Hindsight is twenty-twenty they say. Here we are at the end of Moses’ life and our attention is drawn to his vision. Standing on top of a mountain on the edge of the Holy Land, Moses, like Superman, sees it all. Canaan is one hundred and sixty miles in length and fifty or sixty in breadth. At 120 years old Exodus tells us that Moses’ eyesight was sharp. John Wesley mused that even so his sight must have been “miraculously assisted and enlarged.” Moses had good vision.
And as he was looking forward to the Land where the Israelites would finally call home, he also looked back. The Lord reminded him that Moses was on the brink of the fulfillment of God’s promise to give this land to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants, more numerous than the stars. Mountain top experiences are often times when we pause to reflect on our lives, to look back and see all the missteps, the hardships, the times of wonder and joy along the path we took along the way. Did Moses stop to remember his mother and sister, the kindly Egyptian princess who adopted him, the person he killed in his youth, the work he did leading flocks of sheep. Could he now see how earlier parts of his life prepared him for the bigger tasks that the Lord would set before him, to lead the Israelites out of slavery, to help them to become reacquainted with their Lord and learn to observe God’s commands? I suspect he could. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
The vision of a life of freedom in the Land of Canaan that God gave to Moses was about to be realized. The time was at hand. And yet, Moses himself would not live long enough to make his home there, or even to step foot in the land himself. He died on that mountain. An honorable death, a well-earned rest, embraced by the Lord – Jewish tradition has it that Moses’ soul went out with a kiss from God both the kiss of death and the kiss of peace.
How unfair it seems to us that after all of his hard labor, fighting with the people when they grumbled and complained, reprimanding them when they rebelled, begging the Lord for forgiveness on their behalf – how unfair that Moses should not be allowed to join his people in their final destination.
I heard a student voice a similar complaint the other day. In the process of trying to line up a field placement sight she discovered a mistake in the process that would adversely affect anyone trying to work at a particular location. Her work at alerting the people in charge made a difference for the future. But she was not going to reap the benefit of the changes she initiated.
Yet this is often the way. It is indeed mysterious that “those who lead God’s people, intercede for them and reprimand them when they transgress, the true servants of the Lord (v. 5), do not necessarily see the fulfillment of God’s promise.” Take Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for example. He alluded to the last chapter from Deuteronomy in the last sermon he preached entitled “I See the Promised Land.” Like Moses, Dr. King was fairly clear at this point that his life was about to end. His sermon alludes to the many death threats that had been made in the spring of 1968. And like Moses, who gave a pep talk to the Israelites, Dr. King was aiming to encourage his followers to continue the work after he was gone. He said,
I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding – something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi, or Memphis Tennessee – the cry is always the same – “We want to be free.”…Now I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period, to see what is unfolding.
Dr. King did not live to see his dream of little black boys an black girls being able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers realized. Yet because of his work and those who followed his lead in promoting not only civil rights, but caring relationships between peoples of different races two generations of American children have grown up with tv shows like Sesame Street where people with different races and genders and physical abilities, (not to mention different colored fur!) interact with one another in friendship and respect. Because of Dr. King’s vision and the vision of others like him our school curricula across the country have been rewritten with the purpose of writing in the lives of the women, the slaves, the workers, the Native Americans, the immigrants. Because of visions like this the year 2009 will see either an African American president or a woman vice president
It is a testimony to Dr. King’s faith in God, and his conviction that his vision came from God whose will, in the end, will be done, that he could honestly say.
it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Such vision comes as a gift from God. As John Wesley said, “Such a sight the Old Testament believers had of the kingdom of the Messiah. And such a sight believers have now of the glory that shall be revealed. Such a sight have we now, of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, which shall cover the earth. Those that come after us shall undoubtedly enter into that promised land: which is a comfort to us, when we find our own carcases falling in this wilderness.
These reflections on vision – the vision of the Patriarchs, the vision of Dr. King, the vision of women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard – thinking on their vision begs us to pause and think about our own vision. What vision has the Lord given you and where are you in your life with that vision. Those at the end like Moses are invited to look around and find someone to share that vision with. Whom has the Lord put in your life who might carry on the good work you’ve been doing? Who is your Joshua, standing beside you, eager to receive your wisdom and continue your work? For those who are at the middle, or closer to the beginning of our lives it is fitting to ponder what vision is the Lord giving us. What work are we being called to take up as we move with God’s people toward the life in God’s kingdom that it may fully come here on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us pray for one another, that each of us, like Moses, may have twenty-twenty vision.
Sarah Laughs
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Have Your Eyes Seen the Glory of the Lord? - Sermon from October 19 - Based on Exodus 33
Glory, glory Lord, love come down.
Look, my chillun, glory comin’
See that glory in the sky!
For other verses substitute Faith and Hope. --- Words and music by Joel Hayden
Do you feel it? Have you seen it? Have your eyes seen the glory of the Lord? This might seem like a strange question when our God is invisible. We just sang a few minutes ago that God is inaccessible in light and hid from our eyes. So what do we mean when we say we have seen the glory of the Lord? What is glory anyway?
Kevin and I asked that question at Bible study on Wednesday. Use of some study books helped to clarify that the Hebrew word for glory is דבכ – kabad. Its original meaning is surprising – it means heavy, or weighty. In the Bible Eli was a heavy man and Absalom had heavy hair. Kabad is often used with a negative connotation. Though I usually think of glory as shiny and wonderful, kabad can mean dull, or insensitive like when God called Moses at the burning bush and Moses was reluctant because his tongue was kabad – heavy – he was slow of speech. And Pharaoh’s heart is often described as kabad – heavy or hard. Kabad can also mean severe; like heavy the work given by Pharaoh to the Israelites. The seventh plague God sent to Egypt was heavy hail. Very difficult work like the yoke that oxen pull is kabad. Moses’ father-in-law was concerned that helping all the people settle their disputes was too kabad – too heavy for one person.
If something kabad is severe, it can also be too much, very weighty, or even impressive. Now we are getting closer to what scripture means when it talks about God’s kabad – God’s glory. When kings are described as kabad it is usually because of their social position and their wealth. They have an abundance of goods, a large treasury and they wear beautiful garments that reflect the honor that such impressive people receive. This is how kabad is used to refer to God – God is honorable, worthy of praise, the owner of great abundance who demands respect and reverence. Have you ever seen God’s kabad, God’s glory? Have your eyes beheld the glory of the Lord?
In Exodus 33, Moses asks God to show him his glory. Moses asks because God does not usually show his full weight, his full self to anyone, not even to the children of God. God’s glory is a threat to our very lives. The Lord tells Moses that, “no one shall see me and live.” Trying to look at God’s glory is like trying to stare at the sun – it is blinding. In comparison to our sinfulness, God’s glory is so powerful it could incinerate us. Remember last week when the Israelites worshiped an idol. God’s glory burned so hot that threatened to consume them.
At Camp Farthest Out one of our favorite songs is about God’s glorious power. All the men and boys go onto the stage and sing a great base part, “Now let us sing” while the women respond with enthusiasm, “sing till the power of the Lord comes down” - “Lift up your voice, be not afraid. Now let us sing till the power of the Lord comes down.” We sing it at the top of our lungs and usually have three pianists at the keyboard. When I was young my grandparents would often leave the room during the song – in part because we were so loud. But I still remember the comment my grandfather made – that we really wouldn’t like it very much if the full power of the Lord came down – because it is too glorious, too awesome to behold. My grandfather was remembering what the Lord told Moses, “No one shall see me and live.”
