New Beginnings

 

Epiphany: Matthew 2:1-12, Journeying through the Bible: Numbers 27, Joshua 1:1-9, 3-4

So here we sit at the beginning of a new year. New years are funny, because things are no different on January 1 than they were on December 31. But it’s a new beginning nevertheless, because from where we started counting, the world is now 2025 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, instead of 2024. 

Actual new beginnings happen in our lives all the time, tangible shifts that redefine and redirect us, like starting college or a new job, retiring or moving to a new state, being given a new diagnosis or a new grandchild.  And then there are the new beginnings that become a new beginning because everyone treats it as one, like new years. So, happy new year!

Our culture would have us seize hold of this declared beginning; new year new you! It’s a new chance to take control of our lives, to start over where we’ve slipped in our self-improvement projects. To set new goals, buy new stuff and subscribe to new apps. There is nothing wrong with setting goals or using tools to help us meet them. But the story we are sold about what a good life is tells us it’s all about us, and all in our hands, and even newness must be managed and controlled. 

Who wants to hear about what we can’t control? We got the genetics we got, were born to the place and people where we started, affected by whatever is currently polluting the air or water or zeitgeist, and our lives are tangled up in larger systems and structures mostly beyond our say so. And we are each limited, singular humans, with only so much time, only so much capacity, only so much ability. But good grief, what kind of new year message is that? Being honest about limitations is zero fun. Being vulnerable, or needy? blech. So, let’s keep reaching for control instead. And starting over at it every year! Maybe one year we’ll master it all. 

All our scriptures today are new beginnings. And, surprise! They tell a different story about what a good life is, and who shapes our lives and the world. 

It’s Epiphany, so we meet again our regular new year’s visitors: Magi, traveling from afar, bringing gifts to worship God coming into the world. This was never in their life plans or new year’s resolutions. But they lived open to the direction of something outside themselves and responded when the call came. They ventured into the unknown, deferential to the uncontrollable, obedient to the call, and in the home of a peasant woman and her carpenter husband in a nowhere town 500 miles from home, they met God incarnate face to face.  

The magi departed from that place changed. They were set on a new path, with a new perception of the universe and everyone in it, and belonging to a new, small and very diverse community of those who had been in Christ’s presence, and who would now be watching together what God was doing in the world as ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

Next, we jump backwards 1400 years before the birth of Christ. Where we left off our journey through the bible, the people of God, called to be a blessing to the world, were living in the wilderness, learning to trust God to take care of them, and allowing their identity to be reshaped from slaves who existed to prop up the empire to the people of God called to be a blessing to the world.

We meet up with them today in a new beginning moment. They’re ready to enter the promised land and settle in the new home God has for them. We didn’t read the first story assigned to today, but it is depicted in our picture for the day, so it feels only fair to summarize it. As the leaders began planning for how land would be divvied up once they got to their new home, following the male family lines, 5 sisters with no brothers whose father had died came to them and said, why should our family line die out in the land because our father had no sons? We should be given land too. So, Moses brought their case to God, and God said, They are right. Change the law. When the people entered the promised land, they did so with a law that was more just, because these sisters spoke up, God heard them, and the leaders listened.

So now we come to the threshold moment, the old is ending and the new is about to begin. The people of God called to be a blessing to the world have been living in liminal space, neither here nor there, biding time, learning trust and being shaped by God. And now they will be going home. 

But to go from wandering to settled, they will need to cross the swollen, raging river. They will pass through waters of rebirth, waters of deliverance, waters that remake identity. For us, these waters are baptism. For them, the waters that had released them from the death of slavery and ushered them into new life 40 years before was the red sea, which had parted miraculously so they could cross over into safety in the care of God. This is the story that has shaped them, the experience of God’s saving hand of grace to the generation before them. Their own understanding of God and trust in God has been shaped by their parents’ stories of God’s faithfulness. 

Now it’s their turn. In front of their eyes, the water separates, and God makes a way where there was no way. 
And the presence of God and care of God is known not just in stories now but felt in their own bodies– their feet pressing into wet sand and slimy stones, the smell of the damp river bottom, the hot sun and wind on their faces, the astonishing sight of the water itself participating with God in their new beginning. 
God who has been faithful before is faithful now, and will be faithful again. When they came out of the waters they were changed, set on a new path, with a new perception of creation and their place in God’s order.  They were God’s people, called and led, who would now be watching together what God was doing in the world as ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

They mark the experience with a symbol, stones from the riverbed stacked up as a signpost, and Joshua tells them, “Your children will ask about these stones, and you are to tell them about God parting the waters here as God did at the red sea. Worship God always.”

Inside an ancient story, the same faithful God is always bringing new beginnings. They don’t come from our efforts or control. They come in our endings, our impossibilities, our stuckness, arriving in our places of death and loss that feel like they might define us forever. Sky and water, stars and rivers, strangers, babies, sisters, leaders, long, arduous journeys and staying still for long, long stretches all are part of God’s work. God’s beginnings surprise us, leading us into the lives of new people, like the watching, ready Magi. God’s beginnings use our vulnerability and voices to change the way forward for others, like the brave sisters. God’s beginnings bring us home with continuity and hope, like the children of God coming out of the wilderness into the promised land. However it happens and whomever it involves, God is always bringing salvation and healing, new life, hope and renewed belonging. Always. 

