  Nine new billionaires were created in the pharmaceutical industry as a result of the vaccine.[13]  Rich countries continue to hoard vaccines when, as Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco has said, the only way out of pandemic is application of the vaccine.  Nobody is safe unless we all are safe.[14]  But . . . the king takes. 

Implicit in the passage before us today and in I Samuel, Chapter 12, is the need the Israelite people feel to ratchet up for war, centralize leadership, and take on peoples like the Philistines who are known to have advanced further in military industrial technology than any other people in the land.  As a confederation of tribes, before a king, Israel may not have believed it had the power to impress sons into the army that a king might.  The elders of these tribes also may have believed that a king might make them militarily powerful like other nations.  The giant, Goliath, who ridicules David and his slingshot, is an iconic figure of how the people of Israel felt dwarfed by Philistine military industrial technology.[15]  Though the shepherd boy slays Goliath, the arms race is underway with the need for the Israelite people to abandon faith in the Living God in exchange for shiny new spears to counter the Philistines. 

This is what fear and war do.   Fear and war disrupt and drain the common, centralize leadership and unseat shared thriving and freedom, give power over to kings and sovereigns who then take and take and take, and, inevitably, kings move God off the throne in favor of other idols, lies, and priorities. The king openly states that our prosperity is wrapped in him rather than each other.  So we fear one another instead of the king who drains the common.  The king demonizes the vulnerable to say they are the ones who will drain your livelihood.  In turn, we make the economically poor and the immigrant our enemy pretending that they are the ones who rob of us of our profit margin.  The king amasses a war chest and calls the people to war on his behalf, promoting his own divinity to deliver the people from their insecurity and fears.  The king hoards and privatizes every last thing, including the land and the water, the very thing God gives to live in mutual relationship to the people as their relative. 

To protect our hoarded wealth, requires an ever-greater investment in our military at a time of the longest running war in United States history.  Even if the Pentagon budget were cut in half, the United States would still outspend China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea combined.  We spend more on the military than the next 10 nations combined.[16]  The National Priorities Project shares that “[t]he United States military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of oil and correspondingly, the single largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world. In any given year, the U.S. military pumps more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than some industrialized countries. In 2017, the Pentagon’s total greenhouse gas emissions were greater than the greenhouse gas emissions of Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal.[17]  Rather than a relative to be protected, God’s good earth has become a resource to be exploited. 

This is not about Republican or Democrat.  The increase in the Pentagon budget proposed by President Biden is the size of the entire CDC budget.[18]

We have no shortage of resources.  Abundantly, God has given us the resources.  But they are hoarded by the ruling class.  The king takes. 

I Samuel, Chapter 8, is a critique of a nation that believes in a benevolent dictator rather than a God who desires their shared thriving.  To paraphrase former Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda, I Samuel 8, reminds us that what a faithful nation needs is not a person of faith in the palace but a prophet within earshot.  Prophets were those truth-tellers . . . those people who reminded the powerful of their responsibility for the poor and oppressed.

Our liberation, salvation, and redemption depends on how life goes for not just our private interests but for our whole neighborhood and community, for neighbors and communities half the world over.  That we are bound to one another, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins of one another . . . this is the cruel teaching of the pandemic.

This is what Jesus tried to recognize when he told the lost and forlorn that God was indeed looking for them, when he tended to the grieving and the sick, and shared bread and grape with the hungry and the homeless.  Jesus was trying to restore community to a people caught in the endless Roman War against the Jews in the 1^st Century.  Rome killed millions of Jews, Judea and Galilee were laid waste, and Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean were attacked.[19]  Those meals shared are what we do in communion.  We say that, in a time of war, this blessed church will seek to restore and rebuild our communities, our shared enterprise as a people. 

This congregation knows the character of God though.  We thrive on ways that celebrate the common:  through the ways we share food, Tracy and I were blessed to participate with Perry and Armela in the CROP Walk in May to speak to world hunger, and the work done in efforts for the blanket drive, the food bank, and the community garden. 

