Is God Always Good?: September 11, 2022

 Year C, Pentecost 14                                   Exodus 32:7-14 & Luke 15:1-10                                                        

           We are going to try something right now that we don’t usually do in the Episcopal Church.  It’s called “call and response.”  I am going to say, “God is good” and you will respond “all the time.”  Let’s give it a try.  “God is good.” “All the time.”   I have been in faith communities when they have done this—never in an Episcopal Church of course… And when I hear it, I feel a couple of things.  For a moment, I get swept up in the optimism, the sheer joy.  But then a moment later, I think, “But is he?”  Many of us can think of times in our lives when things seemed so unfair, so desperately sad, we wondered, why is God doing this to me?  Why isn’t God showering me with the goodness I deserve?

            And if you have thought this, that’s ok. The Psalms are full of questions like this.  In the Old Testament, we see a number of examples of when God seems a lot more like an irritable human than a good and loving God.  For instance, was God good when he told Moses to leave him alone so his wrath could burn hot against the people and he could consume them?  He even offered to start a new nation with Moses as the father (rather than Abraham).  That means he was going to destroy the whole group, even though he promised after the flood he would never do that again.   

I will admit that God had some good reasons to be angry.  He was probably expecting that the people would be a little more grateful.  After all, God had brought the people out of Egypt, where they had been slaves.  He had shown them miraculous displays of power and mercy.  God had then given them 10 commandments to follow.  The first commandment was to not to create any idols.  Yet when Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain—where he was talking to God, the people began to panic and asked Aaron (Moses’ brother) to make gods for them.  Aaron complied. 

Now, in defense of the people, being lost in the desert is no small thing.  People die when they are lost in the desert. When your fearless leader disappears on a mountain, that would be fairly anxiety provoking.  So they turned to what they had known for so long…worshipping the most convenient and most accessible gods.  Unfortunately for them, there is nothing that makes God angrier in the Old Testament, than worshipping other gods.   

            God’s reaction is completely understandable to us humans.  We have all lost our temper at times.  But shouldn’t God be above such hair trigger anger?  Fortunately Moses is able to reason with God and this is where things get even more interesting.  Despite the fact that God is determined to punish his people, he is swayed by Moses’ arguments.  Moses reminds him of the promise he made to Abraham.  He basically says, “Remember Abraham? Do you remember how you told him that his descendants would be like the stars of the heaven?  Remember Abraham God?  He was a good guy.  Those are his descendants you are about to destroy.”  God changed his mind.

            This part of the story disturbs some people and I admit that it always makes me a little uncomfortable.  Most of us assume that God doesn’t change.  If God is all knowing and all powerful, he should not change.   Why would he? But when we talk about an unchanging God, we are really talking about God’s character that doesn’t change.  In the end, God is always good.  God is always merciful.  The fact that God was able to change his mind is further proof of his wisdom and goodness.

            If you look at our Gospel reading, you will see God’s character on full display, without any anger to cloud the true nature of his character.  Both parables tell a story of reckless love, compassion and devotion. In the first, Jesus tells the story of a shepherd who searches for the one lost sheep, leaving the other 99 to wander in the wilderness.  The other story is of a woman searching her entire house for a lost coin.  In both stories, the searcher rejoices upon finding the lost item.  The shepherd and woman don’t simply rejoice on their own, no they call their friends and family to rejoice with them.  Jesus then tells those who are listening that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 righteous.  In these stories, we see God as patient, determined and merciful.  We see a God who is good, all the time.

            One of the reasons I have a hard time with that phrase, is that I think about how I would feel if someone said that to me at a difficult time in my life.  I imagine someone walking into the ICU and saying, “God is good” and expecting me to respond, “All the time!”  I consider all the times I have counseled someone going through a difficult time and imagine myself saying that—saying “God is good” and expecting the weeping person to respond: “All the time.” It would not go over well.

Yet what I realized is that those aren’t examples of God not being good, those are times when life wasn’t good.  There is a big difference.  It’s tempting to blame God in times when life is difficult or unfair, but it’s important that we remember just because our circumstances have changed, doesn’t mean God’s character has changed.  It doesn’t mean God’s love for us has changed. God is bigger than what is happening in our world right now.  God is definitely bigger than what is happening in our individual lives right now.