As we begin this new year, lots will be changing in our country and our government, in the global landscape and in our neighborhoods, in our work places and relationships, and in our lives and even our own bodies in ways we don’t yet know and can’t yet see.  

But hear the words of God to the people of God standing on the brink of a new beginning: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.’

Maybe instead of naming all the ways we intend to be strong and courageous because we’re so self-guided and goal-driven and in control, we might admit we’re not really in control, and enter this new beginning honest with ourselves about our vulnerabilities and fears, truthful with each other about needing one another, and open to God incarnate who is with us wherever we go, who leads us where we might otherwise not go, and who will meet us face to face where we could never imagine. 

Maybe we enter this new beginning listening, open, watching and ready, helping each other remember and trust that God who has been faithful before is faithful now, and will be faithful again. 

God’s new beginnings are personal, but never individual. When redemption, hope and new life happen to one of us, other people are always involved, and even sometimes creation, and the newness impacts not only us but blesses the world. The Holy Spirit changes us, sets on a new path, gives us a new perception of the universe and everyone in it, and we are rooted more deeply in our belonging to an old, vast, and very diverse community of those who have been in Christ’s presence, who are watching together what God is doing in the world, ready and willing participants in God’s unfolding story. 

2025 years after joining us in person, how will this faithful God show up this year? 

I can’t wait to find out.

A Christmas Eve Message in Carols

 

Isaiah 6:2:6-7, John 1:1-5, Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 1:18-25, Luke 2:1-20 Christmas songs are the most eclectic collection of music that exists in the same genre. Streaming Christmas music you’ll bounce through tragic break-ups, saucy hook-ups, light-hearted dust-ups, and adorable mix-ups. You’ll go from anthropomorphized snowmen and catty reindeer to ancient magi, alarming angels, and imagined drummer boys. Whiplashing from glee to longing, wistfulness to punchiness, and superficiality to scripture with ho, ho, hos, fa, la, las, and glory-alleluias, the whole thing becomes backdrop soup that we stop really hearing.   But it’s also true that some of the most poignant and powerful lyrics ever written are sung at Christmas. Christmas songs can preach!   I recently came across all the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Bing Crosby croons a few verses but skip others. I did not know it was a Christmas poem written amidst the horrors of the Civil War.    Listen to what Longfellow wrote:   I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play,  And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom  Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Till ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South,  And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men! It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said;  "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;  The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."   Every year Christmas comes around, interrupting our human stupidity and hatred, whatever current versions of awfulness we are engaged in this year.    Long lay the world in sin and error pining.   (O Holy Night)   Nevertheless, throughout time, when the bells ring Christians gather on this night all over the planet. In the midst of world wars and regional famines, through times of personal loss and communal tragedy, we take up our candles, our silence, and our songs to share again this sacred story, and trust again that the God who comes in will meet us here.   No ear may hear His coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.    (O Little Town of Bethlehem)    This is a holy act we do this night.  Because if Christmas has any real and lasting meaning, it can’t just be a bubble bath of nostalgia, or a Netflix binge of escapism. But neither can it be positive platitudes or religious head-patting.    Life isn’t messing around. We have 15-year-olds with guns and countries invading each on a dying planet. Right this moment in the very place our little Lord Jesus lay asleep on the hay, people are suffering and dying, their homes and lives destroyed. And in-between our holiday shopping and wrapping, people are logging online to cheer for a murderer,  because we’ve stopped seeing the human in one another, and in the world’s richest country people can’t get the healthcare they need. And millions of our siblings live in poverty because we also happen to live in the country with the greatest wealth inequality. We’re not crushing it, you guys.   We’re angry and lonely, anxious and scared, hurried and stressed, sad and mean. And in an unstable global environment armed with nuclear weapons and massive egos, the future is unknown.    So, if the best of what Christmas has to offer is the warm winter wonderland of fuzzy appreciation for family and friends, and a once-a-year emphasis on kindness, it’s not going to cut it.   For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!     (I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day)   So, also, it seems if we’re clinging to the delusion that we humans are somehow capable of righting this ship, we are not. Let’s admit it right now. We are not capable of restoring our wrongs. This world is broken, and we cannot fix it. We are hopeless. It is impossible.    But nothing is impossible for God.   And you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing: O, rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.    (It Came Upon a Midnight Clear)   And now, something must happen that we cannot make happen. Something uncontrollable, transformative, and undeserved must break in and change things. It must be both cosmic and personal, universal and particular. We must be met here and now, by something entirely outside of ourselves that embraces our whole selves and everyone else too. We must be found.    The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee to-night.     (O Little Town of Bethlehem)   And so, a voice from the heavens announces to us – to each of us and to all of us ever –FEAR NOT!      Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing!    (O Come, All Ye Faithful)   Eternity breaks into time! God comes into this life – not as a mighty force overthrowing evil, as much as we may wish that were so, but as a helpless, displaced child into the arms and care of unprepared people in a broken world.    Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed, Where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.   (Once in David’s Royal City) Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.   (Hark, the Herald Angels Sing)   God comes into this life, this darkness, this impossibility, the one we are living in right now. This, here, is what is being redeemed by love, flooded with the light no darkness can extinguish.    Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings!    (Hark, the Herald Angels Sing)   What we are incapable of achieving on our own, the life of wholeness and connection, belonging to God and all others, is given us in Christ. This world, and everyone in it, is claimed for redemption.   For lo, the days are hastening on by prophets seen of old, when with the ever-circling years shall come the time foretold  when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,  and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing.  (It Came Upon a Midnight Clear)    History on its inevitable course is interrupted and rerouted by Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. The whole trajectory now points toward love that will never end.     A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!  (O, Holy Night)   We are not on this spinning ball alone fending for ourselves. The destruction we’ve done and keep doing is not our end. Death, in all its terrifying separation, is not the final word. God has come. There is now nowhere Christ is not actively bringing salvation. The middle of the story is messy, but conclusion has already been written. The world is God’s! The end is love!   Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;  The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."  (I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day)   Christmas calls us to walk alongside each other in impossibility, to watch for God’s in-breaking. This is God’s world, and every one of us has a particular place. We will see Christ when we welcome each exquisite human being here beside us with reverent care. When we tend the complex, fascinating earth with humble wonder. When we join in God’s ongoing creativity, merciful justice, unwavering forgiveness, and potent healing, by accepting all the small moments of connection as invitations into miracle, given by God’s Spirit in our ordinary days.    So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heaven.  (O Little Town of Bethlehem)    We are loved by God, always and no matter what, here briefly to love one another.  We can’t control most of what happens around us, or even to us, but we can receive our ‘one, wild precious life’ in with the defiant delight of joy. We can live in trust, gratitude, and anticipation for what God will do next.   Let earth receive her king; let every heart prepare him room.   (Joy to the World!)   Christmas not a happy distraction from the pain and suffering of life and the darkness and brokenness of this world, it’s the main event. God comes into the brokenness, and through the life, death, and resurrection of God-with-us that begins right here, the world will never be the same.  Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, Let all within us praise His holy name!       (O,Holy Night)   What we do this night is a holy act. With our glory-alleluia good news songs of great joy for all people, we take up our candles and our calling, to share again this sacred story, so that with confidence and hope, we may go out from this place into the darkness of this night, trusting that the God of light who comes in is indeed redeeming this world, and even now has met us here.   Amen.

