November 9 -- Micah

Grace to you and peace, from a God who “comforts the afflicted, and afflicts the comfortable” -- it’s all in grace and peace.  AMEN.

Micah -- the prophet from the south.  Speaking out in a time when Jerusalem envisioned itself as invincible.  The nation was divided into north and south during Micah’s day.  The Northern Kingdom was actually named Israel.  The Southern, of which Jerusalem was a part, was named Judah.  Micah was a prophet in Judah.  From a small town in the country.  Here, it’d be like a prophet rising up from Dubuque, Iowa or Fresno, California or Seguin, Texas -- and then going to New York, City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, CA.  To speak out and to stand up to the the powers -- the influencers, the trend setters, the legislators, the religious leaders.  

To stand before the proud and the strong and to speak on behalf of the least, the lost and the lowly.  Micah was a prophet and a voice for the landless farmer, the migrant worker, the widow and the orphan.  The poor.

The book of Micah is traditionally only really read in worship during the season of Advent.  This passage from chapter 5.  “From you O Bethlehem...”  It’s where the song “O Little Town of Bethlehem” comes from.  And so there’s a nice way that we usually hear Micah, when we hear him amid the evergreen branches and beautiful, peaceful candlelights of one of my favorite seasons of the church year.  One scholar says that Micah has become almost “ornamental” -- hung up in December and taken down in January.     

Reading him today is a gift and helps us hear God’s voice in our lives a new way. 

Coloring by Carol Mason

Micah was a prophet for the downtrodden and the oppressed.  And Micah was the first of the prophets to foretell the falling of the Southern Kingdom, and of Jerusalem.  Things were so neat and shiny there, the lords of the land were so plump and secure, they were so comfortable, that Micah must have sounded like a madman.  [people ignoring, ridiculing]

But God called Micah to go them, and agitate their comfortable, oppressive ways.  God always “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.”  

When we’re doing well, watch out, Micah would say.  The stock market did really well this week.  Watch out, Micah would say.  Do not forget the least, the last and the lowly.  It’s easy to forget God, or at least make God ornamental, when times are good.  

If times are bad for you then Micah has a comforting word, Micah is on your side.  But if you’re one of those who -- when people ask how you’re doing -- and you can honestly say, “I’m truly blessed.”  Then Micah has a more challenging word for you today.  And for me.  

Nothing wrong with having stuff.  But don’t forget who brought you to this place of blessing, in the first place.  That’s me channelling Micah.  [Study this short book of the Bible this week.]  Once again, God, through this prophet, reminds the people, “I’m the one who created you, who blessed you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, who gave you this land, who sheltered and protected you all these many years.
“I didn’t do that so that you would hog it all for yourselves.  I did that so that you would go and do likewise.  I didn’t bless you in order that blessing stops with you.  I blessed you so that the whole world would be blessed!”
Once again, God through, this prophet, reminds us today in November 2014, “I’m the one who created you, who brought you up out of all the times of trial you’ve endured -- your own personal Egypt’s -- all the hardships, the brokenness, the pain; I’m the one who brought you here.  I’m the one who entrusted you with the blessings that you have today -- with money, with relationships -- family and friends, work, with transportation and communication, with technology and education, with a church, with a beautiful and powerful nation and a stunningly gorgeous landscape, with blue ocean and blue sky and rolling hills and sunshine and crops.    
“I didn’t do that so that you would hog it all for yourselves.  I blessed you so that you would go and do likewise.  I didn’t bless you in order that blessing stops with you.  I blessed you so that the whole world would be blessed!”

God does justice, loves mercy and walks humbly with us.  Micah calls us, even today, to be mirrors of God’s doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly.

What does that look like in our world, in our church family, in our homes day-to-day?  What does it mean to you to do justice?  I think it’s got something to do with how we treat the least, the lost, and the lowly -- the voiceless and the powerless in our world and in our communities.  What does it mean to you to love kindness?  In a world where there is so much meanness, where kindness sometimes seems rare, as followers -- not of Micah but -- of Christ, I think kindness is a radical act.  We can tell people about the God we serve, simply by being kind, loving and thoughtful to those we know and even those who are strangers to us, and to our communities.  In a world where the stranger is suspected and rejected and even villianized...the Christian’s arms are open.  Love kindness.

