“You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” —Deuteronomy 10:19
The various summaries of the law in the Bible include strangers as people to be especially cared for. Whether we call them sojourners, immigrants or aliens they need help because they are frequently socially powerless. Continue reading
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, and those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”
The “Shadow of Death.” That doesn’t sound very good, does it?
I asked Rabbi Josh Breindel of Temple Anshe Amunim in Pittsfield about the phrase and he said it is quite literally “shadow of death” in Hebrew. He said it is a colloquial saying and means something like “mortal peril.” We are all acquainted with that image from the 23rd Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
Two of the traditional themes for the Epiphany season are “light shining in the darkness” and the “calling to Christian discipleship,” and I hope to combine them today. Continue reading
The good folks over at the Babylon Bee, a Christian satirical site, posted a gem of a fake article today called “Historical-Critical Scholar Doubts Authorship Of Paper He Wrote,” which comically captures some of the dubious certainties that sometimes come out of the New Testament studies combine.
The article quotes the fictitious Dr. Gunther Burg of Yale questioning the authenticity of an article he himself had written. Continue reading
“Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. -—Psalm 8:2
In our family “out of the mouths of babes” was proverbial, expressed when any wisdom or insight, even unintentional, came from one of the youngest members. Here’s an example: A married couple, bickering in the kitchen, was astonished when their young child walked in on them and said, “You should get counseling.” Out of the mouths of babes.
When my own children were very young our mealtime often had the feeling of a manic improvisational comedy troupe. Beverages were spilled with alarming regularity. One time my son turned to his little sister, and asked, “How do you know everything?” She quickly answered, “I don’t know!” Out of the mouths of babes. Continue reading
Bill Holladay died last week and his funeral was yesterday. He was Samuel Edgar Lowry Professor of Old Testament, Emeritus, at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts. Continue reading
For our Lenten adult study we have been looking at each of the four Gospels and Brent (our pastor) has asked me to share briefly with you what I love about the Gospel of Luke.
Each of the Gospels has features about it I love. Like many Christians my idea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a mixed-upped conflation in my mind of all four Gospels.
When I started studying the Bible as a young man I began noticing how each Gospel tells the story in a somewhat different way, and something about that bothered me. I wondered, “Where they differ what is the truth of the story?”
One of my teachers helped me with this by having me imagine a beloved mother with four children, and upon her death each child wrote a remembrance of her. Each child’s remembrance of their mother would be different, but they would all be true.
Another helpful analogy I heard was that the Gospel is like a diamond, when you turn the diamond the light catches different facets of the precious stone. Each of the four Gospels is a different facet of the one Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was in the Christmas story where I first noticed the differences in the several Gospels. Mark and John say nothing about the birth of Jesus. Only in Matthew do we hear about the visit of the Magi, their meeting with Herod and his slaughter of the innocents, and Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt.
But it is especially Luke we think of most often at Christmas time. Only Luke has the annunciations to Elizabeth and Mary, Mary’s Magnificat, and only in Luke do we have the choir of angels addressing the shepherds.
And so these early chapters of Luke might be a good place for me to start to tell you what I especially love about Luke. Continue reading
One of the accepted truths of our faith is that God is everywhere. But here and there, now and then, the Bible tells us about a particular in-breaking of the Divine Presence into someone’s life in a most extraordinary manner.
One of the best known and most important of these stories is the encounter we just heard about between God and Moses on Mt. Horeb.
The back-story to this event starts with the migration of Hebrews to Egypt during and after the time of Joseph, where they increased in number and flourished.
But a new Egyptian king, or pharaoh, came to power who hadn’t known Joseph, and he was threatened by the presence of the Hebrews and he subjected them to slavery.
This is the world Moses is born into, a world where his people are oppressed, and his own life is in danger. This paranoid king orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all the Hebrew boy babies, but in an act of revolutionary daring they disobey him.
You all know the story of how the baby Moses was hid in the bulrushes along the Nile River, and was discovered by Pharoah’s daughter. And how when Moses grew up she adopted him, and he was treated like an Egyptian prince.
So Moses escapes the plight of his people, but not for long. One day he saw an Egyptian overseer beating a Hebrew slave, and Moses rushed to defend the slave and in the ensuing fight he killed the man.
Fleeing for his life he ends up far away on Mt Horeb, where he settles down with a wife and tends the goats for his father-in- law.
That brings us to our story for today. It is not a very promising story, Moses wanted for murder, running away from his home and his people. And he knows that his people suffer terribly under the authority of pharaoh, who is the king of the most powerful empire in the world. Moses may have just been relieved to get out of town with his life.