What's it all for and how does it happen?

 

Exodus 15:22-16:36, Exodus 19:1-20::21. Deuteronomy 6:1-9, Leviticus 25 David Brooks recently had an article in the Atlantic where he said he’d been obsessed with two questions: Why are Americans so sad? and Why are Americans so mean? He says, there are lots of theories, most of them at least partly true. But, he opens, “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.” He writes that restraining our selfishness, welcoming our neighbor, disagreeing constructively, and finding purpose in life are not things our culture is currently intentional about learning and passing on. We don’t collectively address the question, what is life for? Humans need practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. We need moral formation -  to be formed into something and for something.   In our ongoing narrative, the Israelites have been led out of slavery into wilderness. These are the descendants of Abraham and Sarah: blessed to be a blessing to the world. But for centuries they’d been formed as slaves, for the benefit of the empire. They were disposable, existing for work by a system that stripped them of personhood and gave them daily patterns of living that reinforced this definition. They were slaves. They knew how to do this. Now they’re free. How do you be free?  They’ll need a new understanding of what life is for, and some practical guidelines for a meaningful existence.   The first time I preached on the Ten Commandments at Lake Nokomis, Owen was four and Maisy was one. The day before, in a fit of frustration with his baby sister, Owen threw a Star Wars action figure at her.  “No throwing things” isn’t a rule we’ve needed in our house for a long time, and time-outs are a faint memory (except for self-imposed ones), but back then, throwing things led to an immediate time-out.  After Owen’s grueling four minutes on the time-out chair, I knelt down in front of him and asked him if he knew why he had to sit there – my line of the often-repeated script. He avoided looking at me and parroted his line of the script,  “Because I threw something at Maisy. Sorry.”  But something stopped me this time, and since I had his attention, I asked him, “Owen, do you know WHY we don’t throw things in this house?”  He looked at me, big eyes and pensive stare, “Why?”  “We have that rule because we want this house to be a safe place for everyone to play, a place where everyone is protected and free to have fun.  You, Maisy, Mommy and Daddy, and even people who visit us.  If people were allowed to throw things here, nobody would be safe or protected or be able to play without being afraid.  That’s why we can’t have any throwing.   Do you think that is a good rule for us to have?” And he paused, then he nodded.  Then he said, with a very concerned face, “Mommy, that’s a good rule. But I forget! I forget what to do when Maisy touches my things! So I just throw things at her!”   And I promised that next time she touched his things, I would help him remember to tell her NO, then ask me to help get her away.  Because just as we don’t throw things, we also don’t take other people’s things without asking.  And he left satisfied.  That first year this blew the Ten Commandments wide open for me. Because the ten commandments are not actually grammatically commands  - they are descriptive – they portray the way life in the household of God works. In this house, we do not throw things at people, we don’t take other people’s things without asking. Here is what life looks like when people are honored and respected, all people, in a safe place where everyone can grow, and play, and not be afraid.   This is not just a list of rules, it’s not even just helpful moral formation, it’s a relationship upheld by God. You are no longer slaves, you are children.  So first, before even the words themselves, God claims them as children by caring for them in the wilderness. The first story today is about how God gave the Israelites manna for breakfast and quail for dinner, and provided water where there was none. Every day God gave them just what they needed for that day, and no more. If they tried to save it up it went rotten. But every seventh day was for rest, so the food from the sixth day could carry over. We’ve called this period in their lives “Trust training school.”  For 40 years they practiced being cared for, received belonging to God – I am trustworthy, I will take care of you. And then, in that place of upheaval and unknown, God gives them a word. Like the word that spoke creation into being, and the word that will become flesh and dwell among us. God’s word always brings life.  