Is it enough? (Sermon from Oct 29, 2017)

Reading:  Deuteronomy 34:1-12


(Moses has led the people out of slavery in Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, all the way to the edge of the Promised Land.  All that’s left of the fearsome forty-year journey is to cross the Jordan River.  Before doing that, Moses does as he has done all along the way: he goes alone up a mountain, to be with God.  There, God shows him the whole of the Promised Land on the other side of the river; and then God breaks the news that Moses will not be entering it.  Rather, he will die and be buried where he is.)

Was it enough?

Was it enough just to see the Promised Land, for Moses to be able to die happy?

There’s something in us and in our culture that says No. 

Moses worked so hard and waited so long.  He led the people towards it – out from slavery, through the Red Sea, and then for forty years through the desert.  Through trial after trial Moses helped them learn to believe in the Promised Land and in their coming to it.  He took upon himself the fearsome danger of meeting God face to face in the dark cloud at the top of Mt Sinai, to be able to bring down to the people the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law which would help them live well and prosper in the land when they came to it.

And now they are here.  After forty years of ego-killing and soul-shaping desert journey, the people have followed Moses to the east bank of the Jordan River.  They are gathered on the plains of Moab ready to cross the Jordan at his signal.  One last time Moses goes up a mountain with God – this time Mount Nebo.  He goes to the very top summit – the pisgah as it’s called in Hebrew, and there God shows him all the land laid out before him – what a wondrous and welcome sight that must have been.  And God says, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

“Say what?” we might imagine Moses saying. 

Has Moses not earned it?  Does he not deserve to lead the people through the Jordan?  Even if he is not the one now to organize the people in inhabiting the land, does he not deserve at least to feel the soil of the promised land of Canaan beneath his feet?  Maybe retire to a Canaanite villa, and just enjoy the fruits of his labour?  Go for a cruise on Lake Galilee?  Play a few rounds of golf with his buddies?  Isn’t that what we see as an ideal retirement?  What we work all our lives for?  And then at least be buried in the land he believed in, and led the people to?

*  *  *  *

   

On April 3, 1968 a modern Moses – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Mason Temple, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ in Memphis, Tennessee.  It’s known now as his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, because after tracing and celebrating the progress of freedom for all people nurtured by God through the ages, now struggling to emerge in a new way in America in his time, he ends it with these words:

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.  Longevity has its place.  But I'm not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go up to the mountaintop.  And I've looked over.  And I've seen the Promised Land.  I may not get there with you.  But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

“And so I'm happy, tonight.  I'm not worried about anything.  I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

Those were the last words Rev. Martin Luther King spoke in public, because the next day he was shot and killed on the balcony of his Memphis motel room.  As he imagined might happen (because he knew the story of God’s people), he didn’t get to the land and the kind of society of equality for all that he saw coming step by step through history, that he helped people learn to believe in, and that he worked, struggled and suffered so much to lead them towards.  He died and was buried without ever feeling the sun of that new day on his skin, and the ground of that new world beneath his feet.

And yet, he said, “I’m so happy tonight.  I’m not worried about anything.  I’m not fearing any man!  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

It was enough just to see it. 

Is that what Moses felt?  Is that what we feel, too, when we find ourselves caught up, as they were, in the movement and the desire of God in our time?  As King said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.  Longevity has its place.  But I'm not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God's will.”

*  *  *  *

I’ve been thinking a lot about Gord Downie the last couple of weeks.  Gord Downie was a poet, an activist, a song-writer and a singer – lead singer of The Tragically Hip, a band he and some high school friends formed in Kingston 33 years ago.  Since his death just two weeks ago at age 53 of inoperable brain cancer, I cannot count the number of coffee-shop conversations about him I have overheard, the number of radio and TV specials and documentaries that have been aired, the number of days every second song on the radio seems to be one by The Tragically Hip, and the number of Facebook posts, blogs, tweets, and newspaper and magazine stories about him that have been written.

Gord Downie has become a national icon.  Many say it’s because he was at heart a story-teller who told the ordinary, everyday stories of all our lives.  Someone who put up on stage the stories of our lives as individuals trying to make sense of life, and of our life as a country trying to work out what kind of people we are and want to be on the face of the Earth.

