Stories We Tell

November 6, 2011

A sermon preached November 6, 2011 at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho.

Joshua 24:1-25

In our text this morning, Joshua tells the people their story as God sees it.

Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many.
Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in its midst; and afterwards I brought you out.

The narrative goes on from the experiences of the Patriarchs and the Exodus and then includes a reminder of the Wilderness and the entrance into the Promised Land. And in this telling of the events, let’s notice what God didn’t say.

God did not say, “I called your ancestors from beyond the Euphrates because I could tell that you, someday in the future, would be more deserving of my blessing than other people.”
God did not say, “You made it out of slavery because you were super fabulous “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” types.”

God did not say, “It was your own ingenuity and great ideas that delivered you.”
It is clear, in both God’s telling of the story, and in the people’s reiteration of it later in the chapter, that God is the actor in the story. It was God who brought Abraham from beyond the Euphrates and who made him to be a blessing. It was God who blessed the 12 tribes of Jacob’s sons. It was God who parted the waters and who cleared away the earlier inhabitants of the Promised Land.

Joshua asks the people to choose, this day, whom they will serve.

The people answer Joshua:

“Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight.”

Their answer is clearly the “right” answer for them to have given Joshua. But he doesn’t accept it at face value. “You cannot serve the LORD, for he is a holy God,” he tells the people.

 

“Well”, they say. “We know that we have sometimes forgotten that God is leading us. We know that, in the past, we have served other gods and exalted ourselves, but we promise, promise, promise, that this time we will have no other gods but God.”

And, here we are, thousands of years later, and still being asked this question. “Choose this day whom you will serve”.

 

What I appreciate about the question from Joshua is that he asks us to choose “this day” whom we will serve. And we, on this day, consider that question in light of all of the days before us. From the time God brought our ancestor Abraham from beyond the Euphrates to the time God brought our ancestors to Boise.  From the time God called Southminster Presbyterian Church to be built on the southern edge of Boise in 1956. From the time God called these new people to join our family this day.

 

There have been a lot of “this days” in our past, bringing us each here from our different journeys to be family, to be God’s people here in this neighborhood on this day.
The stories we tell about ourselves and about our history are important. If you want to know how someone sees the world, ask them to tell you about their past.

For me, it probably shouldn’t have been a big surprise when I became a pastor, because the narrative of my life starts like this. “My earliest memory is of my parents telling me that I was adopted as an infant because they prayed for a baby and God gave me to them.”

So, I have tangible proof in my life experience that God was actively working on my behalf before I was even born, preparing the family for me that could help turn the loss of adoption into the gift of family.

 

What are the stories you tell about your own life? What are the stories you tell about this community of faith? Is God the major player in our life stories? Or do we recast ourselves as the leading actor?

And sometimes we choose to only tell what we think are the “good” stories. We tell about how our grandparents invented post it notes, or played drums in Glen Miller’s band, but we neglect to mention how a gambling addiction led to financial ruin.

But the stakes are too high for us to only tell the pretty stories.

 

The letters that people include in Christmas cards are good illustrations of this. While it is appropriate to focus on your blessings and to share the gifts of the past year, many people send out Christmas letters that tell the story of the year as if it had been lived by a perfect family that we all know doesn’t really exist.

 

And those letters are okay. But they aren’t the ones you remember. And they don’t connect people as well because you don’t look at their story and see room to enter into it. They don’t help us look at the brokenness in our own lives and realize that if God is at work in that person’s broken story, then surely God is at work in mine.

But we have some friends in New Mexico who send out an honest Christmas letter. While they do share their blessings and write about the good things that happened that year, George is also likely to write about the son who flunked out of college because he forgot to go to class. He’ll tell you about the smells, sounds, and body changes that go along with having adolescent boys in the house. He’ll tell about car crashes and mistakes.

And, while I confess that our own family Christmas letter is not quite as brutally honest as George’s, I recognize that his is the more Biblical one.

Remember how God tells the story of the Hebrew people? Remember how they tell it themselves?  It is human. It is flawed. It is messy. It is full of things they would just as soon forget. Slavery, exile, being lost, and making bad choices.

And these are the stories we need to share with each other. The stories of our pain, our brokenness, our mistakes.

Because if you look at the world around us, where people spend millions of dollars a year on plastic surgery to deny the very human processes that are going on in their lives, if you look at the world around us where rates of depression are higher than ever and where substance abuse rates continue to rise, we can see that telling only perfect stories isn’t working.

If you look around the television dial, you will find plenty of stories of not perfect people, I’m told. From the Kardashian family to the Real Housewives of wherever.

But the problem in these stories is that the stories they tell don’t say anything about where God is moving in the midst of their imperfect lives. Their stories present a narrative that suggests that had Joshua asked them to choose this day whom they would serve, their answers would have been “we serve ourselves and our endorsement deals.”

Yes, we are appalled that a celebrity marriage that reportedly earned the couple millions of dollars in endorsements came to an end after 72 days, as happened this week. But the truly sad piece of the story that is missing is that they seem to be trusting that more endorsements, more reality TV is what will heal them.

What we know, from the stories of scripture, and the stories of our lives, is that it is only the grace of God that can turn the broken and messy, true stories of our lives into beauty, into salvation, and into grace filled moments of wonder.

That’s why we tell the stories that include our brokenness. Not because it will get us endorsements with People Magazine. But because it is how we share where God is moving in our lives.

Remember how the people answered Joshua when he asked them who they would serve?

Then the people answered, “it is the LORD our God who brought us and our ancestors up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight. He protected us along all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.”

In a few minutes, we will be welcoming new members and baptizing people who are new to the Faith. We will be dedicating the pledges of our Tithes and Offerings to support the budget for 2012.

I invite all of us to remember the stories of our own faith journey as we welcome these new members. How did we end up in this place? Who were the people who led you on the journey?

And as we dedicate our pledges, I invite you to consider how God might be calling you to serve God with your time, your talent, and your money. How have other people shared their gifts in your life and is there a way that your tithing and pledging can be a way to answer Joshua’s question?

Friends, let us choose, this day, to serve and love the Lord who has provided for us in the past, who is leading us today, and who is preparing a future for us that is better than the story we could invent for ourselves. Amen

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Posted by marciglass

Uncharted Waters

October 30, 2011

A Sermon Preached  at Southminster Presbyterian Church

October 30, 2011

Joshua 3:1-17

Today is the day we celebrate Reformation Sunday, the day in October 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 complaints to the door of the Cathedral in Wittenberg.  (As an aside, looking out at the doors to our church, the Building and Grounds Committee would request that you not use nails, or masking tape, when attaching your 95 complaints to our double glass doors.)
Actually, Luther didn’t use nails either. He presented his 95 theses to the officials in Wittenberg, intending to start a conversation, not intending to found  a new religious movement.
Anyhow, the church remembers that day as the day the Protestant Reformation begins. I have a Catholic friend who refers to it as the “Protestant Revolt”.

One of my professors thinks it is wrong to remember this day in worship because we shouldn’t celebrate schism in the church. And it is true that this day marks the day we separated from the Roman Catholic church. It has taken 500 years to be able to call each other brother and sister in Christ again. We still haven’t fully reconciled that relationship. Yes, we prayerfully acknowledge the brokenness of our relationships as we think back on what it means to be a part of the religious tradition that grew out of a schism. We pray to be reconcilers and not dividers.

Yet, here we are, singing A Mighty Fortress is our God, the one hymn written by Martin Luther that we can still stand to sing. And the prayer of confession this morning is from the liturgy of Martin Bucer’s church in Strassburg from the mid 16th century, language that for me, at least, is beautiful and uncomfortable in equal measure.  Why then, do we pause this day to remember Martin Luther’s act of defiance, his stand for the gospel, his cry of change for the church he loved?

For one thing, I think it is good to remember from whence we came. It is good to remember that our reforming spirit is built into our very creation.

We are the church reformed and ever reforming. It doesn’t mean we are the church of what’s hip now, abandoning the past and our tradition. It means that we trust that God didn’t finish speaking to the church when the Bible was canonized.

It means we trust that God was still speaking new words to the church in 1517 and that God is still speaking to us now.

Here is the language from the Book of Order:
“The church affirms Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei, that is, “The church reformed, always to be reformed according to the Word of God” in the power of the Spirit.” (F-2.02)

Isn’t it great that we are part of a church that talks about reforming and doing new things, but we say it in Latin, a dead language?  I love that about being Presbyterian. We look back while we’re looking forward.

And so, as we navigate who we are being called to be today, almost 500 years after Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, and the other Reformers, we have to listen to their voices, to remember what it was like to speak a truth about the Gospel that was inconvenient, unpopular, and enough to get them kicked out of the church.

