Sermon Seeds: Holy and Humble Curiosity
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Year A
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 17)
Lectionary citations:
Exodus 3:1-15 with Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c or
Jeremiah 15:15-21 with Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28
Worship resources for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost Year A, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 17) are at Worship Ways
Special resources for ministry during the Coronavirus Pandemic:
Worship Resources:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E_RKfy_VOzelb5jbXV7UW5ytjmiI-_Md-W0H8UaRlaM/edit
Digital Pastoral Care & Grief:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sdalu3udRXIadlo9A_E0J2URF0EqzXHAFlQUhXl_esY/edit
Living psalms are here, scroll down:
https://www.ucc.org/worship_worship-ways
Sermon Seeds
Focus Scripture:
Exodus 3:1-15
Additional reflection on Romans 12:9-21
Focus Theme:
Holy and Humble Curiosity
Reflection:
by Kathryn Matthews
Things were not good for the people of God, back in Egypt. Moses had escaped after killing one of their taskmasters, but his people were still trapped in slavery: brought low, pressed down, suffering. From down below, they cried out to God, and, we read, “their cry for help rose up to God” (2:23). Perhaps they wondered if there was anyone there, listening to their cry.
However, J. Gerald Janzen writes that a biblical faith tells the story with the conviction that “Every cry, with the individual throb of suffering it expresses, is falling, cry for cry, not on deaf ears, but on the heart of God. If God is hidden, God is hidden within the suffering” (Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion).
(There’s something that could be examined more closely in our own lives: the idea that “God is hidden within the suffering.”)
God remembered those ancient promises
And so God heard the cry of the people, and God remembered having made certain promises to them. Something had to be done. We know, from the earlier story about a baby drawn up from the waters, that a plan had, in a sense, already been put in place, even before “God remembered” or “took notice” of God’s people and their suffering.
Nonetheless, Walter Brueggemann finds it significant that the slaves, not God, were the ones who provided “the initial impetus for the exodus confrontation”: their cry is “characteristic of Israel’s powerful tradition of ‘lament'” (An Introduction to the Old Testament).
It seems fair to say, then, that the plan that was in place got kicked into motion by a relational, interpersonal move by Israel–crying out from their hearts to a God who, they believed, must be there, listening, a God who must care–and therefore, a God who will respond, a God who will do something about their predicament.
Minding the sheep in Midian
Meanwhile, Moses was minding his own business, or perhaps he was minding someone else’s business, because that’s what his father-in-law’s sheep would have been. He had gone way, way out, beyond the wilderness, to the mountain of God.
We remember this mountain as Sinai, also called Horeb, probably a sacred place for the Midianites, his remote cousins with whom he had settled down and gotten married, started up a family, made something of a life for himself.
Now he could just do the regular things that ordinary people do: taking care of business–in that situation, tending the flock of sheep. Perhaps Moses thought that he had things in rather good order, for a man on the run, a man wanted by the powers-that-be for murder.
Mirages in the wilderness?
Out there in the Sinai peninsula, past the wilderness, it must have been hot, and the air would have felt thick and shimmery. It would have been easy to see mirages and other apparitions, so when Moses suddenly came upon an angel of the Lord and a bush on fire, he may not have trusted his own eyes.
Perhaps that’s why he drew closer to inspect this astonishing thing more carefully. He was brought up short, however, by nothing less than the Voice of God.
The inexpressible, up on the mountain
Here the story somehow pulls together the indescribable, inexpressible, awesome (that over-used word!) presence of God and the most mundane of things: shoes. Janzen observes that speaking of transcendence is so difficult that all we can do is rely on our words, our limited, inadequate words (Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion).
God, frightening and unapproachable, warned Moses not only to keep his distance, but also to take off his shoes. Yes, it was holy ground, high up on that mountain, far beyond the wilderness, far away from home. But it was also someplace where God could talk to Moses in such a way that his life, and the life of his people, would never be the same.