We share.  We become something bigger than what we are.  We become . . . Divine.  Would that we continue to build the things that make for peace in our communities and in our world not only through activity and interest but also protesting and standing our ground in peace to say no more of the violence, no more of the death, no more of the war.  It is disrupting and draining our common—not only half a world away but here as the citizens of our own communities.

French economist, Michael Piketty, author the iconic book, Capital, says that it may be a pipe dream right now but we need to have the will to have an international, progressive income tax so nobody can drain the common and hide, and then we need to invest in universal education so that all who want to learn and advance can.  We need people to stop being spectators and see themselves part of grand movement away from kings and toward democracy.  Piketty writes, “We must bet everything on democracy.”[20]  We need people to organize and force the kings of the earth to get serious about this beautiful land and sea and resources that God has given us.   Whatever our answers, it is time for people of faith to seek those answers out so that God’s loving and just will be done on earth.

The king takes.  But God . . . God shares.  The question is, what will the people of God now do?   What will the people of this blessed church do?  How will we communicate God’s salvation to the rest of the world?  You.  You are the blessed Body of Christ, the priesthood of all believers, and it is part of the Congregational heritage of this church to believe and act out the reality of a God who has sewn democracy into us.  May we be those people.  Amen.

---

[1] Watching the TV miniseries, “The Crown” should disabuse anyone of that notion.

[2] Everett Fox, Give Us a King!  Samuel, Saul, and David (New York:  Schocken Books, 1999), p. 34.  I use Fox’s beautifully poetic translation of this passage which show the author repeating the word “take” as a header to every phrase.  Fox also interprets God’s name YHWH as “I-Will-Be-There.”

[3] Robert L. Deffinbaugh, “Give Us a King!” Bible.org  May 25, 2004 https://bible.org/seriespage/give-us-king-1-samuel-81-22.

^[4] “salvation,” Powell, Mark Allan, ed. HarperCollins Bible Dictionary. Abridged Edition. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.

[5] Robert Gnuse, You Shall Not Steal:  Community and Property in the Biblical Tradition (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1985), pp. 6-7.

[6] Fox, Give Us, p. 33.

[7] Minda Zetlin, “Amazon Owes $1 Billion in Federal Income Tax. With Deferments, It May Not Need to Pay Up for a While,” Inc., https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/amazon-1-billion-federal-income-tax-payments-deferred.html

[8] Chase Peterhorn-Withorn, How Much Money America’s Billionaires Have Made During The Covid-19 Pandemic,” Forbes, April 30, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/30/american-billionaires-have-gotten-12-trillion-richer-during-the-pandemic/. 

[9] “Amazon warehouse injuries '80% higher' than competitors, report claims,” BBC, June 2, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57332390. 

[10] Lina Batarags, “America's billionaires got 44% richer during the pandemic while more than 80 million people in the US lost their jobs,” Insider, March 24, 2021, https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-in-america-got-so-much-richer-during-pandemic-2021-3.

[11] http://www.greenbag.org/v16n3/v16n3_articles_campbell.pdf

[12] “Headlines,” Democracy Now!, June 4, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/4/headlines/who_warns_of_surging_covid_19_cases_in_africa_as_vaccine_shipments_come_to_near_halt.

[13] Hanna Ziady, “Covid vaccine profits mint 9 new pharma billionaires,” CNN, May 21, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/21/business/covid-vaccine-billionaires/index.html. 

[14] “Dr. Monica Gandhi on the Origins of COVID-19, Vaccine Equity, the Debate over Masks & More,” Democracy Now!, May 27, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/27/covid_19_origins_wuhan_lab_leak.

[15] See I Samuel 13:19-22 for an explicit reference to the superior technology of the Philistines.

[16] Robert Reich quoting from National Priorities Project, Tweet, @RBReich, https://twitter.com/i/status/1399416383033667587, May 31, 2021. 

[17] Lorah Steichen, “The U.S. Military is a Major Polluter, but "Greening the Military" is a False Solution,” National Priorities Project, May 4, 2020, https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/05/04/if-us-military-major-polluter-why-not-green-military/, quoting Brown University Watson Institute International & Public Affairs, “Costs of War.” https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/ClimateChangeandCostofWar; https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/Pentagon%20Fuel%20Use%2C%20Climate%20Change%20and.