And one story in particular stands out because it’s the one he completely committed himself to tell once he knew he was dying.  He called it “Secret Path” and it’s the story of Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who died in late Oct,  1966 in the northern Ontario wilderness after escaping a residential school in Kenora and trying to walk home alone 400 miles away.  In Gord’s hands and through the final months of his life, Chanie’s story became a series of songs and an illustrated book, a movie and also a concert on stage. 

And this wasn’t just a one-off at the end, a last-minute whim.  I saw something recently about a concert The Hip put on in 2012 at a community centre in Fort Albany First Nation – a mostly-Cree community on James Bay just south of Attawapiskat in northern Ontario.  And who knows how many other things like that they did?   

Over the years, Gord came to care deeply about the history and the current state of Canada’s First Nations.  So it made perfect sense that at the band’s final concert and his last chance to say something on that big a stage, he chose to speak about Canada choosing to live towards a better future of real truth and reconciliation with the people of the First Nations.  Then he gave his final months to do all he could to embed the story of Chanie Wenjack in the heart of the country he loved.

And was it enough?  Without getting to live in the new day himself, was it enough for him to die happy?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.  Longevity has its place.  But I'm not concerned about that now.  I just want to do God's will.”

That probably isn’t exactly how Gord Downie would have phrased it.  But without worrying about precisely what vocabulary we use, isn’t that how we all are called to live?

And in the end, isn’t using whatever we have and whatever we are to help the world in our time be a little bit closer to what God desires it to be, enough?

And not only enough, might it even be the only thing?

Reading:  Deuteronomy 34:1-12

(Moses has led the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and all the way through a fearsome wilderness.  Through fearsome and terrifying encounters with God, which no one else is capable of, he has been able to teach the people what they need to know to live well as a people in the Promised Land.  Now they are about to enter that land.  All they have to do is cross through the Jordan River when Moses gives them the signal ... when God tells Moses that the people will cross over, but he will not.  God takes Moses up to a mountain where he can see the Promised Land laid out before him, but he himself will not set foot in it.  He will die -- and does die, and God buries him in an unknown spot outside the Promised Land.  But telling the story even 700 years later, the people still remember Moses, and ask themselves if there has ever been another prophet like him.)

What struck the people of Israel -- and has struck me, is that Moses alone among the whole people of Israel was the one who was able to see God face to face.  The one who was able to go up the mountain, enter the dark cloud, risk the thunder and lightning, and go in to be with God in the dreadful tent of meeting.  And because of it, Moses was able to bring to the people what they needed to hear and to know, to be able to live well as a people on the face of the Earth -- to be the kind of people God set them free from slavery to be.

And while thinking about all that, I have not been able to stop thinking about Gord Downie.

Is it simply because he's everywhere and inescapable right now?  More continually present to us now in his death, than he was in life? 

Or is there actually something about him that connects with the Moses story?  Or about the Moses story that connects with him?

Is there something about us -- who we are, and what we need, and what we long for as human beings, that Moses and Gord Downie each touch in their own way?

What do you think?

...and the darkness does not extinguish it

Readings:  Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 and Letter to the Hebrews 13:2

(The world is not always safe., and the Bible knows it.  In Matthew's story of the incarnation, Jesus is born into a land ruled by a paranoid despot, people live in fear of his irrational and murderous policies, and Jesus' own family is forced to flee for their life.  In the Letter to the Hebrews, the later followers of Jesus are encouraged to be among those in the world who create and offer safe space and warm welcome for others.)

According to the United Nations there are now over 65,000,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in the world.  It’s a human crisis of migration and flight-for-life on a scale the world has not seen before.  And it affects all the world. 

In time, we are told – maybe as soon as our children’s and grand-children’s lifetimes, even greater human migrations than this will be brought on by climate change, as parts of the world we now inhabit suffer rising sea levels and the devastation of ever-more extreme drought, famine, and hurricane.  Humanity will re-align and reposition itself on the face of the Earth, and learn to live differently as a species.

But for now, a significant part of the migration that humanity is suffering is the result of human cruelty and evil – governments turning against their citizens, military forces misusing their powers and weaponry, despots turning oppression into exterminations, demagogues encouraging genocides. 

Causing masses of people to fear and to flee for their lives.