 But here is what is astonishing about out God.  Just because God is bigger than our problems doesn’t mean that God is too big or too important to care.  In both our Old Testament reading and our Gospel, we hear of a God who cares deeply for his people, and not just the group, but every single person.  There is a moment in all our lives, perhaps many moments, when we are lost, even the most righteous of us.  God will not give up until each one of his people is found.  God will not give up on any of us until we are found, perhaps found many times. Not only that, but God will rejoice in those moments as well.  God will gather his angels in heaven and throw a party. That’s not just a good God. That is a great God.

A Thorny Encounter: February 28 2016

Year C, Lent 3             Exodus 3:1-15                                                                        

 

            I have often heard people say something to the effect of, “If only God would speak to me from a burning bush, then things would be so much clearer.”  I too have considered that at times.  In this day and age, God seems to communicate in much more subtle ways than he did in the Old Testament.   Yet when I find myself yearning for the clarity of a burning bush, I remind myself of what that burning bush did for Moses.  It changed his life forever.  It really complicated his life, and the life of his family.  It turned a shepherd into a leader of an oppressed people, a man who would challenge the Pharaoh of Egypt.  I am sure there were times when Moses wished God would have been a little more subtle as that would have made it easier to ignore him.

            But Moses did not ignore the bush.  It was curiously that drew him to the bush.  He was beyond the wilderness tending a flock.  He was alone.  I imagine he was a little bored, probably lonely.   From a distance he saw what appeared to be a bush that was on fire.  The fact that there was a bush on fire was not what interested him.  What interested him was that the bush was not consumed by the fire.  He was intrigued and decided that he needed to investigate this a little further.  It was only when he drew near to the miraculous sight that God called to him from the bush.  God called his name…he said it twice.  He then identified himself as the God of his father, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.  There could be no doubt of who this was or who he was calling. 

            If only God spoke to us all this way! God could create something shiny that would grab our attention.  God would then call our name and then in no uncertain terms identify himself.  That is the way that I want God to communicate with me.  It seems so straightforward.  It was this clarity that led Moses to hide his face.  It was common knowledge at this time that if you looked at God directly it would be the last thing you would do.  Seeing the face of God would end in your death.  Moses did the safe and smart thing.  He had responded to God by saying, “Here I am”, he followed God’s directions by removing his shoes and now he was shielding his face out of deference to the power of God.  So far, things are going about as well as can be expected when a burning bush is involved. 

 God has never been one for small talk and immediately got to the point. He knew what was going on in Egypt.  He knew that the Hebrew people were suffering at the hands of the Egyptians. He went as far as to say, “I know their sufferings…”  That meant that not only was he aware of what was going on, but he had experienced the suffering with the people.  He felt the pain and the desperation.  I imagine that this understanding was comforting to Moses.  Finally someone was on their side, someone with power and authority.  If this God could create a bush that would burn but never turn to ash, surely God could free his people.

But then God explained how this was all going to happen.  He was going to send Moses to the Pharaoh and he would lead the Israelites out of Egypt.  Suddenly Moses was wishing he had gone about his business tending his flock and not investigated this dangerous bush.  There is a little detail in this story that is usually left out.  The Hebrew word that is translated to bush is actually translated to thorn bush.  This wasn’t just any old bush.  This was a thorn bush and those bushes can be dangerous.  It was a dangerous bush and an even more dangerous message.  Moses argued with God for a little bit and was eventually worn down.  God did not promise Moses that it would be easy or that it would be safe and sacrifice free. He only promised that he would be with him through it all. 

Whenever I am asked to pray, I almost always ask for God’s presence and that God’s presence be known.  That’s because I believe that God’s presence is a comfort and reassurance in difficult times as well as good times. Yet as I consider this rather thorny text, I wonder if that is the right prayer when seeking solace and comfort. If God wanted to comfort Moses, he could have sent a rainbow like he did for Noah.  But that’s not what God did.  God lit a thorn bush on fire, a fire that could not be quenched.

God should be a comfort to us all. But God should also challenge us, challenge us to change.  When you have a personal encounter with God, you will always be changed.  You might even leave with a limp or a scar.  It’s like when you start exercising after not working out for a while, it hurts.  But you know that that the pain will lead to a positive change.  You know that you will endure.  It is the same with our encounters with God.  When we open ourselves to God, we will be changed and it won’t be an easy change.  I am reminded of a quote that I have seen and probably mentioned before.  “God loves you just the way you are, but God loves you too much to let you stay that way.” 

