Burned But Not Consumed

Pentecost 13, September 7, 2014 (Exodus 12:1-14, Matthew 18:15-20)

There are times when I don't know what to say. Can you identify? Sometimes things that are so wrong, so horrific get lived out. As such things occur, there is no way that they can be "corrected".

 

American journalists lose their lives in the most gruesome way to Islamic religious fundamentalists who claim to being doing God's will. Before we point fingers at another religion, we need also to see the history of our own Christian fundamentalism – of the Crusades, the Inquisition, our history with residential schools. All of it is horrific.

 

Two American black men, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown are wrongfully accused of a brutal murder of an 11 year old girl in North Carolina. They are only freed after 30 years in prison, living on death row. How often must they have wondered if their number was going to come up? It is good news that they have been freed. But the people who raised them died while they were in prison. How can one ever recover 30 years of their lives? How might one be able to trust anyone, including God, after being unjustly, tried, ridiculed and imprisoned?   

 

There are times when "things" are stuck – stuck in deep ruts that ultimately consistently shuts out life while dealing death. Negotiations between powerful individuals or organizations reach an impasse. All communication shuts down. Where then is the truth? Where then is  accountability or honesty with each other regarding our own faults, our own contributions to the impasse?  

 

Sometimes we get "stuck" personally. We recount aloud or internally, again and again, how we have been wronged. How we can hold onto those times. We become paralyzed, filled with anger as we stoke the memory box. How then our hearts harden, our beings are be filled not with new possibilities or fresh beginnings but with anger and bitterness. What shall we do? Who will deliver us from this body of death?

 

Sometimes it feels like "no one" can or will deliver us. Henry McCollum and Leon Brown are not alone, being imprisoned by injustice. How many innocent men, women and children are being violated, killed, even by people who believe that they are somehow doing God's will? How many relationships have ended or are stuck because no one is genuinely willing to say, "I'm sorry", because no one is willing to admit to their own need to change?

The Hebrew people were stuck. They are slaves in Egypt. There is no end in sight. Their male babies have been killed. Their culture is being swallowed. Many begin to accept that slavery is their "life". But is it? Is existence the same thing as life? ...

 

One day a single male baby is saved from death. He is raised part Hebrew and part Egyptian. At times he is filled with a dark anger. He sees the injustice towards his Hebrew  people. Eventually he snaps. His dark anger boils over. Observing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, this man, himself once delivered from  death waters, literally beats to death the oppressor. Now Moses must run for his life.

 

Eventually he begins to experience life in a different place. That is until he notices a burning bush. Strangely, Although the bush is burning, it isn't being consumed. As Moses moves towards the bush he hears God speaking to him. God is calling him, Moses, this deeply flawed human being, to return to Egypt. Moses is called to make a demand of Pharaoh. The Hebrew people must be freed from their oppression. At first Moses resists God's call.  But God refuses to stop calling him. Eventually Moses obeys. Moses goes back to Egypt.  

 

God acts in the midst of societies marked by death. As God frees Moses' people, God commands them to remember their deliverance in specific ways so that they will not forget where they have come from and what God does. Life is not a walk in the park. We must not follow the path of least resistance. Abundant life, is being opened to obeying God! God is working for life in the midst of any and all the powers of death. Abundant life sometimes involves great risks, which include radical demands. But abundant life is also filled with wonder as the powers of death around and within are resisted and overcome by God's grace and power. New life can emerge around and within – even us.

 

Trusting God doesn't occur in a vacuum, nor only in the confines of certain buildings. Nor does trusting God occur by denying reality. Trusting God involves having eyes that begin to see, ears that are being unstopped and hearts once laggard, that are being warmed. Trusting God realizes that life often is a battle. Difficult struggles are being waged both inwardly and outwardly. Trusting God means being opened to God's help, acknowledging our need of God's deliverance, despite our inability to "deserve" it. 

 

Nevertheless God chooses to love us, to call us and to empower us. Trusting God means receiving and experiencing freedom right in the face of deadly oppression. There is wonder, excitement, fear and many unknowns.   

What will it be like for Henry McCollum and Leon Brown outside of prison after 30 years inside? What will it mean for us to be honest with God about ourselves and then with ourselves and each other? Absolutely, unflinchingly honest! This requires courage, humility, letting go of any and all pretense. But such honesty, by God's grace also brings with it the potential for new, abundant life.

 

And who can be so honest, out of love and not hatred?  

