Exodus 38:1-12
Matthew 22:34-46
We study engineering and economics, physics and philosophy, so as to know.
We study poetry and music and art so as to listen, to see, to feel life's rhythm.
The call to worship this day, was written a decade ago, when the Arizona State legislature dropped all study of creative writing, art and music from the public school curricula. What seems self-evident, is that governments want answers, fix the economy, bomb the enemy, make peace, without full comprehension of the means, the weight and value of balancing and changing priorities.
When we do turn to the Scriptures, we seek wisdom and faith, as if these were set apart from human reason. Years ago, there was a New York Times' Best Seller “All I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarden”. Which emphasized the basics of cooperation, sharing, compassion, loyalty. There are times when life seems so complicated, time is a commodity and there is no where safe or secure to invest. Times when, rather than seeking complex new leaps of understanding to balance pointillism with string theory, we need to listen to the needs of others and act out of a commitment of love. Faith does not require that we know the language of dogma, distinctions between Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, between a Hermeneutic and Proof Texting, faith requires a commitment of covenant. In Western society, we tend to imagine a commitment as if a warrantee. Covenant commitment is not for 1 year, or three, or a lifetime, but for all time.
Part of the wonder of this morning's readings are the importance of visiting an idea a second time. A first effort may be experiential, may be flawed, might be forgot, but a second time underscores and makes permanent. Contracts are legally binding, Covenants are cut into stone or into us in love. An odd, but true reality, love cuts us, love can wound, can scar, can disfigure, but as covenant is cut into our lives.
We are a cynical stiff-necked people, who hear the word love, and drop into an overtly sentimental ridicule of “The Church Lady”, where everything is “SPECIAL” and we bless one another's heart with saccharin sweetness. We emphasize that, this love is different, this is not as perverse as eros, or as flowery as romance, AGAPE is a special kind of love Jesus made up. He did not. The Greek language had just as many words for love, just as many emotions, as we do. But what Jesus describes in Greek with AGAPE is what in the Old Testament was named as “hesed” a steadfast love, a living covenant, that could simultaneously suspend a myriad polarities with the reality: because you are loved.
Exodus records that God loved Israel, loved the people so much as to protect them from oppression; to give the enslaved, freedom; and part seas for them. But as often happens in first love, the people did not appreciate what was offered. The power and beauty of the 10 Commandments we know, the 10 Commandments here written on two stone tablets, are that knowing how fickle we are, having already been betrayed and abandoned by us, God offers the covenant anew. Not ignoring what took place, for God is named as one who can visit suffering on a people for four generations, but God is also steadfast in mercy, in loyalty, in compassion. The 10 Commandments are not about LAW, they are an emphatic statement of COMMITMENT from God, that God will be with us, God will be faithful, and God can transform what was broken into something of value.
There has been a Wendy's Commercial this Summer, emphasizing value. One friend asks the other for a dollar, then offers to trade that buck for the 99 cent sandwich the other is enjoying, and the one enjoying the sandwich recognizes that what is in hand has increased in value and they do not want to give it up.
We have been witnesses to miracles. Imagine a young couple, who are afraid that if they bear a child they may pass along DNA that their child would endure what they had suffered as a child. But before the child is born, they diagnose a more serious problem. Despite all our prayers to make the suffering go away, to relieve them of their plight, the child is born, and with a series of surgeries is healthy and a great gift. Suddenly all their earlier fears are forgot.
There is a certain irony to Exodus 34, because where the first version spelled out four laws of relationship to God and six of relationship within human culture, eight in the negative and two Thou Shalts, in the dictating of these commandments, God instructs the people of Israel to avoid their enemies, to not cook lamb in goat's milk, and rather than worshipping fertility Gods to observe three offerings annually, an offering at the time of planting, an offering pledging future commitment when crops first begin to bear, and an offering at harvest, yet while the people attempted to follow these as a kosher people, the 10 Commandments were remembered as stated in the first version.
In total, the Old Testament Rabbis had counted 618 different laws, 248 positive and 365 thou shalt not, associated with 248 parts of the human body and 365 days of the year. We have followed the last several weeks as the Pharisees and Saducees each tested Jesus about Authority, about the Sanctity of Marriage, about the Resurrection of the dead, and the Power of the Empire versus the Kingdom of God, finally this morning a Theologian is put forward to challenge Jesus on the nuances of all the laws and commandments of what it is to be Kosher. Of the 618 different laws, cooking meat in its mother's milk, versus circumcision, lying, versus simple coveting, pride versus murder which is the greatest? According to Hebrew Law all the Commands were equal, if Sin is brokenness from God to do what you desire as if there were no God, what difference if that is because you were prideful, or murderous? Yet, Jesus replied, the way we need to understand the Laws, the key to everything is to follow the Covenant to love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Here the purpose of the Second is not that the first was insufficient, but that the two together, support and reinforce one another. like the form of the cross, we love God, and we love one another, everything else is understood through these covenant commitments. One need not know every single iota of every law, if you follow these covenant commitments, for all the Law and the Prophets are based upon these.
Having been tested in all these ways, Jesus then tests his listeners. Some have suggested Jesus might be the Messiah, so he asks of the Pharisees, Saducees, Scribes and Theologians: :”How is the Relationship between Beloved King David and the Messiah?” They respond The Messiah is Son of David, as recorded in David wanting to build a house for God and God instead making a Covenant for all future generations that God would be present with the Son of David. To which Jesus then sings one of the most loved of the Psalms which identifies David addressing the Messiah as Lord. It would be as if in the midst of the Political debates last spring, if instead of trying to explain their faith and religious loyalties, the Candidates for our highest Office, our greatest Powers, simply stood before the Nation and humbly sang “Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, twas blind but now I see.”
The answers to life's problems do not have to be complex, the language of faith need not get in the way. What matters, the only thing that maters is our COVENANT COMMITMENT, our Love and Devotion. I have tried to start a tradition, that was begun years ago in my becoming a minister. After College and Seminary Graduate School, candidates for the ministry sit for four four hour written exams similar to passing the Bar in Law, or Medical Boards for a Doctor, after which you are permitted to find a Church that wants you. Then, and only then, are you able to stand before the Presbytery as the Elders and Ministers ask whatever questions they desire. And since the reUnion of the Presbyterian Church in 1984, every time a minister changes Presbyteries they are questioned all over again. The first time I was examined this lasted for two hours. At the end of which you are escorted from the room as they debate and vote on your preparedness for serving a Church. As I was led back into the Sanctuary after the vote, the Presbytery rose to sing: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” as reminder that the blessings we seek are not the Culture's values of Celebrity, Wealth, Notoriety, and Security, but God and God's love alone
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Seeing and Notseeing Is Believing, October 19, 2008
Exodus 33
Matthew 22:15-24
Yesterday, I was at our sons' Parents weekend, where we heard the former Majority leader of the US Senate Dr. Bill Frist speaking about economic development in Underdeveloped countries. After the lecture I introduced myself and described we had created a Clinic in South Sudan and provided for it for two years. He responded dismissively “O yes, religious groups have done a number of wonderful things.”
I was speaking with someone on the Nominating Committee the other day about the church, who described “We've created a very fragile, dangerous consortium. All these separate cliques, side by side. We know that in other times the church has been divided against itself. The world has so many different people's of differing cultures, differing nationalities, ages, orientations, all of which seem to be in competition. It's going to take a firm and authoritative hand to keep all these divergent groups working together!” And we are diverse , we claim that diversity as a value, trying to be as diverse and mutli-talented as possible, but, it doesn't take a heavy hand. What is required is an ABIDING PRESENCE, a covenant that we will trust one another and trust God; the presence of the holy and the presence of one another, that we can be the body of Christ in this place and time, together.
There are those among us who are rationalists, who know that SEEING is BELIEVING, we want to build success upon success, accomplishment upon accomplishment, to invest only in that which can guarantee a sound future.
There are also those among us, who theorize that for BELIEF to be Belief, our BELIEF must be in WHAT IS NOT SEEN. Science, Law and Physics can determine the mathematic probability of every contingency, but there are limits to our knowledge, limits to what we can prove, there are also times when rationalism and pragmatism and technology are simply too stiff, too cold and practical when we need human touch and re-assurance, support and prayer, at which point we BELIEVE because the alternative is hopelessness or a reliance on fate.
There are also those Second Grade Grammar teachers among us, who will insist that we need to use the plural adjective, that rather than SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING, What is proper is that SEEING and NOT SEEING ARE BELIEVING, but it is precisely the interplay and juxtaposition of these TWO as ONE where faith is alive and real. SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING.
If the Bell Choir were each to play all their notes all at the same time, or even as ever each chose to do, there would be sound, there might even on occasion be chords, but we would not call this music. ONLY when every one of the choir have rehearsed together and built trust in one another, being there when needed and having made mistakes, as well as the power and presence of silence, does music resonate.
Last week we read together that the people became anxious because of the delay of Moses on the mountain. The people wanted predictability, wanted a guarantee that WHEN I pray, my wishes will be answered. When I make an offering, I will get what I desire. SO they made an Idol, the GOLDEN CALF. Moses came down the mountain and broke the calf, naming that what they had done was to repeat the Sin of Adam and Eve in Genesis, because they chose to do for themselves as if God did not exist. Moses then went back up the Mountain at Horeb and God says “GO on Your Way, take the people” Go to the Promised Land and get it over with. To which Moses says NO LORD, Not without you. There can be CHEAP GRACE, where we rush to get to the end, where we accept without understanding or forgiveness, without claiming and accepting all that has gone along, but the point is not to GET LIFE OVER WITH.
In the late 1980s, George Steiner, Cultural Critic and Philosopher of Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia, went so far as to describe that every great work of ART, all great LITERATURE deals with the SEARCH for “LIFE, DEATH and GOD”, everything of worth in culture is a transcendent journey that without God is humanly impossible. We could send rockets to the moon, but there would be no questioning of WHY, no search for anything beyond ourselves, without God being part of our lives. An artist can follow all the rules to technically paint or sculpt like one of the Masters, but without faith, without conviction and calling, life would lack passion, life would lack meaning. We can marry and have children, but how different the experience when we come together with shared hopes and dreams and belief in the impossible. We pace the floor at night with our children wishing we could take away the ear ache, make the cancer vanish, allow them to succeed, and where life fails to struggle and wonder, WHY GOD?
Moses does what neither Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac or Jacob had done before him. All the Patriarchs had encountered God, responded to God's call, walked with God, and struggled with faith when circumstances did not fall their way; but most were like Jonah wishing they could get away from God, only to discover that they could not, so they would do as God commands. Moses demands that God be in his life. Moses demands that life, that marriage and the community, and the raising of children, the daily and lifelong struggles, all of it, all of life, WHAT IS SEEN & UNSEEN, be HOLY.
I am convinced that there are painful times in life, which God uses. I would not go so far as to blame God for causing suffering in the world; but that there are times when our lives, our understanding and knowledge and schedules are SO FULL, we have left no time or space for what is holy, that we are humbled. And in those struggles, the car accident that almost killed us... the economic collapse that means we cannot retire to do as we wanted to do, but instead must continue to be of service... the doubts of fidelity that we realize there is GOD in our lives. In the silence and in the struggle, and the juxtaposition of the two, there is FAITH.