[18] Lindsay Koshgarian, “The Pentagon Increase Is the Size of the Entire CDC Budget,” National Priorities Project, May 14, 2021, https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/05/14/pentagon-increase-size-entire-cdc-budget/.

[19] James Carroll, Christ Actually:  The Son of God for the Secular Age  (New York:  Viking, 2014), pp. 46-54

^[20]Thomas Piketty,  CAPITAL:  in the Twenty-First Century (The Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 573

 

Book Report: Ayten Gündoğdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants

 

I was excited to read this text because of a post I saw on Twitter that talked about Gündoğdu locating the ultimate authority for human rights, not merely in the nation-states that allegedly protect them but in human beings themselves who demand those rights by migrating contrary to unjust law.  That definition of what it means to be human realigned all the ethical pieces in my head.  Mythologically, within my faith, those are exactly the stories I know and tell to relate my values.  Pharaoh seeks to do genocide to the Hebrew people.  With God as Deliverer, Moses, Miriam, and the Hebrew people walk out of Egypt to seek out a broad and spacious land for community life and conduct.  (The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary relates that this is literally how the Hebrew Bible defines “salvation.”)  Fleeing Herod’s edict to kill all children under two years of age, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus walk into Egypt for haven and sanctuary. 

To be human is to flee injustice in search of a broad space, haven, and sanctuary.  If you are a faith nerd, like me, you point to Psalm 23 as a way of recognizing that the most dearly beloved Psalm in Christian communities has echoes of this definition.  Maybe it is why we treasure Psalm 23.  Deep down, Psalm 23 tells us what it means to be a human being.  I want to come back to that. 

This book was a critique of the human rights theory of Hannah Arendt.  Coming out of World War II, international declarations were made about human rights.  Arendt, as a Jewish person living in Germany, became increasingly concerned about the antisemitism she saw escalating in her country.  She was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo and escaped to the United States where she became one of the most important political philosophers and theorists of the 20^th Century. 

Arendt wrote of a “right to have rights.”  In other words, how do we vest rights in such a way that they cannot be taken away when the political winds change?  When fiat or blame is leveled, how do we make sure that people or peoples become something less than human beings?  For when people are without voice, work, or labor, Arendt wrote, they are something less than human beings.  They are expulsed from humanity.  Arendt did not want the discourse of human rights to be something static or certain because, she believed, despots or governments would always find a way to maneuver around a concept that did not move with contingency. 

Here in the text was a word I had never encountered but now has become part of my lexicon.  Arendt thought the discourse on human rights should be “aporetic.”   If you are a regular reader to my blog (did I just hear an echo?), you know that I used this term in my Exodus/Wilderness sermon series.  Aporetic is a way of saying that we should work with Socratic questioning in ways that recognize some things always end up in perplexity.  If we keep at this process, however, we may find a path or a way where there was no path before.  We reexamine, “think without a bannister,” so that no trite or easy answers carry the day. 

Arendt makes it clear that human rights are not something that have any meaning outside of legal leverage and ongoing practices.  In fact, Arendt contends, that real legal codification and practice must be augmented to be real.  In our present day, this could not be any more clear.  Unless we augment rights around employment, voting, and fair housing, allowing those rights to remain static means they are eroded or taken away.  Gerrymandering seeks to take away the power of the vote.  Voting-by-mail is being regularly denigrated by President Trump.  Even the doubt cast on the electoral process may upend the presidential election process.  Augmentation is necessary as a way of meeting contingencies created by those who would subvert basic human rights. 

For Arendt, the basics of what it means to be human are about “cultivating a trust in the reality and regularity of life, establishing a relatively durable dwelling place, and creating public spaces to appear and act in the company of fellow human beings.” (p. 208)  My belief is that faith needs to actively incorporate such concepts into its teaching, preaching, and dialog.  Talking about God creating human beings without such real political and legal standing is romantic discourse without the everyday grit and substance faith should be about.  We should then challenge those in the halls of power who actively expulse others from humanity as people who have made themselves God’s adversaries.  If God created these people to be human beings, who are you to take away their voice, labor, and work, their dependable and routine life?