And I find the real Gospel in the passage in the last of Micah’s commands.  Walk humbly with God.  Embedded in that is the promise that God walks with us.  God will walk with us if we walk arrogantly and ignorantly too.  God will walk with us if we walk blindly, or even if we stumble and fall.  God will walk with us when no else walks with us.  God will walk with us certainly in bad times and also in good times.   But Micah calls us to think about how we walk with God:  humbly, patiently, wisely, compassionately, care-fully, trusting in this proximity that we have with God.  Gladly receiving God’s decision to be with us through it all.  God walks with you this day, God is still nudging you to open your hands and open your eyes and see the world, and those in need.  God continues to send us prophets like Micah, who challenge us and love us at the same time.  And God has sent us Jesus, who holds us no matter what, who forgives us, also challenges us, and finally walks us home.  Amen.

November 2 -- All Saints' Sunday and Elisha&Naaman

Do you ever think you know better than the Holy Spirit?  I mean, when the issue of health care or immigration comes up, and Jesus says,  “Let the children come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”  When Jesus puts children at the center, do you ever question all that, and say, “Well, yes Jesus, but you don’t understand the financial implications and the tax burdens that immigrant children and healthcare for everyone can have on our society.”  That’s very a political example.  But when we look at Jesus’ words, and then we look back at our real world, it’s hard to trust in God.  It’s hard to believe that this God that we celebrate and praise in here, is real, or has anything of substance for our present situations.

How about a more personal example?  We can get pretty angry at times.  I know I can.  We don’t show it all the time, but I think anger can build up inside of us, and we can let that out in all kinds of ways, mostly unhealthy ways...because it’s so hard and scary to face the truth of what really eating at us.  And when we hear all those stories and messages that Christ comes among us, his disciples, and says, “Peace be with you.”  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m a little snarky and cynical and say, “Yeah, sure, Jesus.  Easy for you to say.  But we’re living in the real world here.”  It’s hard to trust in God.

Naaman had the same problem.  Naaman was a soldier, actually he was a decorated general in the army.  He had a lot of things, he had quite the resume, he had his king’s ear, he held a privileged position and money.  He was the kind of guy who, when he stepped into a restaurant, everyone would turn an look at him, because he was famous and powerful.  
But he also had this skin disease.  And he was in pain.  

And here’s where the saints get to work.  I said this is a story about God’s subtle saints.  Characters in the background, who don’t even have names.  We celebrate the saints today, on this All Saints Sunday.  Think of how the saints in our lives often work and worked subtly.  [pause]

Naaman had this Hebrew servant, who basically whispered to him about God’s healing acts through this Israelite prophet named Elisha.  She didn’t even have a name.   

But an ongoing theme in our journey through the Old Testament is that Israel, God’s people, are from the beginning and always blessed to be a blessing to the world.  Naaman was a Syrian general.  He was not an Israelite.  He was from the North.  And this Hebrew servant passes him a message of salvation, a message of healing.  God can make you whole.

But like we can be, Naaman is resistant, doubtful, realistic.  He doesn’t really believe it, even while he attempts to make contact with the king of Israel, to try to get Elisha’s number.  See how he works right through the top? 

And now things get even murkier as he finds a way to contact Elisha.  Elisha doesn’t even go out to meet him.  He sends another servant -- another saint -- with a message:  “Go wash in the Jordan River seven times, and you’ll be cured.”  

Do you think Naaman received that well?  

Have you ever had a medical issue that was easily solved, but that almost made you angrier?  You went around and around with doctor’s offices, appointments, medical bills, insurance companies, family members’ referrals for months, and then it turns out you just need to stop eating almonds...or something like that?  Often it’s diet.  What?  I can’t believe that.

I think that’s Naaman.  He’s angry coming into it, he’s arrogant, he’s in pain, and he gets told by a servant -- “No one sends a servant out to me” -- to wash in the Jordan.  Then he insults the Jordan River.  “That muddy trickle of a river?!”    

