Sermon: Not Enough Oil

Matthew 25:1-13

If you have ever read a bible passage and had as many questions after reading as you did when you started, you aren’t alone. Today’s parable from Jesus can leave us with lots of questions. The thing with parables is that they are teaching tools, to start discussions – they are not meant to be exact replicas of reality. So there are always ways that the parable is going to be like the kingdom of God and ways that it isn’t.

For example, in the parable of the bridesmaids and the oil, the wise bridesmaids refuse to share, and because of that the foolish bridesmaids are locked out. Does that mean in the kingdom of God sharing is bad? No, of course not, in kindergarten we are taught to share with others. It is one of the most important things that we can do. And other places in scripture affirm that, even the parables that Jesus tells right near this one in the bible, but in this story something else is happening. The point isn’t about not sharing. So what is going on here?

One thing that might help is to know that the word bridesmaid is really deceptive, the actual word means a young unmarried woman. So what we have here are 10 young unmarried women waiting for the groom.

So this could be a story about competition between the women to see who would get to marry the groom. Which explains their unwillingness to share – The stingy one won’t share with one who didn’t plan well, because then she might not end up getting married. They are rivals for the affections of the groom.

But again that is not what the kingdom of God is like. We are not in a competition with each other for God’s attention. God isn’t going to pick just one of us, but invites a whole multitude. So why would Jesus compare people seeking God with a group of rival women competing for a husband? It sounds like a bad comparison.

One possible explanation is offered by the Jewish Annotated New Testament. It reminds us that in Jewish tradition, oil is often a metaphor for righteousness or good deeds.

So it may very well be that Jesus is telling us to make sure that we have filled the lamps of our lives with the oil of good deeds, so that when the groom comes we can show just how brightly our lives burned. But that still makes it sound like there is a competition in life and that some of us have done enough good deeds and others haven’t. I think it lends itself too easily into the mistaken idea that we must do a certain amount of good deeds in order to get into heaven. Plus, how many of Jesus listeners would have been able to catch that symbolism?

While I was thinking about all of this I ran into that interesting retelling of the parable, that was read for you; where the planners and the last minuters are attending a protest.

This retelling reminds us that it isn’t the idea of sharing or not, and it isn’t that there is a competition to see who can meet with the mayor – the issue is whether or not the people were prepared for the long haul. Were they ready for whatever the situation called for? Pure and simple. I think what Jesus was trying to get his listeners to be ready, they don’t know the day or hour when the bridegroom will come. That’s the point. Ignore the other stuff, it just gets in the way.

So I think Jesus is trying to get us to think of ourselves as young women, who very much want to impress a young man, and you don’t know when he is going to arrive. Clearly, the bridegroom is the Christ, the messiah, and Jesus is telling them, they never know when the Christ may come, and they should be ready. (The irony is that he was sitting there with them at that moment as he taught this – and some of them were clearly didn’t realize it). Consider what he must have been thinking and feeling as he said to them, “Keep alert, because you don’t know the day or the hour.” Perhaps he smiled, perhaps he shook his head sadly as he thought, “Some of you don’t even realize the bridegroom is here. You aren’t ready, and soon it may be too late.”

In the little book, Laughter in Appalachia, Fred Park of Berea, Kentucky tells a story about a man named Quill. Quill lived way back in the woods where he hunted and fished all the time. Quill didn't pay any attention to the hunting seasons or laws or anything, and he knew the woods better than the game warden.

The game warden had been trying to catch Quill for a long time. Today was the day. He knew Quill would be up early to go fishing. So the game warden sneaked down there in the middle of the night and hid on top of Quill's house. This way he knew he had the jump on Quill. He'd let him head out and then he'd follow him. His plan was to hide in the woods until Quill had caught a large, illegal bunch of fish, and he'd catch him.

As it started to get a little bit of daylight, the game warden could hear Quill get up, start a fire, and put the coffee on. His stomach started growling at the smell of that coffee and those fresh smelling biscuits as they baked in the oven. He could hardly contain himself. Suddenly out walked Quill on the porch and hollered, "Come on down here and git some of this coffee and biscuits while they're hot! I know you're out there!" He went back in and shut the door.

The game warden could not believe it. He climbed down and walked up on the porch and into the house and exclaimed, "Well, how did you know I was out there?"

Quill said, "I didn't. I walk out there and say that ever morning, just in case ye are!" Quill may not have been a genius, but he knew enough to take precautions. He was ready![1] That is what Jesus is telling the people there sitting with him. “Come on down here. You should be looking every day for the Messiah, expecting him to be with you. Because you never know he might be out there in the woods, and if you aren’t ready you might be in a heap of trouble.”

But what does the story mean for us, who live in the days after Christ has come? Many think it is referring to Christ’s second coming, and being ready for that. But I wonder about that, because that certainly isn’t what he was thinking of when he shared it with the people sitting around him. He was there, then.

Rather, I think the message for us today has more to do with how we live our lives. Like young women wanting to impress the groom, our love for God should have a sense of eagerness of being in God’s presence, we should have a sense of striving our very best to please God.

After all, if you want to impress the handsomest hunk, you do everything possible to get ready. You don’t do it half-heartedly, and you certainly don’t wait until the last minute.

You still should be living every day with the expectation that you will meet the messiah, you might see him in the face of a person who is suffering, you might find yourself on your deathbed, perhaps he will come again in the clouds tomorrow, whatever the method of meeting him, you should be living with the expectation of it happening at any time. So you should be trying to impress God.

