There will be enough...do you believe it?

Pentecost 15

Exodus 16:2-18

September 21, 2014

There was once an Anglican church in Denmark where a dispute arose within a congregation in regards to the color of the new carpet that was going to go into the sanctuary.  The congregation was split into two camps, the blue camp and the red camp.  Things got so bad that the pastor called the Bishop in to settle the dispute so that he wouldn’t be accused of taking sides.  The Sunday that the Bishop visited with the congregation, they all sat down after worship and each side argued their case for the color of the carpet that they wanted.  An hour later, after both sides had rested their case, the Bishop took some time to think.  Finally, he stood up and said to the entire congregation, “I fear that your mission as a congregation has become lost.  I charge you with the task of raising $100,000 with which you will feed the poor.  If you are not able to do this by the end of the year, I will close the doors to this congregation.”

The second time that the congregation of the Israelites began complaining against Moses and Aaron was three days after they crossed the Red Sea.  They had witnessed Moses raising his arms and God sending a breath of air to part the sea.  They had witnessed the drowning of the Egyptian army who had pursued them into the sea.  They had sang of the deliverance that God had provided for them.  Three days later, they were complaining.  How long our memories last, right? They were complaining because they were thirsty.  God, through Moses, fixed that problem by turning bitter water into sweet water.  

A month and a half later they are at it again.  This time it isn’t thirst, it is hunger…a hunger so extreme that they had forgotten the conditions they were living under in Egypt.  “If only we were back in Egypt where we ate our fill of bread,”(which was about as far from the truth as you could get), “but you have brought us out here to die of hunger.  It would have been better if we had died in Egypt.”

They sound like a bunch of whiny teenagers who haven’t eaten in all of, say, two hours. There is, however, some legitimacy to what they are saying in their complaints to Moses.  The complaint itself is not well placed.  Moses and Aaron are not the ones they should be complaining about.  Rather, it is the content of their complaint that you cannot blame them for.  They have just come out of Egypt, just been made into a new people, “the congregation” of the Israelites, and are learning how to trust and follow this God that brought them out of Egypt and into this new life in the desert.  Likewise, God is learning this new group of people that he created so that he is better able to nurture them so that they can thrive.  Not once in these complaints in the wilderness, not when they were at the other side of the Red Sea, even, does God begrudge them for their complaints.  Rather, God hears what they have to say and provides for what they need.  And right now they need some food.     

God generously and abundantly provides for their needs, providing manna in the morning and quail in the evening.  There will be enough for everyone to get their fill of the bread and of the poultry.  With the generosity comes a test, though, to see if the Israelites are listening to God or just following their stomachs.  Each day, the Israelites are to collect one omer per person, which is approximately 3.5 liters of manna each morning.  No more.  On the sixth day, they are collect two days worth of Manna so they have enough to eat on the Sabbath.  Those were God’s instructions.  And we learn, finally, in verse 18 that when the Israelites went out to gather and what they gathered was measured, what was gathered by those who took too much turned out to weigh in at exactly that omer.  And what was gathered by those to look too little turned out to weigh in at exactly that omer.  Everyone had just enough.  God’s generosity provided for all of the members of the congregation of Israel to have enough.   

What does this have to do with an Anglican congregation in Europe?  We’ll get there.  We need to talk about crises of faith first.  Because that is exactly what is going on here.  The food crisis that the Israelites faced in the desert turned into a crisis of faith.  Who was this God that had led them out of Egypt and into the wilderness but didn’t pack a cooler full of water bottles and lamb on pita sandwiches?  But they soon learned that God would provide for their needs and do so with great generosity. 

Which sounds well and good and all…but how does this “God is going to provide for all your needs with great generosity” thing sound when you’re sitting in the chemo chair?  Or when you go in for that first ultrasound only to hear the words from the doctor “I’m sorry, there is no heartbeat”?  how does it sound when you have spent months going back and forth to the unemployment office because you keep hearing the word “no” when you go to apply for a job?  Or when, in order to pay the bills to keep the roof over your head, all you’ve eaten this month is pasta and eggs? 

Here’s the thing, when we talk about God’s generosity and God’s abundance, we are not talking about it in the same way the Joel Osteen or Creflo Dollar or Kenneth Copeland do.  We are not talking prosperity gospel, where they preach that if you believe hard enough and do all the right things and give enough to the church God will bless you with health and wealth beyond your imagination because God wants you to be happy.  You’ve heard that, right? 

When we talk about God’s generosity and God’s abundance here in this place, that is not what we are talking about.  Because the reality is stuff happens, life happens.  The reality is that bad things happen to good people, try as we might to prevent it.  God didn’t even spare his own son from being crucified, but through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s ultimate act of generosity was shown to us in the promise that we will have life forever in his presence.  As Christians, we trust that God does hear us when we cry out to him and God’s generosity still shines through the bad things that we face in life, in the merciful smile and warm hand of the nurse, in the shared tears of folks who have been through the same hell you have and lived to tell the tale, in the friend who buys your dinner over and over again without asking anything in return, in the faces of the folks at the food bank. 