The majority of the Ten Commandments address Who is this God and what is God up to? “I’m the God who saved you and called you my own and cared for you and looks after you. I give you your name and identity and freedom. I am trustworthy and I expect you to trust me. I can’t be possessed or controlled, only encountered. I am who I will be, and I say who you are – not anything else that would enslave you or totalize you. So respect me. And then God says, you’ll forget you belong to me, and forget who you are for each other and what life is for, so every single week every single person stops working, to enjoy life and rest, just like I did when I created the world, because life is for joy and connection. You are not slaves defined by endless production, you my are children held in my love and called to bless the world. And then the commandments turn to, What is a good life and how do we live it? The moral formation part, practical guidelines for a meaningful existence. And with simple “We don’t throw things here” language, they talk about how to treat each other: in this house we hold one another as sacred and valuable, we uphold other’s dignity and personhood and treat people with respect, honesty and fairness instead of jealousy, greed or envy. In this home, God says, everyone has what they need, and we practice belonging to each other. But to notch it all up a level and really hit the message home, we’ve got another story from the law where God commands that every 7th year is a big, year-long sabbath for the soil, and every 49 years this sabbath thing becomes a mega sabbath jubilee celebration year. The whole gameboard gets wiped clean and reset. Master and marginalized, insider or outsider, generational wealth or poverty, it all disappears. Momentum crushed, balance sheet zeroed out. Only God can tell us who we, not what we’ve achieved or lost, not how people see us or our role in society, not our smart investments or poor choices. We are children, not slaves. And the earth is God’s beloved creation, also not meant to be endlessly worked. So in case we begin acting like what we do is more powerful and permanent than it is, God writes in a reset button. Come back home. You are my children, here to bless the world.  When God gave the law, God said, Here is what life is for. Here is how you live it. This is not hypothetical and idealistic. This is concrete and practical. The only way to life fully human, fully alive, fully who you are made to be, the only way to be free, is inside the perimeters of God’s love and order. Anything outside that makes us into slaves, steals our joy, binds us in patterns of destruction and division and isolation. For 16 years I’ve loved the ten commandments and insight I received from the experience of Owen’s time out.  But this time through I hear something different in that story. I hear a four year old's honest cry of anguish, how he knows it’s wrong to throw things, but when she takes his stuff, he forgets.  And I feel that part.  We’re sad and we’re mean. And we can wish we weren’t sad and try not to be mean – but most of the time we forget what to do. We agree they are good rules: let’s be kind and forgiving and generous. Let’s restrain selfishness and disagree constructively and welcome our neighbor. Yes, yes to all of it. Let’s do those good rules. Let’s practice them and be formed by the practice. But I still forget. I forget when a stranger is short with me, or something doesn’t work like it should, or people say dumb false things, or when I feel judged, or even when I’m just in a hurry.  I forget when I’m insecure or afraid, and I forget most often with those closest to me. When I’m interrupted or impatient, when I get stressed or anxious about things outside my control, when life feels overwhelming, I forget.  We need moral formation. Thank God for the places we learn to practice kindness and civility. Seriously, thank you, God. How will we ever remember unless we practice? But more than practice, I need a savior. I need someone to bring me back home, because sometimes I can’t find my way. I’ve practiced striving and self-protection so much for so long, that it’s hard to just choose to live what I know to be true. I forget.  But God gives more than good moral formation. God gives God’s very self.  To the Israelites God said, I will care for you, I will lead and guide you, and you will care for others. You are no longer slaves, you are my children. I make that so. You are those whom I am with. We are children of God in the household of God. We are those whom God is with. And Christmas is the concrete promise come to fruition in flesh and blood, God is with us. GOD is with us. The word made flesh to dwell among us. Jesus comes to make us fully at home in love. And when we are fully at home in love, that feels like joy.   Joy is a gift, we can’t make it happen. Jesus said that the point of all his teaching is that we have his joy. His joy – not that we try to act joyful or produce joy out of thin air. Jesus enters our death, our impossibility, our deep, existential forgetting, and takes it into himself. And Jesus give us his life. Jesus is fully at home in love, and the inner life of Christ’s own complete belonging to God and belonging to the world is for us. We can be at home in love. Even in pain and suffering. Even in disappointment and confusion. Even in our failure to live up to the values we believe. We drawn into life that doesn’t come from us and will not end with us, that is beauty, and wonder, and mystery, and awe, and delight and sorrow shared, poignant and powerful. And those moments when life eternal breaks through tangibly grabs us, we taste joy. We forget to forget. And we are remembered into life by God who is with us. So together we will practice. Freedom instead of slavery. Rest instead of relentlessness. We will turn our hearts to our creator and seek to trust in the I AM who holds the world, and we’ll help each other with the  kindness and generosity and peace too. But we will undoubtedly also forget.  So, Jesus, God with us, be with us here and set us free again. Speak a word that brings life. God who comes in, come into our places of stuckness and forgetting, remember us into life and bring us back home into love. Amen.