So it’s just another ordinary workday for Moses, keeping an eye on the flocks as they forage for food on the side of the mountain. And then, suddenly, the ordinary day is transformed by this extraordinary sight, a flaming bush that seems to burn but is not consumed. And there is a divine messenger in the fire, for that is what an angel is. The angel never speaks, but the voice of God speaks directly to Moses, calling him by name, “Moses, Moses.”
Moses knows he is the presence of something or Someone much greater than he, and so he says, “Here am I.” Then God warns Moses to come no closer: “Take off your shoes, for you are standing on holy ground!”
What makes it holy ground? It is holy ground because God is present there. God is holy, and where God is present it is holy ground. Did you know that the Latin word, sanctus, meaning holy, is where we get our word sanctuary? A sanctuary means “a container for holy things.” This room is called a sanctuary because it has been set apart as a place where we may know the presence of God. There is nothing intrinsically holy about this room, or Mt. Horeb, for that matter. They only become holy ground because God becomes present there.
I need to say a word about mountains. The ancients often viewed mountains as holy places where the gods or the larger powers dwelt. They were places best left alone. I recently learned that there are very few Native American artifacts on the tops of mountains. For example, Darby Field, who was the first European to climb Mt Washington in NH in 1642, could convince only one of his 26 Indian scouts to approach the summit with him.
They discerned that holy ground can be dangerous ground. Something Moses sensed as well. On Mt Horeb he finds himself suddenly on holy ground, that sacred space where heaven and earth meet.
One of the things I love about scripture is that I notice new details every time I read a passage, even a familiar one like this. Here’s what I noticed about this one: first, it doesn’t say that God is invisible. On the contrary, Moses turns his face in submission to that which is greater than he. The belief was if you looked at God you would die. Later in Exodus, after a long and complicated relationship, Moses gets bolder, but here he turns his face away from God.
The other detail I had never noticed before was the angel. And why doesn’t the angel speak? That’s their job as intermediators. But here it is God who speaks directly to Moses.
Think about it. This encounter with God must have been both terrifying and amazing, both awesome and awful, two words that used to be synonyms but have evolved to being opposites to show the tension that exists in any encounter with God’s presence. Was it awesome? Or was it awful? Both.
There’s an old hymn that captures the former use of awful, “Before Jehovah’s awful throne.”
So Moses finds himself on holy ground, and knows there are dangers. What are some of the dangers of holy ground?
And that is the essential truth about all divine-human encounters. They always come for a reason and a purpose. They are always attached to a call. They are not information about God, but an invitation into the work and will of God. We don’t discover God, like the New Yorker cartoons where the pilgrim climbs a mountain to find the solitary guru to tell him the truth about God. Our God is not a God we can discover, but a God who reveals himself to us, for a purpose, the divine purpose.
That’s what makes these encounters so dangerous. Moses recognizes that this invitation is fraught, because God’s work is not safe. This is why Moses offers excuses and alibis to get out of it. And I love that God never refutes his excuses and alibis, but simply ignores them.
It’s a great story, but is it our story? I think it is. And here’s what I think we may need to hear from this story. Moses is going about his day job, and he thinks he is autonomous and answerable to no one. In that way he is like us, because that is the great myth of our time: that we are both autonomous and accountable to no one.
So on this ordinary day on the mountain God breaks into Moses life, calls him by name and tells him he has a job for him. The sudden presence of God, the bush, the angel, the voice, make it clear to Moses that he is not autonomous, that there is something, Someone, greater than he with whom he is in relationship, and he is accountable, he is called. In the face of the divine presence and before the divine authority Moses realizes he has a vocation, and that his own fate is closely linked with the fate of his people, who are enslaved. The very people he has run away from.
Something else I noticed for the first time in this story. In the beginning of Exodus Moses’s people are called “the Hebrews.” But here there is a shift. God says to Moses, “The cry of “the Israelites” has come to me.” This naming creates a new identity. I am reminded of the line from the 1 Peter 10:2: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.”
So Moses wants to know who is this God? We assume monotheism, but in Moses time there were lots of gods around. God says this is who I am, and discloses the divine name: Yahweh, which means I am who I am. “Tell the Egyptians I am sent you.”
And now that God has identified the Hebrews as Israelites, recall that Jacob’s name became Israel, he explicitly identifies himself as not any old god, but the same God who made covenant with the ancestors. “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
This is the central story that constitutes a people, Israel, and by extension the church. It is not the end of the story by any means; later on this very same mountain God will give Moses the Ten Commandments. The book of Exodus tells us God bestows on his people Presence, Law, and Covenant as the abiding features of a new community set apart to be holy. They are to be slaves no longer, but to live for his will and way on behalf of the whole world.
