Non-Lectionary Sermon - Stewardship Focus: Inspiration: The Steward and the Ship

Sermon 10/16/11

Genesis 6-7, selected verses

Inspiration: The Steward and the Ship

            Today we switch gears from our focus on God-values, to focusing on stewardship, and how God calls us to car for all that we have been given. Or, I guess we could say, we begin to focus in depth on stewardship as one more God-values. This Sunday is Inspiration Sunday – next week is Gratitude Sunday, and finally, on the 30^th, we will celebrate Consecration Sunday, as we offer our pledges to God for the year ahead. And this year our theme for our stewardship focus is The Steward and the Ship, (get it? Steward/Ship) which will focus on the story of Noah's ark. But we will come back to Noah in a few moments.

As I said, today is Inspiration Sunday. Do you know what inspiration means? If you break down the word, it literally means to breathe in. Of course that root, spir- - is what gives us the word Spirit. Inspiration, then, is what breathes life into us. And as people of faith, it is the Holy Spirit, literally God's Holy Breathe, that is meant to breathe life into us. But hopefully many things work together to inspire us. When I was in junior high, I used to keep a list, actually, of people I found particularly inspiring. I called it my hero list. It wasn’t very easy to get on – it was reserved for people who really touched my life – who did something in a way, lived life in a way that really made me want to emulate their good qualities. No celebrities – all people I had met personally. They included a student who was two years older who had a confident ʺI know just who I amʺ way about her, my 8^th grade science teacher and my 9^th grade English teacher, a speaker from one of those life-lesson school assemblies, and a couple others. Who inspires you? Who breathes life into you, makes you want to do or be something more?

            Sometimes I feel inspired by what I see unfolding here at First United. I feel particularly inspired when I see people taking initiative, or acting out of their comfort zones, or making a little go a long way, remembering our abundance instead of feeling limited. Let me give you a few examples. I won't name names, although I am sure you can figure out who I mean in some of these cases. This year, while planning our carnival, someone had the inspired idea to make a phone call that enabled us to have our carnival fliers go home with children in the ESM school district. The result was that we had a ton of children at our event. Another carnival inspiration: one of our young people, new to the church, asked if she could run a jewelry and craft table at the carnival. I will be honest – I wasn’t sure how popular it would be. But I am no fool – I don’t turn down people with ideas who want to do things. It was a huge hit – the table was frequently swarmed all through the day. Many of you visit our shut-in members, but I am particularly inspired when, for example, I hear that one person and her family have gone above and beyond to help out someone during a difficult health crisis. I was told, ʺshe and her family are angels, they are just angels.ʺ I am inspired when you go beyond in your care of one another. I've been inspired by someone who has a vision for our physical space, this beautiful building, and who keeps coming up with creative ideas to make it warmer and more welcoming, including a completely transformed nursery. I am inspired by a man who is not a big fan of public speaking but got up here to tell you about his personal Giving Beyond challenge and how he hoped to inspire you, in turn, to give. I am inspired by a young person who stayed home from his family's weekend away because he wanted to do some volunteer work at the Rescue Mission instead. I am inspired by one of you who invited speakers to come talk to us about Haiti, that led to a successful and rewarding Dress Our People ministry. I am inspired by the man who almost every visitor to our worship services names as the person who greeted and welcomed them when they stepped in the door. There are some people working hard, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, to breathe life into us, into this place. Who inspires you? Who do you inspire?

             Inspiration, breathing in the Holy Spirit, having new life in us, and breathing new life into what is dear to us here – let me not give the impression that these are some magical, unrepeatable acts that we can’t all do. I believe we can all be inspirational. And we do it like this: we pray for help – that is what Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit being – our Advocate, our helper, who fills us up with God's Holy Breath. And then we act as good stewards of our resources. We take the tools God has given us, and the power of the Holy Spirit, and we act. And I firmly believe that when we do that – use the tools God gives us and rely on God's Spirit-directed guidance – we will be inspiring and inspired.

            So what are the tools we have? We could talk about it in any number of ways, but we are all stewards of at least these things: our time, our talents, and our treasure. Today we read about Noah and his ark. Noah might not be who pops to mind when you think about stewardship. But actually, Noah, for a tumultuous period, is made by God steward of everything! We have talked before about what stewards were in biblical times.  Stewards were managers of the property of wealthy men. The steward was usually a slave or a former slave, but they had a great deal of power, too. They were responsible for all the affairs of the master’s household. They oversaw all the finances, and had authority over all the other household slaves, and sometimes even over the children of the master. The Greek name for them is oikonomos, and that’s where we get our English word economy.

            Noah becomes the steward of all creation, and he uses his time, his talent, and his treasure to carry out what God calls him to do. Think about it. Imagine how long it would take to build an ark. Even today, with our technology and skilled workers, it takes a long time to build a large sea vessel. Noah must give an enormous amount of time to the task. And no doubt he is giving enormous financial resources to build the ship. Although we read about God describing just how the ark should be, we don’t read that God gifted Noah with any special fund to make it happen. And of course, Noah must have had the talent – the ability to construct an ark. Time, talent, treasure, as a steward of what is God's – namely, all creation.

            Noah's tools are our tools – time, talents, treasure. And maybe God isn’t calling us to build an ark. But we are called to be stewards of everything that God has put into our hands. If all that we have is from God, then we have to be stewards of all that we have, and take good care of what is God.

            So how do we do it? How are we stewards of time, talent, and treasure? I have more homework assignments for you. Three. But you can pick and choose – do one, two, or all three. But humor me, and try one this week, ok?

            You are a steward of your time. Time is such a precious commodity isn’t it? One of the biggest struggles churches face is helping people commit to the time that mission and ministry takes. We are so very busy, and we have so many demands on our time. What time do we give to God? How much of your day do you spend with God? How do you spend your time? Are you even aware of where your time is going? I think many of us would be surprised, if we mapped it all out. So that is your first assignment – I want you to keep a record this week of how you spend your time, in ½ hour or hour increments. You can make up your own chart, or you can use one I have for you. But I want you to write down everything you do this week. Don’t change your normal behavior. Do what you normally do. And then take a look – where is your time going? Are you spending it how you thought? Does it match up with your priorities?

            You are a steward of your talents. And yes, you have talents – gifts from God. Things that you can uniquely contribute. We talked about it a bit before summer and we will be coming back to all those little slips of paper I had you turn in with what you like and what you are good at. The apostle Paul talks a lot about spiritual gifts. If you read his words carefully, you will discover that Paul was most interested in gifts that could be used for building up the community of faith. What are your talents, and how can you use them to build up the Body of Christ? What Paul thinks is inspiring is when we use our gifts – whatever they are – and we find ways to serve others, serve God's kingdom with them. So assignment number too: I have here for you spiritual gift inventories. A way of figuring out how you are gifted, and how you can share those gifts. Take the inventory, and see what you find out about yourself. Are you using your gifts?