Louai, Israa, Sham and Zain, we are glad you are here.  We give thanks for your safe arrival.  We celebrate your life among us.  We lament your losses, the sorrow you suffer, the struggles and challenges you face.  With you, we pray for the well-being of your wider families, your friends, the people you work to stay in touch with.  And for the 65,000,000 others across the face of the Earth.

In the story of our faith and the way the story is told, when Jesus is born he is a refugee.  His father is forced by political circumstance and led by God to take his infant son and wife away from their homeland, and flee for their lives.  Leaving behind all they have known and had, just to survive, live another day, and have a chance to grow and grow up to be what they were meant to be.

And we believe this is a story of God – of how God is on Earth and within human life.  When humans are cruel and when cruelty becomes our politics, even God – at least, the life of God on Earth, is at risk.

Or is it?  Is God’s life on Earth at risk when in danger?  When exposed?  When vulnerable?

Or is this maybe exactly when God, and the real nature and will and purpose of God become all the more evident, committed, active, visible, public and strong?

Just over two years ago the world was shocked by a terrible image of a three-year-old boy drowned and washed up on a beach in his family’s fevered and ill-fated attempt to cross the Mediterranean to safety, and eventually maybe to Canada.  And the world responded. 

And we responded.  I remember the announcement one Sunday in worship a few weeks after all the world saw that image for anyone interested in talking about what we can do as a church to stay after worship, the number that stayed back and gathered in that corner and discussed, the small working that was formed, the invitation that came to join with four other congregations also wanting to do something … that has led to where we are, and who is with us today.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, we are advised to not neglect to show hospitality to strangers and to people beyond ourselves, because through such hospitality some have come to entertain angels.

The reference, of course, is to the ancient story of Abram and Sarai who welcomed and provided a meal and a safe place to rest to three strangers who happened by their desert encampment, and who turned out to be three angels – or maybe even two angels and God, who at that point began the blessing that changed their life and the life of the world forever.

So who are – or who may be, the angels in our story?  In our humble adventure into hospitality?

Is it Louai and Israa – doing all they can to find a safe place in the world to raise their family, and enriching our community and the lives of all they meet, in the process?  Is it Sham or Zain – in their childish happiness at what they see, in their simple joy of life, in their need and weakness stirring up the muscles of love and protective joy in the hearts of all who encounter them?  To us, each may be an angel in their own way and at different times along the way.  Just as any of the other 65,000,000 may be where they are.

And might the angels also be the number of our members who gathered in that corner, the five churches that joined forces, the co-ordinating committee that steered the work through, the volunteers and helpers and supporters who have appeared along the way and are still doing whatever is needed and whatever they can?  Angels each in their way?

Might it be that when we give ourselves to the work and opportunities of hospitality to strangers and to people beyond ourselves, that we all – humanity as a whole, and we as we participate in it, grow up just a little bit more towards what we are called and created to be? 

That as we open our country and ourselves to refugees that we live up to our calling to be the image of God, and to live in the likeness of God on Earth?

That as we offer safe space and support to others in need of home and care and a safe place to be, we find ourselves living in and living out  God’s good will and purpose, and becoming in our life together the Word made-flesh and made-alive on the face of the Earth?  

It doesn't take much to make a golden calf (October 15, 2017)

Reading:  Exodus 32:1-15, 19-20

The people are on their journey from slavery in Egypt to life in a Promised Land.  They are following Moses and God, and have been protected and blessed.  Now they are at the foot of Mt Sinai.  Moses has come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments which God has given the people to follow as a society, and they have agreed to follow God's way.  

But when Moses goes back up the mountain for another 40 days and nights of conversation with God, the people grow anxious about not seeing either God or Moses for longer than they expected.  In their anxiety they ask Aaron, the second-in-command, to make them a more accessible god.

It doesn’t take much to make a golden calf.

What does the story say?  When asked to make a god to guide the people through the wilderness, Aaron asked for “the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters.”  And it was this – their ear rings, that he melted down to make the calf.

Gold ear rings.  It was part of the jewelry the people of Israel had asked for, and were given by their old neighbours back in Egypt when God started to send plagues against the Egyptians, and the Egyptians were happy to try to win the Israelites’ favour.  The ear rings were part of the blessing of their journey with God.  And that’s what they used to make a golden calf – a god to guide them through what remained of the wilderness, a god to set up against the fear they felt when Moses and God disappeared for longer than they liked, a god to guard against the emptiness they felt within their own souls as they looked at the uncharted territory and long journey ahead of them.

