(Re)Learning How to Read the Bible

If you have been watching the services at Grace over the winter, you may have noticed that almost every week I wear a sweater and that’s because I’m alone in the sanctuary, so the heat isn’t on. If I’m ever not in the sanctuary this winter, it’s because I didn’t want the chattering of my teeth to be distracting.

A couple weeks ago, the pilot light for the boiler that heats the radiators at home went out. It was cold, so I put on my trusty sweater and started to look into the problem.

One thing that you should know about my skills as a handiperson I that that I have only ever lived in parsonages or campus housing, which means I have never really had to fix things on my own. I have always had trustees or a maintenance crew to rely on and when I was in school, my shop class was on a computer.

That said, even I can light a pilot light.

I relit the pilot light for the boiler to heat up the radiators, and it worked for a little bit, but then it went out again. I lit the pilot light again, everything worked for a little bit, but then it went out again. So I googled ‘pilot light won’t stay lit’ which lead me to a video on YouTube that teaches people to repair or replace the thermocouple on a boiler. Before that moment I had never heard of a thermocouple.

Generally speaking, repair jobs that deal with electricity and gas are best left to the professionals. Most of the time if there is a risk or electrocution or a gas leak, you should let someone with the proper skills and training take care of things, but the YouTube video that I watched made it look simple.

I didn’t know what to do, so I called a repair place to see how much it would cost for them to take a look at the pilot light, but it was a weekend, so the rate for them to show up was double what a house call usually is, and the hourly rate was time and a half on top of that. The repair person that I talked to over the phone said that I likely identified the problem and that it could be an easy fix that would cost around $200 for them to do, but less than $20 if I tried to do it myself. Then they said, “If you replace the thermocouple yourself and it works, you’ve fixed the issue for 10% of the cost, but if that replacement doesn’t fix the problem, I won’t be able to get the parts I need until Monday, so why don’t you try it yourself and we will give you a call on Monday to see if we need to come over.”

Boiler repair is intimidating, because when you start to look into one, you see all of these parts that are connected with cables and cords and gas lines and while you can tell that the parts are connected, you can’t really make sense of how or why they fit together the way they do. The repair person said it was a simple job, but this simple job had some combustable elements.

Long-story short, I was able to replace the thermocouple and can technically say that I was able to repair a boiler.

I am willing to bet that my experience with the boiler is similar to how a lot of people experience the Bible.

The Bible is intimidating and we’re not really sure how it works or fits together. We might want to explore it, but at the same time, we know there are some combustable elements in here that, when they’re used and abused, they are as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than as a gas leak.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going learn how to read the Bible. I want you to be able to see the Bible as the library that it is, I want you to find your place in this ongoing conversation and commentary that is within the scriptures. Together, we’re going to see how the threads of liberation, justice, grace and peace that are woven together in the Bible and can be woven into our lives.

Far too often, Christians use the Bible to justify attitudes, behaviors and actions that have nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus wants to save Christians and if we are going to be a part of the justice that Jesus incarnates, if we are going to live with and share the grace and peace that Jesus embodies, we need to learn how to read the Bible.

Officially, Exodus is not the first book of the Bible, when you open the Bible and read, “In the beginning…” you’re reading from Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and yet, when it comes to understanding the scriptures, we should think about Exodus as the first book of the Bible.

Think about it a bit like Star Wars.

Episode IV, A New Hope was the first film released, and thank goodness for that. If George Lucas would have started with Episode I The Phantom Menace, who knows if Jar Jar Binks would have ruined the franchise and made it so Episode IV was never filmed. You can think of Genesis as a prequel, as the book that explains the why and how we get to Exodus.

Exodus is the first book of the Bible because it’s there that the central story of the scripture begins – liberation from Egypt. In the Bible, Egypt is as much a place as it is a metaphor and an example of unchecked evil because Egypt, in the book of Exodus, is a military empire built on the backs of Israelite slave labor, brick by brick by brick.

Exodus begins with oppression and exploitation, with systemic evils and injustices beating down to Hebrew people. And Exodus begins with God saying:
“I’ve clearly seen my people oppressed in Egypt. I’ve heard their cry of injustice because of their slave masters. I know about their pain. I’ve come down to rescue them…” (3:7-8)

This God sees, hears, knows, and rescues.

The Hebrew word that is used here for cry is צַעֲקָתָ֤ם (ṣa·’ă·qā·ṯām), and it comes from the root word צַעֲקָה (seaqah) and it means a cry of distress, our primal expression of pain.

The Israelites are oppressed, they are enslaved, they are suffering, and when they cry out, God hears their cry because God always hears the cry of the oppressed. Sometimes it is only in the cry, in the depths of desperation, at the acknowledgement of oppression, that the spark of liberation is set ablaze.

But God doesn’t just hear the cry, God does something about it, God responds, God moves.

With this in mind, let’s do a bit of a Genesis overview, because it’s clear that things in Egypt are not as they should be, so let’s see how things were supposed to be in Eden, in the beginning.

There is this good gift of creation that brings God joy. That’s the poetry of Genesis 1, God creates, God calls it good, and God creates again, to call this creation good. In the poetry of Genesis, creation is a gift of joy and in Eden, everything has a place, there is peace and harmony and an invitation to be a part of and continue to care for and extend this goodness. But Adam and Eve choose to go another way.

In one generation, the Bible goes from Adam and Eve having a snack to the story of their son Cain killing their other son Abel. Things escalate quickly and in the first few chapters of Genesis, there is a rapid and dramatic progression that says we are on the edge of destruction. A few verses after Cain kills Abel, a descendant of Cain, Lamech, laments saying, “I killed a man for wounding me, a boy for striking me; so Cain will be paid back seven times and Lamech seventy-seven times.” Lamech is saying that things were bad before, but now they are ten times worse.

A few chapters after this, in Genesis 11, there is a new form of technology that’s created, the brick. Rocks and stones are all different sizes and shapes, they are hard to stack and build with, but bricks are uniform, bricks are much easier to build with and in Genesis 11, people begin to build a tower to heaven, convinced that they will make themselves gods.

In 11 chapters, Genesis goes from two people eating some fruit, to murder to revenge, to an entire civilization misusing technology for the sake of their ego.

There is Eden, God’s hope for creation, this place of grace and peace, of goodness and joy, and there’s Egypt, there’s what happens when people, societies and empires act in opposition to God’s hope for the world.

Imagine that you’re the child of a slave in Egypt. You are too young to be forced into labor outside of your home, so you spend your childhood taking care of things at home. One day, your parents come home, but they have bandages all over their arms and backs. You want to know why. You want to know what could possible hurt them this much. And so your parents explain to you that their master beat them. You ask why and they explain that they now have to make the same number of bricks as before, but they have to gather their own straw for the bricks (Exodus 5:7-9). They now have to do a lot of extra work, without any extra time to do it.

Even though that’s an explanation, it’s not a very good explanation. As a child in Egypt, even as a slave child in Egypt, you know things are bad, but you don’t want to believe they are so bad that if you had extra work to do, without the extra time to do it, that your parents would let it slide. Shouldn’t people know that having to collect all the necessary materials for bricks will take more time and there is no way that they can keep the same quota.

So you ask why the master hurt them, and your parents have to explain to you that if their master didn’t make their quota, they would be beaten by their master, and if that master didn’t make their quota, they’d be beaten by their overseer, and those beatings would continue all the way up to the Pharaoh. Your parents try to explain that they were beaten by a master because life in Egypt is part of a larger and messier problem that exploits people for the sake of expansion and profit.

The bandages that you see on your parents’ arms and back are from one person, Egypt didn’t whip them, the Pharaoh didn’t lay a finger on them, and yet Egypt is what happens when sin becomes embedded in a society. Egypt is what happens when our hearts are bent towards the preservation of power at the expense of the exploited.

Imagine being an Israelite slave child in Egypt, wondering why you are living there in the first place. If you’re an Israelite, shouldn’t you living in Israel? With all your questions and concerns, your parents tell you the Genesis story, they tell you how they became slaves in Egypt, they tell you about Eden and the escalation of violence, and then they tell you about the Tower of Babel, about how it was made with bricks.

The slaves in Egypt, those that were forced to make bricks all day, would have had a keen understating of what happens when people start to build an empire out of bricks.

God hears the cry of the oppressed, and God says to Moses, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians…So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

Moses brings the people out of Egypt, and in their journey out of Egypt, they find their way to Sinai.

At Sinai, something interesting happens, God speaks to a group of people. This hasn’t happened since Eden. Since Eden, God has only spoken to individuals like Abraham and Moses, but now God is going to speak to the community.

Moses tells the people to prepare to meet with God. So far in the scriptures, things have kept moving to the east of Eden until we ended up in Egypt. Now the people are in the wildness, unsure what direction to go. There has been a distance growing between humanity and divinity, there is this gulf between where we are and where we need to be, and Sinai breaks that since.

Here is part of the message that God shares at Sinai, “You saw what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you up on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:4-6)

בְּרִיתִ֑י (berit) is the Hebrew word for covenant and the roots of the word are debated, but it carries the idea of cutting a deal, being allies, even being married.

There is this deal, this covenant, contact, this sacred connection and union, and God says, “You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.”

We generally think of priests as folks that show people what God is like. In the Catholic tradition, there is the sense that priests are mediators between people and God. If you go to a temple or shrine or church and watch what the priest does and says, if you observe their rituals and routines of their priestly role, you get a sense what their tradition says god is like.

At Sinai, God invites the people, all of the people, to be priests, to show the world who this God is and what this God is like.

There are all sorts of passages earlier in Genesis and Exodus that point towards this hope of God. In the creation poetry of Genesis it’s written that we are created in the image of God, in Exodus 7 when Moses is preparing to speak to Pharaoh and demand liberation, God says to Moses, “See, I’ve made you like God to Pharaoh…” (7:1).

It is God’s idea to make Moses like God to Pharaoh which tells us that God is always seeking to be embodied. At Sinai it is not only Moses who is asked to be a priest, to embody the liberation and love of God, it’s everyone. But even more than that, the people are told to be a holy nation. It is as if God is saying to these liberated slaves, you’ve experienced one kind of nation in Egypt, now you have to live as another kind of nation, now we’re going to see what life together should be in Eden.

God says to the people at Sinai, “I am the Lord your God who brought you our of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…” and then God gives the people ten commandments to live by, to make them a holy nation.

The first commandment tells them to have no other gods. Their liberation, the new humanity that they are living into, is directly connected to the God that brought them out of Egypt. If they forget God, they forget their story, and if they forget their story, they might find themselves with slavery again.