            You are a steward of your treasure. What do you spend? Why? On what? What do you save? What do you give? I want you to do the same thing for your treasure assignment as for your time assignment – keep track of every cent for one week. What did you make? What did you spend? What did you spend it on? Did you spend it how you intended? Does your spending match your priorities? I make myself a budget for every pay period. It is always filled with great intentions. But somehow, what I spend and what I meant to spend never quite match up by the end of two weeks. So I can tell you this is an assignment I will be doing. Start asking questions. Are you using your treasure how you want to be? In my own stewardship journey, I can tell you that I had a challenge giving what I meant to give to God – until I finally just had it directly withheld from my paycheck. When I left it up to me, somehow I never had enough. But when I put my tithe first, somehow I still managed to make ends meet. I just needed to give up a little bit of the control. Are you using your treasure how you want to be?

            Time, talent, treasure. These are tools. Tools that can help us inspire and be inspired. How are you using these tools? How will you inspire, be inspired?  In these coming weeks, I hope you will be spending some time in prayer, thinking hard, doing some homework, seeking inspiration – the Holy Spirit bringing us to life. We have everything we need. Noah built and ark. What we build together for God in this place? Amen.

             

Non-lectionary Sermon - Stewardship Focus: Gratitude: The Steward and the Ship

Sermon 10/23/11

Genesis 8:6-22

Gratitude: The Steward and the Ship

            This Sunday is Gratitude Sunday in our Stewardship focus. And we will continue with Noah and his story to look at exactly what gratitude means. So today we pick up with Noah where we left off last week. He and his family had built and boarded the ark and taken with them sets of seven of some animals, pairs of others. The floods came, and it rained for forty days and nights. Maybe that in itself doesn’t seem so bad until we realize from the passage that Jerry read today that they actually had to stay on the ark for ten month while the flood waters abated from the earth. Noah keeps sending out a dove to check for dry ground until it finally returns with an olive branch, a symbol of peace. And finally, he and his family and these animals can leave the ark.

            The first thing Noah does when he gets off the ark is build an altar and make sacrifices – gifts of animals – to God. Noah makes an offering. And the scent, we read, is pleasing to God, and God promises never to destroy creation again. I think this is a pretty profound action on Noah's part. Maybe we think nothing of it – Noah just survived with his family a natural disaster of epic proportions – of course he is thankful! But he also just lost everything he knew about his life and world. His home, his city, any family outside of those listed in the scripture – his immediate family. His neighbors. Whatever livelihood he had before ark-builder. A way of life that made sense to him. If you had lost all of that, could you still have gratitude be your first response, even if you walked away with the gift of life?

            Cultivating a life of gratitude is developing the practice of looking at what we have and seeing the abundance and giving thanks. It isn’t always easy, for sure. But what do we see when we look at what we have? Our situations? What we experience? A couple of weeks ago we talked about joy – deep joy – as being more than something that just made you happy or entertained – but that deep God-given contentment that rests in your soul – joy. I think gratitude is similar. I have a pet peeve that is a peeve against myself. I have picked up what I consider the annoying habit of responding Yup when someone says thank you. Thank you. Yup. It doesn’t quite work, does it? But I think it might reflect that culturally we don’t let our thankfulness go very deep. Is giving thanks just something that we go through the motions of? Is it too inconvenient to give thanks, and are we not really even thankful? I love the beauty of many languages, but I have to say English has it all over French or Spanish where the standard reply to Thank You is – It was nothing. In English, we are supposed to say You’re welcome. Short for you are well come here. In other words – it is a good thing, a pleasing thing, that you are here. Such a genuine response, isn’t it? Thank you. You are welcome. Gratitude – a thankful heart.

            Are you a grateful person? And again, like with joy, gratitude doesn’t mean closing your eyes to the serious and real painful situations you experience. But when you look at the whole of your life – are you thankful? Deeply? What do you see when you look at your life? Is the glass half full or half empty? Or can you see that God has filled it to overflowing? And how do you show your gratitude? 

            Here is what I think is the crux of it: We have gratitude only if we see what we have as a gift. If I go out and buy myself a pizza – I am not going to be grateful to you for it no matter how nice and thoughtful you are – because you didn’t get me the pizza – I did! But if you buy me a slice – not even a whole pie – just a slice – well, then I am grateful to you – because you gave me the gift. I am grateful for the gifts I receive. The question, when we come to faith and stewardship, then, is this: What do we see as a gift from God? Of course, we talk about everything being a gift from God. God gives us life, is our creator, sustainer, redeemer, giver of all good things. Everything is from God. But I wonder how much we really believe that? Or live into what we believe? 

            Everything is a gift. Last week, I gave you three homework assignments – a spiritual gifts survey, a time study, and study of how you spend your money. And I asked you not to change your habits to get the answers you wanted, but to honestly assess where you were. How did it go? Any surprises? Any eyes opened? Or just what you expected? Were you happy with what you saw? Talents, and time, and treasure.

            I think we are most easily grateful for the talents – the spiritual gifts – we've been given. But in this case, we have to be convinced that we have them. Over the years, in all my congregations, I am always amazed at how unwilling people are to believe or see that they are gifted. Friends, admitting you are gifted isn’t saying that you are all that. It isn’t bragging. Saying you are gifted is quite simply saying that someone – in this case God – has given you a gift. And denying it – well, that is basically saying that God hasn’t given you anything! Not discovering and using your gifts is like refusing to open a present from God. Kind of rude, isn’t it?! And it when it comes to showing gratitude for your talents, the best way to say thank you is simple – use them. Use your gifts. If you aren’t sure how to use them, we can talk. I am sure I can find some ways to put your gifts to use. But you are gifted.

            What about time? What did you learn about using your time this week? Are you thankful for your time? I suspect that a record of how we use our time would reflect that we aren’t always appreciative of it. We often say that we wish we had more of it. We don’t have enough of it. But sometimes I wonder if God doesn’t think our requests for more time are like asking for second helpings of food when we haven’t yet finished what is already on our plate. Are we asking for more time without even really using what we have? Oh, of course, it ticks by. It moves on with or without us. But what are we doing with it? Growing up, one of the worst things to say to my mom, but especially to my grandmother was: I'm bored. My grandmother was a depression-era baby and she just had no use for boredom. Saying you were bored was the ultimate form of ingratitude. And it would surely get you assigned a task or chore you would really rather not do. Rest is good – God rested, and asks us to rest, to have holy rest even! But wasting time is a whole different issue. We want more time? Are we really using what we have in a way that warrants such a bold request? Time is a gift. And unlike our talents, we always use it up completely. But how do we show we are grateful for it? Sometimes the way we use time is like taking our best linens and using them to wipe the floor. Using our best stationary as scrap paper. Wasting something precious. You have time. Show me time well spent, and you show gratitude for God's gift.