But we especially need to listen for God’s voice. Because we are reformed according to the Word of God.

In our scripture passage this morning Joshua is leading the people. Moses has been buried and it is time for the people to finally, finally, finally, enter the Promised Land.

But there is the matter of a wide, wide river to cross. And remember how they crossed that last big river? Moses stood there with his staff and kept the waters parted.

But Moses isn’t here anymore.

There is a new leader in town.

And God tells Joshua, “here’s the deal. You’ve got a river to cross. But we’re not going to do it the same way we did it last time. Because you’ve not been this way before. Here’s the plan.”

And so Joshua tells the people how it will go. Rather than having Joshua hold up Moses’ staff, one representative from each of the tribes is to be with the priests as they carry the Ark of the Covenant into the water. Once they are all in the water, the waters will recede, allowing them to get across. This is a more representative, a more democratic, show of God’s strength—with one person from each tribe instead of just Joshua.

And for the representatives of the 12 tribes, who were assigned to walk into a raging river with the Ark of the Covenant, they showed the people what it means to trust the God who had brought them all the way through their journey.

But you know, you just know, that someone was standing on the banks of the river saying, “that’s not how Moses would have done it.”

Because, at our core, we are ambivalent about change. No matter how much we want to head into the Promised Land, and into the new future that God is preparing for us, we seek the comfort of the familiar, of the past, of nostalgia for the way things used to be. Because we’ve not been this way before, as God tells Joshua. This is a new path we are on. There is no map to guide us because we are, in some ways, making our own map as we go.

That’s not entirely true, of course. God is going before us.

“I will be with you as I was with Moses,” God tells Joshua. So we just need to figure out how to follow God into this new future.

How do we know we are on the right path, going where God would have us go?

It doesn’t always mean to follow where everyone else is going. A few weeks ago at the Boise City Cross Country Meet, there was a crisis. The 7th and 8th graders run a 2 mile course. All went well. Then the 9th graders run a 5k, or 3.1 mile course.

Well, the leaders of the race, the fastest runners, went the wrong way. They ran the 7th and 8th grade course. And everyone followed them.

Not quite everyone. Mike and Lori Casady’s grandson Alex, a 9th grade runner at Hillside, got to the point in the course where the paths diverged. He saw that the runners ahead of him were not taking the correct path. He likely saw that the correct path was empty. And he took the correct path.
I was standing at the finish line. Joanna Dunn and I were collecting the tags from the runners as they came through the finish chutes. And when the runners started coming in 6 minutes before we were expecting them, I knew they had run the wrong race. What started out as excitement about record times turned into a realization that this race was a mess.

The runners in the middle of the pack, especially, were upset. “We were just following everyone else!”

But then, after the short course runners had finished, Alex and a few other runners came to the finish line. There was some confusion that day about what they were going to do. Did the winners actually win if they didn’t run the course?
What they eventually did was award Alex with the first place ribbon and the runners who ran the short course moved down in the results behind the kids who ran the correct race.

I keep thinking about what that decision must have been like for Alex.

Do I follow the course?
Or do I follow the crowd?

And you feel bad for the kid at the front. He didn’t want to run the wrong course. He certainly, I’m sure, didn’t want to be responsible for leading people down the wrong path.

And the kids in the middle. There are days like that, you get to your destination and realize you were following the wrong people.

You have not passed this way before, God told the people.

When you are going into uncharted waters, when you are heading out on a race course that you have not run before, you have to trust the person who set you on the journey in the first place.

Let’s think about the Reformers again for a minute. Think about what else was going on in the world at the same time as Martin Luther was taking his stand.

Gutenberg invents movable type, allowing material to be printed at a pace that changes the way information is distributed in the world.

Michaelangelo creates David. 
DaVinci is inventing all sorts of things, and has painted the Mona Lisa.


The watch is invented, forever changing the way we mark time.

While we know the dark ages weren’t really dark, the truth is that the beginning of the 1500’s brought forth an explosion in exploration, in art, in invention, and in thought.

Why? Why then?

Why did the Reformation happen then and not in 1200? Why not in 1700?

Edwin Friedman, in his book, “A Failure of Nerve” suggests that all of those things took place when they did because of Columbus. Before Columbus, all explorers headed East to reach the East. Which makes some sense, but it meant traveling all the way around Africa. So Columbus convinced some investment bankers, the monarchs in Spain, that if he headed West, he would reach the East.
To do this, he needed to believe that the Earth was round. Many people believed that already. But not everyone, and not everyone agreed with the size of the planet.

And he needed to sail South of the Equator, which, at the time, was presumed to be a place with no land mass and from where nobody had ever returned.

And here’s a map from the era showing how much high quality GPS he had to plan his route.

So Columbus “discovers” the Caribbean, thinking he found Asia, which you can interpret how you will. But the important thing, according to Friedman, is that Columbus made it back to Europe and broke through a barrier that had held Europeans in sway for generations—namely the idea that you couldn’t cross the Equator without falling off the planet. They had not passed this way before. And yet they made it.
Once the impossible becomes possible, then you start to wonder what else that was previously impossible might be in reach. And there are times when we need to bring that sense of adventure, that willingness to take risks back into our lives as we consider the changes that the future will bring.

You have not passed this way before, God reminds us. But when God is with us, the impossible becomes possible.
I wonder about Joshua. What was going through his mind as he instructed the tribes in his first big assignment since Moses had died.

I suspect that as strong as the lure of the Promised Land might have been, there was also that human tendency to safety, that aversion to change, that was making him want to say, “you could cross into the Promised Land if you’d like to. But some of us are going to stay here, on this side of the river, and we’ll just look at the Promised Land from across the water.”
Christopher Columbus and the other explorers could have gone for safety instead of adventure, but where would we be now?

Martin Luther and the Reformers could have stayed safely within the structures of the medieval church, but the voice of God was too strong to be ignored.

Instead of choosing the safe path, Joshua said, “Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”

As we consider the passage from Joshua, as we remember the willingness of the Reformers to listen to God’s voice, as we listen for God’s voice speaking today, let us remember that when we are willing to step out into a raging river, against all instincts for safety and comfort, and following God’s instructions, God will do wonders among us.

We have not passed this way before. But we are not alone. God is here, preparing the path, and guiding our steps. Amen.

Leave a Comment » | Christopher Columbus, Edwin Friedman, Joshua 3, Reformation | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Writing Your Obituary

October 23, 2011

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church

Oct 23, 2011

Deuteronomy 34

(Please watch this short clip before you read the rest of the sermon.)

Those were Martin Luther King Jr’s final words from the sermon he preached the night before he was assassinated in Memphis.

I have seen the Promised Land.

For him, it wasn’t about standing on Mt Nebo and looking across the Jordan River Valley in to the Promised land. For Martin Luther King, Jr, it was about standing with people in the midst of Civil Rights struggles, fighting to be treated as human beings. The fight had not been won on April 3, 1968 when he said those words. But he had seen the Promised Land by watching people come together to work together for change, even when that change seemed too far away.

I heard a story on the radio this week about a man named AP Tureaud, who in the days of school integration, was the first and only African American student at LSU. He was miserable. His professors wouldn’t touch his papers. The people who roomed next to him made a campaign to make him leave, playing music all night long and making noise so he couldn’t sleep. One day, on campus, a pick up truck drove up to him and an African American man in workers overalls got out of the truck and asked him if he was AP Tureaud.  “Yes”.

The man went back to his truck and brought out his seven year old son and said, “I want my son to meet you because I want him to know that this is possible for him, to come to this school, thanks to you.”

In that moment, despite the misery he was living in, AP Tureaud knew what it meant to see the Promised Land. At 17 years old, by being a symbol of integration, he understood that good things were going to come out of the painful experiences he was enduring. He had seen the Promised Land.

Moses knew that. He knew the 40 year-long road to the Promised Land was not easy. It wasn’t a walk through the park. It was people complaining in the wilderness that he had brought them there to die. It was disobedience. It was being bitten by snakes. It was knowing that you were wandering and not moving forward. It was eating manna, manna, more manna, and quails.

And then God takes him to Mt Nebo, which is in modern day Jordan.

And from there he can look down across the Jordan hillside, across the giant river and over to what is today Southern Israel.
That was all I could see, at least, when I was in the Middle East. But according to the text, Moses had better vision. God showed him the land from the south to the north of Israel, a panoramic sweep of the land for each of the tribes.

What is it like, do you think? To be so close that you can see what you’ve wanted for your whole life?
And to know that you aren’t going to make the rest of the journey?