That to me is what the season of Lent is about.  It’s not about beating ourselves up for our deficiencies or our sins.  It is about opening ourselves up to new encounters with God, even if those encounters shake us up a little…even if God tells us the exact opposite of what we want to hear. 

Now you might be thinking, ok, I am ready for this new thorny encounter.  Where’s my burning bush? 

While the burning bush will probably not be your sign, there are some things we can learn from Moses’ experience. The only reason that he saw the bush was because he was looking at the world around him.  If we are perpetually gazing at a screen…we will probably not see the bush.  Our world is suffering from sensory overload.  It is suffocating.  Therefore we need to be deliberate about creating that space to encounter God.  It might just mean turning off the music or podcast.  It might even mean silencing the phone.  I realize these things sounds drastic, but we have to give God something to work with.  God did not call out to Moses until Moses turned from his task and went to investigate the bush.  My prayer for all of us is that God will be present with us and that we will know that presence.  I pray that presence will not only bring us the peace of God-- but will also disturb our complacency and light a fire that cannot be quenched. 

Oct. 26, 2014: Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Shattered Dreams

Year A, Pentecost 20                                       

 

            In a sermon Martin Luther King said that “Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”[1]  This was not the “I have a dream” speech that he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.  This line came from a sermon that he gave 5 years later, 15 years after he had taken a leadership role in the civil rights movement.   The Biblical text he was preaching on was about King David and his dream of building a great temple.  God did not want King David to build a temple and so it did not happen.  While King David had many accomplishments in his life, this was one thing that remained unfinished, a dream that was never realized, at least not in his lifetime.

            Our Old Testament reading for today is not about King David.  This story comes before David.   It is another great leader of the Jewish faith and the Christian faith as well, Moses.  We have been hearing about Moses for several weeks now in our lectionary readings but we have only touched briefly on his life.  We’ve had glimpses of it in our readings.  We heard about the time when Moses was first called by God with a blaze of fire…a burning bush.  From the bush God called to Moses and asked him to lead his people out of Egypt.  He promised that the people would be led to a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that had been promised to them for generations. 

            Moses was not particularly excited about this assignment, but God promised that he would be with him the whole way, that he would lead him.  So Moses did as he was asked…he led the people out of Egypt.  It was not an easy escape.  There were plagues. There were armies.  There was a wall of water that they had to pass through.  Yet even with all of that accomplished, there was no immediate entrance into land of milk and honey.  Instead, the Israelites found themselves wandering in the desert.  They faced starvation and insurrection.  Moses dealt with their complaints.  In the midst of the trials, he also had moments of joy and fulfillment.  He witnessed God’s glory and received the Ten Commandments.   But he was challenged again and again by very strong willed and frustrated people.  He complained to God and was bitter at times.  His sister died.  His brother died.  An entire generation passed as he led the people on a journey that felt more like a maze.  But finally the end was near.  They could see the Promised Land.  Yet for Moses, it would remain slightly out of reach. 

            God told him as he stood on the mountain top, “I will give it to your descendants; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”  This was not the first time God has told Moses that he would not reach the Promised Land.  God had warned him and even gave him a reason. Yet the reason was murky…so murky that people have been debating it ever since. It was a small thing, perhaps an act of disobedience or even a brief moment where he lacked faith. 

It is strange that one small act would outweigh all of the wonderful things that Moses had done; the sacrifices he made, the close relationship that he had with God.  It has been a mystery for centuries why God would lead him to this place, show him this dream, but not even give him a moment in that land that he had been searching for—for over 40 years. 

“Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”  There have been many people, great people---Godly people who have accomplished amazing things but died before they could see the fruits of their labor:  Abraham Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Kennedy,  Martin Luther King, Gandhi…just to name a few.  Their deaths are tragic and heart breaking.  But their lives are inspiring stories.  What makes these stories inspiring is that while their lives were cut short, their vision lived on. Those dreams that seemed shattered were resurrected by people who followed them…perhaps not completely resurrected, but new life was breathed into them.

Most of us might struggle to identify with these great saints.  Our dreams might be on a smaller scale.  Yet each person here has seen a dream that was shattered in some way.  And we could let those shattered hopes and dreams break us, leaving us battered and beaten.  Or we could take these pieces… pieces of our shattered dreams or even those dreams of people who came before and we can build something new. 