Here Jesus is not telling us to compete with our neighbors and try to keep them from getting into heaven, nor is he telling us that God is measuring the oil of our lives and will judge us based upon our works. No, it is more likely Jesus is telling us, be a like a young girl waiting for her boyfriend, be so in love with God that you are doing everything you can to show it, so that when the day comes that God calls you into heaven, your light is bright for all to see.

Of course, there is one other possibility. And I save this for last because it is so counter to our normal reading of the passage. What I am saying here will make more sense over the next couple of weeks as we look at the next two parables of Jesus.

But it is possible that Jesus is actually critiquing the women who won’t share their oil. The bridegroom has been sighted, he is right there before them. How much oil do their lamps need? Honestly, not much, just enough to burn for a short time. If they had shared their oil, everyone would have gotten in. Jesus may be critiquing those who are afraid to be generous, whose selfishness prevents others from getting to see the Christ. This is an interesting twist that Jesus may have hoped would come out in discussion as they talked about the kingdom of God. So I would add it as a second thing to consider, after first reading it as a reminder to prepare ourselves, read it also as a reminder to help others prepare themselves for God as well. They also need oil for their lamps, and quite honestly you have it. The message of God’s love is that oil, give it to them, so that they can enter in as well.

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[1] Laughter in Appalachia by Fred Park

Sermon: Shocked By a Blessing

Matthew 5:1-12

When Jesus teaches on the mountain, he has a whole group of people sitting around him. And he begins to talk to them about people who have troubles: the hopeless, the grieving, the hungry and thirsty, the harassed and the insulted. But what follows is a shock – Jesus tells them that they are blessed by God for what they are going through.

That normally isn’t our attitude when we are going through things like this – much more likely people ask what they did to anger God, or why are they being punished – but that is not how Jesus frames the situation. He says that they are actually favored by God, beloved of God because this trouble that they are facing leads to blessing. And look at the blessings! Jesus tells them that they will be given heaven, happiness, fullness, mercy and more. They will be rewarded. He turns what they have been feeling as a negative in their lives, their suffering and he turns it into a positive.

I wonder what people were thinking when they heard this for the first time. Did they try cleaning out their ears to see if they heard him correctly? Or did they think that Jesus was crazy? Did they think he was an optimist who not only saw the glass half full, but insanely thought the water in it could be transformed into the best wine? Or did they hear the deeper promises of God that Jesus was conveying and did it fill them with hope?

I pray that it was the latter. You see, one of the most powerful things that Jesus does throughout his life and his death is reframe the way we see the world.

Treasures are not as important as things that don’t rust. The first shall be last, the last shall be first. Don’t worry about what you shall eat or what you shall wear. Love your enemies.

In fact, this is the same thing that Jesus does on the cross. When Jesus suffers and dies, it appears to be a horrible and awful punishment. But God transforms that suffering by producing life from it – suddenly Christ’s death is about being set free from the limitations of our humanity. Sin and death no longer have a hold on us. Forgiveness is offered for our past, and promises laid out for our future. His resurrection reframes the horrific image of crucifixion into a source of salvation. And with it, we are reminded that all suffering including even death is not the end. Instead there is a shocking blessing which follows, eternal life.

So perhaps Jesus does really get it. Perhaps he sees our suffering more clearly than we do because he has a wider perspective. So let’s look at this teaching again, and try to open them up like a stubborn oyster and find the pearls of wisdom inside. Remember, these are just my thoughts, I encourage you to look at them and come up with ways you see the blessings in each as I go through them!

The first one is Happy are people who are hopeless, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs. The blessing of hopelessness is that despite the fact that they have broken spirits, heaven is theirs -- even if they have given up on the promises of God. They will be surprised when the blessing they had stopped hoping for happens for them!

The second is Happy are people who grieve because they will be made glad. The blessing of grief is that joy comes. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. In fact, the situation may be like the previous one, it may be that they have grieved so long that they have given up hope that joy will ever come, but then comes the day when heaven’s blessed reunion is theirs, and they will be shocked when God wipes the tears from their eyes and joy is restored!

The third says, Happy are people who are humble, because they will inherit the earth. Those who don’t think they are worth a damn are shown they are worth a blessing. For those of you who think I just swore and are shocked, I used that phrase on purpose. Being damned is being condemned by God, right? So people who feel like they aren’t even worth enough of God’s time to be condemned by God are given the world. They will be shocked to discover they are valued far beyond their own self-assessment.

The fourth says, Happy are people who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, because they will be fed until they are full. Righteousness in Greek is the same word as justice. It is a word meaning that everything is right and good: internally and externally. So the blessing is that those who are desperate to see good done, will discover so much goodness, that their souls will be overflowing with it, and so will our world. Those who desire this will be shocked when they discover God the immensity of God’s goodness.

The fifth of Jesus’ statements is, Happy are people who show mercy, because they will receive mercy. This one breaks the pattern of most of the others because being merciful doesn’t really seem like a situation of suffering that the prior ones have been. But I suppose it could be, if the person is the type that all around sees wounded and hurting people in a merciless world. So perhaps the blessing is that God shocks them by showing that ultimately mercy wins, and they experience the healing of everything around them.

Jesus’ sixth statement is Happy are people who have pure hearts, because they will see God. Once again, this one doesn’t really seem to be addressing a group of people that are obviously suffering, unless it is that their innocence is stained by the impurity of the world. Like a child, the pure of heart are traumatized by foul things done around them, and perhaps even to them. God will bless them with the purity of God’s presence, which may truly overwhelm and shock, and a realization that God has cleansed and purified everything.