Gündoğdu relates the quandary Arendt faces as she struggles with rightlessness in an age of rights.  For if human rights are conferred by the nation-state through citizenship, what happens to human rights when people who are not citizens seek human rights?  Are immigrants and refugees not human beings because they have no path to citizenship?  Also, as citizenship is deflated, does it also mean that human rights are lost as well?  With economic inequality on the rise throughout the world, where do we vest human rights?

She references the sans-papieres movement as a way of establishing a “founding” of human rights by occupying a political space not open before, establishing new questions about equality and freedom (encapsulated in a term she references as “equaliberty”), and demanding their role as political subjects.  I think how young people have similarly done this through their legal and political work around climate change. 

This book was dense and a slog for me even as many of the concepts changed my worldview and had me recognizing I needed a more rigorous theology around what it means to be a human being.  Study is a spiritual practice for me because I experience joy in this kind of learning.  It may be that Gündoğdu is just ten times smarter than I am in a way that requires my whole brain for every sentence. 

In keeping with Arendt and Gündoğdu and their definition of what it means to be a human being, I had an incredible conversation with my daughter just the other day.  We talked about the basics of what it means to be a human being.  While voice, work, labor, the regularity and dependability of life, and the willingness to occupy political space are important characteristics of what we all should know as human beings, I do think some Biblical concepts should be added to the mix. 

Coming out of the Biblical Exile, Jewish prophets recognized that without human rights, they were building houses that they did not themselves live in or growing vineyards that they themselves did not eat the fruit of.  I think an investigation of “shalom” concepts like these are part of the ongoing, aporetic dialog that will lead us to a fuller understanding of human rights.  That sense of being able to weave together a community through construction and the growing of food and being able to enjoy the shelter and fruit of that labor are part of what it means to be a human being. 

Finally, one of the primary concepts of “shalom” that is found in Micah 4:4 and in Psalm 23 are key to what it means to be human.  That each of us might be able to sit underneath our own olive tree and find rest and leisure in God’s good creation are considered antidotes to imperial rule.  When there is a widespread sense that we do not have to be hypervigilant about what will happen next to find food or shelter, to avoid being killed by law enforcement, and that the world is not going to hell in a handbasket, we become more fully human.  That the Jewish people celebrate Passover every year, advised to recline in leisure as they eat the meal, is a reminder.  We are reminded that yes, trauma has come and may come, but there are times when our humanity is fully embraced in celebration, Sabbath, and rest. 

Sermon: Exodus/Wilderness Series 1, "Making a broad space," September 13, 2020

A Exodus 1 SJUCC 2020 

Exodus 1:8-14; Psalm 105:16-25; Matthew 11:28-30 

September 13, 2020

           Throughout most of the time that I am with you, I will be preaching from the Exodus and Wilderness stories in the Bible.  I do that because it is the birth story for the Jewish people.  As a Jew, the Exodus and Wilderness stories would have been foundational for Jesus.  The Gospel of Matthew uses the Exodus and Wilderness stories to point to Jesus and say, “This guy . . . the guy from the backwater town of Nazareth . . . he is the second Moses.”  To know the Exodus/Wilderness story is to know something of Jesus.

           Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Yoke, throughout Scripture, is a word used to talk about the Jewish experience of imperial oppression.  It is characterized by its arrogance and the way that it devours the people and God’s good earth.  The yoke of empire says that you will only gain your salvation by unending work.  That all begins with Egypt.  Jesus acknowledges that Jewish history and counters with a way of being that is wholly different.  His yoke is characterized by gentleness, humility, and rest.  Jesus is different than any Pharaoh, Caesar, or Sovereign who has come before him.  Again, to know the Exodus and Wilderness story is to know something of Jesus.

