Brave Church

 

7694535The Ten Commandments . . . It isn’t usually the type of post that you imagine me getting excited about, especially when you know I'm not a person all into "hell fire and brimstone" or tons of "thou shall nots."

However, when I read famed Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann's take on this passage in his book Journey to the Common Good, I was so excited I hardly knew what to do with myself (which is of course letting you in on my pastor dorkiness) because his framework for the meaning of the Ten Commandments shed a whole new light on this often over quoted, frequently debated and controversy driven portion of scripture.  (Kevin can attest to this fact after I sought to give him the cliff note version of this book on the way home one afternoon in the car and wouldn’t stop talking about it to which he might or might not have stop listening . . .

So, can you name all ten?

If you only found yourself able to name a couple, you are in good company. If you are like most Americans, the number of them that you know is always less than ten.

In fact a survey several years ago reported that more Americans could name seven ingredients of a McDonald's Big Mac hamburger and members of TV's "The Brady Bunch" more easily than the Bible's Ten Commandments.

Less than half of respondents -- 45 percent -- could recall the commandment "honor thy father and mother""[i] but 62 percent knew the Big Mac has a pickle and 43% knew that Bobby and Peter were Bradies.

So even as most of us don't exactly know all of the commandments, there are some of our Christian brothers and sisters sure do get fired up about them. 29_commandments2

We've all heard and followed the news of legislative battles over placement of the ten commandments in public places over recent years.

For example in September 13 of 2011, the Huffington Post reported that "The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued a southwest Virginia school board for posting the Ten Commandments, contending that the display violates the Constitution's guarantee of separation of church and state. This lawsuit sought to have the Ten Commandments removed from school walls and a ban on further display of the biblical documents.[ii]

The Ten Commandment and American religious culture go hand in hand as the debate in of their appropriateness in public life is likely to go on for generations . . .

So what can we learn from them?

If we go back to the text-- Exodus 20-- at their first appearance we see the context.

Prior to this moment at the base of Mount Sinai, the nation of Israel were slaves. They were owned by the nation of Egypt. They labored hard from sun up to sun down to edify and strengthen not themselves or their families but the empire.

They were asked to perform in bondage back-breaking work simply because the Pharaoh of the land was a afraid: afraid that without oppressing others that one day he'd not have enough. 

And I believe this is most important: they were a member of a society that was build not on ever having time to rest-- because if you stopped then someone else might get ahead. It was also a society not built on caring for neighbor-- because the only way to get ahead as a nation was to put others down.

Yet, as we know, everything had changed. The nation of Israel was now FREE!

Now, no longer would they be asked to bow to Pharaoh or any other god for that matter.

They’d be asked to form their life together around this truth: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me."

They’d be asked to form their life together around this truth: "Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work."

They’d be asked to put neighbor above self and "honor your father and your mother," "not commit adultery" "not steal" or "bear false witness against their neighbor."

When we take a step back and look at the commandments as a unit over all (instead of reading them as so many often do in isolation) what we uncover is that God outlined for the children of Israel a NEW society

 . . . that was no longer based on scarcity, the fear of not having enough.

Instead, they would be asked live together as a people who believed as the Apostle Paul would say later on in the New Testament, "My God shall supply all of your needs."

They would be an abundant community.  

They’d be asked to become a community where no child was left behind wondering if their parents loved them because adultery broke up their parents marriage  . . .

They’d be asked to be a community where there would be no need to take another's food for everyone had their share . . .

They’d be asked to be a community where the deep breaths and moments of life reflecting silence would bring restorative healing as Sabbath, or a day from work was regularly taken. . . .

But their freedom and the abundance of provisions came with a cost. It actually was for a bigger purpose!

Remember long ago what God had said to their ancestor Abraham when he had been called by God, God said to Abraham, "all peoples of the earth will be blessed by you."2014-01-16-BelovedCommunity

Well, I believe that it is here in this moment of history that the way of life comes to be in order to make this happen.

The people of Israel are given an order to their life together so that they can use their blessing by God to bless others. Most of all this: to create a neighborhood where all would be welcomed. ALL people would be welcome.

