God Gives the Geep Hell, Matthew 25:31-46

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

One of the mysteries of life is why no one wants to sit down front in church.  Everywhere else– at the theater or the sports arena or a rock concert–front row seats go for top dollar, but church folks come early to get those great back pew seats.  Explanation: in the old days the front pew was called “the sinners pew.”  Maybe good theology to put those who most need the sermon directly under the preacher’s watchful eye–but not good marketing to sell those front row seats.

In a similar vein, this week’s Gospel lesson from Matthew 25 about Jesus separating the sheep from the goats may explain why in some churches more people sit on the right side of the sanctuary than the left.  In the parable those on Jesus’ right get praised and have their tickets punched for heaven, while those on the left go the other way.  And the reason is simple—those on the right have treated the hungry, lonely, naked, sick, and prisoners with compassion while those on the left have not.  And Jesus says in the most famous line from this parable, “what you did to the least of these who are members of my family, you did to me” (verses 40 and 45).

Matthew 25 is one of the lectionary texts for November 20, the last Sunday before Advent begins.  It is the Sunday in the church calendar known as Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday.  Since the church liturgical year begins with Advent (the four Sundays prior to Christmas), Christ the King Sunday is the last Sunday of the Christian year, and is a time when the Scripture lessons focus on the end time and judgment for how we have lived our lives.  It’s the bad news before we turn to the good news of the birth and incarnation of Christ at Christmas.  The Hebrew Scripture for this Sunday is from Ezekiel 34:11-24 and contains a very similar passage about the fate of good and bad sheep.

Among the challenging questions these passages raise are these: What kind of king is it who judges our lives?  And what kind of critters are we who come to be judged?  It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between an actual sheep and a goat.  It’s not so easy to identify saints and sinners.  Case in point—a week ago Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was a much revered and respected iconic hero.  Some have said he was one of the most influential people in the state of Pennsylvania.  But in a few short 24-hour news cycles the whole world learned Joe Pa is a flawed and fallible human being like everyone else.

There’s a marvelous contemporary parable attributed to Rabbi Haim, a traveling preacher which addresses that question:

“I once ascended to the firmaments. I first went to see Hell and the sight was horrifying. Row after row of tables were laden with platters of sumptuous food, yet the people seated around the tables were pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As I came closer, I understood their predicament.  Every person held a full spoon, but both arms were splinted with wooden slats so he could not bend either elbow to bring the food to his mouth. It broke my heart to hear the tortured groans of these poor people as they held their food so near but could not consume it.

Next I went to visit Heaven. I was surprised to see the same setting I had witnessed in Hell–row after row of long tables laden with food. But in contrast to Hell, the people here in Heaven were sitting contentedly talking with each other, obviously sated from their sumptuous meal.

As I came closer, I was amazed to discover that here, too, each person had his arms splinted on wooden slats that prevented him from bending his elbows. How, then, did they manage to eat?  As I watched, a man picked up his spoon and dug it into the dish before him. Then he stretched across the table and fed the person across from him! The recipient of this kindness thanked him and returned the favor by leaning across the table to feed his benefactor.

I suddenly understood. Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The critical difference is in the way the people treat each other. I ran back to Hell to share this solution with the poor souls trapped there. I whispered in the ear of one starving man, ‘You do not have to go hungry. Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, and he will surely return the favor and feed you.’  ‘You expect me to feed the detestable man sitting across the table?’ said the man angrily. ‘I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of eating!’

I then understood God’s wisdom in choosing who is worthy to go to Heaven and who deserves to go to Hell.”

Saints and sinners look a lot alike.  We not pure-bred sheep or goats, but a mixed breed, and that’s why the difficult task of passing eternal judgment should be left to God and not done by fallible human beings. [Check out Jesus’ quotes: “Judge not that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1) and “If any of you are without sin, let him/her cast the first stone” (John 8:7).]

This parable makes me wonder what Jesus will do with me.  Some days I’m the sweetest most lovable, patient, compassionate person in the world.  The next day I may throw away an appeal for a worthwhile charity without even opening the envelope.  I’ll see someone in need and hurry by on the other side because I’m too busy and my agenda is much more important than yours.  And those who have caught my immature, competitive act at a basketball game or on the golf course know that God is definitely not done working on me yet.  I hope Jesus catches me on one of my good days because I’m not a full-blooded sheep or goat.  I’m a half breed or what Ronald Luckey once called a “Geep.”

And I’m not alone.  I have a dear friend who is the most compassionate pacifist I know; but I remember a conversation we once had about an 84 year-old woman who had been raped and tortured.  There was not one ounce of compassion in how my friend would have treated that rapist if he could have gotten his hands on him.  Or take the lovable actor Andy Griffith.  I once read he had dreams of beating up on dear old Barney Fife.

What will Jesus do with all of us Geep?  Ronald Luckey says our judge will give us hell.  God will show us all of God’s children who have been abused, who are starving and suffering, and we will feel the pain God has always felt.  We will feel regret and remorse as God parades by us all the missed opportunities we’ve had to serve others—all those times we were too busy to help or to care, too scared to get involved, too torn by conflicting loyalties.  We will see in vivid Technicolor all those times we were too selfish or stupid to figure out how to reach across the table and feed each other.

And we will have to stand there and take our medicine.  I have always been afraid that when my time’s up and my life flashes before my eyes it will be boring.  But boring will be so much better than regrets and remorse.  So much better than having Jesus show me all the times I failed—failed my moral and ethical responsibility to do justice and mercy.  He will make me listen to all my lame excuses. “But Jesus, if I’d known it was you; of course, I’d have visited and clothed and fed you.”  And with a tear in his eye, Jesus will say, “Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me” (vs. 45).

But then another word will come, quiet, grace-filled, one we don’t deserve.  Luckey says the King will look at you and me and say:

  • “You who had full cupboards are the truly hungry; I will feed you.”
  • “You who are well-dressed are the truly naked; I will clothe you.”
  • “You who had lavish access to all the good things, you are truly in prison; I will set you free.”

The King will lift us up and give us back our lives.  We are judged on the basis of our deeds, but sentenced on the basis of Grace by a friend and savior who says, “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:24).  We Geep are judged but loved by the lamb who takes away the sins of the world because we are not special.  We are not better or worse sinners than anyone else, and if we repent and ask, none of us are exempt from forgiveness or from needing it.

God will show us how meager our offerings and services have been.  God will show us the times we turned our backs on those in need and show us the ravaged earth we are leaving for our grandchildren.  God will give us that kind of hell because God cares that much.  But then if we are humbled and sincerely confess our sins of commission and omission, God will offer us back our lives.

God will say, “I love you still.  Go, do what you failed to do yesterday.  Reach out with your broken arms and feed those other broken souls across town or across class and racial boundaries, across political, ideological and religious divides.  Feed each other.  For I am still hungry and naked and in prison and a stranger, and what you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

“The Gospel According to Jobs and Jesus,” Matthew 25:14-30

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

I wrote the first draft of his post somewhere between Nassau and Miami on the final day of a 4-day cruise that took us and 2000 new friends to Key West and Nassau and back to Miami. Like life, our trip itinerary was subject to change without notice.  We were supposed go to Cozumel, Mexico, but Hurricane Rina rained on that parade.  So we did a big U-turn and joined 5 other huge cruise ships in Nassau to benefit the Bahamian economy.  Lots of American dollars intended for conversion to pesos went to Nassau instead.  $111 of ours was spent on a tour to the obscenely over-priced Atlantis resort to see how the other .5% lives.