People of Hope

Exodus 7-15 

Episode 7: Moses & The Exodus

On Wednesday I attended the funeral of a woman who died of cancer, a mother of two sons, the youngest 13. Her devastated husband was shaken to the core to lose this love of his life. Who am I now? he asked, without her? Impossible. This thing he must do now, to live into a future without her? It’s impossible. 

Today begins Advent, a season of waiting for the arrival of our Savior. This first week of Advent is framed by hope. Hope is trusting in a future we can’t see right now.  Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Martin Luther King’s closest friend and advisor, said “I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future.” This is hope. 

When our story opens, Moses is an 80 year old shepherd, who fled Egypt decades ago after murdering an overseer who was beating a Hebrew slave. After a dramatic childhood, he has lived out most of his days in the relative quiet and obscurity of the wilderness, tending sheep. When, from the bush that burns without being consumed, he is addressed by the God of his ancestors, and told that God has heard the people’s suffering, that God will be sending Moses to the pharoah to demand their freedom, and draw them into them a different future, Moses asks, “Who am I to do this?’ 

Who am I to do this? Who are we to bring about the future we think needs to happen? Or to stand against the future we dread coming?  Who are we to move forward in impossibility and make a life of it?

God answers Moses’ question with God’s own name, “Tell then I AM Who I Am has sent you,” and then, what gets translated “I will be with you,” God’s next statement is actually more like, “You are the one I am with." Then God says, "Watch what I can do." 

I Am Who I Am, and you are The One I Am With. Watch what I can do.

The baby whose life was spared by Shiprah and Puah, and saved by Jochebed and Miriam, who was first named “Drawn Out of the Water” by the pharoah’s daughter, is now called “The One Who I Am With” and summoned by God to join in as God delivers God’s people from slavery. 

Moses is not the protagonist of this story. He is not the savior, he’s the sidekick. What is about to happen is not from anything Moses can do, it never has been, not with Moses or Joseph or Jacob or Sarah and Abraham – it’s always been God’s work -  God’s choosing and God’s equipping, God’s plan and God’s action. Moses’ work is to surrender in obedience to God – to join in God’s work and trust that God will bring it about. Moses is called into a future he can’t see and can’t possibly make happen. But he must first know who it is who holds the future.

So God gives Moses God’s name. 

This name, Yahweh, is ambiguous in that it is both outside time and timefull – past, present and future are all wrapped up at once in the word. It could be, I am who I am, I am who I will be, I am who I was, I was who I will be. God is always present, past and future, outside of time, but fully entering time with us.

The name is an action word, exist, cause to become, and come to pass are all wrapped up inside of it.  We don’t know what the vowels are so we guess, and say Yahweh, or Jehovah, but to speak it alone almost sounds like breathing. It’s shortened Jah, like Hallelujah! Or, Praise God! The angels announcing God’s coming into the world sing their hallelu to Jah with the startled shepherds. The crowds waving palm branches shout their hallelu to Jah at the man on a donkey, praising the God who was, and is, and always will be right there in their midst. 

Even though the name Yahweh is written 7000 times in the Old Testament, it was not spoken aloud from even shortly after the Exodus. It felt too intimate, too sacred, so it is instead translated Adonai, and everywhere it appears in our bibles it’s instead written “the Lord” in small caps. It seemed too easy to exploit, to manipulate the name of God for our own purposes, to act as though the power is ours rather than God’s. Access to God is on God’s terms, not ours, and not to be taken lightly, made into a platitude, or assumed for our own ends.

God sees the people’s suffering; God opens up God’s own self to share the suffering and makes Godself vulnerable. When God gives Moses God’s name, God says, I am for you, and you may address me, I will be here. God invites relationship. Invites trust.  God comes into our broken places as God’s self. Not a nameless king or pharoah lording power over us, but I AM Who I Am, here in it with us. 

