Sermon, 35 22nd Ordinary, Exodus 3:1–15; Matt 16 21-28

Terribly Called

We have the strangest faith you could imagine.  Two of our greatest heroes, Moses and Peter both have an opportunity to say yes to the call of God: both of them say “no”.

Moses is called to the greatest vocation possible: to be the leader of the Liberation of his people, the slaves of the Empire of Egypt.  The first thing he says to God, (in effect) is “not me.”  The great vocation seems like a terrible idea to him personally.

Jesus finally announces his itinerary to his inner circle led by Peter.  Remember, Peter has just proclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the son of God.“  But hearing that the path leads to suffering and death, he says, “God forbid!”  Sounds like a terrible call to follow.

Why do we have these texts?  Why, of all the vignettes of the lives of Moses and Peter did these texts get passed down? Because they are crucial.

Any time you have a story in which the central characters are confused and need to be corrected, it must be that the author is concerned that the readers are in grave danger of making the same mistakes.

Neither Moses nor Peter understood the big picture; they had to   come to a new and clearer understanding of:

• What is God like?
• What does he care about?
• What does he want from us?
• How do we answer his call to follow him?

We have these same crucial questions.
To answer the questions mistakenly is disastrous – as much to us today as to Moses and Peter.
Let us let the Author teach us.  First, Moses’ story.

What did Moses believe about God before he saw that mysterious burning bush?

Who knows? He was raised in the house of the Egyptian Pharaoh.  Did he believe in the divinity of the Pharaoh, the divine sanction on the Empire and its methods?  Who knows?

One thing is clear: at the experience of that mysterious, unquenchable burning bush, he was taught two things: Who is God, and What does God care about.

Lesson 1: God is Absolute divinity.  “I am who I am” – the essence of being itself.  “
Don’t come any closer: this is holy ground; remove  your sandals”, or as Jesus said “Hallowed, or Holy be your name.”

When we worship God, we come with reverence, knowing that we are in the presence of divinity itself.

But lesson 1 is complex: this holy God knows Moses by name: calls to him by name.  “Moses, Moses“

He identifies himself with Moses family history: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
Lesson 1 is that this mysterious, holy God is personal, he is near, not far off.  He is aware of what is happening to his people and he is engaged in their rescue.

We cannot miss this:
What kind of God is God? He is not any kind of god; he is not an Egyptian god.  He is Israel’s God.

• He has a history with these people.
• He has a relationship with these people.
• He has committed himself to these people.

What is God like?

• He is the God who hears his people’s cries, and cares.
• He is aware of their misery, and it moves him.
• He can see the oppressing conditions that Empire has forced upon them, and he is engaged.

So what does he want?

He wants Moses to do something that seems to defy logic and common sense.  Go to Pharaoh.  Go to where your ran from for fear of loosing your life.

Moses, though in the presence of the burning fire itself, says, “Who am I?“  His mission is counter-intuitive.  How could good come from such a call?  Liberation seems not unlikely, but impossible, and life threatening.

Take note of this: God has not called Moses to comfort, to safety, to ease.  But he has called him personally, and promises this:  “I will be with you;

Who is God and what does he want?

We worship a God:

• who is holy and transcendent, and
• who is horrified by slavery, by sweat shops and child labor.
• who is in opposition to the inhumane treatment of prisoners
• and hates conditions of grinding hopeless poverty;

And a God who, therefore:

• sees where the pain is in your life
• hears your cries in the night
• and is with you, presently at every moment.

We worship a God whose love is not merely mystical and psychological, but rather is as actual as the bricks those Israelite slaves were forced to manufacture for the benefit of the Empire.

It is so significant to notice what he does about it
He calls a person to put himself at risk for people in need.

“Go to Pharaoh! … Set my people free.”

He calls Moses to deny himself, take up his staff, and follow his leading into the jaws of the Empire.
And you know the rest of the story.

But now let us fast forward to the story of Peter and Jesus.  Here we have another similar call to risk everything, deny yourself, take up  your cross, follow me.
Just like Moses, Peter cannot handle this at first: death and suffering were not part of his plan for the Messiah, the son of God – as he had just proclaimed Jesus.

“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”
In Peter’s words, Jesus recognizes the voice of the satan expressing the same temptation he had faced in the wilderness: to take the path of glory, not of suffering.  To bend the knee to the evil tactics of Empire and make all the kingdoms of the earth bow before him.
Jesus looks at Peter, but addresses the source of that idea:
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Peter, at this point, pre-Easter morning, cannot fathom how suffering and death could possibly achieve God’s purposes for his people.

God’s people were in bondage to empire and needed liberation.
Jesus knew that the source of the pain of his people was deeper than empire, it was evil itself.