Because of the Hebrew people’s disobedience, and Moses failure as a leader to obey, the original generation of Hebrew people who left Israel died before they reached the promised land. It was only the next generation who made it across the river. The first generation, other than Caleb and Joshua, died in the wilderness. Granted, it is still better than dying in slavery, but they never crossed over to the Promised Land.

But they didn’t stop when they knew that justice was out of reach for them. They kept on the journey to make a better future for their children.

And the Promised Land sometimes seems like it is so far away that it isn’t even worth the trouble of heading that direction. It can be hard to seek the Promised Land when the milk and honey will be flowing for someone else.

But Moses kept on leading the people toward a goal he knew he would never reach.

And so I suspect that as Moses looked across the river, and saw the land God had promised to his ancestors, that God had led them out of slavery for, and must have felt some relief. Some sense of, “we made it.  Even if I won’t get there with them, I see the path clearly now. It will be okay.”

I keep thinking of Martin Luther King’s final words. He, of course, did not know that assassin’s bullets would claim his life the next day. But I would suspect that had he known, his final words would not have been much different.
Moses did know that the end of his life was approaching. And the 33rd chapter of Deuteronomy is his final sermon to the Israelites, giving each of the tribes instruction and encouragement.

What would you say to people if you knew you were at the end, if you knew the Promised Land was in reach? How would you want to be remembered? What would you want people to know about your Faith?

I would tell the people I love that I love them and if there were things between us that got in the way, I would apologize and tell them not to remember those, which are only obstacles. But to remember what brought us together.

I would tell people that life is too short to worry about the question, “does this make me look fat?” As one of the writer Anne Lamott’s friends would tell her when she would start worrying about such things, “Annie, you don’t have that kind of time”.

I would talk about the life saving grace of God that carried me through difficulty and loss and would encourage people to be in relationship with that God, not because they are afraid of going to Hell if they don’t. But to be in a relationship with God because life is so much better, here and now, when the light of the Divine is allowed to filter down, casting beautiful shadows on the brokenness of human life.

I would talk about the Scriptural imperative for being in community. Despite the American Myth of the Individual, nobody succeeds alone. It is only when we come together that life has meaning and we have what it takes to be the best versions of ourselves. Which means we have a responsibility to BE community, for each other and for the people around us we don’t even know.

And I would tell people about Jesus. About the way he spent time with all of the “wrong” people and called all of the “right” people to reconsider their preconceptions, calling us all to new understandings of justice. About the way he reached out and touched the people society called unclean. About the way he challenged authority and reminded people that the Divine purpose cannot be co-opted by human kingdoms. And I would tell people that Jesus’ sacrificial living, to the point of death, calls us to live with gratitude, with purpose, and with love.

I invite each of you to think about this question now. What do you want people to know about your faith and belief?

On the back of the prayer insert in the bulletin is space where you can write down your answers.

…..musical interlude…….

Does anybody want to share? (Here are some of the responses that were shared. I will add more.)

“We are not alone.”

“Love is what matters
Change is possible
Compassion is necessary
My voice was heard.”

“I am a servant of the Most High God and I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“All will be well and God is in control.”

“We have an everlasting Hope.”

“My grandfather said, shortly before he died at 101, “looking back at my life, when I was opposed to change, I was usually on the wrong side of the issue. When I supported change, I was usually on the right side.”

“I want to be remembered for having a thankful heart.”

We might not be as fortunate as Moses, who got to write his own obituary in Deuteronomy 34. But we can tell the people we love about the things that are important to us. I invite you to take that paper with you today, to think about it some more, and to share it with the ones you love.

Moses lived until he was 120 years old. His “sight was undimmed and his vigor unabated”, or, in other words, he led what we would call a good and long life.

Whether you still have 40 or more years of wilderness wandering ahead of you, or whether the Promised Land is just around the corner, Moses knew that life is too short to not continue the journey to the Promised Land. The journey still mattered, even when the destination wasn’t his to control.

So, keep on with the journey. Support your fellow travelers. The Promised Land is in sight.
Amen.

PS–People were asking where I got the lego pictures of Moses. They can be found at www.bricktestament.com.

1 Comment | Deuteronomy 34, StoryCorps | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Face to Face

October 16, 2011

A sermon preached October 16, 2011 at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho

Exodus 33:12-23

Moses had a different relationship with God than just about anyone in the Scriptural record, other than Jesus.  Certainly different encounters with God than I have had.
Before the passage you heard this morning, God had told Moses, “your people are stiff necked people. So I won’t go with them. But I will send a pillar of cloud with you to guide you on your journey.” God says that if the Divine presence were to travel with such stiff necked people, the Divine anger would consume them. It is the equivalent of those families who love each other but do better with 500 miles between them.

Yes, God loves the people. But boy do they drive God nuts.

Also, this is after the whole incident of the golden calf, when the people melt down their bracelets and start worshipping something other than God.

We are also told that as the Hebrew people traveled, Moses would set up the Tent of Meeting, and God’s presence would settle on the Tent and the people would stand outside and watch as God and Moses spoke.
“Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (33:11)

We can have great prayer lives, but it is not the same as God coming over to your tent and having a chai latte and muffins while you talk about things.

The Lord spoke to Moses, face to face, as one speaks to a friend.

And later in the text, as we just heard, God tells Moses that nobody can see God’s face and live, so this shouldn’t be imagined literally. Ancient Hebrew leaves room for contradictions like this. It is a poetic language, with the roots of the words heading off in different directions as needed.

The Hebrew word for “face”, panim,  is the same word for “presence”.

And from the perspective of the Hebrew people, watching the cloud settle over the tent, it must have seemed as if Moses was having a face to face with God. At least Moses was interacting with God differently than they were doing. The Lord spoke to Moses, presence to presence, if not literally face to face.

This isn’t a casual conversation where one person is checking for emails on their phone while the other person describes what their dog did last weekend. This is a conversation where both parties bring their attention, their focus, and their very presence, turning to each other face to face.

And when you have that kind of relationship, you can say things to people. You can tell them when you think they’ve done something that is good and important. You can also tell them when they have hurt you or when you think they have made a mistake.

These kinds of conversations are important.

They are also difficult.

But they need to happen.

Face to face.

So often in our culture, we don’t have conversations face to face. We have them side to side. Where we tell everyone except the person we’re upset with what they have done wrong or how they have hurt us.

But side to side conversations don’t move toward a solution. They don’t cause us to really bring our presence into a potentially difficult or awkward moment, to say something important that needs to be said.
Luckily, God and Moses talk face to face. Presence to presence.

And Moses tells God to reconsider his plan to not travel with the people. “Yes, God. We’re stiff necked people. But we’re YOUR stiff necked people. You created us. You have blessed us. You can’t just abandon us out here in the wilderness. Because we can’t do this without you.”

And there’s the truth.

We can’t do this journey through the wilderness alone.

God probably knew that already.

But I suspect that perhaps Moses didn’t know it was true until he’d uttered the words.

“If you aren’t with us, God, we’re finished. Don’t leave us now.”

Because Moses could talk with God, presence to presence, he was able to make an important claim and learn something about himself in the process.

And it is an important and difficult lesson to learn that we can’t do it alone.

It is one of those lessons, that I, at least, have to learn again and again.

Last weekend, after I finished reading the ordination exams, I went to my college reunion. It was such a gift to be with those friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in 20 years. But it was with them, while I was in college, when I learned for the first time that I couldn’t make it through the wilderness alone. I am so thankful for that community who taught me that lesson.

And Moses has his moment of truth, as he is presence to presence with God, all pretense of self reliance stripped away, and he gets God to agree to his request.

The LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

And then Moses goes further.

Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.”

This is another spot where the Hebrew is tricky. Glory, Honor, Weightiness, and Divine Presence are all translations from that word in Hebrew, kabod.

What is Moses asking for?

God has already agreed that God will travel with the people in the wilderness. Is it that agreement that leads Moses to ask for more the way my kids ask for 3 cookies once I’ve told them they can have one?
Or does he need more from God? Is Moses at a place where not only does he realize they can’t make it through the wilderness without God but also that he can’t make it outside of the tent without some additional reminder of why he’s doing this in the first place?

I think there are days when we want to see some glory. When we need reminders that this crazy world is not randomness and chaos. When we need to see how weighty God’s presence can be.

Whatever that request means, God is willing to grant part of it. Not because Moses is worthy. Not because his leadership of the Hebrew people has earned him anything. But God says, “and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy”.

So this display of God’s glory is because God will allow it. Not because Moses has earned it.

Also, God tells Moses that he doesn’t really want what he is asking for. If Moses were to see God’s glory, God’s true nature and God’s Divine Presence, he would die. God’s true self is beyond what Moses could comprehend. So God offers to show Moses God’s goodness.