But then his servants -- what I could call his saints -- calm him down, “Peace be with you, father...just try it.  We’ve come all this way.”  And so he does.  And so he’s healed.  

It’s an odd story on one hand, but on the other hand, it’s our story again.  Who are your saints -- some alive, some gone ahead to heavenly glory -- who calm you down, who breathe peace into your hectic world?  We get blinded and arrogant and entitled and angry, and we lose sight of the saints that God has sent us, those quiet servants of the Gospel.  We too can miss those voices in our lives, because we like Naaman think we know better.  We like Naaman struggle to trust God or the puny little whispers-and-hints-and-suggestions-and-encouragements-and-invitations-to-calm-down that the saints God offer us -- in their earthly life, and in their heavenly life.

Funny story Micah and his friend Jackson.  His mother told me... Micah: “You know, Jackson, you’re always talking about all these things you want to build.  But you never build any of them.  Why don’t you just build one, already?”  [pause]

If that question were directed at us, it would be easy to snap back.  “I’ll tell you why I don’t build, or invest in a relationship, or reach out to an organization or friend in need, or sacrifice my time or money, or my emotional energy...because here are all the things that can go wrong!”    

See how worked up we can get?  How worried or paranoid?  How obsessive and averse to any risk whatsoever?  And sometimes the answer is easy:

Just go wash in the river.  Seven times.  Just go talk to him -- the one who upset you so much.  Maybe he’s hurting too.  Just ask her, you’ll never know if you don’t ask...

Just go wash in the river.  Seven times.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes a while and it takes repetition to untangle our distrust in God.  That’s what I love about liturgy.  We’re untangling our distrust in God.  

We can lose heart, sisters and brothers in Christ, we can lose hope and trust, but God does not.  God is faithful and just, remember?  God does not abandon us in our frustration and anger and doubt.  God washes us.  God makes us new.  

The servant girl in the story who first got the message of healing, of one who could save Naaman from his disease (which needless to say was much more than just a skin disease, right?), that servant-saint was described as a YOUNG girl.  

When Naaman is cured, it says that his skin was restored to that of a YOUNG boy.  I think there’s a connection with sainthood and that word YOUNG, regardless of age.  The young girl is the silent saint at the beginning, and now Naaman  with skin like a young boy becomes sainted too.  This is a medal that tops all others.  

And this is a medal that God pins on you too.  We join the glorious company of saints, upon being washed in the waters, even the trickling waters of our little font.  God makes you whole, names you a saint, and hold you in grace today.  Amen.

October 26 -- Solomon's Wisdom (Guest Preacher, Pastor John Embree)

October 19 -- David & Bathsheba

Let us pray, Create in each of us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us.  Cast us not away from thy presence and take not your Holy Spirit from us.  Sustain in us the joy of your salvation.  AMEN.

David & Bathsheba:  a lot has happened since Joshua stood at the verge of the Promised Land last week, and week kicked off our capital campaign with Philip Reitz.  “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  We stopped reading at that quote and reflected on it.  But, do you know what happened next?  All the people respond to Joshua, “Yes, yes!  We will serve the Lord!”  And Joshua tells them back, as a sort of foreshadowing of the next few books of the Bible, “Umm, you can’t serve the Lord, you won’t serve the Lord.”

Old Testament summed up:  God blesses, people mess up, God gets angry, people repent...and on and on.      

Israel evolves into kingship.  That wasn’t the original plan.  Originally the idea was that there would be judges of different provinces.  Leadership was to be shared.  The book of Judges tells the story of those judges, those characters -- Samuel, Deborah (a woman), Gideon.  Heroes to us, perhaps as children; but with adult perspectives, they too are humans -- fallible and broken.  And so a new plan to anoint a king.  First king of Israel was Saul.  That goes horribly wrong.  And then a shepherd king: David.  And the book of first Samuel tells of his rise from very humble beginnings.  Samuel anoints him as a boy.  Slays Goliath... Outdoes Saul time and again.  He’s purer, he’s smarter, he’s more faithful, he’s even handsome.  He’s meant to be king.  God blesses.