Next they are told not to make anything in the image of God, not to have any idols. Throughout the ancient near east at this time, different faith traditions would conceptualize their ideas about god with images and carvings and statues. But the God of Exodus is different. This God doesn’t need statues or carvings or images and idols because this God has a holy nation, this God has priests, this God has people that show the world what God’s liberation and love is all about.

There are all sorts of laws that follow the rest of the ten commandments, numerous examples of ways that the people should live as priests, as a holy nation. In Exodus 22 it’s written, “Don’t mistreat or oppress an immigrant, because you were once immigrants in the land of Egypt. Don’t treat any widow or orphan badly. If you do treat them badly and they cry out to me, be sure that I’ll hear their cry…If you lend money to people who are poor among you, don’t be a creditor and charge them interest. If you take a piece of clothing from someone as a security deposit, you should return it before the sun goes down. [Their] clothing may well be [their] only blanket to cover [themself]. And if [they] cries out to me, I’ll listen, because I’m compassionate.” (22:21-27)

There is a warning here, don’t become like Pharaoh, because God is not found on Pharaoh’s side.

Throughout numerous passages in Exodus, as God tells the people how to be priests, how to live as a holy nation, it’s as if God is saying, this liberation, this joy, this freedom that has been a gift to you, share this gift with others, everywhere, no matter what. God is saying in the same what that I heard your cries and responded, listen to the cries of others and respond to them with liberation and love.

We always have to remember that this conversation with God at Sinai begins with God saying, if. We may have started in Egypt, but we ended up at Sinai and that question of ‘if’. Which begs the question, did the people live as a priests and a holy nation? Did they embody the movement of this God that hears the cries of the oppressed and responds with liberation?

Will we?

In the generations that follow, there are times when the people live into their covenant, and there are times when they forget. David is seen in the scriptures as the great king that brought peace and prosperity to the nation, and King David is followed by Solomon. Solomon, as King, amasses wealth and influence on a global scale in the ancient world. Throughout the scriptures, Solomon is known for their wisdom and their wealth.

In the Book of 1 Kings, a Queen from another land, from Sheba, comes to visit Solomon. She comes from far away, with a different understanding of God, with a different culture and religion, but she wants to know more about these people in Israel, she wants to know about their God.

This seems to be what Sinai was all about. A holy nation embodying the grace and peace of God so that the whole world would be blessed and it’s happening as a stranger from a foreign land travels to Israel to learn about who this God is.

In 1 Kings 10, they write about how Sheba asks Solomon questions and riddles to see how wise Solomon really is. Sheba shares meals with Solomon, she gets a tour of the place and sees all that Solomon has built with their wealth and Sheba says to Solomon, “Bless the Lord your God because God was pleased to place you on Israel’s throne. Because the Lord loved Israel with an eternal love, the Lord made you king to uphold justice and righteousness.”

If there’s anything that we should notice right away in what Sheba says to Solomon, it’s that Sheba says it’s the role of the king to uphold justice and righteousness, she says nothing about Solomon actually doing it.

Justice and righteousness is freedom, it’s liberation, it’s protection from anything and everything that is demeaning and dehumanizing and this outsider from another part of the world, with another faith, sees that God is trusting Solomon to use their wealth and power and influence on behalf of those who are poor, weak, or suffering. Sheba sees that these blessings are not for Solomon alone, but are to be shared, to be passed on, to empower Solomon to hear the cry of the oppressed and respond.

Sheba gets it.

But what about Solomon?

One of the buildings that Sheba saw, the temple that was built in Jerusalem at that time, here’s how the Bible says it was built. “Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the LORD’s temple, his own palace, the terraces, the wall of Jerusalem…” (1 Kings 9:15)

Another term for forced labor is slavery.

The temple to the God of liberation, the temple to the God that freed these people from slavery was built by slaves.

Those that were oppressed became the oppressors. Those that cried out are now causing others to cry and refuse to listen to their tears. The descendants of those that longed for freedom from Egypt have found themselves building their own Egypt.

The passage in 1 Kings 9 continues, and it’s written that the forced labor, the slaves built “Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer.” It’s not written in the text of 1 Kings because the author assumed you would know that “Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer” are military bases.

Megiddo is in a valley at the north of Israel and it was an intersection of trade routes that went throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia so it was a very strategic location where a numerous of battles took place. There was so much violence at Megiddo that it became known by another word in English, Armageddon.

The story continues, as the author of 1 Kings tells us that Solomon has “cities and the towns for his chariots and for his horses”. In Exodus, Pharaoh’s soldiers were on chariots and horses as they chased after the Israelite slaves as they escaped into freedom.

And the story continues, “There were still people left from the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these peoples were not Israelites). Solomon conscripted the descendants of all these peoples remaining in the land—whom the Israelites could not exterminate —to serve as slave labor, as it is to this day.”

In the next chapter it’s written, “Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt…They would import a chariot from Egypt for six hundred pieces of silver and a horse for one hundred fifty and then export them to all the Hittite and Aramean kings” (10:28-29)

There is a new Egypt, and it’s Jerusalem. There is a new Pharaoh, and their name is Solomon.

How much wealth did Solomon make importing and exporting chariots and horses, dealing in the arms of the day? “Solomon received six hundred sixty-six kikkars of gold…” (1 Kings 10:14) By weight, 666 kikkars of gold is about 25 tons and if you are unfamiliar with the number 666, it’s a Biblical way to say that something is evil, unjust, and moving in the opposite direction of God.

The Hebrew scriptures are consistent and clear, God always hears the cry of the oppressed, God cares about suffering and the conditions and systems and empires that cause it, God is searching for a body, a community, a people, to care about the things that God cares about, and God blesses us so that we might bless others with justice and righteousness.

We can’t read the Bible correctly if we forget this, if we fail to hear the cries of the oppressed, if we, like Solomon preserve our privilege and prosperity at the expense of the powerless, we’ve missed the point.

The good news is that if we find ourselves in Egypt, we don’t have to stay there. God hears the cry, and God is coming to the rescue, bringing liberation, grace and peace. Which means we have to ask ourselves if we are on God’s side, or Pharaohs.

Most of the time you want to end a sermon on an inspirational high note, but today we only have a question, are we living for Egypt or Eden? Are we living as priests that are sharing with the world the hope of God, or are we living like Pharaoh and standing stubbornly in opposition? God has made a choice and has invited us to do the same. Egypt and Eden are before you, which way will you go?

Read – Exodus 3:13-20

Notice – Like most ancient peoples, the Egyptians believed in many “gods,” including the Pharaoh. Moses’ initial question – “What’s this God’s name?” – had a “Which one of the many are you?” ring to it. But God’s reply (“I Am Who I Am” – Hebrew YHWH) identified the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the source and ground of all life, as the only God, the sole reason that, as philosophers might say, there is “something instead of nothing.” For people who’d been slaves for many years, it was important to remember their heritage – “the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” It’s your heritage, too. The apostle Paul wrote that “if you belong to Christ, then indeed you are Abraham’s descendants” (Galatians 3:29). Re-read this dramatic passage, focusing on what it tells you about the LORD you serve, the LORD who redeemed and guides you.

Pray – God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in some ways those names seem so long ago, and almost too big to fit a regular person. But they were regular people, too – the “bigness” and enduring quality was in you. Thank you for including me in your eternal purpose. Amen.

Read – Exodus 4:18-23

Notice – In Exodus 3:19, God told Moses, “I know that Egypt’s king won’t let you go unless he’s forced to do it.” In today’s reading, we find a phrase that troubles many people, when God says, “I’ll make him stubborn.” Notice that Pharaoh was NOT willing to release the Israelites before Moses ever appeared before him. What God did through Moses made Pharaoh’s stubbornness dramatically visible, God did not have to make the Egyptian ruler stubborn. Pharaoh had already made those choices. How about you? If you stubbornly resist something you believe God is calling you to do, is your stubbornness your responsibility, or God’s? How can you open your heart to become more willing to follow God’s leading?

Pray – God, I try to imagine how exposed Moses must have felt taking his family (and almost nothing else) with him to Egypt. But somehow he was eternally safe, because you were with him. Heighten my awareness that you are with me, too, today and every day. Amen.​

At Grace, we are spending some time at the start of this year learning to read the Bible. Far too often, the Bible is used and abused in ways that have nothing to do with the teachings or the example of Christ. Last week, we started to walk through the narrative arch of the Bible together beginning with the book of Exodus because even though it isn’t officially the first book of the Bible, it is the central to who God is and who God is inviting us to be.

As the South African pastor and anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak said, “The God of the Bible is the God of liberation rather than oppression; a God of justice rather than injustice; a God of freedom and humanity rather than enslavement and subservience; a God of love, righteousness and community rather than hatred, self-interest and exploitation.”

This is the God that we meet in Exodus and see throughout the scriptures. In Exodus 3 God hears the cry of the oppressed and responds with liberation, bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and leading them to Sinai where the covenant is made, if you faithfully obey me and follow my ways, you will be my most precious possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.

Just as God heard the cry of the oppressed and responded with liberation, we too are called to hear the cry of the oppressed, to cry out against evil and injustice in whatever forms they present themselves, and join with God in this movement towards grace and peace. That is a part of our baptismal vow in the United Methodist Church, we vow to join with God in resisting evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. When we as people of faith don’t read the Bible with this in mind, we are not able to read the Bible in a way that opens our hearts and minds to God’s dreams for us.

But before we go on, let’s state the obvious – we are able to read the Bible because someone wrote something down.

It is so obvious that we hardly ever stop to think about how the Bible didn’t drop out of the sky.

Here’s another obvious reality of the Bible that is easy to forget, the Bible is not one book, but a library of books, a compendium of conversations that we get to enter into.

Many of the stories in the Bible began as an oral tradition, they were campfire stories in the ancient near east, shared generation to generation until someone took the time to write them down.

We see examples of this in the Bible. There’s a passage in 1 Kings 11 where it’s written, “The rest of Solomon’s deeds, including all that he did and all his wisdom, aren’t they written in the official records of Solomon?” (1 Kings 11:41)

Apparently the author of 1 Kings knows of a book called, “The Official Records of Solomon” and they assume that we know about this book too. Unfortunately, the book of the official records of Solomon was lost to time.

For the final verse in the Gospel of John the author writes, “Jesus did many other things as well. If all of them were recorded, I imagine the world itself wouldn’t have enough room for the scrolls that would be written.” (John 21:25) It’s as if the author of the Gospel of John gets to the end of their book and writes, “there’s more I could write, but I ran out of ink.” And John knows there’s more to write about Jesus, because John wrote after the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke were written, with Mark, likely the first Gospel written, being composed sometime in the mid to late 60s and the Gospel of John being written around the end of the first century.

At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, that author writes, “Many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us. Now, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, I have decided to write a carefully ordered account for you…” (Luke 1:1-3)

There is a point that the author of the Gospel of Luke wants to make, and they tell us from the start, “I am editing together these stories to give you an orderly account.”

It is just as obvious as it is important for us to point out that the numerous authors of the Bible were real people, living in real places, at specific points in time. Paul wrote their letters in the Christian Scriptures in the moment, but many Biblical authors wrote in retrospect, looking back at what had been written before and entering into that conversation with new insight about where the story of God’s liberation is leading them.

There is a whole world within the words of the Bible, because there is a context shaped by culture, history, and the continued conversation about what the words of scripture really mean.

Take this passage from the prophet Ezekiel, “This is the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were proud, had plenty to eat, and enjoyed peace and prosperity; but she didn’t help the poor and the needy. They became haughty and did detestable things in front of me, and I turned away from them as soon as I saw it.” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

The story of Sodom and their sister city of Gomorrah is found in Genesis 18 and 19. It is a story of a city not listing to the cry of the oppressed. It is a story of a city not caring for the poor and the needy. It is a story of a city excusing an attempted rape. Apparently, by the time of Ezekiel, people were trying to justify their sins by saying that Sodom was about something else so Ezekiel clarifies things by saying that the sin of Sodom of greed.

If you were with us last week, you might remember that we talked about the choice between Egypt and Eden. We have God’s dream of grace and peace and justice and joy, and we also have the oppression of Egypt. The Bible forces us to ask what direction we are headed. If we find ourselves moving in the direction of Egypt, the prophetic tradition in the Bible is there to guide us back to the hope and promise of Eden.

Exile is the word that the Bible uses to describe what happens to us and within us when we have power and wealth and influence but use them in ways that go against the movement of God’s grace and peace.

Exile is what happens when we cause the cry of the oppressed.

Exile is when we fail to use our blessings in ways that bless others.

The prophet Isaiah writes about exile when they proclaim on God’s behalf, “When you extend your hands, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you pray for a long time, I won’t listen. Your hands are stained with blood. Wash! Be Clean! Remove your ugly deeds from my sight. Put an end to such evil; learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:15-17)

Just before these words, Isaiah writes that God is tired of you offerings, that your worship and festivals are wicked and a burden. (Isaiah 1:11-14).

God wants nothing to do with religion when it is used to ignore the cries of the oppressed. God wants nothing to do with a faith that justifies apathy and inspires indifference. Isaiah, as a masterful prophet holds up a mirror to God’s people so that they can reflect what is going on in their lives and community.

As the prophet Amos writes, “Take away the noise of your songs; I won’t listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:23-24)

It’s possible that more people know these words from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. than from the prophet Amos, probably because it is difficult to transition from singing along to the melody of a hymn during a worship service to hearing that God doesn’t want to hear from us.

At a speech giving to the Synagogue Council of America on December 5, 1966, Dr. King said, “When silence threatens to take the power of decision out of our hands…one looks into history for the courage to speak even in an unpopular cause. Looming as ethical giants are…the Hebrew prophets.”

Dr. King concluded their speech, “Today we particularly need the Hebrew prophets because they taught that to love God was to love justice; that each human being has an inescapable obligation to denounce evil where [they] sees it and to defy a ruler who commands [them] to break the covenant. The Hebrew prophets are needed today because decent people must be imbedded with the courage to speak the truth, to realize that silence may temporarily preserve status or security but to live with a lie is a gross affront to God. The Hebrew prophets are needed today because we need their flaming courage; we need them because the thunder of their fearless voice is the only sound stronger than the blasts of bombs and the clamor of war hysteria…”

When we ignore the words of the prophets, when we worship God with our lips but ignore God’s liberation with our lives, we find ourselves in exile and we feel the words from our reading out of the Psalms today.

“By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs…” (Psalm 137:1-6)

The Babylonian Exile that lead to this Psalm takes place in 2 Chronicles 36, “…they made fun of God’s messengers, treating God’s words with contempt and ridiculing God’s prophets to such an extent that there was no hope of warding off the LORD’s rising anger against [God’s] people. So God brought the Babylonian king against them. The king killed their young men with the sword in their temple’s sanctuary, and showed no pity for young men or for [young women], for the old or for the feeble. God handed all of them over to him. Then the king hauled everything off to Babylon, everything from God’s temple, both large and small…Finally, he exiled to Babylon anyone who survived the killing so that they could be slaves…” (2 Chronicles 36:16-20)

The descendants of Solomon find themselves back in Egypt by way of Babylon.

They had a palace and a temple built by slave labor, they had amassed wealth and power and influence by trading arms and building a massive military at the expense of ignoring the poor and the powerless. And now they are in exile.

They were in power. They were on the top of the world. And they blew it.

They had wealth and influence and peace and prosperity, they blessings, but they forgot God, they refused to hear the cry of the oppressed, and they lost everything.

Here’s another thing to remember about the Bible – the stories that we read in scripture didn’t just happen, they continually happen. Solomon built a temple with slave labor and our nation did too. In the United States we seek to live with this foundational promise that “all men are created equal” but the person that penned those words didn’t extend that equality to all men let alone all people. The prophetic tradition of the Bible still holds up a mirror and asks us what we see.

While slaves in Babylon, the people hang up their harps. In Jerusalem, harps were played in the temple as people came to worship God. The harp was played with joy and celebration in Jerusalem. But now the people are enslaved in Babylon and they hang up their harps, they weep, they cry out to God because of their oppression.

And what happens when God hears the cry of the oppressed? God responds with liberation, because God always hears the cry of the oppressed and God always responds with liberation.

The tears of this cry are sacred because they water the ground around our feet so that new life can grow within us and among us.

Because God freed the people once before, because God heard the cry of the oppressed and responded with liberation, God will do it again.

With their harps hung up in exile, by the rivers of Babylon, God’s people begin to dream again, they look forward to a future of hope, because they know that God is with them and their harps won’t be hung up forever.

It is to this hope of picking up the harps, Isaiah writes, “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. [God] doesn’t grow tired or weary. [God’s] understanding is beyond human reach, giving power to the tired and reviving the exhausted. Youths will become tired and weary, young men will certainly stumble; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength; they will fly up on wings like eagles; they will run and not be tired; they will walk and not be weary.” (Isaiah 39:28-31).

At Sinai, God uses this same language of liberation being on wings like eagles (Exodus 19:4), but this is a new Exodus, and God is about to do a new thing. Isaiah goes on to write, “Don’t remember the prior things; don’t ponder ancient history. Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness.” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

The first exodus wasn’t enough to bring about the liberation that God has in mind. The first exodus was a hint of the redemption, grace and peace that God longs for us to live with.

The prophets long to pick up their harps, and so they dream of the next exodus in ways that would be bigger, greater, more enduring and lasting than the first exodus because they want to know that the next generation won’t make the same mistakes.

To these prophets, the oppression of the king of Babylon was part of the problem, but it wasn’t the only problem. Oppression isn’t simply lurking out there, it is lingering within us all.

There is an Egypt in all of our hearts and that is what we need an exodus from. Isaiah writes that God is, “…coming to gather all nations and cultures. They will come to see my glory.” (Isaiah 66:18)

The first exodus was for the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, this new exodus is for everyone, everywhere.

Isaiah writes, “Clear the LORD’s way in the desert! Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God. Every valley will be raised up, and every mountain and hill will be flattened. Uneven ground will become level, and rough terrain a valley plain. The LORD’s glory will appear, and all humanity will see it together, the LORD’s mouth has commanded it.” (Isaiah 40:3-5)

All, in the Bible, means all.

Everyone is invited to be a part of this new exodus, the if of Sinai is offered to everyone. All persons are eligible to be a part of this kingdom of priest and this holy nation.

The prophet Jeremiah puts it this way, “I will put my instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. They will no longer need to teach each other to say, ‘Know the LORD!’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest declare the LORD…” (Jeremiah 31:33).

This is the hope of the prophets that long to pick up their harps, a new and greater exodus is coming our way, and all people can be a part of it. Exodus has been expanded so much that Isaiah writes, “…there will be an altar to the LORD within the land of Egypt…” (Isaiah 19:19).

This liberation, this love, this grace and peace is so expansive that it will even reach Egypt.

Do you get the grander of this hope?

Now, if there is going to be this new exodus that doesn’t merely leads out of oppression in Egypt but leads to the God of liberation being worshipped and followed even there, then there is going to have to be a new leader like Moses. And yet, as the prophets looked back at their story and studied their history as they imagined a new future of hope, they realized that they didn’t just need a new Moses, they would need a new and greater Solomon, they would need a new kind of leader for this family of God’s grace that is larger than any kingdom because it is kin-dom, a family made up of people of all nations, ages, and races.

David’s son, Solomon, missed the mark. Solomon built a temple to the God of liberation using slave labor. Solomon profited off the pain and oppression, making money off the weapons of war that were used against his own people just a few generations before.

The prophets started to ask themselves, what if David had a new and greater descendent? What if this new and greater descendent didn’t act like king Solomon, but was instead, as Isaiah writes, was a servant, a prophet that stood on the shoulders of all the prophets that came before them (Isaiah 42) sent “to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release for captives, and liberation for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor”? (Isaiah 61:1-2).

By the rivers of Babylon the people hung up their harps because they had become like the Egypt. For a time, they forgot the hope and promise of Eden, and now they were crying out for a new exodus. They asked themselves, what if we could do it all over again? If we had a second chance, what would we do differently now that we know better. What if, instead of Solomon, David had a different descendent? What if, even here and even now we could start to make our way in the wilderness with God? What if, we all had another chance to live into liberation?

That’s what we’ll get into next week.

Read – Jeremiah 29:1-14

Notice – This section of Jeremiah backed up a bit. Babylon first took Hebrew exiles away in 597 B.C. while leaving the puppet King Zedekiah in Jerusalem. Jeremiah sent a letter to those exiles urging them to settle down for a lengthy stay in Babylon. That message was not popular. Self-proclaimed prophets like Hananiah and Shemaiah thought the exile would end quickly. Shemaiah wrote from Babylon asking the high priest in Jerusalem to imprison Jeremiah (cf. Jeremiah 28:1-3, 29:24-32). Jeremiah told the exiles God had “plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.” But first he said, “When Babylon’s seventy years* are up.” “Jeremiah’s words presuppose that there’s no quick fix for the community’s situation. This doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. It does mean people need to be prepared to take the long view.”** Could anything requiring “the long view” actually give you hope? What makes trusting patience essential as you walk with God? Verse 13 summed up Jeremiah’s message of judgment and hope: “When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me.” How do you understand the meaning of searching for God “with all your heart”? What times or events in your life have driven you to seek God with all your heart? What steps helped you do that?