            Our money is a gift. Here I think we struggle a bit more to agree. Because we get a little confused. Didn’t we work hard for our money? Didn’t we earn it? And if we earned it, isn’t it ours to spend as we please? Isn't it our right to do so?  Sure, we put in work. We are laborers in God's vineyard. But friends, the vineyard always still belongs to God, and we may be the best stewards in the world, but we are always still stewards. If we earn money, I guarantee that we had to use several gifts from God in order to make what we have. If you find yourself thinking a bit too much about how hard you’ve worked, try to trace the source of what you have. For example: Did you get a good scholarship to college? How did that happen? Did you do well in school? You needed some intelligence for that. Where did that intelligence come from? Is it not from God? How do you earn your living? What gifts do you use that convince someone else to give you a paycheck? For example – I have learned to be extremely grateful for the gift of music I have. Carrying a tune, for the most part, isn’t something you can learn. Most people can either carry a tune, or they can’t. And while you can refine your voice with training, without something to refine to start out with, you can’t do much. Singing is a gift God gave me, and it has been more useful to me in my ministry than I ever anticipated. It helps me in my life work – and so what a build up to support myself from my ministry – it all belongs to God, and is shared by God with me. I try to use it well, but I know who it all belongs to.

            Are you grateful? We can only be grateful if we can look at all we see and see it all as gift. Our talents, our time, our treasure, our lives, our world, the love we share – all gift. And to show our thanks, we do what we are always trying to do – be more like Jesus. Follow his example. Do what God does. Give, give, give. To God. To your loved ones. To God's house. To strangers. To enemies and friends alike. Give, and give thanks. Thanks be to God for all our gifts. Amen.

Sermon for Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - God Values: Joy

Sermon 10/9/11

Philippians 4:1-9

God Values: Joy

            This week we conclude our series on God Values – we took a pause last week for World Communion, so I hope you can remember what we talked about – forgiveness, fairness, or maybe unfairness, and authority. When I planned this series, I had a number of different ideas about today's theme. At one point, I planned to focus on the gospel lesson and the feast images in the scriptures. Then, I decided I wanted us to give some attention to Philippians – we have been hearing, but not focusing on these passages. This passage has been one of my favorites since childhood, especially this verse: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

            I guess, as a young person it caught my attention because of the word excellent. I grew up when the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was popular – and excellent was used frequently in a slang style to denote something pretty awesome. It isn’t a very common word in the Bible – sometimes a person is described as being excellent. When Paul talks in 1 Corinthians 13 about love, he calls it the more excellent way. And in this verse – well, Paul is telling us we are supposed to think about excellent things. That appealed greatly to my young mind. And today I meant to talk about the God-value of excellence. But all week, I kept coming back to a different verse in this passage:

            Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice. Such a simple verse. I knew it as camp song, a round we sang. But I never gave it much serious thought. Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say Rejoice. Excellent occurs a few times in the scripture – but joy and rejoice – these words occur several hundred times throughout the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, think of some significant ways. When the angels announce Jesus' birth, Gabriel says, I bring you good news of great joy. Jesus says to the disciples after teaching them: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. His parables and teachings about the kingdom of God frequently mention joy. Certainly the resurrection story is marked with the word joy. Joy, joy, and more joy.

            Are you a joyful person? Is there joy in your life? Is there joy in the life of this church? Is it joy that marks your relationship with God? Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! For my mom, deep joy comes when all her children are together. She loves it when all four of us are at home, especially, but mostly when we are together and enjoying each other's company. Sometimes we will all be at home together for some reason or another, and my mother may be falling asleep on the couch late at night. But she is unwilling to actually go to bed. She will be half asleep, but with a smile on her face – she just likes to be around us when we are together and happy. It brings her joy.

            Children are experts at joy, aren’t they? They don’t need much to be joyful, in that relaxed, worry-free way that only children seem capable of. Last night we took my nephew Sam to Cackleberry Castle in Camden, the pumpkin farm we always visited when I was little. These days it is a bit smaller than it was when I was little, but it didn’t matter to Sam. He ran around looking at the display of spooky decorations and beautiful pumpkins and was having the best time, with a sparkle in his eye, and that practically out-of-breath voice he uses when he just can’t tell you fast enough about the great time he is having. Joy.

Or maybe we need a more contemporary image than Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: This week I just finished rereading the Harry Potter series, books I enjoy enough to turn back to when I am between other new reads. I've been think a lot about dementors and patronuses. In case you aren’t familiar, dementors are these dark, hooded creatures that suck souls out of people, a fate worse than death. "Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them... Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself...soulless and evil. You will be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."

To fight off a dementor, wizards have to produce a white, glowing figure called a patronus, which takes an animal form and chases away a dementor. Professor Lupin describes it like this: "A Patronus is a kind of positive force, and for the wizard who can conjure one, it works something like a shield, with the Dementor feeding on it, rather than him. In order for it to work, you need to think of a memory. Not just any memory, a very happy memory, a very powerful memory… Allow it to fill you up... lose yourself in it... then speak the incantation "Expecto Patronum." Harry himself says: "Make it a powerful memory, the happiest you can remember. Allow it to fill you up… Just remember, your Patronus can only protect you as long as you stay focused… Think of the happiest thing you can." At first, he tries thinking of winning a Quittich match – that a wizard sporting event. But that isn’t the deep joy that the spell requires. Our experiences that are so powerful that they can drive away the things that chip away at our very souls – that is joy.

            When I talk about joy, I don’t mean some sappy feeling that masks what we are really experiencing. Even this week, I know we have lost some of our own church family; we have some who have lost someone dear to them. We have some who are critically ill and struggling. But joy doesn’t mean plastering a smile on your face when your heart is full of grief. In fact, I would suggest that we are capable of grief because we are capable of the joy our relationships bring us. Are you joyful? What in your life brings you joy?

            You know that my sense of humor is pretty sarcastic. I love a good snappy retort. My whole family functions with this kind of humor. I ran into a bit of trouble my freshman year of college, because two of my suitemates were from China. Humor is very cultural and it doesn’t translate very well. Sarcasm, I found, especially doesn’t translate well, and my roommates often thought I was just being mean. We actually had to sit down and talk about where I was coming from and what they were hearing from me. I tried to curb my sarcasm with my roommates, and they also learned more about my sense of humor, and eventually, things worked out pretty well. But we were on some shaky ground for a while. Really though, I must confess I like my sarcastic sense of humor. And it seems to be my gut reaction, with my sarcastic response sometimes out of my mouth before I can stop myself.