And then if you’re wondering what this story about the new prophet Nathan going to David is all about.  Here’s the backstory:  I share this with our confirmation kids...

[story of David, Bathsheba, Uriah]

We pick up today the passages and a related psalm that follow this dramatic, seamy account.  And it’s what-happens-after that we really gather around today.  God sends Nathan to David.  One definition of a prophet is “the one who holds up a mirror”.  All Nathan does is tell David a story.  He gets David to announce judgement and then simply holds up that mirror.  

Who are the prophets in your own life?  We give thanks for the prophets today.  Those who call us on our stuff.  Those who hold up the mirror -- You know when we’re complaining about someone or something, and then you realize that the thing you’re complaining about is often something you yourself do...something that you don’t like about yourself.  Often it takes a close friend, a spouse perhaps, to turn that light on and help you see it...but that’s prophets work.  Give thanks today for the prophets in your life.   

But it’s more than that.  It’s more than just seeing your faults, whether someone helps you see them, or you know them already.  I imagine we can do that for ourselves pretty well.

What’s truly amazing...is that normally if someone who doesn’t have any power approaches someone who does, and points out a significant moral flaw, they’d be dismissed, right?

In that period, that’s putting it gently.  They’d be killed.

But David repents.  

David falls on his knees before this weak, old, long-bearded, scraggly-toothed madman prophet Nathan.  And he says:  “I have sinned.”  

We should have read that part too.  Because “have mercy on me O God," doesn’t mean much without first admitting, “I have sinned.”  

I think we can all put ourselves into this story, even into the great King David’s shoes...because we’ve all sinned.  The challenge is to come to terms with it.  To see our own reflections in the prophet’s mirror.  I almost played Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” for you this morning.  “I’m starting with the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.  And no message could have been any clearer.  If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make that change.”

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God sends us prophets to expose those things about ourselves that that we do a pretty great job of covering up -- I’m not talking about blemishes and imperfections on our bodies.  I mean those blemishes and imperfections on our souls, those corrupt things about ourselves, those secrets that we even lie to ourselves about.  Thank God for the prophets.  They are a gift.  Now it’s our challenge -- like David’s, I’m sure -- not to kill them.  Not to dismiss them, not to laugh them off as some out-of-touch scraggly tooth.  David is punished for his sin, and he accepts it, he grieves, he begs for mercy and finally he receives and accepts that mercy.  

David’s sin is not commendable.  Neither is ours.  But the aftermath of David’s sin is what we’re lift up in church -- his acceptance of Nathan’s prophetic visit, his admission of wrong-doing, and finally his openness to God’s mercy.  At any one of those three points we can get off track.  We could reject the prophet’s visit, we could refuse to repent, and finally and maybe most difficult for us long time church people, we can reject God’s forgiveness, and go on living in guilt and fear, blocking our ears to hearing the prophet’s good word -- the prophet has a good word for us too:  “The Lord has put away your sin.  You shall not die.”  Happened to Adam and Eve in the garden, happened to Sarah the unbeliever, to the Jacob the devious, happened to David.

Today we ask God to create in us clean hearts.  To renew a right spirit within us.  And God answers our plea.  God, through Jesus Christ forgives our sin.  We will not die, but live eternal, and the response to that undeserved gift of forgiveness starts now.  We can lift up our heads and smile, even if we’ve done terrible things in our pasts.  God is good.  And God is faithful, and God does not abandon us, even when we abandon God.  

You are blessed too.  God doesn’t ignore our sin and our brokenness, the error of our ways, just like a good parent doesn’t ignore their children’s misbehaviors.  It’s because God loves us that God sends us Nathans to hold up the mirror.  Grace falls even fresher when that happens.  

That grace is for you.  Yours to receive, yours to revel in, yours to celebrate, yours to share with he world.  AMEN. 

    

October 12 -- Joshua Renews the Covenant

Today we welcomed Pastor Philip Reitz.  He is our Stewardship Key Leader capital campaign consultant, and he helped us kick-off our capital campaign, entitled "Today's Mission, Tomorrow's Vision: Faith Needs Room to Grow".  Thank you, Pastor Philip, for being among us!