Pray -Loving God, with all my heart I want to be a part of your hope-filled future. It’s often hard for me to wait, so keep teaching me to trust your timing more than my restless demands. Amen.

• * “seventy years, i.e., a long time or a lifetime; see Jeremiah 25:11.” Louis Stulman, study note on Jeremiah 29:4-14 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 1255OT.
• ** John Goldingay, Jeremiah for Everyone. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p. 146.

Read – Isaiah 40:27-31

Notice –Today’s readings likely came from a time when the Israelites were returning to their ruined land (or about to return) after decades in exile. There were no “Babylon to Jerusalem” flights—words like “stumble” and “walk” reflected the only way most exiles got home. The walking exiles were weary and feared that God was too. But Isaiah said God “doesn’t grow tired or weary.” Israel (and we) could always trust in God, because God-given hope (not hope in our own power) renews our strength. Can you recall times when you have felt like the Israelites in Isaiah 40:27: “My way is hidden from the LORD, my God ignores my predicament”? Are there areas of your life that feel that way to you right now as we continue to deal with the conditions created by the Covid-19 outbreak? In what ways can you reconnect with the Creator who “doesn’t grow tired or weary” of caring for you?

Pray – Lord God, full of eternal energy, you remain the same creative, caring God you’ve always been. Help me learn more and more to trust your timeless love. Amen.

We have been talking about how to read the Bible because too often Christians read the Bible in ways to justify behaviors, attitudes, and actions that fail to reflect the grace and peace of Christ. If you have been with us for the past couple weeks, together we’ve traveled from Exodus to Sinai to Jerusalem to Babylon.

In Exodus, God hears the cry of the oppressed, because God always hears our cries, and God responds with liberation and love.

This week I was a part of a continuing eduction event on preaching and our speaker was New Testament scholar Dr. Amy-Jill Levine. Dr. Levine is unique as a New Testament scholar because she is Jewish. During one of her lectures, Dr. Levine reminded us of a story from the Talmud, the book of Rabbinic teaching about the stories of the scripture, and it’s a story that shows the depth of love that God has for all people.

Exodus is a story of liberation, but it is also a story of Egyptians drowning.

It is a difficult story, because if God is liberation, if God is love, how could God be a part of something like this?

As the story goes, after Moses and the people cross the Red Sea and step between those walls of water that are separated so they can finally live into the freedom that God wants for them, those same walls of water crash down upon the Egyptians and they drown and they die. As this is happening in the book of Exodus, Moses starts to sing a song of celebration and we can understand why Moses sings a song of victory, but this victory came at a heavy cost.

In the Talmud, there is a story from the Rabbis that says as Moses sang, the angels started to join in the song, they wanted to be a part of the celebration. But as these angels sang with Moses, they noticed that God wasn’t singing. An angel asks God why they aren’t singing with Moses and God says to the angel, “How dare you sing for joy when My creatures are dying” (Talmud, Megillah 10b and Sanhedrin 39b).

The God of the Bible has always been the God of all people with a love, grace, and peace that is extended to everyone.

This is what we see as we move from the exodus to the covenant at Sinai. At Sinai, God says to the people, if you follow my ways you will be my most precious possession, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. God makes this covenant, this vow, to be with the people so that they can share this grace and peace of God to everyone, everywhere.

Israel becomes a holy nation, but things start to shift with Solomon. Things move from living into the hope of Eden to creating a new Egypt. Solomon builds a temple to the God that freed them from slavery, and Solomon builds that temple using slave labor. Solomon amasses wealth and power and privilege, but as they do, they become a new kind of Pharaoh causing the oppression that created the cries in Egypt.

It’s this injustice that brings about the Exile and by the rivers of Babylon the people hang up their harps and weep because how could they sing songs of praise and celebration in a strange land? They are oppressed, they are beaten down, they are enslaved, and they cry out, trusting that God always hears the cries of the oppressed and responds with liberation and love.

There is the hope of a new exodus, an exodus not simply from a place but from the sins and the systems that create exile. We don’t merely need freedom from Egypt or Babylon, we need liberation from stain on our hearts that leads us away from the promise of Eden. It is this hope, this promise, that fills the prophets with an imagination of a new kind of Moses, a leader that would begin this exodus. But a new Moses isn’t enough, this leader anointed by God, this messiah, would be king, would be lord, but not like Solomon, they would be a servant, they would be a new and greater descendent of David creating a kin-dom instead of a kingdom – the glory of Jerusalem, the covenant that God made at Sinai would be extended to everyone, everywhere.

As you may know, the Bible that we have has two halves, two testaments. Sometimes it’s called the Hebrew Scriptures, most often it is called the Old Testament, and our Jewish friends call it the Tanakh. The Old Testament is called the Old Testament because it’s older than the New Testament. And let’s remember that old doesn’t mean bad or useless or unnecessary. The music of Beethoven is old, but it’s still inspiring, the comedy of the Three Stooges is old, but it’s still hilarious.

The Christian Old Testament ends with the book of Malachi. Malachi is what we call a minor prophet and by minor we don’t mean insignificant, we mean that they didn’t write as much as Jeremiah or Isaiah. These are some of the last words from the book of Malachi at the end of the Old Testament, “Remember the Instruction from Moses, my servant, to whom I gave Instruction and rules for all Israel at Horeb. Look, I am sending Elijah the prophet to you, before the great and terrifying day of the LORD arrives. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of children to their parents…” (Malachi 4:4-6).

For Christians, the Old Testament ends with a reference to Moses, a reminder of deliverance and covenant, and Malachi includes a reference to Elijah, to the tradition and the hopes of the prophets to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord, with the heats of parents turning towards their children and the children turning their hearts towards their parents to bring an end to the generational struggles. As Amanda Gorman so beautiful and powerful proclaimed in their poem, ‘The Hill we Climb’:
“We will not be turned around

or interrupted by intimidation

because we know our inaction and inertia

will be the inheritance of the next generation

Our blunders become their burdens”

We saw last week in the story of Solomon the consequences of inaction and inertia and we know from the story of our nation how our blunders become their burdens. But the hope at the very end of the Old Testament is that we will break this cycle, we will find a new way forward, their is this new and greater exodus that is bring us all into the dream that God has for everyone, everywhere.

After the Babylonian exile, the people return to Jerusalem and they rebuild the temple, but it’s just not the same. As the prophet Haggai put’s it, “Who among you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Doesn’t it appear as nothing to you?” (Haggai 2:3) and yet, the prophet continues, “This house will be more glorious than its predecessor, says the LORD of heavenly forces. I will provide prosperity in this place…” (Haggai 2:9).

There is hope, there is optimism, things might not be what they used to be, but they can somehow be better because God is with us. And yet, even though they are not in Babylon anymore, even though they have picked up their harps and returned to Jerusalem, things have changed. Empires rise and fall and now Rome, not Babylon is the superpower of the day, occupying Israel, not exiling them.

The new temple is built in Jerusalem, but next door to the temple the Romans build the Praetorium, a military complex that is just a little bit taller than the temple to remind everyone who is in change.

Imagine growing up in Jerusalem. You know the stories, you were slaves in Egypt, liberated by God, with your people God made a covenant, and you lost it all, but God was faithful and still believed so much in your people that God said your nation could be the light of the world.

Wouldn’t you start to wonder what all these Roman soldiers are doing in your city?

This is what’s going on at the start of the first century in Israel. There is occupation, oppression and shame in the air because the people are home, and yet, they’re in a new kind of exile.

This brings us to our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said: The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.” Matthew 3:1-3

There are four Gospels in the New Testament, four ways of telling the story of Jesus’ life, teachings, death and resurrection, and what’s interesting about these four stories is that they all start with the same quote from the prophet Isaiah (Matthew 3:3, Mark 1:2-3, Luke 3:4-6, and John 1:23).

Of all the ways these different writers could have told the story of Jesus, they all decided to quote from Isaiah 40:3 and the announcement of a new exodus.

Later in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus meets a Canaanite woman who is crying out for mercy, for hope and healing for hear daughter, and this woman says to Jesus, “show me mercy, Son of David.” (Matthew 15:21-28).

In the Gospel of Mark, a beggar is sitting on the side of the road and when they heard that Jesus was walking by this beggar cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, show me mercy!” (Mark 10:46-52).

The Gospel of Luke shares a story of a blind man sitting on the side of the road and they cry out to Jesus, “Son of David, show me mercy!” (Luke 18:35-43).

Throughout the Gospels, people cry out to Jesus, and Jesus hears their cry. As the sick, the suffering, the struggling cry out, “Son of David” they’re not just crying, they’re also asking a question – what kind of son of David are you? Can you hear us, or are you like Solomon?

The poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed and forgotten in Jesus’ day used this term, “son of David” because it carried a lot of emotional and spiritual and political weight. To say “son of David’ was to bring up all the pain of exile, oppression and loss, and it was to cling to to hope and deferred dream of a new and greater exodus.

One of the ways that Christians read the Bible wrong is by thinking that they can separate the New Testament from its Jewish origins. To be blunt, Jesus was Jewish and never called himself a Christian. The same can be said for the vast majority of all of Jesus’ first followers. Paul wrestles with this in the early Jesus movement, because it’s mostly Jewish, but non-Jewish persons are starting to follow Jesus as well. Paul is so passionate about his faith that Paul wonders why their friends and neighbors don’t see things the same way that he does. For Paul, it’s obvious, Jesus is Lord, Paul can’t help but see Jesus bringing about this new exodus, leading us into the hopes and dreams of God, extending the covenant at Sinai to all people everywhere, but other first century Jews see things differently, and Paul struggles with what that means.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul spends two chapters wondering what all this means, and in the end Paul writes, “So I ask you, has God rejected [God’s] people? Absolutely not! I’m an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the Benjamin. God hasn’t rejected [God’s] people…” (Romans 11:1-2). A few verses latter, Paul bluntly writes, “all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:26).

Paul never renounces their Jewish faith and Paul never sees Judaism as something that was in the past that should be forsaken and forgotten, even more than that Paul never assumes that the Jewish people that don’t follow Jesus are lost or rejected by God, because Paul trusts that God’s grace is sufficient and God’s love will always be faithful.

In the letters of Paul, it’s clear that he disagrees with a lot of people. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul is so angry that Paul writes, “I wish that the ones who are upsetting you would castrate themselves!” (Galatians 5:12). Paul is upset, Paul is angry, Paul thinks some people have completely missed the plot, which, of course, never happens in any church, organization, or family.

As Christians, when we read the Bible we have to remember that the story of our faith is not simply our story. As a Jewish person, Jesus knew the narrative arc of the scriptures, Jesus knew the hopes and dreams of the prophets, Jesus knew and sought to live out the covenant as Sinai which is why, when Jesus is asked what matters most, Jesus quotes the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Jesus didn’t come up with love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6:4, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength” just like Jesus quoted from Leviticus 19:18, “you must love your neighbor as yourself”.

When we read the Gospels, we have to remember that they were written by Jewish authors that knew and deeply cared for their Jewish faith, and in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus, they saw the fulfillment and the hope of the new exodus for them and for everyone else.

This is why, in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the way…” (John 14:6) which is a reference to what John the Baptist says in our reading today, which is itself a reference to what Isaiah said about the new exodus, people will find a way out of exile if they follow the way.

As Jesus describes the way in the Gospels, Jesus speaks about a new kind of kingdom, a hope, a dream, a future, a present reality that is within us, but is also waiting for us in the future, that is among us, that is near, and that is still to come.

The writers of the Gospels try to make it clear – this is the new son of David that is leading a new exodus for everyone, bringing liberation for everybody, everywhere.

Jesus claims that this message, this hope, the new exodus that we are entering into will be shared in the whole word (Matthew 13:38, 24:14, 26:13 and John 12:19)

Jesus is insistent that his life and teachings will lead to the renewal of all things (Matthew 11:27, 19:28, Mark 9:12, Luke 10:22, John 1:3, 13:3). The most inclusive and expansive words that could be used in the first century to say that all people can be a part of the movement of God, that all people can enter into the hope and the promise that God shared at Sinai, they are said by Jesus as Jesus describes his mission.

The Gospels tell us how word begins to spread about Jesus, anticipation and hope abounds as Jesus travels from place to place, teaching, healing, comforting and challenging, insisting that God is doing something new. Massive crowds follow Jesus, some people give up everything to follow Jesus, children sing about Jesus as a son of David, and then, in an instant, as Jesus says, “It is finished.” (John 19:30).

Jesus is arrested, tried as a criminal for committing treason against the Roman Empire, and then Jesus is killed on a Roman cross.

In the Gospel of Luke, there is a story of two disciples walking back to their hometown after Jesus has died. We don’t know much about them, but I imagine that they walked slowly, that they were not in a hurry to hear anyone say, “I told you so”. They dropped everything to follow Jesus but now they are walking back home because what they thought might happen didn’t happen and apparently who they thought Jesus was, Jesus wasn’t.

As they walk back home, in the midst of their disappointment, another traveler starts to walk with them and asks these folks what they are talking about. These travels are shocked by the question and ask, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who is unaware of the things that have taken place there over the last few days?” (Luke 24:18).

In their disappointment, these travelers are surprised that someone missed the news. They go on to explain what they had hoped, how they believed Jesus was the one the prophets spoke of, that they longed for a new exodus, but Jesus was sentenced to death and was crucified by Rome. The travelers then tell their new friend that some of Jesus’ closest followers claim that Jesus’ tomb is empty, that others are claiming Jesus has appeared to them, but as far as they are concerned, it’s over.

The traveler that these two just shared their story with responds in an odd way. They don’t have any empathy for their disappointment, there is no sympathy for their heartache, the stranger says, “You foolish people!” (Luke 24:25) The stranger goes on to say, “Your dull minds keep you from believing all that the prophets talked about.” (Luke 24:25).

The next time you are on a flight and have a conversation with a stranger, and they tell you a heart wrenching story of loss and disappointment, call them a dull fool and see what happens.

The frustration that this stranger has with the two trailers isn’t that they believed in the hopes of the prophets, that they followed Jesus but now death puts an end to those plans. The stranger asks, “Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26).

For those disciples that were traveling home, Jesus death was the end of hope and the beginning of their heartache. But for their fellow traveler, Jesus death wasn’t the end of hope, it was the expansion of hope.

Luke writes that the stranger then starts to explain why Jesus had to suffer, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27). What Luke doesn’t tell us is what the stranger said.

We don’t know if Jesus told them about the myth of redemptive violence. From the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, we see violence escalate and spread. Evil continually takes the form of violence and the use of more violence does not stop the use of violence, it only spreads.

On the night Jesus was arrested, Jesus was surrounded by a group of soldiers with swords and clubs. One of Jesus’ disciples takes out their sword and starts swinging, but Jesus tells them to put down the sword because, “All those who use the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52).

As the traveler tells the story from Moses to the Prophets, is it possible that they say the only way to break this cycle of violence is to absorb it, to resist ever using violence even if it means bearing it all. Isaiah wrote of a suffering servant (Isaiah 42) the kind that would be beaten and broken only to say, “Forgive them, God, they still don’t get it”.

Or is it possible that the stranger starts to tell their fellow travelers about exodus, about exile, about how we have moved further and further east of Eden and found ourselves in Egypt, drifting away from the dreams of God? Did this stranger start to talk about a new and greater exodus, one that wouldn’t liberate us from a place, but from the sins that still haunt our hearts?

Maybe the stranger told their new friends about Adam, about the beginning and temptation luring Adam away from God. What if the stranger told these travelers about the hope of a new Adam, a fresh start that would redeem and renew all of creation?

I love that we don’t know what the stranger said, all we know is that as these three walked and talked, as they explored the stories of scripture, they began to find hope, they saw a new exodus unfold within them, and they recognized that even here, even now, God is up to something.

Isn’t amazing that in Jesus’ day, people could read, study and discuss the scriptures, but not get the story right? People could even say they were followers of Jesus and completely miss the point, which must be a bit like walking with someone for a few hours, only to discover that while you were with them, you couldn’t see who they really are.

The stranger, of course, is Jesus and it is long past time for American Christianity to let Jesus be the stranger once again. You can go to any number of churches where pastors like me will tell you that Jesus is whomever you need Jesus to be, and you can walk down those roads and miss seeing Jesus the whole time.

May we be surprised by Jesus as we learn to read these stories through the lens of Christ. May our hearts and minds be open to the hope and promise of this new exodus so that Jesus can lead us out of exile and into God’s future of redemption. May we see ourselves in this continued story of God’s expansive love. And next week, we will see how this grace and peace continues to expand all around us.

Read – Acts 2:22-33

Notice -The author of Luke and Acts likely wrote these texts sometime in the between the years 70 and 80. In our reading today, Peter claims “we are all witnesses”. The text has Peter make this claim about two months after the death and resurrection of Christ, with Luke writing about this event 30 to 40 years later, meaning that there would have been persons alive to credit these claims. Peter anchored his beliefs about Jesus firmly in specific facts (“you yourselves know this”—verse 22, and “we are all witnesses”—verse 33). Does it seem likely to you that the Christian faith could have spread throughout a hostile Roman empire if Rome could have easily shown that its claims were false? What was it about Christ that so inspired these first followers, knowing that what Rome did to Jesus, Rome could just as easily do to them?

Pray – Lord God, Peter preached that you had acted decisively, in Jesus, to defeat evil. Give me the vision to live each day confident that ultimately the wrong shall fail and love will prevail. Amen.

Read – Hebrews 1:1-3

Notice -Many political and religious leaders challenged Rome’s power. The Romans crucified most of them. In every case except in the case of the followers of Christ, when the leader died, the movement died, too. Jesus’ followers were bolder and more confident than ever after his death. They wrote letters and books about why that was—they were convinced that their leader had defeated death, and was alive and guiding them. Whether you find that easy or hard to believe, the fact of their activity and writings is historical evidence to be taken seriously. Jesus is a crucial figure in human history—it’s worth the effort to learn as much about what really happened as possible. When have you felt guided by God? How is Christ inspiring you to continue this movement of grace and peace?

Pray – Lord Jesus, sometimes I find faith easy, but sometimes I find it hard. I ask you to be present with me, to help me discern how I can find the reality of you amid all of the claims and confusion that surround your story. Amen.

Acts 8:26-38

For the past few weeks we have been talking about how to read the Bible and today we are reading, from the Bible, a story about someone reading the Bible. It’s Biblical inception.

But before we get to our text today, let me tell you about how we in the United Methodist tradition of Christianity are encouraged to read the Bible. Our reading of the Bible is not, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

In 2 Corinthians 13:12 Paul writes, “Say hello to each other with a holy kiss.”

When this pandemic is over and we can say hello to each other in person, do not greet me like that.

Let’s pick on Paul again and point to another of their odd phrases in the first letter to the Corinthians where they write, “Doesn’t nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him; but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?” (1 Corinthians 11:14-15).

We should ask ourselves what exactly does Paul mean by nature here? Because when it comes to lions, which are, naturally, apart of nature, male lions have long manes but female lions do not.

As a Jewish person, and as a Pharisee on top of that, Paul would have known the teachings of the the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In Leviticus it is written, “You must not cut off the hair on your forehead or clip the ends of your beard.” (Leviticus 19:27). In the later Rabbinical writings of the Talmud, it’s said that this commandment only applies to men, which means men should have long sidelocks, called peyot by the Orthodox and Hassidic Jews that continue to follow that commandment. Those men have long hair, at least on the sides of their head, Paul likely would have too, and Paul would have thought that those long hairs were natural and normal.

There are a ton of other passages that we could point to and see how the idea that thinking the Bible can be reduced to, God said it, I believe it, that settles it, doesn’t work.

In the United Methodist tradition, we sometimes use the fancy term, quadrilateral, to describe how we read the Bible. We try to hold together scripture with an understand that as we read the Bible, we also carry with us tradition, reason and experience. We read the Bible, and as we do we can study what others in the history of the church have said about a passage, we can also reason through how a passage of scripture relates to the rest of the Bible, we can have reasonable thoughts about what genre of literature we are reading, is it poetry, is it allegory, when was it written, all that fun stuff that points to the context behind the words we read, and as we do all of that, we also bring our own experience to the text. As much as we read the Bible, the Bible reads us when it brings to mind feelings, experiences, and memories that shape and inform our reading.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist tradition that Grace is a part of, never used the phrase quadrilateral, but we can see it in Wesley’s writings. One of Wesley’s early writings, “Thoughts Upon Slavery” was so popular among abolitionists that in two years it was published in four editions.

What is fascinating about “Thoughts Upon Slavery” is that Wesley disregards a lot of scripture and tradition. There are numerous passages in the Bible that are be OK with slavery, there are even passages in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testament, that encourage slavery. On top of that, tradition, up to the time of Wesley, was steeped in slavery. Slavery was an economic reality and a part of the social order.

When Wesley wrote “Thoughts Upon Slavery” slavery was traditional and Biblical, and Wesley still knew it was sinful, immoral, and wrong.

So what does Wesley do to faithfully and Biblically argue against slavery?

Wesley clings to the primacy of the greatest commandments, loving God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. This love and liberation is lifted up as primary above any other passage of scripture. With this, Wesley uses reason and experience to proclaim, “Liberty is the right of every human creature, as soon as [they] breathes the vital air. And no human law can deprive [them] of that right, which [they] derives from the law of nature. If therefore you have any regard to justice, (to say nothing of mercy, nor of the revealed law of GOD) render unto all their due. Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature…Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle towards [everyone]…”

In “Thoughts Upon Slavery” if scripture, tradition, reason and experience were the legs of a chair, those legs wouldn’t be of equal length, it wouldn’t be the most balanced seat, and yet, it points us in the direction of God’s love and the new exodus that we are a part of when we live with Christ’s grace and peace.

With all of this in mind, let’s now look at our reading and this moment in the Bible, where two people talk about learning how to read the Bible.

Our text starts with Philip and like most early followers of Jesus, Philip was Jewish. Philip knew all about the story of Exodus, the exile that happened after Solomon, the hope of a new and greater Exodus that would bring all people into the covenant at Sinai and Philip would have also followed rules, traditions, and commandments about what to eat, what not to eat, how to observe the sabbath and more.

Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch meet on a road as they are leaving Jerusalem. It is a small detail in the text that the author of Acts writes, “the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza” (Acts 8:26) but it’s an important detail because it points us in the direction and the movement of the early church.

The book of Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke. The same author writes both texts and at the beginning of Acts that Jesus, “instructed the apostles” (Acts 1:2) for 40 days.

40 is a special and symbolic number in the scripture, because 40 is said to be the number of years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, for 40 days and 40 nights, Noah was in the ark, and Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness to prepare for his ministry and next month we will begin our own 40 day journey as Lent begins.

The last thing that Jesus says to the apostles as they being 40 day journey into the new exodus is, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

Being a witness in Jerusalem isn’t all that interesting because that’s where they are. But to say that they will be witnesses in all Judea and Samaria, that complicates things. There was a lot of animosity between these two regions, there was a lot of bigotry and racism and misunderstandings that perpetuated their divide, but Jesus mentions them together.

It is as if Jesus is saying start at home, do the best you can exactly where you are, and if you can figure out how to love your neighbor as yourself at home, that love can’t help but overflow and bring healing and reconciliation even to people that are at each others throats.

But it’s not just that this good news can bring hope and healing to Judea and Samaria, Jesus goes on to say that it will reach the ends of the earth.

The prophets had spoken of God’s grace reaching the ends of the earth, the covenant at Sinai God says “the whole earth belongs to me” (Exodus 19:5). God’s liberation has always been about everyone, everywhere, which means it can’t stay in Jerusalem, it can’t stop at the borders of Judea and Samaira, it has to reach the ends of the earth.

In our text today, Philip meets and Ethiopian Eunuch, and in the ancient near east, Ethiopia might as well be the end of the earth.

The Ethiopian eunuch is reading, out loud, from the Prophet Isaiah. These details tell us a lot about this Ethiopian eunuch. First, literacy was rare in the ancient near east and the vast majority of people could not read so it was common to read out loud so that others could feel included in the reading. Second, scrolls were a luxury item in the ancient near east. This is centuries before copy machines, let alone paper. If you had a scroll, you had a handwritten copy made of parchment, animal skins. Making parchment took a lot of time, and therefore a lot of money, just like making a handwritten copy takes a lot of time and a lot of money. This eunuch is in charge of the treasury of the Ethiopian queen, and the author of Acts makes it clear that the eunuch has their own treasury too.

The eunuch reads from Isaiah, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent so he didn’t open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was taken away from him. Who can tell the story of his descendants because his life was taken from the earth?” (Isaiah 53:7-8) and when the eunuch asks Philip, “Tell me, about whom does the prophet say this, about himself or someone else?” (Acts 8:34) to Philip, it’s clear that Isaiah was writing about Jesus.

As Philip looks back at the life of Jesus, Philip sees Jesus lead like a lamb to the slaughter. Jesus did not put up a fight against the soldiers that arrested him. Jesus stayed silent before Herod and Pontius Pilate. Jesus was humiliated when Jesus was stripped and nailed to a cross, denied justice due to an unjust trial. Now, after those final 40 days that Philip and the other apostles had with Jesus before Jesus ascended into the heavens, the question is, who is going to tell this story?

Philip sees Jesus in this text from Isaiah and Philip has to tell this Ethiopian eunuch about Jesus so the new exodus can reach the ends of the earth.

As Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch travel away from Jerusalem and towards the ends of the earth, they pass by some water and this Ethiopian eunuch asks, “What would keep me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:37).

The Ethiopian eunuch asks, “What would keep me from being baptized” as if they as if they have asked this question before.

Perhaps the Ethiopian Eunuch had read from Deuteronomy 23, “No man whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off can belong to the LORD’s assembly.” (Deuteronomy 23:1).

By the first century, this passage would have been understood as meaning Eunuchs could not fully participate in worship at the temple because they were ritually impure. The temple did have an area called the Courtyard of the Gentiles, a space for non-Jewish persons to worship the God is Israel, and as far as we know, no one was standing at the entrance of the temple to enforce this passage from Deuteronomy.

Making sense of ritual purity is a bit tricky, because it is not something that we especially mindful of, even though it is still something that we carry with us. We all have ways of marking spaces and times as more sacred and holy than others. Our service is taking place at the same time now as it was before the pandemic, but we all know it feels different online than it feels in the sanctuary. We have a ritual purity that lingers in all the ways that some spaces and times feel more special than others.

In the first century, most Jewish people lived the vast majority of their lives ritualistically unclean and that was just fine because the majority of their life wasn’t lived at the temple. But when they prepared to go to the temple, when the readied themselves for worship, these practices of ritual purity helped to keep the temple sacred, holy, and special.

And yet, as a eunuch, no matter what they got right, to many in the ancient near east, this eunuch would have been seen as damaged goods, as never worthy and always unable of being ritually pure.

When the Ethiopian eunuch asks, “What would keep me from being baptized” I imagine that it’s a question they’ve asked many times before, and they’ve been told every reason that keeps them from being baptized.

For Philip, the question from the Ethiopian eunuch raises another question, what do you do when you realize that your religion is smaller than the movement of God?

This is the tension that is just below the surface in the letters of Paul and for Paul this tension seems to be less about religious rituals and practices, and more about manipulation, guilt, and fear.

Paul never renounces his Jewish faith, he loves it, he embraces it, and, for Paul, his Jewish faith is informed by the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul preaches to non-Jewish people that are starting to follow the teaching of Jesus, what Paul hates is when other Jewish followers of Jesus say to these non-Jewish followers of Jesus, “It’s great that if you want to be one of us, and if you’re really going to be one of us you’re going to have to go all the way, so don’t look down and don’t worry about the knife in my hand.”

What Paul is against is using religious rituals to force feelings of guilt and fear on to others, to use faith in ways that make folks feel they are illegitimate, condemned and not good enough because that’s not liberation, that’s coercion.

It doesn’t matter what kind of religious language is used, it doesn’t matter how many passages of the Bible you can quote to support your position, if it’s destructive and demeaning it’s not what God wants for us.

In Galatians, which is likely Paul’s first letter, they write, “Being circumcised or not being circumcised doesn’t mean anything. What matters is a new creation. May peace and mercy be on whoever follows this rule…” (Galatians 6:15-16).

For Paul, Christ is initiating a new creation, one that extends the covenant of God’s love to everyone, to the ends of the earth and we can all be a part of it.

Which brings us back to the road leaving Jerusalem and the pregnant pause where Philip pondered what, if anything, could keep this Ethiopian eunuch from being baptized.

Philip, just like Paul, would have been circumcised when he was 8 days old. That was something that Jewish families did and have done for generations. As non-Jewish persons started to follow Jesus, some were told you can be part of the family, but you’ve got to be initiated, which is what Paul rails against. But what about this Ethiopian Eunuch? For obvious reasons, they can’t be circumcised. Can they still be a part of the family?

Philip could think about their scriptures, which at that time would not have included the Gospels or the letters of Paul. Philip could have looked at their tradition, they could have said what was good enough for me is good enough for them. There are all sorts of ways that Philip could have responded to the Ethiopian Eunuch, Philip could have pointed in the opposite direction of the water, yelled, “What’s that” and ran away so he didn’t have to deal with the tension of the moment, but instead, Philip baptized Ethiopian eunuch and proclaimed that they are loved and worthy.

After this baptism, we don’t know where Philip goes, but we do know that this eunuch continues to travel away from Jerusalem and toward Ethiopia on a chariot.

If you have been with us for the past few weeks, you might remember that we’ve talked about chariots before. During the first exodus as the Israelites were lead into freedom, Pharaoh sent chariots to chase after them and keep them in slavery. Solomon bought and sold chariots, Solomon amassed wealth as a weapons trader in the ancient near east. Throughout the Bible, the chariot is a symbol of oppression, empire, and violence.

There is a Psalm where it’s written, “Some people trust in chariots, others in horses; but we praise the LORD’s name.” (Psalm 20:7).

But this chariot is different. This chariot isn’t being used for war, this chariot is not being used for violence, coercion or oppression, this chariot is being used to bring good news of liberation and love to the ends of the earth. This chariot speaks to the hope of Isaiah that the nations might, “beat their swords into iron plows and their spears into pruning tools” (Isaiah 2:4), this promise and hope that one day our weapons of war would be turned into gardening tools, because God’s hope for us is still the goodness of the garden.

The chariot is a fantastic little detail in this story, but the Ethiopian eunuch’s job is an even bigger one. This eunuch was responsible for the treasury of Ethiopia.

The wealth of a nation was part of the problem with Solomon. Solomon had wealth and privilege and power, but used it in the wrong way, building palaces and the temple with slave labor, causing the cry of the oppressed instead of hearing the cry and responding with love and liberation.

The Ethiopian eunuch points us towards the economic realities of this new exodus. There’s a passage earlier in the book of Acts where it is written, “All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them.” (Acts 2:44-45).

There is the greed and the coercion of the empire, we know that kind of chariot, but then there is the generosity, the kindness, and the liberation that is shared from the Ethiopian eunuch’s chariot.