Where hospitality and reverence intersect
Taking our shoes off on sacred ground is a familiar idea, but so is “kicking off our shoes” and getting comfortable. In those days, inviting someone to take off their sandals was a sign of hospitality, Janzen says, and “Moses finds himself in a presence that is unfathomably sacred, a presence that invites him to be at home at the same time that it claims his profound respect.” Moses, who “has felt himself ‘an alien residing in a foreign land’ (2:22) now finds himself a guest of God.”
But Janzen takes it one step “deeper,” in a way that makes Moses seem more alert and open, and vulnerable to the call of God. Reflecting on the purpose of wearing shoes, he observes, “Footwear protects us from the ground, and it renders us insensitive to what our soles (and our souls!) might feel there.” Perhaps God wanted to make Moses comfortable enough that he would listen and take the message to heart (Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion).
A story of call
It takes only a sentence for God to reassure Moses that this is no mirage, that this is the God of his own ancestors, the God who makes promises and keeps them. Right away, Moses covers his face, afraid to look.
God then explains the situation, using lots of verbs in describing what God has done so far: observed, heard, know, come down, deliver, bring, seen, and, of course, send. That last verb–“send”–is the one that makes all the difference in the world to Moses.
More than a lovely memory
This could have been a lovely story or a reassuring moment in the faith life of Moses (surely he would have found it good news that God had heard his people’s cry and was going to respond), but no, there’s much more in it for Moses: this is the story of his call from God.
And Moses was just the sort of person who would have understood God’s motivation, James Newsome writes, because he, too, “knew what it meant to protect and defend others…[and] knew that caring for others was expensive and hurtful” (Texts for Preaching Year A). Or, as Brent Strawn describes Moses, he “has deliverer in his blood” (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts).
Moses would have understood God’s determination to rescue the Hebrew people, to “pry them loose from the grip of Egypt,” as Eugene Peterson renders it in The Message.
Arguing with God
There are several things that draw our attention in this one piece of the very long conversation between God and Moses that begins here and continues through the first five books of the Bible, a conversation that is sometimes surprisingly contentious.
Moses may be awe-struck, but even here, the first time that God talks to him, Moses talks back. His reservations are expressed in questions that could be boiled down to “Who am I (to do such a great thing as deliver my people)?” and “Who are you (or at least who can I say sent me to do this bold thing)?” And so we hear that naming is important.
How can this be?
Janzen argues that Moses needs to know how he (simple sheepherder that he is) will be able to convince an entire nation of people that they should follow him in overthrowing the grip of the mightiest empire on earth, how he is “to persuade them that such a name should inspire them with hope.”
In the mystery of God’s name is freedom and power to deal with every situation and to enable and empower the people, beginning with Moses, to do the same. The name that God provides, Janzen writes, “identifies God as that ultimate mystery who is free to be whoever and whatever God chooses to be, in whatever situation or circumstance” (Exodus, Westminster Bible Companion).
Questions of “who”
The two “who” questions come together in God’s response to Moses: the simple words, “I will be with you.” Moses doesn’t need to worry about who he is (and isn’t), or to fret about his inadequacies, the formidable task ahead, or the obstacles in his way.
After all, Brent Strawn writes, “ultimately, this call really isn’t about who Moses is. It is about Who is with Moses.” Many commentators make the point–a key one, of course–that the all-powerful, too-awesome-to-behold God still (usually!) works through the small, intimidated humans God loves.
We recall all of those verbs describing God’s actions, until we get to the key word, “send,” which means Moses will, after all, have to do some of the work. Still, it’s God who plays the most important role; it’s God who’s at the center of the story and the key person in it: Strawn says that the presence and power of God will make all of Moses’ work possible: “Moses will never have to deliver alone again” (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts).
Hearing our call in community
While the great drama of the Exodus is initiated up on that mountaintop, this is also a very personal story of call (not that the personal and the communal natures of call can be severed). Moses was doing his chores, wandering with the sheep, perhaps fittingly going too far (beyond the wilderness–most of us are afraid even to go into the wilderness, let alone beyond it), and encountering God, who gave him, Brueggemann writes, “a larger purpose for his life.”