Walter Bruggemann puts it like this, the Ten Commandments "are not rules for deep moralism. They are not commonsense rules to scold people. Rather, they are the most elemental statement of how to organize social power and social goods for the common benefit of the community."

Which is a way of saying, the Israelites were being asked to order their lives in such a way-- not just to feel shame if they broke one of the commandments, not just to feel like their God was lording over them in oppressive ways (as Pharaoh had done) but journey together toward the common good of all.

Here’s the underlining point: God gave them the 10 commandments to be intentional in their inclusion.

But the question was would they create it? Will we?

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[i]  "Americans Know Big Macs Better than Ten Commandments." http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/10/12/us-bible-commandments-idUSN1223894020071012

[ii] Virginia Ten Commandments Lawsuit: Civil-Liberties Groups Sue Southwest Virginia School Board For Posting Ten Commandments. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/virginia-ten-commandments-lawsuit_n_960447.html

A sermon preached at North Chevy Chase Christian Church on Exodus 16:2-15

enhanced-buzz-25099-1374077846-8Only when you trust someone, do you begin to really get to know them.

Such was a life lesson I began to learn from all of the youth group trips my parents forced me to attend, beginning in the 7th grade.

Every fall, the motley crew of suburban churchy teenagers and I along with our leaders would board a bus headed for the mountains. Though many of us attended with the hopes of hanging out without our friends, usually our youth leaders would have something else in mind as a purpose of the weekend: group bonding.

I will never forget the fear that came over me as a scrawny little 7th grader on my first fall retreat when I was introduced to the "trust fall." Some of you may be familiar when this activity too from similar youth group memories or workplace retreats.

The concept of the trust fall was simple: each participant in the group would be asked to climb up on a large platform, in our case, built into a tree, and stand with their back to the group assembled below with their hands crossed like this (place hands across chest). The group standing below would lock their hands together to their corresponding partner. And, then, if it was your turn on the platform, you'd be asked to fall backwards "trusting" that the others would catch you.

While the whole activity takes merely a few seconds from start to finish, the emotional toil of preparing for and processing the experience afterwards took much longer. For, as much as I wanted to be the "cool" new 7th grader, I could remember how I felt about being such in a vulnerable position of being held, carried and supported by older kids that I barely knew.

But, after (with much encouragement) submitting myself to the trust of the trust fall, it was a feeling like I was on top of the world. I was learning to trust these new friends.

In our scripture passage for this morning, no matter if they liked it or not, the Israelites were also facing their own version of a "trust fall.”

For since we last journeyed with them last week, as they put one foot in front of the other crossing the Red Sea, in no time, they faced new challenges. For as much as they thought they knew God, they were realizing that the adventure had only just begun. So maybe they didn't know this God as well as they thought.  . . . for life was getting just a little bit scarier than they imagined.

The land they found themselves walking on was somewhere around the Sinai Peninsula, a geographically barren place. Differing from the lush vegetation that the Israelites had enjoyed in Egypt next to the Nile River, the change in scenery meant that gathering basic necessities for life was all that much more difficult.

What were they going to eat?

What were they going to drink?

And as our passage opens soon the Israelites voiced concerns for food in verse 3 saying to Moses and Aaron, "If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."   

If you are anything like me my first instinct is to judge and say shame on them for complaining, but the truth be told, they really did have every reason to share their concerns.

None of them had attended Boy Scout camp and gotten their "how to survive in the wilderness when your leader doesn't even know where you are going" badge.

None of them had gone on a pre-mission trip to plot out the locations where food and water could have been.

None of them had been given any sort of road map.

No, not at all.

They were where they were because they were following Yahweh after all, so doesn't it seem fair that a lament to God was in order?

After all laments are all about giving voice, as one theologian writes, "to the human experience of abandonment, suffering, fear and danger. [To lament is to] call upon God to see arise and act."[i]

So, in their laments, they were actually turning toward God in the hopes that in making their requests known in hopes that God actually heard them.

