"Asking the Right Question" October 1st, 2017

Exodus 17:1-7 Matthew 21: 23-32 How many of us this morning, worry about the future? How many of us are filled with anxiety about what kind of world will be left to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren? With the threats of Nuclear powered North Korea and Iran… With the reality of ocean temperatures increasing, spawning hurricanes, we are up to what Marie, so there have been 13 so far this year… With the melting of the polar ice caps… With proposed revisions to the Tax Laws… With nothing having been resolved about Health Care… If I was not worried before I began this morning, I am now. When the Hebrew people crossed over the Red Sea from Egypt into the Wilderness, the Wilderness was not a Land of Milk and Honey! The people of God were filled with Anxiety. We recall these Exodus stories as Miracles: How God provided Manna: Bread from Heaven, and Water from Rock, but more than miraculous circumstances, we need to listen for the underlying Real Question... The people complained: In Egypt we sat beside boiling pots of meat, Moses, have you brought us here to die? The people argued and complained with Moses over their thirst, as if he could make Lakes and Rivers to SATISFY, which Moses took as an affront to his leadership. BUT Exodus is telling a different (far older) story than Numbers and Deuteronomy. In those the Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, there is a second occurrence where Moses strikes Rock this time without being told to by God, and there are snakes sent to bite the people on the ankles. Here, in Exodus, the story is simply that the people sought satisfaction and did not trust God. The people of God complained (Masah) and found fault (Meribah), so God used Moses as a divine-ing rod to bring water from rock, and immediately afterward the Hebrew Nation was again filled with fear, now of the Amalekites. There is this wonderful vignette of how when Moses raised his arms in the position of Jesus on the Cross, a Pastor Blessing the people, AND God was victorious, but when Moses grew tired, and his arms drooped, the Hebrews lost to the Amalekites. Hur and Moses’ brother Aaron found a stone for Moses to sit upon, and they held his arms up for him. The question of Exodus, is not: Did Israel have it better in Egypt than the wilderness, or Did God provide Food and Water in the Wilderness? But instead the question the people asked was: WHETHER GOD IS WITH US OR NOT? In Egypt, Greece and Rome, there were Statues in every Community, the Currency also had the profile of the Pharaoh, King, Caesar, because having the image of the Ruler in that place demonstrated the Authority of that Ruler over those people. This why the toppling of the Statue of Sadam Hussein was such a powerful image. HOWEVER the people of God were given Commandment Never to make an Image of God, because we each already bear God’s living image on each of our faces. With food, with water, with the Canaanite tribe of King Amalek, the people doubted. This is the very human question John Dau asked in the film about the S Sudanese: Did God grow tired of us? Has God forgotten us? I would candidly admit my own failings to you, that last Sunday when I shared that a beloved good friend a 93 year old leader of our church had had a stroke, and though he could move his fingers and toes, he was not coherent, and I FEARED that the end might be near. But whether it is the fact that Jack Howard has never been stopped by any obstacle, or demonstration that God is with us… Jack bounced back. Three years ago, we had a parishioner, whose father-in-law called me during vacation to say that their son-in-law whom I had married, had been diagnosed with three months to live… and recently the inoperable tumors have shrunk by 45%. For the last decade, a life-long member of this church has been tethered through their home by an Oxygen tank, who recently received a transplant of lungs and now is living a new life. Are these images of the Miraculous? Amen! Are we guaranteed survival from every disease… No. We are Mortal after all. But what greater proof do we need that God is with us? God has never tired of us? We are not alone? Probably you have been as frustrated as I, this week, because Puerto Rico does not just represent some Island in the Caribbean, or a Mission Trip some from our church took last summer. These are friends. Pastor Edwin’s wife and I have worked together on a Committee for the last several years. There are countless reports of the lack of Bread and Clean Water, of Medicine, Electricity, Gasoline, because ships could not unload at port. But we have been naming these people of God, lifting them up before God, and no one on earth seems to know that we pray, that we care. The difference between the people of God doubting, complaining and arguing, versus the reality of God’s Love, is what Matthew is all about. According to the Text, on Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem HUMBLE on an ASS with a Colt = The Symbol of The Righteousness of God, as people cried out Not from Liturgy, Not reading the Bible, but from real human Need: HAVE MERCY ON US SON OF DAVID! Jesus healed the Blind and Lame. Jesus drove out those making profit off of others’ sacrifices. And the Chief Priests and Elders challenged Jesus, BY WHAT AUTHORITY are you doing this? Jesus responded By What Authority did John the Baptist BAPTIZE? See there is a Guilty Secret, those of us who are Religious Leaders bear, John the Baptist and Jesus were not recognized by the Church, by the Religious authorities in their own time. The Presbyterian Church is part of The REFORMED PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN CHURCH, as such, we broke away from Orthodoxy, Protesting against Religion, demanding REFORM not because we did not like the way it was, but because we need to listen for GOD BEING WITH US. All too often, Religion has been used for power and politics, and pacifying people. The REAL QUESTION OF THE AUTHORITY OF GOD, is the very human question of whether we have Tired of God, whether we are so human, so caught up in protecting our 401Ks and Jobs and Reputation as being rational, that we have forgotten God? Or whether we can turn over all our anxiety and human frustration, to God. Especially when trusting God with our grandchildren’s future in the shadow of Nuclear Weapons, and Hurricanes, and Strokes and Tumors? The point of Jesus’ parable of the Two Sons, is not whether you were Baptized, not whether you said all the right things, but regardless of what we have said whether we have lived in relationship with God, trusting God who is the only one that can make a difference. Whenever, the Bible says a Man had two sons, we need to run through the list, because these are not independent isolated stories. Cain and Able, Jacob and Esau, Pharaoh and Moses, The Prodigal and the Elder Son, while there is struggle, while they often did wrong initially, God never gave up!