Twentieth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 33.12-23 and Matthew 22.15-22

Through September and October, we have been journeying through the book of Exodus and asking how do we, as the people of God, stand before God on holy ground? We might reframe that question like this: what kind of church do we need to be? The church, in this nation, has experienced a long period of decline. But historically, the church in this nation has experienced cycles of growth and decline, waxing and waning fortunes. Christianity has been found wanting and abandoned; only to be rediscovered again when alternatives have failed to deliver. So, what kind of church do we need to be in our time of decline and in order to be ready when the tide turns again? This was the theme when the clergy of Durham Diocese gathered together for their annual study day on Monday gone. Together our guest speaker invited us to reflect on our calling to be a pilgrim people, a priestly people, and a prophetic people. It seems to me that these three themes are found in our readings today, and so I want to share them with you.

To stand on holy ground is to be a pilgrim people. Moses asks God, ‘Show me your ways.’ That is, show me your road, your journey. He knows that he has been called to lead the people up, to ascend to where God is; and he asks to know the road. This is the language of union with God or being formed by God into the likeness of Christ. It points us to Jesus: when Thomas asked, ‘How can we know the way to the Father?’ Jesus declared, ‘I am the Way.’ And God says to Moses, ‘My presence—literally, my face or faces—will go with you and I will bring you to the place where you will settle.’

God always calls us out from wherever we have settled, in this world, to be strangers and pilgrims, citizens of the kingdom of heaven under the lordship of Jesus, living away from home, longing to return one day. That is why God sends us internationals—students, and workers, and asylum-seekers; people who are not especially welcome in England—to remind us of who we are. And God is revealed among us as reflected in the faces of those we journey with, in black and white faces, young and old faces, male and female faces. We are not English or South African people who happen to be Christians, but Christians who happen to be English or South African, or from wherever else it may be.

And we are a parish church. The word ‘parish’ comes from the Greek word for ‘strangers,’ for those who live outside the walls of the house or the city: we are a church for those who live beyond the walls of the church, for outsiders. We seek the welfare of the society among whom we live, but our first loyalty is to the kingdom of heaven, of which we are also ambassadors. And so, at times the Church will both affirm and challenge government, just as this week Mr Biden has both affirmed and challenged Mr Netanyahu. When the Church is critical of government, people say the Church should stay out of politics; they tend not to say that when the Church affirms government, but there we are. To stand on holy ground, as pilgrims, is to welcome the stranger, the alien from another land, among us—and to take a stand against xenophobia and racism.

To stand on holy ground is also to be a priestly people. We are a royal priesthood. The priestly role is a representative one. Humanity is called to bless the earth, to care for all God’s creation. The Church is called to bless humanity, so humanity as a whole can better fulfil its calling. And within our tradition, some are called to be priests to the Church, to bless the Church so that the Church as a whole can better fulfil her calling to bless humanity to bless creation. Listen to this quote from the sociologist Stefan Paas:

“The minority situation of the church is not first a problem but rather a privilege and a calling. If I go to church as the only one from my street or my family, I do this also on behalf of my street or my family. To be a Christian at that moment means to be a priest on behalf of those who live in my neighbourhood, to offer sacrifices on behalf of the family. Parents go to represent their children, children to represent their parents, neighbours to represent each other.”

[Stefan Paas, Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society, p.213f]

I am your priest, and I pray for you, but we—you—are a priestly people. We come before God representing our neighbours, our representative worship pointing to the day when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Nonetheless it is worth asking, how might we become more fully representative? Moses said to God, ‘Show me your glory.’ And God replied, ‘I will, but you cannot see my face.’ But God had already said, ‘My face, or faces, will go with you.’ The glory of God is reflected in our faces—in your face and my face—but what we see reflected there is God’s back. What we see, reflected in one another’s faces, is where God is going ahead of us. The glory of God we see in the oldest faces here is the bounty of wisdom, and as we grow older we will meet God there waiting for us. The glory of God we see in the youngest faces is the bounty of wonder, and energy, and adventure, for God remains childlike while we grow old. So, if there are too few younger representatives of our parish present with us, we see something of God’s glory but whole other aspects of God’s glory are hidden from us. Yet, the future God is leading us into continues beyond our generation, and so we should expect to see God’s glory reflected in the faces of children. Their presence renews us. To stand on holy ground, representing our neighbours before God, and seeking to be more fully representative, is to ask, who is missing? and what must we do differently, to make room for them, to be the place where god’s glory is revealed?