Listen to his sermon here:

October 5 -- Covenant & Commandments

Well today is a good day, because there is nothing but good in the Ten Commandments!  On October 5, 2014, thank God for the Ten Commandments!  

These are not rules meant to break us down and take our fun away, they are rules meant to build us up and bind us together, even more in Christ.  They are rules--that is, ways of living--that enrich our lives, not detract.  And in this boundary-less society, these 10 commandments are liberating. 

Heather and I had a friend in college who once told us about her childhood:  how she had parents who never really gave her any rules.  One of my most vivid memories of her recollections is how she talked about playing out in the neighborhood before supper, and about the same time the street lights came on, all the mothers and fathers were calling their kids, her friends, in for “dinnertime!”, but little Suzanne never had that curfew or boundaries.  I imagine a little girl left at dusk in a lonely cul-de-sac with street lights sputtering on and the faint sounds and smells of families in their warm houses around her:  healthy suppers and family conversation around the dinner table.

The 10 Commandments are a warm house, and without them we are left out.  They are not rules meant to break us down, they are rules -- ways of living -- meant to build us up, nurture and sustain us.  They are rules meant to free us even more.  The one left outside is the prisoner, the one who is gathered in and given structure, routine, work, play, community -- that’s where we find freedom in Christ.  The 10 Commandments, God’s covenant with the wandering Israelites then, is still God’s grace and love poured out on us today in 2014!

Rule #1: I am the Lord your God, I’m the one who brought you out of Egypt.  (Remember your story.)  Don’t make anything else your god.  

There is so much freedom in that!  We are tempted and even taught to bow down and worship so many other things: money, fame, power and authority, sex, sports, security and military might, family, technology, entertainment...the list goes on.  What is it for you that draws you away from trusting God, and letting God be God?  So many foreign gods as we wander through the wilderness of this life.  But, sisters and brothers in Christ, we don’t have to let those other things rule us.  There is so much freedom in this first and most important commandment.  All the other commandments, actually, point us back to this one: 

Let God be God.  We don’t have to play that role anymore, or seek it out anywhere else: it’s right here.  Let God be God.  Don’t forget who got us all here in the first place.  Put your faith only in one thing -- not in money, not in fame or power or strength, or even family or friends, not in the the technologies of the future, and not in “the way things were”.   Let’s try again to stop worshiping those false idols and start worshiping God.  Worship comes from the same root as worthy, and if you’re wondering what it is you worship, just look at your credit card bill.  That’s a spiritual document -- it’s where you put your money, it’s what’s worthy of your money (actually its all God’s money).  Where are you spending what God has entrusted to you?    

We don’t have to be slaves to those things anymore.  This commandment is calling us out of self-serving, idol-serving lifestyles, and into lives of service, of worship, of trusting God.  This is grace poured out on us.  We don’t have to seek after and bow down to foreign gods and graven images any more!

Rule #2: Don’t make wrongful use of God’s name.  Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.  Yes, watch your language.  But even more, this is a follow-up on the first and most important commandment.  Almost, a bit of a corrective, a clarification:

“OK, God, if I’m supposed to trust you so much, I guess I’m supposed to just sit here and let you do everything...let you find me a parking spot, let you ace my math test, let you take care of starving children and homeless veterans, and abused seniors.  You’re God, not me, so I’ll let you take care of it...”  

This commandment expounds on the first.  Don’t just throw your hands up and hope God takes care of everything, all our world’s problems.  That’s missing the point.  Live as if it all depended on us -- hunger, housing, health care -- don’t call on God’s name for that.  [Dali Lama refusing to pray for world peace.]  I heard it said once “Live as if it all depended on you, and pray as if it all depends on God.”  Don’t use God’s name in vain, asking for God to fix things, and ducking our own culpability and responsibility.   The trash on the ground, and in the ocean, and in the sky: that’s on us!  All the violence we’ve perpetrated and endured as a human species: that’s on us.  Don’t use God’s name in vain, asking God to just take it all away, and getting angry at God when it doesn’t all just disappear.   Let’s take responsibility with our words and with our actions.  That’s liberating.  We don’t have to live helplessly.  This commandment frees us to live and speak helpfully.

