Sunday, September 25, 2005

Matthew 21:23-32 "Words & Actions"

Every now and then Lisa asks me if I want to do something that I am not at all interested in doing. Now I could just say that I’m not interested but I don’t. Instead, I put a bunch of irony and sarcasm in my voice and say, “oh yeah, I really want to spend they day shopping for clothes!” as I roll my eyes. She knows by the tone of my voice and my actions and my strong aversion to shopping that what I am saying doesn’t line up with what I mean. I am saying one thing and I mean something totally different. Though my mouth says “I really want to spend the day shopping for clothes,” the rest of my being is really saying, “please, please, please don’t make me do it.”

This is an obvious place where my words and my actions don’t line up. But things much less obvious can often arrive as well. Maybe I am saying yes to something that I really don’t want to do, but feel I have to. Therefore my heart really isn’t in it and therefore I don’t put the energy I should into whatever it is. Maybe I have every intention of doing something and therefore say I will, but then don’t actually ever get around to it. I must admit that I have been guilty of that one. Maybe the way my words and actions don’t line up is that I don’t speak up against something or for something when I really should because I am afraid of how people will respond.

Whatever the reason, whatever the method, there is something wrong when our words and our actions are not in line with each other. Today we are going to look at a scripture about people whose words and actions did not line up and we are hopefully going to find a way to make our words and actions line up better.

1. Politics

In today’s scripture the leaders in the church question Jesus’ authority. They decide to play games in the way they question Jesus and we discover that he is able to beat them at their own game. You see, the leaders are intimidated by Jesus. They don’t know quite what to make of him, and he seems to have the people of Israel following him and his teachings. Therefore they ask a question of him not to find out the answer but rather to trap him. They are more interested in playing games than they are in learning something about Jesus. So they ask him what seems like a simple question, they ask whose authority he is doing the things he does by. We need to look back earlier in Matthew 21 to see what things they are talking about. Matthew 21 begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem as a king on a donkey with the people praising him and singing Hosanna! People were calling Jesus the son of David. We celebrate this every year with Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter. And the fact that this comes after Palm Sunday means it is something that happens in the last week of Jesus’ life, and these very same leaders in the temple are the ones who are plotting to do Jesus in.

Immediately after the triumphal entry Jesus goes to the temple, which is the whole reason he has come to Jerusalem, to celebrate Passover and worship God at the temple. And he finds something at the temple that breaks his heart and makes him angry. He runs around the temple and overturns tables where people are selling things because he sees that the temple is being misused by the people. They have turned a house of prayer into a den of robbers.

I’m sure this is precisely the thing that the leaders of the temple are questioning. Here comes someone, a man from the backwoods of Israel, from this small area in the north called Nazareth, and he has come in and put a stop to something that they should have put a stop to long before. They see truth in his words, they see authority in his actions, but they decide that it is better to play politics with him than to learn from him.

And so they ask him a loaded question. It is a question that he will have difficulty answering without looking foolish in their eyes. They ask by whose authority he is doing these things. If he says by his own, they then feel they can dismiss him. If he says by God’s authority, they can say that he is a madman, that he has overreached his bounds. They also, at the same time, are calling his credentials into question. They had been to schools. They had been to seminaries. They had the education and they had the official backing of the temple. He had none of these. Instead, he was merely a wandering teacher who had made his living as a carpenter years earlier.

Jesus knows he cannot win with the question they have asked, so he fires one back at them. He beats them at their own game. He asks them a question that they cannot get away with answering. He asks them about John the Baptist who went before him and who had a difficult relationship with them as well. “Where did John and his baptism come from?” Jesus asked. “From God or from man?” He put them in the same position that they had put him and they did not like it.

What really bothers me about the religious leaders is the discussion they had among themselves. They didn’t talk about whether they believed that what John was doing had any merit. They didn’t compare what John had taught with the scripture they knew. They looked at it purely from a political perspective. How will our answer make us look? If we say that John’s baptism was from God then we’ll look bad for not listening to John. If we say it was from man we’ll look bad for attacking a person the people like. How cynical, how depressing, how sad.