The huge resort can’t be missed from the cruise ship dock, and we could have gotten there by cab or ferry for a few dollars.  But fear of coping with a strange city where they drive on the wrong side of the road, even if they do speak English, led me to pay the cruise line and local entrepreneurs to take us on a 10 minute ride, literally and figuratively.  One of the signature features of the Atlantis Resort is a 4740 square foot suite that is located in a bridge sixteen stories up than links two of the imposing twenty-three-story towers on what some marketing genius named Paradise Island.  The bridge suite rents for $25,000 per night (that’s not a typo—it’s 25K), and, in case you are interested in booking it, there’s a four night minimum stay required!  Staying there is not on my bucket list, but if anyone starts an Occupy Atlantis protest, it might be a good place to spend the winter.

The opulent wastefulness within sight of the hundreds of dirt poor native merchants selling cheap souvenirs along the cruise ship dock seemed to confirm the punch line of the parable of the talents which says, “to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have abundance, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matt.25:29).  Never mind the obvious question/problem of how one can take away anything from those who have nothing, where’s the justice in that scenario?  And it gets worse from there.  The parable goes on to pass harsh judgment on the one-talent slave for his scarcity-inspired fear and condemns him as a “wicked, lazy worthless slave “ who is to be thrown into “the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (v. 30).

Granted, that’s a nasty slave owner speaking here, not Jesus (we hope).  Makes me wonder if this parable is about the Reign of God or of Warren Buffet, or could it be both?   Certainly the world rewards risk-takers and those able to think outside the box.  The late Steve Jobs had 313 Apple patents to his name when he died.  Jobs is an inspiring story, and the title of Chapter 1 of his new auto-biography explains much of his success–“From Abandoned to the Chosen One.” I haven’t read the book, but I’m guessing that attitude and gratitude that he was rescued to a new life by his adoptive parents (whom he calls his “real” parents) carried Steve Jobs through many failures and setbacks in his life.  His much quoted commencement speech from Stanford’s 2005 graduation, advising his audience to embrace their mortality and dare to look foolish, might describe the first two slaves in the parable of the talents.

The first two slaves dared to risk all they had in order to reap an impressive return on their investments.  And they are rewarded by their master with praise and a big promotion.  I admire people with that kind of chutzpah.  I’m more like the one-talent slave who digs a hole and buries the money to avoid the risk of losing all he had in an economic downturn.  I wonder how much of our current recession is caused by that kind of fearful scarcity mentality.  From small investors like me worried about shrinking retirement accounts to multi-billion dollar corporations that are hoarding their profits instead of reinvesting them in job-creating new projects, fear inspires more of the same.  Isn’t there the same amount of money out there somewhere now as there was in the boom years prior to 2008?  Most of it is just buried somewhere and not being circulated to create more jobs, services and products.

But the parable of the talents is about much more than economics.  Fear stifles faith and creativity in every aspect of our lives, from honest, intimate relationships to athletic and career achievements.  The slave with one talent buried it, and when asked why he says, “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground” (v. 25).   Sounds a little like hiding one’s light under a bushel, doesn’t it?  But notice another word in that sentence that’s easy to overlook—the word “your.”  The talents don’t belong to the slaves but to the master, just as my house and car and other worldly goods don’t belong to me either.  There’s an old hymn that describes our role as stewards of God’s creation very well.  We often sing it to inspire more generous contributions in the offering plates, but it’s about all of our “possessions.”  “We give thee but thine own, what ‘ere the gift may be.  All that we have is thine alone, a gift O Lord from Thee.”

The good news is that we are all playing with house money.  We’ve got nothing to lose.  Not only is the deed to my house and my car and my 401K really not mine, neither is my life.  Some wag once said, “Don’t take yourself so seriously.  You’ll never get out of this life alive anyway.”  That wisdom needs to be filed next to “You can’t take it (and that means any of it) with you.”  Ever seen an armored car in a funeral procession?
Writer’s block is one familiar example of how fear stifles the talents God gave us.  I have a slogan on my writing desk that says, “Write as if no one will read it.”  That was inspired by the popular saying by William Purkey, “Dance like no one is watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.”  A brave honest student helped me break through my fear and publish my first book this spring.  She asked me if I had published anything.  I said, “No, but I have lots of good stuff in my files and my computer.”  Her poignant reply really hit home.  She said, “Oh, so you’re going to publish posthumously?”
We know the one-talent slave was afraid because Matthew tells us he was, but what about the first two?  We aren’t told they were fearful, but it’s pretty likely since none of us are immune from fear.  If those first two slaves were afraid, the difference is they acted in spite of the fear, much like the title of Susan Jeffers’ excellent book advises, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.  It’s possible the first two slaves used their fear of the harsh master as motivation to risk losing what they had in order to reap a greater reward.  The third slave buried his talent for fear of losing it, and in the process guaranteed its potential was lost.
What dreams and goals do we have that are buried and abandoned by fear of failure?  “Oh, I can’t write that book, it might not sell?  I don’t dare speak that truth!  People might not like it!”  And by choosing not to try I guarantee failure.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Jesus takes that to the nth degree when he says, “Those who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them” (Luke 17:33).   Faith by definition requires risk.  That’s why Paul says we are called to be “fools for Christ” (I Cor. 4:10).   I love the way Bette Midler preaches that truth in “The Rose.”

“ It’s the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance .
It’s the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give .
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live.” (Amanda McBroom)

The lessons are the same from Midler, Jobs, and Jesus:
•    This life is finite.
•    We are all abandoned by all earthly things and allegiances.
•    Those who also know that we are chosen and adopted by God are able to live by faith and dare to live.

The parable says the third slave was cast into the outer darkness by his own lack of faith.  It doesn’t say he has to stay there forever.  Failure was his choice and so is learning to trust.

We all fall down, often.  The secret is learning what an old Japanese proverb teaches, “Fall Down seven times, Get up eight.”

“Just One of the Crowd,” Matthew 23:1-12

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

My son is an excellent athlete—a very good golfer, played on a high school state final four basketball team, skis well.  The irony is that I am the one who got him started in all those sports.  I taught him his first basic lessons.  So why is it that he is head and shoulders better than I in all things athletic and has been for many years?  When I asked him once why that was so, he just smiled and told me, “Dad, I just watched you and saw how not to do things.”  Fortunately, he also learned from my bad example how to be a more confident and relaxed father, husband, and overall good human being.  Apparently teaching by negative example can be a very effective educational methodology.  “Do as I say and not as I do”  becomes “Just do the opposite of what I  do and benefit from my boneheaded mistakes.”

In Matthew 23, Jesus uses the Scribes and Pharisees as examples of how not to be a faithful follower of God.  Jesus is teaching “the crowds” and his disciples, and he begins by saying, “The Scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it.”  So far that sounds like a pretty good recommendation, right?  Then comes the ‘but.’  “But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (vs. 1-3).  Jesus then goes on to itemize a variety of prideful, egotistic behaviors these religious leaders engage in to support his argument that they don’t practice what they preach:  expecting others to live up to a higher standard than they do, showing off how religious they are by wearing prominently displayed religious symbols, doing good deeds not to help others but to earn brownie points with God, expecting the best seats of honor at church potlucks and luxury boxes at football games, I mean in the synagogues, always being greeted and treated with proper titles of honor.