The Ancient Empire of Rome was in many ways the cultural opposite of our own time, not that one is good and the other bad, both have their limitations. But in our time and culture, it would be rare and odd for a person to stop in the midst of their work to pray. Often when greeting folk on Sunday morning, they will comment on the weather, and I will respond “GOD DOES GOOD WORK” and they will look at me as if humorous. It is as if, Faith in God is safe so long as it is kept within this house of worship, within Sunday morning. In the Ancient Roman World, they would be equally PROFANED if you brought something worldly into Religion. Religion was a place for faith in the UNSEEN, the MYTHIC and MYSTIC and SPIRITUAL, and to bring logic, or reason, or world events, into a house of worship was seen as evil. In the Ancient Roman Empire, the culture had so legislated the difference between what is SEEN what is REAL IN THE WORLD and WHAT is UNSEEN/ what is of God, that you were required to use different money in worship than in the culture. As a Roman Society, you paid taxes, you bought and sold and traded in ROMAN Currency. But within a Temple, you made an offering with a living thing, if you had come a great distance and could not or had not brought a heifer or a goat, you could buy them, BUT you had to use TEMPLE CURRENCY not Roman Coinage. Like going through International Customs you traded all the Roman currency you had on you so as to bring nothing worldly into this place, and when you left you sold or gave away everything of the Temple so as to take nothing out into the real world. The Pharisees ask a POINTLESS Question, IS IT LEGAL TO PAY TAXES? Not is it Righteous, is it faithful, is it moral or ethical, or As a man of faith is it WRONG to support the Government...but is it LEGAL. And Jesus replies, by saying I do not have a Coin of the Empire, do any of you? When they produce one, they have already “Profaned Themselves” by having brought that thing into this place.
But he goes further, to question the inscription and picture on it. At which point, he is naming this challenge as a Question of AUTHORITY. The question is not whether it is legal or right to have to pay taxes, but if you have to give to both, which is more important, what is the greatest authority in our lives? And they describe that the image of Caesar is on the coin, to which Jesus claims and you are created in the image of God, so render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God.
The issue of our times is not Should we go into despair over the Market, nor Can we continue living Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow we may die, WE DO NEED to change our priorities and question what is of greatest value, but in that profess we are created in the image of God.
Matthew 22:15-24
Yesterday, I was at our sons' Parents weekend, where we heard the former Majority leader of the US Senate Dr. Bill Frist speaking about economic development in Underdeveloped countries. After the lecture I introduced myself and described we had created a Clinic in South Sudan and provided for it for two years. He responded dismissively “O yes, religious groups have done a number of wonderful things.”
I was speaking with someone on the Nominating Committee the other day about the church, who described “We've created a very fragile, dangerous consortium. All these separate cliques, side by side. We know that in other times the church has been divided against itself. The world has so many different people's of differing cultures, differing nationalities, ages, orientations, all of which seem to be in competition. It's going to take a firm and authoritative hand to keep all these divergent groups working together!” And we are diverse , we claim that diversity as a value, trying to be as diverse and mutli-talented as possible, but, it doesn't take a heavy hand. What is required is an ABIDING PRESENCE, a covenant that we will trust one another and trust God; the presence of the holy and the presence of one another, that we can be the body of Christ in this place and time, together.
There are those among us who are rationalists, who know that SEEING is BELIEVING, we want to build success upon success, accomplishment upon accomplishment, to invest only in that which can guarantee a sound future.
There are also those among us, who theorize that for BELIEF to be Belief, our BELIEF must be in WHAT IS NOT SEEN. Science, Law and Physics can determine the mathematic probability of every contingency, but there are limits to our knowledge, limits to what we can prove, there are also times when rationalism and pragmatism and technology are simply too stiff, too cold and practical when we need human touch and re-assurance, support and prayer, at which point we BELIEVE because the alternative is hopelessness or a reliance on fate.
There are also those Second Grade Grammar teachers among us, who will insist that we need to use the plural adjective, that rather than SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING, What is proper is that SEEING and NOT SEEING ARE BELIEVING, but it is precisely the interplay and juxtaposition of these TWO as ONE where faith is alive and real. SEEING AND NOT SEEING IS BELIEVING.
If the Bell Choir were each to play all their notes all at the same time, or even as ever each chose to do, there would be sound, there might even on occasion be chords, but we would not call this music. ONLY when every one of the choir have rehearsed together and built trust in one another, being there when needed and having made mistakes, as well as the power and presence of silence, does music resonate.
Last week we read together that the people became anxious because of the delay of Moses on the mountain. The people wanted predictability, wanted a guarantee that WHEN I pray, my wishes will be answered. When I make an offering, I will get what I desire. SO they made an Idol, the GOLDEN CALF. Moses came down the mountain and broke the calf, naming that what they had done was to repeat the Sin of Adam and Eve in Genesis, because they chose to do for themselves as if God did not exist. Moses then went back up the Mountain at Horeb and God says “GO on Your Way, take the people” Go to the Promised Land and get it over with. To which Moses says NO LORD, Not without you. There can be CHEAP GRACE, where we rush to get to the end, where we accept without understanding or forgiveness, without claiming and accepting all that has gone along, but the point is not to GET LIFE OVER WITH.
In the late 1980s, George Steiner, Cultural Critic and Philosopher of Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia, went so far as to describe that every great work of ART, all great LITERATURE deals with the SEARCH for “LIFE, DEATH and GOD”, everything of worth in culture is a transcendent journey that without God is humanly impossible. We could send rockets to the moon, but there would be no questioning of WHY, no search for anything beyond ourselves, without God being part of our lives. An artist can follow all the rules to technically paint or sculpt like one of the Masters, but without faith, without conviction and calling, life would lack passion, life would lack meaning. We can marry and have children, but how different the experience when we come together with shared hopes and dreams and belief in the impossible. We pace the floor at night with our children wishing we could take away the ear ache, make the cancer vanish, allow them to succeed, and where life fails to struggle and wonder, WHY GOD?
Moses does what neither Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac or Jacob had done before him. All the Patriarchs had encountered God, responded to God's call, walked with God, and struggled with faith when circumstances did not fall their way; but most were like Jonah wishing they could get away from God, only to discover that they could not, so they would do as God commands. Moses demands that God be in his life. Moses demands that life, that marriage and the community, and the raising of children, the daily and lifelong struggles, all of it, all of life, WHAT IS SEEN & UNSEEN, be HOLY.
I am convinced that there are painful times in life, which God uses. I would not go so far as to blame God for causing suffering in the world; but that there are times when our lives, our understanding and knowledge and schedules are SO FULL, we have left no time or space for what is holy, that we are humbled. And in those struggles, the car accident that almost killed us... the economic collapse that means we cannot retire to do as we wanted to do, but instead must continue to be of service... the doubts of fidelity that we realize there is GOD in our lives. In the silence and in the struggle, and the juxtaposition of the two, there is FAITH.
The Ancient Empire of Rome was in many ways the cultural opposite of our own time, not that one is good and the other bad, both have their limitations. But in our time and culture, it would be rare and odd for a person to stop in the midst of their work to pray. Often when greeting folk on Sunday morning, they will comment on the weather, and I will respond “GOD DOES GOOD WORK” and they will look at me as if humorous. It is as if, Faith in God is safe so long as it is kept within this house of worship, within Sunday morning. In the Ancient Roman World, they would be equally PROFANED if you brought something worldly into Religion. Religion was a place for faith in the UNSEEN, the MYTHIC and MYSTIC and SPIRITUAL, and to bring logic, or reason, or world events, into a house of worship was seen as evil. In the Ancient Roman Empire, the culture had so legislated the difference between what is SEEN what is REAL IN THE WORLD and WHAT is UNSEEN/ what is of God, that you were required to use different money in worship than in the culture. As a Roman Society, you paid taxes, you bought and sold and traded in ROMAN Currency. But within a Temple, you made an offering with a living thing, if you had come a great distance and could not or had not brought a heifer or a goat, you could buy them, BUT you had to use TEMPLE CURRENCY not Roman Coinage. Like going through International Customs you traded all the Roman currency you had on you so as to bring nothing worldly into this place, and when you left you sold or gave away everything of the Temple so as to take nothing out into the real world. The Pharisees ask a POINTLESS Question, IS IT LEGAL TO PAY TAXES? Not is it Righteous, is it faithful, is it moral or ethical, or As a man of faith is it WRONG to support the Government...but is it LEGAL. And Jesus replies, by saying I do not have a Coin of the Empire, do any of you? When they produce one, they have already “Profaned Themselves” by having brought that thing into this place.
But he goes further, to question the inscription and picture on it. At which point, he is naming this challenge as a Question of AUTHORITY. The question is not whether it is legal or right to have to pay taxes, but if you have to give to both, which is more important, what is the greatest authority in our lives? And they describe that the image of Caesar is on the coin, to which Jesus claims and you are created in the image of God, so render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God.
The issue of our times is not Should we go into despair over the Market, nor Can we continue living Eat, Drink and Be Merry for Tomorrow we may die, WE DO NEED to change our priorities and question what is of greatest value, but in that profess we are created in the image of God.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
A Presumptuous People, October 12, 2008
Exodus 32:1-14
Matthew 22:1-14
We are a PRESUMPTUOUS people, filled and pre-occupied with our own anxieties.
Would that we could be the people we envision ourselves to be: Joyful, Faithful, Ethical, Moral, Just, acting to follow through on clear priorities... However, Jesus aptly names that when Called, we have other things to do. The parable describes that among those called, the first is a wealthy land-owner who claims “I have just bought a piece of property and must go inspect what I have bought. The point is not that he bought land sight unseen, but that having bought this land, he wanted to go stand in the middle of his possession and see all that was his. He wanted to walk up and down upon it and take pride that all this was his and his alone. He could not be distracted by a responsibility, even to the King.
The second is a business man who claims to have recently purchased ten pair of oxen and he wants to try them out. The point is not that the fields need to be plowed, not that the oxen are in any danger, but simply that he has bought ten pair of oxen, and like our having a fleet of new cars, he cannot be content until he has driven each, he wanted to touch them, put them into service, he wanted to witness what profit they could provide for him. He could not be distracted by a commitment even to their King.
The third professes, I just got married myself, ignoring that he could have brought his bride to share the honor of attending the King's son's Wedding, ignoring that he could have understood how important this was by having himself gotten married, ignoring this could have blessed his marriage, he wanted to be alone. He saw his priorities foremost. He could not be distracted by an obligation even to the King.
We put our own wants ahead of the world's needs, our demonstration of free will ahead of God's plan. It is the middle of October in Central New York, we have a National Holiday celebrating the discovery of our Continent by Western Europeans over 400 years ago, and on this weekend off the temperature is going to be 75 degrees. Some of us, cannot wait for the first snow, others want to return to mid-summer when the weather was not as beautiful in our eyes as the Autumn has become. Still others, want to hold this moment in time, preserving the color of the leaves, the smells, sound of geese, failing to recognize that the smell is of decay, color the change brought by the trees withdrawing moisture into their roots, flocks preparing to fly.
The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, even Computerization, each were attempts to equalize all humanity, that with public education, with access to information and technology, the human condition would be improved. In so many ways our circumstance has been improved. We now live in a time where quality health care is described as both a basic Human Right and a Moral Responsibility, rather than a privilege of the aristocracy, or an obligation of the State. Where access to owning a home has been perceived as a right all in our nation could attain. Where education is perceived as not only available, but essential. Where technology has made things available cheaper, faster and smaller than ever before. But with all this we do enjoy, we still are human, like two year olds we still want more and we want what we want when we want. Binding our anxiety, we presume to demand our fulfillment of our desires, hurrying up life, foolishly trying to get it over with.