 

Jesus was. And Jesus still will be so honest, even through flawed people who somehow experience God's forgiveness, new beginnings , God's unconditional love in Jesus. Jesus who lives, loves, and for all of that is abandoned, slandered, tortured and executed. He empties Himself for all for us! On the third day he is raised. Then he approaches those who had abandoned him. He  tells them not to be afraid!  They are to go and tell, go and show others that His way of love and forgiveness overcomes all the crap, all the death, all the hatred. By God's grace they are to live and die that way.

 

But it's so hard. It's so impossible. Yes. But it's also so good, so important. We all need the love, the upside down power of Jesus in our battles of life and death, of darkness and light,  of coveting a false freedom without accountability or even purpose beyond ourselves. Each of us needs transformation, forgiveness and hope. So God becomes human in Jesus, lives, suffers, dies and is raised.

 

May we too hear God, follow Jesus, as we beginning to behold bushes that are burning but not being consumed. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call Waiting

Pentecost 12a14 – Exodus 3:1-15 with Mt. 16:21-28 in the b.g. (August 31, 2014)

People often cry. There is the grandfather of a critically ill 8 year old girl at Children's Hospital.  There are ALL THE MOTHERS of children who are being forcibly recruited for terrorism. There are so called middle class people in who are working 50 or 60 hours a week because they feel they have to. But as a result of their workload they are exhausted. They are increasingly less connected with their family and friends than they need to be for their own well being. There are also people who have skills and or degrees but yet are unable to find a job that pays a living wage. There are the kids in schools where they somehow just don't "fit in". There are so many people hurting, crying, inwardly, outwardly.

 

A homeless man recently found his way into a downtown church. When a few of the people in the church approached him to extend a hand of hospitality and ask his name, he said over and over again, "Get Out of Here". It was only later that the people of the church learned that this man struggling with mental health issues often thought his name was GET OUT OF HERE. He thought that because wherever he went people told him to 'GET OUT OF HERE!"                 Many people both near and far are crying out in some kind of pain.

 

These days creation is also crying. Fires rage, mud slides down hill and mountain, glaciers melt and the oceans rise.  People, plants and animals: all are at risk. The crying rises in crescendo.

 

Such crying – as gut wrenching as it is, is not new. Once again we meet Moses. Last week we heard Moses' mother's cry. As her cry is heard her infant son is delivered from death. Moses then grows up. He begins to hear others' cries. His own Hebrew people are oppressed in Egypt. As Moses hears their cries he acts:  firstly in a harsh way. He kills the man who is beating a slave. Now Moses must run for his own life.  But God does not leave him alone. Moses is told that God (yes, God!) hears the cries of the oppressed people. God tells Moses that God will free those people. Great, thinks Moses.  Someone must do something so that those oppressed people can become free.  In that moment, But then, with words that may have caused Moses' heart to stop, God calls Moses to be THE AGENT through whom God will work to free the people. . .

 

Hearing cries is important! If no one hears or sees, another's pain, another's oppression, will anything change?

 

But there must be more than only hearing. Will the person who hears act  – to help those who are crying out?

God acts even as God cares!

 

How can I say that?

 

Look and see. God, the Creator of the universe, willingly takes on our human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. We desperately need a God with skin on. Our pain is  deeply in, with and under our skin. We need someone who identifies with us, who experiences what we experience. We need a God who does enter into our joy and pain, our celebration and predicament. In Jesus God does just that. God hears our cry. God responds to our pain, our joy, our predicament.

 

But (and this is very important) God rarely acts alone. Jesus, God in the flesh, reaches out to people, calling them individually and collectively to obey God. We also, are to hear other's cries. Then we are to respond as God enables.

 

God calls Moses that day even as Moses is out minding his "own business", tending his father-in-law's sheep. Here is mystery! Even though God takes on flesh, God is also still Spirit.

 

Let me elaborate. I was encountered by a woman, diagnosed with a terminal illness. How difficult it is for her to live with her illness. Experiencing the gamut of emotions – anger, fear, denial. Sometimes she wonders where God is. She asked God, "Why?" How could God allow this to happen to her?  She cries out to God in many different ways.

 

After a number of weeks she said to me, "You know Pastor I had a visitation." I asked, "What do you mean, a 'visitation'?" She replied. "A woman came to visit me – not once but twice. I don't even know this woman's name, or where she came from. I haven't seen her since. But this woman said to me both times she appeared – with a strong but not demeaning tone, even as she looked me directly in the eye, 'You need to accept this'.

