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Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you
to do this.
Sermon by Andrew Plocher March 25, 2007, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Deuteronomy 24:1-22 Matthew 14:1-12
The Israelites are getting ready to go away to college, to join the circus, to travel abroad on an Elderhostel trip, to retire in luxury. They’ve been waiting for this moment for 40 years. 40 years in the desert, 40 years of working a job they haven’t enjoyed, 40 years of advocating for their children, their spouse and their space. 40 years without a home. 40 years of eating manna, waiting patiently for the milk and honey, barbeque and chocolate torte of the Promised Land. Patience was probably running out. Moses had been their leader for the entire time. We only let our presidents stay in office for four years: imagine more than 40. Yet they strove to listen and to remember. They could finally see over the mountain and to the valley- to the Promised Land. They heard God in the voice of Moses. They heard God in his words. The words are reminders of the justice that God wants for them, the faithfulness of God throughout their history, and the obedience that they must keep in order to maintain the blessing of God. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. Today that sounds foreign. As Presbyterians we don’t believe that we can earn our way into God’s love and good graces. God loves us, sinners that we are, no matter what we do. Yet we have to do something. The idea that we can sit on our hands, accept cheap grace, is not something that we want. And we do, whether we like it or not, often relegate actions to equal and opposite actions, to reaping what is sown. Somehow, though, we twist it a little. We think of it as a legalistic bond. We turn it into the language of the laws that we understand. God loves us, therefore that will not change, the promise will be there, on time, decently and in good order. In Deuteronomy we witness a God of covenant: a God who has a personal and real relationship with her people, with the children of Israel. The rules are not how we might see them today. They do not stand alone as laws. They are not the speeding ticket, the murder, the theft that we judicialize and enforce today. No, they are deeper than that. If you’ve been reading along in Deuteronomy you have passed through God-won battles, the stoning of children, and challenging texts about marriage. These texts are brutal. They call our moral sensibilities to attention and scream at us. What’s going on? You’ve got to be joking… Yet there are no jokes in these words, no jokes in the laws of justice either. God, and Moses are serious, very serious. The laws in Deuteronomy are about faith. Not fides quae, the content of faith, but of fides qua, faith itself. Dennis Olson notes that we can understand Deuteronomy as a catechesis, a catechism. For those of you that had to memorize a catechism- Deuteronomy’s a bit of a doozey. A catechism is a teaching device, a place where questions are asked, explicitly or implicitly, and are modestly answered. It is a guide for our own questioning. Deuteronomy is a place for the children of Israel to question and hear God’s answer. Today, it might be helpful to think of Deuteronomy as a catechism for spiritual direction. All the laws, curses, blessings and musings are for the community of faith. They are to guide the community in faithfulness and relationship with God. They are about faith itself. None of them are autonomously what faith is. Faith is not just letting the scared soldier stay at home. It is living in relationship with God. The life of the Israelites is about “faith seeking understanding.” It is finding a place for God in the chaos of transition, wilderness and homelessness. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. Today most of us haven’t been homeless. We haven’t had to stone our siblings either. Yet we are faced with some of the same conditions that Israel faced. Every day our lives bring transitions and changes, we face choices about what to do and what not to do, who to converse with and who to ignore. In chapter 24, like much of Deuteronomy, we hear of justice. For many of us it is a commonplace word, a word that we associate with courts and crime, human rights and equality. A word that has been theologized, politicized, and academicized. As Soren Kierkegaard once, semi-humorously wrote: “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.” We stop when the words become uncomfortable or we don’t know what to do. It’s better safe and comfortable than faced with being different in our society. How hard is it to submit to the will of God and to acknowledge that there are things we have truly left undone? Whether or not permitting the new husband to stay home is sexist (as feminist scholar’s suggest), do we do it? Do we selfishly hold onto what we have found, what has been loaned to us, or what has been given to us in pledge? Do we provide for the alien, the orphan, the widow? Do we leave the fruit trees and the gardens when we engage in war? Do we forgive debts, really? We can theologize and philosophize as much as we want. We can argue that our taxes provide for it, that times have changed, and that, “that’s not really what that means,” but in the end we’re left with the words. Ringing in our ears. They are the words that got John’s head cut off, that sent Jesus to the cross, and that we proclaim every Sunday. As we turn towards Easter we stare not at an empty cross, as sits on our chancel, but at the cross on Christ’s back. The betrayal, the crucifixion, the giving up of life for our lives. The cross is a sign of hope, but it also a sign of immense hardship. Christ took it on for us, for me and you, for all the world. And what got him there? Preaching words that didn’t fit the mainstream. Words like the ones we read in chapter 24. Words proclaimed as God’s desire for us. Words proclaimed to transform our lives and bring equality and justice to the world: the renewal of God’s creation. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. It is easy to celebrate the life of Christ with new Easter dresses, shirts and ties, to find the Easter eggs, eat the chocolate, and share a large meal with family. Yet how would it be to invite the homeless to dinner, take new Easter clothing to Central Pres. in Norristown, plant a tree or flower instead of hunting for an egg, and giving food instead of consuming chocolate? Resting on our laurels is a Roman thing. Doing the hard thing is Christian. Throughout history we are a church of doing. Jesus did things. As Woody Guthrie sang, “If Jesus preached in New York what he preached in Galilee, we’d lay him in his grave again.” I know it’s not easy to hear. Frankly, Deuteronomy scares me. It reminds me of blessings, of curses, and of what happens when I don’t listen. Whether metaphorical or real, the text is haltingly prophetic. It calls me to act in ways that I haven’t: to build community with those I’d rather ignore or subjugate. It’s counter cultural, counter intuitive, dangerous and radical. It brings us to the brink of societal, financial, lifestyle, and even physical death. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. Yet those who lose their lives will find them. As I tremble at these thoughts, a story comes to mind. Shane Claiborne, theologian and new monastic, writes of a conversation he had where a friend of his said, “Jesus never talked to a prostitute.” Ready to take the offensive, Shane said, “Oh, sure he did” and whipped out his Bible. His friend calmly looked him in the eye and said, “Listen, Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didn’t see a prostitute. He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with.” When we have new eyes, we can look into the eyes of those we don’t even like and see the One that we love. We can see God’s image in everyone we encounter. As the Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen puts it, “In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile.” We are made of the same dust. We cry the same tears. No one is beyond redemption. And we are free to imagine a revolution that sets the oppressed and the oppressors free. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. Maybe all it takes is changing how I see things. Maybe I need to change my prayers. Maybe I need to start asking to see the world through the eyes of our Lord. Maybe then Easter will return, Deuteronomy will make sense, and my feet will carry me forward. I pray that your feet, too, may move; that your eyes, too, may see; that life awakens at our Lord’s resurrection. Lord, help us remember. Amen. |