The seventh statement, is Happy are people who make peace, because they will be called God’s children. Like the last two peace-makers don’t strike us as people who suffer. And yet those who make peace must see conflict, they must open their eyes and be witnesses to war and hatred. And such sights do not easily leave the heart and mind. One could come to believe that conflict is the only reality. But God promises that it is not, and one day peace will be the ultimate reality, and I suspect that will be a shock for us all.

Finally Jesus tells us that Happy are people whose lives are harassed because they are righteous, who are insulted and have bad and false things said about them because of Christ. They have suffered the harsh condemnation of others. But the blessing is that they will find the complete and utter acceptance of God.

Each and every one of these statements reminds us that what is now the current situation, is not what will be. So the sufferings, the difficulties of this present age, are not part of the age to come.

Jesus is trying to encourage us to see beyond the present, to look into the future, and remember that God is still at work. If we could but see what he sees, we would know it. He wants us to reframe what we experience in life and know that the worst of what we go through can be transformed into something new and beautiful. God is always at work recreating, reshaping and reforming our world and our lives. The suffering of today is the blessing of tomorrow.

When we have lost hope, we need to know that the reign of God is very real and never gives up. When we grieve, we need to know that the deaths that we have witnessed in the last year are the reunions that are planned in heaven. When we are hungry, thirsty, insulted, harassed, merciful, humble, and stepped on by the world, we need to know that God plans to fill us, love us, lift us up, show us mercy, until the very kingdom of heaven is ours. And just knowing that gives us joy.

Sermon: Summarizing the Law

Matthew 22:34-46

A few weeks ago we looked at the 10 commandments and we talked about how they summarized the law, and brought the community of Israel together. But now the question is brought to Jesus – what is the greatest commandment? What is the most important thing that we are supposed to do? And Jesus answers with what some call the vertical and the horizontal rules. Love God (the up and down law) and love each other (the side to side law). Jesus then says that all of the law and the prophets hang upon these two things. What is interesting about these two particular statements is that they don’t sound much like rules or laws; rather, they sound like statements about our heart.

Which is interesting because normally we would say that you can’t command people’s attitude. For example, that little asterisk in the bulletin that asks you to stand up during certain parts of the service – we could make a law about that – we could create a command that says, “Thou shalt stand during the hymns.”

But we could couldn’t really make a law that says “Thou shalt stand reverently during the hymns.” Because you can’t really command that internal state, you can suggest it, you can encourage it, but that doesn’t mean it will happen. In fact we have no real way of knowing if it is happening, because we can’t see what is going on inside the person. All we know is that they are standing – the heart and mind are invisible to us. In fact, “Directing a person to be reverent in no way assures that they will or are even capable of doing so. Reverence is not something you can simply conjure up in yourself at will, your will or that of another.”[1]

And we would probably say that the same is true with love. Imagine that two of you break into a fist fight after church. I can run up to you and tell you to stop. I can command you to shake hands and make up. But I can’t really command you to shake hands with love in your hearts. Truth is, you would probably be too angry to do so, even if commanded. And yet, Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are not about our actions, but about our attitude and our hearts. He has the audacity to claim that God commands love. Even after a fist fight.

I find that pretty fascinating for many reasons. First it seems to suggest that we as human beings can actually control who we love.

Love is not some mystical force beyond our understanding and outside of our control, but that we have the ability to say to ourselves, “I will love that person, I will love my enemy.” When I shared this with praise team on Thursday, Emily said that she imagined Jesus saying that in the way our parents told us to try broccoli. Try loving them you might like them. And I replied, I don’t want to love them, they’re yucky. But you get the idea, Jesus is saying that such an emotional and irrational act is possible for us.

I admit, this is relatively new thinking for me. For a long time I have read this command to love, and what I have interpreted Jesus saying is that we must treat people with love. That when we do the actions eventually the heart follows. But I believed that Jesus wasn’t really talking about or commanding our emotions.

However, having recently been reading various books, I have come to realize that our emotional state is much more under our control than we normally admit. That we can actually change our own feelings, but it takes practice and work. With training, you can teach yourself to be more joyful. With training, you can teach yourself to be more compassionate. And so perhaps, what Jesus is saying to all of us, is that with training, and with God’s help, we can be taught to be more loving: to love God and love people at will.

If that is true, then most of us have work to do! It means that we need practice in compassion, that we need to work on ourselves so that when God commands us to love, we can actually change our hearts and love will come forth from us. Not just actions, but actually deep and real love.

Having thought about it, I think it is true. As I look around the world, I see people who have learned that. They clearly have spent years working on their ability to love others. When you are with them, the compassion in their hearts is evident. You know they care deeply about you. And when they go to the next person, they love that person fully and completely too. They have cultivated that ability. The suggestion is that we can learn that—let me take that back, it isn’t a suggestion, the commandment is that we learn that kind of love.

So if these are the commandments, to love God and love each other, and it is possible to actually do it, why don’t we? I mean, if these really are the most important two laws in the church, why don’t we act like it? Why does it seem like we are often more concerned with other things?

Those questions led me to my second interesting observation from the passage. That Jesus has told us that our faith is about love, and for some reason we don’t believe him. For example, In the book Churchless by George Barna and David Kinnaman, 3 in 5 Christians said that the most important thing in follow Jesus is following the moral rules of God; in other words, the law (p. 80). They didn’t say it was about loving God or loving others, but about moral rules. Now maybe they say that because they think that the way you love God is that you follow God’s rules, which makes a little sense. Unfortunately that then gives people outside the church the wrong impression that the church is about legalistically following the laws, and not about a real change of heart toward God and toward other people.