The problem with my sarcastic outlook, though, is that sometimes it can serve as a wall between me and something I might more fully experience if I didn’t have my gut reaction of sarcasm. I’ve occasionally found myself unable to enjoy an experience that others might find moving, because I just can’t take it seriously – a performance, or a movie, or a story. Pastors sometimes have this trouble when we participate in worship instead of leading it. We spend so much time analyzing the worship services and how the pastor preached and what we would have done differently, that we kind of miss the worship itself, rejoicing in God, which is the whole point, isn’t it? I have a clergy colleague who, without fail, puts aside everything else and seems to be fully present whenever he is in worship – I admit I sometimes envy the joy and peace that seems to fill him when he opens his heart to God. What keeps you, prevents you, holds you back, lets you to hesitate from filling up with joy?

What brings you joy? How is it that you rejoice in God? What brings you joy in this place, this congregation, right now, today, in this moment, among these people? I think I know a lot about what our struggles are – what people want to change, what frustrates us, challenges us. But I am less sure what brings us joy, deep joy, the joy that Jesus seeks to bring us to make us whole, complete. Next week we shift gears and we begin to focus on stewardship and giving to God. I invite you to start as I invited the children to start. I want you to make a list – make it as long as you can. I want you to carry a slip of paper with you this week, or keep a note on your cell phone, or a document on your laptop. And I want you to list the moments that you find joy this week. What brings you joy? If you find this assignment to be a challenge, if you find it hard to create a list of joyful moments, maybe you will need to ask some tough questions – why does so much of what we do fail to bring us joy? What are we filling up our lives with? 

And then as we begin thinking about giving next week, I will ask you to first offer up your moments of joy to God, who is the source of all good gifts. You don’t want the children to show you up, do you? Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Amen. 

Sermon for Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, God Values: Authority, Year A, Matthew 21:23-32

Sermon 9/25/11

Matthew 21:23-32

God Values: Authority

The process of becoming an ordained pastor is pretty long and involved. From start to finish, it took me nine years before the bishop laid hands on me and said, ʺtake thou authority.ʺ But before a candidate is allowed to get too far along in the process of becoming a pastor, she must undergo a battery of psychological tests, including a review of the results of these tests with the conference psychologist. The tests involve hundreds of questions as specific as whether you preferred President Washington or President Lincoln, and as vague as whether you hear “voices” – always a tricky question for those answering a call from God! I’ll admit I was suspicious of the testing process – wondering what some of these questions could possibly tell anyone about me, and frankly, not wanting someone to feel like they  knew me so well because of some multiple choice test I filled out rather than because they actually took the time to get to know me. When I met with the conference psychologist to review my results, my skepticism shone through – the test revealed among other things that I was a defensive test-taker, guarded in my answers! Another thing it revealed was that I also have a tendency to question authority figures. Apparently, I have authority issues. My reaction to the news, was, as revealed, to be a bit defensive and skeptical. Oh please. I don’t have issues with authority figures. What does this psychologist know?  

            But, my mother might tell you a different story. Not about issues between the two of us, but about my relationship with my sixth grade teacher, for example. Apparently, though I barely have a recollection of it myself, apparently I had gotten into the habit in sixth grade of publicly correcting my teacher when he was wrong. Surprisingly, he didn’t like this, and I got a note home about it. Now, I liked my sixth grade teacher a lot. I still remember him as one of my favorites. But I figured he was into sharing authority since he purposely left the answer book out for us to check our own homework responses. He gave an inch, I took a mile. I figured he wouldn’t mind a little help when I saw him giving a wrong response. Turns out, I was the one who was wrong in that situation! OK. Maybe I have a small issue with authority figures.

            But, I think we all have some authority issues, or at least, questions about authority. Should someone have authority solely because of the position he holds? Does someone earn our respect and deference just because she is in charge of something? Over the years, I have had a deep admiration for some of my professors and teachers and mentors – but not because of their titles. Instead, I’ve admired and respected them because of an authority earned by intelligence, scholarship, compassion, dedication. Still, though, I certainly have learned since sixth grade that some authority figures simply have to be followed, obeyed, simply because of the position they hold, and that’s that. It won’t do me any good to argue with a police officer because I don’t respect her authority, right? The reality is that in our society, some people have authority simply because of the position they hold, and because we, as a community – a social community or a faith community – we have decided together to give them such authority for the good of the whole. So, I have authority in this church on some matters, not because of who I am personally, but because of the role I fill – I am the pastor. Hopefully, over time, I have authority here because I earn it – you have known me for a couple of years now, and theoretically, by now you trust from experience and relationship that you can entrust me with the authority of being your pastor. But when I first arrived, and you didn’t know me at all, you still were asked as a congregation to trust in my authority, weren’t you – just based on the fact that I was sent here through a denominational system in whose authority you put some trust? So many authority issues!

Authority is a key element in today's gospel lesson. Our scene takes place very near the end of the gospel of Matthew. In fact, it occurs during the last days of Jesus' life – he is already in Jerusalem, after being welcomed into Jerusalem with triumph and palms waving. The time is short. In this text, Jesus has entered into the temple, and is teaching. And the chief priests and elders come up to him and say, ʺhey, who gave you authority to do these things?ʺ In other words, what gives you the right to come in here and teach as if you knew what you were talking about? Maybe you have been asked, or even asked someone that before in the heat of a conflict. What gives you the right to do that? Who put you in charge? Or: you aren’t the boss of me!  

            Jesus isn’t willing to just play their game and answer their questions. Or, maybe you could say he just plays the game better than they do, because he turns it around on them, and says he will absolutely answer their question – if they can answer his first, which is also about authority: The baptism of John, cousin of Jesus – did that come from heaven, or was it of human origin? The leaders debate; if they say from heaven, from God, Jesus will say, ʺthen why didn’t you believe him?ʺ But if we say of human origin, the people will be mad at us, because they think of John as a prophet. And they definitely didn’t want to risk the anger of the crowds. So they are trapped, and have to answer: We don’t know. Jesus has managed to make these people who are supposed to be religious authorities look pretty silly – they have to admit before all these people in the temple that they don’t know the answer – they can’t say whether John was legit or not. And so, Jesus concludes, I won’t tell you about the source of my authority either.