It’s this “larger purpose,” Brueggemann says, that changes everything in Moses’ life, and in our lives as well (The Threat of Life).
Waiting for our lives to break open
We may have experienced this already, Brueggemann says, or perhaps we’re still waiting for it to happen, still hoping to hear the call that will transform our life, that will “break it open.” Our lives today are lived far away from the mountaintop beyond the wilderness, and yet we must feel lost at times even in the everyday, regular lives we live.
Deep down, we hunger for the holiness of God and a larger purpose for our lives, to discover our lives, like Moses, “saturated with the reality of God.” The questions that Moses asked out loud might have been about “Who am I?” and “Who are you?” but inside, Brueggemann wonders if he wasn’t asking, “What could be different about the purpose of my life because of the reality of this God?” (The Threat of Life).
All of creation longing for liberation
And this “what” is key to our call. Brent Strawn observes that the story isn’t trying to explain “why” Moses is called; that’s “theoretical,” but “the what of calling” is not (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts). We look around us today, in a wilderness of our own, and listen and wonder about God’s call in our lives.
Brueggemann links this story of impending liberation with Paul’s lyrical description in Romans 8 of the liberation that all of creation longs for, groans for, a liberation from decay, and today, a liberation from the greed and violence to which we have subjected it: “Imagine the whole of creation destined for an Exodus liberation!” (The Threat of Life).
A haunting beauty
In the stark and haunting beauty of the wilderness, if we draw away and listen for God’s voice, and seek God’s presence, we might find ourselves drawn into a project much larger than we could ever imagine: the healing of creation. Like Moses, we might consider ourselves inadequate. We might waste time debating “why” we were called, instead of getting to work on the “what” of the larger purpose our lives have been given.
“Perhaps,” Strawn writes, “more deliverances would happen if the called were more concerned with the what of, not to mention the fact of, their calling instead of debating the why” (The Lectionary Commentary: The Old Testament and Acts).
Pursued by holiness
We might also consider the terrible alternative: living a life with a sense of call. We could refuse to listen, refuse to go up on the mountaintop, close ourselves off from the holiness that pursues us and calls out our name. Life is certainly simpler that way, and we are certainly free to say “no.”
In his commentary on Exodus in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Brueggemann describes the uncalled life as “an autonomous existence in which there is no intrusion, disruption, or redefinition, no appearance or utterance of the Holy.”
A clash with culture
Our culture tells us that we should be independent (and so should those “other” people who don’t seem to know how to look after themselves) and self-sufficient. We just have to make it on our own. But Brueggemann thinks we are only fooling ourselves, for like Moses, we are not autonomous: “There is the One who knows and calls by name, even while we imagine we are unknown and unsummoned.”
In the end, the question, then, is whether we’ll have the courage to listen and respond, trusting that wherever we go, to Egypt, to Pharaoh, to the ends of the earth, we will never be alone. Ted Loder has written a beautiful prayer, “The downsweep of your wing,” that expresses our hesitation before the call of the God of “forbidding holiness as well as exciting horizons.”
When, Loder prays to God, “I don’t have enough inspiration, wisdom, imagination, will, or faith to do what seems to lay its claim on me, or to work the change that seems required, have mercy on me and cover me with grace…find a way to me, bestow some gift I cannot name…” (in Wrestling the Light).
One pictures Moses, coming down from that mountain, soaked in grace, never alone, and never again the same. May our lives never be the same, as well.
The Reverend Kathryn M. Matthews retired in 2016 after serving as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio.
You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments below the post on our Facebook page.
A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.
For further reflection:
Parker J. Palmer, 21st century
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”
Thomas Merton, 20th century
“Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.”
and
“For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.”
Mother Theodore Guerin, 19th century
“We are not called upon to do all the good that is possible, but only that which we can do.”
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, 20th century
Cordelia: “I hope I’ve got a vocation.” Charles: “I don’t know what that means.” Cordelia: “It means you can be a nun. If you haven’t a vocation it’s no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can’t get away from it, however much you hate it.”
Anne Lamott, 21st century
“I’m here to be me, which is taking a great deal longer than I had hoped.”