2. Organized Religion

I hear again and again from people who are looking for truth, from people who are seeking to know God, that they think of themselves as spiritual, they want to believe in God and they think there is definitely something more to this world than just the physical. They are looking for meaning to their lives, but they just don’t like organized religion.

Now organized religion can be a scapegoat for them. It may be that they don’t like the idea of God or anybody else telling them how they should live or act or what they should do. Sometimes people allow their dislike for organized religion be an excuse to avoid truly following where God is leading them. But at the same time, organized religion does sometimes make a good bad guy. They see it as a structure that is more interested in the structure than in truth, more interested in money and power than in helping those it shepherds. When we get organized in our faith and set up a structure, some things are lost that Jesus taught. All of a sudden there is a hierarchy that Jesus doesn’t seem very interested in. All of a sudden there is someone above you that is telling you what to believe so that you don’t need to figure it out for yourself.

The interesting thing for me, here, is that it seems that Jesus didn’t have much to do with organized religion himself. He didn’t find priests and prophets to have as the leaders of his church. He didn’t have the Pharisees and Sadducees and teachers of the law as his primary followers. It seems that they were too interested in power and in trying to put him in his place to really hear what it was he had to say. Instead, Jesus took tax collectors and fishermen and ordinary people and had them become his first disciples and then watched them grow into the leaders of his church.

There was a book series that I read in high school called Joshua. It was written by a catholic priest and therefore had some messed up ideas about the pope and the authority of the church, but at the same time it got some amazing truths right. It set itself up with the idea of what would happen if Jesus returned in today’s world, not as conquering king, but rather as he spent his life in Israel 2000 years ago. Jesus, now going by the name Joshua, wanders through towns and teaches truth to those who are outcast and unloved and some churches embrace him and others want nothing to do with him. Those who want nothing to do with him are very much like the temple leaders found in today’s scripture. They are more interested in their own standing than in hearing the truth. Their words and their actions are not connected.

3. Say what you do

Jesus goes on and tells the people and specifically the temple leaders a parable. And the parable is very clear. There is a man who has work that he needs done and so he asks his two sons to go to the vineyard and do some work. One son shows a stubborn streak of independence and disobedience and says no to his father, but then he finds himself able to and goes into the field and does what his father asks. The other son tells dad that he is going to go do what he asks, but then doesn’t. Jesus wonders which is the one that did what his father asked. The answer is obvious. The actions speak louder than the words and what matters isn’t what you say you’re going to do, rather it is what you do.

We don’t know what changed the sons’ minds. Did the one who said he couldn’t have something clear up in his schedule? Did he change his mind because of guilt? Was his conscience working overtime until he decided to do the right thing? Or was he just being contrary with his father because he wanted to be, though he had every intention of going in the end?

And then there is the son who said he would go and didn’t. Did he just blow it off? Did he say yes without thinking through whether he really could? Did he forget? Did something come up that kept him from going. When it comes down to it we discover that intentions don’t really matter as much as results.

Jesus identifies the one who said no and then went with the tax collectors and the prostitutes; he identifies that son with the lost. These are the people who made bad decisions earlier in their lives and headed off in the wrong direction, but then repented. They realized they were heading in the wrong direction and turned around. They came back and followed.

Jesus is looking at the leaders in the organized religion of the day as those who started in the right direction but then got sidetracked and ended up not following where God had led.

Many of us said yes to God early in our lives. And therefore we have a choice. Are we going to follow through with what we promised to do? Are we going to remain faithful to our God and go where he sends us or are we going to let ourselves get distracted and turn away from God’s call on our lives? Are we going to be like the Pharisees or are we going to take a third way. This third way is the son who says yes to his father and then follows through with it. I believe that if organized religion was full of people following this third way, it wouldn’t be the villain it is made out to be. If the temple leaders had looked at John the Baptist’s teachings and truly wondered whether they were from God instead of wondering how their answer to Jesus’ question would make them look, then the conversation they had would have been much different.