            Then Jesus tells them a little mini-parable. Two sons are asked by their father to go and work in his vineyard. One son says no, but then later changes his mind and goes to work anyway. The other says yes, but then never goes to work. Which did the will of the father, Jesus asks? Of course, his audience must admit, the one who actually made it to the vineyard, regardless of what he said he would do, was the one who did his parent's will. Jesus concludes saying that prostitutes and tax collectors will get to the kingdom of God before the priests and elders, because they believed, but the religious leaders won’t change their behavior or beliefs even when it becomes clear that they are in the wrong. In fact, when Jesus says that they won’t change their minds, the word he uses is what the bible usually translates as repent. The religious leaders just won’t repent, even when they realize they are wrong.

            The chief priests, the elders, and the other religious leaders Jesus comes into conflict with in the scriptures, like the Pharisees and scribes – Jesus isn’t saying that their authority shouldn’t be respected, in principle. In fact, in places in the gospels, he urges people to listen to what they teach, just not to follow what they do. No, I think Jesus respects the role they are meant to play – studying God's words, carrying out the rituals of the faith handed down for generations. But, eventually, their lives have to bear out the authority with which they’ve been entrusted.              

            I remember my mother once telling me about a friend of hers whose daughter had gotten in trouble on the bus at school, along with another young person. The woman’s daughter was a church-going child from a fairly well-to-do family, and the other child in trouble was just the opposite. When relaying the story, my mom’s friend said, ʺWell, at least I know that my daughter knew better, so that gives me comfort.ʺ My mom said to her, ʺBut doesn’t that make it worse? If the other kid didn’t know better, he can hardly be blamed for his behavior. But your child knew what was right, and still chose to misbehave.ʺ Naturally, my mom's wisdom did not endear her to her friend. But she had a good point, no? I think this is how Jesus feels about the religious leaders – they are supposed to know better! They have been given authority. And yet, they are like the son who says yes to hard work, but doesn’t actually carry out on the good behavior.  

            Whenever we read about the religious leaders in the gospels, we have to put ourselves in their roles to hear Jesus' message for us, because they, like it or not, are who we are most like, rather than the prostitutes and tax collectors! We are the church-goers, who have learned the stories, heard the gospel, have taken membership vows to say we believe certain things, and so on. So we have to answer Jesus' tough questions.

When have we made commitments to God, only to fail on the follow through? How many times have you made promises to God that for one reason or another, you have not kept? And how often do you find yourself responding to God when you had already told God “no?” Probably, if we are honest, we have more examples of saying yes to God and not acting than saying no and acting out a yes. Why is that? The chief priests knew the right answers in their hearts, but were unwilling to act because of image, because of stubbornness, because they wanted to keep their power. But in the end, Jesus made their supposed authority look pretty silly.

What about us? Why do we not follow through on what we say we will do, both in our human relationships and in our relationship with God? Is it really a case of good intentions gone awry, as I think we want to believe, or is something more at work here, some deeper issue emerging that we need to confront? Theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “When you say “Yes” or promise something, you can very easily deceive yourself and others also, as if you had already done what you promised. It is easy to think that by making a promise you have at least done part of what you promised to do, as if the promise itself were something of value. Not at all! In fact, when you do not do what you promise, it is a long way back to the truth. Beware! The “Yes” of promise keeping is sleep-inducing. An honest “No” possesses much more promise. It can stimulate; repentance may not be far away. He who says “No,” becomes almost afraid of himself. But [those] who [say] “Yes, I will,” [are] all too pleased with [themselves]. The world is quite inclined – even eager – to make promises, for a promise appears very fine at the moment – it inspires! Yet for this very reason the eternal is suspicious of promises.”(1)

            For Jesus, things, as usual, come back to a question of words and actions. One pastor reminds us that “Jesus doesn't divide people up into believers and atheists. Jesus divides people into those who act and those who don't act.” (2) The religious folk in the temple had a lot to say about what was right. They were careful to study the scriptures, and they spent a lot of time in the temple, and they tried to figure out, in great detail, how to apply to scriptures for daily living. Yet, they were so sure they had things right, that they became unwilling to examine their lives to see if they were living what they were teaching, practicing what they were preaching. And they were unwilling to repent, and get back to work. Their words said yes, and their lives said no, as somehow they managed to overlook real ways to love God, active ways to love neighbor.

Jesus says that it isn’t the religious folk who are first in the kingdom of heaven. It is those who are most open to turning their lives around who are first in line, those who take action when Jesus says, “follow me.” Jesus doesn’t say ʺbelieve in meʺ - he says, ʺfollow me.ʺ As people of faith, do we have authority? What will our actions, our living say about us?

A parent had two children. The parent went to the first and said, “Child, go out and work for me today.” The child answered, “I will not,” but later, had a change of mind and went out and worked. The parent said to the second child and said the same, and the child answered, “Of course, I’ll go and work,” but then did not go after all. Which of these two did the will of the parent? They said, the first.

Amen.

(1) Søren Kierkegaard, “Under the Spell of Good Intentions,” 

http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/UnderTheSpell.htm

(2) http://www.ake.quik.co.nz/termon/djc155.html

Sermon for Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A - God Values: That’s Not Fair!

Sermon 9/18/11

Matthew 20:1-16

God Values: That’s Not Fair!

            A couple weeks ago, I told you all that I had a lot more to say to you about God and fairness. Well, today is that lucky day! Let me tell you a little story from my childhood. I am blessed to have a family that is well-educated. My mother, working as a nurse, always had a job, if not two, and by the time I was say, in junior high and high school, my family had a fairly stable middle class financial situation. But it took us a long time to get there. My early years were spent in the small country village of Westernville, and my father was out of work off and on from the time I was two until I was in fifth grade or so. That is another story to tell, but the point is, we were a poor family. We used food stamps, we received help from my grandparents, and we received one of the food baskets we helped put together at church. Westernville was too small for its own elementary school – we were bused to Rome for school, and as geography would have it, relatively poor Westernville kids went to school with kids from some of the wealthier parts of Rome.

            Somehow, it doesn’t take many years of life to learn the different between rich and poor and to assign value judgments – and poor is definitely not cool. The most popular girl in school, Kelly, child of a former professional baseball player and one of the teachers at school, who lived in a house that had more floors than I could count – well, she made my life pretty miserable sometimes. I remember most vividly that for my sixth grade birthday, my brother Jim took me to the mall and let me spend $100 of his hard earned money. It was a huge gift to me. In addition to Mariah Carey and Wilson Phillips single cassette tapes, among other things, my major purchase was a new outfit – a Skidz brand t-shirt and shorts. Anyone remember those? They were all the rage, and I knew, for once, I would be at school with the right clothes. When I arrived at school the next day, Kelly immediately made fun of me – because even though I had the right brand, I had purchased them from JCPenney, and not Tops N Bottoms, the cool store. I just couldn’t seem to win.