But even though it is risky to see the glory of the Lord, we still yearn for it. Moses continues to ask for it until God finally agrees to at least let Moses gaze on his holy backside from the safety of a crevice in the rock. What spurs us on to behold God’s glory? When we turn back to Chapter 33 of Exodus we see that Moses made this request as part of a more general desire that God make his presence known not only to him but to his people. Being able to see God’s glory is what helps the people of God know that God is with them.
In chapter 33 God is still angry with the people for their disloyalty of forging other gods and worshiping them. God was still angry and had withdrawn his presence from all the people. No more pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day. God still wanted Moses to lead the people to the Promised Land, but now they would have to be content with following an angel, a messenger from God, rather than following the Lord God himself.
But Moses begs for God to make his presence known to the people once again. Remember that the only thing that made Israel a special people was their relationship to the Lord. “Once you were no people, but now, you are my people.” We need to have a sense of God’s presence with us as we journey through life, or we will loose our identity as children of God. Later on God concedes and makes his presence known by instructing the people to build a special tent, a tabernacle. And this tabernacle will be filled with God’s glory. Later the movable tabernacle was exchanged by king David for a Temple in Jerusalem. The splendor and honor of the Lord shone from it and like a king or queen, God’s train of glory will fill the temple.
As Christians we believe that God’s glory was most fully revealed, however, in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel – God present with us. Eugene Peterson translates the Gospel of John chapter one this way. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son.” We are reminded that Jesus is God’s glory made visible at Christmas. ”Gloria – in excelsis Deo!” Glory to God in the highest! As the people of God, even if we can’t look at God’s glory full on, we need to behold God’s glory every now and then. We need to be fully aware of God’s powerful presence or we will wither and die.
So I ask you again, have your eyes seen the glory of God? If you are not often aware of God’s glory are you bold enough to be like Moses and ask the Lord, “Show me your glory, I pray.” Are you eagerly looking for God’s power at work in the world? Are you aware of God’s abundant gifts of strength, and peace, hope and love available to you if you only ask? Let us pause now and ask God to reveal his glory, make his presence know to each and every one of us so that we may be strengthened to live as his children.
Sing glory, sing Hallelujah! Sing glory, sing Hallelujah! Sing glory, glory, Hallelujah! I know my Lord is here.
He calls me, to come and follow; He calls me to come and follow, he calls me, calls to come and follow; I know my Lord is here.
Christ Jesus, Your love surrounds me; Christ Jesus, Your love surrounds me; Christ Jesus, yes, Your love surrounds me; I know my Lord is here.
Lord Jesus, You live within me; Lord Jesus, You live within me; Lord Jesus, yes, You live within me; I know my Lord is here. --- Words and music by Joel Hayden
Look, my chillun, glory comin’
See that glory in the sky!
For other verses substitute Faith and Hope. --- Words and music by Joel Hayden
Do you feel it? Have you seen it? Have your eyes seen the glory of the Lord? This might seem like a strange question when our God is invisible. We just sang a few minutes ago that God is inaccessible in light and hid from our eyes. So what do we mean when we say we have seen the glory of the Lord? What is glory anyway?
Kevin and I asked that question at Bible study on Wednesday. Use of some study books helped to clarify that the Hebrew word for glory is דבכ – kabad. Its original meaning is surprising – it means heavy, or weighty. In the Bible Eli was a heavy man and Absalom had heavy hair. Kabad is often used with a negative connotation. Though I usually think of glory as shiny and wonderful, kabad can mean dull, or insensitive like when God called Moses at the burning bush and Moses was reluctant because his tongue was kabad – heavy – he was slow of speech. And Pharaoh’s heart is often described as kabad – heavy or hard. Kabad can also mean severe; like heavy the work given by Pharaoh to the Israelites. The seventh plague God sent to Egypt was heavy hail. Very difficult work like the yoke that oxen pull is kabad. Moses’ father-in-law was concerned that helping all the people settle their disputes was too kabad – too heavy for one person.
If something kabad is severe, it can also be too much, very weighty, or even impressive. Now we are getting closer to what scripture means when it talks about God’s kabad – God’s glory. When kings are described as kabad it is usually because of their social position and their wealth. They have an abundance of goods, a large treasury and they wear beautiful garments that reflect the honor that such impressive people receive. This is how kabad is used to refer to God – God is honorable, worthy of praise, the owner of great abundance who demands respect and reverence. Have you ever seen God’s kabad, God’s glory? Have your eyes beheld the glory of the Lord?
In Exodus 33, Moses asks God to show him his glory. Moses asks because God does not usually show his full weight, his full self to anyone, not even to the children of God. God’s glory is a threat to our very lives. The Lord tells Moses that, “no one shall see me and live.” Trying to look at God’s glory is like trying to stare at the sun – it is blinding. In comparison to our sinfulness, God’s glory is so powerful it could incinerate us. Remember last week when the Israelites worshiped an idol. God’s glory burned so hot that threatened to consume them.
At Camp Farthest Out one of our favorite songs is about God’s glorious power. All the men and boys go onto the stage and sing a great base part, “Now let us sing” while the women respond with enthusiasm, “sing till the power of the Lord comes down” - “Lift up your voice, be not afraid. Now let us sing till the power of the Lord comes down.” We sing it at the top of our lungs and usually have three pianists at the keyboard. When I was young my grandparents would often leave the room during the song – in part because we were so loud. But I still remember the comment my grandfather made – that we really wouldn’t like it very much if the full power of the Lord came down – because it is too glorious, too awesome to behold. My grandfather was remembering what the Lord told Moses, “No one shall see me and live.”
But even though it is risky to see the glory of the Lord, we still yearn for it. Moses continues to ask for it until God finally agrees to at least let Moses gaze on his holy backside from the safety of a crevice in the rock. What spurs us on to behold God’s glory? When we turn back to Chapter 33 of Exodus we see that Moses made this request as part of a more general desire that God make his presence known not only to him but to his people. Being able to see God’s glory is what helps the people of God know that God is with them.
In chapter 33 God is still angry with the people for their disloyalty of forging other gods and worshiping them. God was still angry and had withdrawn his presence from all the people. No more pillar of fire by night and pillar of cloud by day. God still wanted Moses to lead the people to the Promised Land, but now they would have to be content with following an angel, a messenger from God, rather than following the Lord God himself.
But Moses begs for God to make his presence known to the people once again. Remember that the only thing that made Israel a special people was their relationship to the Lord. “Once you were no people, but now, you are my people.” We need to have a sense of God’s presence with us as we journey through life, or we will loose our identity as children of God. Later on God concedes and makes his presence known by instructing the people to build a special tent, a tabernacle. And this tabernacle will be filled with God’s glory. Later the movable tabernacle was exchanged by king David for a Temple in Jerusalem. The splendor and honor of the Lord shone from it and like a king or queen, God’s train of glory will fill the temple.
As Christians we believe that God’s glory was most fully revealed, however, in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel – God present with us. Eugene Peterson translates the Gospel of John chapter one this way. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son.” We are reminded that Jesus is God’s glory made visible at Christmas. ”Gloria – in excelsis Deo!” Glory to God in the highest! As the people of God, even if we can’t look at God’s glory full on, we need to behold God’s glory every now and then. We need to be fully aware of God’s powerful presence or we will wither and die.