In the midst of the wildernesses that we find ourselves in throughout our lives, that is our manna, we are each other’s manna.

The test we face now, though, is will we pay it forward?  Will we have the eyes to see the manna waiting for us in the morning and the quail in the evening and trust in God that the omer we have gathered will be enough for the day?

The congregation of Anglicans was faced with a test.  To give $100,000 to feed the poor in their community.  Not only did they meet that challenge, but they exceeded it and their mission and ministry, and their joy is now in not only feeding the poor in their community but to combating poverty. Their benevolence is now the largest in the diocese for they realized that when they opened their eyes and their hearts to see just how generous God had been with them over the many years of their ministry, they gave them the freedom to respond by being generous with each other and their community.  And it all started over some complaining over a carpet. 

 

Jell-o and the Exodus

Pentecost 14

Exodus 14:19-31

September 14, 2014

This December, Ridley Scott’s version of the Exodus story will begin its run in theatres.  It features Christian Bale as Moses and will likely have the best of the best special effects around…special effects that would have made Cecil B. DeMille envious…maybe even covetous.  And really, you cannot blame Ridley Scott for trying to take a stab at directing a film based upon this narrative.  There are burning bushes and plagues, there is a sea that splits in two with dry ground left in the middle.  There is the story of two brothers, by adoption, who were once as close as they could be and now their relationship has been torn apart.  As much as the Genesis stories screamed “soap opera,” the Exodus story screams “epic film franchise.” 

We know it’s been done before.  In 1956, when Cecil B. DeMille won an Academy Award for his rendition of the Ten Commandments, he used Jell-O to create the walls of water after Moses raised up his right hand and the sea was spilt in two.  Clever, huh?  His version of this story has created the image carried by a generation when it comes to this portion of the narrative, Yul Brenner clad in shiny, blue armor with his gold chariots, and stunning horses standing behind a pillar of fire while Charlton Heston stands on a boulder holding his arms up while the breath of God parts the sea, allowing the Israelites to pass safely through to the other side.  Then, when everyone is safely to the other side, Moses lifts up his hands again and the walls of water come crashing down upon Pharaoh’s army while Pharaoh stands safely back watching in awe and disbelief at what has just happened.   

It is, indeed, an epic story…but have you ever thought of it as a creation story? 

Taking a page from our movie making friends, let’s set the scene.

After God has given the Israelites their recipe for roast lamb and instructions on how they are supposed to eat it, the final plague passes over Egypt…the plague that causes the death of the first born of all families, except for the ones in homes that have been marked with the blood of the lambs that that been set aside while preparing their Passover meal.  This final plague finally convinces Pharaoh to let the Israelites go…and go they do.  There’s a problem, however, and I think the conversation went a little something like this:

“Uh, Moses?”

“Yeah”

“Umm….there’s a…umm…well…a sea.” 

“Yeah”

“Last I checked, we can’t walk on water.”

The Red Sea stood in the way of the Israelites getting safely into freedom.  They had nowhere to go.  So, that’s a problem. 

The second problem is that Pharaoh kinda sorta changed his mind and decided to suit up and round up his army to get his slaves back, even if it meant killing them all.  So the Israelites see the Red sea on their right and Pharaoh and his army on their left and they panicked.  Off to Moses they go, convinced that Moses had led them out of Egypt so they could still die at the hands of Pharaoh.  “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you led us out here into the wilderness?”  We told you to leave us alone, we would rather serve the Egyptians than die out here.  Moses’ response, which was not in our reading this morning, but should have been, reveals the central focus of what the Exodus is all about. 

“Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. ¹⁴The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still,” (Ex 14:13-14).

Then at the instruction of the Lord, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord sent an east wind to create a wall of water on their right and on their left as the Israelites passed through the sea on dry ground. 

Well, how is this a creation story? 

Think about Genesis chapter 1.  In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep while the “ruach,” the spirit or the breath, of God hovered over the waters.  And God said “let there be light,” and it was so.  Then, God separated the waters from the waters and, later, God gathered together the waters under the sky so that dry ground would appear.  So, again, in this epic narrative we find God makes light appear out of the darkness in the pillar of fire that protects the Israelites from the Egyptians AND it is a “ruach,” a mighty wind or breath that separates the waters from the waters revealing the dry ground on which the Israelites passed from slavery into freedom. 

In doing so, in utilizing nature in this way, God also created a new people.  No longer the slaves of the Egyptians, now the free people of God.  People who took a leap of faith by taking the steps necessary to walk between those walls of water, the destructive nature of the sea on their right and on their left. 