Every empire is built on the domination, control, subjugation of  people.
Every empire is founded on the backs of its slaves – whether they are building an Egyptian pyramids, or laboring 18 hours a day in a coal mine, or sewing up cheap T-shirts for export.

Jesus did not have the agenda of dismantling Rome.
His agenda was the demolition of the evil use of human beings as means rather than ends.

This evil, this “will-to-power” to gain advantage over others, to  pursue the endless quest to indulge ourselves, whether by direct or indirect means, is at the root of an enormous amount of human suffering.

The revolution Jesus brings will begin when redemption comes to people who will reject this evil in themselves.

The revolution will start when a groundswell of people of faith are willing to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus.

This is what God wants from us:

• Every moment we invest in ministry to the poor instead of spending on ourselves, is an act of self-denial; a direct assault on evil’s claim on our lives.
• Every time we get out and visit people in hospital or people who are home-bound, every call, every card that says “I care” is a rejection of the evil of self-obsession.
• Every time we spend money filling the grocery sack for the Christian Service Center instead of banking the money for ourselves, we are saying “no” to evil and “yes” to the call to deny ourselves.
• Every time we raise our political voices against genocide, every time we participate in the One campaign, we are putting ourselves behind Jesus in the movement that can bring real, concrete liberation to people all around the globe.

The self denial that we are called to is not about guilt and shame or self-loathing.  Self denial is real, concrete and practical.  It is saying no to the concept that a persons life consists in the abundance of his possessions.

• It is about finally learning that there is actually more joy that comes from spending an hour in ministry at Holeman prison than an hour in front of HBO.
• It means you feel better about yourself for having tutored young people who would otherwise drop out than you could ever by spending that time on yourself.
• It means discovering that you feel far richer for having invested money in a clinic in Sudan than you would be if that money was spent on new clothes for yourself.

This is the irony and compelling certainty of following Jesus: that those who loose their time, loose their money, loose their lives for him and for the kingdom are the ones who actually gain their lives.

Jesus said it best:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

The call we hear is the call to risk loosing ourselves,  our security, our lives on the wager that this is the only way we will find them.
Let us loose our lives, for His sake!

Word Cloud: Sermon Aug. 17, 2008, Matt 15:20-28

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On Being a Canaanite Dog – Aug. 17, 2008

Isa. 56:1-8

locked out

Matt. 15:10-28

On Being a Canaanite Dog

I was driving my car in the city where we lived in Croatia.  I had some Croatian colleagues with me.  We were approaching the center, traffic was heavy.  The car in front of me was holding things up.  His car had a Hungarian licensee plate.  I said, “dumb foreigner”.

My passengers exploded with laughter: here was I, an American, calling a Hungarian in Croatia a foreigner!

I got that joke from Jesus.  Today we watch him as he leaves Judea, crosses the border into Syria (modern Lebanon) – the region of Tyre and Sidon – and calls a local lady a dog!

This is an inside-out story.  She wants healing for her daughter, but Jesus  has left Israel to go to her land to tell her that he was sent only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Well then, what is he doing there?

The way Matthew tells this story, we see that she is not just literally beyond the border of God’s people, everything about this woman is wrong;

• she is a woman,
• she is a gentile, which means
• she doesn’t keep Sabbath
• she eats unclean food
• she of course never offers sacrifices,
• and she is in constant contact with evil powers

- her daughter is demon possessed.

What does God think about this kind of person?  She should be in the bull’s eye of the judgment and wrath target.

But she needs help for her daughter – of a specific kind.

• The girl is not sick,
• She is not a leper,
• She is not lame or blind,
• She is not hungry,

Her problem is spiritual.  She has a demon tormenting her.

Watch this story closely: we will see that this demon is quite familiar and is still alive and well, tormenting people today.

So the nameless mother cries out to Jesus for help.

Her words are carefully chosen and deeply ironic:
“Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David.”

It is hard to have a request with three components that is more Jewish than this!

The gentile woman asks for mercy, using the word in her language that translates the word that sums up God’s lovingkindness (chesed).

She calls Jesus Lord which is a theologically loaded word.

And to top it off, calls him “Son of David“

Matthew started his gospel with a genealogical review, precisely to prove that Jesus was the long awaited son of David.

The Scribes and the Pharisees who make such a point of being acceptable to God do not call Jesus, “son of David.”  But this ultimate outsider does.

Next in the story, a bit of humor: the disciples tell Jesus to send her away.  The disciples are the ones who are away from home.  She is at home.  How could Jesus send her away?

But anyway, he doesn’t try.  He actually engages her in conversation – step one in showing a person dignity and respect.