This is the story of God's creation of the Garden of Eden and The Fall of Adam and Eve, all over again. God had saved the people. God brought them out of slavery and oppression into nature's wilderness, which the people presumed to be AN EXILE. God fed the people and gave them water, God gave the people the LAW and Commandments, which the people did not have to, but freely accepted. The Covenant was cut, offerings were made, the smell of the burnt cereal offerings filled their nostrils, the blood of the sacrifice of ten bulls was sprinkled on the people to seal them in God's Covenant. In the intervening 12 chapters, between Chapter 20 where they receive the 10 Commandments and 32 which we read this day, Moses went up Mount Sinai where God planned and specified in great detail what the Ark of the Covenant would look like, how the Tent of meeting was to be adorned, how the Tabernacle was to be filled with music, all to inspire the people with awe. The purpose of worship was not to be an obligation, not a tax paid to the gods for fertility, pleading for blessings, or changing the economy to benefit our portfolio. God's desire was for the people to be in relationship with God to co-create a Tabernacle and Tent and Ark representative of the Covenant Relationship God had made to this people setting them apart for all history, setting them apart from all others, saving them and preserving them throughout generations. BUT Moses was gone too long. The people became anxious for leadership. The people were idle, and they wanted to do something with their anxiety, so with the blessing of Aaron the idle people made an IDOL of Gold. Inso doing, just as the first humans ate of the FRUIT God commanded not to eat, this people broke the commandment to have no other Gods.
How often, when we are anxious, depressed, filled with fears and blah, we try to fill that void with something gold, something that sparkles, that is new, tangible, malleable, able to be owned and controlled. But that chocolate, the land we own and possess, the oxen and cars and tools of production, do not satisfy.
God had planned to co-create a relationship that would inspire. God had planned that worship like a fine feast would be planned and simmered, developed and nurtured for the people to find fulfillment. The people wanted to have something that would fill the void. Something they could point to when anxious and follow the ritual of their making to that which they owned and possessed, and having paid the duty, having fulfilled their obligation, all would instantly be right with the world. Mom could kiss the boo-boo and make everything right. Dad could repair the broken toy as good as new.
The struggle of God and Moses, the struggle we each encounter, was what to do when the covenant is broken. God's response is “LET ME BE ALONE” so as to get even with this people. God is not simply going to let the people that God saved go after idols of their own making. God is not simply going to kill and destroy. God had created this people, like the act of creation itself, so God would plunge them into primordial chaos. AND MOSES, this man of faith, says “NO LORD”. God says “Do not worry, I will make a great nation out of you, I promised this to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who was renamed Israel, long ago, I promise this to you as as a person of faith as well.” And Moses says “NO GOD.
You are a Rational, Reasoning God, and this is a teachable moment, not a time for vengeance.
Your Reputation with other Nations, with all the world, is on the line, if you do this, no one is going to remember the people broke covenant and made a golden idol. The people will recall God set them free and killed them.
Repent God, and allow the people to repent. And Moses recounts for God the story of faith, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Israel. And this Nation called Israel, as well.” Then Moses came down the mountain to call the people to also repent. Throughout time, we have described God as UnChanging, what we mean by that is that GOD'S COMMITMENT, GOD'S FAITH and COVENANT IS, though God can repent, forgive, choose to enter in and make a difference.
How rarely do we as people of faith do what Moses did! Rather than inventorying our assets. Rather than counting our accomplishments, or going off to be alone. Rather than checking and repositioning our portfolios. To stop, to recall the “spiritual” moments in our lives, to retell our stories of faith.
I recall about three years ago, going along with the Boy Scouts as an Advisor as they climbed the Presidential Range of the Appalachian Trail of the White Mountains. We began the hike, and the mountains became taller and taller when suddenly it occurred to me that these boys were seventeen year olds and I was middle aged. That first day, I convinced myself that all I had to do was survive, keeping up, until we got to the camp that night, and I would not have embarrassed my son, so I could hike down the following day. When midmorning we reached a plateau and looked out over the 50 miles of mountains we would be hiking, I recognized there was no way down, all we could do was trust God and trust one another to get us through this journey.
I recall a weekend about two years ago, when we had a wedding planned for a Saturday afternoon, and during the week there was a death of another family. What none of us could have anticipated, God's sense of humor, was that the mother of the Bride and the daughter of the deceased were best friends, so that morning the mother of the Bride sat with her best friend and consoled her at her loss, and that afternoon the daughter of the deceased sat beside the Mother of the Bride proudly watching the daughter they had raised together walk up the aisle.
There was a man who was very angry at life. He used to throw things and swear, lose his temper and spit on people. One day a friend sat down with him and said “What's wrong with you hat you do this?” He responded that he acted out this way at Church, because they Church preaches forgiveness, so no matter what he did, people had to forgive him. His friend told a different story, that when he had been very young his mother had died, and the whole church took responsibility to love and care and act as mother for a mother-less child. Rather than a place that had to forgive, this was a people who demonstrated love and commitment and faith.
The question is not, is there brokenness in the world. There is. The question is whether we bind our anxiety to shiny objects filled with empty calories that entertain us to death, or whether we see these as faith stories, examples of God in our midst and we change.
Realize, it is not enough, simply to be baptized, to have once long ago claimed a relationship of faith. The parable of the Wedding Garment is that the King invited everyone, good and bad. When the King entered the Banquet Hall, the ing saw one who had not prepared for a Wedding Feast, but who had simply come for a free meal. Elsewhere, those who were caught recognized their wrong and prayed for the opportunity to change. This one did not, he could see nothing other than his own hunger and desire.
Matthew 22:1-14
We are a PRESUMPTUOUS people, filled and pre-occupied with our own anxieties.
Would that we could be the people we envision ourselves to be: Joyful, Faithful, Ethical, Moral, Just, acting to follow through on clear priorities... However, Jesus aptly names that when Called, we have other things to do. The parable describes that among those called, the first is a wealthy land-owner who claims “I have just bought a piece of property and must go inspect what I have bought. The point is not that he bought land sight unseen, but that having bought this land, he wanted to go stand in the middle of his possession and see all that was his. He wanted to walk up and down upon it and take pride that all this was his and his alone. He could not be distracted by a responsibility, even to the King.
The second is a business man who claims to have recently purchased ten pair of oxen and he wants to try them out. The point is not that the fields need to be plowed, not that the oxen are in any danger, but simply that he has bought ten pair of oxen, and like our having a fleet of new cars, he cannot be content until he has driven each, he wanted to touch them, put them into service, he wanted to witness what profit they could provide for him. He could not be distracted by a commitment even to their King.
The third professes, I just got married myself, ignoring that he could have brought his bride to share the honor of attending the King's son's Wedding, ignoring that he could have understood how important this was by having himself gotten married, ignoring this could have blessed his marriage, he wanted to be alone. He saw his priorities foremost. He could not be distracted by an obligation even to the King.
We put our own wants ahead of the world's needs, our demonstration of free will ahead of God's plan. It is the middle of October in Central New York, we have a National Holiday celebrating the discovery of our Continent by Western Europeans over 400 years ago, and on this weekend off the temperature is going to be 75 degrees. Some of us, cannot wait for the first snow, others want to return to mid-summer when the weather was not as beautiful in our eyes as the Autumn has become. Still others, want to hold this moment in time, preserving the color of the leaves, the smells, sound of geese, failing to recognize that the smell is of decay, color the change brought by the trees withdrawing moisture into their roots, flocks preparing to fly.
The Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, even Computerization, each were attempts to equalize all humanity, that with public education, with access to information and technology, the human condition would be improved. In so many ways our circumstance has been improved. We now live in a time where quality health care is described as both a basic Human Right and a Moral Responsibility, rather than a privilege of the aristocracy, or an obligation of the State. Where access to owning a home has been perceived as a right all in our nation could attain. Where education is perceived as not only available, but essential. Where technology has made things available cheaper, faster and smaller than ever before. But with all this we do enjoy, we still are human, like two year olds we still want more and we want what we want when we want. Binding our anxiety, we presume to demand our fulfillment of our desires, hurrying up life, foolishly trying to get it over with.
This is the story of God's creation of the Garden of Eden and The Fall of Adam and Eve, all over again. God had saved the people. God brought them out of slavery and oppression into nature's wilderness, which the people presumed to be AN EXILE. God fed the people and gave them water, God gave the people the LAW and Commandments, which the people did not have to, but freely accepted. The Covenant was cut, offerings were made, the smell of the burnt cereal offerings filled their nostrils, the blood of the sacrifice of ten bulls was sprinkled on the people to seal them in God's Covenant. In the intervening 12 chapters, between Chapter 20 where they receive the 10 Commandments and 32 which we read this day, Moses went up Mount Sinai where God planned and specified in great detail what the Ark of the Covenant would look like, how the Tent of meeting was to be adorned, how the Tabernacle was to be filled with music, all to inspire the people with awe. The purpose of worship was not to be an obligation, not a tax paid to the gods for fertility, pleading for blessings, or changing the economy to benefit our portfolio. God's desire was for the people to be in relationship with God to co-create a Tabernacle and Tent and Ark representative of the Covenant Relationship God had made to this people setting them apart for all history, setting them apart from all others, saving them and preserving them throughout generations. BUT Moses was gone too long. The people became anxious for leadership. The people were idle, and they wanted to do something with their anxiety, so with the blessing of Aaron the idle people made an IDOL of Gold. Inso doing, just as the first humans ate of the FRUIT God commanded not to eat, this people broke the commandment to have no other Gods.
How often, when we are anxious, depressed, filled with fears and blah, we try to fill that void with something gold, something that sparkles, that is new, tangible, malleable, able to be owned and controlled. But that chocolate, the land we own and possess, the oxen and cars and tools of production, do not satisfy.
God had planned to co-create a relationship that would inspire. God had planned that worship like a fine feast would be planned and simmered, developed and nurtured for the people to find fulfillment. The people wanted to have something that would fill the void. Something they could point to when anxious and follow the ritual of their making to that which they owned and possessed, and having paid the duty, having fulfilled their obligation, all would instantly be right with the world. Mom could kiss the boo-boo and make everything right. Dad could repair the broken toy as good as new.
The struggle of God and Moses, the struggle we each encounter, was what to do when the covenant is broken. God's response is “LET ME BE ALONE” so as to get even with this people. God is not simply going to let the people that God saved go after idols of their own making. God is not simply going to kill and destroy. God had created this people, like the act of creation itself, so God would plunge them into primordial chaos. AND MOSES, this man of faith, says “NO LORD”. God says “Do not worry, I will make a great nation out of you, I promised this to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who was renamed Israel, long ago, I promise this to you as as a person of faith as well.” And Moses says “NO GOD.
You are a Rational, Reasoning God, and this is a teachable moment, not a time for vengeance.
Your Reputation with other Nations, with all the world, is on the line, if you do this, no one is going to remember the people broke covenant and made a golden idol. The people will recall God set them free and killed them.
Repent God, and allow the people to repent. And Moses recounts for God the story of faith, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Israel. And this Nation called Israel, as well.” Then Moses came down the mountain to call the people to also repent. Throughout time, we have described God as UnChanging, what we mean by that is that GOD'S COMMITMENT, GOD'S FAITH and COVENANT IS, though God can repent, forgive, choose to enter in and make a difference.
How rarely do we as people of faith do what Moses did! Rather than inventorying our assets. Rather than counting our accomplishments, or going off to be alone. Rather than checking and repositioning our portfolios. To stop, to recall the “spiritual” moments in our lives, to retell our stories of faith.
I recall about three years ago, going along with the Boy Scouts as an Advisor as they climbed the Presidential Range of the Appalachian Trail of the White Mountains. We began the hike, and the mountains became taller and taller when suddenly it occurred to me that these boys were seventeen year olds and I was middle aged. That first day, I convinced myself that all I had to do was survive, keeping up, until we got to the camp that night, and I would not have embarrassed my son, so I could hike down the following day. When midmorning we reached a plateau and looked out over the 50 miles of mountains we would be hiking, I recognized there was no way down, all we could do was trust God and trust one another to get us through this journey.
