DETLAXE Backwards, November 2, 2008

Joshua 3:7-17
Matthew 23:1-12
A month ago, the last time we celebrated The Sacrament of Communion we read the account of the people receiving MANNA from God in the wilderness. The people were starving and afraid in a far off foreign wilderness, they cried out to God and had over abundance. That morning, a month ago, we celebrated as we have each year at World Communion passing multiple loaves, and afterward many described that they were offended by the excess of our having so much, too much for what we need to receive. BUT in fact that was the point, the point of that overextended hyperbole... that we do have SO MUCH, too much for what we actually need to receive and rarely do we see it.

I am told that now 60 years after WWII, some 3,000 Veterans are being buried every day, yet each one's life, the stories their lives tell, are unique. As a people of God in this place and time, we are blessed to celebrate a great number of weddings, and a great number of baptisms, and blessed to have to celebrate a relatively few number of funerals, yet each of these, every memorial, every baptism, every wedding, every communion, is unique, even when the couple say exactly the same vows and have the same music, even if they wore the very same dresses, each would be different. This day, as we break bread and hold the cup praying for redemption, the sacrament is the same and different from even a month ago. That was an occasion of GOD's GIFTS OF ABUNDANCE, this day we remember members of our body, of Christ's body, who are part of the spiritual communion no longer physically present with us in life. How MORBID we are, that we envision death as loss, that we grieve and rail against God for taking those dear to us, when part of the wonder of this sacrament is that God gave them to us and shaped our lives through these who loved us, who now are with God in peace.

Like Joshua and the Elders, whom we read this morning crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, in that act and this Sacrament, we recall the crossing of the Red Sea from slavery and oppression begun in economic desperation, to freedom and dependence upon God alone. We have a very human tendency to want to end every story of human life with AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER. But the Bible, our life of faith is different, instead of each story ending, each life experience seems to bring us back to appreciate and exalt what God has done, ANEW. In the Ten Commandments, the nation of Israel was given one LAW to NEVER BREAK, “trust God”, and even before Moses had come down the mountain they had made an idol; reminiscent of the Garden and choosing to eat what was forbidden so that we might be in the place of God; we too have tried to imagine our lives apart from God, as if we were God, as if God did not matter. Crossing Jordan, Joshua and the Elders stood with the Covenant as the people passed by on safe dry ground with the raging water standing over against them, and they and we recall how in the Beginning God brooded over the face of Chaos, and called dry land to form from the midst of the waters, how humanity corrupted ourselves and after the flood God began anew, how God did not lead the nation from Oppression and slavery into the Promised Land, but into a wilderness apart, a season of spiritual searching, so as to be able to enter into the Promised Land giving thanks.

We are an ANXIOUS PEOPLE, a people who like to cut to the chase, to turn to the conclusion knowing how the story will end before determining if it is worth our investing time in reading. Like every generation before us, we want to be EXALTED, remembered. To some that means great wealth, to others great property, great number of children and grandchildren, even great grandchildren, yet others to have a great Name, having accomplished powerful deeds, to have our lives honored by being remembered. The media so often sensationalizes how we died, and how rarely how we lived. For the title of this morning's sermon, we spelt the word EXALTED backwards to emphasize the point that seeking to be exalted gets you no where.

Seeking to be Exalted reminds us of the SEVEN DEADLY SINS... Do you recall what these sins were? LUST, ENVY, WRATH, GLUTTONY, SLOTH, GREED and PRIDE. How ironic, that in our culture today, these are such common traits. Oh, we would not claim to aspire to them, but the very definition of
SLOTH is to live a life of ease, without worry or responsibility.
GREED is what we claim brought down Wall Street.
GLUTTONY seems a description of an obese society who satiate our pain by eating food.
From Sex & The City to Desperate Housewives and the Internet, LUST is part of us.
ENVY is all around us.
WRATH seems an apt description of a world at TERRORIST WAR.
Which leaves PRIDE, EXALTING Our Accomplishments, our Name. The subtlety here is that God Exalted Joshua and Israel by holding back Jordan, Joshua did not do this.

How easy it would be to take PRIDE, to be exalted in our accomplishments as a church, as a community, but the truth is, that time and again of our efforts we have run into walls. The very Session Meeting where we were to celebrate the completion of the Middle Building, we discovered the floor joists of the Sanctuary were collapsing.
We shipped all the pieces and every tool we could imagine needing for our building a Clinic in Africa, and the containers were hijacked, lost for weeks. But when the volunteers arrived, suddenly they drove up.
They needed to make concrete and the well ran dry, when God provided a Well Driller.
We did not do these things, we were EXALTED by God to have been able to serve.

This week, we finally go to the POLLS to elect our Nation's and Community's leaders. Too many in this season have given their allegiance to one candidate or another, for a Church to do so would put in jeopardy our tax exempt status, but we would abandon our sacred responsibility of challenging and teaching, and lifting up the voice of Scripture if we did not say:
God has told you, O mortals, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
To be thoughtful voters, we pray to be free from the cacophony of voices that speak to fear, hate and self-interest rather than faith and commonwealth.
To be informed voters, protect us from partisan opinions, half-truths and easy answers.
And when we seat our leaders upon the Judgement Seat, may we follow as they instruct us, for we have placed our trust in their leadership and they in God; yet as has been revealed to us so many times, may we have the wisdom and responsibility to do as they say and not necessarily as they as humans do.