So I ask you again, have your eyes seen the glory of God? If you are not often aware of God’s glory are you bold enough to be like Moses and ask the Lord, “Show me your glory, I pray.” Are you eagerly looking for God’s power at work in the world? Are you aware of God’s abundant gifts of strength, and peace, hope and love available to you if you only ask? Let us pause now and ask God to reveal his glory, make his presence know to each and every one of us so that we may be strengthened to live as his children.
Sing glory, sing Hallelujah! Sing glory, sing Hallelujah! Sing glory, glory, Hallelujah! I know my Lord is here.
He calls me, to come and follow; He calls me to come and follow, he calls me, calls to come and follow; I know my Lord is here.
Christ Jesus, Your love surrounds me; Christ Jesus, Your love surrounds me; Christ Jesus, yes, Your love surrounds me; I know my Lord is here.
Lord Jesus, You live within me; Lord Jesus, You live within me; Lord Jesus, yes, You live within me; I know my Lord is here. --- Words and music by Joel Hayden
When We Forget God - Sermon from October 12 - based on Exodus 32
Many Christians today avoid thinking much about the wrath of God. We might sing about it once in a while - “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on.” – but God’s anger is often far from our thoughts. We’d much rather think about God’s love for us; God’s mercy, kindness and patience.
Even the reading for today has been censored. When we stop where I just left off, the Lord is angry at first, and threatens to destroy the Israelites altogether with his fiery wrath. But Moses talks God out of such drastic action and we read, “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”
But if we kept reading we soon see that this is not a neat happily-ever-after story. For when Moses came down off of the mountain and saw for himself the sins of the people, he also became furious. Not only does he destroy the idol they have been worshipping, but also he smashed the two tablets upon which God had written the law. Moses, now angry on God’s behalf first made the Israelites drink a kind of golden calf Kool-Aid – made with the pulverized idol and water. Then he rounded up the loyal Levites in the camp and gave them God’s orders to kill all the worst offenders, numbering three thousand. And by the end of the chapter God punished the Israelites further by sending a plague their way. All this is to show that the Lord takes his covenant with his people very seriously. God will not be mocked. Exodus 20 tells us the Lord “is a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”
In the heavenly courts the Lord is both plaintiff and judge. God charges his people with disloyalty. “They have acted perversely, they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said ‘These are our gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” I can almost hear God muttering, “after everything I’ve done for them, saved Moses from childhood death, prepared him for leadership, the ten plagues ending with the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven and water from a rock. They should be grateful and love me, but no, they can’t even wait a measly 40 days for me to finish giving my law to them.” Then he says to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stubborn and hard headed they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.”
If we were the jury of such a court we would have to admit that the Lord has a case. Not only did the people become impatient for Moses to return, but also they easily turned to worship a false god and attribute their salvation to this lump of gold. And they didn’t only think of this golden calf as a god – they gave a whole day to worship it, holding a festival, offering sacrifices and reveling.
When the thought of the wrath of God has me squirming in my seat, I am tempted to think, “Whew, I’m glad I’m not like those Israelites. I’ve never worshipped a golden calf and I can’t remember the last time I was at a wild party, reveling.” But then I realize I need to look deeper at myself, and fess-up to the ways and times when my unfaithfulness may be stirring up God’s wrath.
In Bible Study on Wednesday we noted that God called the actions of the Israelites perverse or corrupt. If we have Cecil B. DeMill’s film The 10 Commandments in our minds eye, and connect our common understanding of perverse then we are apt to think of wild orgies and drunkenness. But when we looked up the Hebrew word for perverse we discovered that it actually refers to something that has decayed, perished or wasted. And indeed these unfaithful acts of the children of God were destroying the covenant relationship between them. So the question Exodus 32 is asking of us is what in our lives causes our relationship with God to decay, or perish?
Certainly impatience with God is as common today as it was in Moses’ time. We don’t like it when God leaves us alone for a time, to wait and wonder what will happen next. It is hard for us to worship an invisible God and we don’t always have the spiritual maturity to perceive God in our midst. So we tend to rely on human leaders. Notice in verse one the Israelites didn’t even credit the Lord for leading them out of Egypt. They still thought Moses led them, and now that Moses has been gone for a few weeks they cast about for another leader. Impatience can cause our relationship with God to decay.
Aaron was apparently quite happy to fill in. With no objection, and absolutely no loyalty to God or his brother Moses, Aaron took the place of authority offered by the people. Rather than trying to correct them, or help them to be patient and loyal, he gave in to their demands authorizing their shift in loyalty, creating the graven image of a foreign god for them to worship and even leading the worship rituals. Such a story gives me pause to wonder about democracy today. Letting the majority select their own leaders and make their own laws does not necessarily result in the people doing God’s will. Though Jesus clearly instructed us to care for “the least of these” I am fearful that our individual selfishness may undermine our State’s good care of the poor, the elderly, the sick and the children when Massachusetts residents are given the opportunity to get rid of our income tax. When we live as if our neighbors matter less than we do, we let our relationship with God decay.
Like the children of Israel, we also make offerings to other gods. Exodus 32 names two kinds of offerings. The first are burnt offerings given in hopes that one will win favor. What do we do today in an effort to manipulate the life we want? I knew a man who offered his time and effort to enter the Publisher’s Clearing House every year – ordering magazines he didn’t really need or want in hopes that Ed McMann would one day come to his door. Workaholics sacrifice their time and energy to the god of success, hoping that all their effort will pay off and they will gain riches or respect or power. When we devote such resources for our own gain, we are worshiping idols and forgetting the Lord who abundantly provides all our needs.
The other type offerings mentioned in Exodus 32 are peace offerings. The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom” which refers to one’s total well-being. Though the end goal of life in covenant with the Lord is shalom, we often jeopardize this covenant when we make peace offerings to other gods. Think of all the money, time and energy that people give to fitness in hopes of warding off illness and improving their well-being. Or think of the rest of us, who give our resources to obtaining comfort food that makes us feel better for a time.
What other ways do we allow the false gods of this world overshadow, and chip away at our covenant relationship with the Lord? Are we willing to take a hard look at ourselves and see, knowing that our Lord is a jealous and wrathful God? We all have in one way or another exchanged the glory of God for dull images – like that of an ox that eats grass. We are called today to confess these sins, and turn back to the Lord our sovereign God.
The children of Israel had an advocate who helped them renew their relationship with God. In that heavenly court room, after the Lord made his complaint against Israel Moses spoke up for his people, begging God to think twice, to remember the covenant promise, which began with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and extended to their many children. Even after Moses returned from the mountain, after his rage he offered to go back to the Lord for them and make atonement. He asked God to forgive them – and if God refused and decided to blot out all of them from the book of life, Moses said he would rather stand with Israel and receive the same punishment.
Like the Israelites, Christians are not required to stand alone in our sinful state. We also have an advocate who stands with us in complete solidarity - Jesus Christ. He is our intercessor who goes to the Father on our behalf so that our sins of infidelity may be forgiven and our covenant relationship between the Lord and us may be restored. And as restored children of God we can once more gather around the throne of the Lord and worship him in spirit and in truth. May it be so.