It seems the Pharisees needed a shift to the educational philosophy that encourages teachers to move from being “the Sage on the stage to the guide on the side.”  Jesus says in verses 7 and 8, “they want to have people call them rabbi (teacher).  But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students.”  In other words, no matter what our income tax bracket or net worth or educational pedigree, we are all part of the crowd learning together from the one true Rabbi, Jesus.

That does not mean the Pharisees are evil personified.  Their daily religious rituals and the reminders of God’s law they wear are good spiritual disciplines, as far as they go.  The world would be a better place if all of us were more conscious all the time of God’s commandments instead of treating them as mere suggestions.  Christians can learn a valuable lesson from our Muslim friends who take time to pray five times every day wherever they happen to be.  As Jesus reminds us, the Pharisees, the teachers of God’s laws “sit on Moses’ seat,” i.e. we should listen to those who specialize in studying God’s word and learn from them.  But the lesson ends when their actions are inconsistent with their words.  Do as they say and not as they do.  Jesus delivers a not so gentle reminder that those who are privileged to be messengers of God’s word bear huge responsibility.  The Pharisees sometimes forgot that they, like Moses himself, were recipients of God’s law, not the giver or creator of that law.  Because the Scribes and Pharisees let their position of authority go to their heads, this text reminds us all again that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

As always, the scriptures teach us more if we move from history lesson to current events, from pointing fingers at “them” to holding up a mirror in front of ourselves,.  Jesus makes it very clear that the Pharisees and Scribes don’t practice what they preach, but by verses 8-12 he does what some congregations describe as going “from preaching to meddling.”  He turns his teaching to the crowd and the disciples, and those with ears that work can hardly miss the point.  We are all students with one teacher and only one unfailing authority figure in our lives.  We are all called to be servants, not teachers or masters, and the take away line in verse 12 is, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This text is not a teacher evaluation for the Pharisees.  Its relevant question is to you and me: Do we practice what we preach?

  • We teach the Golden Rule and the love of neighbors as ourselves, but we pay our farmers not to grow wheat while thousands starve in Somalia.
  • We teach “thou shall not kill” but violence is epidemic in our society and we continue to develop more sophisticated and impersonal drones and other ways to eliminate our enemies.
  • We read over and over again in our Bibles that God wants us to care for the widows and orphans and strangers in our midst, but when it comes to welfare or health care reform or taxation, our first thoughts are often not “what is best for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our human family?”  Instead we ask, “What will this mean to my bottom line?”

I know because I say it too.  “I’ve paid my dues, worked my way through school, taken my job and my family responsibilities seriously.”  We’ve made it on our own, why can’t everybody else?  But have we “made it on our own?”  What do we take for granted that our parents and grandparents bequeathed to us – land, money, values and self-respect, a solid work ethic, a good education, a spiritual foundation.  Those are all things that many of the least fortunate people in our society and world have never had.  Competition can be good and build character and strength, but only in a fair game with a level playing field.  The danger with succeeding in any competitive venture is that we might begin to believe our own press clippings and think we deserve the seats of honor and special treatment for what we have achieved.  That’s why we only get 15 minutes of fame.  After that it starts to go to one’s head.

I learned a lot of valuable life lessons from my years as a Boy Scout—lessons that I only came to appreciate years later.  One of the most important is humility.  One of my best friends, Blaine Brunner, and I had a very serious but friendly competition to see which one of us could achieve our Eagle Scout badge first.  Eagle Scout is the highest rank in scouting and one that takes several years and a great deal of support and encouragement from family, community and scout leaders along the way.  Blaine and I ran a very close race through all of scouting’s ranks from Tenderfoot to 2nd Class, 1st Class, Star, and Life awards, always with our eye on the prize that took 21 merit badges in skills as diverse as cooking, swimming, hiking, and camping.  Fortunately, it turned out that we both completed our requirements at about the same time, and we were proud to receive our Eagle badges together during a Sunday morning worship service in our church.

The Eagle badge is a red, white and blue ribbon in the shape of a shield that has an eagle hanging below it.  The badge is worn by pinning it on the scout uniform over the left breast pocket.  Blaine and I wore those badges with great pride as long as we were in the scouting program.  When it came time to move on from scouting and our youth to the pursuits of young adulthood, my Eagle badge went into a shoe box along with other mementos of that part of my life.  I found that box while packing for a move several years later, and to my dismay discovered that the ribbon on my cherished Eagle Scout badge had been shredded by a mouse who needed material for her nest.  “All who exalt themselves will be humbled.”

This text fits well for Reformation Sunday, a time to reflect on the principles that inspired the Protestant Reformation nearly 500 years ago.  Humility is foundational to the Protestant Principle which reminds us that there is always room for improvement in the church and in us as individuals.  Protestantism began in large part as a protest against the Roman Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope and the abuse of that power.  That doctrine reminds me of the hilarious country song that says, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.  I can’t wait to look in the mirror, ‘cuz I get better lookin’ each day.”  The song gets better from there (you can Google it if you dare), but you get the point.  One of my favorite biblical summaries of what faithful living looks like is Micah’s response to the question, “What does the Lord require of you?”  He says it is “to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)  Humility is one the top 3 qualities of the Godly life.  Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Mt. 5: 5), is another familiar affirmation of the importance the Judeo-Christian tradition place on humility.

Most of us enjoy being around humble people much more than those insecure souls who feel the need to toot their own horns incessantly.  And yet, when Jesus says “the greatest among you will be your servant” we cringe a bit, don’t we?  When asked as a child what you wanted to be when you grow up, did anyone say, “Oh, I want to be a servant?”  Service sector jobs pay minimum wage because the ways of the world are not God’s ways.   The truth is that human beings and organizations like the church can never be satisfied with where we are or who we are.  We are either growing as life-long learners or we are falling behind the times.  We all have had teachers who have grown complacent and are recycling old knowledge and lesson plans instead of staying current with new ideas.

Clergy for nearly 400 years have been asked a question designed to remind us to stay humble during the United Methodist ordination service.  It is a question from one of our founders, John Wesley, which simply asks, “Are you going on to perfection?”   Not that we believe we achieve that state in this life; that would not be very humble.  The question is a clever reminder that life is a journey, not a destination; and so is faith and ministry.  Baptism, confirmation, ordination, graduation, marriage, a big promotion; none of the milestones in life’s journey mean we have arrived.  Those with the mind of a humble servant know that and live accordingly.

Another key doctrine of Protestantism is “The Priesthood of All Believers.”  Simply put, it means we are all one of the crowd.  No one is to be called holy or rabbi.  Lay persons have as much access to God as clergy and vice versa.  That’s the good news.  I don’t have to go through any fallible human intermediary to communicate with God.  The power of Being itself is ready and willing to listen to my joys and concerns 24/7, our fears and confessions, our hopes and dreams.  No busy signal, no maddening telephone answering system where the menu has recently changed, no elevator music or commercials to listen to while we’re on hold, no power outages or servers that are too busy, no “please try again later.”  Everyone in the crowd who wants it has instant access to God, and the only prerequisite is enough humility to admit we need God’s help.

The terminology from the Hebrew Scriptures that comes to my mind here is that of being “God’s Chosen People.”  We all like to be chosen, don’t we?  One of childhood’s most painful memories for most of us is not being popular or being chosen dead last when teams are picked for a game of soccer or baseball.  Perhaps no words are tougher to hear than, “go play right field.”   The scriptures tell us in both testaments that we are indeed “God’s chosen people.”  I Peter says, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, God’s own people” (2:9).  Does that not contradict the need to walk humbly with God or Jesus’ call to servanthood?  Not if we understand what it means to be one of God’s priests.  Being chosen by God is not a call to privilege but to service of God and humanity; to take up a cross and follow Christ.  The rest of I Peter 2:9 says we are “a people belonging to God (God’s very own possession) that we may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into God’s wonderful light.”  We are clearly chosen to toot God’s horn, not our own.

