October 26, 2014 Deuteronomy 34:1 - 12

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, 

to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, 

and the Lord showed him the whole land: 

Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali,

the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, 

all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea,

the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, 

the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar. 

The Lord said to him, 

“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.” 

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, 

at the Lord’s command. 

He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, 

but no one knows his burial place to this day. 

Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; 

his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. 

The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; 

then the period of mourning for Moses was ended. 

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, 

because Moses had laid his hands on him; 

and the Israelites obeyed him,

doing as the Lord had commanded Moses. 

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, 

whom the Lord knew face to face. 

He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders 

that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, 

against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, 

and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power 

that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel. 

***

There are those of us who orchestrate these rituals, at weddings they are the servers and the band, and at funerals the clergy and the undertaker. If you ask them, they will know how they want it done on their day, writing their own vows and a simple champagne toast, taps on a bugle and a time worn congregational hymn, Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art. Even more, they will know what they don’t want, that poem, “Do not stand on my grave and weep,’ or the microphone passed around for Remembrances, or a picture from some cruise posed uncharacteristically - like elderly school-picture-day, or any sort of canned music - death is natural and may the sound and photographs be so too. Instead may you pick a picture of me that captures who I was even if it harkens back twenty years to my arms outstretched on the beach. I want that poem/prayer, about the shadows lengthening and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed;’ it is perfect. I know the obituary is both an announcement and a genealogy, but put in something that tells a spark of me, say it well and be brief, like that simple toast, or a rote benediction. But leave a little room, to do what you want, Lord You Have Come to the Lakeshore, or an embarrassing story. Be honest, by God be honest, no one is perfect, even in death, and to pretend so has no one fooled and misses out on the redemption part. There is more, much more, but I will spare you. Its only that after enough of these, you know how you want it done, and I tell you Moses’ is done well. 

“Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, 

to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, 

and the Lord showed him the whole land: 

Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali,

the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, 

all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, 

the Negeb, and the Plain—that is, the valley of Jericho, 

the city of palm trees—as far as Zoar.”

If you notice, the last hours, days, and weeks are always remembered, be it Elvis in the tub or the way they past with their children by their side, be it the last family vacation to the coast or the holiday gathering at the old house, be it that tough last conversation that holds more meaning than intended or the one that was never had that holds more, be it that knowing, without being told, that somewhere, hours away, your loved one has just died and you find yourself in that moment reading their favorite story to your children or the ever so common experience of just stepping out of the hospital room for moment and their passing, like a cat, preferring to be alone or just not wanting their loved one to witness them crossing over. Though I believe God does not plan death, there is a way in which during those last hours, days, and weeks, the Lord seems to come a little closer, seems to to be showing us glimpses of the promised land, that in looking back over their last moments our loved one seems to have never been as close since the time they were wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a basket by the Nile, both foreshadowing the destiny of God’s promise.

“The Lord said to Moses, 

“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.” 

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab,”

There is a saying, ‘All good people die in the fall,’ and its reasoning is, ‘because then the community does not have to bear them through the winter.’ It seems as good a reason as any, and I like to think of Moses and the Exodus story that way too, that even in death Moses lifts the people’s burden that they might not have to carry him on through the winter and into the spring of the promised land. Though it has been interpreted that Moses disobeyed the Lord and therefore he never crossed over into the promised land, I like to reframe the Lord into something a little more gracious than punitive, and I like to think God can use even the death’s of the greatest of leaders to teach us something. This scripture was the last Martin Luther King ever preached, and he talked about being able to see the promised land of civil rights. He talked that he might not make it there, but that it was coming for the people. Now I don’t think God chose MLK or Moses’ death, but I think in their dying God’s purposes of leading us to a promised land became more clear and more fervent, that when a leader dies the people must find within themselves the will and the way to move forward. That even when the quietest of us passes that there still something to be learned about the larger narrative of God’s people. I have witnessed many in their last years become gravely concerned with issues of war, or genocide, or AIDS, or the environment, as if with their death all possibility is lost, or at least the hope of seeing such a witness in their lifetime. There is a grief of not making it out of our Exodus into the promised land before death. Yet, I think of the ever present promise of spring, that just as leaves fall so to will they burst forth again, or I think of the way as a hospital chaplain, after gathering with a family around the shrouded deceased and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, I would walk down two floors, and see pink and light blue beanies on tiny faces swaddled in white cloth. These white cloths of shroud and swaddle both images of a present God wrapping around us proclaiming  from the dust we came and to dust we shall return, proclaiming God’s present both in life and in death and beyond them both.