            The worst thing was though, that I was a kid who attended church every week, and I read my bible, and knew it pretty well, and I knew about this parable, and I knew pretty much what it meant. I knew this parable meant that Kelly, as mean as she was, as bad as she made me and other people feel – I knew Kelly was just as loved by God as I was, and that Kelly could live her life as she was and still get God's grace and all the benefits of our generous God if she wanted them. I actually thought about that a lot. And I knew that that was just. not. fair.

This parable, sometimes known as the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, is taught by Jesus following another familiar scene. A rich young man had approached Jesus and asked about getting into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus told him to sell all his stuff and give it to the poor, and the man went away disappointed. Jesus then said to the disciples that it was harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But, Jesus said, with God, anything is possible. Then Peter says, in reply, the scriptures tell us, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ Peter wants to know what exactly the disciples are in for. Jesus tells them they will receive eternal life, but that the first are last and the last are first. And then he tells this parable.

A landowner goes out in the morning to hire laborers for the vineyard. He offers them “whatever is right” for a day of labor. He goes out again at noon and at 3 and at 5, and hires more and more laborers. At the end of the day, the landowner pays them all a day’s wage. All of them. That means that the workers who have worked 10 hours, 8 hours, 5 hours, and 2 hours all get the same paycheck at the end of the day. Naturally, this upsets some of the workers. The workers who worked all day were suddenly less happy with the wage they had received, because those who worked only one hour also received the same salary. But the landowner won’t hear it: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree 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?” Jesus concludes, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

This parable goes against everything we stand for and value in a society like ours. Here, you get what you work for, or at least we value such an ideal. We like things to be fair. We care about equality and equity. We know it isn’t right for people to get the same pay for such drastically different amounts of work. Who would agree to such a thing? Who wouldn’t be resentful of others who had it so easy, who hardly had to do anything to get such a reward. “I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.” Do we feel the same sense of outrage if we remember that this parable is about the kingdom of heaven and about God’s grace?         

I think we have two responses to this parable that we don’t want to admit to ourselves. The first is this: I think we would say that we know what grace is. Goodness knows I talk about it enough, and talk about what it is, and our hymns are about grace, and our liturgies and our prayers and our sacraments – all about grace. And what do we know about grace? I hope that you have learned that grace is God's gift to us, it is free, without price, God's unconditional – that is without conditions! – love, which is poured out on everyone. That is grace. I hope that sounds familiar! But, the thing is, I don’t know if we believe in grace. Oh, I think we believe in it in an abstract way. We believe in it as a concept, a theory. But in practice? I am not convinced we really believe in grace – not fully, anyway.

I think, in our hearts, in our behavior, we are really trying, still, to earn grace, to make sure we are doing what is good enough to be loved by God. Maybe we don’t feel that we are good enough to be loved. So we try hard to be good enough. And somehow, we feel like, if at least we are better than the next person, if we are better than someone, than somehow we are a bit closer to God. We end up trying to get close to God by pushing others farther away, instead of by actually drawing close ourselves. We know from our own experience that love is inexplicable – who can explain why we love who we love? And yet, we can’t accept that God loves us. All of us.   

            So here is our second response to the parable. If we are finally convinced, at last, that God is gonna give the made elementary school rotten for everyone Kellys of the world as much love and grace as the awesomely well-behaved, life-long, faithful, didn’t even have delinquent college years Beths of the world, which, as we have established, is so unfair, then I think we start to have this creeping-into-our-minds question. Why do we bother trying so hard to be good and to live a good life? Why do we struggle so much to follow God's plans for us, God's commands for us, when other people seem to do what they want, and end up with the same reward as we do? If we get God's grace either way, why not live a little? Party a little? Go a little crazy? Why this struggle for following God, if God will ultimately find us and lavish us with grace anyway?

            Again, our response reveals what we really believe: that we see grace as a reward for good behavior and not an outright gift. Grace is not a prize that we get, but sometimes it seems that the only reason we are following God is because of the reward (or fine, gift, we might get out of it at the end.) When Jesus talks about abundant life, living water, bread of life, all that he offers, he is talking about what we can claim, the life we can live not in some distant future, but right now if we will walk with God who loves us. But don’t we sometimes treat these offers like chores we must complete to get to the end of the game and win the prize?     

            We are getting mixed up. The life God offers is meant to fill us up, fulfill us beyond our imagining. When push comes to shove, even though being a disciple is sometimes hard and challenging and seemingly impossible, I wouldn’t trade it in for a minute. I would never want to struggle with that emptiness, with that search for meaning, without knowing the love of God. I would never want to feel so groundless. The life God offers us is truly good and abundant. Laboring longer in God's vineyard is not a punishment, but in itself a blessing, being part of God's kingdom now, right here, today, on this earth, in this time.

            No, God is not at all interested in being fair. God is interested in justice. God is interested in mercy and compassion. God is interested in our abundant lives. God is interested in loving each and every single precious person in creation. But God definitely does not play fair. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Sermon for Pentecost 13A, “God Values: Forgiveness”

Sermon 9/11/11

Matthew 18:21-35

God Values: Forgiveness

            Where were you when it happened? That is a question you might have been asked this week. Where were you on 9-11-01 when you head the news? I was in seminary. I had just started my internship at our United Methodist interfaith agency, located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan – I worked on Mondays and Fridays, and had put in just two days before September 11^th. I was feeling pretty brave about going to work in the big city, riding the trains and the subway, being part of the commuter crowd. Thankfully, I was not in Manhattan on 9-11. I had been the day before.

            On the morning of the 11^th, I, not surprisingly to those of you who know me well, was still asleep when the first plane hit the towers. Soon after, I was up and at the bookstore, when I heard a radio report saying something about a plane and a building, but I didn’t pay it much attention. I then went to the library, where I overheard a woman telling a work-study student that it was ok if he didn’t feel like working that day. And I couldn’t log onto cnn.com on the computers. But I still didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t until I made my way to Seminary Hall, and began talking with other students, that I realized exactly what was happening. And so eventually the fear set in, the sadness, the anxiety. In the coming weeks, I found it hard to get over my fear of going back to the city for work, hard to relax on public transportation, hard to operate through fire drills at my office building there. And I found it hard to watch how we reacted as a nation, and as a world community to these events, how quickly the climate of the world changed. Today you’ll still hear the phrase, “in a post 9-11 world . . . ʺ