I recall a weekend about two years ago, when we had a wedding planned for a Saturday afternoon, and during the week there was a death of another family. What none of us could have anticipated, God's sense of humor, was that the mother of the Bride and the daughter of the deceased were best friends, so that morning the mother of the Bride sat with her best friend and consoled her at her loss, and that afternoon the daughter of the deceased sat beside the Mother of the Bride proudly watching the daughter they had raised together walk up the aisle.
There was a man who was very angry at life. He used to throw things and swear, lose his temper and spit on people. One day a friend sat down with him and said “What's wrong with you hat you do this?” He responded that he acted out this way at Church, because they Church preaches forgiveness, so no matter what he did, people had to forgive him. His friend told a different story, that when he had been very young his mother had died, and the whole church took responsibility to love and care and act as mother for a mother-less child. Rather than a place that had to forgive, this was a people who demonstrated love and commitment and faith.
The question is not, is there brokenness in the world. There is. The question is whether we bind our anxiety to shiny objects filled with empty calories that entertain us to death, or whether we see these as faith stories, examples of God in our midst and we change.
Realize, it is not enough, simply to be baptized, to have once long ago claimed a relationship of faith. The parable of the Wedding Garment is that the King invited everyone, good and bad. When the King entered the Banquet Hall, the ing saw one who had not prepared for a Wedding Feast, but who had simply come for a free meal. Elsewhere, those who were caught recognized their wrong and prayed for the opportunity to change. This one did not, he could see nothing other than his own hunger and desire.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
God's Law or Love: Yes! October 05, 2008
Exodus 20
Matthew 21:33-44
The former slaves of The Pharaoh of Egypt had cried out from oppression and GOD made them FREE!
These former slaves of Pharaoh had cried out in hunger to God, and received MANNA from Heaven.
These former slaves of Pharaoh had complained of thirst and received WATER from solid Rock.
Afraid of the strangers around them, complaining against one another, God had provided them leaders.
Now finally, the people come to pay the piper, to receive the LAW and know what the Lord commands.
As slaves of Egypt, Pharaoh had ordered they build Pyramids and Statues, the Great Sphinx, National Monuments against all Eternity that not even Napoleon and his armies, or Hitler and the Nazis could eliminate from the face of the earth.
In order that they live, Pharaoh had commanded they kill their own babies and they had done so.
In order to be fed, Pharaoh commanded they labor without straw to bind the mortar, still they worked.
What now would this LORD require of them, for having destroyed their oppressor, for feeding them?
The 10 Commandments are strange and awesome, both because of what is required, and what is permitted, as well as the underlying pre-suppositions of what is referred to as the LAW of MOSES.
Despite satirists over time suggesting there were three or four tablets, 12, or even 40 Commandments, there are but 10. Four explicitly defining relationship to God, and 6 of our relationship to one another.
2 Requirements, and 8 Prohibitions. All of which makes one pause to consider, which is easier to fulfill, a Law that requires YOU MUST, or YOU SHALL NOT?
You shall Honor your Parents means that ALWAYS, in everything continually, you MUST.
You shall NOT COVET allows that you can do anything, and everything, all that is required is that you not desire to possess, to fight over, to guard ownership, and by the process of naming we insert the opposite that we SHALL DO, Have Compassion, act in love and devotion.
We have by virtue of believing in A NEW TESTAMENT, with a NEW COVENANT, perpetuated an understanding that the LAW of EXODUS was somehow insurmountable, unable to be lived.
BUT what Jesus described was not ABANDONMENT of the Law as unattainable, but rather, that he would demonstrate how we could so live into the underlying presuppositions of GOD'S LOVE that the LAW becomes self-fulfilled. By our undying commitment, by our willingness to sacrifice for what we love, by our Communion we more than fulfill the Commandments.
Often, people have examined these LAW by LAW, one after another, as if we could somehow find the loophole, the way around all the rest. VITAL to our understanding of the Law, is accepting their UNITY, that all our human relations are built upon our relationship as Human Creatures to God.
The difficulty, is that the GOD OF EXODUS is not a “USER-FRIENDLY GOD”.
We have a tendency to believe that either LONG, Long Ago, before Noah, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the CREATOR OF THE WHOLE COSMOS of universes and therefore in this Post-Modern, Computerized, North American culture, GOD cannot be concerned with what you and I do, think, feel;
OR that there is NO God, that God is the best desire of Human hearts and human aspirations. That as an ethical and moral people we have projected our philosophical ideals to Create a God of our making. Both of these are impotent and unreal. The One Time Creator God is far too distant in time and space, unconcerned, TOO LARGE to have care and passion and compassion for us.
The God of our best ideals, ethics and mores, is TOO SMALL, utterly dependent upon the values and emotions and beliefs of this people today.
BOTH Assume, there is No God, so we live as if we were God. That God has no hands but our hands. Countering both, is the God of EXODUS, who was so close at hand and attentive as to hear the people's cries, and TO CARE, and to enter in.
The God of Exodus was so powerful, that the most powerful and affluent of all the Pharaohs of the Awesome Empire of Egypt was manipulated into confrontation with all his resources, and in the end, the Pharaoh and Egypt, and all their technology and riches and weapons of war, were laid desolate.
For the last several weeks, our National Attention has been focused on the Economy, most recently the CREDIT Crisis, before that UNEMPLOYMENT, before that the STOCK MARKET, before that the HOUSING MARKET, before that GAS PRICES; and we have discovered the implications of our fears and our economy upon the whole world.
In response our leadership created a BILL, which was VOTED, ADOPTED and SIGNED into LAW, granting Powers and Authorities, Tax Breaks and the Ability to Tax the General Population in order to guarantee and protect our limited resources.
One Law, that gives authority for those trusted to use $850 Billion.
A Law to protect and save our investment for the protection and control of our limited resources.
In a WORLD OF POLYTHEISTIC IMAGINATION, God's Law requires we have faith in God alone.
The Bible assumes that Nations will put trust in Presidents and Governments in our ability to create Laws.
The Bible assumes humanity will desire to put faith in The ECONOMY.
Humanity will believe in our own power to wage WAR.
We will devote lifetimes, slaving to own and recreate a piece of Land, this is the reason behind a MORTGAGE that in Latin refers to until death.
For LOVE, for LUST, for PLEASURE for ETERNAL REMEMBRANCE, for PROSPERITY, for REDEMPTION, for PEACE, for CHILDREN what would we do? The 1st COMMANDMENT undercuts all else, that we place our trust, NOT in Washington, Not in Wall Street, not in POLITICS, not in the ECONOMY, not in WAR, not in EDUCATION, but that we place our faith and trust in the limitless generosity of God.
This is a God who does not allow us to use the resources of the earth to make statues or monuments or tombs against eternity, to show our devotion.
This is a God who Not only does not ask us to SWEAR DYING ALLEGIANCE, but who does not allow us to swear, by heaven, or by the name of God.
This is a God who demonstrating the sufficiency of Life, that we do not need to fear or be anxious, entreats us to regularly stop working to SABBATH, to reflect on life in all its fullness.
Repeatedly this week, in Board Rooms, in the Newspaper, in the Political Debates, INSTITUTIONS and AUTHORITIES were asked to name ethics and values, to define marriage, to define the rights and relationship between two who live a committed partnership, to describe what are the legal responsibilities we have for persons in our care and whether a person has the right to refuse treatment, to refuse what authorities determine to be best in order to live out their days and die as they choose, to define the responsibilities of a wife, a mother, a husband a father.
IF we begin with the belief that GOD and GOD alone is GOD, and that all our relationships evolve from the generosity of God. We need a few basic Commands to live by, and the number of BILLS needing to be passed to be LAWS, the rush to save to save the Economy, or to fight a War, or our political battles over Marriage, over defining human relationships will be few.
If instead, we begin, in our fears and our desire to possess to own, to be GOD, then we fail to understand the garden of life in which we live. We fail to see the winepress and the tower for what they can do, and instead guard and covet, even killing the Son of God, when our authority is challenged.
Matthew 21:33-44
The former slaves of The Pharaoh of Egypt had cried out from oppression and GOD made them FREE!
These former slaves of Pharaoh had cried out in hunger to God, and received MANNA from Heaven.
These former slaves of Pharaoh had complained of thirst and received WATER from solid Rock.
Afraid of the strangers around them, complaining against one another, God had provided them leaders.
Now finally, the people come to pay the piper, to receive the LAW and know what the Lord commands.
As slaves of Egypt, Pharaoh had ordered they build Pyramids and Statues, the Great Sphinx, National Monuments against all Eternity that not even Napoleon and his armies, or Hitler and the Nazis could eliminate from the face of the earth.
In order that they live, Pharaoh had commanded they kill their own babies and they had done so.
In order to be fed, Pharaoh commanded they labor without straw to bind the mortar, still they worked.
What now would this LORD require of them, for having destroyed their oppressor, for feeding them?
The 10 Commandments are strange and awesome, both because of what is required, and what is permitted, as well as the underlying pre-suppositions of what is referred to as the LAW of MOSES.
Despite satirists over time suggesting there were three or four tablets, 12, or even 40 Commandments, there are but 10. Four explicitly defining relationship to God, and 6 of our relationship to one another.
2 Requirements, and 8 Prohibitions. All of which makes one pause to consider, which is easier to fulfill, a Law that requires YOU MUST, or YOU SHALL NOT?
You shall Honor your Parents means that ALWAYS, in everything continually, you MUST.
You shall NOT COVET allows that you can do anything, and everything, all that is required is that you not desire to possess, to fight over, to guard ownership, and by the process of naming we insert the opposite that we SHALL DO, Have Compassion, act in love and devotion.
We have by virtue of believing in A NEW TESTAMENT, with a NEW COVENANT, perpetuated an understanding that the LAW of EXODUS was somehow insurmountable, unable to be lived.
BUT what Jesus described was not ABANDONMENT of the Law as unattainable, but rather, that he would demonstrate how we could so live into the underlying presuppositions of GOD'S LOVE that the LAW becomes self-fulfilled. By our undying commitment, by our willingness to sacrifice for what we love, by our Communion we more than fulfill the Commandments.
Often, people have examined these LAW by LAW, one after another, as if we could somehow find the loophole, the way around all the rest. VITAL to our understanding of the Law, is accepting their UNITY, that all our human relations are built upon our relationship as Human Creatures to God.
The difficulty, is that the GOD OF EXODUS is not a “USER-FRIENDLY GOD”.
We have a tendency to believe that either LONG, Long Ago, before Noah, The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was the CREATOR OF THE WHOLE COSMOS of universes and therefore in this Post-Modern, Computerized, North American culture, GOD cannot be concerned with what you and I do, think, feel;
OR that there is NO God, that God is the best desire of Human hearts and human aspirations. That as an ethical and moral people we have projected our philosophical ideals to Create a God of our making. Both of these are impotent and unreal. The One Time Creator God is far too distant in time and space, unconcerned, TOO LARGE to have care and passion and compassion for us.
The God of our best ideals, ethics and mores, is TOO SMALL, utterly dependent upon the values and emotions and beliefs of this people today.
BOTH Assume, there is No God, so we live as if we were God. That God has no hands but our hands. Countering both, is the God of EXODUS, who was so close at hand and attentive as to hear the people's cries, and TO CARE, and to enter in.
The God of Exodus was so powerful, that the most powerful and affluent of all the Pharaohs of the Awesome Empire of Egypt was manipulated into confrontation with all his resources, and in the end, the Pharaoh and Egypt, and all their technology and riches and weapons of war, were laid desolate.