Jesus hadn’t given up on organized religion. Not at all. The problem was that the organized religion of the day had given up on him. But instead of giving up on them, he did all he could to try to get them to see this about themselves and change this about themselves. And there were Pharisees who did follow Jesus, so we know that he did get through to them. Are we going to allow him to get through to us? Are we going to respond when he calls? Are we going to follow through with our promises to him? In the end it is important to remember that we have asked Jesus to be our Savior and Lord, we have promised ourselves to him. The question is whether we are going to live the way we said we would. The question is whether we are going to follow through with our promise. We have said yes to our God. Are we ready to follow through and act this out? Amen.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Psalm 1 - Advice From a Tree

This last June, when Lisa and I were in Colorado for my ordination and our vacation, we went to the Rocky Mountain National Park and it was amazing: the mountain, the lakes, the wildlife and the trees! At the park entrance on the west side there was a ranger station with a gift shop. And, being suckers to commerce, we found ourselves looking through the gift shop to see what we could buy to remind us of the amazing creation around us. At the gift shop I ran across this poem, entitled Advice from a Tree by Ilan Shamir. It is advice that is given, as if a tree were letting you know what it had learned. It goes:

Dear Friend
Stand Tall and Proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of your true nature
Think long term
Go out on a limb
Remember your place among all living beings
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance
The Energy and Birth of Spring
The Growth and Contentment of Summer
The Wisdom to let go of leaves in the Fall
The Rest and Quiet renewal of Winter
Feel the wind and the sun
And delight in their presence
Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
And the mystery of the stars at night
Seek nourishment from the good things in life
Simple pleasures
Earth, fresh air, light
Be content with your natural beauty
Drink plenty of water
Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes
Be flexible
Remember your roots
Enjoy the view!

It is a great poem. I think trees have much that they can teach us. But this poem only scratches the surface. It leaves out other things that trees can also teach us. These other things can be found in the Bible. It’s not our true nature whose light we need to reflect, rather it is the Son’s light, it’s God’s light. It’s not ordinary water that we are to drink, rather it is living water. Trees show us the importance of having deep roots and trees show us the importance of growing good fruit. So, this morning, as we did during Sunday School, we are going to take some advice from a tree. Let us see what we can learn.

1: Advice

In Psalm 1 we are introduced to a person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. We are introduced to the person who does not live the life of a sinner, who does not mock people. This person is described as someone who delights in the Lord and his law. That’s an interesting thing to do, delighting in God’s law. We don’t often focus on that. Yes, we delight in God’s love; yes, we delight in God’s grace—but in God’s law? Isn’t that kind of Old Testament? Actually, it’s very Old Testament, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true for us today. The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119. And Psalm 119 is basically a love song to the law. The law being referred to is not human laws but God’s law. And we begin the book of the Psalms, here in chapter one, being told how good it is to delight in God’s law. But what does it mean to delight in God’s law? It means to enjoy, it means to find joy in, it means to love it, delight is something that gives one pause, something that lifts one up, something that someone finds fulfillment in.

But what is this law of God that we are supposed to delight in? Is it the Ten Commandments? Is it the rules that we are to follow to make sure we are good people? Is it about wearing hats in church and whether we are allowed to go to the movies or not? Is it a list of do’s and don’ts that we are constantly trying to be aware of?

Jesus sums up the law for his disciples in a very simple way. And you all should be getting to the point now where you are getting sick of me talking about this summary of the law that Jesus presents. It’s not because I don’t think you’re hearing it, rather it’s because it is so very important. Jesus summarizes the law in two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and spirit. Love your neighbor as yourself. This is center of the law that we are to delight in.

When we pay attention to this great commandment, we are like a tree by a stream of water. This is important. It is not enough that the person who abides in God’s law is like a tree, cause in and of themselves, trees are great. No, it is like a tree planted by a stream of water. The water nourishes the tree. The water supplies the needed food to the tree. The tree finds its strength in the water, and the tree bears fruit because it is next to the water.

And what is it that allows the tree to get the water, what is it that brings nourishment to the tree? It is the roots. You see, roots are very important for trees. Though you normally cannot see them, they are what give the tree its strength and they are what allow the tree to get the living water that trees need. Roots that grow shallow cause weak trees. Roots that grow deep make for strong trees.