Into the midst of this day, ten years later, our lectionary, our schedule of scriptures, brings us a passage about forgiveness, and it is hard for me not to marvel at the mystery of how God is at work even in which Bible text we are meant to read when. It is certainly no mistake. Our passage from Matthew today comes in the middle of a series of teachings from Jesus. The disciples have asked Jesus some questions, and he has responded, teaching about not being stumbling blocks for one another, talking about it being better to enter God's kingdom without a foot or hand rather than to stumble and stray because of it. He speaks about conflict in the community, recommending a course of action if someone has sinned against you. And then, perhaps in response to this teaching, Peter asks Jesus: ʺLord, if another member of the faith community sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?ʺ Now, the way Peter asks his question gives you an idea that he thinks he is being pretty broad in his suggested response. As many as seven times? Peter asks and lets Jesus know he thinks seven times is a lot. See, Peter is learning, even though he stumbles. He is learning from Jesus and has learned that Jesus is pretty extravagant sometimes – not when it comes to having things and possessions and money. But extravagant about his relationships with others. Jesus is pretty extravagant with his compassion, justice, and mercy. Always going farther than anyone else was prepared to go. Peter, I suspect, thinks he will impress Jesus, by saying he suspects you might need to forgive someone up to seven times if they sin against you! Seven times!

             Jesus replies, “Nice try, Peter. Try seventy seven times. Seventy seven.” In other words, stop counting how many times you have forgiven, and then you are on the right track. And then Jesus tells a parable, about the kingdom of heaven, saying, “It’s like this. A king wanted to settle his debts. He called forward a slave who owed him 10,000 talents. The slave could not pay, so the king prepared to sell the slave, his family, and his possessions to make the payment. But the slave begged for mercy and patience, promising to pay. The king had mercy and cancelled the entire debt and released the slave, beyond what the slave asked for. But later, the same slave encounters a peer who owes him a small sum of money, a hundred denarii. He violently demands payment, and when his peer can’t pay, and begs for mercy, the slave denies him mercy, and has him thrown in prison. When the king finds out about it, he calls the slave before him. ‘How could you not show mercy to your fellow slave, as I showed you mercy?’ Finally, the king hands the slave over and requires payment for the debt.” Jesus concludes, saying that this is how it will be with us if we do not forgive one another.

            When we say the Lord's prayer here at First United, we say, ʺforgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.ʺ We say it that way in particular to honor our Presbyterian heritage, as we honor our  Methodist history in other ways, like through our hymnal choice. I grew up saying trespass and trespasses in the Lord's Prayer, and it took me a while to get the hang of saying debts and debtors, especially when I am still often at conference events that require me to switch back to trespasses! But I have to tell you, having to remember where I am and which words I am supposed to say each time I pray the prayer has helped me to think about it more deeply when I pray, instead of running quickly through familiar words. I have to really think about what I am saying every time. And what am I saying? Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

            There has certainly been enough talk about debt, lately, hasn’t there? We know a little more about national debt and debt ceilings and all that than most of us probably ever knew before. Or at least we've worried about it more than usual. But the debt we are probably most familiar with is our own. Who are you in debt to? And is anyone in debt to you? We probably know that pretty well too. But think particularly about to whom you are in debt – who do you owe? Most of us, unless we are extraordinarily lucky, are in debt to someone financially. Student loans – I am pretty sure I will have those until I am too old to remember what I even studied in college. Car payments, or mortgage payments. Credit cards. Taxes. Utility bills. Rent. To whom are you in debt, and for what? And then, imagine, imagine that your creditor, whoever you owe simply cancels your debt. Not that you suddenly have so much money you can pay off everything you owe. No, but imagine that your debt is just gone, cancelled. What does that feel like? Can you feel the weight that is lifted? The anxiety, the stress, the worry that would be just gone. No more burden.

How often should I forgive? Cancel someone's debts? Forgiveness is a tricky thing, isn’t it? We’re willing to go only so far before we start wanting to know about limits – how much, how often, who must we forgive and in what circumstances? Today’s world demands answers to these questions. Can we forgive even when forgiveness entails life and death situations? Do you believe such extreme forgiveness is possible? What shapes will forgiveness take when we think of the tragedy of September 11^th? And all these questions about human forgiveness lead us to God’s forgiveness. Can God forgive us? Does God forgive all sins from all sinners? What are the conditions of forgiveness? Are there conditions? Are there conditions to God canceling the debt of our sinfulness? Our believing in the possibility of forgiveness works both ways. If we believe that human forgiveness is possible, then forgiveness from God is certain. And in order for us to believe that we are truly forgiven and reconciled people, truly forgiven by God and given the chance, again, for right relationship with God, then we must also believe in the possibility of human forgiveness, reconciliation in human relationships.

            How should we forgive? Let me say briefly but clearly what I don’t think Jesus is saying here about forgiveness. His call for our compassion and bottomless forgiveness is not a call for people to remain trapped in abusive relationships, or a call for victims of violence to remain victims of violence. God wants wholeness for all of us. Forgiveness comes in the simple and complicated form of canceling the debt of wrong-doing done against us, letting go of what is owed to us by another.

            But let me tell you what else I really don’t think Jesus is talking about. Jesus isn’t really addressing his teaching to those who need to ask for forgiveness. This passage isn’t about, primarily, those who are sinners (although that is really all of us, mind you), those who stand in need of forgiveness (again, all of us, really.) Jesus has lots to say about our sinners and how we sin, but this isn’t it. This passage is about those of us who feel someone owes us something, those of us who feel someone is in our debt, those of us who feel someone needs to seek out our forgiveness. Peter wants to know how much forgiveness he has to pay out. That is what prompts Jesusʹ teaching. Ultimately, we can only be responsible for our own actions. You can only decide whether or not you will forgive. You can’t control whether or not someone feels sorry for wronging you, whether they have done enough to make up for hurting you, or even how they will behave in the future, if they really mean their apology, if they will hurt you again or not. Jesus doesn’t really make comment on any of these questions. Because you can only choose how you will behave when someone is in your debt. How often do we forgive? Seven times? Seventy-seven times. Jesus is calling us to forgive like he does, like God does – extravagantly, recklessly, without counting up the cost and how much we were owed and how much debt we cancelled.

            In these next few weeks, we are looking at what I have been thinking of as God-values. God has a way of taking our values and turning them inside out and showing us how much we have missed the mark, how much richer our lives would be if we could begin to see and act with God's eyes and heart. I think we look at someone owing us a debt, and we think of that as power – when we are owed something, it gives us a sense of power over, even if we have that power because we have been wronged. But Jesus finds power, strength, life in letting go of one kind of power to take up another. Jesus, instead of trying to show off his strength, always makes himself more vulnerable. Even on the cross, dying, at his most vulnerable, Jesus exposes his heart to the world even more, speaking of forgiveness even as he is put to death. There is a different, deeper kind of strength and power in laying our hearts bear, emptying our souls of the resentment we feel toward those who have harmed us. Forgiveness is a God-value, a gift from God to us, and a gift that continues to bless us when we share it with others.