In this creation, God had a human partner, a co-creator, if you will.  As the human representative for God in approaching Pharaoh to let the Israelites go, Moses, with the help of his brother, Aaron, acted in a way that allowed God’s plan to be carried out so that justice could be served.  If we are honest, and this is a whole other sermon entirely, so we will just touch on it briefly, there was a second human partner in this whole Exodus business.  Pharaoh.  And here is why.  Forgetting about the whole heart hardening and all that, again, another sermon, Pharaoh’s role as a persecutor and oppressor of God’s people, acted in opposition to God’s plan for a new and just creation and, as a consequence, his own people lost their lives in the sea.

Well that’s great, and all, but what are the practical implications of all this? 

I’m glad you asked that!

The story of the crossing of the Red Sea and the Exodus isn’t just a story for our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Sadly, it has become all too overlooked except during Holy Week when “The Ten Commandments” is aired on ABC each year, because it is our story too.  God utilizing the power of nature with the help of a human co-creator to create a new people…where have we heard this before? 

In the story of the birth, the baptism, the life, and the death, of God’s own son, Jesus Christ.  100% human.  100% God.  Who points us to our creator God, who created us out of the dust, has washed us in the waters of baptism - where we enter the waters slaves to sin, and exit the waters free people of God joined to Christ as fellow heirs of God’s good gifts.  And as such, we are people able to take leaps of faith by responding to God’s call to be co-creators with God who stand on dry ground with the dangers of the world on our right and on our left.  And we have a choice.  To be the ones who stand for God’s justice and God’s peace, doing the sometimes painful and awkward but always freeing task of forgiving our neighbors at least 77 times, announcing freedom to those who are captive, and seeking justice for those who are oppressed.  Or we can be the ones who stand on the side of those things which benefit ourselves alone, regardless of who suffers as a result, not caring if justice is served as long as we are happy and comfortable.  Which will you choose?  

You can make a difference

Pentecost 11a

August 24, 2014

Exodus 1:8-2:10

We’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well.  In 1830, the congress of the United States of America passed the Indian Removal Act, which decreed that members of the five Native American tribes which did not wish to assimilate into current culture, would be removed from their homeland and relocated to land west of the Mississippi.  The act was passed under pressure from those who wished to settle the lands held by those tribes.  Thousands of Native Americans died on what is now known as the Trail of Tears.   In 1930’s Adolf Hitler rose to power on a platform which would come to include a systematic genocide of the Jewish people.  The Jews, Hitler argued, were the reason that Germany had been unsuccessful in WWI and they were also to blame for the economic collapse of Germany that followed.  It only makes sense to rid the Reich of that enemy. 

If we can only get rid of this group or that group, we can get what we want. If you blame them for long enough, others will think there is something wrong with them and then they will rally with us against them.  They’re lazy, they carry diseases, they are driving the value of homes in our community down, they want to take our jobs, they are ruining this country, if we don’t get rid of them, they will ruin our economy again and we won’t ever get it fixed. 

The movie I am referring to is called Scapegoat…so named for the ancient practice of symbolically placing the sins of a community onto a sheep, but usually a goat, and then sacrificing that goat in order to satisfy the anger of the gods.  We can usually tell scapegoating is going to occur when the us vs. them language occurs…and experience tells us that it usually doesn’t end well.

Those Hebrews are getting too many in number, worried a paranoid Pharaoh in today’s version of the movie.  Forgetting their shared history with Joseph having saved the Egyptians from the famine and the then Pharaoh welcoming Joseph’s family as honored guests in their land about 400 years earlier, this Pharaoh now saw the ancient Israelites as possible terrorists.  If one person caused an uprising, he worried, those Hebrews would outnumber us Egyptians and certainly overtake us. So persecute them…enslave them, he said, but the Hebrews just kept increasing in number.  The more they were persecuted, the more babies they seemed to have. 

Under further stress of a growing Hebrew population, his new solution was simple, kill the male newborns.  A generation without members of the male gender would render this Hebrew threat powerless quickly. 

Little did he know that one act of civil disobedience performed by four women would have the power to change history. 

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah ignored Pharaoh’s order to kill the male babies, playing off of Pharaoh’s own paranoia and prejudices about those Hebrew women, informing Pharaoh that these women were much different in childbirth than the delicate Egyptian women.  For the Hebrew women were forceful in childbirth and delivered their babies before the midwives even had a chance to arrive.  They just got their too late to carry out Pharaoh’s orders, Shiphrah and Puah said.  And though Pharaoh doesn’t realize it, we know they are lying.

Then we have a young mother, who, upon seeing the beautiful and healthy nature of her son, hides him in her home as long as she can and, when she can no longer hide him, she places him in a basket in the Nile.  Technically she did follow the orders of the Pharaoh to toss the male babies in the river Nile, but her baby had some protection from the pith and bitumen covering the basket.  Finally, we have Pharaoh’s own daughter, who finds this baby in the basket floating among the reeds.  Even though she knows that this little boy is the son of a Hebrew woman, she is moved by pity hearing him cry and spares his life, even taking him into her house…Pharaoh’s house and adopting him as her son after he is weaned by his own mother. 