Yes, we are God’s Chosen ones, but we are chosen not to be served but to humbly and gladly serve.  We are all one of the crowd, listening to Jesus, the master teacher, learning together as fellow students to faithfully follow both his word and example.  Because Jesus is the only teacher who can honestly say, “Do as I say AND do as I do!”

“The Holy Hokey Pokey,” Deuteronomy 34:1-12

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

“Talk is cheap.”  “Walk the walk.”  “Play full out.”  These are modern vernacular for the words from Paul to the church at Thessalonica when he says, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves” (I Thess. 2:8).  One of my favorite proverbs along those lines is, “What you do speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say.”  In a similar vein, James 1:22 tells us to “be doers of the word and not hearers only.”  All of these words of wisdom point toward the qualities of integrity and intimacy necessary for faithful and fulfilled living.  Are our actions congruent with our words and the values we profess?  I love the impertinent question often quoted by former President Jimmy Carter, which is now the basis for a contemporary Christian song, “If you were arrested for being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?”  When I’m brave enough, I ask that while looking in the mirror.

The Hebrew text for October 23 (Deut. 34:1-12) contains the last words of Deuteronomy and is therefore the conclusion of the entire Pentateuch.  We are at the end of the Exodus journey and the transition of leadership from Moses to his successor, Joshua.  The story relates Moses’ death on Mt. Nebo.  From that vantage point Moses was at long last able to check a big item off his Bucket List and see with his own eyes the land God has promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

There are lots of interesting facets to this story, and I’ve chosen three to reflect on:

  1.  God says to Moses (vs. 4-5), “’I have let you see it [the Promised Land], but you shall not cross over there.’  Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command.”
  2.  “Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated” (v. 7)
  3. “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (v. 10).

 

1)  Why is Moses forbidden to enter the Promised Land?  If he is the greatest prophet ever in the history of Israel, why not let him achieve the ultimate goal for which he’s given his life?  To draw on another cliché, we might say, “There’s no I in Team.”  Sports teams and nations, communities, families – all win as a team and lose as a team.  It’s not just Moses; none of the Hebrews who left Egypt were permitted to enter the Promised Land because of their unfaithfulness.  (For more on that see the reflections on the Golden Calf, complaining, greed over the Manna from heaven, etc. that I posted on Exodus texts on Sept. 7 & 13).  It wasn’t because Moses refused to stop and ask for directions that it took the Hebrews forty years to make the 200-300 mile trip from Egypt to Jericho.  They had a heavenly GPS (aka a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night) to guide their journey.  It took four decades because God was waiting for the original crowd to expire so God could get a fresh start with Caleb and Joshua and a new generation.  (See Numbers 13:20-21 for Yahweh’s decree that none of those who “have tested me these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors.”)

I find it helpful to note here that big dreams and goals often take longer than a lifetime and more persistence and leadership than one person or generation can provide.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made that point powerfully on the night before he was assassinated.  In the final great speech he gave on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Dr. King used this Biblical imagery to say he was blessed to have seen the Promised Land.  Even though he personally might not get there he was sure others would.

Even Jesus needed faithful followers to carry on the work of establishing the reign of God.  He commissioned his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).  He also promised the disciples, “You will do even greater things than I have done” (John 14:12).

Do we have dreams and visions today that are bigger than ourselves that stretch far beyond the horizons of our finite mortality?  A friend posted this simple but profound truth on Facebook the other day in the form of two circles side by side but separate from each other, one larger than the other.  In the larger circle are the words, “Where the Magic Happens.”  In the smaller one, “Your comfort zone.”

A recent New York Times op/ed piece by David Brooks, reflecting on the tremendous innovative talents of the late Steve Jobs, made the same point about dreamers and visionaries.  Brooks said we made fantastic innovative leaps in multiple areas of society in the first 70 years of the 20th century, but very few in the last 40 years.  In my grandparents’ lifetimes America went from horse and buggy to landing on the moon; from outhouses to air conditioned homes and cars.  Life expectancy increased from 47 to 77 years; communication technology moved from telegraph to telephone to television.

But in the last forty years, other than the explosion in information technology, there have been very few dramatic, life-changing advances.  Brooks quotes several authors, including Peter Thiel, who says, “we travel at the same speeds we did a half-century ago.  We rely on the same basic energy sources [which are still poisoning us and our planet, I might add].  Warren Buffett made a $49 billion investment in 2009.  It was in a railroad that carries coal.”  We have not cured or even seriously researched ways to prevent cancer.  Many of us are in denial about the environmental crisis.  Our cities and schools and, most embarrassingly, our churches are as segregated as ever.   The wars on poverty and drugs have been dismal failures.  The great American Dream of home ownership has turned into a foreclosure nightmare.  When it comes to for the least of our sisters and brothers, our health care system is among the worst in the industrialized world.  Any wonder we are seeing protestors taking to the streets of every American city?

 

2)  We desperately need dreamers and visionaries who are willing to commit their whole being to causes that transcend themselves and their mortality.  That brings us to verse 7 and Moses’ vitality.  For those who think their retirement years are an excuse to ignore the responsibilities of Christian discipleship, reread Deuteronomy 34:7. “Moses was 120 years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated.”  That last phrase is the fun part of that verse.  The Hebrew for “vigor not abating” means Moses did not need Viagra.  He was fertile, productive, and able to create new life?  Are we?  Or have we pawned our dreams for self-interest and survival?  And don’t get hung up on the numbers game in that verse.  No one really knows what these triple digit age numbers in the Hebrew texts mean.  Did Medicare really pay the maternity bills for Abraham and Sarah?  Was Methuselah really over 900 years old?  Probably not according to our calendar calculations.  The point is not Guinness World Records for aging.  The point is that these people lived productive lives until they died, and the challenge is for us to do the same.  What shall we do with those extra 30 years of life expectancy we now have to help create a better world for those that our Joshuas and Janets will lead into the future?

 

3)  Moses’ vigor and vitality leads to the claim in verse 10 that “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”  This may be one of those hyperbolic claims one often hears at funeral homes.  The ones that make me look in the casket to see if we’re talking about the same fallible human being I knew the deceased to be.  A good case can be made for Moses being the number 1 prophet.  Without Moses’ leadership, the Exodus, the formative event of Israel’s history might never have happened.  Moses is the George Washington of Israel, the Father of his country.  Without him the Judeo-Christian saga would have been a very short documentary instead of the on-going epic that shaped the course of human history.

I would argue that Moses’ influence and his vitality to the end of his life came from the passion and total commitment he put into his role in God’s drama of salvation history.  He gave his people and us not just God’s word but his own self.  Does that mean he was infallible or perfect?  Of course not.  Remember he once murdered an Egyptian when he allowed his passion to consume his better judgment (Exodus 2).  Moses was a fugitive from Egyptian justice when God recruited him via a burning bush (Ex. 3).  So don’t think we can use our own fallibility as an excuse for not responding to God’s call.  It won’t wash.

Then we have this strange phrase that the Lord knew Moses “face to face.”  Back in Exodus 33 Moses is told specifically that he cannot see God’s face because no mortal can do so and live.  How do we resolve such a seeming contradiction?   Most biblical problems, including this one, are created by interpreting the texts too literally.  Because we often return the favor of Genesis and create God in our own image, we picture God like us, in anthropomorphic terms.  But according to Jesus, “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and “No one has seen God” (John 1:18).

This text in Deuteronomy does not mean Moses saw God up close and personal and had an opportunity to snap a picture of Yahweh on his iPhone.  It does mean he had face time with God, intimacy, closeness.  That’s the spiritual connection that inspired and empowered Moses to faithfully lead an unruly band of stiff-necked, rebellious pilgrims from slavery and death to new life in the Promised Land.

We can have that same intimate, vigorous, passionate relationship with God too if we are willing to do the Holy Hokey Pokey and put our whole selves in.

The Universe is made of stories

by Steve Harsh, posted in Uncategorized

“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”  Muriel Rukeyser (15 December 1913 – 12 February 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism.  Just found that great quote in my Franklin Covey calendar on October 8 and had to share.

“To Pay Taxes or Not, That is the Question,” Matthew 22:15-22

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

There’s an old joke where you ask someone, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”  There is no good way to answer that question.  In this Gospel text from Matthew 22 the Pharisees try to trap Jesus by asking him a trick question like that one.   They ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  The question is loaded because paying taxes to Rome was a hot political topic that provoked a revolt some 30 years later in 66 CE.  For Jesus to say “yes” would anger Jewish nationalists chaffing under Roman oppression.  To say “no” would be illegal and treasonous.  They have Jesus between a rock and hard place, or so they think.

I had not noticed that word “lawful” before in this text.  How many things can we think of that are perfectly lawful or legal but highly questionable ethically?  Owning human beings was lawful and quite profitable in this country and most of the world for centuries—including Biblical times—and human trafficking is an increasing problem to this day.  Denying women equal rights is still legal in much of the world and was in the U.S. for most of our history.  And if you or any women you know have bumped into any glass ceilings lately you know it still is in practice.  Those who benefited from sub-prime mortgages that helped create the economic mess we are in were well within the law because those with money and power make the rules we play by.

I like Mark’s version of this text better than Matthew’s.  Mark (12:15) adds a second question to the dialogue that raises the bar.  In Mark, after asking if it’s lawful to pay taxes the Pharisees also say, “Should we pay them, or should we not?”  That question pushes the stakes from a purely legal level to an ethical one.  Human laws, because they are created by fallible human beings, change with the swings of the political pendulum.  Think about prohibition or Blue Laws, for example.  Back in the 1972 when I was even more naïve than I am today I remember celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the existing capital punishment law was unconstitutional.  I thought, “Good, we can finally check that cause off the liberal agenda.”   But it only took 9 years for the political winds to shift again.  According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections website, “After drafting a new law to reflect the strict criteria for the imposition of the death sentence, Ohio lawmakers enacted the current capital punishment statute, which took effect October 19, 1981.”  Human laws come and go, but God’s laws, the true standard of what we should and should not do, regardless of what the empire’s laws du jour say, is as constant as the rising and setting of the sun.

Jesus is not taken in by the Pharisee’s trickery.  The three synoptic gospels agree on this point, but they use different words to describe the situation, at least according to the NSRV translations.  Where Matthew says Jesus was “aware of their malice,” Mark uses “hypocrisy,” and Luke a bit milder term, “craftiness.”  Whatever the adjective, Jesus sees through the scam and trumps their cleverness with some of his own.  He asks to see a Roman coin.  He apparently doesn’t have one, but the Pharisees do; which makes a very subtle point we should not miss.  The inscription on the coin would have read, “Tiberius Caesar, the Majestic Son of God, the High Priest,” or “Tiberius Caesar, son of the Divine Augustus, the High Priest.”  Modest fellows, those emperors.  (For a similar dramatic encounter between divine and human authority, read Daniel 4 and the account of Daniel not so subtly reminding King Nebuchadnezzar of his rightful place in the divine pecking order.)

The point is that it would have been blasphemous for a good Jew to have these Roman coins in their possession.  The Romans provided a generic coin for the pious Jews who objected to these coins on religious principles.  So for these Pharisees to have one of these Roman coins in their possession immediately shows they have compromised their faith.   But, before we are too quick to cast stones at the Pharisees, let’s ask ourselves how we compromise our own values and faith?

  • What kind of deals do we make with our culture and popular society because it’s just easier to go along with the crowd than to stand up for what we believe?
  • Anyone have any stock in companies that are helping to destroy our environment or compound the epidemic of home foreclosures?  Do we even know where our pension money or mutual funds are invested?  Do we care as long as they are (or were) making money for us?
  • Do we pay taxes to support wars or other causes we don’t believe in?  Are we using our political power to try and change those practices?
  • Do we support companies that exploit women by using sex to sell everything from Audis to  Zest soap?  Do we watch violent TV programs or buy brutal video games for our children?  Are we addicted to watching overpaid athletes?
  • Do we buy lottery tickets when we know gambling preys on those who can least afford it?
  • Do we feed junk food to our kids because it’s easier than cooking a healthy meal?
  • Are we intimidated by friends or powerful lobbies to ignore the mayhem on our streets by not speaking out against the insane proliferation of hand guns in our society?
  • Do we turn a blind eye to unethical business practices for fear of losing a much-needed job?

The bottom line in the Gospel lesson and in all of those questions is, “Who really has ultimate authority over our lives?”  Is it the most high priests of wealth and power, or is it Almighty God, our creator and final judge of how we live our lives?

There’s a very short answer to this dilemma.  Jesus says, “Give the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (v. 21).  The trick of course is to figure out which is which, and the simple answer is nothing really belongs to Caesar or Uncle Sam or any earthly authority.  The Biblical position on that is crystal clear.  Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”  That pretty well covers it all.  Even Paul, a Roman citizen who is frequently cited (Romans 13:1) by advocates of total obedience to government authority, quotes that verse from the Psalms in I Corinthians 10:26.  Numerous other New Testament texts argue strongly for ultimate obedience to God when there is a conflict between divine and human authority (I Peter 1:1, Phil. 3:20).  Perhaps none is clearer than Acts 5:29 where Peter and other apostles are under arrest for teaching the Gospel and their defense is simply, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

Jesus is painfully clear on multiple occasions that God’s authority trumps any other competing allegiance life tempts us with–wealth, comfort, family, even honoring the dead:

  • “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of me; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37)
  • “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:60)
  • “One thing you lack,” he said (to a rich young ruler who kept all the commandments). “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  (Mark 10:21)
  • “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  (Matt. 19:24)

The Pharisees would have been all too familiar with these radical teachings of Jesus.  In fact, some of them got the point when he said “Give the emperor what is the emperor’s and God what is God’s.”  At Jesus’ trial before Pilate one of the charges leveled at Jesus is that “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor” (Luke 23:2).

No, Jesus didn’t say that exactly. But he does lay the burden of choosing between competing commitments squarely upon each of us.  Paying taxes as part of a democratic society is a necessary cost of doing business and creating an orderly civilization where together we can provide services for everyone better than individuals or families can do so themselves.  How would it look if we all had to build our own roads and other infrastructure or provide for education, law enforcement, emergency services, or defense?  As idealistic as it may sound, families and churches and other charitable organizations caring for all the poor and elderly and sick without a society-wide network of support is simply not practical in the complex world we live in where extended families are scattered and badly over-extended.  We all know very well that not all taxes are just or equitable or necessary – but most are, and our job as citizens and people of faith is to work within the political system, broken and imperfect as it is, to make human authority as much like God’s plan for humanity as we possibly can.