“at the Lord’s command.

He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, 

but no one knows his burial place to this day.” 

I imagine the Lord could have created a sandstorm or great flood to take Moses’ body away, but somehow I like to think of it as a cold and rainy day with an old shovel and the Lord doing it right, skimping on neither depth nor height, the sides being straight and the dirt being dark and deep. I imagine the Lord with heaviness of arms, pall-bearing Moses’ body with those same careful tiny ritual toe first steps, and lowering him in the grave this worldly returning dust to dust, but the promise that nothing, even death can separate us from the Lord. I imagine these words a comfort to the family, as they try to write the obituary,

“Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; 

his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. 

The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; 

then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.”

One hundred and twenty and still playing jokes, one hundred and twenty and still serving at the senior center, one hundred and twenty and still working on an old car, one hundred and twenty and still could remember his wife’s name though nothing else, one hundred and twenty and still the people will weep - the softest of tissues placed in the first few pews, and God heard closely in the soloist, or the reciting of Psalm 23, until sometimes hours, sometimes days, often times months and years, the period of mourning ends, and ends by in part, with a looking forward that honors the past, with a looking forward that honors the Lord’s on going promise and presence. 

“Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, 

because Moses had laid his hands on him; 

and the Israelites obeyed him,

doing as the Lord had commanded Moses.”

New leaders will emerge and people will remark, how they were like the former, the family roles will adjust and change for better or worse, you are like your grandmother in the way you are visiting and caring for your grandfather, the family has become more distant as he was the one who brought them together, you carry your father’s sense of humor, or you look just like her when you smile. The deceased’s traits becoming fuller, not merely positive, or negative, but just becoming who that person was, unique. With time too the cliches will round out, the poems and pictures that make little sense outside of the throws of grief will become part of a larger narrative, the laments of the Exodus. Likewise, God too moves from directly beside, placing in the grave, and weeping with the mourning, to a little more distant, the storyteller, the chapter keeper. This storytelling is role of the minister, and the ones who orchestrate these rituals, to tell a life fully enough, to tell it straight, to tell it with care, but also to tell the of it in a way that points to the promised land. 

“Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, 

whom the Lord knew face to face. 

He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders 

that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, 

against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, 

and for all the mighty deeds 

and all the terrifying displays of power 

that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”

This minister of Exodus tells it just right. A good eulogy is one where the work of the Lord can be seen in life of the deceased, that in every life there are signs and wonders, mighty deeds, and also, if we are honest, terrifying displays of power, but that we are all brought forth into this world by the Lord, and sent to the in-between place of Exodus, to journey together toward the promised land. If it’s told right, we can not only see our loved one’s journey as part of the path toward the promised land, but we can better find ourselves and our own place in the larger narrative. Most importantly, we can see God’s presence from Alpha to Omega, from beginning to end, from death to life forever and ever, and life toward the spring of the promised land. If it’s done right, and for Moses, it was. 

October 19, 2014 Exodus 33:12 - 23

I love taking pictures from planes, but they never turn out. Perhaps it is the atmospheric film on the windows, or the smudgy fingerprints illuminated by the strongest of sunbeams. Perhaps it is merely the angle of the porthole that I can see farther out and winder than my camera can capture. Yet, I think it is something more. Some things just cant be pictured. 

In San Francisco I walked up to a shoebox sized lunch place with a line stretching out the door and upon reaching the entrance I knew why there was a wait. I wished I could transport scent, send it like a picture, full of curries and thai chilis, and peanut sauce, couple with warmth and echoing order numbers and instructions, mixed with the customers tech talk of phones and companies. I wished I could capture it not as a look at me, but as a sharing a smell beyond words, and certainly beyond sight. 