And so if you were to ask people outside of the church what the two most important laws of the church were, do you think they would answer these two: love God and love one another? I doubt it. I would guess based upon what is in the news and the public arguments that they would respond quite differently than this. They might answer closer to what is in the book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou where she tells us Momma’s two most important rules were Thou shall not be dirty and thou shall not be impudent! Yep, the church is often more concerned about dirtiness and impudence than love. We get all fussy over moral dirt, because we can see that. But we forget about the state of our own hearts.

Now, I don’t want to diminish the importance of these other laws, because quite honestly, the rules are often intended to help us do the right thing. And our arguments within the church on how to apply the rules often center on what is the best way to show our love for God and our love for others. Should we be accepting or should we show tough love? Should we emphasize grace or holiness? But the fact of the matter is that we are not communicating the underlying principles to others the way we should. We aren’t communicating it well enough to ourselves if 3 in 5 Christians didn’t realize that loving God and loving others are the most important things in following Christ.

We are a church built upon love. Love that sees the way God sees, love that cares the way God cares, and love that reaches out to help and strives to be the very hands of God in service of the world.

As much as we like to talk about getting rid of dirt, as much as we like to cure impudence, those are secondary to the change that comes in here. [point to heart].

So why don’t we want to believe Jesus when he tells us that our faith is about love? Honestly, I think because changing our hearts is harder than changing our behavior. It is easier for me to stop punching my neighbor in the nose than to love him or her. It is easier to obey a list of laws than it is to truly and deeply fall in love with God. In a recent book, James K. A. Smith writes that, You are what you love. Not what you believe, not what you think, but what you love. This has profound implications for us as Christians – suddenly it isn’t about our head or our intellect, but about our deepest desires as human beings. Advertisers know this. They don’t try to change our minds, they try to change our wants. Likewise, in the end, love is what God wants and expects of us. “Jesus is a teacher who doesn’t just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn’t content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings.”[2]

Because love is what God has for us. Our commands are to love God and love others because God loves us and God loves others. God only expects us to do what God is already doing. We are to love because God loves. God is capable of loving us when we are dirty. God is capable of loving us when we are impudent. So God says, “Love others when they are dirty, love them when they are impudent. If you struggle to do it, let my love fill you. Learn to love like I do, learn it from me. In fact, I command it. All of the law and the prophets hang upon this. So love me, and love others.”

So unlike other times when I have read this and thought Jesus meant act lovingly toward others, this time I read it and I thought, Jesus really is calling us to change our hearts not just our actions. And it is time we acted like we believe him.

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[1] Mark Radecke, In Christ a New Creation, CSS Publishing Company

[2] James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit

A Glimpse of God

Exodus 33:12-23

Last week I spoke with how God wants to be in relationship with us. That there is open dialogue, give and take, forgiveness and love. That Moses even changes God’s mind. One of the mistakes that we might make after hearing that sermon is to think then that God is just like us as humans. That there is nothing particularly awe-inspiring about God.

Today’s passage in Exodus remedies that situation. Moses continues to be in relationship in God – they continue to be in dialogue, the give and take is still there, as are the forgiveness and love; but it is clear that this is by no means a relationship of two equals. Moses is still very much human, and God is still very much a power beyond understanding.

You see, Moses craves to see God. In other words he wants to know God more fully and more personally. He wants God to reveal all that God is, but God knows that Moses can’t handle that. For him to experience God that completely would destroy him. So God consents to let Moses catch a glimpse of him as he goes by.

Many of us also crave what Moses craves – we want to see God more fully. We want to experience God’s presence.

In an article Making It Personal Rabbi Adam Morris captures this really well! “The “evidence” of divinity may be all around us, but we human beings are wired to want to know God “personally.” We want God to speak to us as we speak to one another. We want to calculate God’s effect in our world the way we calculate the balance of our bank accounts. We want to be able to invoke God’s presence in the same manner that we can access the piece of news, information, podcast, at a moment’s notice. The story of Moses seeking to see God’s glory (Exodus 33) is part of the Jewish sacred story because it captures the inherent challenge in establishing a personal relationship with God.”[1]

What it shows us is that although we desire to see God, God is bigger than we can handle. We want to know God like we know another person, but that simply is not possible. God is not another person, God is the creator of all that is. That kind of power is truly beyond our comprehension. And yet even though God is so powerful, even though God is so far beyond us, God still wants to be close to us, to know us, and for us to know God. It is a great dilemma of faith – how can we be close to one so beyond us?

There are a couple of theological words that can be helpful for us in this: immanence and transcendence. Immanence is the idea that God is immanent –

the official definition is that the Divine presence permeates the material world, that God is here, that God is within us, close to us, in fact, that God is always with us. It is the idea that there are many ways that God is like us. God is like a father, God is like a friend, God is like a neighbor, a counselor, a mother holding us when we are afraid. We need to know the immanence of God. That’s what Moses is asking for here today. “Let me see your glorious presence.”

But God’s answer is that although God is willing to be there, God is also Transcendent. The official definition is that there are aspects of the Divine that are beyond the material universe,

beyond physical laws, separate from our physical universe. Transcendence is the idea that God is beyond us, is greater than us. It is a reminder that God is unlike us, not only outside of our experience, but outside of the entire universe’s experience. There is nothing in nature that is quite like God.

