Sermon: Knowing and Following God- Exodus 33:12-22- RCL 24A

Moses in the cleft of the rock (Exodus 33:22)

The Jews were a stiffnecked people.  That is the conclusion drawn in the run up to today's Old Testament lesson.  My guess is that is one of the reasons God called them and set them apart- so that the rest of us could identify with them.  Today's lesson is part of a much longer Old Testament narrative which lies at the very heart of the Jewish, and the Christian experience.  It is a tale of bad decisions, and lost opportunities, and forgiveness, and more bad decisions, and exile, and really spicy personal details, and outright rebellion, and selfless love, and judgment, and grace, and oh, did I say forgiveness?  At the beginning of the major section of which today's lesson is a small but important part,  Moses had gone up into the mountain to meet with God.  It was a wonderful meeting, in which God communed with Moses and gave him the ten commandments and detailed directions about how the people should worship and order their community. Moses was there for a while.  The people got restless and began to doubt whether he would ever come back.  In the midst of the uncertainty which seemed to be all around them, their memories of life in Egypt began to look pretty good.  They forgot the bondage and the slavery, and remembered the varied diet, the comfortable homes that were not tents, and the nice things that such a settled life  allowed them to accumulate.  They went to Aaron the Levite, the priest and the brother of Moses, and implored him to make them a god, He called for donations of gold and made them a statue of a calf, and they worshipped it with highly sexualized fertility rites, perhaps like those they had seen in Egypt, or among their Canaanitish neighbors.  Now the Lord looked down and saw what was going on, and he said to Moses, these people have corrupted themselves, and I am going to destroy them, but I will make you a great people.  And Moses prayed from the bottom of his heart that God would have mercy on the people, and God decided not to destroy them.  Now Joshua was up on the mountain trail waiting for Moses, where he had been the entire time.  He met Moses on the path, and as the two of them came into view of the camp, they saw what was going on.  Moses was so angry that he threw down the tablets with the commandments on them and they shattered.  And he took the golden calf and ordered it ground to dust, and scattered in in the water and made all the people drink it.  Considering the biology of it all, I think that is a pretty effective way of saying what you think of a false god.  Then he turned on his brother, the priest, and said, "How could you do such a thing?"  And Aaron was very nuanced- that is to say he lied and blamed it all on someone else, and he minimized his part in the whole affair.  Shame on him and on any priest who does such a thing in every age.  And then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and rallied the faithful, and they stopped the orgy that day by killing three thousand of their neighbors with the sword.  And for their faithfulness to the Lord that day, the Levites, who had refused to defile themselves, were blessed as the keepers of the holy things of God in perpetuity.  And then Moses prayed for the people as he had never prayed before.  As his Lord Jesus and his brother Paul would pray some thirteen hundred years in the future, he offered himself for the sins of the people he loved when he said "O Lord, forgive their sins- and if not then blot me out of the book of life!"  In the passion of his prayer that day, we begin to see the depths of  God's love manifested to us and to all who believe in Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  And then a plague came upon the people, because every action has consequences, and even when we are forgiven by God we must live with the consequences of our actions.  And then God reaffirmed the promise, the covenant which he had made to Abraham, and had renewed with the other patriarchs of Israel. And God called Moses to enter the tabernacle of Israel that day, and as he did so, the cloud of God's glory, the shekinah, descended upon the holy place to confirm that this was of God.  And Joshua went in with his master, and the people, having learned their lesson for the time being, "rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door."  And that story brings us to today's Old Testament lesson.

"And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend." (Exodus 33:11)  Moses  asked God to show him the way of the Lord, and shared with him his own fears and insecurities.  And the Lord did speak with him as with a friend. And when God assured Moses of his support and direction and providence, Moses asked to see the very glory of God. And it was a wonderful thing, and God answered his prayer, and the Bible says that the face of Moses shone with the light of the glory of God.  And then the Lord answered Moses' first question, the one about knowing the way of the Lord.  There was another set of tablets made for the commandments, and God gave some very specific guidelines for how the tribes were to honor their relationship with him when they entered the promised land.  And the rest of the book of Exodus is about how the people responded to God's love by obeying him and accomplishing the things he called them to do.

