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Proper 17

Exodus 3

5"Do not come any closer," God told him. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground." 6Then he said, "I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When Moses heard this, he hid his face in his hands because he was afraid to look at God.

7Then the Lord told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites live. 9The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

Matthew 16

24Then Jesus said to the disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. 25If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. 26And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul£ in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul? 27For I, the Son of Man, will come in the glory of my Father with his angels and will judge all people according to their deeds. 28And I assure you that some of you standing here right now will not die before you see me, the Son of Man, coming in my Kingdom."


He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.

Who does the quote describe? Does the phrase "Crawford, Texas" come to mind? Surrounded, as I am, by pews filled with dangerous radicals, I wonder if the incumbent president is too easy a target for us. And then, of course, there is the whole issue of overtly political preaching, and it's appropriateness. Perhaps if I told you that both Exodus 3 and Matthew 16 are overtly political passages, this would set your mind at ease. Also bear in mind that this August, the sleepy month where preachers sneak in the odd bit of controversy in the hope that few will notice.

The above quote is not from the Utne Reader or Harper's. It wasn't from Michael Enright or Rex Murphy, these days only heard from the sidewalk on Front Street. The author was Thomas Merton, the most famous monk of the twentieth century, regarded in his lifetime as the foremost authority on the contemplative life, and later in his life an active voice for peace. Let me share the rest of the quote:

There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we ever have been.

Preparing for my sermon I came across two references to Doctor Faustus. I took it as a sign. The second reference came from Pierre Teihard de Chardin. Writing at about the same time as Merton, he spoke of the Faustian spirit of his age: "the spirit of autonomy and solitude. Man with his own strength and for his own sake opposing a blind and hostile universe." (Resources, p. 231)

In the spirit of interaction, who can tell me about Doctor Faustus?

Faustus is literary shorthand for the classic pact with the devil. He sold his soul to gain all knowledge, and in the end was only interested in practical jokes and silly tricks. Near the end of his life he begins to understand the gravity of what he has done, but it is too late. In the final scene his soul is carried off to hell.

Much of this, of course, was inspired by Matthew 16:

"If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. 25If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for me, you will find true life. 26And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul£ in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?

It is important the bear in mind that these words were not spoken to a Renaissance scholar or the elite of Elizabethan society, but rather to a group of fishermen from Galilee. It wasn't a message directed to the powerful (yet), but rather a message to the most common folk that Jesus could find. It is only in this context that the words speak through time to us today. We hear the words "gain the whole world" and quickly image that Jesus is talking to someone else, someone more powerful. In fact, because the message first when out to peasants and labourers, it falls more heavily on us.

***

If you asked someone in the thirteenth century B.C.E. who has power, they would have only one answer: Pharaoh. Egypt was a solitary superpower, convinced of its greatness, determined to spread (by whatever means) the Egyptian "way of life." The "rightness" of their cause, and their great success led them to believe that they were blessed by a unique providence.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Did I say "pews filled with dangerous radicals"? Superpowers of every era tend to look the same after a while, to the extent that even Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament scholar pauses in his study of Exodus to add these words: "A pondering of Pharaoh by citizens of the United States, the last remaining superpower, might cause us to pause in a moment of self-recognition."

***

Then the Lord told him, "You can be sure I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries for deliverance from their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. 8So I have come to rescue them from the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own good and spacious land. 9The cries of the people of Israel have reached me, and I have seen how the Egyptians have oppressed them with heavy tasks. 10Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You will lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

What a odd choice, that Moses. Formerly a Prince of Egypt, albeit with a rather unique beginning; a coward, who flees before the wrath of Pharaoh rather that defend himself as a member of the royal court; a man who hides among the shepherds; and man who responds to the invitation of Most High with the protest "I'm just not a good speaker; I'm clumsy with words."

Odd choice, or inspired choice? Moses understood the enemy of the Israelites, as no other Israelite could. He sat in the seats of power and knew that the very thing that the Egyptians understood as strength was in fact their greatest weakness: divinity. To everyone in Egyptian society, Pharaoh was god. His divinity was his supposed strength, and the very thing that made a challenge to his power foolish. But Moses knew Pharaoh and his court in a more intimate way: they were family. He understood that the myth of divinity was a pillar on which to build empire, and not a fact to consider.

Think of it as a society-wide "Faustian bargain." With Pharaoh, they said, we will gain the whole world. Our souls will rest with a god of limitless power that lives with us by the Nile, another object of worship and considered the source of life. It was for Moses then, an adopted Egyptian, long freed from the official cult and the common beliefs, to return with the help of the Israelite God.

As inarticulate as he was, Moses could speak for God and demand the release of God’s people. He was an "inspired choice" because he allowed God to speak through him and voice God's endless desire to stand with the victims, safeguard the oppressed, and free those in bondage. Hard-hearted Pharaoh couldn’t hear this voice, but God freed them anyway.

***

More Merton:

We are living through the greatest crisis in the history of man; and this crisis is centered precisely in the country that has made a fetish out of action and has lost (or perhaps never had) the sense of contemplation. Far from being irrelevant, prayer, meditation and contemplation are of the utmost importance in America today.

Jesus said "shoulder your cross" and follow me. He urged his disciples to "count the cost" (Luke 14.28) and decide on a life of praising God and serving others. Raymond Brown called it "a carefully considered program of involvement." Shouldering a cross and counting the cost of discipleship means entering God’s presence in a prayerful and intentional way, as a way to fully enter the world.

Merton wrote in the context of the Cold War and Vietnam, but his words have an eerie ring to them. We live in a time when people and nations need to prayerfully reject power and domination, to find salvation in the service of others. We need to remind the world that God stands with the powerless and seeks for them life in its fullest expression. Such is the Kingdom of God. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 3:55 PM