Even the reading for today has been censored. When we stop where I just left off, the Lord is angry at first, and threatens to destroy the Israelites altogether with his fiery wrath. But Moses talks God out of such drastic action and we read, “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”
But if we kept reading we soon see that this is not a neat happily-ever-after story. For when Moses came down off of the mountain and saw for himself the sins of the people, he also became furious. Not only does he destroy the idol they have been worshipping, but also he smashed the two tablets upon which God had written the law. Moses, now angry on God’s behalf first made the Israelites drink a kind of golden calf Kool-Aid – made with the pulverized idol and water. Then he rounded up the loyal Levites in the camp and gave them God’s orders to kill all the worst offenders, numbering three thousand. And by the end of the chapter God punished the Israelites further by sending a plague their way. All this is to show that the Lord takes his covenant with his people very seriously. God will not be mocked. Exodus 20 tells us the Lord “is a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”
In the heavenly courts the Lord is both plaintiff and judge. God charges his people with disloyalty. “They have acted perversely, they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said ‘These are our gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” I can almost hear God muttering, “after everything I’ve done for them, saved Moses from childhood death, prepared him for leadership, the ten plagues ending with the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven and water from a rock. They should be grateful and love me, but no, they can’t even wait a measly 40 days for me to finish giving my law to them.” Then he says to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stubborn and hard headed they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them.”
If we were the jury of such a court we would have to admit that the Lord has a case. Not only did the people become impatient for Moses to return, but also they easily turned to worship a false god and attribute their salvation to this lump of gold. And they didn’t only think of this golden calf as a god – they gave a whole day to worship it, holding a festival, offering sacrifices and reveling.
When the thought of the wrath of God has me squirming in my seat, I am tempted to think, “Whew, I’m glad I’m not like those Israelites. I’ve never worshipped a golden calf and I can’t remember the last time I was at a wild party, reveling.” But then I realize I need to look deeper at myself, and fess-up to the ways and times when my unfaithfulness may be stirring up God’s wrath.
In Bible Study on Wednesday we noted that God called the actions of the Israelites perverse or corrupt. If we have Cecil B. DeMill’s film The 10 Commandments in our minds eye, and connect our common understanding of perverse then we are apt to think of wild orgies and drunkenness. But when we looked up the Hebrew word for perverse we discovered that it actually refers to something that has decayed, perished or wasted. And indeed these unfaithful acts of the children of God were destroying the covenant relationship between them. So the question Exodus 32 is asking of us is what in our lives causes our relationship with God to decay, or perish?
Certainly impatience with God is as common today as it was in Moses’ time. We don’t like it when God leaves us alone for a time, to wait and wonder what will happen next. It is hard for us to worship an invisible God and we don’t always have the spiritual maturity to perceive God in our midst. So we tend to rely on human leaders. Notice in verse one the Israelites didn’t even credit the Lord for leading them out of Egypt. They still thought Moses led them, and now that Moses has been gone for a few weeks they cast about for another leader. Impatience can cause our relationship with God to decay.
Aaron was apparently quite happy to fill in. With no objection, and absolutely no loyalty to God or his brother Moses, Aaron took the place of authority offered by the people. Rather than trying to correct them, or help them to be patient and loyal, he gave in to their demands authorizing their shift in loyalty, creating the graven image of a foreign god for them to worship and even leading the worship rituals. Such a story gives me pause to wonder about democracy today. Letting the majority select their own leaders and make their own laws does not necessarily result in the people doing God’s will. Though Jesus clearly instructed us to care for “the least of these” I am fearful that our individual selfishness may undermine our State’s good care of the poor, the elderly, the sick and the children when Massachusetts residents are given the opportunity to get rid of our income tax. When we live as if our neighbors matter less than we do, we let our relationship with God decay.
Like the children of Israel, we also make offerings to other gods. Exodus 32 names two kinds of offerings. The first are burnt offerings given in hopes that one will win favor. What do we do today in an effort to manipulate the life we want? I knew a man who offered his time and effort to enter the Publisher’s Clearing House every year – ordering magazines he didn’t really need or want in hopes that Ed McMann would one day come to his door. Workaholics sacrifice their time and energy to the god of success, hoping that all their effort will pay off and they will gain riches or respect or power. When we devote such resources for our own gain, we are worshiping idols and forgetting the Lord who abundantly provides all our needs.
The other type offerings mentioned in Exodus 32 are peace offerings. The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom” which refers to one’s total well-being. Though the end goal of life in covenant with the Lord is shalom, we often jeopardize this covenant when we make peace offerings to other gods. Think of all the money, time and energy that people give to fitness in hopes of warding off illness and improving their well-being. Or think of the rest of us, who give our resources to obtaining comfort food that makes us feel better for a time.
What other ways do we allow the false gods of this world overshadow, and chip away at our covenant relationship with the Lord? Are we willing to take a hard look at ourselves and see, knowing that our Lord is a jealous and wrathful God? We all have in one way or another exchanged the glory of God for dull images – like that of an ox that eats grass. We are called today to confess these sins, and turn back to the Lord our sovereign God.
The children of Israel had an advocate who helped them renew their relationship with God. In that heavenly court room, after the Lord made his complaint against Israel Moses spoke up for his people, begging God to think twice, to remember the covenant promise, which began with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and extended to their many children. Even after Moses returned from the mountain, after his rage he offered to go back to the Lord for them and make atonement. He asked God to forgive them – and if God refused and decided to blot out all of them from the book of life, Moses said he would rather stand with Israel and receive the same punishment.
Like the Israelites, Christians are not required to stand alone in our sinful state. We also have an advocate who stands with us in complete solidarity - Jesus Christ. He is our intercessor who goes to the Father on our behalf so that our sins of infidelity may be forgiven and our covenant relationship between the Lord and us may be restored. And as restored children of God we can once more gather around the throne of the Lord and worship him in spirit and in truth. May it be so.
Our Covenant with God - Sermon from October 5 - based on Exodus 20
When I was a girl my Sunday School class was challenged to learn a new passage of scripture every year. In fifth grade the assigned passage was the Ten Commandments. From the beginning of the Reformation, Protestants have held these commandments in high regard as something that all Christians should learn. Martin Luther included them in his catechism; John Calvin’s Geneva liturgy has the congregation recite them each Sunday morning. It is rather common for a pastor to choose the Ten Commandments as a sermon series, taking ten weeks to focus on each commandment one at a time.
Of course these Ten Commandments are only a small set of all the commandments in the Bible. The Old Testament alone uses the word commandment 180 times and there are many other laws instructing God’s people how to conduct business, how to cook, what to do in cases of illness and death.
But this morning I want to draw our attention beyond the list of rules, to the context in which they have been given. This is the context of covenant. This is the name we give to the special relationship between God, and God’s people. In a covenant two parties make a promise to one another. God promises to be our God and save us, heal us and bless us; and we, God’s people promise to live according to God’s will. The commandments are simply an attempt to articulate God’s will for our lives – a reminder of what we agree to when we entered into covenant with God.
The English-speaking members of this congregation have been reading through portions of Exodus in worship this fall so that we can remember the story of God’s salvation of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Today as we contemplate the commandments it is very important to remember that they were given in the context of God’s salvation. God’s grace had been at work with the children of God, setting them free from slavery long before God gave them a commandment.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, called this kind of grace “prevenient grace” or grace that goes before. This is the assertion that God’s work of salvation begins long before we are aware of it. It’s not that we are to follow a list of rules and then earn God’s love and approval. God loves us dearly and reaches out to save us long before we do anything. This is why Methodists will baptize infants, long before they can profess their faith. We are emphasizing God’s grace that surrounds our children from the time they are conceived. Ironically John Calvin and other Reformers, wishing to lift up the importance of keeping the laws when one enters into covenant with God, obscured God’s prevenient grace by requiring that children be old enough to recite a catechism, including the Ten Commandments, before they could be baptized.
Methodists also see the commandments as an important part of our covenant relationship with God. It’s just that we are willing to recognize that God initiates this covenant as a free gift of grace without merit, and then instructs us in how covenant people are to live. These instructions are known as the law.
When you look carefully at these commandments you can see that the first four deal with the relationship between us and God, while the last six commandments all revolve around how we are to relate to one another – honor our parents, and five “shall nots.” As Jesus summed them up people who are part of the covenant are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. When we enter this covenant through baptism and reaffirm this covenant with confirmation, or reaffirmation of faith, or by joining a church like Wesley Untied Methodist we become part of God’s covenant people who have a special kind of relationship to God and to one another.
What does it look like when we begin to live our covenant relationship with God? What are our lives like when we truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? When we have no other gods, no idols, we refuse to take the Lord’s name in vain and we honor the Sabbath? It makes me think of an old African American spiritual “I woke up this morning with my mind – stayed on Jesus.” People who are living the covenant make God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the number one relationship in our lives. We talk to the Lord when we wake up each morning, and before we go to sleep each night. We pray, not only telling God what we need and trusting that the Lord will provide, but also listening to God’s reply and God’s call on our lives. Covenant people also listen to God by reading his word, and studying it. We seek to know God’s will for our lives and invite the Lord to melt us, mold us, fill us and use us for his good purpose. Covenant people’s lives are so full of God that we can’t help but talk about our faith to our friends and neighbors. John Wesley encouraged Methodists to nurture our relationship with God by taking advantage of the means of grace, like Holy Communion, as often as possible.
And what about our covenant with one another? Through our baptisms we entered into this covenant with the whole Christian church. We became brothers and sisters with every other Christian around this world. Just think! That’s one big, beautiful family we belong to! Being in covenant relationship with God means not only honoring our parents, but also our children, our neighbors, the strangers among us and even our enemies. We are not only to respect our elders and our bosses, but the bus drivers, the garbage collectors and even the person that cuts us off on the highway.
Pause for translation
But the covenant also gives us a special relationship with our local congregation. When Zara and Kevin joined Wesley United Methodist Church last week their covenant included a promise to uphold our congregation with their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service and their witness. The full blessings of being in covenant can only come to us when we are present and engaged in our congregation. We have a unique congregation here, one with diversity, which at times can seem challenging, but has the potential to be a great blessing. As a new part of the Wesley community I have been wondering and praying about how we might more fully nurture our covenant relationship with one another.
These monthly worship services are a great start. But I wonder what else we might do to come to know one another better as brothers and sisters in Christ? I haven’t kept my promise yet to roust myself out of the house early enough to attend morning prayer here – but I think that might help. Or perhaps we could have a study group of some kind, which includes members of both parts of the congregation. I also know how to lead a kind of prayerful movement to music an activity called “devotions in motion.” It’s a little bit like Tai Chi so I think we could do it together in spite of our language barrier. Maybe you have ideas – how could we be more fully present to one another, pray for and with one another, share our gifts with one another, serve one another and witness to one another as a whole congregation?
Another aspect of living in covenant as a United Methodist congregation is entering more fully into the United Methodist way. Similar to the Old Testament Law, United Methodists have a code of living together called the Discipline, which is amended every four years at General Conference. It is published in English and Korean and we should be ordering our new copies of the 2008 edition soon. In these first few years of being a bi-lingual congregation we have not been held accountable for following all the ways of the Discipline. We comply with some of it, like our Church Council meeting today, and our participation in mission shares. But there are other aspects of being a United Methodist congregation.
For example our congregation is entitled to send lay representatives to the meeting of the New England Annual Conference – a wonderful time when Methodists from all over our region gather for worship, fellowship and the work of setting policies. Our current lay member, Bill Cowens, is unable to attend Annual Conference any more. Who will we select to replace him?
Another event mandated by the Discipline is that every United Methodist Church hold an annual Charge Conference where the members meet to celebrate our life together and make plans for the coming year of ministry. This year our Charge Conference is scheduled for Thursday November 6 from 7 to 8:30. I encourage all members of this congregation to be present in keeping with our covenant promise.
Also related to the New England Conference, Wesley Church made a covenant to contribute $250 every month for five years toward the Together for Tomorrow Capital Campaign. This campaign supports the ministries of camping and retreats, missions in Nicaragua and West Angola, retired clergy health care, and money to help congregations grow stronger. Together with other churches our contributions can make a big difference for United Methodists in New England.
The Discipline also encourages us to send lay members for training in preaching and worship leadership and the Metro Boston Hope district offers such courses every spring and every fall. Kevin has already signed up for the fall sessions, which will meet on October 25 and November 15. Are there others in this congregation who would like to take advantage of this opportunity to grow in your faith?
And the Discipline designates six special Sundays when United Methodists are to focus our attention on special ministries. Today just happens to be one of those Sundays, called World Communion Sunday. Celebrated on the first Sunday in October, this day calls the Church to be the universal inclusive Church. It was first observed by Presbyterians in 1936 and was adopted by the Council of Churches in 1940. It is now a global and interdenominational event. On this day, Protestants all over the world join with Catholics in taking communion and remembering that our covenant extends beyond this local congregation, and beyond the United Methodist Church, to Christians all over the world. Part of the United Methodist observance of World Communion Sunday is to take a special offering which goes to support ethnic and minority U.S. and international students. Last year American United Methodists collected over one million, two hundred five thousand dollars on World Communion Sunday.
By the grace of God we are gathered for communion here and now, and we represent some of the wonderful diversity God has created in his children. So as we gather at Christ’s table to receive his good gifts on this World Communion Sunday, let us truly remember that through our baptisms and as members of this congregation we are members of his body, connected to one another, to other United Methodists and to the world wide church by such a strong and life giving covenant which began with Abraham and Moses and has been extended to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Of course these Ten Commandments are only a small set of all the commandments in the Bible. The Old Testament alone uses the word commandment 180 times and there are many other laws instructing God’s people how to conduct business, how to cook, what to do in cases of illness and death.
But this morning I want to draw our attention beyond the list of rules, to the context in which they have been given. This is the context of covenant. This is the name we give to the special relationship between God, and God’s people. In a covenant two parties make a promise to one another. God promises to be our God and save us, heal us and bless us; and we, God’s people promise to live according to God’s will. The commandments are simply an attempt to articulate God’s will for our lives – a reminder of what we agree to when we entered into covenant with God.
The English-speaking members of this congregation have been reading through portions of Exodus in worship this fall so that we can remember the story of God’s salvation of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Today as we contemplate the commandments it is very important to remember that they were given in the context of God’s salvation. God’s grace had been at work with the children of God, setting them free from slavery long before God gave them a commandment.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, called this kind of grace “prevenient grace” or grace that goes before. This is the assertion that God’s work of salvation begins long before we are aware of it. It’s not that we are to follow a list of rules and then earn God’s love and approval. God loves us dearly and reaches out to save us long before we do anything. This is why Methodists will baptize infants, long before they can profess their faith. We are emphasizing God’s grace that surrounds our children from the time they are conceived. Ironically John Calvin and other Reformers, wishing to lift up the importance of keeping the laws when one enters into covenant with God, obscured God’s prevenient grace by requiring that children be old enough to recite a catechism, including the Ten Commandments, before they could be baptized.