Philip had all sorts of traditional and scriptural reason to say no to the Ethiopian eunuch, but Philip still said yes because they trusted that God’s good news is really that good.

If an Ethiopian eunuch came to Grace and said, “What’s to keep me from being baptized”, I think we’d baptize them faster than Philip did. We strive to be an inclusive church and I am proud of that. There are folks that have found a home at our church that haven’t been able to experience God’s grace and peace elsewhere. Grace is a church that says yes to a lot of people that other churches have said no to.

We know that the Ethiopian Eunuch is welcome here, because everyone is welcome here and God’s new exodus is about the liberation and love that God wants for all people.

But, if a Qanon conspiracy theorist came to Grace and said what is to keep me from being baptized, I could come up with a few reasons.

If someone that stormed the capital on January 6th came and asked to be baptized, I’d hesitate and excuse myself from the conversation to call the FBI.

If someone said to me, “I’m not racist, but the Klan has some good ideas, can I be baptized at Grace” I would say, without hesitation, “Grace probably isn’t the church for you.”

We read the Bible the wrong way when we only read the words on the page simply ask ourselves what does this say instead of also asking what do they mean.

The Bible is the story of God’s liberating love extending to the ends of the earth and people like me stopping to ask God, “Do you mean that person too?”

I don’t have a solution in this sermon, but I do have a question, what does it look like for you to extend this love to the ends of the earth?

I’m not saying anything goes. Jesus welcomes everyone to the table, but table manners are still important. We must challenge and confront what is sinful and untrue, but when Philip baptized the Ethiopian Eunuch, Philip doesn’t stop to ask “What are you going to do with this chariot and how is your faith going to change the way you run the treasury?”

What does it look like for you to join God in extending the new exodus to the ends of the earth? What does it look like when we, like Philip, know what the story says, but choose to live into the love that the story means?

Again, this doesn’t mean anything goes, it doesn’t mean that we’re saying accountability doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to let ourselves be doormats that don’t stand up against evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves, but it does mean when we wonder if God loves and cares about them too, we have to say yes, just as quickly as Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch.

So what will it look like for you to live with that love? What is the end of the earth for you, and how can you witness to God’s grace and peace being found even there?

Read – Ezekiel 34:1-8, 11-12, Luke 15:1-7

Notice – Jesus, God in the flesh, came to this planet on very real rescue mission. Drawing from the image in Ezekiel 34, he told a story about a shepherd who lost one sheep from his flock. That was only 1% of the flock, but the shepherd cared deeply about any lost sheep. He dropped everything, searched until he found that sheep—and felt great joy when he found it. Jesus’ critics thought he should write off the human “lost sheep” (Luke 15:2), but Jesus in fact searched tirelessly for them. “[Ezekiel’s] metaphor goes beyond the normal responsibilities of making sure that the sheep are protected and fed. Instead it focuses on the remedial duties, caring for the sick and finding the lost. These equate to the need for kings to bring about justice for alienated and disenfranchised people.” * What are some of the ways you can actively support and work for justice for alienated or disenfranchised people around you?

Pray – Jesus, thank you that you’ve never seen me (or anyone) as a “disposable asset,” as someone who doesn’t matter. Give me your heart for everyone in your human family. Amen.

• HarperCollins Christian Publishing. NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, eBook: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture (Kindle Locations 190424-190426). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Read – Colossians 3:12-14, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Notice – Paul was emphatically practical in his letters to the Christians in Ephesus and Corinth. He would have grown up reciting the Shema, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Jesus, Paul’s Lord, said that was the greatest commandment, and added, “You must love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The next logical question for Paul, like Christ’s followers ever since, was, “What does it look like to love my neighbor?” These were his answers. It looks like being humble—not thinking of yourself more highly than others. It looks like being gentle—take a deep breath if you feel angry, speak carefully. It looks like being patient—while waiting, focus on God instead of yourself. Love requires compassion (suffering with others), kindness (honor and consideration) and forgiveness to all God’s children. As you read this list of loving actions, how do you feel? Great? Guilty? Condemned? If you’re not perfectly living this list, remember: none of us are. Start with, how can you be more loving this week? Instead of trying to grow in all areas at once, choose one characteristic Paul lists and focus on living into a new way of loving. And loving attitudes and actions are both individual and public, local and general. Think more broadly than just yourself. What can your family, your community, your church, your city, your state, your nation do to be more loving to people you’ve never met? How can you join in God’s work to extend divine love to all people?

Pray – Jesus, I want to love all my neighbors, everywhere. Help me start close to home and guide me as I expand my vision to be more and more like your vast, world-changing vision. Amen.​

Over the past five weeks, we have followed the narrative arch of the scriptures, beginning in Exodus with God hearing the cry of the oppressed and responding with liberation and love. This God of justice, this God of mercy, this God of grace and peace will not give pain, suffering, or oppression the final say.

From oppression, God brings us into freedom, but not a freedom for ourselves, it is a freedom for the ever-expanding love of God. After the exodus from Egypt, God makes a covenant with the people, and that covenant begins with ‘if’, with God reminding us that we can choose to go any number of directions. In this covenant, God’s grace is made manifest in our lives because God has always been looking for partners. The life that God wants for us in not an idea but an experienced reality. We are freed, we are blessed, not simply for our own benefit, but so that we can be partners with God in sharing this grace with others.

Sometimes we get this right. Sometimes we don’t.

We saw what happened when Solomon got things wrong. The temple to the God of liberation was built by slave labor while Solomon became an arms dealer with Egypt. Actions, especially those that cause pain and oppression, have consequences, and one of the consequences that we see in the scripture is exile.

Sometimes we can feel like strangers to ourselves. That’s exile. The confusion, the doubts, the questions, the worries, the cries. There are times when we hang up our harps because we can’t sing of joy. Sometimes, all we can do is cry out.

But what did we learn about our cries? God hears and God cares.

In the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Scriptures, we see the prophets hold up a mirror to the people. The prophets persist in reminding the people who God is and who God has called us to be. Even in exile, the invitation is to return, to find our way back to the goodness that God has created us for. There is this hope, this promise that we see in the Bible of a new and greater exodus, not merely from a place, but from the Egypt, the oppression, the sin, that lurks within us all.

When I was a kid, I’d sometimes play a trick on my younger sister by telling her that I wanted to play a game was called ‘who can punch softer’. I’d tell her that the goal of the game is to be as gentle as possible.

If I could talk my sister into playing who can punch softer, I’d let her go first, and she would ball up her fist and touch my arm as lightly as possible.

When it was my turn, I would hit her in the arm as hard as I could. Technically, my sister won the game, but I was the only one without a bruise.

As far as examples for sin go, an older brother being a bully is pretty light, but the nature of sin remains the same, we reduce individuals into objects.

The struggle with sin is that we all know it doesn’t have to be this way, and yet it still is. None of us want to think we’re doing the wrong thing, we believe in our own best intentions. Solomon had to think they were doing the right thing, just like I thought I was doing the right thing when I’d ‘apologize’ to my sister for playing a trick on her and I’d convince her to play another round with me, but this time I would go first so she could take a swing at me. At that point, because we were tied at one win each, we’d have to have a tie-breaking round, and because I went first in the last round, it was her turn to go first this time…

We need an exodus, we need to enter into this liberation and love that frees us from the sins the separate us from God and one another.

Jesus, fully human and fully divine, shows us that in the fullness of our humanity we can enter into the fullness of God’s dream, we can fully enter into, experience, and expand this grace and peace.

No matter how we might have wandered away, regardless of how we miss the plot, Jesus is calling us back to the covenant and this promise of God’s grace reaching the ends of the earth.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus shows us what it means to remember what we read earlier from Deuteronomy, “When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, don’t become arrogant, forgetting the LORD your God: the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery; the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water; the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock; the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end. Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. Remember the LORD your God! [God’s] the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant [God] made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now.”

One of the most vivid examples of Jesus pointing to this idea comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12.

If you have a Bible, I’d invite you to open it up and follow along with me, we will be in Luke, chapter 12, starting in verse 13. If you don’t have a Bible and would like one, please let us know and we will be sure to get a Bible to you.

As you find your way to Luke 12:13, I just want to share a few statistics with you, because we all know that this last year has been hard, but because we’re distanced, online, and not interacting like we’re used to, even though we know we’re in the same blizzard, some of us have a snowblower, others have a shovel, and some don’t have a coat.

We all know that life before covid wasn’t perfect, and we all know that this pandemic only amplified the struggles of society.

According to the most recent census data, the poverty rate in Iowa is just over 11%. That figure comes from data prior to the pandemic and we can be fairly sure that the poverty rate in our state has increased in the last 10 months because food insecurity has continued to rise. People in poverty already don’t have enough to eat and in Polk County, in 2016, 22% of our neighbors were food insecure. 1 in 10 of our neighbors lives at or below the poverty line and 1 in 5 of our neighbors isn’t sure when they will have their next meal. Throughout Iowa, demand at food banks and pantries has risen by a third in some communities to 50% in others.

On an average week, about 240 people watch Grace online on Facebook or Youtube. If those statistics are true about our community, then 24 people watching a screen right now live at or below the poverty line and nearly 50 people watching right now are food insecure.

Anyway, Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, starting in verse 13, “Someone from the crowd said to [Jesus], ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’”

This is a very odd demand to make on Jesus because Jesus was a religious teacher, a Rabbi, and dealing with this dispute wasn’t really in Jesus’ job description.

The person asking the question doesn’t really want Jesus to make a decision as much as they want Jesus to agree with what they already believe.

Inheritance, in the ancient near east, was, more often than not, land. Your family farm was passed down from one generation to the next and, often, the oldest child would inherit a little bit more than the younger children, but it was, as far as we can tell, a fairly even split that often wasn’t much of a split because in an era before John Deere, you needed all hands on deck. Multigenerational families were the norm, everyone needed all the help they could get. One of the reasons why Jesus spends most of his time with people in poverty is that in the ancient near east, nearly everyone lived in poverty.

When it comes to the person that asks Jesus to make their brother divide the inheritance, we don’t know what the dynamics of this family are, but it’s clear things are not as they should be. It also seems clear that this person’s motivation is greed. They just want theirs.

This is how Jesus responds, “Man, who appointed me as judge or referee between you and your brother?”

When Jesus said, “man” do you think that it was a silent with a sigh, like, ‘man’ or do you think it was an exasperated, ‘MAN!’?

Either way, Jesus goes on to say, “…who appointed me as a judge or referee between you and your brother?”