Last night, tired and reading, listening to the catacombs of Spotify, a music website. I discovered Hildegard of Bingen and like concert goers in a middvil cathedral I became silent, and the sound lifted and moved me. I remembered as a youth singing similar melodic climbing and descending lines in equally ancient cathedrals around Europe and seeing old women weep and once my fellow second soprano and I grabbing hands as our voices to floated reaching a note that it seemed we could not have produced alone. 

These are those cleft of the rock places. Places that are beyond seeing, beyond smelling, beyond touching, beyond capturing, when all you know is that the divine is passing by, and afterward, you recognize that you have seen God’s back like the iridescent silage  of a snail, or the lengthening and thinning of a shadow almost gone.

These cleft of rock places are always a surprise, never expected, never planned, but always to come eventually. I know this because I felt enough of them and have no reason to believe they will cease, but Moses and his people believe they have done something so grave as to make the divine presence disappear. They have complained, and created golden calves, and angered God and broke the covenant. They first asked God not to retaliate, and now Moses is asking God to go with them. Moses knows that their journey to the promised land of milk and honey will be unfruitful without the presence of God leading them. I cannot imagine the fear of being destroyed by God, but I do believe, far greater, would be the fear that the divine presence would not exist, would not be present, that there would no longer be those moments in which manna was showered down from the skies, or that those skies would always remain empty and gone would be the view of a thunderstorm crossing the desert - its giant clouds equally ominous as wondrous - and the feeling of being smaller than the whole, or that I would no longer overhear someone behind me in line for coffee remark what great laugh a woman across the room had released, and my turning, smiling, and nodding my head, taking that extra moment from the cleft in the rock to watch the back of the divine as it passed. I too would be eternally scared if I ever thought I would have to say goodbye to these things. I too, like Moses, even after being reassured, would beg, “Show me your glory, I pray.” I would fall to my knees; I would hope that the most cunning among my people had been sent -  to convince, to plead our case with the humility that knows that those cleft in the rock places are not an expectation but a gift. I too would want to hear God’s reassurance twice. But I cannot imagine not knowing the omnipresence of those cleft in the rock places. I have seen them my whole life, I have expected them and called them a gift. Even when I did not believe they were the back of God, I did know there was a presence beyond, and knew that it this presence beyond myself would always be. Today, scripturally, I know the end of the Exodus story, I know God remains present. I know the people will build a tabernacle to carry with them so as not to loose those moments where by the fireside your back warms and tingles with heat and you later awake having gone so deeply beyond the domiviglia to a place where all is rest. I do not have to be reassured when God says, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” It is something I already know, and I have faith you know too. 

I have no doubt we each have experienced those cleft of the rock moments. I wonder, as you sit here, which come to your mind? I wonder what was the most recent, the strongest, the first of your memory, the one you’ve told, the one your afraid to tell, the one your unsure of, the one of which you are certain, the one that came when you needed, the one that came out of the clear blue sky. I wonder where have you seen the presence of the divine as it passes. I wonder where you will see it next, because there always is a next; God has promised,  the Lord continued, 

“See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; 

and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, 

and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; 

then I will take away my hand, 

and you shall see my back; 

but my face shall not be seen.”