Hopefully, we have learned the importance of roots. In Seattle, there is the famous Space Needle. It is this building that reaches up into the sky. It has a restaurant and a gift shop on the top of it. It has an observation deck that allows you to see the city around you. It is a breathtaking sight. When you see a picture of Seattle, you know it is Seattle that you are looking at because of the Space Needle. The Space Needle has three legs that go down to the ground and they are what hold it up. But they don’t end at the ground. You see, we only see 2/3rds of the legs of the Space Needle. The other 3rd of the legs are underground. The Space Needle has roots that keep it strong, that protect it from high winds, that give it its strength. Roots are important. Deep roots are what allow us to grow.

2. Strait Trees

In western Washington State, on the Olympic Peninsula there are rain forests. They aren’t tropical rain forests like what we see in movies, but they do get rain about 70% of the time. The pine trees in these rain forests are bigger and stronger than others in the area and they are covered with all sorts of mosses. One interesting thing about these rain forests is that trees grow in them in straight lines. The first time I visited the rain forest I thought someone had planted the trees for there seemed to be too much order to the way they were growing as they lined up perfectly with each other. You would find a line of trees growing in an area that all seemed to be about the same height and width. Some were younger, some much older. But then I discovered that there was a reason for this order, for this precision.

You see, when a tree fell in the rainforest it would sit on the ground and rot. As the tree rotted, new trees would begin to sprout out of its trunk. This is where the nutrients were for them. This is where their roots would find the most nourishment and this is where their roots would gain the most strength. But then the old, dead trees would disintegrate into the floor of the forest and all you would see would be the trees that had grown out of it’s fallen trunk. And these trees would be strong and mighty and they would grow up in a strait line. You would still know where that old tree had lain because the younger trees marked its place.

I think we can learn something powerful from this strange order that we find in creation. The young trees found strength and nourishment from the old tree. Those who are older in our church, in our community have something to offer those of us who are younger. We ignore them at our own peril. It is their strength that we can learn from, that we can find nourishment in. And when the old tree is gone, its place can still be seen in the young trees that had grown from its trunk. Is there a better legacy that we can leave than to raise up our children, our grandchildren, the children and grandchildren in our church and community in the delight of the Lord? By teaching them and nourishing them in the ways of the Lord, we leave something special in this world, something important, something needed.

3. Bearing fruits

So, take advice from a tree! Let your roots dig deep and drink of the water that God provides you. Let your roots drink of the water that is God’s strength in your life. And bear fruits, fruits that glorify God. We are told in the New Testament that we will be known by our fruits.

In Matthew 7 it is laid out so very clearly for us. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. If our roots are deep, if we drink of the living water, if we abide by the law of God, if we train ourselves up in the way of the Lord, learning from those who have gone before, finding strength as we spend time learning about God, studying his word and praying to him; then we will be good trees and we will bear good fruit.

We are told that our purpose in this world is to bear fruits. These fruits are not just for us to look pretty. They are not just for our own sake. These fruits are to help those around us who need our help, to feed those who need food, to clothe those who need clothes. Let us bear the fruit of life. This is what we are about.

We are called to be trees of many fruit. We know of the fruits of the Spirit that our children learned about this morning in Sunday School: Love, faithfulness, self-control, joy, patience, gentleness, goodness, kindness and peace. These fruits aren’t optional. We aren’t given the choice whether to be loving or not. Matthew 7 tells us that every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. We are commanded and expected to be more loving, more joyful, to live lives of self-control.

But we cannot just say to ourselves, I want to be more patient and expect it to happen. It doesn’t work that way. You see, the fruits aren’t the cause of our health, they are the result of our health. It is the nourishment that we get at the trunk, it is the water we receive from our roots that allows us to bear these fruits. In many ways, the fruits of the Spirit are the symptoms of living as God’s children. And they are symptoms that we all want to have.