But the thing is about laments, which we know from the times when we make them in our own lives too, is that the solutions we come up with are not always the most level-headed solutions or even the best scenarios at all for getting us out of our predicaments.

When times are hard, we often go for the “quick fixes” don’t we?

For the Israelites, their complaining lament focused on going back to Egypt. They wanted to go back there because even with all of its oppression was a place where they at least knew the rules. At least at the end of the day in Egypt, no matter how hard it was, they earned food by their own hands to put in their mouths.

But here was the turning point of faith—

Put it all on the line and trust God to provide for their most basic of basic needs. 

No more trusting in Pharoah.

No more trusting in their oppressors.

No more trusting in themselves.

To know this God, they'd have to first depend on him.

As we continue to read this passage, we see that the provisions come from the heavens-- and no matter if you believe this part of the story was an actual miracle or just some circumstances of chance-- the message is still the same: the ways of God were different from life was in Egypt.maxresdefault

I love verse 15 for this very reason, for when the bread came and the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" for they didn't know what it was. And the actual translation of "what is it?" is the word manna which we know the bread as in our Bibles today.

So, every morning the people gathered the bread and every evening that gathered the meat. They were full. And then they’d have to trust that somehow God would provide the next day too.

What an exercise this was in giving up control! God would take care of them. All they needed to do was go collect the blessings.

How so much easier said than done this spiritual principle is!

Do I have anyone here today who likes to be in control? Who likes to have a plan? Who likes to know what comes next?

I certainly do!

A dear mentor of mine, Dr. Joseph Smith was a pastor in the DC area for over 40 years.

He pastored several Baptist churches in the area including being an interim at one point at First Baptist Church of Gaithersburg, MD where I met him as a young associate pastor. He was a good leader. He loved preaching, and he loved people. He was the type of pastor who often worked almost too hard sometimes. His wife Margaret of over 50 years was always encouraging at him to take a break, slow down, stop. But, that was not how Joe rolled.

He regularly spent hours of his time in his study organizing his preparations for anything he was in charge of and always thinking of ways that he could be most helpful to those in the sphere of influence in his life, even when he was said to be "retired."

However, out of nowhere, most unfairly, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, though not a smoker. After chemo and a series of blood conditions developed as a side effect of his treatment, Dr. Smith was weak and fragile only taking baby steps around his house with a walker. The man who had gone and did some more (more than anyone ever asked him to do) was now left to trust family and friends who could look after him.

Sadly within months, cancer took his life. I was so honored that he asked me to be one of the speakers at his funeral.

Yet, in one of our last correspondences with each other he wrote me about how hard it was to be the one in need of the visit instead of being the pastor making the house calls. He told me how much it ached him when he no longer had the energy to be the first one to reach out or contribute to the care of others. He hoped people would not forget him in his time of need. The feelings he shared were a modern version of a lament of how hard this trust stuff is for all of us—even us “professionals.”

I don't want to be one of those preachers who stands here before you this morning and says that God sends onto this planet drought, famine, life-shattering illnesses like cancer in order to teach us how to be dependent creatures.  Sounds too much like a sick plan of an abusive Father, rather than a loving God to me.

But, what I do know is that God wanted my friend Joe to know the joy of provision even in the last days of his life. God would take care of all of his needs.

And, God wants the same for you too.

And it’s true, sometimes the only way you and I are going to learn is by going into the wilderness—a place where we can learn about who God really is when everything comfortable is taken away. And it is there that God who says to us, “I hear you, I see, you and even if the provisions I provide look like manna ("what is it?") still you will be nourished. Still you will be full.”

So, today, I ask you today: do you want to live in Egypt? Or do you want to be on the journey to the promise land?

Do you want to eat what you’ve always tasted? Or do you want to try some delicious manna?

If you want to go to the Promised Land, if you want to abide in the presence of the One who knew you before you even knew yourself . . . if you want to know the One who says I am the beginning and the end . . .  then, trust is verb you and I need to keep practicing.

Intentionally. 

[i] Elna K. Solvang "Lectionary for August 2, 2009: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15." www.workingpreacher.org/preaching_print.aspx?commentary_id=354

216617_10151479782722381_1721861107_nGandhi once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world!"