When Martin Luther King spoke of shattered dreams, he was talking about King David and his own experience as well.  While today’s reading is not the story of King David, Moses did pave the way for King David.  He brought the people to the Promised Land, the land that King David would one day rule.  Without his sacrifice and his obedience to God’s word, there would never have even been a dream of a temple.  It would not have even been in the realm of possibility.  One person’s shattered dream provided the pieces for another person’s temple…for God’s temple. 

During the celebration of communion, there is a point where the priest holds up the host and says, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”  Then the priest breaks the host.  That breaking of the host is meant to remind us of Christ broken on the cross.   It also reminds us of the way that we are broken.   After these words the priest breaks up the host even further so it is 24 pieces, pieces that are then distributed to you, the body of Christ.  We share in the brokenness of Christ and in some ways that makes Christ whole again because we have all shared in that as the body of Christ.  In those same ways, we can share the broken pieces of our lives with one another and with God.  That is one of the ways that we can find wholeness.

Moses might have never reached the Promised Land.  He did not feel the land under his feet, but he saw it with his own eyes, with God right beside him.  Not only that, but he knew that the people who he had led would experience that Promised Land.  Sometimes that is what faith is about.  It is about working with broken pieces---either our broken pieces or ones that other people have given up on.  It is about placing our hopes in things that we may never see.  But the important thing is that we never stop trying. Moses was told that he would never reach the Promised Land, but he never stopped walking and frankly, I don’t think he ever stopped hoping.   

When he died, God buried him.  The English just says that he was buried, but there was only one person (one being) with him on the mountain. God.  While it might seem as though God punished him, the truth is that he was with him to the very end…even at death.  Just try to picture that in your head, the Almighty God digging in the dirt and then with great care placing the body of Moses in the ground.   That is how God cares for each of us.  In turn he asks us to never give up…to take those broken pieces and build them into something new, something beautiful. 

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[1] http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/unfulfilled_dreams/

Exodus 16: 2-15: September 21, 2014

When whining is a good thing

         Year A, Pentecost 14                                             

                                                            

Robert Leahy recently wrote a book entitled: Anxiety Free.  In it, he refers to the time that we live in as the “age of anxiety.” He wrote that the average child today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s[1].  I am not exactly sure how he came to this conclusion; but it is a rather startling claim. I don’t think any of us would deny that we live in a time that is riddled with anxiety.  I remember getting on the metro in our nation’s capital and seeing the terror alert listed.  It was orange at the time. It felt like I was living in some dystopian novel.  Around that same time I was talking to an environmentalist and he mentioned something called “eco-anxiety” which describes a heightened anxiety that people experience regarding the state of our environment.   We are anxious about everything from the air we breathe to the terror that seems to surround us. I doubt there is anyone here who has not experienced some type of anxiety; some that is completely rational and some not so rational. 

            Keeping that in mind, it might be more difficult to judge the Hebrew people who were anxious about starving to death.  I remember in one church I served, there was a lay reader who generally read in a monotone, except when it came to the Exodus story.  Then she moved into this rather nasaly whine that woke everybody up and elicited a raised eyebrow from the rector.  People love to imitate the whine of the Hebrew people.   They get a bad rap and I wonder if they really deserve it. They were after all in the desert with very little food or water.  It’s not like they were just on a long stretch of highway between Starbucks.  So why are we so quick to judge them?  

To some, they just seem ungrateful. God just saved them from slavery and parted a body of water so that they could escape and now they are complaining again!  I admit that their comment that it would have been better that they had died in Egypt where they had plenty to eat was a little obnoxious.  But they were hungry and scared.  People say desperate things when they are in desperate situations.  Plus, the God that they had experienced, the all-powerful God who rained down plagues and killed thousands of people was not necessarily the same tender hearted God that we picture.  In their minds, they had a God who was a warrior and a deliverer, but maybe not a provider of food and love.

            While Moses was a little annoyed with the people and their complaints, God showed no such judgment.  As soon as they complained to Moses, God said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you…”  Problem solved.  Yet he provided an interesting caveat.  “…each day people shall go out and gather enough for that day.  In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instructions or not.”  The instructions were pretty clear.  The people were to gather only enough…only enough as they needed for that one day.  But these were hungry people who had just been through a period of slavery and uncertainty.  Sure, God had freed them from slavery but that was after a long period of suffering.  Some Bible scholars surmise that they were enslaved for 400 years.  The people who were freed had seen many of their loved ones die in slavery.  They had seen infants killed.  That was a high price to pay and not one that would be easily forgotten.  The people needed more than a miraculous act to believe in God.  They needed a relationship with God.