As we begin our Sunday School year together, as we study God’s word in Sunday School, in our Adult studies, in Confirmation, on Wednesday nights; know that this isn’t just about head knowledge. Know that we aren’t spending this time studying just because we feel we have to. There is a point to it. We are trying to grow ourselves. We are trying to build ourselves up as Christ’s followers precisely so that we can bear good fruits that will make a difference in this world around us. We are called to make a powerful difference in the world around us. If we do these things, God will bless us with much fruit and the world around us will change, it will change for the better.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Exodus 14:19-31 "God Opens a Way"

A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!" he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not.

Shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.

"Hey" asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, "Don't you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle."

The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the "realities" of the miracles of the Bible. "That can all be very easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across."

The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap. The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person to the finer points of scientific insight, turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.

"Wow!" exclaimed the boy happily, "God is greater than I thought! Not only did He lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, He topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in 10 inches of water!"

Having shared this story, I need to say that the depth of the Red Sea really has nothing to do with the scripture that we have read this morning. It doesn’t matter whether the Red Sea was 10 inches or 10 feet deep. It doesn’t matter whether we can find some way to rationalize away the parting of the Red Sea. What does matter is that God worked in the lives of his people when they needed them most. The people of Israel needed a path, for the way was closed for them. And God made that way for them.

I. Amazing Stories

The book of Exodus is full of amazing stories that spark the imagination. There is Moses in a basket in the river, the burning bush, the ten plagues, Moses descending from the mountain with the ten commandments, the golden calf, water gushing from rocks and manna falling from heaven… but there is one that stands out above the rest and touches the imagination in a unique way, and it is the crossing of the Red Sea.

Imagine a group of people being chased by an army and finding themselves pushed up against the sea. They were at their end. They had unending water on one side of them and an army coming down on the other. God had promised to take them out of slavery and they had gotten their hopes up and then they found themselves in this predicament. They had two choices, really. They could either drown or be killed by the sword; neither a very good option. But these two options, these two choices don’t take into account the God that had brought them this far.

What is so great about the parting of the Red Sea is that it is completely God. It is not something that the people can take credit for. It is not something that they can pretend they are responsible for. God saves his people from the Egyptians and they know so very clearly that it is God doing the saving.

We don’t always live in the world that the Israelites lived in. We pay attention to the reminder that God helps those who help themselves. We know that we are to pray hard, but we also know that we are to work harder. It’s built into us that we are to do everything we can to take care of ourselves and our families. And yet we do sometimes find ourselves in situations that are beyond our control. We do sometimes find ourselves in places we cannot get out of. Sometimes we find ourselves caught between an army and a sea and all seems hopeless.

II. Oppression

I want to go back again a bit. I want you to think about the things that threaten to overwhelm you. What are you beholden to? What is it that oppresses you? The people of Israel were living under a real oppression that we just don’t deal with. They were slaves. They spent their lives working for the Egyptians and had no control over their own lives because of this. They were so oppressed that when the Egyptians decided to kill all the male boys being born to them, they couldn’t do anything about it. They were so oppressed that an Egyptian could kill an Israelite and that was that. They had no recourse. They had no control over their own lives. They had no freedom. They could not do what they wanted. They could not worship how they wanted. They were slaves. No wonder the African-Americans have identified so well with the story of the Exodus. But I honestly think we all can identify with the Exodus in some way. For we all have things that oppress us. And hopefully, we are all calling out to God to free us from such oppressions. Perhaps we feel overwhelmed by our jobs, perhaps it is our responsibility at home that overwhelms us. Maybe we don’t know how we are going to get out of debt, or how we are going to deal with the difficulties that come with age. For some, oppression takes the form of alcoholism or addiction. For others it is living in a situation of abuse. For some it is a marriage that doesn’t seem to be working out. For some it is chronic pain. Sometimes the oppression that you face might not seem like much to those around you, but it is real and it can be a struggle.