 This brings us to the application of today's text to our lives.  The great drawback to all lectionaries is that they tend to isolate portions of Scripture from their context, that is why the reformers insisted on serial reading of the Bible.  Today you have heard the context of the lesson.  And so you are in a better position to understand it more perfectly.  If I were to read today's lesson from Exodus 33:12-23 apart from its context, I might draw the conclusion that God does communicate directly and passionately with his people, and that he on occasion allows us the  personal experience of his glory.  Now both of those things are true.  But the passage assumes a very different intensity and tone if I realize the complex moral failures which preceded the assigned lesson.  And then when I consider the willingness of Moses to give up his own life for the people, and his anger, and his strong leadership, and all of those other things which are a part of the story- the emotional intensity of God's determination to share with us the experience of his presence and glory are all the more amazing.  My heart cries out with the song writer who said, "And can it be, that I should gain, an interest in my Saviour's love?  Died he for me, who caused him pain, for me who him to death persued?  Amazing love, how can it be, that thou, my God, woulds't die for me?"  I am overcome with emotion and thanksgiving that even after it all, he still accepts us and forgives us and desires intimate fellowship- with us. 

And then in the midst of my wonder and joy, I remember that first question of Moses.  "If I have found favour in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people." (Exodus 33:13)    I realize with a new sense of urgency that God's grace is given not just that I might feel wonderful or find self-actualization or enhanced self esteem.  God's grace is given that I might be transformed into the image of his grace and mercy, and that I might reflect his holiness by walking in accordance with his attitudes and his standards of personal and corporate behavior all the days of my life.  Certainly there is forgiveness and even rapture in serving our God.  And there is also duty to live a life of personal holiness according to the moral law of God proclaimed to us in the scriptures. 

Some of you may be thinking, "Pursley is a crazy fundamentalist!  The next thing you know he will be calling for the institution of some sort of Christian Sharia law!"  Well, I am a sort of a fundamentalist, if fundamentalism is defined in its original pre-Scopes trial sense of "one who holds the tenets of the creeds absolutely without redefinition and who seeks to accept the faith received from Jesus and the Apostles as understood by the holy fathers."  But I would remind you that Paul clearly states that legalism and works righteousness have no place in our faith.  Obedience however, does.  And I would refer you to page 869 of the Book of Common Prayer, Article VII - Of the Old Testament.  Our Church has always taught that the ceremonial law of the Jews was a prophetic declaration of the character of God and of the coming of Christ.  That is why we do not sacrifice animals or celebrate Seders, even though the Old Testament commands both.  We also teach that the civil law of Israel fulfills those same purposes, and that the code of punishments need not "to be received in any commonwealth." Hence we do not stone people caught in adultery or stone unruly and rebellious young men, even though both were the law in ancient Israel.  "Yet not withstanding, no Christian man whatsoever is free form the obedience of the Commandments which are called Moral."  God's moral behavioural expectations touching our relationship to him and to each other  is the same for Athens and for Jerusalem, now and forever.  As blessed John says in I John chapters one and two,  We have all sinned, and yet Jesus takes care of our sins, and those of all the world.  The evidence that we have been redeemed is that we keep his commandments as written in the word of God, and as we keep those commandments, we are perfected in love, and we truly learn to love each other.

So the end of the matter is this. We are a lot like the ancient Jews, a stiffnecked people.  We have fallen and done some pretty horrible things.  But God loves us and in Jesus Christ he has forgiven us.  He communes with us not as mere subjects or servants, but as friends, and we are given the opportunity to experience him in a way that will transform our outlooks and our behavior as surely as it transformed Moses' visage and caused him to glow with a heavenly light.  Let us now claim our inheritance as the sons and daughters of God.  Let us experience his love and his glory, and his transformation.  And by our commitment to obey his moral law, and by our love for all people and for all he has made, let us proclaim the wonders of his glory to everyone, so that in the end, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Giving Back to God: Rector's Rambling- November, 2014

November opens with All Saints' Day and closes with the first Sunday of Advent.  There are so many important things happening in the Church in November.  But for any local parish, perhaps the most important thing, practically speaking, is the annual parish stewardship drive.  It is the engine which drives the parish program and budget for the ensuing year.  Without it, plans are almost impossible to make, and difficult decisions must be made about which programs are the most important, and which ones cannot be sustained.  On the eve of our annual parish pledge request, I thought it would be a good thing to offer a few thoughts about Christian stewardship. 