And, truly, God bless the fixers in this world because there are so many big problems out there that need solving.

There are children who need to be feed-- if only someone will figure out the resources of how to get them food.

There are elderly who are literally dying to know that somebody cares about them-- if only someone could motivate those of us with extra time to be moved in their direction.

There are diseases in certain parts of the world that could be prevented-- if only someone could move better medical care in their direction.

But, what about those problems in the world which you and I have no control to fix even if we want to?

What about those problems that though we put all our might, all our effort, all our prayers toward, nothing seems to change?

What do we do then?

Such is a terrible plight for the best fixers among us.

It's terrible to want to "be the change" only to find yourself hitting wall after wall after wall of failed efforts.

I write this because I often try to be a fixer.  And I know the pain of delayed expectations. The pain of knowing that as much as I want to fix something for myself or for someone I care about-- I can't.

We all hate this hard truth of life: we're not in control.

As much as I want to, I can't make a job to come out of thin air for my unemployed friend.

I can't take way the cancer diagnoses for that 12-year-old girl who I adore!

I can't re-write laws in countries which are unjust, keeping essential resources away from the most vulnerable who need them the most.

I can't spark joy into the lives of my friends who are weighed down in a season of life of funeral after funeral.

I can't. And it's so frustrating!

But what I can do is be is right where I am. I can be right where my loved ones are. I can stand with them in the midst of our unknowing. I can sit with my grief and theirs too, if I'm invited.

And I can live with the discomfort-- not run from it.

Yet, it's so easy for a "fix it" mentality to set in, though. Before we know it, we're saying:

"Oh, let's find a 3rd opinion and a 4th for that timeline of death"

"Oh, let's send out twenty more resumes and re-write 20 more versions of your cover letter."

"Oh, let's fill up the days with appointments and evenings with parties-- all of my time should be filled!"

But, such I believe would not be the way of our God, our God who tenderly wants to welcome the brokenhearted into loving arms and say, "Peace be still."

For I believe that God calls us to live with our discomfort.

Not as punishment. Not as a fear producing exercise. But as an expression of our faith.

Because sometimes, the BEST things happen when we have no idea where we are or where we're going next. And as we give our pain time to move through us.

And I believe that God calls us to stand in the middle of discomfort and believe something good is coming.

One of my favorite scriptures comes from Exodus 14. Moses and the Israelites found themselves at a pretty desperate place too.

They'd only just left Egypt after 400 years of slavery and Pharoah was on their tail. Moses felt beside himself in worry with so much responsiblity on his shoulders. He could not see a way forward! And, he cries out to God for help.

And this is what he hears: "The Lord will fight for you; you only need to stand still."

Or in other words, "Live with the discomfort, Moses! And let Me be in charge."

So wherever you find yourself today, hear me preaching to me and preaching to you: help is always on the way! This trust is what faith is all about.

exodus-14-14

A Sermon about Exodus 17:1-7 preached at The Federated Church, Weatherford, OK

Do you remember the last time you were really thirsty? Parched mouth? Dry tongue? Dreaming of water flowing from a faucet?

In our water bottle, water fountain and Sonic on every corner culture, it’s unheard of that any of us would ever "die of thirst” as we are all known to dramatically say from time to time.

Water is something we have enough of, almost always in this part of the world. Unless, of course, a tornado threatens to come through or an ice storm hits and our neighbors hoard the bottles of water off the shelves at Wal-Mart leaving nothing for the rest of us . . .

In Old Testament reading for this morning, Israelites found themselves with one very big problem and it had everything to do with water.

Two weeks ago, we left the Israelites on the their journey out of Egypt as the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea just happened. With joyous celebration they exclaimed the amazing provisions of their LORD leading them on their way into the Promise Land!

Just three days after crossing the Red Sea-- the big and dramatic-- experience of faith, the group was short on water. Scripture tells us that God led them to a spring where their thirst could be quenched. All was well. God was mightily at work among them, providing for their every need.