Phillips Brooks, 19th century, Trinity Church, Boston
“Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.”
Additional reflection on Romans 12:9-21:
by Kathryn Matthews
Paul’s soaring theology of grace might spark criticism that he didn’t have an ethical dimension to his teaching, but his Letter to the Romans responds masterfully to this question with a “therefore” that describes the proper response to God’s grace, and what it looks like to be transformed by God.
Written to the “new church start” at Rome, the letter is full of advice, as Paul offers guidance in the early days of the church to a young community, a little like a newly-married couple (which is why this is a wonderful wedding message text).
The congregation in Rome is already experiencing some problems, some conflict and challenges, as they fashion a new life together, rooted in love: not a warm, fuzzy, soft-focus love, but a clear, community, interdependent kind of love. In our efforts today to be loving communities of hospitality and grace, we have much in common with our earliest ancestors, and much to learn from their teacher.
Flowing exhortations
Our reading this week is a long list of instructions from Paul about how to live the Christian life, as individuals and as a community. The exhortations seem to flow, one upon another, as if Paul has so many things he wants to say to them, like the parents of the bride and groom at a wedding: “Oh, and just one more thing I forgot to tell you…”–but it’s clear that this life together is also a witness to the world.
Even a tiny community of committed and faithful people can understand themselves as mustard seeds of a goodness that surprises everyone with the potential to transform everything around them. More than earnest efforts to convert others to our way of thinking and believing, the lives of Christians following this ethic–everyday saints living in everyday holiness–would be both powerful and transformative in a world shaped by self-interest, self-righteousness, and “nice guys finishing last.”
So this Christian ethic isn’t just about focusing inward on the life of the church (although caring about one another in the church is very important) but also about turning our attention and our love on the world that God loves, too.
Responding to injury and insult with a blessing
While Charles Cousar cautions preachers not to “domesticate” this text “by appealing to a vague and sentimentalized form of love” (Texts for Preaching Year A), the love Paul describes here is anything but vague or sentimentalized. We might even call it “tough love,” for what is tougher for human beings than to turn away evil with good–to respond to injury or insult with a blessing?
After all, doesn’t it feel good to give food, for example, to people who, we feel (and judge), are deserving of our help? Yes, but many folks find it galling to give to someone who, they have determined, “don’t deserve it.”
The harder challenge
Even harder is to give, to share, to bless someone who has actually wronged us, or threatened to do so. Wasn’t the world taken aback years ago by the grace of the Amish families in Pennsylvania who forgave the man who had shot ten of their daughters, little schoolgirls in their classroom? The wholehearted commitment of their community to the ethic described here by Paul, ironically, sparked debate and questioning even among fellow Christians.
And yet, as Hank Langknecht puts is so well, “Christians are not allowed the indulgence of having enemies or permission to assume that we are right” (New Proclamation Year A 2008). Do we doubt that the world would be transformed if millions of Christians refused to have enemies, or to assume that we are always and thoroughly right?
Unfathomable grace from the depth of pain
Still, this is a thorny question, in light of the ongoing tensions–and anguish–caused by the resurgence and refueling of racist movements in the United States and around the world, as well as the “good trouble” of voices rising up in protest against longstanding violence and injustice that have never gone away but simply “escaped” our attention (were we even paying attention?).
Some injuries and longstanding aggrievements are so deep, so profound, that they challenge our powers to forgive and forget, either individually or communally, especially when their effects go on and on, from generation to generation, sometimes taking somewhat different form but persistently pressing down and damaging God’s children in undeniable ways.
Memories in Charlottesville
With the recent anniversary of the Charlottesville protests and the killing of a young woman who came to that city to be in solidarity with those witnessing for racial justice (also, the injuries of many more who were run down by her killer), we might consider whether we have even begun to remember well enough the terrible wrongs that were done there, not just in 2017 but long, long before. Historical markers honoring Confederate leaders seemed to hold more significance than the lost memories of those they enslaved, and the justice owed their descendants.