October 12, 2014 by Luke Rembold in LaGrande, Oregon

Israel-Palestine

This past January, I had the honor and privilege of going to Israel and Palestine as a delegation member of a group put together by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, working with Interfaith Peace Builders to promote peace and active engagement in what is going on in this volatile region. Our Presbytery financially supported me in this endeavor, so I must begin by saying thank you. I would not have been able to go on what I can only describe as a transformational trip without the support of this church and so many churches in our Presbytery. It’s a privilege to share my experience with you today.
How do you take an emotional, visceral, personal experience and communicate it in a clear, passionate way? I’ve struggled since January to put my experience into clear words and inspiring sentences; what I want to share with you today is simply a step on a journey. Having had time to reflect now, 9 months later, and with new events to reflect on, my sermon today will be quite different than the one I shared 8 months ago at my home church in Baker. Perhaps that’s the point: after all, faith is hardly a destination and much more the journey to get there, and nothing illustrates a journey like traveling halfway around the world.
To say there are a lot of politics involved in this conversation would be an understatement. I’m aware of the context that we come from, or at least that I have come from as a middle-class American. But to be honest, I left on this trip mostly ignorant. I’m sure some of you come into this topic with a great deal more knowledge than I had before I left, and some of you probably still have more knowledge than I have now. I’ll try not to get political. Operative word here being “try.” Honestly, the intersections of politics and religion here are so tightly wound together that trying to detangle them is to drastically oversimplify the complexity of what we’re talking about. My promise to you today is to try to use “I” language as best as I can, and to acknowledge that this is my experience alone. By no means am I the one who knows what is “right” solely because I spent a couple weeks there.
I went to the Holy Land searching for the holy. Simple enough, yeah? Now, I might have tried to tell myself that my delegation was based on becoming more aware of the struggles that are taking place, that I was going to educate myself as a peacemaker, but really, I was seeking the Divine. I was looking for where God was in this holy mess, searching for God in the deserts of the Holy Land, seeking guidance both for my own life and for the lives of everyone in this region.
Problem is, I left on the trip with a single story of what I was going to see. I knew things were bad. I expected to see oppression, to witness living conditions and situations I could barely even imagine. I tiptoed around my desire to be SHAKEN and my fear of what my reaction to these circumstances might be.
Single stories, however, aren’t the full stories. Let’s look at our Gospel lesson today, from the book of John:
Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts; where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and sin no more.”
Jesus shows the Pharisees that this woman is much more than a single story of adultery. We never hear her version of the story, or learn her circumstances. But Jesus points out the danger of reducing someone to one identity. This woman cannot solely be described as an adulteress. She is a woman. She comes from a family. She lives somewhere. And Jesus sends her off, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”
You start to see the danger of the single story? Let me tell you my single stories of the two predominant viewpoints in this conflict.
My very first exposure to the events that led to the foundation of Israel came from the historical fiction of Leon Uris. The book Exodus spurred a great movement in me as I read it. It led me to do a report on Israel in high school in 2003. I still remember pieces of today. In it, we learn of a persecuted people, fleeing horrific events in the Holocaust and seeking a homeland where they could be safe. The narrative is gripping and real. Our humanity reaches out to their humanity. Everyone deserves a home.
My second major experience came at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium in 2004. I was fortunate enough to be placed in a small group with a young man named Jiries, from Palestine. Jiries was and is a Palestinian Christian passionate about music. Today he serves as a prolific piano instructor at a couple different music institutes in Jerusalem. But what Jiries started talking in 2004 about the wall being built down the center of Israel and Palestine, I knew something wasn’t right. Walls breed exclusivism. Walls lead to us/them dynamics. Walls, indeed, lead to single stories of another people.
You can probably sense my desire to break those walls down, both literally and metaphorically. Single stories can never contain the fullness of humanity. Humanity as it is: beautiful, compassionate, broken, flawed. I want to give you a couple snapshots from my trip to break down some of the single stories rampant about this region.
Our second morning in Jerusalem, we met with Ruth, an Israeli citizen working with the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions. Ruth took us to an overlook on the outskirts of town where we could look over the city held holy in three different religions. From this perspective, we could look at the wall and talk about the border issues that lie so much at the root of this conflict.
For education’s sake, and we can look at this map after church, Israel’s borders have been expanding ever since 1948. This took place in a major way in 1967, with the war in which Israel captured Jerusalem, but continues to happen every day, as Israeli settlers move onto what is internationally recognized as Palestinian land and take it over with the protection of the Israeli Defense Force. Couple that with the fact that the wall itself fails to follow any internationally recognized boundary, and you can start to understand the confusion and bitterness these border issues create.
Our tour with Ruth finished with a visit to a home demolition site, where a Palestinian building was destroyed by contractors working for the Israeli government (I want to note that I will try to be very careful in my language as I define Israeli, referring to the political governmental body, and those of the Jewish faith. While Israel’s desire is to be the homeland of the Jewish people, there are many Israeli citizens that claim other faith traditions). West Jerusalem, the new, Israeli part of the city has a huge construction economy and constant building taking place, but no building or expansion permits are issued in East Jerusalem, and therefor entire neighborhoods of Palestinian housing are falling apart, or are not big enough to support the families living there. Since 1967, over 28,000 homes in the Palestinian territories have been destroyed, thousands in East Jerusalem, with reasons for destruction being cited as everything from a threat to public safety, or that building took place without proper permits. That’s almost three times La Grande’s population losing their homes over the course of the last 47 years.