And so we call out to God and do what we can to try to get out of the things that oppress us. But the thing about oppression is that it doesn’t let you out. Even when you think you are free, it comes after you. Israel had been told that they were free. They headed out, on their way to the wilderness, on their way to the Promised Land. But those that oppressed them had not given up. They came after them with an army. They meant to destroy the people of Israel. Sometimes we think we may have escaped from our oppression. Sometimes we think we may have made it. But when we try to do it on our own, we will often find that that which oppressed us will chase after us and bring us back in, and even make things much worse. And then we find ourselves in the place that Israel found themselves: with our backs to the sea and an army bearing down on us.

What do we do when we cannot save ourselves? Where do we go when there is no place left to go? Do we just give up at that point? Do we stand and fight? Or do we continue to believe and continue to follow where God leads?

III. Spread out you Hand

The people of Israel didn’t handle it very well. They grumbled because they were afraid. We didn’t read this part this morning, but it is worth going back to Exodus 14:11,12. Here the people of Israel ask Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Harsh words came from the people of Israel. They had stepped out in faith and it seemed to be leading them to disaster. When we step out in faith things sometimes seem to go wrong, and we begin to ask these same questions? We wonder whether we really had been hearing God in our lives. We wonder whether it may have been better to have continued the way we had been going. But the fact is that God didn’t call the people out to the shore of the Red Sea just to die. Instead, God had something great planned.

God had been leading the people of Israel with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. And the cloud came between the people of Israel and the Egyptian army. God shielded the people of Israel from the army that was after them. God kept them from battling each other. It seems that Israel was just as ready to fight as Egypt was, but God didn’t allow for either. So God bought the people of Israel time by coming between them and the army that oppressed them.

And then Moses acted on faith. He stretched out his hand over the water. Oh, he could have looked very silly. He could have stretched out his hand and nothing would have happened. More people would have laughed at him and their doom would have been complete. But Moses knew that that wouldn’t happen. He knew that God had brought them this far and would take them through the next step. So he spread out his hand, and we are told that through the night a wind blew and parted the Red Sea. We are told that the Israelites crossed it with a wall of water on their right and on their left. And we are told that a way was made for them that had not been there before.

This is the point where faith pays off. You’ve got your back to the sea. You’ve got no place to go. Your problems are running you down, about to hit you. You’ve run out of options completely. And then God opens a way that was not there. God opens a path that did not exist. Up to this point it has been about trusting God. Up to this point it has been about accepting that God will fulfill his promises. Now it is just about following the path that God has set before you. I’m sure there is trust involved at this point also, I’m sure it may have been scary crossing the sea with walls of water on either side. But God has just shown you what he can do and now all you need to do is walk on the path that he has opened before you.

God is able to open a path for you out of the oppression that you face. And when it comes time, God will work in a powerful way to make that path come alive, a path that you had not seen up until that time. But you are called to prepare yourself to see that path. You are called to follow God down what may seem like a dead end as he prepares you to be released from that which oppresses you.

And so, I want you to take three life lessons from Moses and the people of Israel. There are three life lessons that we can learn from and that will affect how we live and how we follow God.

The first of these is that we can learn from the fact that the people of Israel called to God in their slavery and he heard them. They cried out and asked for his help. They pleaded for him to come to them in their need. We must do the same. We must turn those things that oppress us over to God in prayer. We must give up the illusion that we can work our own way out of them and instead we must lift them before our God.

Our second life lesson is to see that Israel followed where God led, even though it seemed like it was leading them to a dead end. Oh, they grumbled about it, as we often do. They complained and worried about what God had in front of them. But, in the end, they followed when they needed to and went where God told them to go.

And our third lesson has specifically to do with Moses. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. He was willing to look foolish for his faith. He put all his trust in God and allowed God to use him in a mighty way. By stretching out his hand he was acknowledging that God was in control and God would open the path before them. And God did this very thing. And God can and will do this very thing for you as well. So, call out to God for help, go where God leads and be ready to look foolish for God’s sake, putting your trust in his faithfulness. And just watch to see what God does for your sake. Amen.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Exodus 12:1-14 "Celebrating Victory"

For me this week has been a week of the heavy heart. We have had a few deaths in the community. And we have lost one of our loved ones from our extended church family. As if that weren’t enough, every time you turn on the news you are inundated with pictures and scenes that almost don’t make sense because they are so horrible. There are towns in Mississippi that no longer exist. And there is the situation in New Orleans, which has finally been getting better this weekend, as supplies get to these people and they are able to get evacuated from their city.