He tells her he has been sent to lost sheep, but not to her kind of lost sheep.  He has been sent, he tells her, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (then what is he doing there on her side of the boundary?).

But she keeps coming, and kneels humbly and reverently before him, shortening her request to “Lord, help me.”

What happens next sounds horrible.  Jesus says,
“It is not fair to take the childrens’ food and throw it to the dogs.”

Well, if she is a dog, I am a dog, you are dogs, all of us are dogs.  If being a Canaanite, a non-Jewish person, places her outside the boundary of God’s covenant with Abraham, then we are in as much trouble as she.

But what sound like insult is another twisting irony: if she were an irrelevant dog, he would have ignored her, not engaged her.

The fact that he offers this brief metaphor of a table with children eating around it and dogs beneath is offering her a challenge to respond to.

She does.  She takes the image and runs with it.  If I’m a dog, then give me what the dogs get; the crumbs.  Let the kids get the meal – fair enough.  All I need is a crumb of mercy falling from the master’s table.

Crumb – let’s see; I’m picturing something about the size of a mustard seed.  What use is mercy the size of a mustard seed?

Question: Up to this point, what has this Sabbath breaking, pork eating, non-chosen-people, impure woman done?  Asked where she can convert?  Promise to turn a new leaf?  Even memorize the 10 commandments?

Up to this point all she has done is ask for a crumb of
mercy.

And with only that to go on, Jesus answers her with the opposite words he said to sinking Peter: “Great is your faith.”

Last week we made the declaration that we are people of weak faith, like Peter.

We are people who, like him, loose our focus, notice the storm, feel helpless and overwhelmed, and doubt God.

But we saw Jesus reaching down to save sinking Peter, as he does us, despite the weakness of our faith.

Now we see the measure of great faith: it is faith enough to ask for a crumb of mercy – to ask with head bowed and hands open, waiting for the crumb to land.

That’s it.  And that is a revolution.  God’s mercy is not contingent on anything but asking for it.  (Calvin would say that having the desire to ask for it is itself a mercy).

But the point is worthiness.
Jesus said, “Let it be done for you as you wish.”

• Not because she was Jewish
• not because she kept the commandments
• not because she promised to improve,

Jesus considered her worthy of God’s mercy just because she asked for it.

She was, after all, not outside of the boundary of God’s grace.

There are two powerful lessons here and we need both of them.

The first is personal: we are never outside the boundaries of God’s mercy.  God is not waiting for us to improve, not waiting for our promises to do better, not waiting for us to become giants of faith.  God does not wait to be merciful.

The very notion that we could be excluded from God’s mercy is demonic – still.

Everybody has skeletons in the closet; things we wish we had not done or said or wished.  We all have reasons to think that God is not exactly pleased with us.

But the message of this scripture is that it’s not about being worthy by any measure.

God gets to decide to be merciful and gracious to us and there is nothing we can do to stop him.

If we would just look around, everyday we would be overwhelmed with evidence that he is not waiting.  Every day he gives us life it is his gift.

Every day that we can get up and get dressed is a  mercy.

Every day that we can see the sky in motion is a mercy.

And every time we:

• swallow a pill,
• have a nurse take our temperature
• and speak with a real doctor,

- we are getting huge quantities of mercy that many people do not have.

God is in the mercy business, and he is a success at it.

Lesson number two is that we are not the only ones inside the circle of God’s mercy.  In fact, there is no one who is outside of it.
The idea that any criteria could separate a person from God’s mercy is also demonic – still.

By the act of crossing that boundary into the region of Tyre and Sidon, Jesus was demolishing artificial, human-created boundaries around “insiders” and “outsiders”.

We like to think that we are unlike the Scribes and Pharisees in their smug superiority to Canaanite women, but, honestly, we do it all the time.

We feel like we are God’s exceptions because:

• we are not illegal aliens
  we are not Muslims
  we are not criminals,
  we don’t have HIV/AIDS
  we aren’t on welfare and on drugs
  we don’t drive ratty cars and wear scary clothes

But this text calls us to cross boundaries.

Jesus calls us:

• to engage excluded people in dialogue,
  to bring dignity to people who have been shut out of the conversation,
  to be on the side of people who do not have:
  adequate health care
  decent housing
  who are discriminated against because of their sexual identity
  or medical condition
  to bring God’s healing mercy to people who need it

Because they need it, not because they have earned it,

- just exactly the same reason we received it.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Georgia, South Ossetia, ethnic conflict and Jesus

According to Wikipedia,

South Ossetians nearly unanimously approved a referendum on November 12, 2006 opting for independence from Georgia. The referendum was hugely popular, winning between 98 and 99 percent of the ballots, flag waving and celebration marked were seen across South Ossetia, but elsewhere observers were less enthusiastic. International critics claimed that the move could worsen regional tensions, and the Tblisi government thoroughly discounted the results.