Methodists also see the commandments as an important part of our covenant relationship with God. It’s just that we are willing to recognize that God initiates this covenant as a free gift of grace without merit, and then instructs us in how covenant people are to live. These instructions are known as the law.
When you look carefully at these commandments you can see that the first four deal with the relationship between us and God, while the last six commandments all revolve around how we are to relate to one another – honor our parents, and five “shall nots.” As Jesus summed them up people who are part of the covenant are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. When we enter this covenant through baptism and reaffirm this covenant with confirmation, or reaffirmation of faith, or by joining a church like Wesley Untied Methodist we become part of God’s covenant people who have a special kind of relationship to God and to one another.
What does it look like when we begin to live our covenant relationship with God? What are our lives like when we truly love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? When we have no other gods, no idols, we refuse to take the Lord’s name in vain and we honor the Sabbath? It makes me think of an old African American spiritual “I woke up this morning with my mind – stayed on Jesus.” People who are living the covenant make God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the number one relationship in our lives. We talk to the Lord when we wake up each morning, and before we go to sleep each night. We pray, not only telling God what we need and trusting that the Lord will provide, but also listening to God’s reply and God’s call on our lives. Covenant people also listen to God by reading his word, and studying it. We seek to know God’s will for our lives and invite the Lord to melt us, mold us, fill us and use us for his good purpose. Covenant people’s lives are so full of God that we can’t help but talk about our faith to our friends and neighbors. John Wesley encouraged Methodists to nurture our relationship with God by taking advantage of the means of grace, like Holy Communion, as often as possible.
And what about our covenant with one another? Through our baptisms we entered into this covenant with the whole Christian church. We became brothers and sisters with every other Christian around this world. Just think! That’s one big, beautiful family we belong to! Being in covenant relationship with God means not only honoring our parents, but also our children, our neighbors, the strangers among us and even our enemies. We are not only to respect our elders and our bosses, but the bus drivers, the garbage collectors and even the person that cuts us off on the highway.
Pause for translation
But the covenant also gives us a special relationship with our local congregation. When Zara and Kevin joined Wesley United Methodist Church last week their covenant included a promise to uphold our congregation with their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service and their witness. The full blessings of being in covenant can only come to us when we are present and engaged in our congregation. We have a unique congregation here, one with diversity, which at times can seem challenging, but has the potential to be a great blessing. As a new part of the Wesley community I have been wondering and praying about how we might more fully nurture our covenant relationship with one another.
These monthly worship services are a great start. But I wonder what else we might do to come to know one another better as brothers and sisters in Christ? I haven’t kept my promise yet to roust myself out of the house early enough to attend morning prayer here – but I think that might help. Or perhaps we could have a study group of some kind, which includes members of both parts of the congregation. I also know how to lead a kind of prayerful movement to music an activity called “devotions in motion.” It’s a little bit like Tai Chi so I think we could do it together in spite of our language barrier. Maybe you have ideas – how could we be more fully present to one another, pray for and with one another, share our gifts with one another, serve one another and witness to one another as a whole congregation?
Another aspect of living in covenant as a United Methodist congregation is entering more fully into the United Methodist way. Similar to the Old Testament Law, United Methodists have a code of living together called the Discipline, which is amended every four years at General Conference. It is published in English and Korean and we should be ordering our new copies of the 2008 edition soon. In these first few years of being a bi-lingual congregation we have not been held accountable for following all the ways of the Discipline. We comply with some of it, like our Church Council meeting today, and our participation in mission shares. But there are other aspects of being a United Methodist congregation.
For example our congregation is entitled to send lay representatives to the meeting of the New England Annual Conference – a wonderful time when Methodists from all over our region gather for worship, fellowship and the work of setting policies. Our current lay member, Bill Cowens, is unable to attend Annual Conference any more. Who will we select to replace him?
Another event mandated by the Discipline is that every United Methodist Church hold an annual Charge Conference where the members meet to celebrate our life together and make plans for the coming year of ministry. This year our Charge Conference is scheduled for Thursday November 6 from 7 to 8:30. I encourage all members of this congregation to be present in keeping with our covenant promise.
Also related to the New England Conference, Wesley Church made a covenant to contribute $250 every month for five years toward the Together for Tomorrow Capital Campaign. This campaign supports the ministries of camping and retreats, missions in Nicaragua and West Angola, retired clergy health care, and money to help congregations grow stronger. Together with other churches our contributions can make a big difference for United Methodists in New England.
The Discipline also encourages us to send lay members for training in preaching and worship leadership and the Metro Boston Hope district offers such courses every spring and every fall. Kevin has already signed up for the fall sessions, which will meet on October 25 and November 15. Are there others in this congregation who would like to take advantage of this opportunity to grow in your faith?
And the Discipline designates six special Sundays when United Methodists are to focus our attention on special ministries. Today just happens to be one of those Sundays, called World Communion Sunday. Celebrated on the first Sunday in October, this day calls the Church to be the universal inclusive Church. It was first observed by Presbyterians in 1936 and was adopted by the Council of Churches in 1940. It is now a global and interdenominational event. On this day, Protestants all over the world join with Catholics in taking communion and remembering that our covenant extends beyond this local congregation, and beyond the United Methodist Church, to Christians all over the world. Part of the United Methodist observance of World Communion Sunday is to take a special offering which goes to support ethnic and minority U.S. and international students. Last year American United Methodists collected over one million, two hundred five thousand dollars on World Communion Sunday.
By the grace of God we are gathered for communion here and now, and we represent some of the wonderful diversity God has created in his children. So as we gather at Christ’s table to receive his good gifts on this World Communion Sunday, let us truly remember that through our baptisms and as members of this congregation we are members of his body, connected to one another, to other United Methodists and to the world wide church by such a strong and life giving covenant which began with Abraham and Moses and has been extended to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Working Out our Salvation - From September 28 - Based on Exodus 17 and Philippians 2
For the past few weeks we have been reading the Bible and thinking about salvation. God saved the Israelites from slavery to the Egyptians, God performed a miracle of parting the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross on dry ground. And God saved them from hunger in the wilderness by providing manna from heaven.
And here we are again, still with Moses and the Israelites who are still in the wilderness and just as miserable as they were before. Now they were worried about their water supply and once again they began complaining, and quarreling with Moses, demanding that he save them with water.
I believe that we are seeing a very common aspect of human nature. When we are unhappy with our lives we wish for someone to come down like a fairy godmother and magically make everything all right. Our consumer culture understands our nature – it is always promising bliss and happiness if only we buy this gadget, or that medicine.
Christian teachings rightly point out that all salvation comes from God. But if we leave it at that, focused only on what God does, it can leave us with an image of ourselves as helpless Cinderellas and Pinocchios just sitting around wishing for our dreams to come true. And when we don’t get what we want we end up quarreling with God and those who represent God to us, or just giving up on faith all together.
I once came to know a congregation who had such a passive image of salvation. They were down to five active people attending worship. Though they had known one another for a long time, I noticed at coffee hour that everyone talked and no one listened, or responded to the other. They did not participate in any outreach ministry of any kind, or attend any conference or district events, or take up special offerings for the poor, or victims of disasters. They were not particularly cooperative with their pastors either. At the same time that they were getting ready to close the church and take the whole summer off, they had put in a request for the conference to give them enough money to pay for a full time pastor. Their expectation that someone would just save them, while they continued to focus on what they lacked - grumbling, murmuring, complaining and fighting all the way.