Stewardship must always be honest.  The reality is that ours, like most of the parishes in the Episcopal Church, is greying and shrinking.  This is not to say that we do not have some wonderful and active young families, or that our older individuals and families do not come and do good and commendable things in this place.  But it is to acknowledge a statistical reality that there are fewer people to pay the bills and to staff the ministries at St. John's than there were a few years ago.  It is also to acknowledge that several of our loved ones who were able to support the church very generously now serve Jesus in a different way and in another place (some of them in heaven.)  It is incumbent on those of us who worship here now to clarify our vision of what God would have our parish to do, and what he would have us to be, and to fund and staff that holy vocation to the glory of God, to the building up of his people, and to the extension of his kingdom.

Stewardship must always be creative.  There are many wonderful traditions in our parish, and we are a traditional denomination.  And there are many things which worked very well in the past which are not so effective today.  Where resources are limited, it is our responsibility to deploy those resources in ways which honor and maintain continuity with our heritage.  It is also our duty to make adaptations where necessity demands that we might be as effective as possible in kingdom work.  Our vestry system of government is an effective tool in evaluating and implementing modifications and improvements in ways that meet our goals and preserve our identity as the people of God called Anglicans.

Stewardship must always reach out to others.  One of the most important acts of stewardship any of us can accomplish is to invite someone to church, and to introduce them to the grace of God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Think about who you might invite to a church service, or a parish breakfast, or a Christmas or Easter service, or a Lenten or choir presentation. Be sure to sit with them and invite them out for hospitality following the service or event.

Stewardship must always be sacrificial.  Jesus gave his life to pay for our sins that we might find new life and purpose and healing and joy (and everlasting life!)  All of the Apostles were tortured or killed for refusing to deny the good news that God reconciled us to himself through the sacrifice of Jesus.  Sacrifice is a part of the heritage of the Church.  We are called to go beyond what we can do, or what is comfortable for us to do, in the service of God and in our attempts to share the Gospel with our town.  This sacrifice should push us to offer our time and talents, and should inform our financial decisions about how much we should give to the parish and to other works which proclaim and implement God's plan for all people.

Stewardship must always be motivated by love.  The Bible tells us that "God loves a cheerful giver."  Our giving is most effective in bringing us closer to God when it is motivated by our love for him, for his kingdom, and for our parish home.  To give because we want to is an expression of how we believe and how we feel about our Lord and the people with whom we worship.  Even though I may not agree with every decision or everything which takes place, I love this place because so many times I have met God here.  I love the people and the building, and the garden, and the music, and even the big tree out front.   I wish to share that experience of meeting and knowing him in this particular Anglican Christian way with others- and so I give for the joy of it- for the love of it.  I hope you will do the same.

I humbly entreat all of you, my friends, to prayerfully consider how you would support St. John's in 2015.  Together, we can continue to make a real difference in this place, and bring glory to God, as is our whole duty as his sons and daughters.

St John Announcements 12 October 2014

St. John Weekly Messenger- 12 October, 2014

Prayer Requests

Sun: The Province of West Africa, Charlie King as he recovers from pneumonia

Mon: Diocese of Ikka in Nigeria, Bonnie Poulson and family at Gordon’s Passing

Tues: Dioceses of Ikko and Ikwerre in Nigeria, Our persecuted brothers and sisters

Wed: Diocese of Ikwauno in Nigeria, pray for the salvation of those who persecute the church

Thurs: Diocese of Ilage in Nigeria, Stuart and Lisa as they serve us all and the cause of peace and stability

Fri: Dioceses of Ile and Oluji in Nigeria, Good citizenship as election season approaches

Sat: Dioceses of Ilesa and Ilesa South West in Nigeria, that this church might be a safe and blessed place for all of the children of God, and all who seek him. For Lori and those who will be trained today.