As a former student at the University of Virginia (almost half a century ago, which is very “recent” in that historic town), I was filled with horror as I watched the television coverage of the 2017 demonstrations by white supremacists and Nazis–Nazis–as they marched across “The Lawn” and around the elegant rotunda that had filled me with wonder all those years ago.
I was so young and idealistic in those days, a history major surrounded by historic, beautiful landmarks from the “idealistic youth” of our nation’s founding–both the country and the buildings “designed by Mr. Jefferson himself,” they told us.
What does a space stand for?
The campus felt like a kind of secular sacred space, like the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial, a place that tourists came to see in order to learn about America. It was supposed to stand for something, if only in its ideals and not in the realization of those ideals: freedom, justice, equality, the dignity and worth of all of God’s children.
That was how I saw it. Again, horror is the word that comes to mind as I watched those polo-shirted Nazis carrying torches as they marched, yelling racial slurs. In my naive “older age,” I still thought of those grounds as holding special meaning.
Where education is lacking
My education, both formal and informal, was lacking in countless ways, and half a century later, I’m chastened by every new lesson and insight, including an article in the Washington Post about the recently opened Memorial to Enslaved Laborers on the campus of Mr. Jefferson’s beloved university (A powerful new memorial to U-Va.’s enslaved workers reclaims lost lives and forgotten narratives).
This is no small marker discreetly placed near a building–in fact, there actually is such a marker near the Rotunda (placed as recently as 2007!), honoring “the several hundred men and women, both free and enslaved, whose labor between 1817 and 1826 helped realize Thomas Jefferson’s design” for the school (it’s always about Jefferson, not the workers).
Do we see what they did there? Utterly inadequate…but so was my own understanding and my grasp of the reality that was out of sight, by design, not only architecturally but in the telling of history as well. The article describes the way the lives of the slaves were hidden at the school and up at Monticello, “underneath” the lives of those they served.
A glimmer of hope
Perhaps that’s why I’m so moved by this description of the new memorial, placed prominently right next to the walk I used to take from my dorm to the row of shops and off-campus restaurants we would frequent. There’s no missing this history, no denying or hiding or pretending it’s an “unfortunate but necessary” part of something otherwise beautiful, our history in all its “glory.”
Does a new, beautiful-in-its-own-way, its-own-sorrow, memorial on a college campus make up for racism and its nightmare of a legacy? Of course not. But I’m struck by the description by the writer who notes the “curious acoustic phenomenon” of the memorial’s layout: “The conversations of people inside the gray, granite walls are clearly audible, even from a distance.”
While this didn’t totally surprise the designers, it did become much more “evident” after the memorial was completed.
Whispers and roars
I was thinking about our own ability and opportunity, then, to speak out in our own time and place when we witness harm and hatred visited upon others, to stand up and step out in protest against words and practices that violate the humanity of any of God’s children.
Might our whispers, our softly spoken words, however shaky and tentative, still be heard, surprisingly, by those who need to receive messages of justice and hope? What effect might the example of our lives have on others?
The person in the crowd
I’m reminded of the story told by the brilliant writer, Isabel Wilkerson, in her excellent new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. (You may recall her earlier work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Warmth of Other Suns.)
Wilkerson writes about “the man in the crowd,” August Landmesser of Hamburg, Germany, who stood–bravely still–in the midst of his countrymen, who were all raising their arms in salute to Hitler. The famous photograph is a stark illustration of quiet, dangerous, stubborn courage in the face of evil. (The rest of August’s story is consistent with this witness.)
Admittedly, many of us struggle with how to respond communally and personally to groups espousing and chanting hate toward other groups and individuals, all of them part of the seemingly fraying fabric of this heartbroken nation. As Wilkerson recalls Landmesser’s story, she asks, “What would it take to be him now?”
Would we measure up?
We wonder, too, whether we would be able, under the same circumstances, to speak and act with the grace and inspiring generosity of the mother of Heather Heyer, the young woman who lost her life while standing against such hatred in the streets of Charlottesville.
Would we think first not of our own pain, but of the pain of others, as that mother did, when she was informed of her daughter’s death and expressed concern for the other mother–the parent of the young man who drove the car–who also “lost” a child that day?