For the last several weeks, our National Attention has been focused on the Economy, most recently the CREDIT Crisis, before that UNEMPLOYMENT, before that the STOCK MARKET, before that the HOUSING MARKET, before that GAS PRICES; and we have discovered the implications of our fears and our economy upon the whole world.
In response our leadership created a BILL, which was VOTED, ADOPTED and SIGNED into LAW, granting Powers and Authorities, Tax Breaks and the Ability to Tax the General Population in order to guarantee and protect our limited resources.
One Law, that gives authority for those trusted to use $850 Billion.
A Law to protect and save our investment for the protection and control of our limited resources.
In a WORLD OF POLYTHEISTIC IMAGINATION, God's Law requires we have faith in God alone.
The Bible assumes that Nations will put trust in Presidents and Governments in our ability to create Laws.
The Bible assumes humanity will desire to put faith in The ECONOMY.
Humanity will believe in our own power to wage WAR.
We will devote lifetimes, slaving to own and recreate a piece of Land, this is the reason behind a MORTGAGE that in Latin refers to until death.
For LOVE, for LUST, for PLEASURE for ETERNAL REMEMBRANCE, for PROSPERITY, for REDEMPTION, for PEACE, for CHILDREN what would we do? The 1st COMMANDMENT undercuts all else, that we place our trust, NOT in Washington, Not in Wall Street, not in POLITICS, not in the ECONOMY, not in WAR, not in EDUCATION, but that we place our faith and trust in the limitless generosity of God.
This is a God who does not allow us to use the resources of the earth to make statues or monuments or tombs against eternity, to show our devotion.
This is a God who Not only does not ask us to SWEAR DYING ALLEGIANCE, but who does not allow us to swear, by heaven, or by the name of God.
This is a God who demonstrating the sufficiency of Life, that we do not need to fear or be anxious, entreats us to regularly stop working to SABBATH, to reflect on life in all its fullness.
Repeatedly this week, in Board Rooms, in the Newspaper, in the Political Debates, INSTITUTIONS and AUTHORITIES were asked to name ethics and values, to define marriage, to define the rights and relationship between two who live a committed partnership, to describe what are the legal responsibilities we have for persons in our care and whether a person has the right to refuse treatment, to refuse what authorities determine to be best in order to live out their days and die as they choose, to define the responsibilities of a wife, a mother, a husband a father.
IF we begin with the belief that GOD and GOD alone is GOD, and that all our relationships evolve from the generosity of God. We need a few basic Commands to live by, and the number of BILLS needing to be passed to be LAWS, the rush to save to save the Economy, or to fight a War, or our political battles over Marriage, over defining human relationships will be few.
If instead, we begin, in our fears and our desire to possess to own, to be GOD, then we fail to understand the garden of life in which we live. We fail to see the winepress and the tower for what they can do, and instead guard and covet, even killing the Son of God, when our authority is challenged.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
DELEGATING TRUST September 28, 2008
Exodus 18: 13-27
Matthew 21:23-32
Ordinarily, we follow the Lectionary, a three year week by week schedule of readings, to encourage reading the diversity of the Bible, and that every Church of every denomination would converse with the same passages, and hopefully one another. BUT, these are not ordinary times.
Following the Lectionary, after the Crossing of the Red Sea and Manna from Heaven, prior to receiving the 10 Commandments, we would ordinarily read of the peoples' grumbling and complaining leading to Moses naming that place on the journey Massah / Grumbling and Meribah / Complaining. I am uncertain why the Religious Authorities suspect we need to read about the people grumbling and complaining, every year, twice each year? So I looked at the passages between this and the next, and discerned these three which we never are given to preach, the justification being that these deal with the specific circumstances of that specific people in time. This is the differentiation that when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL” the minister is preaching; when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THY NEIGHBOR'S CHICKENS” the pastor is medling.
The three passages between The Grumbling and Complaining of Massah and Meribah and Moses receiving the 10 Commandments, are:
That the wandering tribe of escaped Hebrew slaves were attacked by the Canaanite tribe of the Amalekites, and Joshua went into battle against Amalek. While Moses stood on the hill watching them, whenever Moses raised his hands to appeal to God, Joshua would win, and whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek would win. So Aaron and Hur, held Moses hands up for the whole day until Joshua and the Lord had saved the people.
Recall that when Moses saw the burning bush, he had been keeping the sheep of his Father-in-Law Jethro, a priest of the Midianites. When Moses went back down to Egypt, and led the people out away from Pharaoh, Moses had left his wife Zipporah and their two sons Gershom (we were alien in an alien land) and Eliezer (my father's God saves us) with Jethro upon the mountain. Now Jethro brings the family to Moses. As Moses recounts to Jethro what took place, how God had saved them at the Red Sea, Jethro led Moses in making an offering and thanking God.
The following morning, Jethro noted that Moses was both leading the people, judging between the people on every complaint, and appealing to God for guidance of this people. This is probably the first event in human history of a leader being challenged about burn-out, and needing to be taught to delegate.
These are passages about TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE; and we are in a time in human history where TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE are lacking. These are not simply matters that we can choose, I am going to trust / or I am not. CONFIDENCE must be lived into and developed day after day, from isolated grand occasions and repeated small events, through increasingly greater delegations of commitment, as well as retracing our steps, asking for forgiveness and looking for help when we struggle.
This week our Nation's leaders explained that we are in a fiscal crisis. If something bold and dramatic is not done, the wheels of our Nation's economy will grind to a halt; and that very lack of inertia, that lack of momentum would require even greater resources than doing something now. Both sides had been quick to blame the other, both have been sobered by fears of impending doom, but the underlying issue, the underlying issue, is one of TRUST, Consumer CONFIDENCE, questioning how to cultivate a willingness to follow and to risk.
Israel had been a rag-tag mob of grumblers and complainers, former slaves, who knew only to do what they were told or be beaten, they knew not how to TRUST or to believe. What was dramatized for Moses and the people, was that when Moses appealed to God they were saved. Literally, over and over throughout the day, when he lifted his hands in prayer, they were victorious. Yet, whenever he tired or was distracted, when his hands and his Confidence faltered, they were beaten.
There are times when daily prayer, the grace before a meal, or sleep, seems rote and ritual, but these are the simple foundations of trust and faith. We are extremely fortunate as a congregation to celebrate a number of weddings and baptisms. One of the elements we include in weddings is a daily reminder to pray for each other. To awake in the morning and realize how blessed we are to have been given each other. In the middle of the day, to stop from our busy-ness, to name the blessing of challenge and life lived for those whom we love. In the evening, not to ignore each other taking life for granted, but to talk together and inquire about changes, because we do not have the ability to read one another's minds, but the responsibility to ask what is upon their hearts as they grow and change through life. And before the end, before we lay down the last time, to thank God for having given us the blessing of one another to share life.
Not only in perpetual acts of faith, but when especially blessed, to stop and name our Trust in God. Jethro returns with Moses' family. Jethro hears the wonder of all that has taken place. And Jethro models for Moses and all Israel the human need to Thank God, to make an Offering. A decade ago, at a family gathering, their three year old wandered down to the water and out on the docks. Suddenly the family festivities were interrupted by the barking of their dog, and when they investigated they found the child had fallen in the lake and the dog was pulling him to shore wet, surprised but safe and sound. The dog received a special treat, and they made a special offering, saying they were so thankful their grandchild was alive.
So often, we are caught up in wedding receptions and family birthdays at who is sitting next to whom, whether they have the right meal, whether the fireworks will be inspiring, that we forget the reason for the reception, for the feast, for the gifts, all began with this simple act of Jethro teaching Moses to make an Offering to God in thanksgiving for their blessings.
There are those who are waiting for me to dance around Jethro's instruction to Moses of the need to delegate. Years ago, our congregation was extremely divided because of a failed co-pastorate. It did not seem to matter, what the issue was, whether turning the Sanctuary, replacing the roofs, problems with the Nursery School, or the Organ, friend had been turned against friend into differing camps. So the new pastor exercised authority, bringing all decision-making, all power and responsibility back to the pastor. We used to have what we described as ALL COMMITTEE night, which meant that all the Committes met simultaneously and the pastor literally ran from one to another, with problems or ideas surfacing just as soon as you left, until the pastor was set to have a nervous breakdown. We separated committees to meet at different times on different days, and gradually delegated Christian Education Committee to the Christian Educator, Finance to the Business Administrator, etc. But time has passed again, we as the Church have grown and changed to where it appears we may need an Associate Pastor. LET ME BE CLEAR, THIS IS NOT CONSIDERATION OF A CO-PASTOR, but rather a delegation of authority, of trust and confidence, that just as in Israel they gathered in small groups, in 10s and 50s and hundreds and thousands, so we may need to have those who work especiallly with youth fellowships, with mission.
If we were to do so, we need to be clear of the trust and confidence we share. These are difficult financial times, when everyone is a little uncertain about the future, and this has specific financial consequences. We can be thankful that the Finance Committee and Session have nurtured the endowments of the Church, to allow us the opportunity to consider this even in times of economic unrest. We need to talk together, to share concerns and ideas and hopes and dreams, especially including those who will be most effected.
One of the questions we must ask ourselves in this, and continually address in all we do, is the question of our Motivation, of our Authority. The question of the Temple Authorities to Jesus, and his reply to them, questioning where the Authority of John the Baptist came. Do we consider these options because of our own desires, out of concern for the community, are they motivated by evil, or by God? We must function according to sound business practices, but we are not simply a business, we are “The Church in this time and place”, so we must question whether the things we take on and those we delegate, the wars we fight and the offerings we make, are done in response to God, as an offering and prayer, a sacrificial commitment of who we are, or out of a lack of trust, a lack of confidence and fear?
Often, especially within the Church, we celebrate commitments, but the demonstration of our faith comes when our confidences have been challenged, our trusts and convictions taken out from under us. Then, can we be thankful, can we trust? Belief is not so much a statement of Sunday morning, but the daily struggles to raise our hands to volunteer when you have been wrong before, and the fears in the dark of night.
Matthew 21:23-32
Ordinarily, we follow the Lectionary, a three year week by week schedule of readings, to encourage reading the diversity of the Bible, and that every Church of every denomination would converse with the same passages, and hopefully one another. BUT, these are not ordinary times.
Following the Lectionary, after the Crossing of the Red Sea and Manna from Heaven, prior to receiving the 10 Commandments, we would ordinarily read of the peoples' grumbling and complaining leading to Moses naming that place on the journey Massah / Grumbling and Meribah / Complaining. I am uncertain why the Religious Authorities suspect we need to read about the people grumbling and complaining, every year, twice each year? So I looked at the passages between this and the next, and discerned these three which we never are given to preach, the justification being that these deal with the specific circumstances of that specific people in time. This is the differentiation that when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL” the minister is preaching; when the sermon is “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THY NEIGHBOR'S CHICKENS” the pastor is medling.
The three passages between The Grumbling and Complaining of Massah and Meribah and Moses receiving the 10 Commandments, are:
That the wandering tribe of escaped Hebrew slaves were attacked by the Canaanite tribe of the Amalekites, and Joshua went into battle against Amalek. While Moses stood on the hill watching them, whenever Moses raised his hands to appeal to God, Joshua would win, and whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek would win. So Aaron and Hur, held Moses hands up for the whole day until Joshua and the Lord had saved the people.
Recall that when Moses saw the burning bush, he had been keeping the sheep of his Father-in-Law Jethro, a priest of the Midianites. When Moses went back down to Egypt, and led the people out away from Pharaoh, Moses had left his wife Zipporah and their two sons Gershom (we were alien in an alien land) and Eliezer (my father's God saves us) with Jethro upon the mountain. Now Jethro brings the family to Moses. As Moses recounts to Jethro what took place, how God had saved them at the Red Sea, Jethro led Moses in making an offering and thanking God.