We’re given a reminder, even as we pray familiar words: God, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. God asks for us to share with others the same forgiveness with which God blesses us. Is it easy work? No. Like Peter, we want to know – have we done enough yet? But God promises us that practicing forgiveness is life-giving, where withholding forgiveness only hurts us. There is much in this world to forgive. There is much for which we seek forgiveness. So we struggle, we try harder, both in forgiving those who have sinned against us, and in asking forgiveness where we have caused harm. But wherever we find ourselves in our struggles, we can trust that we find ourselves free of debt, completely covered by God’s boundless forgiveness. Let us go, and live likewise. Amen.

Sermon for 10th Sunday after Pentecost, “Sunday School Stories: Moses, Part I“

Sermon 8/21/11

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Sunday School Stories: Moses, Part I

            One time when I was visiting our friend and member Walt Jenkins, who is always reading something, he had a book on his coffee table that really caught my interest. I can’t remember the title, but I remember the concept. In each chapter, a different author looked at events in United States history and imagined what would have happened if one small variable had been different. For example, what if Paul Revere had not been able to complete his famous ride in time to warn colonials of the approaching British troops? What if he had been captured or injured or his horse broke a leg? Perhaps we can conjecture that a quick replacement would have been made. But it is only conjecture. We have no idea how one event might have impacted everything else. Or what if Lee Harvey Oswald had missed and failed to assassinate JFK? What if JFK had completed his presidency? Certainly the course of US history would be different – but how?

You’ve probably heard of this, even if not by this name: the Butterfly Effect. The butterfly effect gets its name from the basic example: the presence or absence of a butterfly flapping its wings in a certain time and place can impact the presence or absence of weather systems as large as hurricanes across the world. The actual concept is slightly more complicated. Reading about it will take you into a world of math formulas and graphs. But we can grasp the basic idea, I think, and think about our own lives. Sometimes the examples are much more trivial than presidential assassinations. Think about your own life. You probably consider this when you narrowly avoid an auto accident and realize that if you had traveled one mile per hour faster or slower, your life might be totally different. Think about the choices you’ve made, and the consequences your choices have, intended and unintended. What if you chose to take a different class in college and you never met your spouse? What if you never lost touch with that friend from grade school? Or what if you had taken a different summer job when you were in high school? What if you'd put on a different outfit this morning? What if you hadn’t lost your keys and left the house five minutes earlier? What if you weren’t here today, but out at breakfast? We cannot even know what impact our decisions might be having. We cannot even imagine.

Reading today's Old Testament lesson, where we turn our focus from Moses to Joseph, I am overwhelmed with questions of this type. What if? What if? So, let’s look at what we have. ʺNow a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.ʺ That’s how our passage from Exodus begins today, and it explains how Joseph's actions with his brothers, where he lets them essentially work for food in Egypt, turns into Israelite slavery under Egyptians just a few generations later. What if, indeed? How could Joseph and his brothers imagine that their sibling rivalry would be the groundwork for a whole nation being slaves to another, which would lead to the Exodus, which remains today the most significant story shaping Jewish identity. Perhaps it will give you pause next time you are arguing with a loved one – who knows how your actions will shape the world!

Times have changed and Joseph and family are no longer special guests in Egypt. They’re slaves. More than that, the new king, the new Pharaoh, feels threatened by the number of Israelites. They have multiplied over time and now are more numerous than the Egyptians. So the Israelites become slaves forced into worsening conditions. Pharaoh also directs the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill any male children born to Israelite women. (Lynn, apparently only two midwives were needed to assist with an entire nation of newborns.) But Shiphrah and Puah have their own plan. They deliver babies as usual, and tell Pharaoh that Israelite women are just exceptionally vigorous in labor and deliver and they can’t get there fast enough. Pharaoh is not so easily thwarted though, and he orders every baby boy born simply thrown into the Nile.

We read about a Levite woman, one of the tribes of Israel, who has a baby boy and sees how beautiful he is, and she decides to hide him. When that becomes too risky, she prepares a basket for him and puts him in among the reeds on the banks of the river. The baby’s sister, Miriam, watches to see what happens. Indeed, we don’t know what his mother Jochebed was hoping would happen – but she has to hope for something. Who comes to the river, but the Pharaoh's daughter! When she sees the baby, she has pity on him, even knowing it is probably one of the Hebrew babies, even knowing her actions are about to violate her own father’s law.  The baby’s sister, Miriam, offers to run and find a nurse, and of course, she brings back his own mother. The Pharaoh's daughter hires her to be the nurse, but he is raised as the child of the Pharaoh's daughter. And she names him Moses.

What a strange turn of events! Of course, we know that it is Moses, this baby, who becomes the man who leads the Israelites out of Egypt to freedom, who will eventually go head to head with Pharaoh. So if Pharaoh had never ordered babies killed, in order to oppress and control the Israelites, Moses would never have been raised by his daughter and in a position to lead people to freedom. All through this story, these women take action – maybe small actions – but they add up to the unfolding of one of the most important stories in the Old Testament. Shiphrah and Puah pretend Israelite women give birth really quickly. Jochebed sees what happens if she trusts God and floats her baby in the Nile. Pharaoh's daughter doesn’t let her royal status keep her from pity and compassion. Even Miriam knows just what to do when an opportunity presents itself. They probably are all a little afraid. And probably none of them could imagine the grand consequences of their actions. But without every piece, who knows what would have transpired?

God calls us and waits for us to respond. Every day, all the time, in a million situations. God creates us, and sets us loose in the world, and gives us hearts, souls, minds, lives that we can make of what we will. Sometimes we feel so small in this world, but in reality, we have incredible power because of the gift of freewill God gives to us. And so when we act, when we react, when we speak, when we decide, when we refuse to act – each choice we make has an impact – whether we see it immediately or never truly understand how the years ahead are shaped by a small decision today. That means we should carefully consider what we are about. Our lives aren’t trivial, but full of meaning that God draws out from us. When we speak and act in anger, out of hate, it matters. When we act with compassion, it matters. When we are kind, it matters. When we hurt one another, it matters. When we don’t act, and don’t care, it matters. When we make one small contribution for peace and justice, it matters. When we act with love, it matters. It all counts.

Every day we make a million choices. You’ve already made a million to bring you to this very place this morning. And maybe we can’t know whether taking one route or another home today will change history. But we can think long and hard about how the small choices we make can lead to big things, and how the small steps we take, can bring us ever closer to God. Amen.