So although Moses wants to see God. That simply isn’t completely possible. Not only can we not handle seeing God, the universe itself cannot contain God. I know that this is very philosophical. But it is vital for us to understand, even if we don’t completely get it, that God is like us, within us, and close to us in some ways. But at the same time God is far beyond anything we can understand, unlike anything we have ever experienced, mysterious and awesome.

Perhaps it is like our experience of the sun. We know and experience the sun through the light and the heat that it gives us. We know that it is absolutely vital to our lives and everything depends upon it.

We sometimes crave sitting in its light, absorbing its warmth, feeling it upon our skin. We even want to know more about it, and are curious when things like eclipses take place. Yet, despite our desire to look directly at it, we cannot without harming our eyes. Because as much as we know that the sun is part of all that happens in our world, we also know that we could not stand next to it without being consumed in its fire. It is much more than a heat lamp.

Of course, God is not the sun. My comparison is just a weak attempt to explain how something can be close to us, part of us, and yet beyond us at the same time. So that is the dilemma of faith. How can we get closer to the one who made us? How can we see God more clearly and completely?

St. Anselm in his great treatise on God, in the very first chapter writes this: “Be it mine to look up to your light, even from afar, even from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me, when I seek you, for I cannot seek you, except you teach me, nor find you, except you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in longing, let me long for you in seeking; let me find you in love, and love you in finding. Lord, I acknowledge and I thank you that you have created me in this your image, in order that I may be mindful of you, may conceive of you, and love you; but that image has been so consumed and wasted away by vices, and obscured by the smoke of wrong‑doing, that it cannot achieve that for which it was made, except you renew it, and create it anew. I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate your sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree your truth, which my heart believes and loves.”[2]

Anselm captures strongly the difficulty of wanting to see God, and yet knowing that as humans, partly because we are sinful, partly because we simply are not wise enough to handle it, we are limited in our ability to see God. We are in the image of God, but we are not God. He also reminds us that, although we cannot find God, although we cannot see God, God can find us, teach us, God can reveal Godself to us.

So here is the amazing thing that happens in this scripture. Although God is so beyond us, God wants to grant Moses his wish. God wants to satisfy his desire to see God’s glorious presence. In fact, God wants all of us to be able to encounter God and draw close to God. This is part of the grace of God.

This song captured that well for me. You can sing along if you like, or just read and meditate on the words and pictures.

[video Who Am I – Casting Crowns]

And so God often grants us fleeting glimpses of Godself. We may catch a glimpse of God in nature, or in the compassionate actions of another person, in a spiritual moment while we are in prayer, or in a dream while we are asleep. Even Jesus is just a glimpse of God, the embodiment of God in a human form, as much as God can be contained by such.

Each of these glimpses is meant to help satisfy what we crave, that meeting with God, while also reminding us that God is far beyond us and bigger than we can ever capture with our smart-phone camera.

What this means in our personal spiritual lives is that God is willing to bless us with glimpses of God. But it also means that those glimpses may never quite satisfy us. There will always be mystery in God. It means that while we want a personal relationship with God, and God in some ways grants it, that relationship is one between the Creator of all that is, and one of the creations. It is not a relationship of equals, but despite that, it is a relationship of love. Love that wants dialogue, give and take, obedience and forgiveness. And that is complex, hard to explain, and yet wonderful to be part of every day!

As Rabbi Adam Morris says, “The Divine Being, regardless of its power and presence in your personal world, is still as mysterious and elusive as the Israelites found it.” And quite honestly, that is exactly what I would expect from God: to be like me, and yet to be beyond me, and that makes me love and awe God even more.

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[1] Seasons of the Spirit, p. 121.

[2] Works of St. Anselm, tr. by Sidney Norton Deane, [1903], at sacred-texts.com, chapter 1

Sermon: Good Relationship

Exodus 32:1-14

Relationship. According to the dictionary: The word means the way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected. The way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other. Relationship can be a good way of interacting, it can be a bad way of interacting. But let’s just focus on the good relationships for a moment. If I were to ask you what the elements of a good relationship are? What makes it so that two people can live together well, work together well? [open it up]

In today’s passage there are all sorts of relationships. There are good ones, there are not so good ones. First let me read it, and listen for the relationships. This is Exodus 32:1-14

The people saw that Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. They gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come on! Make us gods who can lead us. As for this man Moses who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t have a clue what has happened to him.”

Aaron said to them, “All right, take out the gold rings from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took out the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. He collected them and tied them up in a cloth. Then he made a metal image of a bull calf, and the people declared, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf. Then Aaron announced, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!” They got up early the next day and offered up entirely burned offerings and brought well-being sacrifices. The people sat down to eat and drink and then got up to celebrate.

The Lord spoke to Moses: “Hurry up and go down! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, are ruining everything! They’ve already abandoned the path that I commanded. They have made a metal bull calf for themselves. They’ve bowed down to it and offered sacrifices to it and declared, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” The Lord said to Moses, “I’ve been watching these people, and I’ve seen how stubborn they are. Now leave me alone! Let my fury burn and devour them. Then I’ll make a great nation out of you.”

But Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, “Lord, why does your fury burn against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and amazing force? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He had an evil plan to take the people out and kill them in the mountains and so wipe them off the earth’? Calm down your fierce anger. Change your mind about doing terrible things to your own people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, whom you yourself promised, ‘I’ll make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky. And I’ve promised to give your descendants this whole land to possess for all time.’” Then the Lord changed his mind about the terrible things he said he would do to his people.

Listening for the relationship is a different way of listening to this passage isn’t it. There are four basic characters. Moses, the people of Israel, Aaron and God. Tim Scorer, a spiritual director, educator and author takes time to talk about the human characters of the story, and how and when we might see ourselves like them.