Just as importantly, are we able to leave our own comfort and security in order to stand up for the rights and safety of those who are still, nearly two hundred and fifty years later, denied the full dignity and rights supposedly promised to its citizens in those early, “idealistic” days of this nation? How indeed are love and grace, courage and bold witness, properly intertwined?
Personal grief and forgiveness
I remember reading, several years ago, the story of a man who witnessed the brutal murders of his parents and the rape of his sister when he was a teenager. His life, and his sister’s, were marked by this nightmare for many years, and I think of their story–and their anguish–as well when I read this text.
How do people of faith respond–adequately, purposefully–to school shootings, or mass shootings in churches, stores, concerts, and clubs? How do we respond to the brutal murder of a man being detained by the police and literally choked to death for all to see? In our gun-soaked culture, how can we cope with the horror of a little boy senselessly shot by his next-door neighbor, right in front of his two little sisters?
The preacher/pastor’s task, in the face of such horrors, is daunting. How difficult it is to say that we need to forgive, as the Amish people did in Pennsylvania, without sounding insensitive to the suffering of those involved, and of those who love them. And yet, as my professors used to say, here is the text before us.
Love at unexpected moments
Last week’s reading from Romans (12:1-8) spoke of the need (might “imperative” be a better word?) to live a life transformed by the power of the gospel, and this week’s reading describes such a Spirit-led life. One short exhortation after another describes the content of Paul’s “better way” (I Corinthians 12), all of it in the spirit of the Jewish wisdom tradition and Jesus’ own teaching (Jesus, of course, was, among many other things, a wisdom teacher in his tradition).
In The Message, Eugene Peterson’s version of the Bible, he gives a remarkably accessible path to the challenge Paul lays out: “Love from the center of who you are…discover beauty in everyone.” Perhaps those two lines are at the heart of the list of instructions, because loving from the center of who we are, and finding beauty in every single one of God’s children, would lead us to be generous and hospitable, forgiving and peaceful, humble and kind: full of grace.
Those words, by the way, are how Mary herself, Jesus’ own mother, was addressed, as we recall. And she wasn’t afraid to sing of the powerful being brought down and the lowly lifted up (Luke 1:46-55), so she knew something about resisting hatred and injustice.
A better way than empire
Once again, Paul’s “better way” contrasts with the world (“the empire”) that surrounds him and his readers, most dramatically right there in Rome, the seat of the Empire. Another version that makes the meaning of the text even clearer is the New Living Translation: “Don’t just pretend that you love others. Really love them.”
It’s troubling that many Christians seems to measure faithfulness and even Christian identity itself in terms of sexual morality or a specific way of interpreting the Bible rather than focusing on these clear instructions from the earliest author of the New Testament. But what if things were different? What would that mean for the life of the world?
Where do we discover beauty?
Today, we are surrounded by a world that puts its faith more in striking back than in discovering beauty in every single one of God’s children. In Rome long ago and in the world today, the sweet irony of loving our enemy, of giving our hungry enemy food instead of bombing them, of giving our thirsty enemy a drink instead of striking them down, might confuse and confound them.
However, and this is the ironic twist: it might also lead to their transformation, to a change of heart within them, as God works through us, the disciples of Jesus.
Fueling the evil?
Alas, we seem to be more conformed to the ways of this world than to the ways of the gospel, and often we’re unwilling to short-circuit evil with good. Instead, we strike back (and often feel quite self-righteous as we do), and we call that “justice,” even as children starve and arms manufacturers prosper.
We actually fuel the evil rather than doing the entirely unexpected thing of responding with love. It is the effect of sin marring the essential goodness of our creation in the image of God.
Learning to love from God
On the other hand, our good creation by God is the reason we might consider our “natural tendencies” often to be good and beautiful. (Years ago, Matthew Fox wrote a book entitled Original Blessing, rather than Original Sin.) Our truest nature (the “better angels of our nature,” as Abraham Lincoln put it) lies buried beneath the distortions of sin and self-centeredness, of fear and a failure to trust.