“I will teach you what you are to say,” God tells Moses, who is so worried about speaking. And I will give you someone to speak with and for you, your brother Aaron. In other words, Show up. I’ll take it from there. And you are not in it alone.

So God makes Moses into a minister, as God is. Then, God invites the pharoah to minister as well, which is to say, to come back to his humanity. We are made in the image of a ministering God, and we live that truth out when we minister to others. Again and again, God commands the pharaoh to let the people go, and again and again Pharoah resists. His heart is hardened, whether by God, or his own stubbornness, or both, and he does not submit.  

He will not win. God will prevail. Pharoah is used to power and control, but his power is nothing against the maker of the universe - it was no match for the trust and obedience of the lowly midwives through whom God spared the Hebrew babies and set Moses on his path. The pharoah can’t stop any of this from happening. He could help it happen, but he chooses not to, so it happens over and against him instead of with him.

When the people have fled Egypt - when the story of the Passover that becomes the meal that feeds them with memory and gratitude for centuries to come, turning their hearts to who God is and what God is up to and helping them watch for God’s coming, when the frantic departure has happened and they’ve begun the journey, hemmed in from before and behind, protected and guided by Yahweh, and it seems like they’re in the clear - then the real terror descends.

Suddenly they’re pinned between the watery chaos of the sea that is the death in front of them and the raging armies bearing down that is the death behind. Now the impossibility is stark – What are they to do? Nothing. They can do nothing. Only God can act. 

When we are trapped in impossibility, when death is all we can see, there is nothing we can do to pull ourselves out or to save one another.  There is nothing we can say to fix or change things for someone in that place. Who are we to make anything happen? 

The command comes to them there, in that utterly hopeless place, Do not be afraid, Be still. Be still and see what God will do for you.

And then God acts. God parts the waters of death and leads them into new life. And when they’re safely across, and the impossibly powerful force of destruction that is the entire Egyptian army is utterly destroyed in their wake, sister Miriam, the now-elderly prophet, leads the people of God in singing their hallelu to Jah and praising the God who saves.

The future, and our futures, are held by I Am Who I Will Be, who calls each of us One Whom God Is With. 

God comes in to be with us. Both cosmically, to save us all, and personally, to lead us through all the deaths of our lives into new life, again and again. The one who brings being into being, has come, is here. Jesus Christ is God with us. Born into this life of dying, Jesus takes our impossibility into the very heart of God.

In Christ, we are made bearers of hope in the world, and for the world. We become people through whom God brings about God’s future.  People who go into impossibility alongside others as those God is with and we wait there for God to act.  

We are drawn into the timefulness of Yahweh. With eyes wide open, we see the world as it is -  without hiding in denial or fleeing to optimism - but we also know that what is is not all there is or will be. Trusting this, as Rev. David Wood said so beautifully a few weeks ago in his letter about hope: instead of reactive we become responsive. Instead of anxious, we become available.  And instead of distracted, we become attentive, watching the one who holds the future to be now who God has been. 

Our story is not our own, it is God’s. It is the story of those gone before and those to come, it is memory and gratitude, water and naming, impossibility and deliverance. It is the story of the God right here with us, who sees and bears our suffering, who sends us to be ministers to one another and receive the ministry of others, without knowing how we will do this, only promising to be with us and to tell us what we are to say. It is the story of the God who is turning the world around in hope and can be joined but cannot be stopped. 

Who are we to bring about the future we think needs to happen? Or to stand against the future we dread coming? Who are we up against death and despair?  When all is lost and we can’t see our way forward, when the impossibility is most stark –we can do nothing. Only God can act. And God says, Don’t be afraid. Be still and watch what I will do. 

Together, for others and for this world, we trust in a future we can’t yet see, because we know who holds the future. We are people of hope.

Amen.

Where we've been - 

Episode 1: The Beginning

Episode 2: Noah (conversation - so this sermon is from 2014)

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah 

Episode 4: Jacob

Episode 5: Joseph

Episode 6: Brave Women of Egypt

A Blessing for Thanksgiving Day Morning

The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. 

In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, 

but in giving thanks we give ourselves.

- BR. DAVID STEINDL-RAST

A Blessing for Thanksgiving Day Morning

(and again later, if needed)

by Kara K Root

Gratitude is a door into timelessness.

Stopping in wonder, 

letting gratefulness rise in your heart,

thicken your throat,

and press against the back of your eyes,

pulls you through the moment 

into the deep reality.

 

Beyond everything else,

and underneath it all,

We Belong to God

and We Belong to Each Other.

 

May today be filled with glimpses 

that break through noise and division, 

anxiety and frustration, 

distraction, blame and fatigue,

to this fundamental truth:

 

These people belong to you 

and you to them,

we all belong to God,

this whole wide world,

and life is a gift,

abundance beyond measure, powerful

to be shared and received.

Each breath and touch,

each laughter and tear,

each taste and texture,

drawing us in, opening us up,

to receive, respond, rejoice.