Little did they know it at the time, but in these seemingly insignificant acts, four women would wind up changing history.

In those acts of civil disobedience, a young man was raised up in the house of Pharaoh who would be called by God to rescue the Hebrews from the hands of the Egyptians and return them to the land that God had promised to Abraham.

We don’t talk about this story much, we prefer the flashier stories in Exodus about the acts of God in bushes on fire but not consumed by fire, in rivers turned to blood, and staffs turned into snakes, in plagues…and we sometimes forget that the beginning of this story had a humbler origin.  It was this beginning, though, that would lead to an ending that turned out differently than what we would expect from the opening credits of the Exodus version of the scapegoat movie.

How are you going to change the world this week?  In what way will your actions change the course of history for the better?  Did you know that you have the power to change the world?

In 2012 when the National Youth Gathering met in New Orleans, each day we heard the theme song for the gathering…the chorus goes like this.

I want my life to make a difference

I want my life to make a change

I want my life to do some good here

I want my life to make a change

You have that power, children of God, to make a difference…to make an impact that could change the course of history.  For with God, nothing is too small or insignificant to have the power to do amazing things. 

Seek out the lost, feed the hungry, heck – smile at the stranger walking down the street.  When school starts, sit next to the kid who is at a table all by themselves.

It took just one person, we really don’t know exactly who, to start the ice bucket challenge that would come to focus on Lou Gehrig’s disease and has so far raised over $40 million dollars for ALS research. 

Your impact may not be as big in the eyes of the world, but it is just as important in the eyes of God. 

So get out there.  Make a change.  

Jesus the jerk

Pentecost 10A

August 17, 2014

Matthew 15:21-28

I received a text this past Tuesday from a friend and fellow pastor which read “why is Jesus such a jerk this week?”  My first reaction was “what?” but then I read the Gospel text for today and my only response to her was “you’re so right, Jesus is a jerk this week.  I have no idea why.”

If what I just said makes you uncomfortable, you are not alone. 

The Jesus we have been brought up being trained to know and to love is the warm and fuzzy Jesus. The one who welcomes sinners and eats with them. The one who invites children to come sit with him so he can bless them.  The one who feeds people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.  I have never seen a picture of an angry Jesus. Even in the paintings of Jesus cleansing the temple, he still has more of a righteous indignation look on his face instead of straight up anger.  Who are you to call Jesus a jerk, pastor?  My Jesus is not a jerk. 

Except, in this case, he is. 

Let’s take a closer look at this story.  Jesus arrives in Tyre and Sidon, gentile territory, and is met by a Canaanite woman, a woman whose people were descendants of Ham, the son whom Noah cursed after the flood. The Canaanites were pagans and had not only been slaves of Israel, but were also considered to be their enemies.  Seeing Jesus and recognizing who he is, this woman pleads with him for help for her daughter but Jesus doesn’t answer her.  He ignores her.  He ignores her until she her cries for help become so annoying to the disciples that they ask him to send her away.  Then, after she once again pleads for help, Jesus speaks in such a way that she is equated with a dog. 

Let that sink in for a second.  The one who we proclaim as the savior of the world, the one who we call on in times of trouble, ignored this women and then called her a dog. 

If this story doesn’t trouble you…it should.

What is going on with Jesus?  Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed?  Can’t we just go back to the Joseph story?  It’s a little bit warmer and fuzzier than what we are encountering here. 

If, however, we take a look at the news this week, and in the past few weeks, actually, it seems that warm and fuzzy is not what we need right now. 

Having Joseph tell his brothers that their attempt to harm him resulted in something good really doesn’t jive well when the photographs from Ferguson, Missouri look like an active war zone that has been easily compared with photographs from the Middle East and from our own country during the civil rights era.  When a mother and father are grieving the loss of a son whose life was taken by a police officer for a reason we may never really know.  When black parents all across this country are living in constant fear that their children will be treated differently by the police and the media simply because of the color of their skin. 

Having Joseph tell his brothers that their attempt to harm him resulted in something good doesn’t really jive well when commentators are referring to Robin Williams’ death as selfish and cowardly.  When they take no time to consider what it means for someone to be so lost and beaten down be a disease called depression that they become a victim of the demons living inside of them. 

Having Joseph tell his brothers that their attempt to harm him resulted in something good doesn’t jive well when only 0.2% of welfare recipients in Utah tested positive for drug use amidst allegations that welfare recipients are enabled by a government provided safety net which would allow them to use drugs without consequence.   

We don’t need warm and fuzzy right now.  Warm and fuzzy would just lead to complacency and that is the last thing that this world needs in this moment. 