            God addressed that need in a couple of ways.  He started with communication.  He communicated directly with the leaders (Moses and Moses’ brother Aaron).   Then he did something rather surprising, even as we look at the story in retrospect.  Aaron told the people to “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.”   With those words, the glory of the Lord appeared to them.  All the people saw it.  Imagine if after every time I recommended that you grow closer to God, he appeared.  That would be effective, would it not?  People would take those words pretty seriously.  What I find particularly interesting is that God never told Moses or Aaron that he would appear to the people.  He said that he would provide food, but he never mentioned that cloud of glory. It was an affirmation for not only the people, but the leadership as well. 

            The next way that God encouraged a closer relationship with him was by providing a test.  Most of us probably do not have warm and fuzzy feelings about tests.  I have not taken a test in about ten years and I still have nightmares about them.  Recently I read about a new method they are attempting in education.  The teacher starts the year with a test. It would be similar to the test that the student would take at the end of the year, but there would be no grade.  The idea is that the student would see what was expected of them for the year.  The teacher would also know what areas needed more time than others.  The classes that have used this method ended up doing much better on their final exam. 

This is similar to the kind of test that God was providing.  There was no grade, but there were results.  It was not a test as much as it was another teaching opportunity.  The people were only supposed to gather as much as they needed.  But they were hungry. They were used to having to grab everything they could get because they did not know where the next meal was coming from.  Need is a relative term.  They probably felt they needed as much as they could gather.  Of course they could not eat all that they gathered, so they stored it for the next day….just in case God did not deliver the bread from heaven.   When they woke up, the food that they had stored was infested with worms AND the manna from heaven rained down again.  It was a test but it was also a lesson and it was one that they learned pretty quickly.  This God was not a warrior, and not merely a deliverer.  This God was God who cared about their day to day needs but also a God who expected obedience.  

            Perhaps we are quick to judge the Hebrew people for their complaints because we are also quick to judge ourselves for our own lack of faith, our lack of confidence in God.   That is what complaints about or to God seem to indicate to so many…a lack of faith.   Yet the complaints of the Hebrew people actually resulted in a closer relationship with God.  Now I am not encouraging you all to start complaining…especially not to me (unless it is non-church related in which case, fire away)!  However there is something to say about complaining to God.  Sometimes when we are questioning our faith or when we are frustrated with our own life, it is tempting to shut God out, but that is the time when we really need to talk to God, even if it sounds like whining. 

This is an age of anxiety. It might be tempting to try to ignore that anxiety or pretend we are not really that anxious.  It is best not to ignore it or to perceive it as a lack of faith.  The best thing we can do for our own mental health and our relationship with God is to share those things that weigh us down.  We might not always get the answer we want.  Or the answer might seem as though it takes years and years to come, but the answer will come.  If you find that you have grown closer to God in the process and if in that process you catch even a glimpse of the glory of God, then you might discover that you don’t even need the answer anymore. 

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[1] http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/13/most-common-fears-forbeslife-cx_avd_1214commonfears.html

September 14, 2014: Exodus 14:19-31

When the water is up to your nose...

Year A, Pentecost 14                                    

                                                        

            I have to admit that getting ready for this Kick-off Sunday made me a little anxious.  It felt like some sort of unveiling, but there is nothing new that we were actually unveiling.  I’m old news at this point as I have been at John’s for 11 months.  I keep telling people that I am looking forward to the one year mark, that time when I have been through everything once.  That means I will have seen Christmas at St. John’s before experiencing it. I will have walked through the Palm Sunday procession before having to lead it.  Leading a service that you have never experienced when everyone else knows exactly what to expect is well….kind of terrifying. 

In the last year, I have found myself identifying a little with Moses, except without the superpowers.  Moses was a leader, but he was not really sure where he was going.  It was all very new for him.  Of course Moses had some things on his side:  a direct connection to God and some pretty astounding miracles. 