And on every Passover Jewish families repeat this story at the Seder table. They don’t say, “when our ancestors were slaves in Egypt.” They say, “When we were slaves in Egypt.” In doing so they collapse the time from then to now.
In much the same way when we Christians hear this story and think about this story we know that it is our story too. It is a story of liberation. It is the Passover from slavery to freedom. It is the Easter from death to new life.
The story reminds us that we are neither autonomous nor accountable to no one. That is a lie our society tells itself. But it is not true. On the contrary, our God sees, hears, knows, calls us by name, and invites us to share the divine work of liberation from every form of bondage, and every structure of oppression, whether it is personal or societal.
The bush still burns. The call still comes. “Who will speak for me? Who will hear and respond to the invitation to work for my will and way?” Amen.
I preached this sermon on August 31, 2014 at the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. To hear a podcast of the service that contains this sermon go here.
One of the limitations of being a pastor is that you don’t very often get to hear your colleagues and minister friends (or anybody, really) preach and lead worship, because you yourself are so occupied on the majority of Sunday mornings.
So for the last five years since I retired I have enjoyed from time to time visiting a variety of churches, mostly, but by no means exclusively, in my own denomination, the United Church of Christ.
In doing so I have experienced all manner of worship, some good and not so good preaching, and generally interesting approaches to the Lord’s Day worship of the people.
But one troubling feature of many of the worship services I attended is the practice of calling the Old Testament reading by another name. I think this is a bad practice, and further adds to the confusion in the pews about just what the role of Scripture is in worship. Because we don’t pick these readings at random, as if we could just as easily pick some other one (say Kahlil Gibran or e.e. cummings.) No, these reading are our canon of Scripture, and define our identity as Christians. The word canon comes from the word “rule” or “measure,” and it’s one of the ancient rules of our tribe, but now seemingly in jeopardy.
The most common practice that I have noticed is for congregations to call the first reading, “A Reading of the Hebrew Scriptures.” It sounds good and fair, and who could object? Well, me for one.
The reasons for calling it this are right-minded (a supposed sensitivity to Jews for one thing), but wrong-headed. For one thing, it isn’t entirely true, as the Hebrew Scriptures differ somewhat, and have an entirely different canonical order. And they are not actually all in Hebrew as there is some Aramaic in them. In academia, where I suspect this bad habit has been picked up by well meaning but misguided ministers, it makes a certain sense to call the academic study of the Hebrew Scriptures “the Hebrew Scriptures,” but congregations aren’t classrooms, and the liturgical use of Scripture is a different creature from the academic study of it (although the latter should certainly inform the other.)
So Sunday service bulletins should call it the Old Testament, which has the advantage of being the near universal practice of the ecumenical church, and also theologically correct, since it precedes the New.Old Testament doesn’t imply super-sessionism (the great fear of the revisionists), only chronology, and points to the arc of the whole Christian narrative, which is obviously contained in both of the two testaments.
Calling the first readings the Hebrew Scriptures also wrongly implies that the New Testament is the Christian Scriptures (sometimes, believe it or not, even just called that in some of our churches), which of course is dangerously false, as the Christian canon is both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Remember Marcion?
Furthermore, we Christians read the Old Testament (or should) through a different set of lenses than the Jewish community, precisely because of the New Testament. Which is to say that we read them in the light of the life, teaching, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or as we say in the jargon of the theological world, Christologically.And other common euphemisms for the old Testament, such “Our Common Scriptures,” or “First Reading” or “First Lesson” are no better, and share the same flaws. Some of this language may well be appropriate in an inter-faith service, but I am talking about it being used in our own worship.
Given the despicable history of Christian anti-Semitism it is understandable that we are trying to be sensitive to our Jewish brothers and sisters, whose faith and ours do indeed share common roots. But my Jewish rabbi colleagues, and I have had many of them, tell me they don’t understand this practice and it gives them no solace.
They (usually) would like to be in conversation with us, but not as a way to find some new religion that is netiher Jewish nor Christian. My best rabbi friend tells me that our honesty with each other comes about because he doesn’t apologize for being a Jew, and I don’t apologize for being a Christian, and so we can talk about where we agree and where we differ.And one of the places where we differ is in having different Scriptures, although they do indeed overlap. And for Christians, our Scriptures are the writings contained in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
So why else do we do this? I think we do this to signal to ourselves and others how open we are, and to make our mostly middle class congregants feel good about themselves, which is actually not what divine worship is for.So if you are calling the first reading something else in your congregation, just stop it. It’s proper name is the Old Testament!
When I Survey . . . 