What we do need is a very real and very human Jesus.  Right now we need a Jesus that is so human that even he isn’t immune to expressing a prejudice he was raised up with.  Right now, we need a human Jesus who will shake us awake to see all the terrible things in this world and the fact that, unless we say something, unless we stand up, unless we take action to rid the world of violence and injustice in our state, in our nation, and in our world, we are considered to giving our consent to the massive conflagrations taking place in this very moment in Ferguson, Missouri, in Israel and Palestine, in Iraq, everywhere where peace has been overcome by war. 

We need Jesus to be a jerk, sometimes, if we are going to look in on ourselves and see all of the places in which our prejudices get in the way of us looking like the little Christ’s that I spoke about two weeks ago. 

And so this morning we stand toe to toe with a very real, very human Jesus.  A very real human being who was taught to avoid those pagan Canaanites.  A very real human being whose purpose was to bring salvation to the lost sheep of Israel.  Period.  And we watch as this very real, very human Jesus, who is also very God, do something that happens time and again throughout the biblical witness.  He changes his mind. 

In this exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, we are seeing Jesus changing his mind about the mission that he is on.  It is no longer just to save the house of Israel…now salvation is even available to the pagans.  Jesus changed his mind and his attitude about the Canaanites all because of the faith shown forth by a mother crying out on behalf of her sick daughter.

What if, though, part of the purpose of Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman was to point out to the disciples just where their prejudices lay so that they could see where they are getting in the way of the Kingdom?  What if part of the reason that Matthew didn’t just jump to Jesus healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter is that he wants us to search ourselves and see where we are getting in the way of the Kingdom?  Because if Jesus is just a jerk, whatever the reason may be, it shows us that we very real human beings are much worse.  That we all have prejudices. 

Some come from how we were raised, others come from negative life experiences that we have had, while still others come from negative perceptions expressed in the public forum.  But regardless of where you picked it up, prejudice is not ok.  Prejudice blinds us to seeing the children of God-ness in others and therefore their value in this world.  It is very painful to admit that we are people of prejudice.  It is even more painful to fight our prejudices and rid ourselves of them.  If we do, though, our eyes and our hearts can be open to giving and receiving so much more love that our lives will be changed for the better. 

Because of Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman, salvation was not just limited to the lost sheep of Israel, it became available to the whole world.  When Jesus went to the cross, it wasn’t just for a specific group, but for everyone…for all people. And Jesus’ mission didn’t just stop once he had defeated sin and death. There isn’t a big “the end” after the resurrection.  The mission goes on. The work continues and it will not end until God’s love wins and sometimes that means we have to endure a little bit of discomfort or some mild pain so that our kinks can get worked out so that when we sit at the eternal banquet table, the person sitting next to is someone whose company we can enjoy regardless of the color of their skin, their religious or political affiliation, or who they love.  In the kingdom of heaven, a KKK member will be able to enjoy the company of a black man, an anti-Semite will be able to enjoy the company of a Jewish woman, Trayvon Martin will be able to sit next to George Zimmerman and Michael Brown Jr. will be able to sit next to Officer Wilson in peace, because in the kingdom of heaven there is no prejudice.  There is no hate.  That means, though, that we have work to do getting rid of it all here.  It’s not going to be easy…but it will be worth it.  

What's your name?

August 3, 2014

Genesis 32:22-31

Pentecost 8

“Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me”

“I’m rubber, you’re glue. Your words bounce off of me and stick to you”

Two of the worst sayings that we are taught as children because they are not true.  Words hurt.  They sting.  They inflict internal wounds that cannot be seen in the day light like the black eye you might wind up with in a fist fight.  The healing time from wounds inflicted by words often takes longer than the black eye, too.  It’s often the names that inflict the most pain.  Bully.  Geek.  Loser.  Four eyes. Brace face.  Tattle tale.  Ugly.  Fat.  Cheat.  If someone gets called a name often enough, they begin to believe that they people calling them by that name are right.  So there are organizations out there that are working to reverse the trend so that if surround people with positive names that describe them, beautiful, smart, funny, etc., folks will believe this about themselves and begin to have a better outlook on who they are.  Because the names that we use to refer to one another are important, they do give us a sense of who we are and what we are about.

In the bible, names carry a great significance.  They still do today, but not in the way they did in ancient times. Today we often pick out babies names before they are born.  We want names that flow, that fit well with a middle and a last name.  Sometimes, out of tradition, we give family names.  We talk about how a name fits a person. Often, though, we forget about the meaning behind names.  This is what differentiates our culture from the Near East cultures of biblical times.

In ancient times, your name described who you were and, often, who you were destined to become.  Adam was the dirt man.  Abraham was the father of many nations.  Esau was the red one.  Eve was the one from whom life was born.  Jacob, we have learned, was the deceiver, along with his mother, Rebecca, whose name means “the snare.”

