Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 16 Yr A August 23 2020

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Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 16 Yr A August 23 2020

Exodus 1:8-2:10, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20

 

Two weeks ago we heard Jesus’ followers exclaim, “Truly you are the Son of God.” Last week we heard the Canaanite woman call Jesus into an expansive and inclusive ministry. Today we hear Jesus ask, “who do you say I am.” And Simon Peter announces on behalf of the band of disciples, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

 

Who do you say I am. Jesus asks each one of us this question. Who do you say Jesus is? When you are out in the marketplace in these times when that may be a hard choice, who do you say Jesus is? When you begin to return to work, or school, who do you say Jesus is? When you are sitting in traffic, or having backyard conversations, or deciding how you want to vote, or considering the violent events in our country and our world, who do you say Jesus is?

 

Who do you say Jesus is? Like Peter, I announce Jesus is the son of the living God. But I also think those are just words, unless they are backed up by what I do with my time, my talent, and my treasure, how I make my decisions and how I treat people. But you and I aren't the kind of people who have a ready answer to the question, who do you say Jesus is? The words don't come easily, but I guarantee any words we use fall unmeaning if our lives don't speak of mercy and compassion.

 

Jesus is teaching disciples in these stories. Jesus is trying to impart all he knows and all he is as he prepares for his last days in Jerusalem. In these stories, Jesus is developing followers. You and I are followers of Jesus, and our work is to live the answer to the question, who do you say I am, with our words and with our lives.

 

What you do this week with your live lived as a follower of Jesus, will change the world. In the Exodus story, a single act of resistance saved an entire people. The King had commanded that all male babies be killed. The baby in our story, Moses, was hidden from that awful fate by the midwives who caught him, until the daughter of Pharoah found him and raised him as her own. Moses went on to lead his people out of Egypt into a new land and a new life, Moses led his people from slavery into freedom. Like Shiphrah and Puah, who by their actions saved Moses, what you do this week will change the world. We just don't know how what we do will effect that change, but it will, and it does. And even the ancient story of Moses shows us that what we do matters to God and matters to the world. Who do you say Jesus is? How your life answers that question makes a difference.

 

Last week I said to you that our words matter. This week I say to you that what we do matters. Both are true. Jesus’ teaching is to love your enemies, to come before God in prayer and in worship, and to forgive one another. Out of love, Jesus steps in our place, and Jesus gives his life for ours. This is the kingship through which the God who created the heavens and the earth inaugurates a new creation.

 

Who do you say that Jesus is? This question presupposes that what we believe about Jesus matters. What we believe about Jesus matters to you and to me, it matters to our church, and most importantly it matters to the world.

 

It also assumes a relationship; there is no way to begin to say who Jesus is without the relationship. And in this relationship with Jesus, we learn who we really are. In response to Peter naming Jesus Messiah, Son of God, Jesus tells Peter who he really is. Jesus says, you are Peter, a rock. In this relationship, Jesus knows who we really are, we are named and marked as Christ’s own forever. Jesus names us beloved, the delight of God’s life.

 

So this is not so much about the right answer to the question, who do you say that Jesus is, but it is very much about the relationship the question presupposes. And that relationship is, you are the delight of God’s life. I think this is the most important part of this story. We might not be very good answering the question with words, but we can begin to show the world that Jesus matters, that this relationship with Jesus matters.

 

That brings us to the image that is presented in Romans, we, who are many, are one body in Christ. This is an amazingly counter cultural image, one body, with different graceful gifts. This new creation that God inaugurates in Jesus is all about a completely new way to live on this earth. We live not for ourselves, but for the greater good of God’s creation. Do not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the relationship, and the amazing and abundant love that God has for you.

 

How do we live in the world as the body of Christ?

How do we live in the world as the delight of God’s life?

How do we live in the world as people to whom Jesus matters?

How do we live in the world as agents of new creation?

How do we live in the world as a people transformed by God’s love?

I think we do that by showing forth love not only for those it is easy to love, but for those we count as enemies as well. I think we do that by showing mercy and compassion. I think we do that by caring for God’s creation. I think we do that by showing up in our lives with intention, with love, with mercy, and with compassion.

 

So now we come back to the question, who do you say that Jesus is? This is not just a rhetorical question. We must answer it. I want you to know your answer to it. Your answer to it matters, because what we do matters, what we say matters, and that can change the world. And our world needs changing. Who do we say Jesus is?

 

Jesus is God in our midst.

Jesus is the love that wins.

Jesus is the way. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is the Light.

These are words, words that matter. And this is a life that matters. When we say these words, with Peter and the disciples, as followers of Jesus, and as part of the body of Christ, we stand for love, we stand for truth, we stand for light. We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, we love when hate seems pervasive. We include when others call for exclusion. We must stand against powers and principalities that would condone and cause violence against any group of people.

 

Like the midwives who caught Moses as he was born, and chose life over death, today, we must be midwives. We must choose life, we must choose love. Our lives will tell the world who Jesus is. Amen.