He asks for Glory but receives Goodness.

And there are days when we need that reminder too, I suspect. Days where we ask God for glory, for clear signs, and instead someone gives us a hug and tells us they’ve been thinking about us. Or someone sends you a note, letting you know you aren’t alone. We ask for Glory and power and control and instead, we receive goodness.

But even God’s goodness is beyond human understanding. Even God’s goodness is beyond what we experience in human goodness. So God directs Moses to a cleft in the rock and shields him with a Divine Hand or Wing, so that as God’s presence passes by, Moses can get a glimpse of God’s goodness.

And while there are jokes to be made about Moses seeing God’s backside—Moon Over the Sinai—there is also great truth in it. Because we don’t see God’s goodness when it is walking toward us. We only see it in hindsight. As it is walking away and we realize what just happened.

It is with hindsight that we see where God showed up and offered us goodness.

Because of my college reunion, I’ve been thinking about the past a lot lately. I’ve been looking back and seeing how blessed I have been—that God put those extraordinary people in my life at the time I would need them the most. Did I know that at the time? Maybe. Maybe I had glimpses of it. But after it has passed by, and God’s hands have unshielded my eyes, it is clear.

That is the tricky part of faith, isn’t it. I can’t promise that if you join the church you will see great manifestations of God’s Glory. Perhaps you will. God will be gracious to whom God will be gracious, after all. But I can promise you that you will see glimpses of God’s goodness in hindsight, after it has passed by.

And so we need to become people who move forward by looking back.

Moses and the Hebrew people didn’t stay in that one place in the wilderness, waiting for another glimpse of goodness. They kept on their journey.

And God is also calling us forward on our journey.

So we are called to proclaim where we have just seen God’s goodness, as we invite people to join us on the journey.

I know that for many people, talking about money is not the way you want to think about God’s goodness, but consider this. As the Stewardship and Finance Committee is putting together our budget in the coming months, they are asking you to pledge the budget, to say, “we don’t know exactly how God’s goodness will look as we move towards it in this coming year, but because of the glimpses of goodness we’ve had in the past, we will pledge the budget so that people in this building, people in this community, and people around the world will also get a chance to know of God’s goodness.”

Stewardship is an act of faith, moving forward on the journey based on the experiences of Divine Goodness that we have seen in the past.

In the past few years, as the economy has stalled out, your Session has been careful stewards of our resources, bringing expenses down as much as possible. But they have also maintained our commitment to supporting Mission and outreach both here and abroad. They have also maintained our commitment to education, to worship, and to the upkeep of our facilities. Pledge cards and stewardship campaign information is in the narthex and you’ll be hearing more about it in the weeks to come. But I invite you to prayerfully consider how financial giving to the church allows other people to get a glimpse of God’s goodness.

Stewardship is about more than money. It is about how we give of our time as well. And I am humbled by how much time many of you give in this place to work for God’s kingdom. But for some of you, perhaps you are being called to join in with your time. I am sure that the people who volunteer at Grace Jordan could share with us how they have seen God’s goodness in their time volunteering at the school. I’m sure the Deacons and the Presbyterian Women who go out and visit homebound members could share stories of how they experienced God’s goodness in visitation.

However we live into Stewardship, we are called to be on the lookout for these glimpses of God’s goodness. And these glimpses then call us to move forward, into the future that we trust will be loving.

So, where is God’s goodness in our lives today?

How attuned are you to be watching for glimpses of it?

I invite you this week to pay attention to those moments where something unexpected passed by, where you caught glimpses of goodness. We are called on the journey together, because we can’t do it alone, and called to help people see the goodness of God when it has passed by. What a gift we’ve been given. Thanks be to God. Amen

Leave a Comment » | Exodus 33, God's Glory, Stewardship | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Get Dirty

October 2, 2011

A Sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho

Matt. 21:33-46

Isaiah 5:1-7

Let me start with a disclaimer for the English Majors in the room. I will be mixing metaphors in this sermon. The vineyard theme that weaves through these two texts lends itself to many different readings.  At some points, I might refer to us as the grape plants. In others, we’ll be the laborers tending the vines. So, please accept my apologies in advance. Here we go!

Our passage in Matthew this morning picks up right where we left off last week, in the midst of a debate about authority between Jesus and the religious leaders in the Temple.

When Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard….” the religious leaders, professional readers of scriptures, would have all thrown their hands up in the air and said, “pick me! Pick me! I know this one. Isaiah 5! We’re supposed to be good grapes!!!”

But then the story changes, as Jesus’ stories are wont to do. God, the owner of the vineyard becomes an absentee landlord. All of the hands go down. “Nevermind. I thought I knew where he was going with this,” they think to themselves. “But why would God be a landlord? All the peasants I know who work for a landlord all the live-long day, don’t have one good thing to say about them. The landlords take every penny earned and the peasants end up with nothing to show for it.  Why would he possibly equate God to a landlord?”

But Jesus is okay with the discomfort we feel when God does not behave as we think God should and he goes on with his adapted vineyard story. Landlord sends slaves to collect the harvest, but the slaves are killed. So he sends more slaves. Same thing. Then the landlord sends his only begotten son. Hmmm…why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah, Jesus.

But now it takes an even bigger twist. Because the tenants decide that by killing the heir, they will become the new heirs.

Now where does that ever work out? Any economic system you know of?

The tenants on this vineyard seem to be operating on a false assumption. This land is not theirs. The harvest is not theirs. The labor is not even theirs.

And Jesus, like Isaiah, calls the priests in the temple to pronounce judgment on themselves. “Now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

They answer: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

I’m not sure they are wrong in their answer. I think their experience of landlords would suggest that killing the tenants wouldn’t be too far fetched. Perhaps that comment is more of an observation.
And I think they are correct that the new tenants will be people who will hand over the produce at harvest, but I don’t think they know how true that is.

In the context of their debate about authority, Jesus is, yet again, using their own words to pass judgment on them.

 “You can ask me about authority all day long”, says Jesus, “but let’s talk about your obedience to God’s authority. You walk around this Temple as if you own the place. Who made you the heir instead of the hired hand?”

It scares me, this Jesus.

He seems 12 feet tall, angry, uncontrollable.

And then he starts quoting scripture. “Have you never read the scriptures?”, he asks the people who read scripture professionally.

This is angry Jesus.

“The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

The turn he takes to anger reminds us of the passage from Isaiah’s prophecy.

Because this prophecy starts out as a love song. God is a landlord who loves the vineyard of Israel so much that he wrote a love song to them. The owner of the vineyard puts love and care and back-breaking labor into this vineyard. Digging and clearing a field, investing in choice vines and the infrastructure needed to make wine are all signs of the owner’s love and of his hope for a future of prosperity.

But, as evidenced by the wild bitter grapes, there is clearly only so much that the owner can do to affect the harvest.  What else, he asks, was there for him to do for the vineyard that he had not already done? With that, Isaiah calls the hearers of his message to make their own judgment. And then God gets angry.
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.

It is easy to forget this is a love song by the time you get to the trampling, devouring, and desolation.

It is clear, though, that the Divine presence can get angry. Whether it is Jesus in the Temple, taking the authorities to task for not obeying God’s call to produce the fruits of the Kingdom, or whether it is God taking Israel to task for being bad grapes, for bearing fruit of bloodshed instead of justice, our disobedience angers God.

Let me say that again, our disobedience angers God.

God has lovingly put care in our planting, setting up a harvest that will be of benefit to the whole community, and we choose to be rotten grapes. God has lovingly sent God’s own son, to proclaim the in-breaking of God’s kingdom on earth, and we have decided instead to go our own way, pretending that we, the tenants on the vineyard, can inherit in the Son’s place.

But our disobedience is not the last word. God’s anger is not the last word. God, who knows who we are, still chooses to sing us a love song.

And so the response is ours. Will we join in the song, singing back to God with lives of justice and righteousness?

And what does that look like?

It means more than saying, “I will pray for peace.” Prayer is important, but it isn’t always the stopping place. Often, it is only the beginning point. Imagine me saying, “I will pray for a good garden this year.” If I didn’t go out in the yard, pull the weeds, plant the seeds, water the garden, and tend the plants, it wouldn’t matter.

We have to work for justice and righteousness.

And working in a garden for a good harvest, whether you want to harvest tomatoes or justice, is dirty work.

I heard a story on the news this past week that reminded me of this. October 2006, Charles Roberts opened fire and shot 10 Amish school-girls in Lancaster, PA, killing five of them, before killing himself.  When his mother Terri heard about the shooting, “she crawled into a fetal position, feeling as if her insides were ripped apart. Her husband, Chuck, a retired policeman, cried into a tea towel, unable to lift his head. He wore skin off his face wiping away tears.”