And yet we are transformed by God’s hand inexorably at work in our lives and in our hearts, and the actions we choose can have a hand in shaping us not in the form and image of a broken world, but in the shape of God’s own dream for us, good and lovely, gracious and giving and kind.
Finding our center in love
Perhaps there have been moments that you can name, when you, or others in your life, in your church, have loved from the center of who they are, times when you have discovered beauty in everyone. It may be difficult to do this, but that’s the point of grace and the power of the Holy Spirit: S.D. Giere observes that the kind of love we’re talking about isn’t just something we decide to feel or to show; it’s agape, and “agape is God’s love and not to be mistaken for any other.”
While, Giere says, “human love is imperfect–expecting, using, manipulating” (New Proclamation Year A 2011), we know that God’s love is extravagant and relentless, or, as Robert Jewett says, “both spontaneous and indiscriminately generous” (The Lectionary Commentary: Acts and the Epistles).
Following a better way
When has God spoken to your congregation and to the United Church of Christ, calling us to follow a “better way,” in spite of what the world around us would say? Your church may be more like a newly married couple (a young church), or a long-married one (established long-ago). How, then, does this text from so long ago speak to the life of your congregation?
For example, in what ways does your church “contribute to the needs of the saints” and “extend hospitality to strangers”? Notice that it says “strangers,” not “familiar friends and family.”
Do we notice the stranger in our midst?
Members of churches often say, “We’re a friendly church,” warmly welcoming one another, friends and family, while failing to notice the new visitor in their midst, who quietly walks by, unnoticed. I think that our visitors are the only ones who can tell us whether we’re a friendly church, or not. How well do we welcome those we do not know?
The word Paul uses here, philoxenia, or the love of the stranger, is one that S.D. Giere claims “defies attaching adjectives like ‘illegal’ to those from outside.” And despite the claims and efforts of many churches to be friendly at least to one another, Giere observes that many of us prefer “to blend into an anonymous participation” (New Proclamation Year A 2011).
Like friendship, church membership requires energy, attention, time, and involvement with others’ lives. How else will we come to know and love deeply the people God has given us to love?
Hear God’s Word in the midst of the noise around us
Karl Barth famously said that we should read the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other. It’s difficult to read this text without the television, the internet, the radio, the newspaper and perhaps especially Facebook feeding us a constant stream of updates on the political squabbles of our day. Maybe “squabbles” isn’t a strong enough term, as they sometimes appear to be a fight to the death, if only figuratively.
No matter what our political beliefs are, we have a growing sense that the greater good is not being served by the tone and spirit of this public debate and the struggles beneath it, the divisions and polarization that are splitting us farther apart and even dehumanizing us in one another’s eyes.
Most if not all of the combatants loudly claim to be Christians, too, and while we do observe the separation of church and state, can we be blamed for wishing all parties involved might read, and agree on, the words in this passage as guidance for the life of our larger community?
Admitting our equality
Robert Jewett is especially helpful when he writes: “To be ‘of the same mind toward one another’ does not imply agreeing on particulars or achieving a consensus on general points that overcomes disagreements. It implies rather the admission of mental equality that enables people to work with each other. If love is to be genuine, it must abandon any claim of possessing superior insight or status” (The Lectionary Commentary: Acts and the Epistles).
Let me be the first to confess that I find Paul’s words hard to live by, but then that was the point about grace, wasn’t it? If we opened ourselves up to the Spirit of God at work in the world, through us, loving one another, listening to one another, hoping and sharing and forgiving and not being so proud and self-righteous, welcoming one another (and their perspectives), returning gentleness and kindness for every wrong, well, Jewett is right that it would be “a new kind of triumph over evil: by civility and hospitality rather than by force” (The Lectionary Commentary: Acts and the Epistles).
Of course, it would also be a whole new way of doings things, wouldn’t it? And wouldn’t it be a beautiful thing to behold?
For further reflection:
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 20th century
“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
Walt Whitman, 19th century
“Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people…go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families….”
William Pickens, in a speech to a meeting of Congregationalists, Oak Park, Illinois, November 2, 1932
“Living together is an art.”