For example, we might feel like Moses when we have to entrust our responsibilities to someone else when we go away.

We might feel like Moses when we have to clean up the mess that happens when we are gone. Or when we have to intervene with authorities on behalf of those we love, as Moses intervenes for the people with God. We might understand how hard it can be to argue with one who is in authority over us. Yet Moses also represents people who have a lively relationship with God and receive deep promises from God.

Whereas the people of Israel represent us at very different times in life than Moses does.

We empathize with them when we become restless in the absence of our leader, when we feel an absence of connection with God and want something more, or perhaps when we want to be able to use our money to influence our religious community and perhaps even shape the practices of our faith.

And we will definitely understand what Aaron is going through when

we have been through a time when something disastrous has happened on our watch, when we are waiting for our boss to return or for someone else to come and fix it. We might even relate to him as one who refuses to take a stand even when we know that things are going wrong.[1]

Those are the human characters in the passage. Now, you may relate to one or another of these people more than others. You might feel like the Israelites and their relationship with God – impatient and wondering what will happen next. You might feel like Aaron, who should have taken a stand, ended up doing the wrong thing, and now probably feels pretty foolish as he looks at God. Or you may feel like Moses and have a strong relationship with God even though those around you are making a huge mess of it all. What makes the story interesting and in fact what makes it applicable to our lives are the ways these characters interact. The relationships between them.

And you could go lots of directions analyzing that, but let’s focus on how God has a strong relationship with Moses, because I hope that all of us want a stronger relationship with God. I hope it is a pretty universal desire among us here.

The situation reaches its critical moment, when God sees what the people are doing. God is not happy that the people have forgotten about God and built an idol after all that God has done for them. God is frustrated and hurt. And here is what is amazing, God tells Moses that. “I’ve been watching these people, and I’ve seen how stubborn they are. Now leave me alone!” It takes a pretty good relationship for someone to come to you and say to you, I’m really mad at that other person.

But it goes even further, because even though God says, “Now leave me alone.” -- Moses argues back with God, and he says, “Change your mind about doing terrible things to your own people.” God actually is open to input from Moses on how to handle the situation. This idea may leave us confused – because we expect God to have all the answers, we expect God to be perfect and know it all. What it suggests to us is that God is more about relationship than about setting our destinies in stone, and plotting out our lives ahead of time. Perhaps what makes God perfect is God’s ability to work with us in relationship.

In other words, God is less like a clock-maker who made a perfect machine and started the universe in motion, and more like the perfect coach who motivates the team throughout the game. And as a perfect coach, God actually listens when the players want to have input into the game-plan, if the ideas are good. It is a much more relational view of God. It certainly fits with our ideas that God loves and forgives – even in the midst of relationship problems – as God does with the Israelites here, and as God does with us throughout our lives.

What this passage shows us about God is that God is deeply committed to being in relationship with Moses. But it also suggests that when we say that God wants to be in relationship with us as human beings, when we say that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us as individuals, that God may want to be able to interact with us much as God did with Moses. In other words, God wants to be able to tell us when we have done things that anger or frustrate God. God wants us to be free to share when we are becoming impatient, and are on the verge of giving up and looking for something else because God has taken too long. God is open to our input, and we can argue with God about how things should be done.

All of this is part of our prayer life. Of talking with God and listening to God.

And of course, in those moments God also reminds us that God loves and forgives us. All of these things are part of a good relationship with God, even as they are part of a good relationship with others. It is a willingness to stay in relationship even during the tough times.

The good news is that God wants relationship with us. Relationship in its best form. Where we are able to communicate openly and clearly, where give and take is expected, and where love and forgiveness are the foundation.

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[1] Seasons of the Spirit, Finding Meaning in Exodus, Tim Scorer

Sermon: So Many Laws

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

For the past month we have been reading about the Israelites and their escape from Egypt. We have heard about how God has saved them through miracle and miracle. All that is wonderful. But after wandering in the desert for a while, without any government, without any laws – the people need guidance. They are no longer under Egyptian law. So at some point they need to establish rules for their new community. How are they to treat each other? What things are off limits?

It is a situation very similar to what happened on Boxing Day, December 26, 1989. Romania was in turmoil. The previous day, President Nicolae Ceausescu, unable to quell the tide of dissent in Bucharest, had been tried and executed. Now no one was in charge. Western reporters flooded into the country from the south, searching for someone who could speak English. Finally they found someone, and in one sentence she summed up not only Romania's predicament, but the human condition: "We have freedom," she said, "but we don't know what to do with it."[1] That’s where the Israelites were – they now had freedom, but they didn’t know what to do with it. What is the best way to live?

Today’s reading begins a section of the Bible where law and rules become an important part of the story. Mixed in with the stories of Moses and the people will be long sections on how the temple is to be organized, how people are to treat strangers, what to do if a person steals from another person; and so on.

Believe it or not, up until this point, God has never really laid all of that out. The people have lived and acted pretty much without that kind of guidance. But this moment in time changes that.

This new guidance from God begins with one of the hallmarks in the history of religious law. We call it the 10 commandments. Scholars looking at the original form of this passage and reading it in the Hebrew, suggest that the commandments listed here, may actually have first been simply 10 single words. Murder. Idolatry. Adultery. And so. They were a shorthand for a rule of life to guide the Israelite people.[2] Remember these 10 words, one for each finger, and then obey them.