Rule #3.  Take a break...to remember that first commandment.  Practice, live out these commandments, don’t just memorize and recite them.  Make sabbath a part of your weekly life.  

We have no boundaries anymore.  With smart phones and wireless connections, we mix up free time and work time all the time.  We’ve lost the ability to take it easy.  But even God rests on the seventh day.  This commandment calls us to stop, and go to church -- not to see what’s in it for me -- but rather to worship God.  To remember our story, to gather around the gifts of God: Word, Wine, Water, Wheat.  We forget so easily that God is God.  I wonder if we’ll remember it by this afternoon, when all our games are on, our families are beaconing, our cell phones are buzzing with little tasks in preparation for Monday morning...See?  This commandment frees us to stop.  Breathe.  Remember how we got here.  Remember that God will bring us through.  And -- I think this part has been lost too -- the Sabbath is to be joyful.  People get stressed out being told they should take a break, so that’s missing the point too.  The sabbath is meant for joy.  Let me put it like this: the sabbath is for sex, healthy, fun sex.  Morning at church -- remembering and giving thanks that God is God.  And then a little afternoon delight.  [Tell ‘em you heard it here!]  Yes!  You get what I’m saying, though?  The sabbath is for relaxation.  The sabbath is for re-creation.  The sabbath is God’s gift, the way we were intended.  We were made for frolicking.  That’s the original state of things, right?  Adam and Eve in the garden -- what do you think they were doing?  Just sitting there, checking their work email accounts?  They were having fun.  This commandment frees us to have fun.

I’m not going to talk through every single commandment here, but let me just say that when God says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, who freed you,” is an intro for continued and enhanced liberation, and that’s what these commandments are:  Sabbath liberates God’s people from only working.  We have a freer society when people aren’t stealing from each other, when people aren’t killing each other -- how locked up would you feel if you’re always fearing for you life?  Or fearing that your spouse is committing adultery, or fearing that someone wants what you have?  See, each of these commandments point us, continues to lead us out of bondage and into freedom.  Out of fear and into life.   “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”  AMEN.  

September 28 -- Rescue at the Sea

Raise your hand if you’ve heard this great story before. 

Raise your hand if you’ve thought of Charlton Heston at all this morning.

That film, I think, has made this an iconic biblical scene in American culture.  And that’s a good start, because this is an image that should be burned into our Christian psyches:  God making a way out of no way.  [stehekin = the way through]

God’s people had an army chasing after them.  (BTW, chariots =  stealth bomber of that day.  The Egyptians were the most powerful nation in the world, then.)  So that’s on one side, on the other side is water, too deep to swim across, too wide to go around.  Wilderness, desert everywhere.  Trouble all around, so much so that the Israelites resort to sarcasm:  “Were there not enough graves in Egypt, Moses?”  And even more: they resort to panic.  God, where are you?  Once again.

We had this question last week, when Joseph was in prison.  So much has happened in our Old Testament saga since then:  I’m rewinding, but remember Joseph was stuck in prison after being sold by his brothers.  Then an earlier and kinder Pharaoh receives word that Joseph is able to interpret dreams, so he pulls Joseph from prison rags and puts him second in command, second in riches in all the land.  And Joseph subsequently brings his whole family to Egypt, reconciles with his brothers after all those years they had to live with the fact that they sold their brother into slavery.  One of the greatest forgiveness epics in the all of literature.  Then the family grows for generations in the land of plenty, in Egypt, and a new much less kind Pharaoh comes to power.  And he says that these immigrants are getting too numerous.  So a) we’ll enslave them (put them to work in the fields and the factories, in construction and washing dishes and dusting, all the jobs we don’t want to do), and b) we’ll kill all the first born boys by drowning them.  

God makes a way out of no way again, and baby Moses escapes the jaws of death by another watery salvation -- a little ark is made, and he’s pushed down the river, winds up in the caring hands of the Pharaoh’s daughter, who makes sure that baby Moses is cared for by employing a Hebrew mother.  Another rags to riches.  Moses grows up practically a prince too.  See how all these stories are so intricately related and interwoven?