It is our dear friend, the deceiver, that we find in a moment of stress.  He has fled from his father in law, Laban, taking with him Rachel and Leah and their maids, most of Laban’s flocks and much of Laban’s fortune.  Laban had overtaken the caravan that Jacob fled with, but they wound up coming to a peaceful agreement and Laban agreed to leave them alone.  Now, however, Jacob learns that the brother whom cheated out of a birthright and stole a blessing, and from whom Jacob fled in order to save his life, has assembled 400 men and is planning to meet Jacob at the other side of the River Jabbock.  For a man whose last interaction with his brother involved a death threat, this cannot be good. 

In panic, Jacob divides all that he has in two.  If one half doesn’t make it, he believes the other half will.  He then attempts to appease his brother and sends him a gift of 200 female goats and 20 male goats, 200 ewes and 20 rams, 30 milch camels and their colts, 40 cows, 10 bulls 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys.  A lovely menagerie of animals if there ever was one. Across the river Jabbock the gift goes, along with Jacob’s entire family where they will be safe until morning when Jacob will join them again.  

The actions that Jacob took to secure what he had and to attempt to make peace with Esau, however, was not enough to keep Jacob from pacing and worrying about what his first interaction with his brother would be like the next day.  He tosses and turns, playing all of the possible scenarios in his head.  The good ones, the bad ones, the ugly ones.  That is when the attack happens.   

The wrestling match between Jacob and his attacker is epic, lasting all night and into day break…until Jacob’s opponent realizes that Jacob is going to win, so his puts Jacob’s hip out of socket, but that doesn’t keep Jacob from continuing to struggle. 

“Let me go” demands the opponent. 

“Bless me first,” demands Jacob, recognizing that his opponent isn’t an ordinary attacker.  Jacob’s request is answered with an unusual response.  It’s not the blessing that Jacob asks for, it is not a denial of the request, but simply “tell me your name.” 

If Jacob is going to exit this wrestling match, he must share his name with his opponent.  So he does, and with the sharing of Jacob’s name, Jacob also shares his confession.  The one who has survived for so long by cheating, deceiving, usurping, and taking what wasn’t his, and therefore living up to his name, confesses all the wrongs he has done to the man who wrestled with him all through the night and into daybreak all in one word…his own name. There is nothing left to hide now.  All the cheating and the lying and the deception are all laid on the table for all to see.  He has been exposed for who he is.

We wait for the attacker to dish out to Jacob what he deserves.  For vengeance.  For punishment.  That’s not what happens, though. 

Instead of dealing out to Jacob what he had coming to him, the man gives him a new name.  Israel.  The one who wrestles with God and with humans and prevails. 

That day the man who paced and worried and wrestled all night long walked away a different man.  He was no longer the deceiver. No longer the cheat.  No longer the one who took what wasn’t his.  With the new name came a new character, a new purpose.  To be the one who would father the twelve tribes of Israel.  To be the one through whom the promise to Abraham was passed down.  To be the one who would reconcile with the brother he so badly wronged on the other side of the river.  Jacob may have walked away from the wrestling match with a limp, but he still walked away victorious, for he had seen God face to face and yet his life was preserved. 

We all have our given names, our nicknames, the “I wish he would never bring that one up again” names, that our family and friends us to identify us.  However, then there are the names that have seemed to define who we are.  Some of those names build us up and others break us down. Parent, spouse, lawyer, runner, writer, softball player, doctor.  Divorced, infertile, exhausted, depressed, broke, broken. Coward, liar, unfaithful.  Lonely. 

God has a different name for us, however.  A name that we were given in baptism.  A name that, once we have been baptized, cannot be taken away from us.  Christ.

In baptism, we put on Christ and we become a part of Christ and so, while we don’t use the word Christening that often, it’s actually a good word to describe what is happening.  We are joined to Christ in the waters of baptism.  We are given a new name and a new destiny, to live lives as children of God, heirs with Christ in all of the blessings that God has to bestow.  We have become little Christs! And though sin and the powers of evil in this world would have us think that we are not worthy to be put into the same category as Christ, God deems us worthy, simply because he loves us and wants us to thrive and have life.  

So as you go out into the world today, remember, you are a little Christ.  You are a child of God, called and claimed and sent into the world to spread the message of God’s love and God’s justice to the world. And you are not doing this alone, for you are surrounded by little Christs.  In the grocery store, at the farmers market, at the Ronald McDonald house and the God’s Works meals.  There are little Christs everywhere.  And we work together as people renewed by water and the Spirit to be Christ for the world.  Let’s get to work.