It’s always nice to have a god we can see, and touch, and carry with us, and feel comfortable with.  And it doesn’t take much to make one.

And I don’t think we should be too hard on the Israelites for doing this. 

In the story, God of course is infuriated.  That’s the way the people saw God for a long time.  And on one level God’s anger is understandable – that after freeing the people from slavery, leading them through the Red Sea, saving them from the Pharaoh’s army, providing them meat and bread and water along the way, giving them Ten Commandments to help them live as a truly human and godly society on Earth, and promising them a land to live that way in – that after doing all that for the people, as soon as God and Moses disappear up the mountain for 40 more days and nights of leadership chats, the people should so quickly turn from the God of their salvation and healing, and make another god – a Golden Calf of the ear rings God helped them get!  It really is enough to make a true God mad.

But on another level – the level that Moses helps God remember, and that according to the story God increasingly lives into, it’s understandable.  The wilderness is scary.  The future is uncharted territory.  The Promised Land is unknown and far away.  The task of living well and in good relation to everything along the way is a big one.  To know that life has good meaning and real purpose is sometimes more than we can cope with.  Especially when God and Moses and clear answers and firm direction from on high seem to disappear, and we feel left alone with our anxieties and emptiness.

And Moses understood this.  Remember it was Moses who wasn’t sure of the whole venture right from the beginning, and who didn’t feel up to the task.  All along the way Moses needed and was given help and support, was shown signs of God’s power and might, said at one point – even after seeing the power of God at the Red Sea, that he still would not go one more step in the way God told him to go unless God would promise to go with him every step of the way.  “No angel, God; no divine messenger; no intermediary or subordinate power,” Moses said.  “It has to be you, God, yourself, or I will not go one more step in leading these people anywhere.”  And God said okay, because it was not an unreasonable request. 

How can we go ahead into the wilderness, how can we feel comfortable in life, how can we face the mystery of everything and our own emptiness in the face of it, without God … or, because God sometimes seems too hard to see, some kind of god that at least we can understand and feel comfortable with?

And we all do it.  It’s human and natural and universal.  We all have our golden ear rings that we are blessed with somewhere along the way, and that we turn into a golden calf to guide us and guard us against our anxieties.

Sometimes it really is the trinkets and treasures of life – the bling and the look of success in the eyes of the world that, once achieved, so easily becomes the purpose of life, what we reassure ourselves with, and what we work for and find comfort in.  And as long as we can maintain the look and keep stocking the bling, we feel okay and that our life is on track.

It might be awards, honours and prizes … for anything, really – in school for academic achievement, in sports, in business, in who knows what?  The awards and honours start out as a blessing – a sign and affirmation of some gift, or maybe of perseverance and commitment, and the ability to be able to do something good to make a difference for others in the world.  But at what point for some folks do the awards and honours and prizes become themselves the reason for being, and the way that they have of staving off fear of their own emptiness and need for reassurance against the mystery of a meaningful life?

It happens to communities – even communities of faith.  A community of faith is planted in a new and wilderness spot to make a difference for good in that part of the world.  It grows and flourishes and in time is blessed with people, resources, a building, a history of faithful ministry and mission.  But life is long, history is never-ending, and the mystery of faithful mission and purpose is great.  At what point do the blessings along the way – the budget and the numbers of members and the building itself, become the god instead so that as long as these things are served and maintained, all is thought to be well.

It happens to countries – that a people come to land different than what they have known, they encounter people and customs different than they understand, and they are called into the mystery of learning to live well in relation to things beyond their experience and understanding.  And they begin in that direction, but then as soon as they manage to create a confederation of provinces and tie together a string of settlements from coast to coast to make a country that they understand and control, how easy is it for that creation of their own hands to become a god, a guard against the mystery of all else that is around them, a way of boiling the wildness and fullness of reality down to something they can understand and feel comfortable with?

It’s understandable.  We do it all the time.

Life, though, has a way of breaking through, and breaking down whatever false gods we fall into following and trusting – the way that Moses, when he came down from the mountain and saw what the people had done, as much as he understood why they did it, still did the only thing he could for their good.  He “took the calf they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.”  Wow!  What a bitter lesson that must have been!