My heart was heavy after our tour with Ruth. She took us through some checkpoints, as we watched Palestinian people (typically darker in skin color than their Israeli counterparts) wait in chutes uncannily similar to cattle chutes wait to be allowed through, usually for the purpose of work. We visited an Israeli settlement just outside Jerusalem, perfect landscaping and grass in the desert, complete with olive trees transplanted in roundabouts to create an image of permanence. My heart was angry. This was injustice, blatant injustice taking place, mostly through military force.
I have to flash forward a little bit now, to a young man we met in Bethlehem by the name of Muhammad. Muhammad has spent his whole life in the AIDA refugee camp, one of the refugee camps set up after the 1948 war that led to the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians. That is more people than the entire city of Portland evicted and displaced. Aida doesn’t look like a refugee camp as I at least, picture it. It is not tents and temporary structures. This is a community that has existed since 1948, and the camp now consists of many permanent buildings, all built right within the shadow of the wall. That wall keeps a constant eye on the refugee camp…the day we were there we had to hurriedly leave because soldiers were getting ready to come in for a sweep (they use it - the AIDA refugee camp- for training new soldiers). As we left Bethlehem later that day, we saw the smoke from tear gas billowing up into the air from the wall near the refugee camp where we had enjoyed tea, hospitality, and a tour just hours earlier.
Muhammad now serves as the director of youth activities at the local community center. Muhammad said something I’ll never forget: He said, “You, as Americans, have more rights in my homeland than I do. You can come here, then go to Jerusalem. Another day you might go to the sea. Most of the youth who live here will never see Jerusalem, will never see the sea. We are prisoners inside these walls.” As two friends and I walked the 7 miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem later that day, we passed through the checkpoint that essentially keeps Bethlehem a completely walled-in city. When we needed to produce our passports to gain entry into Israel, the guard took one look at us and waved us through without even glancing at our papers. Indeed, we had more freedom in Muhammad’s land than he did.
Three weeks after we left, Muhammad was struck in the head by a rubber bullet during an IDF sweep of the camp. He was leaning out the window of the community center, urging youth to empty the streets, when an IDF soldier shot him in the head. When his cohorts in the community center tried to rush him to the hospital, IDF forces in the streets prevented them from leaving, citing safety concerns. Thankfully, Muhammad lived to tell the story. And Muhammad’s message for us made me brutally aware of the privilege I carry as an American strutting through the Holy Land.
So here I was, faced with injustice, unfairness, inequality. Much of what I saw only furthered my single stories of this conflict and this area. I want to tell you about the place that pushed me beyond single stories to a bigger, more complex, but more compassionate view of the region.
One of our last days, we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in West Jerusalem. It was absolutely heartbreaking. Reading, learning about the atrocities of the Shoa (the Hebrew name for the Holocaust), it gave me a broader understanding of the historical narrative that led to the creation of Israel. And I realized that in my anger, in my frustration, and my sadness, I was at risk of blaming too heavily, of once again reducing a people to a single story.
There is graffiti on the separation wall outside Bethlehem that reads, “One wall, two jails.” The problem with single stories is that in the eagerness to label oppressed and oppressor, we fail to ask questions of whether the oppressor themselves is lost, stuck in a single story of injustice they cannot escape from. If your identity is given to you a certain way, how do you break free? Martin Luther King Jr writes that we must pray for and love those who oppress us, that we don’t become oppressors ourselves.
So I look at Israel and Palestine and see two peoples that have been caught in a narrative pitting their single stories against one another, with the opportunity for only one story to be heard. Therefore, it becomes our obligation and holy responsibility to bring voice to the voices that aren’t being heard. How do you change a single story? You learn more stories. You hear from more viewpoints. You break down that wall of fear and love even those that are scary to love, love those that might even hurt you. But if we are going to take that proclamation from God in Genesis seriously, that these people might be a blessing to ALL peoples, we have to live into a new story.
I don’t like a sermon without a call to action. It’s just not in my DNA. And while this is my journey, I recognize that it might not be your own. Your story, your understanding, your narrative is going to look different than mine. That’s great. I’ll willingly admit I bring more questions than answers, and I invite and implore you to explore your own understanding. Go read on these issues. Try to find viewpoints from all over the spectrum. Pray for wisdom. Pray for peace. I hope we can be a church that can pray for peace in the midst of turmoil.
But it gets bigger than that. It’s not just about Israel and Palestine anymore. I look around and I see constant single stories I create for those around me in my own context. The homeless. The migrant. The incarcerated. Gang members. The elderly. Young people. Republicans, democrats, you name it. We write our neighbors into single stories every day. The problem is that those single stories deprive us of our humanity. I had to go halfway around the world to see the walls of fear that I put up each and every day.
The good news? Friends, we are followers of a God of resurrection. We believe in a Redeemer that can take what is broken and flawed and make it whole. We worship a Lord that sees past our own single stories and meets us only with love.
So today, I pray for peace in Israel and Palestine. I pray for Ruth and the other activists we met. I pray for Muhammad and the refugees of the AIDA refugee camp. And I also pray for the legislators and lawmakers of the Israeli government. I pray for the members of the Israeli Defense Force that are compelled by law to take up arms against their neighbors. Prayers for peace, and prayers for courage to fight injustice when we see it.
Let us pray to the God that tears down walls, that we might each be freed from our own prisons, that we might see past the single stories to love courageously and love freely and love abundantly and love joyfully and love recklessly, to be God’s hands and feet, a blessing in the world around us. Amen.