We pray it all the time, “Thy Kingdom Come on earth as it is in heaven.”  Jesus challenges us to put our allegiance where our mouths are and make choices in every area of our lives so we “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God what is God’s.”

“Standing in the Breach,” Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Exodus 32:1-14

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

How can you tell if you are really alive?  I couldn’t find the quote this week which I think is from Frederick Beuchner, but I remember the third and final question in the test is this:  “Is there anyone that if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer to be the one to suffer?”    I think that’s what my son meant when he told me once that he loved me so much he would “run through a wall for me.”  I’m not sure what that would accomplish, but it touches my heart every time I think about it.

The lectionary lessons for October 9 from the Hebrew Scriptures are about that kind of risk-taking love.  Both deal with a time when Moses put his life on the line for the people of Israel.

Psalm 106 is the Cliffs Notes version of the famous Golden Calf story in Exodus 32.  The Psalmist says, “They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a cast image.  They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous things in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.  Therefore God said he would destroy them—had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before God, to turn away God’s wrath from destroying them.” (vs. 19-23)

We can all think of times when we have needed someone to stand in the breach for us, to be our advocate—to stand up to a bully or a predatory lender, to help us find our way through the morass of a complex tax code or indecipherable medical bills from a half dozen different health care providers, all for the same medical procedure.  Perhaps it’s getting help for an addiction or support in escaping from an abusive relationship, or an elderly patient needing a health care advocate.  When do you need someone to stand in the breach for you?  Who are the others around us that need us to be their voice when they cannot find their own?  Where do breach standers find the courage to put themselves on the line?

It takes great courage to speak the truth to one who has the power to do us great harm.  A whistle blower who exposes unjust practices by his employer is often very soon among the unemployed.  A witness who testifies against a criminal may risk retribution.  Christians who are called to witness to their faith need to know that the Greek word for “witness” is also the word for “martyr.”  Breach standing is not for sissies, and yet the courage of those who stand up to human forces of injustice pales in comparison to what Moses does in the Exodus 32 account.

It may help to sketch in a few more details that aren’t included in the Psalm 106 summary to   remind ourselves of the context of the Golden Calf story.  In the last few blog posts I’ve talked about the complaining the Israelites do about Moses’ leadership and his failure to provide for their comfort in the way to which they would like to become accustomed.  The Psalmist reminds us that in every case God has responded by meeting the needs of the people.  God has liberated them from slavery, fed them when they were hungry, given them a GPS in the sky to direct their travels, and provided water when they were thirsty.  Now their leader Moses has gone up on the mountain (called both Sinai and Horeb in the scriptures) to receive the 10 Commandments.

Moses is gone a lot longer than the people think he should be.  Granted 40 days does seem like a long time to get 10 Commandments.  That’s four days per commandment, but remember there were no Kinko’s where the printing could be done quickly, and God has a good union contract that provides for a day off every seven days!  The bottom line is that the people get restless and worried.  You know how hard it is to wait and worry about a loved one who is driving home late at night; or how hard it is to wait for test results from the doctor that could be a matter of life or death.  The Israelites are missing their leader, the one who has led them to freedom and they are lost without him.  They say, “Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (32:1).  Translation: Who is going to take care of us out here in the wilderness if Moses doesn’t come back?

That part of the story is understandable.   Fame is fleeting and fans are fickle.  Look how quickly a football coach is hung in effigy when his winning team starts losing or a political leader’s popularity goes south when unemployment numbers go north?  What is amazing about the story in Exodus is how quickly Moses’ brother Aaron caves in to the demands of the people.  The other part of Exodus 32:1 says, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us.”  And without hesitation, Aaron says, OK, give me your rings and any gold you have, “and he formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf” which the people proceed to bow down and worship.

I don’t know about you, but the image in my mind of this golden calf is a lot like the full-sized butter cow the dairy farmers display at the Ohio State Fair.  Influenced by the Hollywood version of this story, the picture in my mind is of a large impressive gold statue of a full-grown Holstein.  But let’s do a reality check.  These Israelites were homeless runaway slaves who fled Egypt with only what they could take in a carry on.  How much gold do you think they had?  Probably not enough to create a very big idol.  And that adds to the irony of the story.  On one hand we have Yahweh who turned the Nile into blood, sent plagues of locusts, killed off all the first-born sons of Egypt, parted the waters of the sea, fed the refugees manna from heaven, and made water come out of rocks to quench their thirst.  In the other corner we have a tiny, lifeless inanimate piece of metal.  That’s like somebody in a shiny new Lexus pulling up next to a rusty old VW bug and asking the driver if she wants to trade.  Or maybe it’s like the choice we’ll wrestle with in next week’s Gospel lesson where Jesus tells us to “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Back to Mt. Horeb where God is watching this little Golden Calf drama unfold.  God immediately pronounces destruction on these idolatrous, “stiff-necked” people (32:10).  I like to think God is as long-suffering and patient as a Cleveland sports fan, but it looks like there is a limit to God’s mercy and this seems to be it.  That is until Moses steps into the breach and argues with God.  I have trouble standing up to my wife or my grandkids, and here is Moses arguing with God.  You have to have a pretty trusting relationship to have an honest argument.  People who know how to argue fairly and speak the truth in love to each other have relationships that last.  Moses has that kind of relationship with God, sort of like Tevye in “Fiddle on the Roof.”

But as amazing as it is that Moses has the courage to argue with God, the most incredible thing is that he wins the argument!  You can read the details in verses 11-13, but my paraphrase of Moses’ case is, “Yahweh, this is going to be a PR nightmare if you go back on your promise to Abraham to make this little rag tag bunch of nomads a great nation.  How will that look back in Egypt on CNN?  You can’t afford to mess this up.”    And verse 16 says “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

Three reflections on God’s dramatic reversal:

1.  One person can make a difference.  If God can be persuaded to change, don’t let anyone tell us we can’t fight city hall.  Read John Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage to see how often one person of integrity has changed the course of American history.  Or the story about a young boy saving starfish that were washed up on the beach to die by throwing them back into the ocean.  When a passerby told him he was wasting his time because there were thousands of starfish on the beach and he couldn’t make a difference, the boy picked up another starfish, threw it into the water and said, “It made a difference to that one.”

2.  What does Moses advocacy for the Israelites tell us about the power of intercessory prayer?  No, it doesn’t mean we can expect God to do whatever we ask.  A god like that would be weaker than a Golden Calf.    It does mean we all have an obligation and duty to stand in the breach for those who need an advocate; to pray without ceasing, to work for peace and justice, or as the Epistle lesson for this week (Philippians 4:1-9) tells us, “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

3.  Before Psalm 106 retells the Golden Calf story it assures us that our God is a God of mercy whose “steadfast love endures forever” (Ps. 106:1), even when “both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.” (Ps. 106:6)  God gets justifiably angry at the Israelites and us for our unfaithfulness, yes, but one can be angry and still love the sinner.  Sometimes we need to be reminded of that, and that’s exactly what Moses does in his argument with God.  He reminds God of his promises and of his love for his people.  And that reminder helps God “turn from his fierce wrath and change his mind.”

We need reminders too.  Regular acts of worship and study of the Scriptures help us remember our own sin and God’s deliverance,  the promises we have made to live in the ways of peace and love with those dearest to us and with all of our sisters and brothers in the family of God.   Partaking of Holy Communion, a sacrament of remembrance, reminds us of Christ’s sacrificial love as he stood in the breach for humankind’s redemption.  And we are reminded that God has not left us alone but has given us the Holy Spirit, our eternal advocate to strengthen us so our fears do not tempt us to bow down to any false gods.