God Works

Pentecost 7a

July 27, 2014

Genesis 29:15-29

I have said it before, but every time I do, I turn out to be wrong.  I am going to say it again though, this is one of the most difficult texts I’ve ever attempted to preach on.  If we take it just on its own merits, what is there to say?  There is no mention of God.  There is no mention of God’s promises.  There is no mention of the fulfillment of God’s promises.  It’s a continuation of an ongoing soap opera of people deceiving each other and making messes out of human relationships. Where is the good news to be found when a man wakes up one morning and discovers that the woman that he thought he married was the wrong woman?  What connection can we make to God’s promises when a man negotiates a business contract using women as his wages?  Why did the people who assigned the readings for this year even think that this was remotely preachable? Because it is not.

Not on its own anyways.

It seems we have approached a moment in the lectionary where a text without context can become dangerous.  There are many, many, texts throughout scripture that, without context, are dangerous because without context we can do with them what they wish, no matter how badly we mangle what is actually meant by the passage as a whole. 

For example – In 1^st Corinthians 10:13, Paul writes “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Which is a wonderful, hopeful text…unless you are flailing in the waters of grief and suffering, about to drown because, on your own, you can’t do it no matter how much faith you have.  I’ve heard this text preached in a manner that individuals are encouraged to endure the awful things that life has handed them because God will give them a way to endure it.  But what about the woman in the abusive relationship? What about the employee who is asked to do too much and paid too little but is afraid to speak to his boss out of fear of retribution? What about the person who has been so overcome by depression that death is starting to look like a good way out? If you take a look at the context around it, however, Paul is speaking to an entire community, so when he says you, he actually means “y’all.” So, as a community, you will be able to endure when you lean on each other in times of grief and temptation…and that brings a whole lot more hope when we feel isolated.  Lean in on your community and together you will endure this.

So it can be with this text…one lesson that we can take from this is - if you are willing to work really hard for what you want, you will achieve it and maybe even wind up with more than you expected.  Now, on the surface, there isn’t much wrong with the concept of hard work.  The most rewarding things in life are things that we work hard for, the car we saved up for, the house we built with our own two hands, the first quilt we finished sewing after months or even years of lessons and frustrations.  But then we look around and we see the families with parents working multiple minimum wage jobs just so they can pay their bills.  We see the kids who come to school hungry because the car that his single dad needs to get to work got a flat tire and what money they had left for food was cut significantly so that dad didn’t risk losing his job.  There are lots of people in our country who are working really hard to stay afloat for whom being told that if they just work hard enough, they will get what they want, is a slap across the face. 

Or, one could make an argument based solely off of this passage that using women as a salary option is acceptable…when really, we know that while it was an accepted practice at the time, now…not so much.  I’m pretty sure that you fathers in this room would have a pretty negative reaction if a man doing work for you asked for your daughter as his wages.

If we look at the context, though, we can find so much more…in fact, we have no other choice but to find what else there is to this passage if we are going to talk about God or God’s promises, or even make sense of Jacob’s marrying Leah and Rachel this week and Jacob’s wrestling with God next week.  Two weeks ago, we hear God’s words to Rebekah that her twins would come to be two nations…two nations that would be continually struggling against one another…and that the older would serve the younger.  That is, the promise that God made to Abraham would be fulfilled through Jacob, not through Esau.  And though it happened through Jacob and Rebekah’s deception or Esau and Isaac, Jacob did become the one to whom the birthright and the blessing were given.

Then last week, we heard God’s words to Jacob that God would be with him until his promise to him was fulfilled.  That God would not leave Jacob’s side.  Though we don’t see it directly in the text that we are presented with this morning, I invite you, in this week, to read the passages that follow what we read this morning.  For we will see in the verses and chapters to come after Jacob’s being tricked into marrying both Leah and Rachel was the beginning of a very visible fleshing out of the promise that God had made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob himself.  To make them the ancestors of many nations, the ones who would have descendants as many as the stars in the sky, the grains of sand in the desert, the specks of dirt on the earth.  For it was through Leah and Rachel, and their two maids, that Jacob would become the father of not one or two children…but of 13 children. 12 sons and 1 daughter.  These sons would become the twelve tribes of Israel. 

And as the history of God’s people continues, we will continue to see the dysfunction and the sin that will plague God’s people.  How, Jacob will deceive Laban, just as Laban had deceived him before.  How Leah and Rachel will struggle against one another out of jealousy that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah on Leah’s part, and jealousy that Leah was able to bear more children that Rachel on Rachel’s part.  We will see brothers avenge their sister after she is sexually assaulted and then turn and sell their brother out of jealousy.  And we will see forgiveness and compassion as Jacob and Esau reunite.  As Joseph and his brothers reunite. 

And above all, we will see God at work, fulfilling his promises even in the midst of the messes that we humans make out of relationships. 

The God we know and love and serve is a God who never gives up on his people.  When Adam and Eve sinned, he forgave them and provided for them.  When Cain killed Abel, God protected him from retribution.  When sin survived the flood and God promised to never flood the earth again, God has tried again and again to find ways to get through to us a positive way to make his plans for us come to fruition.  And yet, time and again we deceive ourselves and one another  into thinking that we are doing good enough…but are we?