October 12, 2014 Exodus 32:1 - 14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, 

“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; 

as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, 

we do not know what has become of him.” 

Aaron said to them, 

“Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, 

your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 

So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, 

“These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, 

“Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” 

They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. 

The Lord said to Moses, 

“Go down at once! 

Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, 

have acted perversely; 

they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; 

they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, 

and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 

‘These are your gods, O Israel, 

who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’”

The Lord said to Moses, 

“I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 

Now let me alone, 

so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; 

and of you I will make a great nation.” 

But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, 

“O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, 

whom you brought out of the land of Egypt 

with great power and with a mighty hand? 

Why should the Egyptians say, 

‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, 

and to consume them from the face of the earth’? 

Turn from your fierce wrath; 

change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, 

how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, 

‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, 

and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, 

and they shall inherit it forever.’”

And the Lord changed the Lord’s mind about the disaster that the Lord planned to bring on the Lord’s people. 

***

Oh, us Presbyterians and our meetings. I was recently at Synod, our regional governing body for Northern California, Nevada, and Oregon, which coordinates mission for the three state areas, and helps to distribute funds and grants to lower governing bodies, such as Presbyteries and churches. There, in Burlingame, California, various commissioners from Presbyteries work over three days to evaluate grants and finances and Synod personnel procedures, etc. Board yet? 

Well, in my committee - evaluating grant requests, there were the problems of doing smaller committee work by consensus in the larger body, of having no guiding mission or goals by which to evaluate grants, yet following to the letter limiting criteria, and a moderator who had no process besides the loudest holding the most sway. We met from 10am - 4:30p.m. and only accomplished 2 action items and unapproved 3 items for the Synod floor. Board and frustrated yet? 

At one point a creative grant proposal came forth. A church had recently begun to acquire a deaf population and it was asking for monies to provide deaf interpreters to sign during worship and meetings. It seemed obvious for approval - inclusive, justice oriented, filling a need, generating growth, so much so that I wondered about own church and how we would welcome those with disabilities. There at Synod the entire committee was encouraged by the proposal, but alas the proposal did not meet the criteria for the grant for which the church applied, and instead met the criteria for another grant for which there was still money available. There was hesitation, resistance, we’ve never switched a before. It is neither encouraged or discouraged by the Synod Administrative Manuel and its polity. A retired pastor pushed saying, “At this point, I am at the age where I am more willing to let go of the rules to see ministry happen.” I replied with obvious look around the room, “Being the youngest person in the room, I know we are called to order, but also creativity and I think there is a way here for both.” The stated clerk was summoned and we were directed that the options were that grant applicants should reapply the next year under the alternative grant or be advised to meet the criteria. Then, with that loud voice, the grant became a mute point.