“Is God With Us or Not?” Exodus 17:1-7

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

The first time I ever felt totally and absolutely alone was the night I was initiated into the Order of the Arrow in the Boy Scouts.  The initiation included a 24 hour period of silence, which was bad enough, but the hardest part of that time was the night we each had to spend alone under the stars, not knowing where we were or how close we were to any other scouts.  We were led in silence, single-file out into the remote areas of Camp Lakota near Defiance, Ohio with nothing but a sleeping bag.  Our instructions were that when tapped on the shoulder by the guide who was behind us we were to stop in that spot, bunk down for the night and not leave that spot until a guide came for us in the morning.

The Exodus passage for September 25 reminds me of that frightened young boy I was some 50 years ago.  Exodus 17 is a continuation of last week’s complaining saga in chapter 16.  This time the complaints are more specific, namely for water.  The Israelites have camped at Rephidim where, we are told, “there was no water for the people to drink.”  (Note that this story must be from one of the other sources incorporated into the Exodus account.  If God has provided food in chapter 16 it makes no sense that something as essential for human life as water would not have also been provided.  However, following the manna from Heaven story in chapter 16 with this plea for water may also be a way to show us how quickly we return to complaining after one set of needs has been met, and how we are continually dependent on God to provide for us anew each and every day.)

But the Israelites still don’t understand the source of their liberation or their dependence on God. In verse 2 we are told they “quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’”  It’s not Moses who provided food in chapter 16 and as we see it is not within Moses’ power to provide water for the thirsty pilgrims either.

I would argue that water is not the real issue here.  As important as water is for survival there’s a deeper thirst, the same one Jesus addresses with the woman at the well in John 4 when he offers her “living water.”  What’s going on in the Exodus story is that the real question behind all the murmuring and complaining comes to a head.  The Israelites seem to have finally realized they are really on their own.  There’s no 7-11 on the corner to buy Perrier when they’re thirsty.  They are in the wilderness, without identity or place, free from slavery but homeless, and like those scared Order of the Arrow scouts, feeling a strange mixture of independence and abandonment.   The bottom line question is not about water.  It comes in verse 7, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Theologically one does not have to be in a desert to experience the wilderness or to thirst for living water.

  • A widow after 50 years of happy marriage wakes up on a tear-soaked pillow in an empty bed in the wilderness.
  • A young vibrant father in the prime of life is struck down by a freak accident and will spend the rest of his life in the wilderness as a quadriplegic.
  • An innocent 10-year old girl is told she is HIV positive from a blood transfusion and is then driven deeper into the wilderness by an unknowing Sunday School teacher who tells her class that God has sent Aids to punish promiscuity and homosexuality.  And she not only wonders if God is among us in the wilderness but who would want that kind of God there anyway?
  • So does a family whose home is washed away by a flood that is labeled by their insurance company “an act of God.”

We’ve all been in the wilderness—without even leaving home:  broken-hearted by a loving relationship gone sour; frightened by the fear of unemployment in a shaky economy; helplessly watching a whole year’s crop baked to a crisp in draught-plagued summer heat; weeping over the destruction of more acres of woodlands by the bulldozers of progress or the pollution of yet more rivers and streams.

Haven’t we all murmured and asked, “Is God among us in this wilderness or not?”

It’s a legitimate question raised by the Israelites.  They are no longer able to depend on their Egyptian overlords to provide for them and are being asked to put their lives on the line and trust Yahweh and his agent, Moses.  They (and we) are like a trapeze artist who wants to know if her partner can be trusted to catch her 50 feet above the ground; or a traveler who deserves to know if the pilot is sober and qualified to fly the 737 he’s about to board; or a marriage or business partner who has a right to know if their spouse or colleague is reliable and trustworthy.

If we risk our lives on someone we want to know if they are with us or not, don’t we?  It’s OK to ask about God’s presence.  There has to be room for doubt in our lives or there is no room for genuine faith.  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [Heb. 11:1]  So, it’s OK to question God’s presence, but the problem is we often look for the wrong kind of answer to that question.  Because what we really want is for God to do for us what we want.  And sometimes the answer to our prayers is “no.”  And we feel abandoned and forsaken, like Jesus on the cross or like the Hebrews in the wilderness.  “Have you brought us out here to die?”

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer to “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” I sometimes want to say, “What good are you doing in Heaven, God.  We need you here with us in the wilderness.”  Robert Browning’s poem is comforting (“God is in his heaven and all is right with the world”) but anyone who has been out of their house or watched the 11 o’clock news knows that all is not right with the world.  Is God with us in the wilderness?

Fred Craddock says that the problem is that we want our theology to be “When the Messiah comes there will be no more suffering.”  We’ve got it backwards, says Craddock.  What the Bible really tells us over and over again is that “Where there is suffering, there the Messiah will come.”

We know that is true, but like the Israelites, we ask why does God lets us wander in the wilderness and wonder if we are abandoned?  Such times test us too and help teach us that we are not independent or self-sufficient.  We are dependent on God, but only when we feel the void in our lives, the emptiness that no human can fill, are we able to admit our dependence on God and invite God into our lives to fill the wilderness-sized hole.  I believe it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “People are like tea bags.  You can’t tell how strong they are till they are in hot water.”  Those hot water  times are when we learn that we need God.

That faith and strength is like the metaphor in the title song to the great musical “Fiddler on the Roof” (lyrics by Sheldon Harnick):

“Away above my head I see the strangest sight, a fiddler on the roof, who’s up there day and night.  He fiddles when it rains, he fiddles when it snows; I’ve never seen him rest, yet on and on he goes.

What does it mean this fiddler on the roof, who fiddles every night and fiddles every noon?  Why should he pick so curious a place to play his little fiddler’s tune?  An unexpected breeze could blow him to the ground, yet after ev’ry storm I see he’s still around.  Whatever each day brings, this odd outlandish man, he plays his simple tune, as sweetly as he can.

A fiddler on the roof, a most unlikely sight; it may not mean a thing, but then again it might!”

Is God with us in the stormy, lonely, wilderness times of our lives?  The answer is a resounding “Yes!”  Emmanuel, one of the names for Jesus, means literally “God with Us,” incarnate in human form.  In the Exodus 17 passage God answers this basic theological and existential question in a different but also life-giving form.   In verses 4-6 God responds to the murmuring Israelites.

Moses asks God for help in dealing with his rebellious people.  The mob is so angry Moses is afraid they are going to stone him.  Desperate people do such things.  But God tells Moses to take his staff and strike the rock at Horeb and “water will come out of it so that the people may drink.”  The text tells us Moses did so “in the sight of the elders of Israel.”  But notice what the text doesn’t say; it doesn’t say the water flowed out of the rock.  The story ends right there and another example of how dependent the people are on God begins in verse 9 when they are attacked by Amalek.  We are never told the water flows.  People of faith however don’t need that blank filled in with details.  We can hear the water gurgling up from the rock and taste the cool refreshing life it gives.

And in the bubbling water, we also hear the answer whispered to those who have ears to hear, “Yes, God is with us, everywhere; especially in the wilderness.”