14 Pentecost Yr A

So your teenager walks into the house after school, or after football practice, or band rehearsal, or just takes a break from homework, or even about an hour after dinner, and looks through the cupboards, opens the refrigerator door, and says, "Mom! There's nothin to eat." Just like the Israelites in this part of the Exodus. Whining, whining, whining, "God, we have nothing to eat, and what’s more, we don't like what you’ve given us to eat." But I do think that if I were wandering in the wilderness with Moses and Aaron for 40 years, I might be a little whinny too. “God, we’re tired, we’re hungry, we may as well have stayed in Egypt for all this gets us.” And they are reminded that in Egypt they were slaves, at least in the desert they are free. This is a great story. In the verses that follow these we just heard God instructs them to gather up what they need for themselves and their families. Each family got just what they needed, no more, no less. Then Moses instructed them not to save any of it, don’t leave any until morning he told them. Well, some didn’t listen to Moses, and hoarded the food that God had provided for them, and it got wormy and smelled bad. So not only do they not seem to want what God has provided for them, they go ahead and eat it anyway, and then save some up for later, only for it to go bad on them. Lord, lord, lord, give us something to eat, give us something better to eat, we don’t like what you’ve given us, but even though we don’t like it we’ll save it for later and risk losing what is right here in front of us. God provides, God provides enough. Even when it doesn’t look good. It’s all God’s anyway. Matthew’s gospel is paired with this story from Exodus and it carries the theme even farther. Matthew’s story always seems so topsy-turvy. The day laborers that show up at the end of the day get paid the same as those who showed up early to work, and work or no work, everyone gets paid the same. The kingdom is not business as usual. Remember, kingdom parables serve to show us that God is doing this absolutely new thing, there is no business as usual. In this kingdom everything is re-ordered. It’s not even as simple as the last will be first, and the first shall be last. God coming into our midst, living, loving, suffering, dying, and being raised from the dead makes this absolutely new. So this kingdom parable didn’t sit well with those who heard it centuries ago, and it doesn’t sit well with people who hear it today, because we are trained to believe there is a reward. The simplest statement of that is if we live a good life, we’ll get our reward in heaven. This parable refutes that conventional wisdom. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, not at the grave. The new life that God has affected is available from the beginning. We live our whole lives loved by God, the delight of God’s life. The Christian life is not about earning our wage or our reward in heaven. The Christian life is about responding to God’s amazing and abundant love, about receiving God’s grace, right here, right now. The Christian life is about the fruit of our baptism; the Christian life is about responding to the joys and challenges of our lives in ways that show forth the grace that God has given us. The Christian life is not easy nor is it clear, it is not about finding Jesus, it’s about being found by God’s love. The Christian life is about grace and forgiveness, the grace and forgiveness that God offers us, and the grace and forgiveness that we offer one another as we love our neighbors as ourselves. So when did we get so greedy? When did we begin to hoard what we have? These stories we hear today remind or maybe even teach us that we’ve got all we need, and there’s enough for everyone. One of the seminal stories about who we are and to whom we are related is the story of Moses and the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Moses relayed the ten commandments to the Hebrews as they wandered. Moses said to the people, “God spoke all these words: I am God, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of a life of slavery. No other gods, only me.” No other gods, only me, the Hebrew people, like us, had so much trouble accepting God’s gift of enough. God asks us for our undivided attention, and God gives us all we need. The Hebrew people couldn’t accept God’s gift of enough, and instead made their own god out of the gold they had and found. They got greedy. We get greedy, and we are encouraged in our greediness by a culture that constantly encourages us to buy more, and bigger, regardless of our ability to do so, regardless of need. Now, as much as the Hebrew people needed to hear “no other gods, only me,” and as much as the Jews of the first century needed to hear the inbreaking of God’s kingdom re-orders all that they knew to be true, we, in the 21st century need to hear this message that we are sought and we are found, that God loves us abundantly and claims us. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, we are new creations. This is good news indeed. Good news in a world that needs good news. Good news that this life isn’t just about you, but it is about how you, and me, and every one of us is loved, and how you in turn love one another. It is about how you are the delight of God’s life, and about how you pay that forward. It is about how God transformed the world with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and how God continues to transform us and the world as each of us goes out into the world to do the work we are called to do, to love and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. Today we identify and celebrate the ministry that God has given us. We don't hoard the abundance God showers upon us, and we are not greedy about it either. We show forth so much love by being the church in the world, by being the body of Christ. Our baptismal ministry is lived out in so many ways. We celebrate God's abundance by loving and serving our neighbors, by volunteering in schools and hospitals, by knitting hats and prayer shawls. We celebrate God's abundance in our work as we create a culture of mercy and compassion wherever we find ourselves. We are ministers, every one of us, by virtue of our baptism. God's abundance enfolds us, empowers us, saves us, sends us.

3 Lent Yr C

So here’s Moses, going about his work, keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro. Moses really has a good life, a wife, a father-in-law that lets him keep the flock, not much more you could ask for. It’s been very quiet for him since leaving the palace as a young man, and it seems that Moses liked it that way, and probably could have lived his life quite contentedly. I imagine every once in while the memories would return to him. Memories of those days when he was raised as an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Although an Israelite, he did not suffer along with his people. He was both an Egyptian and an Israelite, and yet he was neither.