If the person that asked the question would have been a little faster on, they could have responded to Jesus, “Well, you are Jesus” but they couldn’t get a word in because Jesus starts to tell a story.

Jesus says, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions…”

The word that Jesus uses for life in this passage, in Greek, is ζωὴ (zoe). Bio is the Greek word for life that most of us are familiar with – biology, after all, is the study of life, or bio. ζωὴ (zoe) is something different than bio and we feel that difference every time it seems like we are existing instead of living. Zoe is a vitality, purpose, vigor, energy, excitement.

We all know that money can’t buy happiness. Money can buy a jet ski and I’ve never seen anyone frown on a jet ski, and yet, a jet ski doesn’t have much of a purpose in Iowa this winter.

You can’t purchase ζωὴ (zoe) and no amount of possessions will give you this gift.

Jesus continues and starts to tell a story, “A certain rich man’s land produced a bountiful crop. He said to himself…”

Jesus does something very subtle at the start of this story to make us question this person character and it is probably not what you think. Jesus saying that this person is rich isn’t a big detail because the Bible doesn’t condemn wealth, the Bible condemns greed.

I know extremely wealthy persons that are generous just like I know very poor persons that are greedy. No matter how empty or full your wallet is, you can live with a closed or open heart.

What Jesus says to set apart this person is, “He said to himself…”

In a culture where families had to live together for generations, when the land that you cared for was cared for collectively, there wasn’t much reason to think to yourself, especially when it came to what your land produced. When it came to what happens with the crops, the decision affected everyone, so this wasn’t a decision that was made by yourself.

On top of that, one of the most consistent ethics that we see in the Bible is around hospitality, not just making sure that people are taken care of, making sure everyone knows they are welcomed and cared for. If you had a good crop, but your neighbors didn’t, your excess became their sustenance because who knows how the next harvest is going to come in, and if the tables are turned, you’d hope your neighbor would care for you just as you would care for yourself.

This person in this parable, apparently, has amassed so much wealth that they are disconnected from the community. They are isolated, their greed has separated them from not just their neighbors, but their family. In this parable, the only person that this rich man thinks of is themself, which is why they think to themself, “What will I do? I have no place to store my harvest! (it’s like they went to the refrigerator at the middle of the night, saw how filled it was with food, and thought, there’s nothing to eat) Then he thought, Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store my grain and goods. I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink and enjoy yourself. But God said to him, ‘Fool…’

In this parable, I like to imagine that God is played by Mr. T.

Ἄφρων (Aphrōn) is the Greek word for fool. The prefix ‘a’ in Greek, means without and phrōn comes from the Greek word that literally translates as diaphragm or guts. In ancient Greek thought, the center of your being, the core of who you are, was found in your diaphragm, this place within us where air and life came into our being. The core of who we are is in this area around your heart and lungs because throughout the ancient near east is was thought that here was where your wisdom and understanding and passion come from.

But the person in this parable, they don’t have wisdom, they don’t have understanding, they don’t have passion. They think to themselves, the barns that I already have aren’t big enough, so I’ll tear them down and build even bigger ones for myself.

God (played by Mr. T in this parable), says to the rich man, “Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’

God doesn’t just use an interesting word when God calls this person an Ἄφρων (Aphrōn) because the word that Jesus has God use for die in this parable is fascinating. That word is ἀπαιτέω (apaiteó) Apo is a Greek prefix that means from and paiteó means to demand or request. It means to recall, to demand something in return. It was a legal term in the ancient near east, where if you took out a loan there were conditions that had to be met otherwise what was loaned to you would be ἀπαιτέω (apaiteó)-ed.

In this parable, it is as if Jesus has God say, your life has been on loan and I want it back.

Jesus ends the parable saying, “This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”

I don’t know what bothers you about this teaching from Jesus, but what terrifies me is that Jesus doesn’t finish the parable by saying, “Don’t worry, it’s just a story.”

If you look through the rest of Jesus’ parables, I don’t think you will find another parable or teaching where Jesus lifts up something so awful, so sinful that in that very moment God strikes them down.

What is it that is so awful, so against the expanding grace and peace that God wants for us and for everything else that God decides that’s it?

Greed.

We’re fairly comfortable with the idea that wealth is a gift from God, the tradition of praying before a meal comes from seeing food as a gift from God, but this parable is about life itself being a gift from God and God being offended when this gift is not shared or appreciated the right way.

Nearly 40% of all food in the United States is thrown away even though one in five of our neighbors doesn’t have enough to eat. Nearly one billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. Another two and a half billion people live on less than two dollars a day, resulting in about 40% of our global neighbors lacking basic sanitation while in the United States we annually spend more on trash bags than what nearly half of the world spends on all goods.

“When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, don’t become arrogant, forgetting the LORD your God: the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery; the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water; the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock; the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end. Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. Remember the LORD your God!”

The majority of the Bible was written by a minority people living under the rule and reign of massive, wealthy, mighty, military empires from the Egyptians to the Babylonians to the Romans.

2000 years later, when you benefit from citizenship within the wealthiest, strongest, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is easy to miss the central story of the scripture without careful study, reflection, humility, and consistently remembering the Lord your God who hears the cry of the oppressed.

The way of Jesus, the promise of this new exodus that leads us back to Eden is marked by our willingness to never be so isolated and privileged with our wealth that we, like the rich man in Jesus’ parable can think to ourselves I have more than I need so I’ll build a bigger barn instead of sharing a bigger table.

On the night that he was arrested, Jesus took bread, broke it, gave thanks to God, and shared it with the disciples saying, take, eat, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me. At the end of the meal Jesus took the cup, gave thanks to God and shared it with the disciples saying, drink this, all of you, this is the cup of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins, do this in remembrance of me.

What does it look like when we break our hearts open and pour ourselves out for the healing and hope of God’s love extending to the ends of the earth?

My hope is that the measure of these sermons that I share with you is not if they affirm what you already believe. My hope is that this sermon is not just another piece of content on the internet that you can like and share, even though I hope you will do both.

This gathering exists to bring us back to the table, to center ourselves in God’s grace and peace. It is a time that we have to be reminded, to be inspired to participate in the healing and the hope that God has for us and for everything else.

A worship service isn’t the end, it’s always a new beginning. That’s why Christianity insists that that Sunday, not Monday, is the first day of the week. We are just getting started, we are putting things into perspective, we are remembering, we are being provoked, comforted, even challenged, to share this eucharist and extend it wherever we go.

In the Bible, we see the story of Egypt to Exodus over and over again, because salvation is what happens when we find ourselves in Egypt and cry out.

We all have our own Egypt. From addiction to anger to rage to envy to hate to dishonesty to greed to lust – we all have our Egypts that show us the injustice in ways that make the headlines every day, to the smallest details of our lives that only we notice because it’s at the core of how we think and feel and act.

At the center of our story is crying out and being heard by God. Trusting that God is doing for us what we can never fulfill on our own, rescue, redemption, grace and peace.

We move from Egypt to Sinai and we find our purpose, we find our identity in the God that reduces us so that we might help rescue the world. We join god in hearing the cries of the oppressed and responding with liberation and love.

But sometimes we lose the plot. We can start to feel entitled, we can become accustomed to abundance, finding ourselves isolated instead of engaged.

But God is never isolated. God is always engaged, so when we cry out in our exile, God hears us and invites us back to Sinai.

This eucharist that we share, it not just about saving the world, it’s about finding ourselves in the salvation of God, finding exodus from our empires of indifference, making our way home out of the exile of irrelevance.

Jesus wants to save Christians because Jesus wants to save us from standing at a distance from this life. We may have to be physically distanced but that doesn’t mean we are disinterested and disaffected.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, abandoned, denied, and crucified, with all those that would turn away, Jesus still welcomed each and every one of them to the table and said do this in remembrance of me.

We can think of ‘do this’ as eating dipping some bread in a cup, we can also think of ‘do this’ when we reflect and remember, when we sing and pray and sit in silence, when we take part in this two-thousand-year-old ritual that challenges, humbles and brings us together, to not just know about the body and blood of Christ, but to be it with and for one another and all of creation.

There is a Rabbinical tradition of learning to read the scripture like you are looking at a diamond. No matter how it spins, you can see the brilliance shine through. There is no one right way to read the Bible, but there are some wrong ways and we can find ourselves reading like that when we think to ourselves that’s not my concern, those people aren’t my neighbors, and do this in remembrance of me is just a nice metaphor and not a way of life continually transformed by grace and peace.

May we keep finding our way back to this table, so that wherever we go, we can do this.

Read – Philippians 1:3-11

Notice – We don’t always link “love,” “knowledge” and “insight.” Paul did: “We think of [love] as having to do with emotion and affection, not with knowledge and wisdom. For Paul they are all bound together: what we call the ‘heart’ and what we call the ‘head’ were not separated.” * When has learning more about Jesus’ God-empowered mission  to the world (i.e. everyone, everything, God’s grace and peace reaching the ends of the earth) caused your love for Jesus to grow “even more and more rich”? Paul’s prayer for love led on to prayer for the “fruit of righteousness.” “‘Love’ is an aspect of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22), enabling all other spiritual virtues to be exercised properly (1 Cor 13:1–3). Without it no Christian is spiritually complete (Col 3:14)….Paul desires that when his readers stand before Christ, their lives will have been filled with….the spiritual fruit that comes from Jesus Christ, produced in them by the Holy Spirit.” ** How have you seen Spirit-produced love grow other spiritual fruit in your life and the lives of others?

Pray – Jesus, I’m not interested in pretending to be spiritually complete. I want a life genuinely filled with the spiritual fruit you wish to grow in me. Shape me as you did Paul and his first-century friends. Amen.

• *Wright, N.T., Paul for Everyone, The Prison Letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon (The New Testament for Everyone) (p. 85). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
• ** Homer A. Kent, Jr., comment on Philippians 1:9, 11 in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Abridged: New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994, p. 791.

Read – 2 Corinthians 9:6-15

Notice – Paul was not a rich person by earthly standards, and yet Paul writes, “God has the power to provide you with more than enough of every kind of grace” (verse 8). “You will be made rich in every way” (verse 11). Paul’s specific focus was an offering from Gentile Christians to support poor Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Yet he focused on what God gives us: “everything you need always,” “every kind of grace” and “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous in every way.” When (if ever) have you received a gift that “left you speechless,” that words couldn’t fully describe? How would you compare that feeling with God’s gift(s) of which Paul spoke?

Pray – Jesus, you gave, literally, all you had to give for me “for the sake of the joy” (Hebrews 12:2). Teach me more each day about the joy of generosity and the gift of sharing your grace. Amen.