 

"And you know" the woman said, "I have been able to... I am going to live with whatever time God gives me".

 

"Who was the woman that came to you?", I asked. "I don't know", she said.

 

Somehow, some way, God hears the cries of people, of creation. Part of this mystery of God is to call people to reach out on God's behalf to help others. The people God calls are flawed like Moses. Moses was a murderer, a manipulator (seeking to know God's name to control God) while at the same time genuinely afraid. After all, who is he, Moses, to approach the great and mighty Pharaoh, to ask or even demand that Pharaoh let the people go?

 

Nevertheless God's call stands for Moses.

 

I wonder can we hear the cries of anyone right now? Where and who might they be? (P)

 

Might God be calling us both to hear and to identify with them? Might God be calling us to go beyond hearing and feeling, even to go on God's behalf to do something about their pain?

 

Hearing God's call upon our lives is sometimes frightening. We may feel inadequately prepared to obey. Like Moses, WHO ARE WE to do this? We may be painfully aware of our own limitations. But, could it be that God knows what God is doing? God acts as God hears to free those who are hurting, dying, being oppressed in any way.

 

God chooses people to be part of God's grand dream, this seemingly impossible scheme: to confront the powers that be, the seemingly immoveable forces that almost always appear to be winning: death, violence, hatred and fear. God chooses people to act on God's behalf, to care,  to say offer our lives as a strong, "no" to such forces. God calls us to live in a different way.

 

Such living isn't easy. Such living often involves great risk, even significant loss. See Moses and other prophets. See Jesus. But in everything God is with us! This "freeing" is God's dream, God's hope, God's will. So God needs and calls all kinds of people including you and me.

 

Dear people: are we listening for the cries of others and creation? Are we open to being encountered by the very mystery of God?, Even in such seemingly ordinary things as burning bushes, bread and wine, water and words, God can call us by name!

 

How will we respond beyond our questions, our confusion, our fear?

 

Might we join Isaiah? Here I am, here we are – send us!  Amen.    

 

Transforming Voices (Go Shiphrah and Puah)

Pentecost 11a, August 24, 2014-08-22 (Romans 12:1-8 with Exodus 1:8-2:10 and Matthew 16:13-20)

Text: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

 

I  love this world!

 

There is incredible beauty. From the desert sagebrush of Kamloops, to the expansive waters of the Pacific. From the nearness of the Gulf Islands, to the expansive sands of Tofino.  From the realities of an eagle, bear cub or dolphin being rescued and restored to soar, to roar, to cut through the water. There is so much that is amazing in this world. 

 

Some of  you know or are beginning to experience the wonder of having a child head off to university, to adventure in their own way, hopefully to soar. Others of you watch and experience as  others' love unfolds, matures and develops beyond anything we could have imagined.  I love the exuberance of a pup as well as the patience and intimate knowledge of an older dog walking or limping with its master – two hearts as one. Yes, I love this world.

 

And our Scriptures tell us that God loves this world too.

 

Yet  there is also more to the world than its incredible beauty, creativity, mystery, love and wonder. . .

 

Sometimes the motivation and actions of people are anything but loving or beautiful. This is true when horrendous things are done and then "put out there" for all to see. James Foley is executed because his nationality is American. His executioners rigidly hate all Americans. So, James Foley's life is considered expendable.. Such thinking and action is awful. Such thinking and action is far too frequent.

 

There are also natural disasters. To some extent we knowingly or unknowingly contribute to them. The many fires, mudslides, and storms .

 

At times, the imbalance, the brokenness of our world comes to light even when we try to do that which is beneficial  in developing natural resources. At the same time too often we damage ourselves and our environment.

 

The "lostness" of our world is also apparent closer to home. Sometimes we do what we want. Never mind the consequences. We will think as we want, buy what we want, go where we want – with little if any consideration for those around us, for those who should come after us. This is not God's way.

 

To be sure, there is, there can forgiveness – as God chooses to to let go of our sins. Miraculously, others too may forgive us granting us new life with them. But the consequences of our self-centered actions or inaction stand. In all of that there is a lostness in our world.

 

Nor is this new. We have been brutalizing and terrorizing ourselves and others from the time of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel -  too often even in the name of God!

 

What shall we do, what are we doing in this colossal struggle between the beauty, the wonder of the world and our own "lostness"?  Can we – can  "our" world be rescued, delivered, re-directed?  ...