We usually associate miracles with Jesus, but there were plenty or miracles in the Old Testament as well.  There are a lot of different definitions of miracles.  At one point, I looked it up on the internet and found one from the skeptics dictionary.  The skeptics dictionary defined a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular decision of the Deity..."[1]  While that describes some miracles, it is certainly not all inclusive.  Miracles are so much more than transgressions of the laws of nature. Each one of us would probably define a miracle in a different way, but most would say it is a time when God intervenes directly in our lives. 

            Consider the parting of the Red Sea. Would that fit into the skeptics definition? We have all seen the dramatic depictions of this event in the movies.  There is usually a man with a long white beard that is being whipped around by the wind.  Suddenly a tunnel is created in the water and the Hebrew people walk through without a second thought.  This depiction would definitely fit the skeptic’s definition.  But if you look at the text itself (and not the Hollywood rendition), you might see something slightly different.  “Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided.  The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.”  What is interesting about this is that instead of a violation of the laws of nature, it would seem as though nature is working with God.

In fact, God is using many resources to accomplish this miracle.  First, he asks Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea.  Then he uses the wind to separate the water. He uses both a human agent and a force of nature.  Couldn’t God have parted the sea without Moses stretching his hand out? Did God really need wind? If we really believe that God is an all powerful God, then of course he could separate water without any wind and without any human assistance.  Yet it would seem that God is not working alone in this instance, that he wants it to be a joint effort.

You will find that is true of many miracles in the Bible. In the feeding of the 5,000 a boy brings forward five loaves and two fish, which is what Jesus multiplies. In the healing miracles, people had to take the initiative to request the healing. Most of the time, they had to find the courage to approach Jesus. It is easy to think that miracles are something that just come to us, that all we have to do is sit back and wait.  However, most of the time, we need to work with God. 

The Jewish people have volumes and volumes of commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures. They refer to this commentary as the midrash.  Sometimes the midrash will analyze the scripture. Sometimes it fills in perceived gaps to give a more complete picture. The midrash provides some fascinating insight into the Exodus story, which is one of the most important stories of the Jewish people. One particularly insightful comment focused on the line, “The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.”  From a careful study of the Hebrew, which is what the midrash is working with, the writers concluded that the Hebrew people entered the sea before it was actually parted.  The water did not part until they were so far in, it had reached their noses.[2]  In other words, God’s miracle required human initiative.  They had to take the first step. They had to believe that God would not let them drown.

If we consider this depiction of the story, then I imagine Moses standing on the side with his hand over the sea while the people walked through.  While he was technically leading them, they were the ones who were walking out in front.  This reminds me a lot of my experience at St. John’s.  I am the rector, which apparently makes me the leader.  But for much of the time, I have found myself standing to the side to see how it all works.  After Oct. 13^th, I will have been here one year and will have at least some experience on how things work here, but there will still be times when I have to stand aside while you all wade into the water.  We are all on this journey together. There will be times when we will feel incredibly lost and there will be times when God’s guidance is so clear it is like a pillar of light in the night sky.

But most of the time, it will be something in between.  We will have a general idea where we are going, but we might lack the energy or the confidence to keep going.  Maybe we will be a little worried that the water won’t separate and we are not sure that we are in the mood for a midnight swim.  It’s those times when things don’t feel miraculous, when the rector is not new and shiny…it is those times when we have to keep moving forward together and have faith that God will either divide the water or give us the strength to swim.  In the end, it does not really matter who is in front.  What matters is where the wind is coming from, where the power is really coming from.  If we are truly the Church of Christ, then our guidance and strength is always in God’s hands.

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[1] Hume, David. http://skepdic.com/miracles.html

[2] Talmud, Sotah 37a; Midrash Rabbah             

August 24, 2014: Exodus 1:8-2:10

What it Means to Have Power

Year A Pentecost 11  

 

            It would be easy to read this story from Exodus and say that it is a story about Moses.  After all, it is the first time we see Moses’ names and he’s clearly the star.  We know what happens after Moses grows up.  He ends up leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt.  But this story is not about Moses.  Then it must be about Pharaoh.  He’s an important guy, clearly very powerful. It’s not about Pharaoh either.  If it was about Pharaoh, we would probably have a name for him.  We don’t.  This story is not about the powerful.  It is about the powerless, at least the people who were perceived to be powerless.