So obviously these were critical for the Israelite people. They needed laws for their new community that was free from Egypt and united under their service of God – but what do these 10 commandments do for us? Because we do not live in a society without laws. In fact, in our country, our state and our community, we have thousands of laws. Way more than fit in the bible. There are laws about murder, building codes, medical marijuana, how fast you can drive, where to ride your bicycle, and what you can put in your garbage cans. In fact it is estimated there are 35 million laws on the books in the United States alone.

So we have no shortage of laws – do we still need the 10 commandments? That may sound like a joke, but honestly, do we? What role do these commandments play in our lives? Several of them are covered by a whole host of laws on the books in the United States, so do we need them?

Actually a Christian Sunday School teacher wrote Rabbi Adam Morris’ a question much like this. That may sound strange, but Rabbi Morris works with a Christian Sunday School curriculum company and helps to answer questions people have about the Hebrew Scriptures which we sometimes call the Old Testament. Here is the question:

“Dear Rabbi, I teach Sunday school to young people. This month we are doing a bulletin board on the ten commandments. Could you tell me if there is a more modern way to interpret them for youth?”

Rabbi Morris answers: “You ask a great question that cuts to the heart of the matter as to why we teach Scripture – or as we Jews may call it, text. We teach it because on some level we believe in our heart of hearts how relevant it is – no matter the anachronistic language or even uncomfortable story details (Leviticus and leprosy come to mind!). We believe that there is relevance to us today. Even though the language of the commandments can be somewhat distant, at the core of each is a truth that each of us knows and faces. I think that the key to interpreting them today is hooking into that truth and staying positive and appropriate.”

“Jews order the ten commandments a bit differently than in the Christian tradition, but I’ll share our way of counting.”

He then deals with the commandments one by one.

“I am the Lord your God can be re-told as: Knowing who is the one with the power.”

“Wrongful use of God’s name can be re-told as: Being aware of the language we use (cursing, blessing, etc.).”

“Idol Worship -- Following after the god of stuff (watches, clothes, phones, etc.).”

“Shabbat/Sabbath day --Taking care of ourselves/souls.”

“Parents -- (Too much relevancy here!).”

Let me pause for a second here so that those of you who are taking notes can catch up, and so the rest of you can digest those first five commandments. [pause – after a few moments continue]

Ready to go on? Okay, so for the next one we could say that the reminder about the evil of Murder is that God is “All about life.”

“Stealing -- Acting on jealousy and feeling left out (see #10).”

“Adultery -- Focus on the positive – the need for loving relationships.”

“Bearing false witness -- Truth – how much they value it from others.”

“Coveting -- Not feeling good about themselves so wanting what everyone else has.”[3]

What Rabbi Morris encourages us to do as we look at the commandments, is to look for the deeper truth in them of what God expects us to value most. These should continue to influence the way we live our daily lives. They act as guiding principles for what is most important, and what brings life.

Suddenly the things that are most important are: the God who made us, the relationships with family, the relationships of marriage, the relationships in community. We are reminded to take care of ourselves, to be careful what we say, to value the lives of others. We are reminded that dishonesty and jealousy are harmful to ourselves and to others. We are told that stuff is less important and doesn’t need to be the object of our desire, and reminded that God more important than we often give God credit for.

If we were to truly live these 10 laws out, our lives would be greatly changed. Can you imagine no jealousy, no chasing after material things, no shooters from the 32^nd floor of a hotel, no threat of war with North Korea. And people would actually take care of their souls so that they felt that deep connection with God that they need to be truly fulfilled. These 10 laws could change everything for us. As Psalm 19 says, “All of these are righteous, they are sweeter than honey—even dripping off the honeycomb! No doubt about it, your servant is enlightened by them; there is great reward in keeping them.”

So yes, there is a reason for us to keep reading and learning the 10 commandments – even if the language is old, and at first glance they don’t relate to our day to day modern life. The reality is they serve as a baseline reminder that there are deeper values to life.

The founder of United Methodist, John Wesley said, “The ritual or ceremonial law, delivered by Moses to the children of Israel, containing all the injunctions and ordinances which related to the old sacrifices and service of the temple, our Lord indeed did come to destroy, to dissolve, and utterly abolish.  . .. all the Apostles, elders, and brethren, being assembled with one accord, (Acts 15:22) declared, that to command them to keep this law, was to "subvert their souls;" and that "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost" and to them, to lay no such burden upon them. (Acts 15:28) This "hand-writing of ordinances" our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to His cross.”

“But the moral law, contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He did not take away. It was not the design of His coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken, which stands fast as the faithful witness in heaven.”

They remind us in 10 short statements, perhaps even in 10 words, that God cares about our religious lives, which is obvious, but God also cares about the quality of our lives and that means God gives us instructions about how we treat each other, and even what we desire most.

They tell us how to use the freedom we have, given to us by God as we make choices each day, and they guide us to the best results. So take some time and meditate upon these, and let them help you prioritize how you live out each day. After all, if you can work to obey 35 million laws for our country, you can certainly work on these 10 for yourself.

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[1] David F. Wells, "God Spoke These Words," The ChristianCentury, 3/15/00, p. 301.

[2] Seasons of the SPirit

[3] Seasons of the Spirit

Sermon: Is God With Us?

Exodus 17:1-7

When you read today’s passage from Exodus, you might be tempted to get the wrong point. It would be easy to look at the people and their arguments in the passage from Exodus and think that the most important part of the passage is about complaining. Moses led the people out of Egypt and ever since they have been uphappy. But in today’s passage the stress hits a new height. The people are now, not just complaining, but now they are arguing with Moses.