   

Video Catechism on You Tube: Check out “americananglican: Article 14 Supererogation”

Nursery and Children’s workers are needed to expand our children’s education program. Safe Church Training is available at St. John’s on October 18th at St John’s.  See Fr. Bill or Mark Conrad if you sense a call or would like more information.  Sign up sheet for the course this saturday is at the back of the church!

Daily Office Readings are Year Two, Proper 23, found on page 989 of the Book of Common Prayer.

This Week at St. John’s

Office Hours Tuesday through Thursday 9-12

Today: 9:15 Choir Practice and Adult Forum

Monday: Columbus Day

10:30 at Frank Smith- Gordon Poulson funeral

5:00 Pizza and God Talk at the Church(note time shift)

7:00 Choral Evensong

Wednesday: 10:30 Bible Study II Thessalonians

Noon 1928 Holy Communion

Thursday: 7PM Vestry

Saturday: Safe Church Training- Sign up at back of church or call Fr. Bill at 215-3900

Next Sunday: 8:00 HC I

    9:15 Choir Practice

    9:15 Adult Forum with Bishop NT Wright: The Gospel of John

    10:30 HC II

Remember to put your prayer requests in the alms basin

Confession and Spiritual Direction are available on request- see Fr. Bill

The Rector’s Blog is at http://anglicaninlancaster.blogspot.com/

Stewardship Note:  Sometimes people wonder about the Biblical benchmark for financial giving.  Scripture teaches a concept called the “tithe.” It means that within the understanding that all believers should give regularly, proportionally, and sacrificially- a minimum of 10% of our income should be donated to institutions or activities which advance the Kingdom of God.

Sermon for Proper 23 A RCL: Philippians 4:1-9: The Path to Christian Unity

To be preached at St. John's Lancaster on Sunday, 12 October, God willing.

Every competent scholar knows that literary snippets, including those from the Bible, must be considered in their context.  Today's text from Philippians is no exception.  Throughout the Book, St. Paul echoes the prayer of Jesus in John seventeen as he urges Christians to live together in unity, or more specifically to "ta owto pronain in kurio"- to think the same thing, or to be of one mind in the Lord.  We will return to that concept shortly, and unpack its implications by looking at the Apostle's admonition to two ladies in the parish, but before we do, we should consider another canon of sound scholarship.  A good scholar also knows the context in which he speaks or preaches, and anticipates flawed interpretations which are likely to occur among his hearers because of the culture in which they live and the education they are likely to have received.  Based on that knowledge, he or she ought to dispense with those flawed interpretations early so that they do not detract from the exposition which is to follow.  Today's text demands such an approach. 

There are those who would look at Paul's admonition to Euodias and Syntyche and demand that everyone in the church must be in lock step with each other.  I believe there is overwhelming evidence in this letter that such is not the Apostle's intent.  Both women are addressed as active members of the parish, and therefore we can presume that they are both Christians.  In the specific actions and attitudes which are encouraged in the verses which follow, deepening spirituality and growth in grace are encouraged, but wrong theology or rebellion against God are not implied in any way.  It would therefore be rational to infer that the disagreement between the ladies had more to do with personality or opinions regarding non-essentials or ways of accomplishing a task than with the sort of things which would necessarily threaten a person's eternal salvation.  There is room for disagreement in the family of God.  In fact, chapters one and two indicate that in the parish there are very mixed motives for doing things, and while these varying motives might be based to some extent in immaturity or selfishness, they are characteristic of us Christians and do not necessarily mean that we are to be cast out of the kingdom.  People, even Christian people, can be expected to act like people from time to time.  Ours is not a community of plaster saints, but a community of real people with real feelings and opinions and motives, who have named Jesus as Lord and share the road to heaven.