But an Amish neighbor came to their house shortly after the shooting and told her husband, who worked with the Amish, “We love you.”

Instead of offering their judgment, which we could understand, the Amish community offered love, which allowed the Roberts family to seek new ways to live into the reality of this tragedy.

Three months after the shooting, Chuck and Terri, the parents of the shooter, started visiting the families of the victims. Terri invited the survivors and their mothers to her home for a tea party. One of the survivors is paralyzed and unable to move or communicate, but she is still alive. Terri goes over to her house once a week to sit with her, bathe her, sing her hymns, and read her Bible stories.

There is no erasing the tragedy that happened to those families 5 years ago. But these people chose not to let desolation, destruction, and ruin have the final say.

The illustrations in our lives might, or might not be as dramatic as this.

But we have to do more than say we care about justice and righteousness. We have to get down on our knees, digging in the dirt, preparing our gardens so justice and righteousness can flourish. And it is dirty work. It puts us in places where we feel vulnerable and unsure. It puts us with people we might not choose to be with.

And it takes time. Vines don’t grow overnight. Working for a good harvest takes time.

Our work for a good harvest requires action.

When we see a homeless person on the street, we need to do more than feel bad about the situation. We need to support the ministries that feed and house people. We need to work in our community and in our nation to help alleviate the conditions that contribute to homelessness.

David Brooks wrote about this in the New York Times this past week in an article called “the Limits of Empathy.”

He writes:
“Empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of another—makes you more aware of other people’s suffering, but it’s not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.”

In other words, empathy allows us to be like the religious leaders in the temple, who preach God’s kingdom, but don’t take it any further than words. He goes on to say, “It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them.”

I think that is what this passage from Isaiah is calling us to do—to move away from empty emotions that only serve us and to move toward the real work that leads to a good harvest.

So, How are you going to do that?

It isn’t too late to join a house church. We’ll have the sign up lists available after worship. Helping homeless people prepare for their GED exams, working to support Grace Jordan, or seeking Human Rights are great ways to get dirty to prepare a harvest of righteousness. There are other ways too. But please be in prayer about how you can respond to God’s love song in your life. I won’t be in the office this week because I’ll be reading and grading Ordination Exams for the denomination, but I would love to be in conversation with you about how you can get involved in new ways in ministry.

Today is World Communion Sunday. We will gather around God’s Table, just as Christians are doing all around the world. As we come to the Table to be fed, let us remember that, at this table, God is singing a love song to the world. God has poured out great care and effort so that we, as God’s vineyard, might be fed, nourished, and bear good fruit. The rest is up to us.
Let’s go get dirty and have some fun. Amen.

Leave a Comment » | Isaiah 5:1-7, Matthew 21:33-46 | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Mind Changing: Jesus, Neutrinos, and New Coke

September 25, 2011

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church

September 25, 2011

Matthew 21:23-32

Between the parable we heard last week, and the one we just heard this morning, Jesus did a few things you might want to know about. Minor little things. Like a triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a colt. And a small little moment when he entered the Temple and turned over some tables and called people names. He also tells a few more parables where the moral of the story continues to be “last will be first and the first will be last”.
So, when the Temple leadership, the chief priests and the elders, come up and ask him the questions, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”, we can understand their point of view. They just spent the last night picking up the Temple, sweeping up the turtle dove “offerings” that were left after their cages were broken open and they nested in the rafters.

They had just spent the last night dealing with the angry money-changers who wanted restitution, after Jesus threw their money all over the place, while the crowds scrambled around, picking up loose shekels. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

We can understand their frustration. If someone came in here and did something similar, you can be sure the Building and Grounds Committee and the Session would want to know who gave them permission to walk in here, move the pews, and leave a big mess!

But their questions are bigger than that. Because they consider themselves to be the authority. And they certainly didn’t invite this itinerant rabbi from Nazareth into their midst. They also probably recognize their position as the “first” and they keep hearing his comments about the first being last and the last being first.
Just who do you think you are, mister?

Interestingly, their questions remind us of the questions Jesus asks his disciples. “Who do you say that I am?”

Identity. Authority. Place in the Kingdom.

The questions of the religious leaders are dangerous though. If Jesus answers, “God has given me all authority”, then they can get him on blasphemy charges. If he says, “I am my own authority”, then they can dismiss him.  Both of those answers would be true, of course, but they wouldn’t see that. Because they continue to order their world, their understanding of authority, power, and God in a different way than Jesus does.

And his continuing conflict with the Temple leadership will lead him straight to the cross. They will kill him before they will change their minds.

Because that is what he’s asking them to do. Change their minds, reconsider what they thought to be true, and believe that God is working for the repentance, the renewal, of the world, in new ways.
His answer to their question is another question. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?”

At first glance, it seems an odd question. John was killed chapters ago, after all. But John had preached a message of repentance, proclaiming “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And remember that John was very popular. Betting people in that day would have guessed that in 2,000 years people would still be talking about John, not Jesus.

So, when Jesus asks, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?,” he puts the authorities in a tricky situation. Do they anger the fans of John the Baptist? Or do they acknowledge he was speaking for God and they killed him anyway and now want to kill the person he spoke about?

So, they bravely answer, mumbling under their breath, “we don’t know.”

Jesus is offering them a chance to change their minds. He is giving them a way to say, “John came from God and, hey look—he was talking about you! Oh, we get it now!”

But they won’t do it.

So Jesus tells them a parable about two brothers, a very Biblical way to tell a story. Wonder what their names were. Cain and Abel? Jacob and Esau? Alden and Elliott?

In any case, we have this parable about two brothers. One of them tells his father he won’t go work in the vineyard, but then he does. And the other one says he will do it, but then he doesn’t. And he asks the religious authorities, “which son did the right thing?” And even these politicians who wouldn’t make a stand unless it had been focus-grouped, say, “the one who did the will of his father.”
But parables don’t usually have such an easy and obvious answer, which gives me pause. Even though Jesus has now twice trapped the religious leaders, leaving them with only wrong answers, he is not done. He makes sure they understand that they said the right things but did all of the wrong things. And the people they don’t invite to church—the tax collectors and the prostitutes—have responded to God’s call more faithfully than have God’s own servants.

And all because the religious leaders wouldn’t change their minds.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? To change your mind.

But think how hard that really is to do. Especially on the big things.

The great minds of the world were convinced the earth was flat.
Until it was proven to be a sphere.
The sun revolved around the earth.
Until it was proven that the earth revolves around the sun.

Just the other day, I heard a news story about neutrinos. I confess I had never given any thought to neutrinos, which are subatomic particles, until I learned that scientists had just done an experiment in which neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light.
And, apparently, that’s impossible. According to Einstein and E=MC2 and all that, nothing travels faster than light. Nothing.

So even the scientists who led the experiment, who read the results that showed these neutrinos traveling faster than they ought, are asking other scientists to look over the data and figure out what they did wrong. Because, clearly, they can’t be right. I’ve read of very few scientists who have said, “it’s possible, I suppose”. Most have said that there clearly was a mistake in the calculations, a mis-reading of the data, or just blamed it on the pesky neutrinos themselves, which are notoriously difficult to study. 
It is too soon to say what we’ve really discovered about neutrinos, but I find it interesting that even the authors of the study are having a hard time changing their minds about what they know to be true about the way the world works.
They don’t want to believe the results of their own experiments.
It isn’t just in science where we have trouble changing our minds. The Presbyterian Church has been ordaining women to ministry for over 50 years, which sounds like a long time. But I know there are people here in this room who were among the first women ordained to the office of Elder.  For this faith community, 50 plus years down the road, women in ministry is no big deal, and I am thankful that I’m just your minister, not your “lady minister”. But I still encounter people who question my decision to “disobey God’s rules” and become a pastor. We are still in the midst of watching people change their minds about the role of women in the church.
But it is just one illustration of the social and societal changes we have seen. The way we view slavery, evolution, geology, colonialism, divorce, and homosexuality have all changed, or are in the process of changing, and major fights are still being waged over many of these issues.

Jesus criticizes the religious leaders for not changing their minds when presented with the message of John the Baptist and when presented with the person of Jesus, himself.  And, looking back on it with the advantage of History, we realize they were wrong. But they thought they were being faithful Jews. They thought they were upholding tradition.

They knew that not all change is good.

New Coke, for example.

Back in the 80’s. It was horrible. That was not change to believe in, and Coca Cola went back to the “classic coke” formula less than 3 months after the introduction of the new formula.

We aren’t called to follow every new thing that is out there. We are called to change our minds when God sends his prophets to lead us on the path of righteousness. We are called to change our minds when God sends his own Son to live among us and teach us what true, sacrificial love looks like.