The following morning, Jethro noted that Moses was both leading the people, judging between the people on every complaint, and appealing to God for guidance of this people. This is probably the first event in human history of a leader being challenged about burn-out, and needing to be taught to delegate.
These are passages about TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE; and we are in a time in human history where TRUST and AUTHORITY and CONFIDENCE are lacking. These are not simply matters that we can choose, I am going to trust / or I am not. CONFIDENCE must be lived into and developed day after day, from isolated grand occasions and repeated small events, through increasingly greater delegations of commitment, as well as retracing our steps, asking for forgiveness and looking for help when we struggle.
This week our Nation's leaders explained that we are in a fiscal crisis. If something bold and dramatic is not done, the wheels of our Nation's economy will grind to a halt; and that very lack of inertia, that lack of momentum would require even greater resources than doing something now. Both sides had been quick to blame the other, both have been sobered by fears of impending doom, but the underlying issue, the underlying issue, is one of TRUST, Consumer CONFIDENCE, questioning how to cultivate a willingness to follow and to risk.
Israel had been a rag-tag mob of grumblers and complainers, former slaves, who knew only to do what they were told or be beaten, they knew not how to TRUST or to believe. What was dramatized for Moses and the people, was that when Moses appealed to God they were saved. Literally, over and over throughout the day, when he lifted his hands in prayer, they were victorious. Yet, whenever he tired or was distracted, when his hands and his Confidence faltered, they were beaten.
There are times when daily prayer, the grace before a meal, or sleep, seems rote and ritual, but these are the simple foundations of trust and faith. We are extremely fortunate as a congregation to celebrate a number of weddings and baptisms. One of the elements we include in weddings is a daily reminder to pray for each other. To awake in the morning and realize how blessed we are to have been given each other. In the middle of the day, to stop from our busy-ness, to name the blessing of challenge and life lived for those whom we love. In the evening, not to ignore each other taking life for granted, but to talk together and inquire about changes, because we do not have the ability to read one another's minds, but the responsibility to ask what is upon their hearts as they grow and change through life. And before the end, before we lay down the last time, to thank God for having given us the blessing of one another to share life.
Not only in perpetual acts of faith, but when especially blessed, to stop and name our Trust in God. Jethro returns with Moses' family. Jethro hears the wonder of all that has taken place. And Jethro models for Moses and all Israel the human need to Thank God, to make an Offering. A decade ago, at a family gathering, their three year old wandered down to the water and out on the docks. Suddenly the family festivities were interrupted by the barking of their dog, and when they investigated they found the child had fallen in the lake and the dog was pulling him to shore wet, surprised but safe and sound. The dog received a special treat, and they made a special offering, saying they were so thankful their grandchild was alive.
So often, we are caught up in wedding receptions and family birthdays at who is sitting next to whom, whether they have the right meal, whether the fireworks will be inspiring, that we forget the reason for the reception, for the feast, for the gifts, all began with this simple act of Jethro teaching Moses to make an Offering to God in thanksgiving for their blessings.
There are those who are waiting for me to dance around Jethro's instruction to Moses of the need to delegate. Years ago, our congregation was extremely divided because of a failed co-pastorate. It did not seem to matter, what the issue was, whether turning the Sanctuary, replacing the roofs, problems with the Nursery School, or the Organ, friend had been turned against friend into differing camps. So the new pastor exercised authority, bringing all decision-making, all power and responsibility back to the pastor. We used to have what we described as ALL COMMITTEE night, which meant that all the Committes met simultaneously and the pastor literally ran from one to another, with problems or ideas surfacing just as soon as you left, until the pastor was set to have a nervous breakdown. We separated committees to meet at different times on different days, and gradually delegated Christian Education Committee to the Christian Educator, Finance to the Business Administrator, etc. But time has passed again, we as the Church have grown and changed to where it appears we may need an Associate Pastor. LET ME BE CLEAR, THIS IS NOT CONSIDERATION OF A CO-PASTOR, but rather a delegation of authority, of trust and confidence, that just as in Israel they gathered in small groups, in 10s and 50s and hundreds and thousands, so we may need to have those who work especiallly with youth fellowships, with mission.
If we were to do so, we need to be clear of the trust and confidence we share. These are difficult financial times, when everyone is a little uncertain about the future, and this has specific financial consequences. We can be thankful that the Finance Committee and Session have nurtured the endowments of the Church, to allow us the opportunity to consider this even in times of economic unrest. We need to talk together, to share concerns and ideas and hopes and dreams, especially including those who will be most effected.
One of the questions we must ask ourselves in this, and continually address in all we do, is the question of our Motivation, of our Authority. The question of the Temple Authorities to Jesus, and his reply to them, questioning where the Authority of John the Baptist came. Do we consider these options because of our own desires, out of concern for the community, are they motivated by evil, or by God? We must function according to sound business practices, but we are not simply a business, we are “The Church in this time and place”, so we must question whether the things we take on and those we delegate, the wars we fight and the offerings we make, are done in response to God, as an offering and prayer, a sacrificial commitment of who we are, or out of a lack of trust, a lack of confidence and fear?
Often, especially within the Church, we celebrate commitments, but the demonstration of our faith comes when our confidences have been challenged, our trusts and convictions taken out from under us. Then, can we be thankful, can we trust? Belief is not so much a statement of Sunday morning, but the daily struggles to raise our hands to volunteer when you have been wrong before, and the fears in the dark of night.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Manna in Anxiety September 21, 2008
Exodus 16:1-15
Matthew 20: 1-16
This has been a hard week, a week of great anxiety and fear.
The Yankees left The House that Ruth Built, and the Mets Chose Buffalo over Syracuse!
For the last two decades we have seen our homes as protection against the forces of inflation.
Stocks and Bonds may fluctuate, hurricanes and terrorism may effect the price of Gas and the global economy, but as long as I wash my windows and mow my lawn, my mortgage investment is growing. Housing had been assessed up in 2000, again in 2005 and is planned for reassessment again in 2010. Ten years ago we witnessed the Dot.Com Bubble surface, everyone trying to get on board, then POP. But that was new technologies, faith in ideas that may have had no reality.
Throughout the last year, we have seen the sale not simply of houses, but of homes slow to a standstill; yet still there were the securities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers and AIG, foundations of our economy, some going back to WWI. Those of us who normally go about our daily routines, found ourselves sitting in front of our computers checking the hour listing of stocks, helplessly watching as the price per share of our future vanished. The Republicans blamed the GREED of Wall Street financers, the Democrats blamed the ADMINISTRATION, and no one had a solution. Then came the weekend, the Markets closed for a time of Sabbath.
The buzz throughout the last 48 hours has been whether and how the Government can underwrite all Bad Debt, what legislation and policies must be created to enstill trust and assuage anxiety. Acording to the news, when the Federal Reserve Chair finished addressing Congress, they were no longer considering what pork and special projects they could hide in the legislation, but there was honest fear and absolute quiet, as the repercussions sank in. In a time of SABBATH REST everyone takes a step back, unable to act, unable to respond, waiting.
The Old Testament describes three periods in the history of Israel. The time of Wandering in the Wilderness when there was great fear and anxiety; and the time of the Monarchy, when people became complacent and lax; the Exile in Babylon where they mourned. Our ANXIETY, our FEARS of Whom and What to Trust, what authority to believe, link us to the Wilderness Wandering People of Faith.
We love to recall the Great Patriarchs of the Genesis Stories: Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the people of Israel had for as long as any could remember been slaves, property belonging to Pharaoh, possession of Egypt. Treated as beasts of burden, worked and bred, bought and sold like oxen, they worked from sun up to sun down, every day of their lives, stretching every muscle to build the Pyramids, to serve the Pharaoh, in payment for which they received subsistence: bread and water, and the promise that tomorrow would be the same as yesterday, acceptance that our children's children would have the same life as our parents' parents. Not a hope of freedom, of improvement, or a better life, but simply a slave's existence, being sold which was thought better than being killed off.
In the miracles of the Passover and Crossing the Red Sea, the slaves, the Hebrews, were suddenly FREE. But freedom does not feed your child. While the dream of Freedom may motivate, Freedom cannot make the ache of starvation cease. The people turn to Moses saying, “You led us against Pharaoh, You won, You now are the new Pharaoh, You own us and You are responsible for us. What must we do as slaves of Moses to be fed?”
Before Moses can plead their case to God, God provides for God's people. The story of Manna from heaven, is a tale of the ABUNDANCE of GRACE, every day there is more than any could gather, enough to fill and satisfy.
But even more, MANNA from heaven is declaration from God of a GREAT REVERSAL with God. Pharaoh demanded that we work and sweat in order that we might be fed to survive, not piecemeal, that the more you produce the more you earn; not time and a half after a 40 hour workweek; not through the purchase and sale of what we inherited, bought and created, because everything belonged to Pharaoh.
God declared to Moses that Creation, the Land itself, would provide daily bread.
No one truly knows how the people of Israel were fed for 40 years in the wilderness. There are storms and winds that take whole flocks of birds, like quail, and after buffetting and carrying them from differing points across Africa drop thousands of exhausted birds miles away in a different place. One interpretation is that as there were Quail covering the fields at night and a sticky powder like substance on the fieleds at dawn, that Manna was equated with the droppings of Quail. The people could have easily gone out and picked this and the birds up for meat. There are also ANTS that bore into the Fruit of The TAMARISK plant, and the fruit drain a sticky paste, which in the morning dew covers whole fields with a flaky flour like substance, that inidigenous people still harvest and which can be baked or fried as bread. This bread is high in protein and carbohydrates, but with little preservative capability. The Point of MANNA from HEAVEN is that rather than being OPPRESSED and ENSLAVED given Pharaoh's bread for subsistence; Manna from Heaven is there from God as part of Natural Creation, every day, our daily Bread. We must gather it, we must share, if you are greedy, or hoard too much the Manna will sour and be filled with worms. But GOD's DESIGN is that there would be daily Bread for us, and a DAY of SABBATH for all Creation, an order to God's creation, where we need not be anxious, fearful or filled with anxiety.
To suspend our ANXIETY, to Trust God, we must give up worrying about what our neighbor has. The question for most of us has shifted from whether we can survive, or even whether our children have the opportunities we have, to whether we and our children have as much as our neighbors. Property Assessments are based as much on the value of your neighbor's home, as on what you may have put into yours, and despite the Tax Bill, the value of the property does not exist unless and until you are willing and able to give it up. Stock prices/home values all are Monopoly Money, Winning at Anxiety, in which true value does not exist until you are ready to cash in and quit for ever. A dozen years ago, I bought a home in this community for $163,000 and because my neighbor's homes have been bought and sold in recent years for $400,000 mine must surely be worth as much. The story of the Laborers Hired to Work in the Vineyard, just as Manna from Heaven, are that everyone is provided for, everyone has enough. In the Parable, the Laborers who were hired first could have been paid first, with those hired last paid last, and none would have been the wiser; but the householder has the manager pay the last first so the others will see they are provided for. And those who have instead worked all day, grumble that they should have been paid more though they were provided the fair daily wage they had agreed to in the first place. This is not sound Economic practice, nor good Human Relations Personnel Management, but is a statement of God's love in Divine Judgement, the true worth of our lives.
A rich young man came to Jesus, possessing everything, he had mastered education, his beauty, his acomplishments and experience and references and wealth, his wisdom, all were to be envied. Yet he longed to have something more, something still was missing from his hollow life. He inquired of Jesus, “So, what should I do?” and Jesus said “Go sell everything and give this to the poor, then come follow. The man went sorrowful away, and good old Simon Peter who consistently is portrayed as jumping to conclusions, says “OOOH Ohh OOOH! We did that! What do we get?” And Jesus tells this parable, as much as to say “You are already part of the community, having this life, what more could you really need? Have compassion on those that want to labor in the vineyard, but come later.”