Lastly, to stand on holy ground is to be a prophetic people. Moses says, ‘Show me your ways’ and ‘show me your glory’. Jesus says to those trying to trap him, ‘Show me the coin used for the tax.’  The coin reveals the ways and the glory of the emperor: Roman roads carving up an empire, the fruit of the earth and work of human hands pouring into Rome. In this worldview the human is first and foremost an economic unit, a slave to the market. The same view prevails today. Our education system is designed to form future economic units to replace the ones that get discarded at the end of their productive working life. Foreigners are viewed as coming here to steal our jobs. Jesus recognises that we live in this world but insists that we are not of it. That we are to view humanity as bearing God’s likeness, of pointing to God’s ways and God’s glory.

To stand on holy ground is to view work as a holy calling, the way in which we, as members of the Church, bless humanity, and as members of humanity, bless the whole creation. To see people not primarily as economic units, but as creative partners in God’s good activity in the world. To see children not as future workforce but as given as gift to the world with their own vocation, which we might help them to discover. To see those who are retired, or disabled, or who choose to step out of full-time employment for a season to raise a family or care for a family member, or for whom life is overwhelming to the extent that they cannot participate in the game of being model citizens, not as a drain on society but as those who reveal something of the glory of God among us. To stand on holy ground is to take a prophetic stance, declaring in word and action that human beings have inherent value. This is why, for example, we are to take Safeguarding seriously, nurturing an environment where all, including and especially the most vulnerable, can flourish as fully as possible, free from harm, rescued from exploitation.

How do we, as the people of God, stand before God on holy ground? Or what kind of church do we need to be? We are called to be a pilgrim people, a priestly people, a prophetic people. As we seek to walk these roads, we shall witness God’s glory, and witnessing God’s glory, we shall be changed. We shall be changed, and a way made in the wilderness, for others to travel, to come to know Jesus for themselves. Amen.

 

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 32.1-14 and Matthew 22.1-14

I want to suggest that Jesus is the key to our reading the Bible. That every part of the written Word points us to the incarnate Word, and that the incarnate Word is the lens through which we must interpret the written Word. I recognise that this might be called a logical fallacy, being a circular argument; but then, I don’t believe that logic is well-equipped to handle transrational experiences such as love or death or God or suffering. The Church proclaims that Jesus is the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end; the initiation, and the completion. I want to bear this in mind today.

In our Gospel reading today, I want to suggest that Jesus tells this parable as a corrective to popular expectation concerning the Messiah. I want to suggest that the son for whom the king throws a wedding banquet is the Messiah of their expectation; that the servants are the people of Israel, and perhaps the political-cultural-religious leaders of the people; that the invited guests are the surrounding nations, called to recognise the heir to the throne of king David, but either indifferent or openly hostile; and that the fate that befalls them is the expected overthrow of the armies of Rome. I want to suggest that, as a corrective, Jesus presents himself as the man who appears, unnoticed, centre-stage, who confounds expectation (refusing to wear a wedding gown is culturally offensive; Jesus repeatedly offends scribes, priests and Pharisees, who ultimately plot to have him killed), is interrogated by the ruler but remains silent, and who is bound and taken outside the walls to the place of despair and impotent anger, the place of public execution. I want to suggest that Jesus reveals to us that God rejects violence as a justifiable means to any end; and that, by fully identifying with us in our deep grief, God, in and through Jesus, fashions light from darkness, life from death, glory from suffering, hope from despair.