There are others who would extend this picture of our humanity to such a permissible degree in the church that they would allow anything to be said or believed.  The end of such extension is functional universalism, that is that God would not in the end condemn anyone, and that therefore any theological opinion, as long as it is sincere, may be held in the church.  Often, those who hold such an opinion will say something like, "after all, we all worship the same God."  In chapter three, Paul rejects this view and points out that those opinions which would overthrow the efficacy of God's grace given to us in Jesus Christ are evil, and that those who proclaim and practice them are the enemies of the cross of Christ.  Definitions are you see, very important, and we risk our souls if we maintain that words can be redefined or transformed into whatever we wish them to mean.  There is place for some doctrinal disagreement and discussion, but that person who denies the understanding of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church as contained in the ancient creeds and the consensus of faith actually departs from the orthodox faith received, and proclaims a faith other than that of Christ and his church.  Paul says that we ought to love and pray for such people, and to weep for their lostness, but we ought not to treat with them as if they are our brothers or sisters in the Church of Jesus Christ.  With this in mind, I admonish you in the Name of the Most Holy God: do not travel to hear Bishop John Spong when he comes to the Cathedral in Cincinnati.  He has denied basic elements of the Creeds, and while it might be helpful to hear him speak in a comparative religion class or a philosophy class at the University, he ought not to be given credence in the Church as either an expert or a prophetic gadfly.

But now it is time to return to the disagreement between the ladies and how it ought to be handled.  I think at this point it would be safe to substitute our own names for theirs.  Imagine some time here at St. John's when you have been angry or aggravated with a fellow parishioner over the choice of music, or an element of the service, or a committee decision, or which flowers were on the altar, or how much was spent or not spent on the library, or the garden, or the utilities, or the priest's car, or some other thing which did not directly impact our common belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation of King Jesus.  Paul's admonition ought to characterize our responses in such situations.

Did you acknowledge that both parties in the disagreement were Christians who brought real gifts and faithfulness to the work of God's Kingdom? And were you willing to work faithfully and lovingly with both sides to bring resolution to the issue? That is the message of verse three.

Did you rejoice in the Lord, even when the disagreement, the fight if you will, was going on?  Verse four maintains that that is a must in our parish, because it (or its absence) is an accurate indicator of the attitude which prevails here at St. John's, as it was in Philippi.

In the midst of it all, would the people you spoke with about the problem have said that you were gentle, and that your focus was colored by a firm reliance that God was with us, and that you truly believed that the return of the Lord was near enough to make our immediate reconciliation as the people of God to be truly important?  Verse five makes those points clearly.

Were you willing to turn away from your own anxieties and personal opinions and hurts during the time of unpleasantness and pray with others, including those with whom you disagreed, with the faith that God would lead all of us together to discover a plan that would surpass all of our needs and expectations?  And could you find it in your heart to thankfully anticipate God's answer, and to honestly own the things that really bothered you and pray about the real issues with your brothers and sisters, and not about presentation issues and intellectualized straw men?  That is the message of verse six.

Verse seven goes to the heart of our faith.  Did you really believe that God had the power and desire to bring peace among his people, and were you willing to accept that gift, even if it didn't look the way you had imagined it?

In summary, during the time of disagreement, did you seek to fill your heart and mind with things which were true, and honorable, and just, and pure, and pleasing, and commendable, and excellent, and worthy of praise?  Or did you allow negativity and selfishness and nursed feelings of exclusion or embarrassment or pain or anger to fill your heart and mind?  That is the message of verse eight.

Finally, St. Paul says to us, look at the record of how I have sought to behave among you, and do likewise.  If you set your heart on doing so, the God of Peace will be with you, and will heal your unhappy divisions, and bring you that unity for which our Lord prayed.  That wraps up our second lesson for today.

How did you do the last time around?  I must admit that there have been times when I fell a bit short of the ideal in my dealings with some of you.  I promise that with God's help, I will try harder next time.  I hope you will do the same.  The Bible says that God will bless our efforts, and that he will draw us together in unity and peace.  Join me in believing that he will keep his promise.  As we covenant together to claim his promise as our own, he will send his Holy Spirit upon us to make a wonderful place even better. 

Will you turn with me to page 818, prayer 14, in the Book of Common Prayer, so that we might pray together for God to accomplish this work in our midst.

14. For the Unity of the Church
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.