 

Pause there for a moment.

Read it again if it helps.

May you transcend and descend today.

 

And if you forget,

that you belong to God and these others,

may someone see past your defenses and bluster,

to your longing soul,

and may the Spirit gently nudge you back,

to your true home,

the space you are known and loved in God.

 

And when it’s a challenge,

may the grace of deep belonging hold you fast,

console your disappointment,

and give you a peek past the bluster

into the longing soul of another,

who belongs to God and you,

even while they’re forgetting it just now.

 

Gratitude is a door into timelessness.

It pulls you through the moment

into the deep reality.

And these words: “Thank you,” 

masquerade as simple, even trite,

but they are an invocation, 

a holy and powerful homecoming,

returning us to each other,

with whom we share all life and blessing,

and resuming us in God, 

from whom all life and blessing comes,

and to whom all life and blessing returns.

  

Happy Thanksgiving.

(Blessing from Receiving This Life)

Agents of Life

 Exodus 1-2:10 

Episode 6: Brave Women of Egypt 

I thought Lincoln was the one who said, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” But it turns out that was Rosevelt. Apparently, Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote on fear was, “A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.” (aww).

 

Our story today is a story of two kinds of fear. 

First up, the fear of Pharoah. The most powerful person in the land, but he is the new guy – he doesn’t remember Joseph and the way Joseph helped save the whole empire.  There is no basis for his fear of the Israelites, but fear doesn’t need to be rational. Pharoah’s insecurity, his lens of scarcity– what we around here call The Way of Fear—means  he sees them as threat, competition, and danger.  In order to feel safe, powerful, and in control, he must squash them.  

So Pharoah oppresses and enslaves the Israelites. But still, they multiply, and his fear multiplies too, and because fear is contagious and insidious, it spreads, and it makes us see one another as other – not even human – until we can justify doing or saying terrible things and even, ultimately even ending each other. Fear takes over like a cancer, invading minds, bending wills, tarnishing souls, and conscripting human beings as agents of fear and destruction. Soon all of Egypt fears the Israelites, and Pharoah is desperate and obsessed with destroying them. 

 

But a completely different kind of fear is centered in this story. It’s shown first by the midwives, Shiprah and Puah, who happen to be pretty much lowest on the Egyptian pecking order—barren, slave, and female—and who have real reason to be afraid, (what with the command from the Pharoah to murder and all).  And even though they may be afraid for their lives, this other kind of fear is stronger. Twice we are told they fear the Lord.

 

This phrase is used in our bible a lot, but there is no good direct translation or easy idiom to express in English “the fear of the Lord.”   It’s not the same as the Pharoah’s unjustified and self-centered fear, or even justified fear of a powerful, hellbent Pharoah – though the overwhelmed sensation may be part of it. The meaning of “fear of the Lord” is layered, and centers around truly appreciating who God is, so it includes awe and wonder, even trepidation, but also deep trust, respect, gratitude and obedience. 

It might be said that when we fear the Lord, God and humanity are put back in proper position, and we truly, deeply remember whose we are, and so we also bravely and freely live who we are: beloved children of the Sovereign God of Shalom, who brings wholenss and healing, and calls us to love God and one another. There is no higher identity or calling. There is nothing more real or trustworthy.

 

The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs (9:10) tells us. Because these midwives fear the Lord, no matter what is happening to them or around them – and it’s really bad – nevertheless they are living bravely in The Way of God.  And it’s worth noting that while the Pharoah remains unnamed, because it doesn’t really matter who he is, a nameless agent of death –these two seemingly insignificant women are agents of life – and so we know them by name. 

 

The Pharoah’s fear begins in forgetting.  Insecurity and self-preservation drown out the story of belonging, mutuality or salvation, and when that happens, long relationships, like the one between the Egyptians and the Israelites, are lost in the way of fear. 

 

But Shiprah, Puah, and Jochebed and Miriam – they remember: God is God. And so, they trust God above all the authority in front of their eyes, the evil perpetrated by a selfish and fearful ruler, the suffering, damage and death wrought by those in power. 

Right in the middle of all that, they act for life.  They know God will provide. They respond in each moment to our belonging to God and each other by upholding humanity where they can, and speaking up where they can, and being ready to act when and where they can. And God makes a way – for them and through them.  

 

The women in this story are all partners in the salvation of God. They join with the God of life in bringing life.  And the defeat of the evil empire, the freeing of slaves, and the defining story of the children of God that will unfold in the decades to come, which will shape the trajectory of the salvation story for you and me too, is set in motion through the hands and actions of these women: The midwives who saved countless infants and delivered baby Moses into the world, the mother who loved and guarded him and then let him go into the water, the sister who watched over him, and spoke to power and returned him to his mother’s care, and also, surprisingly, the Egyptian princess who drew him from the water and claimed him as her own. 

 

Because while we might expect to see the Israelites as heroes of the story, who we do not expect to see as an agent of salvation is the enemy’s daughter.  At the moment a pampered princess lifts a doomed baby from the river, her life turns toward the other in love, and his role is cast. She will raise him right under the Pharoah’s nose and God will use him to set the people free. 