But we are journeying through the book of Exodus, and asking what does it have to teach us about how to stand on holy ground? So, how does this Jesus help us to understand, and respond to, the strange and disturbing conversation between God and Moses?

First, let’s consider the context. God has brought the people out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and to his holy mountain. There, he has spoken, ten words that call into being life. One of those words concerns the people as living images (or icons, or idols) of their God, an ardent God of steadfast love, who observes the impact of the iniquity of one generation on the lives of the generations that follow them, but who himself fashions kindness to countless thousands who, in turn, observe his love for them. These ten words are followed by further instruction, and then God calls Moses up the mountain to meet with him alone. It has been forty days and forty nights (recalling the time Noah spent in the ark) since anyone has seen Moses, while God gives him detailed instructions regarding the construction, dedication, and use of the tabernacle—the place where God will dwell in the midst of the people and meet with them—and the consecration of priests to oversee this space. This consecration involves burnt offerings, whose pleasing aroma will rise before the Lord God.

Seemingly abandoned, and growing anxious, the people call on Moses’ brother, Aaron, to fashion idols for them, visible images of gods who will lead them. This is a clear departure from the words spoken by God in their hearing, the very kind of decision-making that results in negative consequences for several generations, though in no way negating God’s activity to fashion kindness in their lives.

It is at this point that God—who observes such things—speaks to Moses, saying, “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.”

At this point, one might accuse God of setting the people up to fail. I do think that God is testing the people; but I don’t think the nature of the testing has anything to do with failure and punishment. Any good teacher will assess their class, to ascertain what they have understood; where the group as a whole, or given individuals, need further instruction, or even a different approach. Seen in this light, God, Moses, and the people, discover that the people are yet to learn how to see God reflected in their neighbour, in one another—they think they need some other image. This needs closer attention. If we can see Jesus in the bread and wine, but not in one another, our learning is incomplete.

What are we to make of ‘wrath’? It is a word that has only appeared once before in the story, in the context of God’s care for the resident alien, the widow and the orphan (Exodus 22:21-24), a care the people are to share, remembering that they themselves were aliens in Egypt. The word is rooted in the word for ‘nostril,’ and the sense of smell is more strongly attached to memory than any of our other senses. Wrath, then, appears to be concerned with taking a deep breath in through the nose, and being reminded of something by the smell, by the kindling of a sensation in the nostrils. It should be remembered that God has just spent forty days and forty nights instructing Moses concerning the burning of fragrant incense and of roasting meat.

This burning wrath will ‘consume’ the people. The word, which does not occur in exactly this form anywhere else, can mean accomplished, completed, finished. It resonates with Jesus’ words on the cross, “It is finished!” It has to do with process, and a coming through something, in continuity and transformation, as perhaps, for example, grieving well brings us through bereavement to new life beyond loss.

Might we read Exodus 32:10 in this way: that God tells Moses to go from him, carrying his instructions, acting with urgency, that incense and fat smoke might rise, filling God’s nostrils, establishing a deep memory—for the people, as well as for God—and bringing the people to completion as a great nation, in some way fashioned from Moses?

Moses’ immediate response is to plead for his people. It is clear that he sees something terrible in the experience of God’s wrath, fears that the completion it brings will amount to annihilation rather than consummation. This is an understandable reaction—even if it blots out the memory of the bush that burned but was not consumed, trees always symbolising people in biblical imagery, in this case the presence of God in the midst of his people—but it does not necessarily make Moses a reliable witness in this moment. (None of us are fully reliable witnesses.) Nonetheless his heart for his people is revealed, and this is consoling to God, who takes up this compassion as raw material in fashioning the kindness he has promised in response to human failure.