But this day was not like the others. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush, the bush was blazing, but not consumed. Now, how many of you have been about your business, happily humming, and there appears to you a burning bush? Moses was told to remove the sandals from his feet, because the place on which he was standing was holy ground. And God said, “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses recalls memories of these stories, but never had God intruded into his life before.

But God went on to rehearse the misery of God’s people in Eygpt, and Moses recalled the misery of the people he left. God gives Moses his assignment of bringing the people out of Egypt, and promises a new life for them. A life free of slavery and oppression. But then Moses says to God, almost like he wants to make sure he doesn’t look crazy when he tells the people about this, now one more time God, who should I tell the people you are? And God answers, tell them I am who I am. Tell them I am their God, the God of creation, the God of their ancestors, the God of their descendants.

Moses accepts God’s call to him. No longer will Moses’ life be a life of herding sheep, a life centered on his own comfort, no longer will he be centered on his own ego. Instead, his concern will be for the purposes of God, what God wishes for the world. No longer will Moses’ life be safe, secure, and devoid of growth. Moses gives himself up to a life of faith, and what does he get?

Moses must bear the people’s grumbling, their addiction to slavery, their readiness at every turn to flee from freedom. All this makes him feel stress and strain, and it turns his hair white before his time, and, Moses doesn’t even make it to the land that is promised, he dies just short of the goal.

Where are the burning bushes in your life? A bush blazes when some person or place or moment reaches out to you, calling you insistently by name. A burning bush is that yearning, that insistence in your life to reach deeper, to embrace fully, to be part of and connected to the story of creation, to dance in freedom with the God who says, I am.

A bush blazes for you this Lent; the blazing bush insists that you embark upon the journey that God wishes for you, the journey that you yearn for. The thing about this Lenten journey is that we know we must travel through the darkness to get to the Light. We must journey with Moses through the wilderness. The hard part of the journey is that there is no easy way out of the wilderness. There is no gospel of prosperity or happiness or ease. There is no road map that avoids the dark and dangerous places. Death is part of the wilderness. Sorrow and pain are part and parcel of life. There is no growth; there is no depth without this journey. There is no encountering God merely on the top of the mountain; God is encountered in the depths of the valleys as well.

And then in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is interpreting the signs of the times. The first part of the gospel is about the things that Pilate did which upset and irritated the local Jewish population. Sometimes it even seemed that Pilate was deliberately trying to make them angry. He trampled on their religious sensibilities; he tried to bring Roman military emblems into Jerusalem, with their pagan images. And in this part of Luke, we hear the results of an attempt by Pilate to slaughter the Jews. Additionally, it is important to remember that Jerusalem is under Roman occupation. Last week you’ll remember I spoke some about tragedy, and I said that tragedy just is, it is part of life on this planet. This bit of Luke illustrates that further. Sin does not make atrocities come. They just come.

This reality is what the next portion of this passage is about. Life's fragility gives it urgency. Jesus turns attention away from disasters, victims, and "why?" questions to address those of us who thus far have survived the hazards of the universe and human society. We should not mistake our good fortune as evidence of God's special blessing. We should count our good fortune as an opportunity for repentance and growth.

In our reading we have an apple tree, you may be familiar with it as the fig tree. This tree, which should be bearing fruit, is not. With another season, and some good manure, the tree has another chance to grow and produce. The expectation for the result of manure and time and care is bearing fruit. Although there is another chance at growth, growth continues to be an urgent matter. The time frame is clear and it is not infinite, there is another year, another season. In the midst of the reality of human life, the fragility of living, and the tragedy that just is, growth is urgent.

And according to Jesus, growth gives rise to repentance, the kind of repentance that is conversion of the heart. This repentance does not mean being filled and tormented by guilt. Instead, it means being ready to admit our responsibility for our actions and our need for forgiveness, and having a firm desire to change our life: to turn away from ourselves, in prayer and in love. Repentance means, above all, a constant, patient, growing in love. It means our willingness to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in us and to embrace fully the gift of our salvation (Irma Zaleski The Way of Repentance 1999). The Christian outlook on repentance arcs toward joy.

In the midst of human existence and tragedy, God loves us abundantly and absolutely, and expects us to grow and to do it now rather than later. Growth begets repentance; repentance is being ready to admit our responsibility for our action, our need for forgiveness, and having a firm desire to change our life. We turn away from ourselves in prayer and in love, and we open ourselves to the work of the Spirit. This outlook on repentance arcs toward joy, it results in hope.

Both of these stories are about Love that begets growth, Growth that begets repentance, and Repentance that begets joy. Oh how very different from the way we expect it to be. It may very well cause our hair to whiten prematurely like Moses.

Pay attention to the blazing bush, take off your shoes, walk with one another on this Holy Ground, hold one another’s hand, wander and discover the abundant life God has for you. Pay attention when a bush blazes and something demands that you take off your mask and live from the center deep inside you. You bear fruit when you take what action you can for others, when you act on your impulse to help, when you act on your impulse to pray, when you act on your impulse to accompany one another on this journey in the wilderness.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.