           I also chose to do an Exodus/Wilderness preaching series because it rhymes with some of the challenges and joys I heard as I listened to your leaders talk about the glory that is St. John’s United Church of Christ in Jackson, Michigan.  We get back to the origin story.  We remember who we are.  We recognize that the difficult circumstance we are in, the mainline church declining, living in this poopy pandemic, and trying to cobble together something new . . . ugh, it can be so hard.  Right?  Church community can be glorious.  Church community can be hard work, damaging, and, at its worst, violent. 

           At the end of this sermon series, you may say to yourself, “This Mike Mulberry guy is really geeky about the Bible, spends way too much time thinking about faith, and maybe needs a real life.”  But I hope when we come to the end of the series, you will recognize that the God of the Exodus and the Wilderness, who seemed so far from the Hebrew people at the time . . . that God has been with us and leading us all along.  I pray that will be true.

           As Christians, we talk quite a bit about the word “salvation” and conservative and evangelical tradition has made that word primarily about the afterlife.  In Hebrew Scripture, however, particularly in the Exodus and Wilderness stories, salvation is rooted in this material world, in the land.  The Harper Collins Bible Dictionary talks about the root meaning of “salvation” having to do with a “’broadening’ or ‘enlarging’ and can connote the creation of space in the community for life and conduct.”[1] 

           That is the salvation the Living God delivered for the Hebrew people, the Children of Israel—a broadening, a space made for community life and conduct.

           Now I want to pause here to help the good people of St. John’s UCC really reflect on that meaning of salvation.  Because as I got a tour of the building and heard you all reflect on the ministries that you do at this church, this meaning sure sounds like the salvation St. John’s UCC offers the Jackson community on an ongoing basis.  You broaden a space for community life and conduct with the people you welcome into your building.  You enlarge and make a space for community life and conduct with ways you share your building with so many people in Jackson.  Literally, St. John’s UCC saves Jackson, Michigan, in an everyday way.

           The definition continues:  “More often than not, this is done with divine help, particularly in circumstances where God’s people face an adversary.”[2]

           As we begin the story, we know immediately who the adversary is—Pharaoh.  We learn that this Pharaoh rises to power not knowing how Joseph, the Hebrew, had saved the Egyptian Empire with his dream interpretations and prognostications.  Pharaoh, in his arrogance, thinks he and his empire are self-made.  We know better.  Joseph, the left-for-dead immigrant, follows the trade routes and ends up in prison only to rise to oversee Egypt’s economic recovery.  Pharaoh considers himself the sun, the moon, and the stars.  In other words, he allots for himself position and power that should only be reserved for the gods or, as the Hebrews know, for God. 

           At most churches I serve, I teach a Bible 101 class.  Either in the first or second session together, I relate to everyone that real study of the Bible begins by asking “power questions.”  We cannot really know Divine truth unless we begin by asking basic questions like:   who holds power; who is on the outside looking in; and where is God’s being and activity placed?  As we read and responded in our Affirmation of Faith, earlier in the service, the ancient world assumed that if you were in power, the gods favored you.  If your people had conquered another people, your gods were stronger than theirs.  The status quo is thus because the gods ordained it to be so. 

           The Exodus and Wilderness stories are a response to this ancient understanding.  Pharaoh believes he is in power because Ra has ordained it to be so.  And Pharaoh is the divine mediator between Ra and the known Egyptian world.  Instead, far outside the pomp and circumstance of the palace, out in the wilderness, opposed to Pharaoh’s State-sponsored slavery and violence, another story is being told.  In keeping with Pharaoh’s theology, later in history the philosopher Aristotle stated, “Some are born to be slaves.  And some are born to be slave masters.”  The God of the Exodus knows that Aristotle’s statement is rubbish and that we are all born to be the Beloved Children of God.

           While Pharaoh believes he has a Divine right to make the Hebrews, the people he doesn’t know, work harder and longer as slaves, the God showing up in the wilderness has come close, knows the suffering of the people, and does not believe their divine destiny is to remain slaves.  Space needs to be made . . . broadened and enlarged for the Hebrew people to experience true community.  In contrast to what Pharaoh believes of the Egyptian god, Ra, the God in the wilderness has not ordained the status quo to be just so.  This God desires, yearns for, is willing to draw close to, the most powerless in the world.  This is the God of the Exodus and the Wilderness. 