Like the two brothers in the parable, we are given new information—go help in the vineyard, neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light, Jesus Christ is God’s own son, etc—and our job is to respond to that new information.

We all respond to the news, for good or bad. The brothers walk away from their father and both of them change their minds, after all. Even the religious authorities respond by choosing not to believe it.

But this week, as your life unfolds around you, ask if there are places where you are being called to change your mind. Is God asking you to do a new thing? To see the world differently?

In a few minutes, people will be coming forward to say that God is calling them to help get a House Church up and going. Is God calling you to join in? Sure, you’re busy. Sure, we all have good reasons to say no. But do we have better reasons to say yes?
Or is there another way that God is calling you to respond to the grace you’ve received? We heard this morning briefly from Rusty Edmondson, who will be back with us tonight, sharing about his response to God’s call.

Or, is God calling you to reconsider something you’ve faithfully believed like the scribes and Pharisees were called to do?

All I know is that when there is a parable where the answer seems too easy, it means we should spend some time with it, searching for the place where God is speaking to us today. May our hearts and minds be open to change. Amen.

1 Comment | Matthew 21:23-32, neutrinos, New Coke | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Church and State

September 22, 2011

Here is my newsletter article for October. It is likely controversial, and so I wanted to publish it here so that we may begin the conversation that needs to take place. I don’t presume that everyone will agree with me about this topic, and so, especially if you do not, please help me understand your views.

 

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

I often hear about the “separation of church and state” on the news. This phrase is often thought to be from the First Amendment to the US Constitution, but it was actually in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to church leaders in Connecticut.

However the First Amendment is worded, I am a fan. I do not think the government should be in the business of religion. I do not think the government should tell people how they should worship and serve God. The First Amendment never prohibits people from being religious, but it reminds us that the state should not be the place where religious policy is determined.

In most situations, this separation between religion and government works pretty well and has allowed American religious expression to develop and flourish over the course of our history.

But there is one area where the aims of church and state have become intertwined—marriage. When a pastor, rabbi, imam, or other religious leader officiates at a wedding, they are authorized to speak for the State of Idaho and can sign the marriage license. The State of Idaho doesn’t require me to register with the State, to make sure that it is a “good marriage” (whatever that means), or to take any other steps to make sure that the weddings over which I preside have a real chance at success.

In American culture, there is no real distinction between a religious marriage, where a relationship is blessed by God and supported by the community of faith, and a civil marriage, where a relationship is blessed by the State and afforded the benefits of tax breaks, property inheritance, etc.

Additionally, the State of Idaho is allowed to tell me who I am allowed to marry and who I am not allowed to marry. In 2006, Amendment 2 passed in the State of Idaho, stating that:

A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.

So, what should have been a religious decision became a state decision.

The Session and I have decided that this confusion of the line between the church and the state is a problem. And so from now on, I will not be signing marriage licenses as an agent of the State of Idaho for anyone until I am allowed to sign them for everyone. I will still officiate over the religious service for couples who have gone through pre-marital counseling and who want to be married in the eyes of God. But couples will have to find someone else who is willing to sign the paperwork that confers the benefits of a civil marriage.

Additionally, I am currently limited by our denomination’s polity concerning marriage. Until the Book of Order changes (and it is likely that the issue will be brought up at the next meeting of the General Assembly in the summer of 2012) I cannot (and will not) officiate at same gender weddings.  But it is frustrating to me that I become an agent of injustice by abiding by our denomination’s polity. If a heterosexual couple in the church wanted me to preside at their religious wedding, I could easily do that. But I cannot be present for same gender couples who would like to join their lives together before God and this community.

In the coming months, the Session will be inviting you to participate in conversations about the issue of marriage, civil unions, and blessings. What does the Bible actually say about marriage? How does the Sacrament of Baptism connect to the issue of marriage rights? How can we stand with people facing injustice? The Session understands that there are many different views in our congregation on this topic and that is why we hope all of you will join in the conversation.

6 Comments | same gender marriage | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

It’s Not Fair! (Thank you, God!)

September 18, 2011

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Boise, Idaho.

Sept 18, 2011

Matthew 20:1-16

Before we look at what this parable might possibly mean for us today, I’d like to take a few minutes first and consider what it tells us about the economic reality of Jesus’ day. There are people standing idle, desperate for work. These people, who in Jesus’ day would have all been men, are hanging out at Jerusalem’s Home Depot, hoping that someone needs to hire them, so that they can get by. If they get a job, it wouldn’t have paid enough for them to really get ahead. A “day’s wage” meant enough to subsist, to get by. We shouldn’t picture a unionized construction crew who are allowed regularly scheduled breaks and OSHA safety standards. These are people who are at the mercy of the people who show up and say, “hey you, go into my vineyard and work. I’ll pay you.”

There are no labor contracts. No guarantees you’ll actually get paid, even. These men do not have the resources or ability to go back to school, to get small business loans so they can open their own pita shops, or to apply for unemployment. There is no social safety net for them.

I wish we could look at this story and NOT see parallels to our world today. I wish that 2,000 years would have gone by and let us read this story as ancient history. And for many of us, it is. Many of us have security, stability, agency in our own lives. But many people in our community and around the world, could likely relate well to this situation. Think of the day laborers, waiting at the hardware store, hoping that today they’ll get lucky and get hired by someone who will pay them a fair wage to do an honest job. This story is today’s story for many people.

But the good news is that Jesus uses this situation to tell a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus doesn’t say “the Kingdom of Heaven is…” He says “the Kingdom of Heaven is LIKE….”. In this case, it is like a landowner who went to hire day laborers. So that means that even if you can’t take a parable, paint it in black and white and walk away with clear answers, it also means that the Kingdom of Heaven is something to which we can relate. The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t far away from our experience and life. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a landowner who went to Home Depot to hire a bunch of unemployed, day laborers.

But the story doesn’t play out exactly as it would in Boise in 2011. The owner starts with his first crew at the break of dawn. The text doesn’t tell us how this first bunch were selected. Were they at the front of the line? Did they look stronger? Who knows.

He tells them, I’ll pay you the usual daily wage for a day’s work. And they agree. And as they are off pruning grapevines or stomping on grapes, the owner goes back to the hardware store and hires some more workers. I’ll pay you what is right, he tells them. This happens a few more times in the day, with new workers joining the people who have been there all day. The final trip for laborers was at the very end of the day, which makes you wonder how desperate or hopeful those last laborers must have been—standing there all day, long after everyone else had been hired or had gone home, deciding to try again tomorrow. Is that what faith is—sitting there from 6:00 am to 5:00 pm, just hoping and praying that something is going to work out for you?

So far, so good.

I’m sure the laborers hired first were thinking, “I’m glad he hired Johnny at the end of the day. Even if he only gets an hour’s wage, it is better than nothing and I know how much he needs to work.” Because people who feel secure in their situation tend to be generous towards others.

I expect the laborers hired at the end of the day were thinking, “If I work really hard for this one hour, maybe he’ll hire me first tomorrow morning.” Because people who have recently received grace tend to value it.

Even at this point of the story, we have hints that the Kingdom of Heaven is not exactly like it is in our world. Because landowners don’t keep hiring laborers all day long. It is bad business. You end up paying people who haven’t even had time to learn to do their job. Why would you hire someone at 2 pm or at 5 pm? If you really needed the laborers, you would have hired them in the beginning. Maybe you would have run back at your lunch hour if the job changed. Maybe.

But then the story changes. It leaves the path of plausible employment story and becomes something else altogether. Because the employees who get there just in time to clean up and go home, get paid. And they get paid first, which doesn’t quite seem right. And then they get paid what the boss said he’d pay the first laborers.
Had I been one of the early employees, I would have been doing some quick math….”Okay, he said he’d pay me $20 to work today. And he just paid that guy $20 for less than an hour, which means that he’ll pay me…..”

But it didn’t work that way. Each of the laborers, no matter how long they’d been working in the vineyard, got the same amount of money that he’d promised the first workers—a day’s wage.

We talked about this text at Committee Night this past week, and someone pointed out that this text brings to mind what kids say every day in every house in the land.

“It’s not fair!”

I hear it at my house all the time. I know I said it when I was a kid. My sense of justice is deeply ingrained and goes way back.

“It’s not fair!”, the laborers call out.

But in the Kingdom of God, apparently, that is a good thing. When we call out “It’s not fair!”, we usually are referring to situations when we feel someone else has gotten an advantage. I’ve never, or rarely, heard it yelled out when we are the beneficiaries of the injustice.

When have you heard this?:

“It’s not fair!….that we were born in a country with clean water, stable society, and public education while other people were born in war zones!”