This is not to remove passing judgement on wrongdoing from the nature of God, or negative consequence from human action; nor even to seek to wash over troubling passages in the Bible, of which there are many; but to seek to take seriously Jesus as the fullest revelation of God—to whom all scripture points and through who we read all scripture—and his rejection of violence as a means to an end. It is to de-couple ‘wrath’ from ‘shock and awe,’ and ask whether, instead, it has more to do with grief and the need—even, and perhaps especially, for God—for consolation.

What, then, does this have to do with us?

Our first response to people who find life overwhelming, who are seeking to fashion a life that works from whatever means they have to hand, should be one of compassion. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, for they were like sheep, lost without a shepherd. Wherever we are, we find ourselves standing on holy ground when we show compassion towards others.

Arising from this compassion, we should both go to them, and go to God. We should pray for them, and teach them to come to God, who observes the mess we make, for ourselves and our families, but is committed to fashioning goodness and kindness in our lives. Prayer should be an act of memory—the memory of a community, and the perpetual creating of new memories—the testimony of God’s goodness and mercy, the hope on which we stand. An act of navigating loss and disorientation—at times, prayer will have no words—and coming, in time, to a fresh experience of steadfast love. Again, if we are to learn how to stand on holy ground, we are going to have to learn how to pray.

Life is messy, at times very messy. But God does not write us off, happy to start again with someone else. God journeys with us our whole pilgrimage through this world, and we reflect God’s suffering and glory. May we be strengthened to stand before the Lord today, without fear and with great joy. Amen.

 

Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity 2023

 

Lectionary readings: Exodus 20.1–20 and Philippians 3.4–14 and Matthew 21.33–46

I wonder what comes to mind when you hear mention of the Ten Commandments? Perhaps you’ve known them used as a blunt weapon for exercising control, wielded by Catholic nuns in schools or American Evangelicals in the public square? Perhaps they give rise to unwelcome feelings of inadequacy or failure, a sense of shame? Perhaps you believe them to be obsolete, a fossil record from another age? Is it even conceivable that they might be words of life?

There’s a God whose story is told in the Bible, whose name is Yahweh, which means ‘I call into being.’ We first meet this God in the first verse of the first book of the Bible, when they ‘call into being’ ‘the heavens and the earth,’ fashioning worlds of Sky and Earth and Sea. In response, all life unfolds, watched over by appointed guardians, until it fills every vast open space and tiny nook and cranny, complete with catastrophe and failure, mutation, and imaginative leaps along the way. Dinosaurs and dung beetles, pygmy shrews and kangaroos, penguins and pandas, crocodiles and condors, humpbacked whales, and woolly mammoths. This company loving God calls into being angelic beings [gods] and human beings and invites all creation to participate in the miracle of life. But not everything, not everyone, does so choose, at least not consistently.

After many adventures, with many friends, this God appears to Moses. Moses is a trauma survivor trying to rebuild a life, complete with catastrophe and imaginative leaps along the way. Yahweh convinces him to join forces and return to Egypt, to his beginnings, to liberate Moses’ people from the pantheon of Egyptian gods to whom they lived in bondage. And having mounted a successful operation to free them, this God introduces himself to the people. ‘I am Yahweh, the one who calls you into being.’

Whenever God speaks, it is to call something into being, to shape the world in a particular way, so that life can flourish. The ‘Ten Words,’ or Commandments, are words of life, continually calling a people—the people of [this] God—into being. They underwrite a moral universe and are also permissive invitations to respond, complete with those catastrophes and imaginative leaps along the way, already noted above.

The first word establishes an enduring freedom from the fear of a return to debt bondage. [This is the most common form of slavery in the world today, experienced by over 8 million people.] Yahweh, who has rescued this people in the immediate past, proclaims that the day will not come to pass when some other god will recapture them. Literally, Yahweh—who is eternal—will not live to see it. Even when Yahweh does later hand the people over to other gods, as the consequence of their unfaithfulness, terms are clearly stated and upheld—a seventy-year-long exile. If we were to trust this first word, if we were to seek to be shaped by it, we would reject the path of seeking to control others, would reject manipulation as a legitimate use of whatever power we have in the world. We might find ourselves on such a trajectory, but we would turn around, turn back. Even if we did not, life, as God has decreed it, would turn us back, eventually.