But sometimes life does that.  And it can be cruel.  It can be hard and tragic. 

I think of stories from Fort McMurray last year, and this year from BC and the Caribbean and the Gulf Coastal states of people who have lost almost everything they have had in the world to fires and to floods and to the extreme force of hurricanes.  They have had to flee – like the people of Israel, like refugees, with only what they could carry in their car.  And how often have they said, “It’s only stuff.  What matters is that we’re alive, and that we have one another.  Thank God for what we have.”

Not that God sent the fires or caused the floods or directed the hurricanes.  I don’t believe that.  But is it maybe that in the midst of these things, as the blessings of life and of the journey we are on are taken away, and as the gods we sometimes make of them are knocked off their pedestals, that the true God behind and within, and above and beyond all things is there ready and waiting to catch us, ready and waiting to be found again, ready and waiting to help us rediscover and continue a journey and a life of real meaning and purpose?

Is that maybe what’s happening in Canada these days with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and with the way that some of our illusory myths and idolatries about ourselves as a nation are being shaken, and broken down, and shown to be false?  Is it maybe a chance to regain some measure of the real journey we are called to be on as a people, to face again the Mystery of what we might yet be as a nation, and to commit once again to God’s commands of living in right relations with all that is?

Is this maybe what every church is up against, each time we stop and really ask ourselves, what is it we are here for?  What are we really about?  Are we just a budget and numbers of members and a building?  Or are these merely tools and blessings we have along the way, as we serve a larger purpose, and follow a greater goal – a goal that is nothing less than God’s will for the healing and enlightening of all who are here in this part of the world where we have been planted?

It doesn’t take much to make a golden calf – to turn the blessings we have along the way into a god.  

The wilderness and the journey and the call of God, as well as the emptiness and inadequacy and powerlessness we feel within ourselves can be scary.   

But God is always there – ready and waiting to catch us when we leap or even just stumble into the unknown, ready and waiting to be found again … and again … and again as our God, ready and waiting to lead us as we are willing on a journey of deep and holy meaning and purpose towards a good and glorious land we have not yet seen.

 

Towards Sunday, October 15, 2017

Reading:  Exodus 32:1-14
(The people of Israel are still at the foot of Mt Sinai, and it's no more than a month since Moses brought down the Ten Commandments from God and the people agreed to obey them.  Prior to that, God and Moses set them free from slavery, led them through the Red Sea, saved them from the Pharaoh's army, provided bread, meat and water in the wilderness, and have given them hope of a Promised Land that they will journey to and live in as God's people on Earth.  

So what do they do when Moses goes back up the mountain to converse with God for 40 days and nights?  They grow restless and afraid when they can't see Moses or his God.  And in place of the God of Moses who has led them well thus far, they get Aaron -- Moses' brother and second-in-command, to make them an idol, a god they can see -- a golden calf, to which they now bow down as the god who will see them through.)

One thing that amazes me is that this is the official history of the Jewish people.  It's the state-sanctioned, dominant-class-approved story of the nation and its people.  It's what would be in the government-approved textbooks.  

And it's a story of massive sin, failure of character, weakness, misdirection, fear, idolatry and self-inflicted harm ... all in the end redeemed only by the gracious forgiveness and forbearance of God.

I wonder what our national story would be like, if we as a people had the same courage, honesty and faith in the way we tell it, and what we choose to tell in it?

* * * * *

Specific to this story, are the people of Israel unique within humanity and among all nations in making a golden calf of their own design, along the way of their national journey?  In starting out well, and then giving themselves as a people to something other than God?  In saying "in God we trust" or calling themselves a godly or even a Christian nation, and in a number of ways having a different god in mind than the God of the Bible?  

* * * * *

One more side note: the "golden calf" was a little bull -- the bull being a sign of vitality and strength often associated with, and deified by warlike and aggressive kingdoms.  The people of Israel chose to worship a sign of worldly strength and power (albeit a little one).  

Are there ways we do this?  In both our personal and national life?  What are today's signs of worldly strength and power?  Are they compatible with obedience to, and trust in God?  Are we as dependent on the gracious forgiveness and forbearance of God, as the people of Israel realized and remembered they were? 

And if so, it's no disgrace.  To the contrary, it helps us find more deeply the real way in to a very holy company.