But, of course we know that their water jugs did not stay filled for long.

In chapter 17 verse 2 they said to Moses again: "Give us water to drink."

And, such was a good, normal, everyday, essential need, right? Of course they had a right to ask this request of God.

H2O, we know, is critical to our very existence: the definition of a need. Most medical professionals will say that a human being, in reasonable to good health can only live between 3-5 days without water before suffering from extreme dehydration and shock leading to death.

So, while, we might read Exodus 17 with thoughts in our head like "here they go again complaining,” simply the Israelites sought to express a deep need. They needed to say to Moses, their spiritual and administrative leader, "We must have water now!"

In the meantime, however, what were they to do? How were they to wait?

How were they to respond to an unmet need that they were powerless to fix?

Did it mean that their need was not really a need?

Did it mean that God had abandoned them and truly wanted them to die, as they feared? It sure felt that way . . .

It's easy to kick the dog when you are down right? And, so, went the days of the lives of the Israelites and their relationship to Moses.

As they perceived God not giving them the life they wanted, they took out their pain on the easiest next best thing: Moses.

Voicing their frustration to the point that we hear Moses fearing for his life in verse 4-- believing that in their extreme thirst the crowd might stone him if they didn't get a drink and fast.

Moses' natural response to the crisis as a leader was fearful of the crowd's response, but tempered. We hear in the words of this text, Moses saying to the crowds: simmer down stop bothering me and simply trust in God’s provisions-- as this was God's job to meet their needs.

I can imagine, if I were a member of the crowd, I would have found Moses' calm as a cucumber leadership style really annoying. Wouldn’t you?

Trust that God would provide?

"Oh, Moses," I would have said. "It's so much harder than that. When, tell me, when God is going to get God's act together and find us some water!”

For, secretly they hoped that in Moses' bag of superpower, bring on the 10 plagues kind of tricks, he could lead them by another spring and they'd worry about water no more. But, such was just not going to happen.

They needed to wait. They needed to wait to see what could become.

A friend of mine shared with me this week a similar frustration with the world and with God.

After being out of work for the past nine months due to a company downsizing in these difficult economic times, she is currently at the end of her rope.

After sending out over 500 resumes, doing everything she can to do what experts say to do when you are looking for work: networking, staying on a schedule everyday and trying not to get down on herself even as the funds in the bank account slowly begin to run down, she says the best parts of her life are dying more every day.

After interview after interview, rejection letter after rejection letter, and sleepless nights and pleas for prayer to any religiously minded person she knows, my friend shared she was beginning to think that God had forgotten her.

No one in her life seemed to care that she was out of work and without a job coming her way soon; she might lose everything she's worked so hard for including her modest home. She hears her pastor say often at church that “God is going to work things out” but to her God is a distant figure that doesn’t seem to care about her pain.

But in the spirit of these same frustrations, the Israelites were asked to have ACTIVE faith in their waiting.

They were asked to believe that God was still at work, even if they couldn’t recognize it in the moment.

And so, these were Moses' instructions from God: "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. . . . Strike the rock,” God said, "and water will come out of it."

It was a simple as that. Strike the rock with your staff.

I can imagine that laughter erupted from the crowd AND anxiety of what might be next (if this didn't work) from Moses. This God they were serving was just getting crazier and crazier all the time . . .

But, Moses did as instructed by the LORD. And to the amazement of all, it worked. Sweet God Almighty brought them water from a big ole rock!

Let’s stop here and note that this provision was nothing like they expected. NOTHING. But yet it was water nonetheless and EXACTLY what they needed.

The water came not from a spring (as it did before) nor from going back to Egypt (as they had suggested), rather, it came from something that was dead.

Though it would have not been a word they used at the time, the best way I know how to describe the scene is by calling it resurrection! That out of something that seemed life-less and certainly not life-giving, out flowed streaming of living water.

Professor Amy Erickson sums up what happens in this way: "It strikes me (pun intended!) that God choose to bring water-- and the life it symbolizes and will impart-- out of something that appears to be lifeless . . ."

But, this my friends is exactly how God works.