The second word establishes steadfast love as the way Yahweh will reconcile all creation, across space and time, including the realm of the dead, even in the face of rebellion. Love is the way, and love wins, in the end. A people seeking to be shaped by this word are empowered to be living images of this god of steadfast love: hearing, seeing, speaking, acting in and for love.

The third word establishes the absolute refusal to weaponize God against our neighbour. A people shaped by this word are freed to love the Other, those who look different and live differently to us, those whom we might otherwise fear. My God, do we need to embrace this word today.

The fourth word establishes delight in regular rest from labour, a delight that reveals God as King over creation and history. A people shaped by this word are set free and empowered to be strengthened by joy. When I was growing up, in a nation misshaped by austere religion, Sundays dragged on like long Covid. Where I live these days, they are, perhaps, a day in search of a purpose. What might it feel like, not to hold out for the weekend in a way that devalues the rest of the week, but to set apart one day in seven to revel in God’s sheer goodness?

The fifth word establishes human participation in God’s glory. For mortal creatures, this results in a weight, or heaviness, that increases over time: so, there is a dignity, or gravitas, to aging. The fifth word sets the people free from idolising youth or fearing old age; frees the young to cherish the old, and the old to continue to share with the young the life they gave them in the first place.

The sixth word negates murder. Unlawful killings occur; but they will not have the final word. This God commits to calling light from darkness, hope from despair, life from even unlawful death. Moses himself is a murderer, in his past: this word takes that burden up and transforms it, so that Moses can be one who brings life to many. This word so fully establishes the world that even when ‘the Word took on flesh,’ and was murdered—an act that is both deicide and genocide—the murder of God and of humanity is negated in the resurrected Christ.

The seventh word negates adultery. Infidelity occurs, with unoriginal repetition, pulling a community into psychological and material chaos; yet, here again, God declares that infidelity will not have the final word, for God commits to negate it, to call healthy relationships into being, again and again. This word, then—like all the others—is grace to those who stumble, good news to the poor in spirit.

The eighth word negates loss—whether of property, as in theft, or persons, as in kidnapping—by stealth. Stealth catches us out, when we least expect it; but this, too, however tragic, however great a violation, will not have the final word.

The ninth word negates deception, false testimony. It reveals a principle we have already seen in this people’s history. Joseph was sold into slavery, his brothers deceiving their father that he was dead. This Joseph was later thrown in prison, the victim of false testimony. Yet from such hopeless circumstances, God called into being the feeding of an empire through seven years of famine.

The tenth word negates false desire. We stumble down the road of laying claim, in our heart, to what has been given to another; but, sooner or later, we are confronted by God, who transforms our desire, so we are more able than before to love rightly. To treasure what has been given to us, and to value what has been given to others without needing to possess those gifts for ourselves.

The ten words really are words of life, re-ordering the universe, establishing a world that is truly as its Creator intended. And yet we only have to look around to see that even (sometimes, it feels, especially) those who claim to believe in the God who established such a world don’t live as if it were possible, let alone the real world.

The people said to Moses, ‘You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.’ And they were right. If we even hear God speak, we will experience death—which is why so many of us do not wish to hear God speak today. But all that will die is all that needs to die, to be returned to earth, that life might reemerge.

This is why the church-planter Paul speaks of the treasures of the Law being incomplete until they find their fulfilment in Christ Jesus, his Lord; why he regards his entire history—personal and corporate—as manure; why he longs to share in Christ’s death and resurrection; as his life, and the life of the household of God, unfolds, to fill the Roman Empire and beyond, from the sea of slaves to the small corners occupied by freemen and the elite, spreading to every continent, century, and  culture.

And, yes, we’ve found ourselves lost in catastrophes, needing imaginative leaps. But what God has called into being cannot be undone. God is not done with us yet. Love wins, in the end.