Or

“It’s not fair….that I don’t have cancer and we’re praying for a 14 year old who has leukemia!”

And that’s the problem with the earliest laborers. They didn’t complain in the morning when they were hired instead of the other day laborers.

They received what they’d been promised. Any other day, they would have taken their $20 and been thankful that they could buy food for their kids.

But once someone got a different deal than they did, their cries for justice were quick to come.

I think one of the truths in this parable is that it might just be a good thing that life isn’t fair. Because as often as we focus on the injustices we suffer, we tend to overlook the moments when we benefit from the unfairness of life. The times we’re forgiven our mistakes, the times we receive second chances, the times we are picked ahead of one of the other laborers for no reason other than we were ahead of them in line.

There’s a song by the Newsboys, which is a band few of you have likely heard of, but they wrote a song about this very issue. It is called “Real Good Thing” and here’s the line:

When you don’t get what you deserve, that’s a real good thing.

When you get what you don’t deserve, that’s a real good thing.

Whatever the Kingdom of Heaven is like, it is clear that we need to let go of being the people who decide what justice looks like for God.

If God is the owner of the vineyard in this parable, it seems clear that God keeps going back to hire laborers because they need to be included in the work of the vineyard. They need care and provision.

God doesn’t keep going back to hire people because they are such great workers and will work for cheap. God offers them inclusion in the work of the Kingdom because God is generous like that. If God chooses to dispense God’s own grace to people who have been here for 10 minutes and to people who have been here for 10 years, what business is that of ours?

Remember what the owner of the vineyard says to the complainers:

‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

We don’t have grace to dispense. We only have grace to receive.

And there is enough of it to go around. Just because God shares it with someone who has newly arrived doesn’t mean God will run out by the time God gets to the person who worked all day. We have no reason to be envious of God’s generosity. We only have reason to be grateful.

Whatever the Kingdom of Heaven is like, it seems that if we want to be recipients of God’s grace, we have to let go of our desire for everyone else’s justice. If God’s grace is for us, it is for all. And that’s a real good thing. Amen.

1 Comment | I Love Lucy, Matthew 20, Newsboys | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Following Clouds

September 12, 2011

A Sermon preached September 11, 2011 at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho.

Exodus 14:19-31

I’m sure there are many interesting parts of this story, but I confess I couldn’t focus on anything after the first sentence.

“The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them.”

So, the Hebrew people are on the move. They are fleeing their lives of slavery and bondage to Pharaoh. They are on the way to the Promised Land. But they have miles to go before they sleep. They’ve got a long journey ahead of them and a wide, wide river to cross.

But they aren’t alone. They are being led by the angel of God and by a pillar of cloud.

Now, being led by an angel and a cloud has its own issues, for sure. How do you know who to trust? Which cloud do you follow, exactly? The Israelites had to decide if they were going to listen to Moses and follow God into this strange new future. Did they trust that God was providing the pillar of cloud? Could they trust the angel of God, who had just passed over their doorposts, killing the first born sons of Egypt, would keep them safe?

Apparently they made it through those questions and followed behind the angel and the pillar of cloud.
But then the angel and the pillar move to the back of the column and start leading from behind.

And that’s what got me thinking about the relationship between the leader and the led.

It is one thing to follow a leader. You trust they know where they are going. The leader trusts that the people behind will follow. It requires an amount of trust on both sides.

But leading from behind seems a whole different venture to me. On one level, I’m sure it was reassuring to the people, especially to the ones in the back, to know that someone “had their back”, that someone was between them and the advancing Egyptian army.

But I wonder how it felt to the people at the front of the line? How many of them, who had been happy to follow behind the cloud and the angel, all of a sudden paused and said, “which way do we go now?” How many of them offered to let the people behind them go ahead. “No, really, that’s okay. You can go first for a while. I insist. You first.”

And, while I’m sure the angel and the pillar of cloud had their hands full taking care of the Egyptians, I also wonder if they were wondering how things were going at the front of the line. “They didn’t turn left at that intersection, did they? They needed to turn right. I hope they go the right way!”

Because that’s the problem of leading from behind. You have to let go. You have to trust that the people at the front have learned from you and have what they need to find the path without your direct help. Leading from behind becomes an exercise in collaboration, with the leader and the led each playing an important role.

And I confess that I haven’t thought much about the responsibility for their own journey the Israelites had to make. I tend to think of them as sheep, just following along where they are led, complaining about the conditions, forgetting about the promises.

But, if the pillar of cloud and the angel of God have gone back to take care of the situation at the back of the line, then the Israelites were more than sheep. Yes, they had Moses with them at the front. But they didn’t have to follow him either. They could easily have said, “yeah, thanks, but we’re going to wait for the cloud to come back, Moses.”

So, with their divine leaders at the back of the column, they reach the Red Sea. And they wait for the morning. Water on one side, approaching Egyptians on the other. And they wait for the morning. While they wait, in the darkness, Moses stretches out his hand to part the waters. And all night long, the Israelites must have heard—I don’t know what they heard—but there must have been a sound that accompanied the parting of the water.

And despite the fact that they are up against a large body of water and have no boats, life preservers or inner tubes, the Israelites don’t turn themselves in to Pharaoh. They keep going, heading toward a big swim. And all night long, while on one side they hear the noise of the chariot wheels and the neighing of the horses, the sound of the Egyptians cooking their dinner and singing around the fire as they anticipate the rout and destruction of the foolish Israelites in the morning, on the other side they hear the wind. It is dark, so they can’t see what’s going on, but they can tell that something is happening on the Red Sea.

And in this part of the story, you can see the trust that is often hard to see from the Israelites during the rest of the Exodus story. They wait. They stay in place over night, trusting that the pillar of cloud and the angel of God will take care of what is behind them and that Moses has some sort of plan for what is ahead of them.

If they didn’t trust, I suspect we’d read about them deciding to quietly slip off up one side of the waterfront or down the other.

But they wait through the night.

And in the morning, a miracle happened.

I can’t explain this miracle, and it doesn’t seem to be worth our time to do that today. (Although if you google it, plenty of people will explain it to you…) But I want you to notice WHEN this miracle occurs in this story.

It doesn’t happen in the first few miles of the journey. The Israelites follow the pillar of cloud and angel for a while. The miracle doesn’t happen when the darkness at the end of the day arrives either. The Israelites sit through a dark night, not knowing what would happen in the morning.

The miracle happens with the new day, after a night of trust, weird sounds, and anxiety. In some ways, the miracle is a byproduct of relationships that led to trust—trust in who you follow, trust that the journey is heading where it is supposed to be going, trust that you will make it through the darkness of night.

So, here’s the question.

Who do you trust?

And don’t just say “God” because you know that’s the right answer.

Because it is easy to say we trust in God.

But often times, it seems we say that, but then we trust only in ourselves.

And I suspect there were a few Hebrew people who were like us. I’m sure some of them were thinking, “I’m sure God has it under control, even though it is dark and I don’t swim and the Egyptians hate us and did I mention it is dark….but I’ll let God take care of the rest of the Hebrew crowd. It’s nice of God to offer, really, but I’ll just take care of myself, maybe move a little further away from both the water and the Egyptians and find a nice quiet spot to rest a bit and then I’ll catch up with everyone later.”

Because when it really comes down to it, we don’t want to have to rely on anyone else. Not even a Divine anyone else.

And in much of our lives, we can get away with that illusion of control. We are very self-reliant people, which is fine, to a point.

God doesn’t want us to just lie down and wait for the bus to come to carry us out of slavery and into the promised land. The Hebrew people had to walk and we have things to do as well. But what we need to do is not confuse our participation in the exodus with being in charge and setting the course.

And we need to remember that God sometimes doesn’t lead from the front of the line, but is protecting us at our backs. Because when the path forward isn’t clear, it doesn’t mean we are alone.

Who do you trust to lead you?

As you do your part in the work of deliverance, who are you following?

The Exodus, the deliverance from slavery to freedom, isn’t about the impressiveness of the Hebrew people.
At every turn of the 40 year journey, it is about the power of God.

Even though we can—as Americans privileged with health, comfort, safety, and opportunity—we can maintain the illusion that we direct our own paths, the story of the Exodus is a reminder to us not to do that.

Listen to the words of the psalmist.
 God is our refuge and strength,
        a very present help in trouble.
        Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
        though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
        though its waters roar and foam,
        though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

          There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
        the holy habitation of the Most High.
        God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
        God will help it when the morning dawns.
        The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
        he utters his voice, the earth melts.
        The LORD of hosts is with us;
        the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

          Come, behold the works of the LORD;
        see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
        He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
        he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
        he burns the chariots with fire.
         “Be still, and know that I am God!
        I am exalted among the nations,
        I am exalted in the earth.”
        The LORD of hosts is with us;
        the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Psalm 46)

So, who are we going to trust?

We can trust ourselves. We can trust the political realms. We can trust the free market or the almighty dollar.

But, at the end of the day, I pray that we will remember to wait on the Lord. I pray that when we find ourselves in the dark night, with enemies encamped behind us and no clear path before us, that we will trust that our deliverance is not in our own hands. We will not create our own miracles. But it is God who is our refuge, our very present help in times of trouble. Trust in that.

Leave a Comment » | Exodus 14, Leadership, Trust | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

Curiosity for Divine Things

August 28, 2011

A Sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church

August 28, 2011

Matt 16:21-28

Exodus 3

Moses is known for looking like Charlton Heston and being a hero. But the text today hasn’t gotten to that Moses quite yet. Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s house, after Pharaoh’s daughter pulled him out of the river. He was a Hebrew baby whose mother had entrusted him to God’s care when Pharaoh was murdering all of the Hebrew babies. So he grows up in a life of privilege.  But he murders an Egyptian who is bothering a Hebrew slave, and flees.

Our story picks up not long after he has been taken in by Jethro, and married to one of his daughters.  He’s gone from living in the palace to tending flocks on the hillside. The text tells us he is beyond the wilderness. He’s 40 miles from the end of nowhere.

When he sees a bush. Burning. But not burning up.

And he thinks, “hmmm…wonder what’s going on?”
And God speaks to him from the burning bush.

But here’s what I noticed for the first time about this story that was pretty familiar to me.  It says that God spoke to Moses “When the LORD saw that Moses had turned aside to see”.

What if Moses hadn’t turned aside to see?
What if Moses hadn’t been curious?
What if Moses had thought, “oh great, a bush is on fire. Better take this other trail and stay away….”

Would God have talked to him then?

The text makes it sound as if Moses became God’s conversation partner because of his curiosity.
“When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

Moses had his first opportunity to engage when he stopped and turned aside to see what was going on. But the second opportunity was when he heard a voice calling his name. He could have quickly decided that it was the heat or that he heard something funny in the wind. He could have just kept walking.

He could have decided that if, in fact, God were to speak to him, then he certainly would have spoken from a majestic and tall tree. Or he would have picked a beautiful plant.

He could have decided that God couldn’t possibly be speaking to him from a lowly piece of shrubbery, and kept on walking.

Because he grew up in Pharaoh’s court, where if gods were present, it was in the midst of decorations of gold, with great fanfare, and in the midst of the royal court.  But out beyond the wilderness, with his flocks and a bunch of scrub brush, Moses hears his name and he answers, “Here I am.”

This is the Moses I want to be like. Not the big hero leading the people. But the shepherd, out beyond the wilderness, with enough curiosity to engage the Divine in conversation. I want to be the Moses who can recognize his name when it is being called from the middle of a shrub on fire.

And I fear that too often I get distracted by the other things I have to do. But we all have the time, right? We each have 24 hours in a day. Surely we could find the time to pause when we see something that makes us wonder? Surely, when we hear our voice being called in unlikely places, we could find the time to stop and say, “here I am.”

Some of you are better at that than I am, no doubt. But I hope we’ll all pause this week, when we’re just doing our ordinary tasks of tending our father in law’s flocks, and be curious about what we see going on around us.  I hope we will trust that God may choose to be present with us in places where we would not expect to find the Divine.

Moses becomes God’s conversation partner because he was willing to take the time, willing to be curious, and willing to trust that God might show up in very unlikely places.

The story we heard this morning from Matthew’s gospel doesn’t give us Peter’s first encounter with the Divine. He fared much better in that story than he does today. This story marks the beginning of the end—the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry.  The text tells us, “From that time on….” and it marks the point in Matthew’s gospel when Jesus turns his eyes toward Jerusalem, preparing for the path that lay ahead.
And Jesus begins preparing his disciples for what was to come.

But Peter didn’t like what he heard.

“God forbid! That’s the worst plan I’ve ever heard? Hand yourself over to the authorities to be tortured and crucified? We won’t let that happen, jesus.”

Even though I know the ending to the story, even though I know that Jesus had it all under control, I understand why Peter said what he said.

Because we don’t want the ones we love to suffer. We don’t want them to die.

And so Jesus’ answer to Peter sounds harsh in our ears. “Get behind me Satan!”

“well alright then. Go ahead and suffer. But you don’t have to call me ‘Satan’.”

I joke.

But perhaps the reason Jesus responds so seriously to Peter’s comments is because he was having the same thoughts himself. Perhaps Peter’s comments were real temptations to Jesus.

It is easy not to be tempted by things you didn’t want anyway. But life, health, getting along with the chief priests and the scribes, not being tortured—that has to be tempting, doesn’t it?

But Jesus won’t be tempted.

“Get behind me, tempter. For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

And that’s our problem, isn’t it? We set our minds on human things.

Remember Moses on the mountain? I invite you to remember Moses as you try to figure out the difference between keeping your mind on human things versus divine things.

Because I don’t think Jesus is setting up a dichotomy, saying “heaven is a divine thing and the grocery store is a human thing”.

I think he is saying that if you try to make sense of God with only human ideas and understanding, then God won’t make sense.

It didn’t make sense for a bush to be burning and not consumed.

It didn’t make sense for God to speak to someone out beyond the wilderness while he was tending flocks.

It didn’t make sense for Jesus to suffer, be tortured, and die on a cross either.

But that’s how God works, in Divine ways, not according to the ways that make sense to humans. I think setting our minds on Divine things is akin to having curiosity, to trusting that there is more to the story than we can imagine and to stop trying to limit what God can do.

Jesus goes on to tell his disciples all sorts of things that if we were define them by “human things” they leave us scratching our heads.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
 “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Maybe we need to approach these words like Moses did with the bush, deciding to turn our heads and ponder something that doesn’t make sense.

Returning to the Moses story, for a minute. After Moses shows his curiosity, his willingness to see things from another perspective, God shares things with him that Moses never would have dreamed up himself.

God informs Moses that he will lead the people. Moses, the fugitive murderer/sheep tender from beyond the wilderness, will go to Pharaoh to speak for God. Moses has two questions. First, why would Pharaoh listen to me? And second, why would the Israelites listen to me?

And I think those are good questions. One could see why Pharaoh wouldn’t be so interested in hearing from the turncoat, raised in his palace, only to abandon the family business. And I can see why the Israelites wouldn’t listen to him either. They don’t know him. Why would they listen to him when they know their other leaders, they trust their other leaders.

And God’s answers to Moses’ questions. Sort of.  To the first question, “who am I to go to Pharaoh?”, God replies, “well, Moses. It isn’t really about you. But I will be with you when you go before him.”

And to the second question about who sent Moses to the Israelites, the answer is “I am who I am”. Another way to translate that is “I will be who I will be”—Perhaps a reminder from God that the Divine can’t be contained in human words or human understandings.

Moses could set his mind on human things, if he wanted to. But it wouldn’t solve his dilemma. It wouldn’t make his job as spokesman for God any easier. It might, actually, just get in the way.

It appears that Moses, instead, set his mind on divine things, and determined that God must have a plan and that his part in it all was to trust, to accept, and to see what happened.

Once Peter heard his rebuke from Jesus, “get behind me, Satan!”, he had some choices too. He could have left. That would likely have crossed my mind. But there is no indication that Peter leaves. Perhaps he is able to quickly take Jesus’ rebuke to heart and realizes that leaving in his embarrassment would be setting his mind on human things.

In any case, the disciples hear Jesus’ instructions about cross bearing, life losing, and the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. And they may not have “gotten it” right then, in that moment. But as they continued on with Jesus toward Jerusalem, as they journeyed with him through Holy Week, as they encountered the risen Lord, it seems that they continued to think back on what he said, they continued to turn aside to consider something that didn’t make sense in human terms.

Because they became servant leaders. Many of them found their lives by losing their identities as fishermen and becoming disciples and evangelists. Many of them realized that all they had to give in return for the gift of their life was their life—to offer it up to God and trust that God’s plan was better when defined in “divine things” instead of “human things”.

So, this week, I invite us to spend some time with this text from Matthew’s gospel. Take time to be curious about these strange instructions that don’t fall easy on our ears. I pray that, like Moses, our curiosity will lead us into a conversation with God, will allow us to hear our name when God calls it from unexpected places, and will send us into God’s service, trusting that “I will be who I will be” is leading us into the future with hope.

Leave a Comment » | Burning Bush, Exodus 3, Matthew 16 | Permalink
Posted by marciglass

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