 

Our stories, the stories God gives us are so powerful!

 

A Pharaoh comes to power who does not know Joseph.  Like so many people with "power",  Pharaoh worries about a lot of things. Mostly he worries about how he is going to keep power. He is convinced that he will be "nobody" if he isn't Pharaoh. The more he thinks about this, the deeper his paranoia becomes.  Then – from his own fear, he concocts a horrific plan as to how he might keep his "power". He oppress those Israelites, the people descended from and through Joseph. " Kill all their male babies, and Pharaoh thinks that he will be fully in control". So Pharaoh  commands the midwives to become agents of death instead of agents of life. 

 

But thanks be to God, the midwives refuse. Puah and Shiphrah disobey Pharaoh employing both verve and cunning. When Pharaoh calls them on the carpet because the  male Israelite babies continue both to be born and to thrive, the women are  appealing to his prejudice. They imply that the Hebrew women are just like animals. They are so fast in delivering their babies that we midwives can't get there in time. Once the baby is nuzzling at the mother's breast, well then  we can't kill them.

 

It is these women, women whom Pharaoh and others discount as weak and unimportant  who refuse to be dictated to by his fear and hatred.  They are God's agents of life.

 

This is so important for us! Behold the incredible beauty and wonder of the world. God makes and shapes the world. Appreciate it, live with it, celebrate and uphold it! Whether we are interacting with the "richest" person or the "poorest" person, it does not matter. All are important to God. Who is to say what is "rich" or "poor" to God? Whether it is a small piece of land or a large tract, a small body of water or a large body of water, a tiny animal or a large animal - all are vital and important to God.

You see, whom we say Jesus is doesn't have as much to do with the words on our lips, as it  does with how we live our lives with other people, with the rest of creation and things.  

 

As people are losing their homes or are hungry, whom do we say Jesus is?  Is He the One who loves the poor and oppressed and calls others to hear them, see them, help them – including us?

 

Or do we somehow separate God and Jesus from all such economic  and political reality and do nothing? Then aren't we saying that Jesus is irrelevant, at least to us?

 

When the forces around us and sometimes within us seek to tell us repeatedly that we are only worthwhile if we make a lot of money, spend a lot of money, have lots of people who like us on facebook or in other ways, do we accept, do we believe that? God help us!

 

The risen Jesus repeatedly tells us as we enter this place, every time we hear Scripture, that by God's grace we are known and loved by God unconditionally. Intellect, accomplishment and income are non factors in God's love for us!  

 

When there is need and a plea from our communities for donations of time and money – whom do we say Jesus is?  Is He the One who gets the left-overs after we have spent most of what we have on our selves and others who already have so much? Or is he the One, the Lord of the living and the dead who calls us to be agents of life not death, contemporary Shiphrahs and Puahs?

 

Ask yourself: Whom and what do you love? Whom and what do we bet and base our lives upon?

 

Following and obeying the triune God is demanding.

 

But dear people, don't we see, that we are being given everything that really matters by this amazing God?  Our friends, our families, education, opportunities, love, forgiveness - all are gifts from God. God's washing us in the waters of a new creation is all Grace! All of this is beyond anything we could ever deserve or earn, or fully comprehend. What could we possibly do to earn the love of God, where God gives up everything as God takes on our human flesh and is executed so that we can live anew each day – so that each person and all creation can know and experience that they are of infinite value to God.

 

Do we actually know this? Do we live trusting God?

 

So much in our world works to convince us otherwise. These are the same "voices" that spoke to Pharaoh. "Be afraid! Protect what you have – there's not enough for everyone! Be on guard against all others. Build walls. Take care of  yourself alone!" Such forces come at us from many different directions, in the different times of our lives.

 

 So Paul says," Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect."

 

Oh people – the very Word of God, Jesus, lifted up again and again in the cradle of Christ, the Bible, keeps showing us this NEW WAY. We can hear Him. We can rest in Him. We can be shaped by Him. Oh people, the Sacraments of God – the bread and wine through which the very body of Christ is given to us so that we can be nurtured, strengthened and empowered comes again and again to us as a free gift.  Eat and drink, celebrate and live from the beauty, the awe of this God who is continues to create ourselves and the entire universe.

Oh people, by God's grace, with hearts and minds being daily transformed, let's both discern and live out the good and gracious will of God. How wonderful that is and can be! Amen.