It matters not whether baptized as an infant, or coming to faith as a more mature believer, but that those of us who are part of the Church have compassion and find new ways to include those who other wise might not believe.
Matthew 20: 1-16
This has been a hard week, a week of great anxiety and fear.
The Yankees left The House that Ruth Built, and the Mets Chose Buffalo over Syracuse!
For the last two decades we have seen our homes as protection against the forces of inflation.
Stocks and Bonds may fluctuate, hurricanes and terrorism may effect the price of Gas and the global economy, but as long as I wash my windows and mow my lawn, my mortgage investment is growing. Housing had been assessed up in 2000, again in 2005 and is planned for reassessment again in 2010. Ten years ago we witnessed the Dot.Com Bubble surface, everyone trying to get on board, then POP. But that was new technologies, faith in ideas that may have had no reality.
Throughout the last year, we have seen the sale not simply of houses, but of homes slow to a standstill; yet still there were the securities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers and AIG, foundations of our economy, some going back to WWI. Those of us who normally go about our daily routines, found ourselves sitting in front of our computers checking the hour listing of stocks, helplessly watching as the price per share of our future vanished. The Republicans blamed the GREED of Wall Street financers, the Democrats blamed the ADMINISTRATION, and no one had a solution. Then came the weekend, the Markets closed for a time of Sabbath.
The buzz throughout the last 48 hours has been whether and how the Government can underwrite all Bad Debt, what legislation and policies must be created to enstill trust and assuage anxiety. Acording to the news, when the Federal Reserve Chair finished addressing Congress, they were no longer considering what pork and special projects they could hide in the legislation, but there was honest fear and absolute quiet, as the repercussions sank in. In a time of SABBATH REST everyone takes a step back, unable to act, unable to respond, waiting.
The Old Testament describes three periods in the history of Israel. The time of Wandering in the Wilderness when there was great fear and anxiety; and the time of the Monarchy, when people became complacent and lax; the Exile in Babylon where they mourned. Our ANXIETY, our FEARS of Whom and What to Trust, what authority to believe, link us to the Wilderness Wandering People of Faith.
We love to recall the Great Patriarchs of the Genesis Stories: Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the people of Israel had for as long as any could remember been slaves, property belonging to Pharaoh, possession of Egypt. Treated as beasts of burden, worked and bred, bought and sold like oxen, they worked from sun up to sun down, every day of their lives, stretching every muscle to build the Pyramids, to serve the Pharaoh, in payment for which they received subsistence: bread and water, and the promise that tomorrow would be the same as yesterday, acceptance that our children's children would have the same life as our parents' parents. Not a hope of freedom, of improvement, or a better life, but simply a slave's existence, being sold which was thought better than being killed off.
In the miracles of the Passover and Crossing the Red Sea, the slaves, the Hebrews, were suddenly FREE. But freedom does not feed your child. While the dream of Freedom may motivate, Freedom cannot make the ache of starvation cease. The people turn to Moses saying, “You led us against Pharaoh, You won, You now are the new Pharaoh, You own us and You are responsible for us. What must we do as slaves of Moses to be fed?”
Before Moses can plead their case to God, God provides for God's people. The story of Manna from heaven, is a tale of the ABUNDANCE of GRACE, every day there is more than any could gather, enough to fill and satisfy.
But even more, MANNA from heaven is declaration from God of a GREAT REVERSAL with God. Pharaoh demanded that we work and sweat in order that we might be fed to survive, not piecemeal, that the more you produce the more you earn; not time and a half after a 40 hour workweek; not through the purchase and sale of what we inherited, bought and created, because everything belonged to Pharaoh.
God declared to Moses that Creation, the Land itself, would provide daily bread.
No one truly knows how the people of Israel were fed for 40 years in the wilderness. There are storms and winds that take whole flocks of birds, like quail, and after buffetting and carrying them from differing points across Africa drop thousands of exhausted birds miles away in a different place. One interpretation is that as there were Quail covering the fields at night and a sticky powder like substance on the fieleds at dawn, that Manna was equated with the droppings of Quail. The people could have easily gone out and picked this and the birds up for meat. There are also ANTS that bore into the Fruit of The TAMARISK plant, and the fruit drain a sticky paste, which in the morning dew covers whole fields with a flaky flour like substance, that inidigenous people still harvest and which can be baked or fried as bread. This bread is high in protein and carbohydrates, but with little preservative capability. The Point of MANNA from HEAVEN is that rather than being OPPRESSED and ENSLAVED given Pharaoh's bread for subsistence; Manna from Heaven is there from God as part of Natural Creation, every day, our daily Bread. We must gather it, we must share, if you are greedy, or hoard too much the Manna will sour and be filled with worms. But GOD's DESIGN is that there would be daily Bread for us, and a DAY of SABBATH for all Creation, an order to God's creation, where we need not be anxious, fearful or filled with anxiety.
To suspend our ANXIETY, to Trust God, we must give up worrying about what our neighbor has. The question for most of us has shifted from whether we can survive, or even whether our children have the opportunities we have, to whether we and our children have as much as our neighbors. Property Assessments are based as much on the value of your neighbor's home, as on what you may have put into yours, and despite the Tax Bill, the value of the property does not exist unless and until you are willing and able to give it up. Stock prices/home values all are Monopoly Money, Winning at Anxiety, in which true value does not exist until you are ready to cash in and quit for ever. A dozen years ago, I bought a home in this community for $163,000 and because my neighbor's homes have been bought and sold in recent years for $400,000 mine must surely be worth as much. The story of the Laborers Hired to Work in the Vineyard, just as Manna from Heaven, are that everyone is provided for, everyone has enough. In the Parable, the Laborers who were hired first could have been paid first, with those hired last paid last, and none would have been the wiser; but the householder has the manager pay the last first so the others will see they are provided for. And those who have instead worked all day, grumble that they should have been paid more though they were provided the fair daily wage they had agreed to in the first place. This is not sound Economic practice, nor good Human Relations Personnel Management, but is a statement of God's love in Divine Judgement, the true worth of our lives.
A rich young man came to Jesus, possessing everything, he had mastered education, his beauty, his acomplishments and experience and references and wealth, his wisdom, all were to be envied. Yet he longed to have something more, something still was missing from his hollow life. He inquired of Jesus, “So, what should I do?” and Jesus said “Go sell everything and give this to the poor, then come follow. The man went sorrowful away, and good old Simon Peter who consistently is portrayed as jumping to conclusions, says “OOOH Ohh OOOH! We did that! What do we get?” And Jesus tells this parable, as much as to say “You are already part of the community, having this life, what more could you really need? Have compassion on those that want to labor in the vineyard, but come later.”
It matters not whether baptized as an infant, or coming to faith as a more mature believer, but that those of us who are part of the Church have compassion and find new ways to include those who other wise might not believe.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
POWER September 14, 2008
Exodus 13:17 - 14:10
Matthew 18:21-35
When in Seminary we were taught, “save the book of Genesis until later, it is the most beautiful rich poetry, taking all the ancient oral traditions and crafting the story. The first event of faith, be we Jewish or Christian, is the EXODUS. God heard the people's cries, God never forgot them, and God led Israel across the Red Sea to dry land and Safety in the Wilderness, while destroying mighty Pharaoh, his Chariots and Armies in the chaos of the water. But more than a history of how the People of Israel escaped Egypt, EXODUS is a story of the POWER of GOD.
Like an old John Wayne Western, there is this pause, as the Israelites, and the Egyptians, the story teller and the listener all realize the POWERLESS PEOPLE are HOPELESS. The people had wanted to WORHIP GOD, to show God Glory; and the Pharaoh had made himself into a God, saying NO.
As we portrayed last week with each of the 10 plagues, time after time, Moses had come on behalf of the people NOT to ask for their freedom to leave, but to ask for their FREEDOM TO GLORIFY GOD and Pharaoh had said NO. Ultimately, there is the PASSOVER, when all the first born of Egypt, all those who had been bred to inherit, of every family, die. While the whole nation of Egypt mourns, Israel is set free. But such events do not GIVE GLORY to the POWER of GOD.
God leads the people into a Wilderness, as the heart of Pharaoh becomes bitter, resolved and ruthless. You can feel the anxiety climax, as the people of Faith and the Chariots of Pharaoh pass beside each other over and over again in the fog throughout the night. They can hear each other, they sense one another, but they ALSO HEAR THE WIND beating against the sea from the East al through the night. When the mists rise, the people who had been slaves, who had escaped during the tragedy of Egypt are trapped, their backs are to the sea and before their eyes coming down upon them is this un-named God-Like Pharaoh with his 600 finest Chariots, his army, his horsemen, and many other Chariots too.
And MOSES, the Man of Faith, commands the people “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID” we are not alone. Then a second Command “STAND FIRM” then “BE STILL” and finally “SALVATION IS AT HAND” and as he raises his staff, the waters they were afraid of , the waters they were to be drowned in, to die, part. In a RE-Enactment of CREATION Dry Land is formed by God out of the Waters of Chaos.
In the past, we have described the escalating Nature of CONFLICT. That whenever there is disagreement, there is the potential for Conflict.
LEVEL I: The difference may be as minor as I wanted Fish and you wanted Chicken, or we both want what only one can have. We disagree. The important factor at this stage is that we both value what we want and each other enough to state our Conflict.
LEVEL II: Or the difference may be between Parent and Child, Teacher and Student. I want you to reach beyond what you have known as easy, to strive for what can only be attained by challenge. Again, because we value each other, and we value what can be, the Conflict is healthy.
LEVEL III: The difficulty is that as Conflict escalates there becomes COMPETITION where we value each other less; and winning/attaining/ being first, becomes our goal. In a world of Limited Resources, with FEAR a presence in our consciousness, we sruggle for ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, we strive for ACCEPTANCE, we COMPETE to SURVIVE. A problem of our culture, is that we have ratcheted up EXPECTATIONS, TIME has become so precious, RECESSION has left us all fearful of losing what we have, that COMPETITION has become our baseline, of where we live.
LEVEL IV: The difference between the Conflict of Comeptition, and the next Level of Conflict is a desire not simply to win, but to humiliate, to emotionally and psychologically break the other, in order that they will never challnge for power again.
LEVEL V: The absolute reality of CONFLICT is more than a willingness, a desire to destroy, to make an example, so that no one will ever again challenge or conflict.
The TIPPING POINT from one level of Conflict to another, may be as simple as DISAGREEMENT, or FEAR, or because at every level of Conflict there is a decreasing number of people you identify with and feel a part of, the difference may be ISOLATION. As idealistic and communal as our culture has claimed to be... As much as the Internet has shrunk our world bringing us into communication with people around the world... We have become increasingly INDIVIDUALISTIC and Isolated and Alone.
As Pharaoh perceived he was being Challenged, he became more HARD HEARTED, more intractable, his level of Conflict escalated from denial of a request, to teaching a lesson, to annoyance, to a desire to win and control, to a desire to act as God where these people would never again challenge him, to a desire for genocide. BUT REMEMBER what Moses sought was not to put a frog in the lap of the King, what Moses sought was not to set the people free, MOSES' CALL had been to allow the people to be free to Choose to Worship, to offer GLORY TO GOD.
So when outnumbered, with over-whelming force and technology, backed up against a wall of chaos and destruction, MOSES DID NOT command “Get 'Em”... Moses did not command “Retreat”... Moses did not command “WE WILL SURGE THE WAR TO OUR ENEMIES and BE VICTORIOUS!”