I was beyond frustrated, and upon leaving the meeting wondered if I would not make a better American Baptist or UCC pastor, where there were less committees and more actions, where processes seemed less stilted and more organic. For me, Moses had gone up the mountain, and when he had not come down by 4:30p.m. I had begun to make a golden calf. Yes, my calf was about the work of God, but it also was about efficiency, and competency, about good communication, vision and leadership. You have to look no further than our session, to see that these traits are those which out of which I make a golden calf. Yes, our elders are called to those positions because of their gifts for ministry, but I wonder are there ways I have silenced those with alternative gifts. Walking out of that meeting, and at other times when processes don’t seem to be function, my stress makes a Golden Calf of competence and efficiency. 

So quickly, I had forgotten the way God had led us Presbyterians out of Egypt. In frustration it was easy to dismiss this denomination which nurtured my upbringing through a congregation of parents and grandparents, not too different than this one, the denomination which ordained me at twenty-eight, which supports me with everything from mentors to health insurance, which recently voted approval, on a national level, causes I believe in, a denomination which has supported this local church and its mission projects, such as Open Door and Backpack, this denomination which is this church - the people in its pews, who I am faithfully and consistently in awe, your love and generous care for one another, your Christian ability to have conversations about touch issues and to remain partners in Christ even if you agree to disagree. This truly Presbyterian trait of dialogue, which I value so much, and our slow careful pace for which just a couple months ago, I wrote a newsletter article heralding. It was easy in frustration and a bit of hopelessness about that meeting to make a golden calf. To say, God is not in present in this process, it is taking too long, I want to turn to something else.

I think about the ways we do this over and over with our leaders. We expect change and we expect it right now, and we forget to look at the pattern behind us, and instead only look at the problems before us. First we say,

“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; 

as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, 

we do not know what has become of him.” 

I think about the ways we do this over and over with our leaders. We expect change and we expect it right now, and we forget to look at the pattern behind us, and instead only look at the problems before us. I remember those that were so driven by Obama’s Change campaign and within a year, were saying how disappointed they were, that he was moving so slowly, that he had had forgotten his campaign promises. I look back over those promises and now and the end of his presidency I believe he accomplished many of them - whether you support them or not. I think about our students teachers who work so hard adapting to the needs of each student and learning their quirks and gifts, and I remember one parent complaining in the first week that the teacher had not taken care of her child’s one particular need. I wonder how often we look forward to what is not yet in front of us, instead of looking behind us to the pattern of freedom from Egypt, of manna in the desert, in water sprung from a rock. 

At this point the Israelites have been wandering for decades in the desert, and Moses goes up the mountain and is delayed for forty days. The people do not know what has happened to Moses. They send no search party, there is no time of prayer and fasting, not even a moment for grieving Moses who they championed as the one who brought them out of the land of Egypt. So quickly they move on from leader to leader. They go to Aaron, Moses’ most trusted elder and give to him their earrings and gold, treasures which they have carried through the desert. I imagine them, with these jewels they packed away and wore in the dust and sand, little memories of significant moments, of weddings and anniversaries, family heirlooms, clung to as they left their homes. Now lifted up to charismatic Aaron, who their new idol, and voice of God. With the gold he makes for them a golden calf, saying this calf is the God who brought you out of Egypt, this calf who wasn’t even there, becomes for them larger than Moses, and larger than God.

Not dissimilarly, God too seems to forget. God is angered that both Moses’ leadership and God’s faithfulness have so easily been perverted to that of an idol, a golden calf. God says to Moses, “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” God has forgotten the larger purpose of the Exodus, and instead focuses on the present. God too has been looking with nearsightedness, and Moses attempts to show God, that by remembering a mere chapter in a novel, God is no different than the Israelites. Moses first reminds God that it was God, not simply Moses who brought the people out of Egypt, that it was God who swore to Abraham, and Isaac, and the Israelites saying, 

‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, 

and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, 

and they shall inherit it forever.’

Moses is doing what God has taught Moses. Moses is remaining faithful, remembering the promise, and following God. There are times when leaders want to give up on their people because the people have given up on them. This is the human part. The God part is remembering the purpose and the promise. The God part, is the part which runs through the whole narrative. 