            It is full of irony and intrigue.  It starts with a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph, which means he did not know the story of Joseph.  He did not know how this Israelite had actually saved Egypt from a devastating famine, which brought more Israelites to Egypt.  This Pharaoh was probably only alive because of the actions of an Israelite who lived long ago.  He was at a disadvantage because of his self-inflicted ignorance.  He also seemed a bit paranoid, or possibly just horribly insecure.  He was worried that if the Israelites continued to increase in number, they would join the enemies of Egypt and overthrow them.  So he oppressed them, because as we know that is always an effective way to keep people in line.  He also hoped that by working them so much, they would not procreate as much…they would not have the time and energy.  Alas, this plan did not work.  The more they were oppressed, the more numerous they got. 

The Pharaoh called on two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah.  Midwives were usually women who were barren.  Barren women were pretty much the lowest social status you could be in this time since a woman’s main reason for being was procreation.  The Pharaoh asked these women to kill all the male babies.  The girls did not concern him. The midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. 

A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of fear of God.  The word translated to fear is a tricky one.  There is no direct translation, no English word that really works.  A translation that might be more understandable is honor. They honored God more than they honored Pharaoh.  They knew that the Pharaoh’s power was temporary and God’s was eternal. They did not tell him that they refused.  They just didn’t obey. When Pharaoh realized all these baby boys were still being born, he brought them back in and questioned them.  Their response is pretty hysterical.  They essentially said, “The Hebrew women are just popping them out so fast, the baby is delivered before we even get there.”  Apparently he bought that.

The Pharaoh then called on the Egyptian people to throw every male baby in the Nile so that they would drown.  One woman hid her child and put him in a basket in the Nile River.  When we hear basket, we think of a flimsy wicker thing.   This was no ordinary basket.   The Hebrew word translated to basket is the very same word that is translated to ark in the story of Noah and the Ark.  Clearly, the mother of Moses had put some time and effort into this little ark.  She wanted this child to be carried to safety, much like God wanted that ark to carry the people and animals to safety. 

As luck would have it, the daughter of the Pharaoh just happened to be bathing by the river and she saw this little ark passing by.  Of course, we know it had nothing to do with luck.  God wanted her to be there. She knew that this was a Hebrew child, a child that her father had ordered to death.  But compassion moved her when she saw him and heard his cries.  I am sure she knew about her father’s policy, but seeing the effects of this horrific policy must been more than she could bear. So she pulled him out of the river.  She knew that the ark while sturdy, could not last forever without her intervention.  So the daughter of the Pharaoh disobeyed her own father and saved the one man that would end up delivering an entire nation. 

It is fascinating to me that while the Pharaoh was so intent on killing all the males, it was the females, the ones who were already alive, who would be the means of his undoing.  He feared that the Israelites would become so numerous that they would create an army.  They didn’t need an army.  They needed a couple of women who were considered completely powerless who would risk their own safety to save a child and to honor God.   The Pharaoh’s daughter was probably not a worshipper of the one true God, but maybe she was.  Jewish rabbis have surmised that she was at the river to cleanse herself of idolatry because she had discovered the one true God.  There is absolutely no evidence to prove this, but it’s an interesting idea.  What we know is that she was moved by compassion, a compassion that moved her to sacrifice her own interests for that of another. That is love in its truest sense.  That is God.

There is another theory that the rabbis have for this story.  They wrote that it was not the maid of the Pharaoh’s daughter who pulled the baby out of the water. It was actually her own arm. However, her arm extended to double or triple its length as she went to reach for this child allowing her to pull him out of the river.  We hear the phrase divine intervention all the time.  But God has always been fond of using human intervention for his divine purposes.  Sure, he could have destroyed Pharaoh in some fantastic way and then carried the people of Israel in a cloud to the Promised Land.  That is not how God operates.  God likes humans to intervene.

God especially loves to use those people who would be considered powerless by most.  Those Hebrew midwives had nothing but their courage and their faith in God.  Moses’ mother had nothing but courage, love and faith. The daughter of the Pharaoh probably had more power than most women in that time, but it was still not very much.  The power that each woman had was her willingness to risk her life for another.  That is a power that God honors.  That is the power that Jesus wielded centuries later to save all humanity.

There are so many times in life when people do not act because they feel powerless.  They are powerless to change themselves or their lives or the world around them.  God proves again and again that power does not come with wealth, prestige or connections but in an openness to the will of God, to the possibility of something more. We think that we can only reach as far as our arm will extend.  Yet when we reach our arm out in love, God will always stretch us in ways that we never expected.  We will find that we are more powerful than we ever imagined.