balancing

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN

and St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN

29^th ORDINARY SUNDAY (October 22^nd) 2023

 

 

READINGS:

Exodus 33: 12-23

Psalm 99

1 Thessalonians 1: 1-10

Matthew 22: 15-22

 

 

There is an almost shocking familiarity between Moses and his God in the depiction that we have of Moses’ determination to, as it were, unmask the God with whom he is chatting, in whom he is trusting, and in whom, indirectly, he is asking his people to trust.

To get the best out of the Moses scene we need to realize it is stylized. The setting is one in which the relationship between the Hebrews and their neighbours is fraught – we might remember the situation in the Middle East today, except that this narrative is clear that God, not bombs (or their equivalent) will provide the way out of trouble. But Israel has betrayed God with last week’s sacred cow: can the relationship be restored? God’s ongoing relationship is depicted as very cautious and tenuous, propped up only by God’s grace, or gracious forbearance.

Let’s step away from military parallels between the modern State of Israel and the ancient People of God – despite, of course, the DNA connection. We who are Christ-bearers have also too often made our sacred cows, and I don’t think I need to list the myriad ways we have neglected our responsibilities. I am not here speaking of the wider western world; I dare speak only for the community of faith – perhaps I dare speak only for myself?

But I want to park Moses there for a moment, in his daring tête-à-tête with God. It’s a little outside my experience, perhaps yours too. But there are important messages in the other readings, too. 

In the Psalm, for example, we find the author turning not to petition God to seek favours, but simply pouring out his or her heart in praise to God, with awe, with love, with a deep dense of the underserved privilege of access to the one from whom and towards whom all creation moves. 

It is a big call, of course; can we really speak of a God in the face of so much human-made and nature-made horror in the world, even in our own lives?

The psalmist dares to say yes. We only kid ourselves if we think difficulties in believing are a modern phenomenon. It’s not what we might call “sexy,” (or “chic” if we’re prudish), to cling to a belief in an unseen being, but it was ever thus. Surrounded by some pretty toxic enemies the psalmist, like the tellers of the Moses story, dared to believe. And – not unlike the donors and planners and builders of the great cathedrals of Europe – the fruits of risking belief often came long after the light of their own individual lives was extinguished (at least to human sight).

We and our forebears, Hebrew and Christian alike, have been called to believe despite all odds. It is no new thing. Moses’ crew found it much easier to turn to the much less complex option of a golden cow. Paul, so unpopular in many circles, believed against all odds. He poured out his lifeblood proclaiming resurrection hope to a disinterested world. 

Where his words sometimes fell on fertile soil he too often found, as in Corinth and Galatia, that the new and enthusiastic beliers soon turned to their own form of Golden cow: in Corinth they turned to showy sexual libertinism and social elitism. In Galatia they turned to rigorous, life-suppressing ritualism and again, probably, social elitism. 

In Thessalonica Paul seems to have found fertile ground and faithful stewards of the gospel, though later in the letter Paul will issue stern warnings to those believers, too: “Don’t be a slave of your desires or live like people who don’t know God,” he will tell them. Paul has been stung too often by the foibles of Christ-bearers. 

Matthew recalls Jesus’ condemnation of recalcitrant and renegade Sadducees, who have turned faith into a means of exploitation and oppression: too often we the Christian people of God have been the Sadducees, and Paul was at the very least taking a pre-emptive strike in writing to the Thessalonians, warning them of the risks ahead.

There is much to learn from Moses. I say again, few of us will or even should have the easy familiarity with God that was the hallmark of the great servants of God through history. Nor should we – perhaps they didn’t either, for I suspect the narratives cover up the fear and trembling with which they tapped God’s metaphorical shoulder. 

In the end though we find that to a person they all, even the one we came to know as Son of God, balanced that easy familiarity with deep reverence and awe. Aslan is “not like a tame lion,” as Mr Beaver warns the children towards the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I suggest even the second person of the Trinity, the one we know as Jesus and Christ, is not our mate but an inspirational revelation of the who and the how of God.

Strangely, perhaps, it is Moses in our highly symbolic first reading, that most models that balance between familiarity and awe.