I stand here and I think of our denomination, and while God can and does easily work outside of it, just as God could have easily worked through a new linage in Moses, I know that God is at work in this denomination. I can stand here, as woman and as a pastor, and it is one of the few pulpits in town which are open to women, and this happened through that arduous process I witnessed at Synod. That same Synod, where, that same committee moderator made to me some really great suggestions for possible youth trips, and for continuing education. That same Synod, which provides money to our presbytery, which provides money to our church, so I can go down downstairs on a school day, and see kids not only being fed physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Our same denomination, where I can watch our congregation gathered around a line of masking tape renewing their baptismal promises to care and support one another. I have to remember that God is not in a golden calf. God is in the promise, the longevity, and I am called to follow that promise, that longevity, to look forward with hindsight, with assurance and hope. God is in the promise, God is the longevity. 

October 5, 2014 Exodus 20:1 - 4, 7-9, 12-20

Then God spoke all these words: 

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 

you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, 

for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses God’s name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

Honor your father and your mother, 

so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance, and said to Moses, 

“You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” 

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of God upon you so that you do not sin.”

***

Growing up in the South there is phrase I would hear a lot. Parents would say to their children, ‘No, Ma’am. No, Sir, We don't do that.’ Most directly, ‘We,’ was the family, but ‘we,’ was also a cultural thing, as the phrase was likewise said to other people’s children. It could have been easily extended to say, ‘We as Southerns don't to that.’ ‘That,’ being anything from tossing dirt on the playground, to a teenager talkin’ back, or as we called it, sassin'’. Sometimes, “We don’t do that,” came in a look, where some teacher raised her eyebrows beyond what you’d ever think her forehead could hold. Sometimes, “We don’t do that,” came in the form of a question, “Excuse me?” and you knew that meant you had about one second to come up with a different answer than the one you first provided. Sometimes, the entirety of the answer to, ‘Excuse me?’ was ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ and this, ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ likewise echoed the cultural agreement of respecting elders and formality.

At this point in Exodus, God has already said, ‘Excuse me?’ when God provided manna in the desert. God has already raised God’s eyebrows, when water sprang from the rock. And now, the Israelites have still been sassin’, and God is at that, ‘No, Ma’am, No, Sir, We don’t do that,’ stage. 

God starts out, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of slavery.” It is God’s version of, ‘I am your parent, and I set the expectations, as long as you are under this roof.’ And though it can sound pejorative, this reminder is less about rank and more about relationship. We are a family, we are community, and I have brought you out of the land of Egypt, and put food on the table, because I love you, and when you do that thing we don’t do, I feel like you don’t value this family or my love. I wonder how many arguments would stop right there, if they started by first expressing how we are family, and the basis for our relationship is for mutual support and love. That this mutual love and support is the chief end of any set of expectations.

Some people may call these commandments rules, and interpret out of them a policing God. But I don’t think this is what God is about, nor do God’s actions of consistent presence and providence maintain this theory. Here God is, and the Israelites have been complaining up a storm, and over and over God has provided for them. God has seen their patterns and out of this comes expectations for their behavior. I think of the, ‘We do nots’ that I heard growing up. The only way those, ‘We do nots,’ get formed, is because they are told over and over, generation after generation. How many generations of parents to their children have said, “We do not throw rocks.” There is even a Biblical witness in Jesus, “Whoever of you has not sinned throw the first stone.” Even Jesus must remind the people we are a, “We do not,’ society, not a, ‘You shall not,’ individuality. Today, our New Revised Standard Version even reads, “You shall not,” but each commentary I have read purports that this phrase is better translated, “We do not.” Still today, we need the reminder. This is text about community, and we have a God of relationship. 

Some may call this list commandments, but it was written as a covenant, and repeated as a creed, a covenant which makes a promise between God and God’s people, and a creed which is lifted up from God’s people to God. It is more than a list of, ‘you shall not,’ rules. Rules are made to be broken, but relationships are not, especially when they include an ever present God. Moreover, each of these ten expectations is about how to be, ‘we,’ from honoring our parents to remembering the sabbath, to not coveting that which a neighbor has. They are smart, but part of what makes them smart is they tell us how to be a community, and how to worship God. And I think perhaps this is why the Decalogue has lasted, because over and over through generations God has been present reminding us whose we are, we are God’s family, we are we.