           The God of the Exodus and the Wilderness shows up and right away questions absolute power and certainty.  This God cannot be pinned down or enshrined in a particular spot.   This God doesn’t remain in one place.  The God of the Exodus and the Wilderness is on the move, lives in a tent.  To know the activity and movement of God then, we learn that this is not so much a God of answers--but questions not to tear down or destroy but to reveal and disclose the Truth.

In keeping with God’s character then, the Hebrews are delivered from Egypt only to walk out into the wilderness on an aporetic journey.  Aporetic is a word used by Jewish and German-born philosopher and human rights advocate, Hannah Arendt, who helped a number of people find safe passage out of fascist Germany, was herself arrested by the Nazis, and escaped to the United States.  Arendt knew that to carve in stone parameters for human rights would allow any fascist or two-bit dictator to co-opt right and rule to the point where the most vulnerable would eventually have no rights at all.  Better she thought, to challenge power through Socratic questioning and aporetic inquiry.  Aporetic was a way of saying that important questions forever ended up in perplexities but working with that perplexity and those unending questions made us a better people.  Aporetic inquiry does not lead to a path or road on solid ground, but it does point to the possibility of navigating the uncertain world of perplexities to trace a passage, one that was not available before—a critical practice that one takes on when there are “no fixed directions,” no familiar “landmarks,” or “bearings” to rely on.    Aporetic inquiry is “thinking without a bannister” because we recognize we are living in a time or place of uncertainty.  Our willingness to dialogue and question allows for a reexamination of key concepts, principles, and assumptions because we are on a perplexing journey which defies easy resolution.[3] 

What Hannah Arendt describes in aporetic inquiry and Socratic questioning is the journey God puts the Hebrew people on as they walk out into the wilderness.  A space has been opened, broadened, expanded, but there are no fixed directions, no familiar landmarks, or bearings to rely on.  The Hebrew people will have to learn how to forage for food in this new place, how to distill water they can drink in this new place, how to be a community and a people in this new place. 

This is the primary reason I decided we should embark on this sermon series.  In the changing landscape of the church, in the midst of a global pandemic, one of the last things we have is certainty.  All that we find around us is perplexity.  How shall we be on this new and sometimes frightening journey?  The rules have all changed.  We don’t know where to go to get our most basic needs met as a people.  And there has been conflict as we all try to figure out who we shall be on this perplexing, aporetic journey. 

But this is where our Biblical stories are a gift to us.  We learn from the Exodus and the Wilderness story that living in a perplexing wilderness does not mean God has deserted us.  On the contrary, God is on the move.  As the people of God, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, we are not necessarily called to resolution and certainty but to affirm the presence of God, ask the questions (some that may have no real answers), and learn what it means to be on this new journey.  We trace a passage that was not available before.  Just because this journey is different, does not mean it is without the blessing of God. 

God is on the move.  So we, as the people of God, should be too.   Where we were in the not-so-distant past, it may have been safe and certain and known.  But the Biblical story seems to teach us that our God is not found in the safe and the certain and the known.  I invite you, to walk with me in the wilderness, with a God who would never look upon you and say anything less than, “You are my Beloved Children, created in my image, just for this uncertain, perplexing journey.  Do not think for a second that your lowly estate in this moment means I approve of the status quo.  Rather, I am working through you to transform the slavery, violence, and oppression of every Pharaoh and Caesar until all of Jackson, all of Michigan, might experience a broad and expansive place, and know salvation.”  Amen. 

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[1] “salvation,” Powell, Mark Allan, ed. HarperCollins Bible Dictionary. Abridged Edition. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).  https://www.bibleodyssey.org/HarperCollinsBibleDictionary/s/salvation.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ayten Gündoğu, Rightlessness in an age of rights:  Hannah Arendt and the contemporary struggles of migrants (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 22ff