Oscar Arias Sanchez, 20th century
“The children of the world do not need more missiles.”
G.K. Chesterton, 20th century
“The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.”
Margaret Mead, 20th century
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed [people] can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Exodus 3:1-15
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”
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.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.
with
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b
O give thanks to God,
call on God’s name,
make known God’s deeds
among the peoples.
Sing to God,
sing praises to God;
tell of all
God’s wonderful works.
Glory in God’s holy name;
let the hearts
of those who seek God
rejoice.
Seek God
and God’s strength;
seek God’s presence
continually.
Remember the wonderful works
God has done,
God’s miracles,
and the judgments God uttered,
O offspring of God’s servant
Abraham,
children of Jacob,
God’s chosen ones.
Then Israel came to Egypt;
Jacob lived as an alien
in the land of Ham.
And God made God’s people
very fruitful,
and made them stronger
than their foes,
whose hearts God then turned
to hate God’s people,
to deal craftily
with God’s servants.
God sent God’s servant Moses,
and Aaron whom God had chosen.
Praise God!
or
Jeremiah 15:15-21
O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me,
and bring down retribution for me on my persecutors.
In your forbearance do not take me away;
know that on your account I suffer insult.
Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O LORD, God of hosts.
I did not sit in the company of merrymakers,
nor did I rejoice;
under the weight of your hand I sat alone,
for you had filled me with indignation.
Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail.
Therefore thus says the LORD:
If you turn back,
I will take you back,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious,
and not what is worthless,
you shall serve as my mouth.
It is they who will turn to you,
not you who will turn to them.
And I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you to save you and deliver you,
says the LORD.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.
with
Psalm 26:1-8
Vindicate me, O God,
for I have walked
in my integrity,
and I have trusted in God
without wavering.
Prove me, O God,
and try me;
test my heart and mind.
For your steadfast love
is before my eyes,
and I walk in faithfulness
to you.
I do not sit
with the worthless,
nor do I consort
with hypocrites;
I hate the company
of evildoers,
and will not sit
with the wicked.
I wash my hands
in innocence,
and go around your altar,
O God,
singing aloud a song
of thanksgiving,
and telling all
your wondrous deeds.
O God, I love the house
in which you dwell,
and the place
where your glory abides.
Romans 12:9-21
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Matthew 16:21-28
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “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.”
Notes on the Lectionary and Liturgical Colors
by the Rev. Susan Blain, Curator for Worship and Liturgical Arts (mailto:blains@ucc.org)
Faith Formation Ministry, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ
(Essay based on an article by Laurence Hull Stookey: “Putting Liturgical Colors in their Place” in Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church ©1996 Abingdon Press.)
The use of colors to differentiate liturgical seasons is a custom in use among some Western churches for hundreds of years. Although the custom of using colors is an ancient one, there has not always been agreement on what the colors should be. The Council of Trent in 1570, a Roman Catholic response to the Reformation, codified the colors for the Roman Catholic Church. When we talk about “traditional” colors today, we usually are referring to that codification. There were four basic colors in that codification: purple (penitence), red (Spirit or Martyrs memorials), green (long season after Pentecost) and white (festivals). Other colors, or no color at all, were acceptable variants in some regions.
The Reformation of course was a watershed for Christian ritual practice. Anglican and Lutheran churches often used some form of liturgical colors; however, the Reformed tradition of churches, where the UCC falls, for the most part did away with the custom of using colors, opting for much more simplicity. During the ecumenical liturgical movement of the mid-20th Century, Protestant churches began to look back at some of the ritual and colorful practices of the past with an eye toward reclaiming them to help give expression to feeling, tone, and imagery underlying the lectionary stories.
Before the Reformation’s iconoclasm, and Trent’s code, practices varied from place to place, often depending on what was available. Indeed, in some places the custom was to organize vestments into practical categories of “best,” “second best,” and “everyday” — not depending on the color at all. For Christmas and Easter the “best” vestments were used, no matter the color! Other, less prominent feasts or Sundays got “second best” or “everyday.”