So we could think that the passage is about helping people to learn better ways of bringing their problems to light. But that isn’t the point. The real function of the passage is in the very last line – “Is the Lord really with us or not?” That’s the crux of the issue. That’s why the people are afraid. That’s why they are panicked and concerned.

When we read the story, we think, “How can they not know”. Obviously, God has been with the Israelites from before they stepped out of Egypt. God saw their plight and has walked with them all along the way. God brought plagues to change Pharaoh’s heart, God parted the seas, God provided food in the form of Manna so that they would not be hungry. From our perspective as we read about miracle after miracle, it is obvious that God is with them. But to the Israelites, who day by day are walking through the desert, and who day after day are struggling to live, it is easy to keep forgetting the past, because they are lost in the worries of today, so they lose trust, and they are afraid, and they wonder “Is God with us?”

For those of us today, who are reading the story; rather than be judgmental of the Israelites, we should admit that ultimately we have the same question, that critical question at the end of the passage: “Is the Lord really with us or not?”

Often our worries both for the church and ourselves, is that very same question. As we go through life we wonder, “Is God there, or not? Is God real?” This is especially on our minds when things are not going well.

And this is natural. It is natural to wonder, even to doubt God’s love, God’s care, and even if God exists, when the circumstances of life are not going well. When you are in a hospital bed facing life or death, when you are going through a horrendous divorce, when you are watching your child ruin their life – these questions can pour forth from us. And the longer the situation lasts, the more emotional we can become. What starts as a nagging thought in the back of our mind, suddenly becomes such a worry that we start to be argumentative and to complain.

We may have very real complaints, like we don’t have enough water; or that the medicine isn’t helping us, or our ex is treating us like dirt, or our child won’t talk to us; we may have very real complaints, we may be lacking something that is necessary and life giving, but what if there is also a spiritual issue behind our complaints.

In some cases, the reason we become angry, the reason we start arguing with the doctors, or the lawyers, or even our family members is because we are afraid that God is not walking alongside us. We are afraid that we have been abandoned and left to die in the desert places of life. We no longer trust that our future is protected by the one who made us. Our situation has created a cloud of doubt within us. We feel like we have lost our faith. I find it interesting that it is so obvious to us that God was with the Israelites and yet at the same time it can be so hard for us to see that God is with us personally!

Perhaps if someone were to write the story of our lives out for us, we would be able to see it. Perhaps if we read the heavenly account, to see miracle after miracle that has occurred in our lives, whether we were aware of them or not, then maybe we would feel just as confident that God is with us as we are confident that God was with the Israelites.

One of the exercises that we assign to new candidates for ministry is to draw out their lives as a river. The river starts at their birth and it flows through time to where they are today. Along the way, there have been twists and turns, slow and calm places, and places with rapids and waterfalls. There may be places where new streams merged with ours or waters split into diverging streams. They are to draw it, and present it to the other candidates.

Perhaps the next time we are tempted to ask whether God is with us, we need to do the river exercise, and draw out our lives on a piece of paper. Then, as we look at that river, where are the places where we felt God most closely? What are the times when we know that God protected us? When have we experienced miracles that truly saved us? Often what we discover is that God has been with us throughout our lives, and although we are afraid today, although we have worries, God has been faithful in the past. We can draw on that to help us with the situation we are currently in, to help us trust that God is with us now.

Barbara Milligan, writing for the National Association for Christian Recovery writes about how she “was haunted by questions like, Am I really saved? Does God really love me? Is there really a God, and did Jesus really die for me, or did somebody make all this up?”

Questions that might be summed up in the same question the Israelites asked, “Is God really with me or not?” She then writes that looking back through her life helps her when she asks those questions: “I remember the dark nights of crying out to God when I was lonely or afraid, and the warmth of God’s presence that often came to me within minutes. I remember sensing that God was leading me as I decided to move 400 miles from my childhood home without a job or a place to live. I remember God beginning to heal my emotional wounds, freeing me from some codependent patterns and helping me develop healthy boundaries. And I remember many of God’s personal, daily gifts to me–a hummingbird in flight, staring into my face from two feet away, or an encouraging conversation with someone I trusted, or a glimpse of something good that God was doing in a situation that had tied my stomach into knots.”

“Despite my doubts, God met me in all those ways, and more. Over and over, I was invited to experience God. I experienced God’s presence, God’s guidance, God’s compassion, God’s comfort, God’s nurturing, God’s strength, God’s love and many more aspects of God’s character.” [1]

You see the good news is that although we doubt, although we worry, although we are afraid, it does not mean that God is not present, and God is not at work. Our doubts do not hold God out of our lives.

Our worries do not prevent God from working. Look at this passage. Even though the people are complaining and argumentative and even though Moses has no idea what to do with them, God steps in, gives instruction and leads the people to thirst quenching water.

Often in our lives, even though we do not deserve it, even though our trust in God is not all that great, even though we may argue and complain, God actually does good and miraculous things for us anyway! Why? Because even though we are sinners, God loves us and will not leave us – ever. Even when we fail to see God there.

So the point of this passage is not, stop whining or stop arguing with the pastor, although I might like it to be. No, the point of the passage is that when we are worried and afraid, and we find ourselves angry at all around us; perhaps we need to be reminded that, “Yes, God is with me.” Read the story of your life, look at the heavenly account, and see just how much God has done for you. And then use that to reassure yourself that God will continue to be with you in the future – even if that future leads you out into the desert with no water. God will not abandon you. Ever.

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[1] http://www.nacr.org/center-for-spirituality-and-recovery/recovery-from-doubt-experiencing-god