A whole city has disappeared, at least for a time. People are without a place to live, they are without jobs, they are without schools. Many don’t have anything to identify them, no driver’s license or social security card. In one storm their lives were changed, our country was changed, and we were changed.

It is easy to become overwhelmed by what we see. We turn it off because we feel so helpless. We ignore it because it is too painful to dwell on all that is going on. And I wonder, where is God in the midst of the destruction, in the midst of the violence, in the midst of the pain.

But then I go back to what we are studying in scripture. We see a people, God’s people, living in the midst of destruction, in the midst of violence and in the midst of pain. We see Israel living as slaves in a land that is not their own. And we see God so clearly working on their behalf. We see God come down and bring them out of their slavery. We see God offer them freedom. We see God bring relief from their suffering. And we can hope and pray that God can do the same for us.

I. Passover

Exodus 12 finds us in an interesting and difficult place. Moses has reluctantly accepted the call that God has laid on his life. He has gone back to Egypt to speak to Pharaoh and bring Israel out of slavery into the desert, towards the Promised Land. Moses has not had the greatest success. God sent plague after plague to the land of Egypt. Pharaoh would be troubled by each plague and would promise Moses that he could take Israel out to the wilderness. He would ask Moses to pray for him and he would promise that the Israelites would go free. But then, when the plague ended he would change his mind and he would keep Moses and Israel in Egypt.

And eventually we come to the tenth plague. And it is a horrible one. All the firstborn in Egypt are to die in one night. One cannot imagine the horror and pain this would bring to the people of Egypt. One cannot imagine the suffering that the people of Egypt would have to suffer because of their hardhearted leader. But then it gets weird for the people of Israel. For they are told that they are to celebrate a festival. Their instructions are quite clear. They are to prepare a lamb to eat. They are to do so in a way that there are no leftovers. They are to go through their families and portion out how much lamb each person in their household will eat, and only cook that much. After we have stopped reading, in the rest of the chapter, we see that they are also supposed to bake bread without yeast, unleavened bread. The people of Israel are to have a celebration. They are to barbeque lamb. But their celebration is also supposed to have a sense of haste to it. They are to eat with their sandals on and their cloaks and staffs ready so that they can go. And they are to take blood from the lamb which they are eating and put it on their doorframe. If they follow this command, then the plague that hits the people of Egypt will pass over them. And they will be ready to go when they hear the call to leave.

This must have been a strange request for the people of Israel. First, they are called to have a feast, though they have not been delivered from slavery yet. You think they might worry that they are wasting resources. They are all told to take their most promising lambs and use them for the feast. They might argue that this is not the time for feasting. Perhaps after they have gotten out of Egypt they can do so, perhaps when they are hungry in the desert, the lamb will be much more needed. But God has given a command and they respond. Moses has promised them deliverance, but again and again, Pharaoh has changed his mind and you begin to wonder whether they really thought they would ever be able to go. And the rules for this feast are so specific. And then there is the odd request of the lamb’s blood on the door.

And yet, though what they were being asked to do was so very weird, the people of Israel followed Moses command, and did as he asked. And this is the moment that the exodus really began. This is the point where the people of Israel left Egypt and began their trek to the Promised Land. And this was the beginning of an annual celebrating which remembered that God passed over his own people, protecting them and saving them. God’s judgment came upon all the people in Egypt, but because of the lambs’ blood on their doors, the people of Israel were saved. The celebration of Passover was the center of their worship. It was Christmas and Easter wrapped up together. It was the place where they celebrated their freedom from slavery. It was the place where they celebrated their victory. And it is no coincidence that Jesus’ death came at the celebration of Passover. It is no coincidence that Jesus sat with his disciples and ate unleavened bread with them and drank from the cup with them and declared the bread his body and the cup his blood. When Jesus sat with his disciples and did this, it was during the Passover feast. It was when they were celebrating the freedom that God offered the people of Israel.