 

God is greater than our stereotypes, and even our firmly held convictions, and God uses who God chooses. Not only can God NOT be thwarted, but God’s preferred methods thwart our divisions. No power or principality, no selfish, insecure despot, no extraordinary evil or everyday unfriendliness can derail God’s salvation of the world, and God brings that salvation mostly through ordinary people in acts of simple humanity.  

 

The world is filled with pain and suffering, and none is exempt. But life happens anyway, and death cannot stop it. When in our forgetting we succumb to fear, and our longing to feel safe, powerful, and in control is the biggest and loudest thing, the temptation is to turn inward in self protection, and to make exceptions to belonging. We decide that some people – because of their selfish actions, or cruel words, or stupid beliefs, or contrary votes – don’t belong to us and we don’t belong to them. That they are not our problem or our responsibility, or they have no wisdom or kindness to contribute to our lives, or we have no calling in common or work to share.  But that is not how this works. 

 

That we are in this together, given to each other, is not ours to decide. It’s the proper ordering of things- God is God and we are God’s children, made in God’s image to care for one another and the earth. Period. I don’t get to mistreat or disown siblings in the human family because I fear them or they threaten me, or because they fear me or I threaten them. It doesn’t work like that. 

 

But if we do – fear and threaten each other – will that stop God’s salvation from coming? If we act as agents of fear and death, absorbing and spreading disgust and distrust, undermining connection and reinforcing isolation, does that thwart God? 

No. God will keep using the sisters, mothers, midwifes and enemy’s daughters and do the world-saving anyway.  

 

There is so much more story to come! Moses’ life is just getting started! (Your homework between now and December is to watch The Prince of Egypt!) And while the big, epic tale of the Israelites’ deliverance is a lifetime away, make no mistake, it is coming. 

At the same time, there is no new story. As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. Evil gonna evil. Humans gonna human. Pharoah Fear is no different now than it was 3500 years ago. But the fear of the Lord is the same as it was then too.  

 

You and I will inevitably fall into trap of fear and sin because we are human, and life is scary. But we’ve been redeemed by the God whose salvation works in and through common people, and who came right into all of this to share in it with us, to die our death, so nothing can dictate the future of the world – or of our own belovedness or belonging - except for God and God alone. 

So we can trust this, that is, we can fear the Lord. In awe and wonder we can appreciate God being God, and in gratitude and obedience we can recognize our calling to love and serve God and our neighbors. The rest is details.  

 

Later on, when the Israelites are free and settled in the land God has given them, and Moses’ earthly journey is almost over, God will give Moses a message for the Israelites, which is this: 

“I have set before you life and death. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.” (Deut. 30:15-19)

 

Whether the stakes are high and alarming, or life is just ticking along as usual, the choice is set before us again and again.  Each time that happens, may the Holy Spirit help us to deeply remember whose we are, and so we also bravely and freely live who we are. You and I are agents of life. 

Amen.gs- God is God and we are God’s children, made in God’s image to care for one another and the earth. Period. I don’t get to mistreat or disown siblings in the human family because I fear them or they threaten me, or because they fear me or I threaten them. It doesn’t work like that. 

 

But if we do – fear and threaten each other – will that stop God’s salvation from coming? If we act as agents of fear and death, absorbing and spreading disgust and distrust, undermining connection and reinforcing isolation, does that thwart God? 

No. God will keep using the sisters, mothers, midwifes and enemy’s daughters and do the world-saving anyway.  

 

There is so much more story to come! Moses’ life is just getting started! (Your homework between now and December is to watch The Prince of Egypt!) And while the big, epic tale of the Israelites’ deliverance is a lifetime away, make no mistake, it is coming. 

At the same time, there is no new story. As Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. Evil gonna evil. Humans gonna human. Pharoah Fear is no different now than it was 3500 years ago. But the fear of the Lord is the same as it was then too.  

 

You and I will inevitably fall into trap of fear and sin because we are human, and life is scary. But we’ve been redeemed by the God whose salvation works in and through common people, and who came right into all of this to share in it with us, to die our death, so nothing can dictate the future of the world – or of our own belovedness or belonging - except for God and God alone. 

So we can trust this, that is, we can fear the Lord. In awe and wonder we can appreciate God being God, and in gratitude and obedience we can recognize our calling to love and serve God and our neighbors. The rest is details.  

 

Later on, when the Israelites are free and settled in the land God has given them, and Moses’ earthly journey is almost over, God will give Moses a message for the Israelites, which is this: 

“I have set before you life and death. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.”

 

Whether the stakes are high and alarming, or life is just ticking along as usual, the choice is set before us again and again.  Each time that happens, may the Holy Spirit help us to deeply remember whose we are, and so we also bravely and freely live who we are. 

You and I are agents of life. 

Amen.

Where we've been - 

Episode 1: The Beginning

Episode 2: Noah (conversation - so this sermon is from 2014)

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah 

Episode 4: Jacob

Episode 5: Joseph