Can you visualize this congregation? Can you imagine being a visitor to such a congregation on a Sunday morning? No wonder a congregation like this was not growing in any way at all.
In contrast Paul urges the followers of Jesus to “do all things without murmuring and arguing so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation in which you shine like stars.” Can you now imagine a congregation like this? – one that feels like an oasis from the outside world. One that has members that shine like stars because they are filled with Christ’s love and they know God’s saving grace.
This is the kind of congregation Paul encourages the Philippians to become. A congregation that encourages one another, that offers one another solace, consolation, compassion and sympathy in times of need; a congregation that is united in heart both to Christ and to one another; a congregation full of the Spirit of Christ – and thus full of joy.
Such a congregation learns how to put each other first, and does nothing for selfish reasons of ambition or conceit. The members are not focused on their own individual needs, but on the needs of other members and seek to meet them. When I read this description in Philippians I think of Quakers, who have learned the art of making all decisions by consensus. This is a process whereby each person is asked to pray about a certain decision. Then the members discuss how they hear the Spirit leading them. If only one member disagrees with the path the group is setting, the group returns to a position of prayerful listening, and they seek to alter their plans until every member is at peace with them. If they can’t come to peace, then the group just holds off on any decision until later. This process takes time, and patience and a certain humility, which Paul lifts up here in Scripture. It also takes trust that the Spirit of God is at work in each member of the church. It is not easy to learn to let the same mind that was in Christ reside in us. But when we, as a congregation, begin to practice this discipline, we will find that we make better decisions, and have more unity of direction, because we are setting aside our own wills in exchange for following God’s will.
The kind of salvation presented to us in Scripture, rather than being a magical, instant cure that someone else gives us, requires our response. Yes, salvation comes from God alone, but God’s Spirit works in us and through us, empowering us and transforming us from people who sit around grumbling and quarreling, to children of God who shine like stars without blemish. Scriptural salvation begins with God, is grounded in God, and is motivated by God. Verse 13 says, “God is at work in you.” And not just me or you as individuals, but all of us. If Paul were a southerner he would say, “God is at work in y’all.” But the work God does in us is just the first part of salvation. The second part is that God’s work in us enables us both to have the will to stop sinning, and the ability to work for God’s good pleasure. We are called, therefore, to work out our own salvation.
John Wesley wrote a sermon on the topic of working out our own salvation and describes how we can do so. He said,
“Cease to do evil; learn to do well.” If ever you desire that God should work in you that faith whereof cometh both present and eternal salvation, by the grace already given, fly from all sin as from the face of a serpent; carefully avoid every evil word and work; yea, abstain from all appearance of evil. And “learn to do well:” Be zealous of good works, of works of piety, as well as works of mercy; family prayer, and crying to God in secret. Fast in secret, and “your Father which seeth in secret, he will reward you openly.” “Search the Scriptures:” Hear them in public, read them in private, and meditate therein. At every opportunity, be a partaker of the Lord's Supper. “Do this in remembrance of him:” and he will meet you at his own table. Let your conversation be with the children of God; and see that it “be in grace, seasoned with salt.” As ye have time, do good unto all men; to their souls and to their bodies. And herein “be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” It then only remains that ye deny yourselves and take up your cross daily. Deny yourselves every pleasure which does not prepare you for taking pleasure in God, and willingly embrace every means of drawing near to God, though it be a cross, though it be grievous to flesh and blood. Thus when you have redemption in the blood of Christ, you will “go on to perfection;” till “walking in the light as he is in the light,” you are enabled to testify, that “he is faithful and just,” not only to ‘forgive’ your ‘sins,’ but to ‘cleanse’ you from all unrighteousness.”
The baptismal covenant is the Christian’s way to enter into salvation. It is God’s gift, offered to us without price. But in it we are also asked to respond to this gift. God is like the river, and we are each a small mill. The river flows over us, but we need to put ourselves in gear in order for the rushing water of God’s grace to turn our water wheels and empower us to do great things. We put ourselves in gear by renouncing sin, by professing our faith publicly, by taking note of all the ways God has already saved us, and giving God thanks and praise, and by keeping our promise to support the Church, the community of brothers and sisters in Christ, by our prayers, our presence our gifts, our service and our witness.
As we prepare to put ourselves in gear once again through the renewing of our baptismal covenant, let us sing hymn 577 – God of Grace and God of Glory.
And here we are again, still with Moses and the Israelites who are still in the wilderness and just as miserable as they were before. Now they were worried about their water supply and once again they began complaining, and quarreling with Moses, demanding that he save them with water.
I believe that we are seeing a very common aspect of human nature. When we are unhappy with our lives we wish for someone to come down like a fairy godmother and magically make everything all right. Our consumer culture understands our nature – it is always promising bliss and happiness if only we buy this gadget, or that medicine.
Christian teachings rightly point out that all salvation comes from God. But if we leave it at that, focused only on what God does, it can leave us with an image of ourselves as helpless Cinderellas and Pinocchios just sitting around wishing for our dreams to come true. And when we don’t get what we want we end up quarreling with God and those who represent God to us, or just giving up on faith all together.
I once came to know a congregation who had such a passive image of salvation. They were down to five active people attending worship. Though they had known one another for a long time, I noticed at coffee hour that everyone talked and no one listened, or responded to the other. They did not participate in any outreach ministry of any kind, or attend any conference or district events, or take up special offerings for the poor, or victims of disasters. They were not particularly cooperative with their pastors either. At the same time that they were getting ready to close the church and take the whole summer off, they had put in a request for the conference to give them enough money to pay for a full time pastor. Their expectation that someone would just save them, while they continued to focus on what they lacked - grumbling, murmuring, complaining and fighting all the way.
Can you visualize this congregation? Can you imagine being a visitor to such a congregation on a Sunday morning? No wonder a congregation like this was not growing in any way at all.
In contrast Paul urges the followers of Jesus to “do all things without murmuring and arguing so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation in which you shine like stars.” Can you now imagine a congregation like this? – one that feels like an oasis from the outside world. One that has members that shine like stars because they are filled with Christ’s love and they know God’s saving grace.
This is the kind of congregation Paul encourages the Philippians to become. A congregation that encourages one another, that offers one another solace, consolation, compassion and sympathy in times of need; a congregation that is united in heart both to Christ and to one another; a congregation full of the Spirit of Christ – and thus full of joy.
Such a congregation learns how to put each other first, and does nothing for selfish reasons of ambition or conceit. The members are not focused on their own individual needs, but on the needs of other members and seek to meet them. When I read this description in Philippians I think of Quakers, who have learned the art of making all decisions by consensus. This is a process whereby each person is asked to pray about a certain decision. Then the members discuss how they hear the Spirit leading them. If only one member disagrees with the path the group is setting, the group returns to a position of prayerful listening, and they seek to alter their plans until every member is at peace with them. If they can’t come to peace, then the group just holds off on any decision until later. This process takes time, and patience and a certain humility, which Paul lifts up here in Scripture. It also takes trust that the Spirit of God is at work in each member of the church. It is not easy to learn to let the same mind that was in Christ reside in us. But when we, as a congregation, begin to practice this discipline, we will find that we make better decisions, and have more unity of direction, because we are setting aside our own wills in exchange for following God’s will.