A man in Minnesota shot a woman the other night for asking him to not ride his lawn mower on her front lawn.  The shootings in Chicago continue to make national news headlines every week.  As long as there is violence and hatred instead of love and peace and justice, we are not living up to the plan that God has for us.  And yet that doesn’t keep God from working.  In those pockets of the world where darkness seems to reign, there is always a light shining somewhere.  In those places that we think are lost causes, somewhere there is hope.  In those locations where violence is seemingly never ending, somewhere there is peace.  Because God hasn’t abandoned them.  Just like God won’t abandon us…

  

On Miscarriage

In May, Chris and I got some unexpected news...that we were going to become parents for the second time. We moved quickly from shock to excitement that January would bring new life to our family.

Then, on July 10th, just one day before we hit the 12 week mark, we heard the word that every expectant parent fears most - Miscarriage.  In our case, a missed miscarriage.  We were told that our little one stopped growing at 8 weeks gestation, which means that while my body had shut down the pregnancy 4 weeks ago, it hadn't followed up with miscarrying on its own.  Instead, the morning sickness, the slowly growing belly, etc., all continued, giving us the impression that everything was alright.  That this pregnancy was a healthy one.  That we would be safe telling the congregation on the 13th of July that Eleanor was going to be a big sister.  Instead, our dreams for this child were dashed in the moment that *that* look flashed across the face of my OB.  Medically, a second ultrasound was required to confirm what we feared, but I knew when that first image popped up on the ultrasound screen that January 2015 would not be our month. Even though I knew in my heart, I prayed and pleaded for a miracle. I cried out that God would intervene and that the next morning there would be a small, but strong little one on that ultrasound screen.  That prayer wasn't answered.

So, on July 13th, I stood before a congregation, only a few of whom had heard any of news regarding our pregnancy and miscarriage, and preached that God can take bad situations in our lives and make good come out of them (see blog post entitled Red Stuff).  God still is at work even when it seems that we have hit a road block.  This is what I believe.  That in the midst of miscarriages and cancer (at least two members of the congregation I serve are actively in the midst of this fight) and the messes that we ourselves have created (oh and there are plenty...have you read the news lately? Kyrie eleison), God is still at work and can take these awful situations and make good out of them. Most of the time, this mean that God calls us to be God's presence in the world. To stand up and speak, or act, when injustice and violence plague our cities, our nations, our world.  To celebrate and mourn with each other in the best and worst moments of our lives. To reach out to the lonely, to lift up the poor, to welcome the stranger...you know, the whole love God - love neighbor thing. We can't just stand around because then we are just getting in God's way.

In the midst of this painful and sad situation, we have been surrounded by love.  A love whose origins come from God.  In cards and hugs and loaves of banana bread and words of comfort and shared tears.  As surrounded as we are, I know that there are many women and their partners, who suffer through miscarriages silently, as if the pregnancy never happened.  I mourn for these women who have been told "we don't talk about miscarriages."  I want these women to know that they are not alone.  That they have a support network.  That they don't have to stay silent.  That the children that they lost matter.

There are plenty of articles that have been written about what to say and what not to say to someone who has suffered a pregnancy loss.  This is not one of them.  I do, though, feel the need to comment on one of "don'ts" as a member of the clergy.

"It is all a part of God's plan.  You know that better than anyone else, Pastor"
I may have earned a Masters of Divinity.  I may be an ordained leader in the church.
             I have no better idea about God's plan than anyone else. 
Scientifically speaking, I know that there may be an explanation for why our baby died. However, I cannot and will not say that this was God's plan.  I do not believe that the God whom I have come to know and to love in my faith journey is a God who wakes up in the morning, checks the list of new pregnancies and marks off which ones will result in a live birth and which ones will not - which pregnancies will fulfill dreams and which ones will dash hopes and dreams altogether.
We learn in scripture that death is a result of the power of sin in the world and the powers of sin and death are the very things that God sent his Son into the world to destroy. We also learn in scripture that God's desire is for his creation, a very good creation, to flourish and have abundant life. Finally, we are told in Revelation that God's final plan is to make his home on earth among us on a day in which death and pain and suffering and mourning will be no more (Revelation 21).  I have no idea why our baby died or why God didn't step in. What I can say that I know, though, is that in death our child is resting in God's arms and that God is with us as we mourn the loss of a child that we will never meet in this life.

In the mean time we will mourn and grieve.  We will continue to give thanks for our daughter - the light of our lives - as she continues to grow and amaze us.  We will hope to, one day, add another child to our family.  We will never forget our Snowpea (I have a thing for cute nicknames so I don't have to call baby "it") and we will look forward to the day when we will be reunited with our 2nd child in God's presence.  We do this knowing that we are not alone, which brings with it a level of gratefulness that cannot be expressed.