How God works things for good, even things that aren’t good! 

And after Moses grows up he returns to his own people and winds up being the means by which liberation will be achieved: he begs, pleas, then sends plagues, 10 plagues to convince Pharaoh “Oh, baby, let my people go!”  No, no, no, no, until God does shahat on the Egyptians.  That is, the punishment fits the crime, which is an Old Testament theme.  God revisits the same atrocities that humans inflict on one another.  The evil ruler who executed the first-born Hebrew children is now brought under the same horrifying shadow of death.  And after his own son dies, Pharaoh finally tells the Hebrews to go.  Which brings us to our text and our scene this morning.

See, I wanted to rehearse all that with you, as a reminder of God’s presence and action through it all -- sometimes overt, sometimes not.  We can forget how far God has brought us, when we’re in a bad place.  But as we rehearse our own stories and the stories of others who have been oppressed, we can find God all along the muddy way, all along the dry desert way, all along the rocky way, in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.

When it seems as though there is no way now, sisters and brothers in Christ, remember all the ways God has gone with you before.  

Panic is natural, and “Crying out where are you God!” is natural.  
But we have to train ourselves to trust God and to calm down.

      

There is a Lutheran pastor back in the Midwest, whose wife became very sick in the last few years.  She was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, and after a big operation, her road to recovery was extremely rocky -- near-death on several occasions -- and this loving pastor had to step away from his many responsibilities at the church in order to take care of her.  I learned this summer that this pastor said, while he was on that terribly rocky road, “You know, it’s as if I’ve been preparing for this my entire life of faith.”  All the prayers, all the worship, all the caring for others in these types of situations, serving and working, all the grounding himself in the biblical stories of liberation and redemption, all that training in order to trust God now and calm down.  

This is where I differ with Charlton Heston’s film: In that old movie God’s voice seems booming and obvious.  But when the waves are crashing, the winds are blowing, the clouds are brooding, the chariots are charging, the children are screaming and adults are panicking...God’s not going to try to shout out instructions over all that chaos.  Rather, Christ Jesus comes to us in still, small ways.  A whisper, a listening ear, a ray of light, a compassionate hand on your shoulder, the flutter of a butterfly or the song of bird, a little piece of bread, a little splash of water.  “It’s as if we’ve been preparing for this our entire lives.”

When crisis comes, when sorrow strikes, when storms rage, when enemies charge, when panic takes over the land, when evil seems to have the last say, God speaks.  And what does God say?  “Stretch out your hand.”  If we had more space, I’d say we should pray like this today.  In other words, stretch out the faith God has given you in your baptism.  Faith is a gift.  “Trust in me,” God says, “stretch out your hand.  I will give you freedom, life, and rest eternal.  The promised land is before you.  I’ve brought you this far, haven’t I?  I have brought your people through, haven’t I?  Remember your story, your family’s story, your ancestors’ story, your faith story.  I will bring you through this, too” God speaks softly to us today.  “I will give you life.”  

As people of the cross, venturing together through strange lands, Jesus Christ is our way through, our parting sea, our dry land, our watery salvation, our ark of safety and hope.   You see all these rich Old Testament images and stories are pointing us directly to the cross of Christ.  And in that cross, we have salvation, we are freed -- all all of creation -- from the chokehold of the oppressor, from even our own selfish, self-centered inclinations.  Even when we in our own, far more covert, ways try consciously or unconsciously to dominate and enslave others, in Christ Jesus we are freed from those clutches of evil.  Death is drowned in the sea of our baptism.  And we are made freed on the other said.  To venture into the life that God has promised and molded us for -- a life of serving and sharing, giving and caring, a baptized life.  Those terrifying waters are also life-giving waters.  And now God’s people, as your former pastor Dan Erlander, was fond of saying, now we are “walking wet”.  

When our kids come in the house after swimming, they leave little puddles with every step they take.  We too, having come through the sea of baptism, make puddles of God’s love and God’s presence in the dry world through which we walk.   May it be so.  AMEN.