The kind of salvation presented to us in Scripture, rather than being a magical, instant cure that someone else gives us, requires our response. Yes, salvation comes from God alone, but God’s Spirit works in us and through us, empowering us and transforming us from people who sit around grumbling and quarreling, to children of God who shine like stars without blemish. Scriptural salvation begins with God, is grounded in God, and is motivated by God. Verse 13 says, “God is at work in you.” And not just me or you as individuals, but all of us. If Paul were a southerner he would say, “God is at work in y’all.” But the work God does in us is just the first part of salvation. The second part is that God’s work in us enables us both to have the will to stop sinning, and the ability to work for God’s good pleasure. We are called, therefore, to work out our own salvation.
John Wesley wrote a sermon on the topic of working out our own salvation and describes how we can do so. He said,
“Cease to do evil; learn to do well.” If ever you desire that God should work in you that faith whereof cometh both present and eternal salvation, by the grace already given, fly from all sin as from the face of a serpent; carefully avoid every evil word and work; yea, abstain from all appearance of evil. And “learn to do well:” Be zealous of good works, of works of piety, as well as works of mercy; family prayer, and crying to God in secret. Fast in secret, and “your Father which seeth in secret, he will reward you openly.” “Search the Scriptures:” Hear them in public, read them in private, and meditate therein. At every opportunity, be a partaker of the Lord's Supper. “Do this in remembrance of him:” and he will meet you at his own table. Let your conversation be with the children of God; and see that it “be in grace, seasoned with salt.” As ye have time, do good unto all men; to their souls and to their bodies. And herein “be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” It then only remains that ye deny yourselves and take up your cross daily. Deny yourselves every pleasure which does not prepare you for taking pleasure in God, and willingly embrace every means of drawing near to God, though it be a cross, though it be grievous to flesh and blood. Thus when you have redemption in the blood of Christ, you will “go on to perfection;” till “walking in the light as he is in the light,” you are enabled to testify, that “he is faithful and just,” not only to ‘forgive’ your ‘sins,’ but to ‘cleanse’ you from all unrighteousness.”
The baptismal covenant is the Christian’s way to enter into salvation. It is God’s gift, offered to us without price. But in it we are also asked to respond to this gift. God is like the river, and we are each a small mill. The river flows over us, but we need to put ourselves in gear in order for the rushing water of God’s grace to turn our water wheels and empower us to do great things. We put ourselves in gear by renouncing sin, by professing our faith publicly, by taking note of all the ways God has already saved us, and giving God thanks and praise, and by keeping our promise to support the Church, the community of brothers and sisters in Christ, by our prayers, our presence our gifts, our service and our witness.
As we prepare to put ourselves in gear once again through the renewing of our baptismal covenant, let us sing hymn 577 – God of Grace and God of Glory.
Bread of Heaven - Sermon based on Exodus 16 - Given September 21
Last Sunday we began to think about salvation while contemplating the story of Israel escaping from slavery in Egypt and how God helped them by parting the Red Sea. The main theme of Exodus is salvation. Not only did God save Israel from the misery of slavery to the Egyptians who were harsh taskmasters and implemented cruel policies like drowning the baby boys in the river, but after Israel escaped from Egypt, the Lord spent 40 years saving them from themselves and teaching them to trust only in him. During this time the Lord used the wilderness as a tool for salvation.
In the second year after I graduated from college I had a miserable year. The recession of the early 90s had hit causing the preschool where I worked to close. I searched in vain for new work, finding only babysitting jobs for the summer, and then finally accepting a position as a nanny which paid only room and board for 20 hours a week. I soon discovered that this family was not so pleasant to work for and worse to live with, and I was unable to find any other work so I was very poor. This experience was very hard on my self-esteem – it is not where I expected to be after four good years of college. While I had clearly felt God’s hand leading me when I was in school, now I felt abandoned, rejected, aimless and alone.
But one day as I was talking with my friend Louise – who was like a second mom to me – she said, “Sarah, you are in the wilderness.” She proceeded to tell me about some of her wilderness experiences and helped me see the connection between our lives in the wilderness, and what the Israelites experienced as they made their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. After a while, I too began to see how the Lord was using my wilderness time to strengthen and teach me and help me grow in my faith.
There are many lessons to be learned in the wilderness, but the focus for today is on the bread of heaven. After wandering around for a while the Israelites’ rations began to run low. So the whole congregation began to murmur, grumble and complain to Moses and Aaron. They started to wish out loud that they were still in Egypt, where at least they had food to eat. Not only did they complain, but they accused the very ones who led them out of slavery of now trying to kill them. They had no trust in God.
What I find amazing in this story is that while the Israelites were being whiny, insolent, ungrateful brats, God only responded with grace and mercy. God’s response to Moses was to promise; “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.” You are hungry, I will provide. Now many parents would not be quite so generous. We might tell our children, stop complaining, and apologize first. You won’t get anything until you behave better. But not the Lord, he hears the cries and provides for the needs of his people. This is the beginning of salvation – God’s providential grace given lavishly, with no requirement that we do anything to deserve it.
It is commonly thought that the wilderness period is a time when the Israelites learned how to live into being in covenant with the Lord. And while God gave the manna from heaven as pure grace, he also used this gift to teach the people. He taught them not only to trust in him and draw near to him, but also how to take only what they needed, and to observe the Sabbath day, for on the sixth day the Lord provided twice the manna, so that on the seventh everyone could rest, and simply eat what had been gathered the day before.
In the gospel of John chapter 6, after feeding bread to the five thousand, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from ever. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
While in Exodus the bread of heaven was for the salvation of the people God chose first to be in covenant with him, the life death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus Christ, expanded salvation beyond the children of Israel, to all who believe. As followers of Christ we enter into this covenant through our baptisms, and from time to time we have opportunity to renew this covenant at confirmation or when we join a particular congregation.
Next week we will have the blessing of renewing our covenant with God, with the church universal, with the United Methodist church and with each other and celebrate God’s saving gifts in our lives as Kevin and Zara join Wesley. One of the vows Methodists typically ask new members to take is to support the church with their prayers, presence, gifts and service. But at General Conference last spring an addition was made. Our witness.
Witnessing is a very important part of being a Christian and it’s one that we sometimes forget to do. Witnessing simply means telling others what God has been doing in our lives. When Louise helped me understand that really hard year after college as wilderness, and told me about how God was with her in her wilderness, and pointed me to Exodus so I could read about all the blessings that can come to God’s people in wilderness times, she was witnessing. When the woman at the well ran back to town to tell everyone that she had just met the Messiah, she was witnessing. Witnessing doesn’t have to be hard – we don’t all have to be good at public speaking, we don’t have to try and convince a stranger to come to church. We just need to remember to tell the people in our lives about our relationship with God, our prayers, and how God has answered them. But our culture is not always open to witnessing, so we might have to practice a little to get into the habit. I think the safest place to practice talking about they wonderful things God is doing in our lives is here at church.
After we sing the next hymn I invited you to come forward and take part in a time of witnessing called a love feast. We will just gather together and share God’s love with one another over some good bread. We will remember that Jesus is the bread of heaven, the bread of life, and that in him and through him the Lord gives us everything we truly need. We will practice witnessing, telling one another how we have seen God at work lately. How has God fed you, renewed you, or comforted you? When have you been aware that the Lord was on your side, walking beside you? Or how has God been working in others around you? Let us sing praise, and practice giving witness to the salvation of our God.
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