Neither the government of the United States nor the EU accept that 2006 vote as legitimate.  Nonetheless, the region of South Ossetia is called a “break away” region because a substantial number of its inhabitants want to be free of Georgian state control.

People (we) want to govern themselves.  We do not want “them” to rule “us.”  It’s true for Coats and Serbs, it’s true for Hutu and Tootsie, it’s true for Kurds, Kosovars – everybody.

So the most important question is who is “them”?  This is solved by defining “us.”

All over the world “us” is defined by ethnicity.  Ethnic Ossetians want to govern themselves, and they do not want to be governed by ethnic Georgians – or Russians or Ottomans or anybody else.  They want what everybody wants.

Sometimes ethnicity is too blunt, and so the division needs to be cut by a finer blade: religion is often at hand to be the instrument.  Sunni and Shi’a are both Arabs, but “need” to distinguish themselves, so religion – down to the level of sect-of-the-same-religion helps.  It helped Serbs (Orthodox Christians) and Croats (Roman Catholic Christians) where ethnic differences between Serbs and Croats are not visible to the naked eye.

Ossetians know who they are; they have defined “us”.  They have their own language, their own alphabet, and a long history of fighting for independence.

Ethnic boundaries are frequently in conflict with national boundaries; ask the Hungarians who, after Trianon in 1919 found themselves in Romania.  Ask the Serbs, Croats, Solvenes (and more Hungarians)  and others who were collectively tied together in Yugoslavia.

But the modern nation state of Georgia, now free of the Soviet Union, wants the territory of the South Ossetians (currently inside the borders of Georgia) to  be and stay part of Georgia.  Regardless of the reasons (oil piplines for example) the conflict is about who gets to call it their own.

The Georgians look at South Ossetia and see that almost a third (28%) of it’s population is actually ethnically Georgian.  Some say the number is as high as 35% – but it is complicated.  The Russians, over the course of decades, moved a number of Russians into the region – and many now identify as Ossetians; should they be counted?

Anyway,  the population is now mixed.  It’s mixed down to the village level – just like Bosnia where a Serb village is just over the hill from a Bosnian-Muslim village (like Srebrenica – hence, the target of “ethnic cleansing”).

So what everybody wants  – to rule “themselves” becomes impossible in practice – unless we go back to city states (village states?) like ancient Greece.  Too many eggs have been scrambled, too many populations have been shoved around over time; the cry of nationalists (foreigners go home) is an impossible wish (home?).

So what about Jesus on this issue?

Ethnicity and boundary markers like religion were a huge part of Jesus’ agenda.  He wanted the “us” definition for the “people of God” to no longer include ethnicity.  He intentionally journeyed into non-Jewish territory, engaged ethnically non-Jews, and commended them for their faith.   That’s what is going on in the setting of the text this week in Matthew 15.  Jesus, in the region of Tyre and Sidon, engages a local woman, specifically identified by her non-Jewish ethnicity, a “Canaanite” in repartee, allows himself to be bested by her, and grants her wish to have her daughter healed.

Jesus’ location and action were “in your face” to people with the purity-agenda (which of course included ethnic purity).  Collectively represented as the “Scribes and Pharisees” these spokespersons for the “tradition of the elders” (Matt 15:2) are the subject of Jesus’ de-construction.  N.T. Wright is particularly good on this issue (Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 195-197, 309 & ff).  Though Jesus understood the unique place of Israel in God’s plan to bless all the nations of the earth (chronologically first), he anticipated the spread of the ethnically-open-ended Kingdom of God (or Heaven) to the world.  The Canaanite lady was one of the first, though not the only nor the last non-Jew to experience the blessings of the coming kingdom.

So what do we do with this vis a vis South Ossetia and Georgia?  Well, for me, it starts like every moral question: with the ideal end.  Just as all moral standards represent an ideal of perfection (do not kill, do not steal) which are often broken in practice, nevertheless, the ideal is the goal; the vision.

So for me, the vision is of a world in which people may know themselves as “us” defined by some handy criteria (ethnicity), but do not use that criteria in a way that excludes or dominates others.  That’s the vision.

Therefore, the first project is always peaceful settlement, not automatic acceptance of either separatist movements (the South Ossetian’s agenda) nor of naton-state control-claims (Georgia’s agenda).  Rather, the first project should be to find a way in which the legitimate interests of the South Ossetians can be protected without the need for ethnic-based conflict and the enormous loss of life and population-dislocation that always follows, and the genocide that often does as well.  That’s how I read Jesus.