Now I had a teacher in college that really spent a lot of time looking for the shape of crosses in the Old Testament. He was a dearly loved teacher, and full of much wisdom, but I often felt that his classes were more like Sunday School than college. He would hold up a diagram of the temple that Israel worshipped at, and he would show how it was in the shape of a cross. He would point out the snake in the desert, on a pole and talk about how it was up on a cross. And he would talk about the doorframe that the lambs’ blood was on. He would point out that the doorframe would have blood on both sides and the top. And, if you connect the dots, this makes the shape of a cross. Many of us thought he was stretching just a bit with this. We would look at the tiles on the floor, where they intersect, point to them and say, Oh, look it’s the shape of a cross.

It is a stretch to see the physical shape of a cross in the blood on the doorways at Passover. But it is not a stretch to see this spiritually. You see, what that lambs’ blood did for the people of Israel, Jesus did for each of us on the cross. God saved his people from slavery, he protected them from plague. And he did this because of the blood that protected their doorways.

God saves us from that which oppresses us. And he does this because of the blood shed by his Son. When we talk about Jesus as the Lamb of God, it isn’t because we think he is sweet and cuddly. It is because he is the sacrifice that was offered in our place. He was sacrificed so that we can know life. He was laid down so that we can know salvation. He was killed so that we can begin our journey as we walk with our God and follow him out of our own slavery into his presence.

II. Remembering

The people of Israel didn’t always follow God the best. God rescued them from slavery. He took them out into the desert and promised to give them a land that was beyond their wildest dreams, one flowing with milk and honey. And even after having seen God work miracles and do great things for them, they still chose not to trust him again and again. Because of this, they spent 40 years in the desert. Because of this they found hardship after hardship as they wandered through that same desert. The lamb saved them, the lamb’s blood brought them out of slavery. But then they were called to follow God and obey God and trust God. At times, when they chose not to do this, they even contemplated returning to Egypt, returning to a life of slavery.

I fear that we sometimes are too much like the people of Israel. We refuse to trust the God that has led us this far. We refuse to remember that God goes with us on our journey and God is offering us a better destination than that which we came from.

It becomes particularly hard when we face the trials that this world brings, when we see the destruction of a hurricane, when we lose someone close to us. It becomes easy to wonder what God is all about. It is easy to think that we should just worry about ourselves and not follow this God who could let such a horrible thing happen in this world. It is easy to decide that it might be better back in Egypt, where at least things made sense. But then, for Israel, there was the Passover celebration. A time for them to remember the fact that God was faithful to them. It was a time that they could remember God had protected them from a horrible plague and God had rescued them from slavery. Hopefully their memory of this would help them to learn to trust God in their present situation. Hopefully by remembering that God had been faithful to them in the past, had saved them in the past, they could trust that God would be with them in the present as well.

III. Holy Communion

Today we celebrate communion together. We partake of Christ’s body and blood. We remember that Jesus is our Passover lamb. We celebrate that Jesus’ blood has saved us. But we don’t want to become like the people of Israel in the desert. We don’t want to allow ourselves to participate in this celebration regularly without paying attention to what it means. It means that God will be with us. It means that when God promises to do something he will stay true to that promise. It means that Jesus did something for us 2000 years ago, but he continues to be there for us today.

When we look at the pain and suffering in this world; when we feel overwhelmed by the loss that we see around us; we must remember that God is with us. We must allow him to work in the midst of evil. We must allow him to show himself in the midst of chaos. We must trust that he is there. Just as we trust that when we eat this bread and drink from this cup we are somehow receiving the body and blood of Christ. Jesus is our Passover lamb. He gave his life for us. As we celebrate communion today, let us remember this. Let us know the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. And let this affect how we live and what we do. When you take that bread, know that Jesus offered his body up for you. When you drink from that cup, know that Jesus’ blood has set you free. When you celebrate communion, remember God’s faithfulness in the past. But also look to the present and look to the future. Remember that God is promising to be with you today. Know that God stands with you in the darkest place and comes alongside you and walks with you. And as you celebrate communion this morning, promise again to walk alongside God. Amen.