In the face of escalating Conflict, over-whelming POWER, TERRORISM in its most basic form, MOSES Commanded “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID.”
If only in the midst of our Conflicts, we could find a moment of Peace to collect ourselves and fear not. To STAND FIRM and BE STILL, Listening and knowing we are not alone.
The Story of Exodus is not about the CONFLICT between ISRAEL and ENEMIES, not even between Pharaoh and Moses, or Technology and Faith. The Story of EXODUS is about All the Greatest Power of the Mightiest Pharaoh, in CONFLICT with the POWER OF GOD, over who will be GLORIFIED.
This is not a story that can be explained scientifically, this is not RATIONAL Reasoning.
As described by a Confirmation Class student years ago,
“Either you have to accept the Miracle of Moses Parting the Red Sea, or you have to accept the Miracle of Pharaoh's entire Military 600 Chariots and Calvary and Soldiers all getting stuck in the mud and drowning in 6” of water!”
The Bible is not a CONSTRUCT of HISTORY, this happened that set up this possibility; this is a story of WITNESS, the Power of an Empire against the POWER OF GOD, and in the middle are a people afraid and alone, backed up against Chaos and Death. An ENTIRE NATION who in the midst of their anxieties and fear hear their leader command “PEACE, FEAR NOT, STAND FIRM, BE STILL, KNOW YOU ARE NOT ALONE” and they were saved.
So the question we must ask ourselves, is Whether we add to one another's fears, escalating conflict, by escalating competition and power, or Whether we stand with one another, lowering the conflict by remembering and letting others know they are not alone?
The teaching of Jesus is difficult enough to accept and practice,
GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT GOD GAVE GOD'S ONLY BEGOTTEN SON FOR US.
But here, when asked Jesus teaches that we must forgive not just once or twice, or even SEVEN Times, but forgiving llong after we give up counting how many times, as many as 70 times 7 times= 490 times to forgive those close to us.
YET, according to Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus said this, he also illustrated his point with a parable... Not only does it not matter the amount forgiven, one was forgiven 100 Talents ½ a Year's Salary, where the other begged to be forgiven a day's wages; the point is that the FORGIVENESS Of the King was to have had an effect of this one forgiving others 70 times over. More than the idea of PAY IT FORWARD this is the realization that we forgive because we have been forgiven, and how awesome the world could be, if everyone forgave, and stood beside one another instead of toe to toe.
Seven years ago, the General Assembly of the Church was gathered to consider the future. For the last forty years, the Church has been divided over one social issue after another, divided by fear, by losses. The testimony we heard from both sides described “Do Not create one more Policy, one more Paper to sit in the Archives.” And we were asked to consider the underlying issues, to name a fresh new future for the Church in the 21st Century?
Historically, here in North America, the Church has been an established authority, A Power.
In every community, the Church sits at the Center, or atop the hill as a moral beacon.
In this community, as you enter from the West you come passed the sentinel of the Lutheran Church; entering the Village from the North you pass the Catholic Church then the Methodist; or from the East passed the Pentecostal then between the Episcopal and Presbyterian, like stone gates of establishment and power. Yet, in recent decades the Church has become identified as marginalized, people seek truth, their answers from GOOGLE, from POLITICS, from the ECONOMIC MARKET, from the MEDIA.
What if, the Church stood with people who were marginalized, who were in fear, to stand with the POWERLESS and command “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID, STAND FIRM, BE SILENT And LISTEN, YOU ARE NOT ALONE, YOU ARE FORGIVEN, YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN, YOU WILL BE SAVED”.
Matthew 18:21-35
When in Seminary we were taught, “save the book of Genesis until later, it is the most beautiful rich poetry, taking all the ancient oral traditions and crafting the story. The first event of faith, be we Jewish or Christian, is the EXODUS. God heard the people's cries, God never forgot them, and God led Israel across the Red Sea to dry land and Safety in the Wilderness, while destroying mighty Pharaoh, his Chariots and Armies in the chaos of the water. But more than a history of how the People of Israel escaped Egypt, EXODUS is a story of the POWER of GOD.
Like an old John Wayne Western, there is this pause, as the Israelites, and the Egyptians, the story teller and the listener all realize the POWERLESS PEOPLE are HOPELESS. The people had wanted to WORHIP GOD, to show God Glory; and the Pharaoh had made himself into a God, saying NO.
As we portrayed last week with each of the 10 plagues, time after time, Moses had come on behalf of the people NOT to ask for their freedom to leave, but to ask for their FREEDOM TO GLORIFY GOD and Pharaoh had said NO. Ultimately, there is the PASSOVER, when all the first born of Egypt, all those who had been bred to inherit, of every family, die. While the whole nation of Egypt mourns, Israel is set free. But such events do not GIVE GLORY to the POWER of GOD.
God leads the people into a Wilderness, as the heart of Pharaoh becomes bitter, resolved and ruthless. You can feel the anxiety climax, as the people of Faith and the Chariots of Pharaoh pass beside each other over and over again in the fog throughout the night. They can hear each other, they sense one another, but they ALSO HEAR THE WIND beating against the sea from the East al through the night. When the mists rise, the people who had been slaves, who had escaped during the tragedy of Egypt are trapped, their backs are to the sea and before their eyes coming down upon them is this un-named God-Like Pharaoh with his 600 finest Chariots, his army, his horsemen, and many other Chariots too.
And MOSES, the Man of Faith, commands the people “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID” we are not alone. Then a second Command “STAND FIRM” then “BE STILL” and finally “SALVATION IS AT HAND” and as he raises his staff, the waters they were afraid of , the waters they were to be drowned in, to die, part. In a RE-Enactment of CREATION Dry Land is formed by God out of the Waters of Chaos.
In the past, we have described the escalating Nature of CONFLICT. That whenever there is disagreement, there is the potential for Conflict.
LEVEL I: The difference may be as minor as I wanted Fish and you wanted Chicken, or we both want what only one can have. We disagree. The important factor at this stage is that we both value what we want and each other enough to state our Conflict.
LEVEL II: Or the difference may be between Parent and Child, Teacher and Student. I want you to reach beyond what you have known as easy, to strive for what can only be attained by challenge. Again, because we value each other, and we value what can be, the Conflict is healthy.
LEVEL III: The difficulty is that as Conflict escalates there becomes COMPETITION where we value each other less; and winning/attaining/ being first, becomes our goal. In a world of Limited Resources, with FEAR a presence in our consciousness, we sruggle for ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, we strive for ACCEPTANCE, we COMPETE to SURVIVE. A problem of our culture, is that we have ratcheted up EXPECTATIONS, TIME has become so precious, RECESSION has left us all fearful of losing what we have, that COMPETITION has become our baseline, of where we live.
LEVEL IV: The difference between the Conflict of Comeptition, and the next Level of Conflict is a desire not simply to win, but to humiliate, to emotionally and psychologically break the other, in order that they will never challnge for power again.
LEVEL V: The absolute reality of CONFLICT is more than a willingness, a desire to destroy, to make an example, so that no one will ever again challenge or conflict.
The TIPPING POINT from one level of Conflict to another, may be as simple as DISAGREEMENT, or FEAR, or because at every level of Conflict there is a decreasing number of people you identify with and feel a part of, the difference may be ISOLATION. As idealistic and communal as our culture has claimed to be... As much as the Internet has shrunk our world bringing us into communication with people around the world... We have become increasingly INDIVIDUALISTIC and Isolated and Alone.
As Pharaoh perceived he was being Challenged, he became more HARD HEARTED, more intractable, his level of Conflict escalated from denial of a request, to teaching a lesson, to annoyance, to a desire to win and control, to a desire to act as God where these people would never again challenge him, to a desire for genocide. BUT REMEMBER what Moses sought was not to put a frog in the lap of the King, what Moses sought was not to set the people free, MOSES' CALL had been to allow the people to be free to Choose to Worship, to offer GLORY TO GOD.
So when outnumbered, with over-whelming force and technology, backed up against a wall of chaos and destruction, MOSES DID NOT command “Get 'Em”... Moses did not command “Retreat”... Moses did not command “WE WILL SURGE THE WAR TO OUR ENEMIES and BE VICTORIOUS!”
In the face of escalating Conflict, over-whelming POWER, TERRORISM in its most basic form, MOSES Commanded “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID.”
If only in the midst of our Conflicts, we could find a moment of Peace to collect ourselves and fear not. To STAND FIRM and BE STILL, Listening and knowing we are not alone.
The Story of Exodus is not about the CONFLICT between ISRAEL and ENEMIES, not even between Pharaoh and Moses, or Technology and Faith. The Story of EXODUS is about All the Greatest Power of the Mightiest Pharaoh, in CONFLICT with the POWER OF GOD, over who will be GLORIFIED.
This is not a story that can be explained scientifically, this is not RATIONAL Reasoning.
As described by a Confirmation Class student years ago,
“Either you have to accept the Miracle of Moses Parting the Red Sea, or you have to accept the Miracle of Pharaoh's entire Military 600 Chariots and Calvary and Soldiers all getting stuck in the mud and drowning in 6” of water!”
The Bible is not a CONSTRUCT of HISTORY, this happened that set up this possibility; this is a story of WITNESS, the Power of an Empire against the POWER OF GOD, and in the middle are a people afraid and alone, backed up against Chaos and Death. An ENTIRE NATION who in the midst of their anxieties and fear hear their leader command “PEACE, FEAR NOT, STAND FIRM, BE STILL, KNOW YOU ARE NOT ALONE” and they were saved.
So the question we must ask ourselves, is Whether we add to one another's fears, escalating conflict, by escalating competition and power, or Whether we stand with one another, lowering the conflict by remembering and letting others know they are not alone?
The teaching of Jesus is difficult enough to accept and practice,
GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT GOD GAVE GOD'S ONLY BEGOTTEN SON FOR US.
But here, when asked Jesus teaches that we must forgive not just once or twice, or even SEVEN Times, but forgiving llong after we give up counting how many times, as many as 70 times 7 times= 490 times to forgive those close to us.
YET, according to Matthew's Gospel, when Jesus said this, he also illustrated his point with a parable... Not only does it not matter the amount forgiven, one was forgiven 100 Talents ½ a Year's Salary, where the other begged to be forgiven a day's wages; the point is that the FORGIVENESS Of the King was to have had an effect of this one forgiving others 70 times over. More than the idea of PAY IT FORWARD this is the realization that we forgive because we have been forgiven, and how awesome the world could be, if everyone forgave, and stood beside one another instead of toe to toe.
Seven years ago, the General Assembly of the Church was gathered to consider the future. For the last forty years, the Church has been divided over one social issue after another, divided by fear, by losses. The testimony we heard from both sides described “Do Not create one more Policy, one more Paper to sit in the Archives.” And we were asked to consider the underlying issues, to name a fresh new future for the Church in the 21st Century?
Historically, here in North America, the Church has been an established authority, A Power.
In every community, the Church sits at the Center, or atop the hill as a moral beacon.
In this community, as you enter from the West you come passed the sentinel of the Lutheran Church; entering the Village from the North you pass the Catholic Church then the Methodist; or from the East passed the Pentecostal then between the Episcopal and Presbyterian, like stone gates of establishment and power. Yet, in recent decades the Church has become identified as marginalized, people seek truth, their answers from GOOGLE, from POLITICS, from the ECONOMIC MARKET, from the MEDIA.
What if, the Church stood with people who were marginalized, who were in fear, to stand with the POWERLESS and command “PEACE, BE NOT AFRAID, STAND FIRM, BE SILENT And LISTEN, YOU ARE NOT ALONE, YOU ARE FORGIVEN, YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN, YOU WILL BE SAVED”.
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