This Sermon Needs a New Title — because the chapter title wasn’t working
The truth of any journey is that some parts are easier than others. Some parts are more enjoyable than others. Some parts are more scenic than others. Some parts make more sense. Some parts will look different from the rearview mirror eventually (we hope).
In our series which spans 52 weeks, this week’s travels feel hard and uncomfortable and awkward to me...a little like shoes that you don’t want to put on because you already have blisters from another pair.
It also feels a little rushed because of how fast the world is moving. And I am hoping the rearview mirror helps us see more fully how this message fits in over time.
This is part of what it means to make the road by walking.
Maybe this week feels hard because it collides with our tradition of remembering those we have loved and have lost on All Saints Day. Maybe this week feels hard because it is set against the backdrop of our civic calendar which has us voting on Tuesday in one of the most divisive elections of the past century. Maybe this week’s travels feel hard because we are in our 8th month of social separation while we seek to keep ourselves and those we love safe.
Last week, we stood with Moses as he questioned God’s call to the work of liberating the Israelites.
Today, we pick up that story as the Israelites have emerged after 40 years in the wilderness, arriving at Sinai. Having been plucked from a life of oppression and dependence upon the crushing authority of the Egyptians, wilderness for the Israelites was a demonstration of how disorienting it is to walk away from everything you know, even if what you knew was awful and demoralizing, as you try to create and to become something new.
So having traveled through the strangeness of wilderness, I would imagine that the Israelites arrived at their destination confused, at loose ends, and in need of some forms and some structures.
So here at Mount Sinai, Moses receives from God the law that will shape their lives. Not just their individual lives but their collective lives – this law shapes their faith, their economy, their social structure.
Today we heard about the big 10, if you will, but the law goes on in great detail, describing how and where they will worship, what they can and cannot eat, how various missteps will be punished. The Sinai covenant is really a how-to manual for building a new society.
I found myself looking at our scriptures this week and seeking once again the foundational beams of the story line. Because sometimes we need to see the foundation to understand the details of the structure.
Here are some beams for our pondering this week:
The first theme I want us to consider is wilderness. While our selected scriptures skip the details of the Israelites wilderness adventure, the idea of wilderness is a fundamental one to our understanding of these stories and our understanding of life with God.
We need to remember what happened between Moses’ call and arriving at Mount Sinai. There was hunger, there was thirst, there was bickering and there was confusion.
Wilderness is often the season of profound disorientation.
For the Israelites, wilderness was something that happens between enslavement and liberation.
Right now, living in the space between our pre-COVID “normal lives” and whatever our new normal will become might be our wilderness – life between what we once knew that is no more and what will eventually become.
We might find ourselves freed of things we didn’t even know were oppressing ourselves on the other side of this wilderness season. But meanwhile, we are disoriented, perplexed, watching and wondering what will come next.
Wilderness might be the necessary space between enslavement to powers over us and liberation.
How might you begin to think about this as a season of wilderness, expecting some things to change and never be the same, finding a way to let the confusion be what it is knowing that there is a transition to something new? (leave some silence)
Another theme from this story of Moses leading the Israelites is the oneness of community. I confess that getting there with what is provided in McLaren’s book is a bit of work. But I encourage you, in the week to come, to consider how the laws that were provided – both in the Hebrew scriptures as Moses receives the commandments on Sinai and by Jesus as he speaks to the officials – are about building and strengthening the fabric of community – our shared life.
In our North American frontier mentality of rugged individualism, we have tended to read scripture as a guidebook for how to perfect our individual lives. We seek our own righteousness and salvation, often at the expense of a greater good. I believe this is part of the reason we find ourselves at the divide we are living in right now – we are far too accustomed to seeking our own security and our own good, failing to make room for the other. I like to drive my own car. I like to have a big yard. I like it when the trash company picks up my trash twice a week – full bin or not. I like my candidate and my political expectations. How about you?
But in the Law and in Jesus’ mandate to love one another, the promise is for a whole community – a whole body of people. For the Israelites it was about being God’s chosen people in the promised land. For us, as we seek to follow Jesus, it is about the Kingdom of God – where our individual well-being is not the main point but rather reclamation and gathering in for the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted.
I wonder, this week, how we might set our feet in the direction of the greater good, seeking the wellbeing of the community it which we find ourselves? (leave some silence)
C
Today, in addition to absorbing scripture to hear from God, we have work to do to remember the fullness of our community – our community of Faith church and the greater human community in this season – fullness that we have lost but that we also anticipate being restored as the Kingdom emerges.
Let us enter into a time of remembrance together.
(Transition to “Remembering the Saints” read by Clyde.)
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