EXODUS 19:2-8a
PSALM 100
ROMANS 5:6-11
MATTHEW 9:35-10:15
Sermon – 6/16/02
As this morning’s reading from the Book of Exodus opens, the people of Israel, led by Moses, have arrived at the foot of Mt. Sinai, on top of which God would shortly give Moses the Ten Commandments. Just two months before, the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, powerless and hopeless, until God rescued them and delivered them from the hand of a brutal dictator and the dictator’s mighty army.
As
God puts it poetically to the people, “I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought
you to myself.” Being liberated from a
dictator was good, but it wasn’t enough to ensure true freedom:
true freedom and fulfillment is only possible with a living relationship with
The Source of Life, Almighty God.
Without submitting to God’s authority and guidance, the newly-freed
slaves were likely to degenerate into a disorganized mob.
Not
only that, they were likely to die.
Literally.
They
had escaped from Egypt, delivered from slavery by the mighty hand of God – and
they had also left the most prosperous and advanced country in the world
with the most stable economy and dependable food supply and arrived in – a
desert.
On
the Sinai peninsula, that triangle of land at the northeast part of Egypt, on
the border of the Holy Land, the wettest part gets 4 inches of rain per year. And unlike the heartland of Egypt, there is
no big river (or even small river) in Sinai to provide an obvious and
dependable source of water. And there
were (and are) no taps to turn to get water.
The
Israelites had already noticed this and complained loud and long. God’s response was, essentially, “I created
the whole planet; don’t you think I know where to find water out
here? I just rescued you from slavery;
don’t you think I want you to live?
Ask and you shall receive!
Enough with the complaining, already!”
So
it was in an unusually chastened frame of mind that the Israelites came to Mt.
Sinai. From that spot, you can see for
miles in any direction. Miles of,
basically, mountains covered by rocks and dirt. There are oases with water, but you have to know where
they are. Our guide to Sinai took us to
a lookout spot and showed us, in the distance, one of the oases the Israelites
stopped at. Looking at arm’s length,
you could cover it with your thumb. Go
in the wrong direction and miss it, and you’re toast. Literally.
None
of the Israelites except Moses had ever been in the wilderness of Sinai before
– and Moses had only been half-way across the desert. Knowing how to get half-way across a
desert isn’t enough. And the people
knew that behind them was the Egyptian army, eager to give them a very
warm reception if they crawled back to Egypt and abandoned the God who had
saved them.
That
was the choice: reject God and go back into slavery, think they could figure
out how and where to cross the desert themselves and die, or trust the God who
had gotten them this far to bring them the rest of the way to the
wonderful new home God had prepared for them.
It
was not as easy a choice as that may sound. Slavery was brutal, but it was familiar:
they knew what to expect. And some
people become so comfortable with failure and powerlessness that they are
really scared to try success and adulthood!
The desert was, on the other hand, totally unfamiliar, but human
arrogance can fill people with false and disastrous self-confidence based on –
nothing.
Faith,
on the other hand, meant acting like mature adults – but like adults who were
mature enough to know that they didn’t know it all, and needed to count
on God.
Enough
people followed Moses on that third, hard path of faith (with both
self-confidence and humility) for there to become a nation, not
just a mob of escaped slaves. That was
indeed God’s plan. As God says in
today’s passage, “’The whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly
kingdom and a holy nation.’”
The whole earth is God’s: it’s important
to remember that and not get carried away by human grandiosity about what we
“own”. It also helps to remember when
we give an offering to God, we are giving back to God’s service and to
the well-being of God’s creatures a little part of the bounty God has
shared with us – which is everything we can see, hear, touch,
taste, smell or imagine.
God
then said, “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” Being delivered from slavery by God does not
mean being freed to “do our own thing” until the end of time: we would end up
being “slaves” to someone or something else, whether a political demagogue or
our own wants and desires. That isn’t
true freedom. True freedom requires
discipline and dedication, otherwise freedom means the “Whim of the Month Club.”