Dead is never dead in the kingdom of God.

Lost causes are never really lost.

And the broken down and washed out are really never without hope.

When I was serving as an associate pastor at Untied Methodist congregation while in seminary at Duke Divinity in North Carolina, I told it was my job to make most of the pastoral visits.

On a Monday afternoon only a couple of months into my second year at the church, I found myself sitting in a rocking chair on the back porch of Mrs. Melba’s house. She offered me some iced tea—as good southern women do. We began chatting about life. She wanted to know how my classes were going.

Mrs. Melba, a spunky woman in her early 70s, tried to keep a brave face for this young pastor student. But soon she was fighting back tears as she began to recount to me details about her husband’s recent death. He’d died of cancer recently.

She misses him more than she could even say.

She had trouble, she said, finding the energy to get out of bed in the mornings, many days still.

She couldn’t seem to find her purpose for living life anymore, she told me.

I remember this afternoon so well because in the moments that followed, I broke what I had learned only a few days earlier in class, some of the “rules” of pastoral care. My classmates and I were told to not show too much of our own emotions when we made visits. But, I cried too. Melba and I sat and rocked on that porch and cried. Her feelings of this great “dead end” sign life had handed her felt just as overwhelming to me. Sadness felt thick in the air.

Because most of all Melba felt like God had forgotten her. Everything around her felt dead. She felt dead without her beloved, even though her pulse told her she was still living.

A few years later, a man in mid 30s sat in my office. We were chatting about life. How crazy the amount of snow that winter had been.

But soon, Tom began telling me about how he felt his life had hit a dead-end too.

Tom was the father of three kids, but none of them were living with him at the time. His ex-wife had sued him for full custody of the kids, and had won because of the hot-shot lawyer she’d hired.

Lies had been told about him court.

Though Tom had made some mistakes in life—been a big fan of drinking too much in his younger years—he’d cleaned up his act and there was no good reason why he couldn’t even see his kids on the weekends.

To make matters worse, at a church Tom had previously attended, he was told by an associate pastor that he was no longer welcome to worship at the Sunday services. The pastor, it seemed was the reason his marriage broke up in the first place. His wife and the pastor had a long-term relationship on the side that he was just now finding out about.

Tom felt let God was as far away as possible. Everything around him felt dead too. No wife, no kids, and no church family to help him through this hard time in life.

But—and there is always a BUT in the kingdom of GOD—these feelings of deep despair was not the end for Melba and Tom.

Though in these moments they faced some of their darkest hours, God was still at work.

New water was about to come out of rocks in their lives.

As Melba continued to put one foot in front of the other, getting out of bed every morning, slowly she began to see that life wasn’t finished with her.

Through the loving embrace and watchful care of her church family, she started moving toward service of others once again. Melba started singing in the choir. She involved herself in the mission projects of United Methodist Women and she took her turn leading the lessons in her Sunday School class—using the lessons she learned about finding God in this hard place with other widows like herself.

And Tom, as he took the risk of being a part of a new church community, putting aside the hurt of his previous church in the past, began to see new life spring up around him too.

Tom’s secret passion for writing became a real gift to the church’s communication ministry.

And with encouragement from some new friends and the recommendation of a new lawyer, he was able after 5 long years of separation to spend weekends with his kids again.

Both Melba and Tom learned through their pain that this exactly how God works. Dead is never dead in the kingdom of God. Lost causes are never really lost. And the broken down and washed out are really never without hope.

So, my friends, I tell you today, the God of Israel, the God of Moses who struck that rock that day to watch water flow from such a dead place is alive and wanting to be at work in your life too.

Let us be active in our waiting.

Let us not grow weary in doing good.

And let us surround ourselves with loving community to remind us of the Lord’s goodness if we forget.

And in fact, this is what we are about to celebrate in a few minutes as we come to the table of God—we’ll taste and see that what was once dead has come to new life. We’ll taste and see the sweetness of resurrection called the body and blood of our Lord. And we’ll celebrate together that anything, yes, anything is possible in the kingdom of God. God is always at work!

AMEN