“Complaining,” Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16

by Steve Harsh, posted in Christian Discipleship, Faith and Values

I’m wearing one of those rubber bracelets that are popular these days to show support for all kinds of good causes.  This one is from a group called “A Complaint Free World.org” started by Rev. Will Bowen to promote a healthier, more positive attitude toward life.  The unique deal for this bracelet is that it’s interactive.  You are supposed to switch it from one wrist to the other each time you catch yourself complaining, the goal being to go 21 days without whining or bellyaching.  I wore out 3 bracelets before I made it to the three-week goal.

Coincidentally (or is it a God incident?) two of the scripture lessons for September 18 in the Revised Common Lectionary deal with complaining.  Exodus (16:2-15) begins with “The whole congregation of Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”  This is a classic “no good deed will go unpunished” or “what have you done for me lately” story.  Moses and Aaron have risked their lives to liberate the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and the thanks they get from their ungrateful people is constant griping.  The whining former slaves go so far as to say, “We would have been better off just dying in Egypt than to have you bring us out here in the wilderness to starve to death.”  Like they were expecting the Sinai Sheraton?

The Gospel lesson (Matthew 20:1-6) is the parable that must have inspired first century collective bargaining.  Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard owner who hires some laborers early in the morning, another group at 9 am, another at noon, more at 3 pm, and a final cadre at 5 pm.  So far, so good.  One of the few things we all agree on these days is creating jobs, right?  But when the whistle blows at 6 pm and the workers line up for their pay, starting with those who only worked an hour, everyone gets paid the same wage, whether they worked an hour or 12 hours!  Not surprisingly, the folks who worked all day long in the hot sun are mildly irritated and complain that they should be paid more since they worked more.  They shout a child’s favorite complaint, “That’s not fair!”  But the landowner says, “I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?  Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?  Or are you envious because I am generous?”  And then Jesus concludes the parable with that curious line, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” 

I love the way my mentor Van Bogard “Bogie” Dunn interpreted that last line when I was a seminary student.  Rather than seeing this as a reversal of order from one up to one down, Bogie said that if the first are last and the last are first, that means everyone is the same—there is no first or last.  The kingdom of God is not about getting ahead, it’s about realizing that we are all equal in the eyes of God.  And if we are all equal and trust God to provide what we need and not what we want, 90% of our reasons for complaining melt away faster than an ice cream cone in the noon day sun.

One thing that intrigues me about these two passages of scripture is the seemingly illogical way God and the God-figure/landowner respond to the complainers.  The complaint of the laborers who slaved all day seems legit to our capitalistic sensibilities, does it not?  And look at how God responds to the former slaves in the Exodus passage.  Three times in 14 verses the Exodus account tells us that “God has heard your complaining.” (vs. 7, 8, and 12). That part makes sense.  We know God listens to our prayers, apparently even when we are whining.  But God’s response to the Israelites is totally unexpected.  Rather than telling them to shut up and be glad they are free from their captivity in Egypt or asking if they want some cheese with their whine, God seems to reward their grumpiness and provides manna from heaven, bread in the morning and meat in the evening.  And they don’t have to do anything to earn it.  They work even less than the 5 o’clock grape pickers in the parable.  All they have to do is go out and gather what God provides for them every day; and the only caveat is that they can’t get greedy and take more than they really need or it will spoil.  (Which of course they do, and it does.)

So the workers who seem to have a justifiable gripe come up empty handed, and the Israelite ingrates get fed.  The Exodus account reminds me of another parable Jesus told (Luke 18:1-8) about a judge who is constantly harassed by a woman with a grievance.  She finally wears the judge down and gets what she wants, not because she pleads her case so well; but because the judge is tired of listening to her complain.

Is the message here that if we complain enough God will solve our problems just to shut us up?  That’s the squeaky-wheel theology of prayer, and it has some merit.  We have had one of those Murphy’s law summers at our house when it seems that everything that can has quit working: hot water heater, car alternator, ice maker in the frig, telephone, cable TV.  Multiple times we have been promised repairs or installation services, and days or even weeks go by without satisfactory response.  I’ve learned that making phone calls with increasing levels of irritation and impatience does seem to get results in the service sector.  But is that the way it is with God? 

One possible answer is found in Luke 18:1 where Luke very clearly spells out the purpose of the parable of the persistent widow.  “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”  At least when we are complaining to God we are in communication and showing some level of trust that God cares and will respond.

On the flip side of complaining, consider the famous serenity prayer that says, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”  I don’t think St. Paul was in AA, but his statement in Philippians 4:11 that he has “learned to be content in whatever state” he is in has a similar ring to it.  And so does Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, telling us not to worry about tomorrow or what we will eat or drink or wear.   He says God knows we need these things and will provide, just as God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness.

Maybe it’s a lack of faith, but I have problems with that advice.  It sounds too much like the Gospel according to Pollyanna to me and can be too easily turned into an excuse to rest on our laurels (or other parts of our anatomy).  I suppose the fear of apathy or laziness inspired the popular saying that “God helps those who help themselves,” one of those familiar phrases that Fred Craddock calls ‘almost Bible” because so many people think it’s biblical or should be.  Here’s what Wikipedia says about that saying:  “The phrase originated in ancient Greece, occurring as the moral to one of Aesop’s Fables, and later in the great tragedy authors of ancient Greek drama. It has been commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin; however the modern English wording appears earlier in Algernon Sidney’s work.  It is mistaken by many to be a Bible quote; however the phrase does not occur in the Bible. Some Christians have criticized it as actually against the Bible’s basic message of God’s grace.”

That last phrase zeros in on a key dynamic for the balancing act required in faithful living  We are called to walk a fine line between trusting God to provide but also taking initiative to meet our own needs and those of others – to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. 

Too often we use the “God helps those who help themselves” philosophy or hum a few bars of  “God will take care of you” to avoid our own responsibility for going the extra mile to meet the needs of others.  Praying for those in need is good.  It raises our awareness and can motivate us to compassionate just action.  But if our prayer stops with just delegating the problems of others to God’s to do list, sorry that won’t fly.  (And yes, I just switched my bracelet for complaining about those who behave this way.  And yes, I need to check for logs in my own eye before pointing out the speck in yours.)

Remember the full text of the Serenity Prayer asks for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” but also for “the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”   The Israelites in the wilderness couldn’t change the harsh living conditions in the desert, but when God provided food for them, they were required to change what they could — to go out for themselves and gather what God had given them. 

The bottom line is that constructive criticism is an essential Christina discipline.  Injustices will not be righted or human needs met until some whistle blowing prophet first identifies the problem.  When criticism degenerates into complaining is when we fail to respond to a problem by taking positive action to improve our own situation or that of others.

My suggestion is this:

The next time we hear someone, including ourselves, moaning and groaning about an unfair or painful situation, consider our options:

  1.  We can just tune out the complainer and ignore him or her.
  2. We can listen for what’s behind the complaint. Is it
  • (a) One of those things up with which we have to put, i.e. something that can’t be changed and therefore must be accepted?
  • (b) If it can be changed, what resources can we and the other person(s) muster or create together to help the situation?
  • (c)  A quick prayer for discerning the difference between a and b is always helpful.

In that light, Exodus 16 makes a lot more sense.  When God heard the complaints of the Israelites, God didn’t reward them for being cantankerous and unreasonable.  God really listened and heard the fear and pain in their pleas and responded in love and grace to meet their needs.

May we go and do likewise.

My book is on sale

by Steve Harsh, posted in Uncategorized

Great time to order gift copies of “Building Peace from the Inside Out” for Christmas or other occasions.  lulu.com is running a 20% off sale, in addition to the 20% discount already in place.  Use code SEPTEMBER305 at lulu.com