God’s
covenant with the people of Israel through Moses was a crucial first step
towards the redemption of the world, but it wasn’t the whole plan. For one thing, the Old Covenant was only
with one nation, not with the offer of redemption and new life for all
people. For another thing, while the
covenant of Mt. Sinai offered discipline and dedication, it did not offer full
spiritual liberation from sin (for a system of repeated and endless sacrifices
for atonement was created with it), and it did not offer liberation from the
spiritual arrogance which was (and is) a risk for everyone (including
Christians), arrogance by those who think they’ve obeyed all the rules and “God
owes them one” and arrogance by those who think they are perfectly good
without God.
In
Christ, God offered (and offers) liberation for all people in all
nations, atonement for the sins of all people in all places and times, and
liberation and spiritual growth by his grace, not by any good deeds of
ours. So there is no room for either
arrogance or hopelessness by anyone.
The
fact is, if we think we’re so good that
we don’t need God, we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. And,
if we think we’re so bad that God
doesn’t want us, we don’t know God as well as we think we do.
As St. Paul says in
today’s Epistle, the first New Testament reading, “God proves his love for us
in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Christ “took the rap” for all of us even and
especially when we are at our worst.
And we all have days like that, days when upon reflection we regret what
we’ve done, or didn’t do. Without
Christ’s help, our sins and their consequences would be welded to our
souls forever, and we’d have as much chance of getting to the ultimate Promised
Land as the Israelites would have had of getting to the earthly promised land
without guidance. They, and we, would
die in the desert.
To
put it another way, people today have two options. Option A: we can try to tackle all of life’s challenges totally
on our own, or with the help of people who are just as fallible as we are but
don’t know it. Option B: we can try to
tackle all of life’s challenges with the “24/7” personal interest and
commitment of the Creator of Life and Owner of the Universe, including a second
chance in life bought with the most precious blood of the Son of God himself. As an added benefit, Option B comes with a community
of people who have also picked Option B, who may not necessarily be smarter
than other people but who know that.
All the members of the community of Option B know they are
works-in-progress who don’t know all the answers – but they know the One who is
the answer.
So
we stand, each of us, like those Israelites of old, facing the choice of trying
to cross the desert by themselves, or with a community of people who together
say “I will, with God’s help.” (That is
the response to the invitations to commitment in The Baptismal Covenant in the
Prayer Book.)
We
who say “yes” to being part of that covenant community live and work among
people some of whom are also standing “on the edge of the desert” but unsure
what to do. Perhaps they are tempted by
the “siren song” of those who want to lure them back into slavery” of some sort
(like slavery to alcohol or drugs).
Perhaps they are tempted to believe they can “cross the desert” on their
own. Perhaps they think that there is no alternative to “crossing the
desert” – a.k.a. facing life’s challenges – on their own, because no one has
ever invited them to be part of the community which trusts in God to guide them
across the desert.
Who
will urge people not to go back into “slavery”, not to trust solely in their
own limited abilities, and instead to trust in God to guide us through life
together?
We’re
elected, folks. There ain’t nobody
else. That’s the package: obey and
follow God, be part of the community dedicated to obeying and following God – and invite and welcome others to come along
on the journey.
There will be dry days on our journey across the desert, days we may be tempted to give up when we’ll need to be there for each other. There will be nights of extraordinary beauty, when we can share food and drink blessed by God, sing songs and tell stories around the campfire, and then look up and see more stars than we ever imagined we could. There will be days of joy and days of sorrow, days of frustration and days of accomplishment, celebrations when we reach a fine oasis along with an awareness that an oasis is not The Promised Land itself. And then one day, by the grace of God, we will reach the end of the desert and come to a place we have never been before but which feels more like HOME than any home we have ever experienced. And we will meet Someone face to face who up ‘til then we’ve only known by faith.
And,
if we get there, we’ll get there by the grace of God, our faith and because someone
else invited us to come along on the journey.
And maybe someone else will make it by the grace of God, their faith and
because you invited them to come along on the journey.
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard