Matthew 22:1-14
David A. Davis
February 28, 2016
Lent III

You know it’s a wild parable when the violence isn’t the only thing that’s hard to hear. Pretty much every detail of this parable of Jesus stretches the limits of credulity. Right from the beginning; no one would ignore a royal invitation to a wedding banquet for the future king. No king would offer a second plea to those whose first refusal was way beyond the pale. It’s one thing to ignore an invitation that ought to be received more like an edict and go back to work. But seizing the king’s slaves, abusing them, and killing them, that’s not a believable or sound life decision. In the aftermath of the king’s vengeance, as the city is burning, we’re told that a second set of slaves went into the main streets to wrangle up some guests. That doesn’t make sense since people would have presumably fled for their lives. The Greek implies something more like the roads on the edge of town, but still! Who hangs around when an enraged king is sacking the place? And how about that lone under-dressed wedding guest with nothing to say? Getting scraped up off a burning street and brought to the party of the year only to be tossed for not wearing a tie, well, that’s just cruel. It’s not just the killing of the servants, or a king destroying his own city, or the dreaded “outer darkness” that makes the whole parable hard to listen to, it’s everything in between as well. Exaggeration or hyperbole or allegory doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to Jesus’ parable of the marriage feast in Matthew. Absurd, carnival-like farce works better.

Here’s the standard fare when it comes to the interpretation of Matthew 22:1-14. It is a tale that tells of the history of God and God’s people. The king is God. The son is Jesus and the banquet is the eternal marriage feast celebrated in the kingdom of heaven, that great gathering of all the saints where God wipes every tear from their eye and the Lamb is on the throne. The slaves who are sent to bring the guests, they are the Hebrew prophets. Messengers of God who begged and pleaded and cajoled and roared and warned and proclaimed. Those first invitees with so much else to do are the people of Israel and their established religious leaders. The seizing and killing of the slaves is symbolic of Israel’s rejection of the prophets. The destruction of the city is a reference to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., an event with all its death and violence that Matthew’s intended audience would have known. The inclusive invitation to bring in the good and the bad is the taking of the gospel to the Gentiles and the church’s call to make disciples of all nations. The missing wedding garment stands for the baptismal garment, putting on Christ, and the life of discipleship. The outer darkness and the weeping and gnashing of teeth, that Matthew’s recurring image of eternal judgment.

An allegorical approach that attempts to allow the parable to be more intellectually palatable while paying less attention to the violence. A take on the parable that offers a safe distance for the hearer, with its macro view of salvation history, making it more about the past than the present. An interpretation consistent with Matthew’s gospel and the urgent exhortation to live a faith-filled life best defined by the ethics of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The judgment that comes to that one guest has nothing to do with clothing. The party fail has to do with the complete disregard for the call to lead a Christian life. As the Apostle Paul puts it in Colossians, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, cloth yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience” (Col 3:12). When you’re invited to the feast, don’t just say yes, act like you belong there. Salvation history and Christ’s call to discipleship. The Parable of the Marriage Feast in Matthew’s gospel. Check please?!

One scholar points that reading the parable as an allegory is so “seductive because it ties up so many loose ends, rubs off the rough edges, and, most important, locates the church happily at banquet.” But you and I could sit with this parable for hours raising more questions, poking more holes, pointing out theological incongruities, searching for other historical help, trying to wrap our heads around some understanding, and frankly, just trying to feel better about the blasted thing. Even then, I imagine, we’d be left wanting; wanting more intellectual satisfaction. Here’s the rub, when it comes to a parable, passing intellectual muster is pretty much irrelevant. If you were to make a list of qualities or characteristics of the parables of Jesus, things like logical and rational and even coherent would be pretty far down the page.

In telling the parable of the Marriage Feast, Jesus creates this absurd picture that is a caricature of pretty much every detail: the guests’ complete disregard, the king’s insatiable desire to be honored and respected, the violence that wipes out everything, an extreme invitation that comes in the form of a roundup of anyone still breathing, an inordinate attention to festive dress, and a punishment that far exceeds any wrong committed. Amid all those cartoon-like details, one guest, one and only one, stands out for the failure to exhibit of the appropriate homage, to embody the necessary gratitude, to exude the unrestrained joy, and to express the heartfelt devotion. The guest is called out for failing to embrace the party. Like it or not, the disrespect coming from the speechless guest in jeans and a t-shirt is just as offensive to the king as the ignorance of those who were on the A-list and killed the messengers. Jesus poses this farce of power, allegiance, violence, celebration, joy, and judgment. It is an artfully crafted view of the human condition on steroids with one character notably devoid of honor, gratitude, joy, and devotion at just the wrong time.

On Ash Wednesday last, I watched for a time out my office window as some clergy colleagues offered the imposition of ashes out there on Palmer Square. I also read accounts of ashes being offered at some stations of New Jersey Transit and street corners in New York City. One may not appreciate the activity but the strategy is clear. Don’t wait for the people to come to you, take the ashes to them. A ritual of the church’s tradition carried out to the streets. A sign of devotion and repentance taken to the sites that represent the very definition of humanity’s hustle and bustle, the sites that define hustle and bustle on steroids. It’s kind of absurd, I guess.

A colleague was showing a few of us a newly renovated sanctuary. The large baptismal fount was located smack in the middle of the center aisle about three or four pews back. The liturgical symbolism placed the emphasis on baptizing there among the people. And there was the hope that meaning would be found as folks would be coming and going past the fount each Sunday. As we admired the fount, somebody asked about weddings, “What do you do with the fount in the aisle when it comes to a bride and a bridal party?” The pastor didn’t say a word. He just smiled and pointed with his toe to the three huge bolts at the base of the fount. It wasn’t going anywhere. Then he said, “Can you think of a better time to remember your baptismal identity than when you are making a lifelong promise to someone?” I can imagine some folks since have thought that was absurd.

Imagine a baptismal fount out on Palmer Square, or at the train station, or on a crowded corner, or in your school, or next to the water cooler at work, smack out there on Main Street. Not to put piety on display or to splash out grace on demand (though that may not be a bad idea), but celebrating a baptism where and when you and I are immersed in all that the world demands. We baptized Oliver this morning, as, together with his parents and the rest of his family, we expressed our homage, our gratitude, our joy, and our devotion to the God we know in and through Jesus Christ. It’s one thing to give voice to it here at this fount. It’s quite another to shout it out on Main Street where our humanity runs amok and there are a whole lot more demands on your attention, your allegiance, your life.

What if an encounter with a parable of Jesus is less about sitting down and diagramming it until you can squeeze some meaning out and much more about being drawn into a world you’re not expected to understand and discovering afresh the one who is doing the telling. Here in Matthew Jesus draws a cartoon with his words. He creates a world so pumped up, so absurd, so distasteful, so foul. Yet a world, if we’re honest, that is uncomfortably familiar. And when you find yourself confronted again and again by the farcical nature of the powers and principalities of the everyday, it would seem that the one telling the parable still expects your devotion, your joy, your gratitude, and your commitment.

Living into and claiming your baptismal devotion to Christ Jesus precisely in those moments when it feels like the world around you has gone off the rails, or when you’re taking in the news of the day and find yourself whispering, “You can’t make this up,” or when the pain of a broken relationship or very real family drama leaves you wanting to wake up from a bad dream, or when you find yourself being bombarded a whole bunch of medical information you could never be expected to understand, or when the promotion at work makes you feel ten-feet-tall, or when the new love of your life has you on cloud nine, or the death of your spouse after 63 years makes it feel like you are living in some kind of fog, or when the newborn baby is cooing and smiling at you in the middle of the night and for the life of you, you never dreamed you could be so blessed… in those absurd moments of life that are so utterly everyday, don’t forget you’ve been marked with the indelible sign of God’s love and you have tasted the joy of God’s grace, and that life you have in Christ, it’s for the long haul.

And you know, you know, you know… you’re going have to say something.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Matthew 18:21-35
David A. Davis
February 14, 2016
Lent I

This morning we begin to take a look at the parables of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. The parable series will guide our preaching life here at Nassau all through Lent up to and including Palm Sunday and Easter. The preaching texts read a bit like a greatest hits collection of the parables: the parable of the talents, the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, the parable about doing unto the least of these, the one about the wedding banquet when none of those invited would come, the one about the owner of the vineyard who sent his son to collect the harvest, the parable about laborers in the field who all worked different lengths of time but were paid the same, and the parable of the unforgiving servant, our text for this morning. Seven parables all from the gospel of Matthew. Each Sunday between now and the end of March, we’re going learn about the parables of Jesus and how they function, how they serve the gospel. We’re going to ponder Matthew’s gospel and how these parable serve his message. In these parables we are going to encounter Jesus in a way that may make us laugh and cry. Maybe we will get frustrated and have more questions than answers. We’re probably going to learn a bit about ourselves and our faith. It’s all going to happen as the cross of Christ once again appears on the horizon of our life together, as we are drawn to it together, as we stand beneath together and then, and only then, proclaim together, Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed. So, don’t worry about your hats, but hold on to your hearts. Here we go.

(Matthew 18:21-35)

So I am going to jump right in. “In anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until could pay his entire debt. So may my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive from your heart.” If you ever want an example of Jesus the preacher going for a bit of rhetorical flare, preacher’s license, and hyperbole, here it is. Another sample in Matthew would be right here in the eighteenth chapter right before this morning’s text, “if your hand or foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It’s better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire.” When you find yourself confronted by one of the parables of Jesus, a good lesson to learn early on is that an allegorical approach—this means this, this means that, this character is God, this one Jesus, this one me—doesn’t always work. Even though that’s how Jesus himself interprets the parable of the sower, the parables as a collection are more complex and mysterious than that. One cannot be snookered by a tyranny of interpretation and tricked by the irony of taking an allegorical approach literally. If the God we know and worship in and through Jesus Christ is going to torture us until we forgive from the heart, let’s call it a day and all go home right now. Even some sort of psychologizing of the text, as in “when you can’t forgive it is torturous for your spirit, your soul,” even that misses the hyperbole and the meaning unleashed in a parable of the absurd.

The slave who is at the center of what the parable describes as “the reckoning” owed the king an absurd amount of money. Math doesn’t do justice to Jesus’ exaggeration. The man owed a million, gazillion, zillion dollars. That’s the only way to say: a million, gazillion, zillion. He asks for patience which is absurd because he would never, ever, ever be able to pay off that debt. “I will pay you everything.” Ha! No way! Not in a million, gazillion, zillion years. Out of pity, the king released him and forgave the debt. That’s absurd.

Just on the other side of “the reckoning,” the slave comes upon a fellow slave who owes him not an insignificant amount of money. It’s about a half-year’s wages. To make his message clear, the debt-free slave grabs the man by the throat and demands to be paid. The plea for patience this time isn’t absurd, it’s a synonym for a payment plan, a loan extension, a second mortgage. The plea is ignored as the second slave is tossed into prison. The community gets involved. The king comes back and is furious with the first slave. Torture is invoked for the aforementioned debt that, you will remember, can never actually be repaid. A million, gazillion, zillion. Torture for what can never be attained. It’s absurd.

Take a step back with me from the parable and from Jesus the preacher “pushing the envelope” oratorically. Right before Peter asks Jesus how often he has to forgive, Jesus gives instructions about how to approach a member of the church who sins against you. Its basic and practical. First, go to the person alone and point out the matter. If that doesn’t work, take one or two others with you to try to work things out. After that, let it go if you have to. The teaching ends with the iconic “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Before it was the tradition affirming Christ’s presence when we gather for worship, it was Jesus teaching about forgiveness in the community. That’s what comes before the parable.

Right after the parable, at the beginning of the nineteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus leaves Galilee and sets out for the region of Judea beyond the Jordan, which means that Jesus was off to Jerusalem. So the last thing Jesus teaches his disciples before they leave home and head for Jerusalem—and the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane and Gologtha—is forgiveness. In Matthew there’s plenty of teaching yet to come, plenty of parables yet to come. But the last thing, there in the community, surrounded by friends and family and all that is ordinary in life, the last thing Jesus teaches is forgiveness. He gives them a bit of process. He tells Peter to forgive 77 times, which is biblical dialect for forgive every time. And he tells them this absurd parable about the unforgiving servant.

This parable about the unquantifiable, indescribable, unimaginable, ridiculous, absurd love and forgiveness of God that pours over you and me in a sort of a gully washer kind of way that we so don’t deserve and so don’t earn. This parable about how Great God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, expects that you will pass it forward. Pass forgiveness forward. That you will forgive as you have been forgiven. That your forgiveness will be sign of the kingdom, of the kingdom of God in your neck of the world’s woods. That by the grace of Jesus Christ, God’s mercy will flow through you as you are able to forgive. Passing forward not just the price of coffee at the drive-thru Starbucks, but passing forward a very extraordinary experience of the gospel in and through the very ordinary places of our lives.

In my preparation this week, the unforgettable forgiveness story of Chris Singleton came to mind. He is the young man whose mother was shot and killed in the murderous rampage at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston last summer. Of him and the other families of those who were killed displaying what could be nothing other than a God-given act of mercy. A forgiveness that’s just wondrous. Chris Singleton and his forgiveness. Maybe it isn’t an example of forgiveness to the millionth, gazillionth, zillionth degree, but it is certainly one to the zillionth degree.

As I read commentaries and found other sermons on the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, it struck me that every preacher, every scholar was citing some extraordinary example of forgiveness. A litany of citations from Apartheid and South Africa, from victims of violent crimes or their families, stories from World War II soldiers and Holocaust survivors. Each example more remarkable than the next. Each forgiveness story so compelling you can’t hear it, you can’t tell it enough. Like Chris Singleton surrounded by his college baseball teammates less than 24 hours after his mother was shot and killed and telling reporters that his mother would want him to forgive, that she taught him that “love will always be stronger than hate.” Awe-inspiring vignettes of forgiveness beyond what most of us can even begin to imagine because on most days you and I are striving for a life of forgiveness that reaches across the dinner table, or a forgiveness that makes its way into the office next door at work, or a forgiveness that anoints a morning conversation with your child, or a forgiveness that inspires a long-put-off phone call to a friend, or a forgiveness that ripples through a group text among high school sophomores, or a forgiveness that saves a roommate situation about to be broken forever, or a forgiveness that warms the hearts of siblings separated by a lot more than miles.

Which brings me back to the absurd parable about passing forward the very extraordinary forgiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in and through the very ordinary places of our lives. You and I should never stop looking for and telling those stories of forgiveness that reach to the zillionth degree. Such forgiveness is real and godly and momentous. But the unquantifiable difference in the parable between what the king forgave and what the unforgiving servant went after, ten thousand talents versus a hundred denarii, the difference between what is incomprehensible and what can be counted up and put in a wallet, leads me to conclude that the parable is less about miraculous forgiveness among God’s people and more about an everyday forgiveness that can sometimes feel just like chump change. God knows the world we live in and humanity as we know it needs such miraculous forgiveness multiplied to the nth degree but you and I survive on, thirst for, thrive on, depend upon forgiveness of a much more ordinary kind. And both of them, all of it, comes from God.

At the end of his recent book, The Road To Character, David Brooks offers a list of propositions that take the form of what he calls a “humility code.” The code sort of pulls together, sums up, the qualities of the people of character he writes about through the book. That final list includes things like moral imagination, community, grace, wisdom, vocation, maturity. Brooks’ final thought is that since all of us are flawed when it comes to character and being human, we should acknowledge that we are all stumblers. The beauty and meaning of life, he suggests, are to be found in the stumbling. And when it comes to stumbling, Brooks writes, “We [stumblers] lean on each other as we struggle against sin. We depend on each other for the forgiveness of sin.” Now to be fair to David Brooks, he talks about God often enough in the book. His thoughts on grace are theological. And I am shamelessly lifting one sentence from the whole book. But if you and I are dependent on each other for the forgiveness of sin, we are in deep trouble. That whole book on character and forgiveness is mentioned once on the next to the last page. Maybe that’s because forgiveness comes from God. Forgiveness comes from above, from beyond humanity’s family system. Before forgiveness can be about us, it’s about God. You and I are called to pass it forward.

The only way to forgive is to remember, draw upon, live into, know deep within, tell yourself over and over again, learn from, give thanks for… how much God has forgiven you. And there’s no better place to remember, to taste and to see, than right here at this Table.

It’s a simple meal but it tastes like a million, gazillion, zillion bucks.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

II Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Charles Guth
February 10, 2016
Ash Wednesday

Today we begin to think about Easter. The resurrection of our Lord and Savior is the highlight of the Church’s year, and from very early on Christians have sought to prepare themselves for the occasion. The apostles tell us that in Christ’s cross our sins were redeemed and in his resurrection death was defeated. So during Lent we are especially mindful of our weakness as creatures and of our need to repent from sin. These themes are especially prominent on Ash Wednesday. So it’s easy to see why Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is associated with this day. Joy in suffering, strength in weakness, the sufficiency of Christ—nowhere else does Paul write so movingly about these themes; at no other time is it so fitting to reflect on these than on Ash Wednesday.

And yet, I have my reservations about Ash Wednesday. I don’t object to remembering that we are mortal—that we are from dust, as Scripture and tradition puts it. Far from it. We live in a culture which worships youth and where hospitals euphemistically refer to dead patients as “expired”—as if they were packages of yogurt rather than human beings. By contrast, realistic and reverent acknowledgement of our frailty can be, well, live-giving. There is freedom in recognizing that we are creatures, not the creator. And how much more important is it for Christians to repent humbly before our God? Paul offers us strong words: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God … [do not] accept the grace of God in vain.” We might imagine Paul saying those words in a busy market to crowds of unbelieving gentiles, but no. Be reconciled to God! To his fellow Christians he said that. Do not accept the grace of God in vain. To Christians Paul writes these words. Far be it from us, then, not to heed them. But what can accepting God’s grace yet doing so in vain mean other than accepting grace without seeking transformed life? But transformation starts with repentance. So far so good for Ash Wednesday.

And yet—and yet I worry about it. Not because I think remembering our mortality or repenting are bad in themselves. No, I worry because it seems to me we are so bad at doing them. I’ve seen repentance go wrong so many times before. A dear and very pious friend told me about going to an Ash Wednesday service once. Knowing the day’s theme she was not only contrite but felt deeply guilty sitting in the pew. Saying the liturgy she felt God’s judgment; confessing, she dwelt on her weakness and sin. Upon receiving the imposition of ashes—in the form of a cross on her forehead—the priest told her, “from dust you came and from dust you will return.” And at those words my friend felt worthless. Surely Christ could not bear her sins; surely God could not love her… It’s a horrifying story. My friend’s response was exacerbated by serious mental health problems. But unfortunately such anxiety at the prospect of facing God is all too common. Repentance is not—not—about despair or self-loathing, and yet for many of us that is what it can become.

But there’s a very different way repentance can go wrong. I have been in many Presbyterian churches, and have heard many Prayers of Confession. And I’m often surprised at just how trite many are. Sometimes sin is psychologized away as not being “true to ourselves,” or whittled down into a failure to “do our best.” Our iniquities are reduced to “messing up,” our fallen state to being “screw-ups.” There’s no “we have sinned by our own fault” in these prayers; no confession of not loving God and neighbor in what we have done and left undone. They suggest we hardly need God’s grace at all—I wonder if that’s their point. We are blessed at Nassau to have rich and honest Prayers of Confession; we are blessed to not have the Gospel robbed of its power and Christ’s love stripped of its Passion. The irony of those other prayers is that they’re no more able to trust in God’s love than my friend was. After all, why would we mask over our sinful abandonment of God’s good purposes if we were not afraid to reveal it?

But the tragedy of this approach is that by turning our sin into psychology or mistakes, it actually makes it worse for people like my friend. What’s so sad about my friend’s story is that she thought that God must be mad at her, and mad for everything. She felt guilty for every mistake and every screw-up. But we don’t need to repent for being screw-ups—to make a mistake is not to sin! Our God is loving but just, not nit-picky and obsessive! That is my real worry about Ash Wednesday: it risks confusing repentance and weakness, and thereby either terrifying us or tempting us to delude ourselves.

These are extreme cases, for sure, but I suspect this anxiety at repentance is true of most of us. Few of us like to dwell on our sins against God and neighbor; few of us can bear to honestly look into our souls for long and dwell on the selfishness, injustice, or malice we find. And if we can’t handle it—we think—surely God can’t either! This anxiety goes deep. Our Call to Worship cuts off at verse 13, with Joel calling the people to repent (Joel 2:13). The very next verse basically says, “who knows, maybe God will relent.” Who knows? Maybe. Paul tells us, “do not accept God’s grace in vain.” But so many of us are still trying to trust in God’s grace. Many of us are stuck at, “Who knows? Maybe.”

But everything changes when we remember Christ and his cross. Christ has revealed God’s love for us sinners once and for all. “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God… See, now is the season, now is the day of salvation!” There can be no maybe after Christ; there is no “who knows?” when we look upon the cross! We are accepted; our sins have been forgiven; we have been reconciled to God! Just before our passage Paul tells us, “In Christ God was reconciling the world to God, not counting their trespasses against them.” It’s finished—done. We are reconciled to God.

Paul talks about this reconciliation as though our sins were exchanged for Christ’s righteousness, or as though we died with Christ and were made new with him. Those are challenging but profound metaphors, yet it’s important that we not lose Paul’s main point. God reconciled Godself to us through Christ. In the ancient world, reconciliation was a political idea. It was expected that only the one who fractured the relationship would seek reconciliation. So it was only sinners who do the reconciling. Not so with God! God’s love in Christ flips this order. Paul reminds us that God establishes reconciliation with humans, even though we broke the relationship by sinning. Such is the love of God. In Christ God was not counting our trespasses against us. And so, in Christ we are free—free from our sins, free from the anxiety of not knowing whether God accepts us as we truly are. Paul is so confident that he talks like the future is already here: “If anyone is in Christ: a new creation. Everything old passed away; behold, everything has become new!”

Because of Christ we are absolutely secure in God’s love and acceptance. So we are free to repent this Lent without anxiety. In the Bible, repentance doesn’t mean feeling guilty; it means turning one’s life around—following Jesus. We have been reconciled to God, so now we are free to “live for Christ,” as Paul puts it. We’re free to do the hard work of repenting—to take a careful look at ourselves, and see what we have done and left undone. Maybe our actions show that when things get tough, we don’t really care that much about racism. Maybe our spending shows that while we care for the poor, we care for stuff more. Maybe our treatment of those who wait on us shows that we don’t treat them with the dignity they deserve. But certainly, certainly we need to look not just at what we do, but who we are. Are you a lover of God and neighbor? How can you be more Christ-like?

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you are reconciled to God, so you are free to repent without fear. Sisters and brothers in Christ, you are a new creation, so you are free to live like it! I “entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God!” Become more of what you already are—a new creation in Christ. May this be your challenge, and your comfort, this Lenten season. Amen.

© 2016 Charles Guth

Exodus 34:29-35
David A. Davis
February 7, 2016
Transfiguration of the Lord

The rabbi, the imam, and the minister walked into the mosque for the first of our three night presentation/discussion on tolerance in a multi-faith world. As we came from the imam’s office into what is called the multi-purpose room, the room was already full. The members of the mosque were gathering for evening prayer in the worship space, so the folks sitting in the multi-purpose room were pretty much all from the Jewish Center and from Nassau Church. Rabbi Feldman quietly asked Imam Chablis whether we should ask the women from our congregations to cover their heads or ask the men to sit on one side and the women on the other. “No, no, no!” was the answer from the Imam. “You are our guests here! This is your house too. Everyone should be comfortable just the way they are.” It was an act of hospitality. He then invited all of us to observe the evening prayer but requested that we take off our shoes before entering the worship space of the mosque, before entering the holy ground of prayer.

The next night the imam, the rabbi, and the minister walked into the synagogue. The conversation at the Jewish Center, however, was in the worship space. We were speaking from the bimah, the equivalent of the pulpit, the place from which Torah is read. As we entered I immediately remembered being in worship there before for various things and I knew I would be expected to cover my head. Men cover their head as a sign of humility and submission before the Lord, before the teaching of the Lord. The rabbi had his kepah on, his yarmulke. The imam’s head is covered all the time. As I looked around the men from Nassau Church there in the pews, they had picked up the covering at the door and were wearing it. So I asked the rabbi. His answer was a bit different. “You do what you want,” he said, “Just like last night, you’re a guest here.” And as we continued to move through the aisle he turned back and said, “But people will notice. You know they will notice.” So I went and picked up a kepah.

Moses wore a veil over his face because people noticed. They noticed that the skin of his face was shining and they were afraid to come near him. According to the Exodus account offered for your hearing, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the second edition of the tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. The people noticed. They noticed and were afraid to come near. But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the leaders then came close to him, and Moses gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken on Mount Sinai. When he was done speaking, he put a veil on his face. He would take it off when he went before the Lord. When Moses went to speak with the Lord, he would take it off. And when he came to tell the Israelites what the Lord had commanded, his face was uncovered still. And as he spoke, the people noticed his face. So after he spoke, after he told them all that the Lord had said, Moses would cover his face again until he went to speak with the Lord. Because the people noticed. The people noticed. You know they will notice.

Moses, the veil, and his shining face. Tradition sort of sums it up as Moses’ face reflecting the glory of God. That’s why this Old Testament reading from Exodus is scheduled for this Sunday. Transfiguration Sunday. The last Sunday before Lent. The Sunday the church reads the gospel account of Jesus up on the mountain radiating God’s glory there with Moses and Elijah. As Luke puts it, “While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” Yes, the disciples noticed.

Moses, the veil, and his shining face. The Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 3 refers to Moses’ veil. He turns it into a metaphor and applies it to his theological presentation of God’s new covenant revealed in Christ. According to Paul, in Jesus Christ “we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of that glory that was being set aside.” Paul uses the veil as a symbol of the hardening of minds, the hardening of hearts, the captivity to the law. Christ liberates us, sets us free, removes that veil. He sets the veil aside in the power of the Spirit so that “all of us, with unveiled faces” can see the glory of the Lord “as though reflected in a mirror.” In Paul’s theology, in Paul’s argument, in Paul’s sermon, Christ is the UN-veiling of God’s glory.

But any text from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, every scripture lesson leads to more than one sermon. That’s part of the power of the Word. That’s how the Spirit works. How God still speaks. It’s the mystery of God’s living word. Before taking the veil and turning it into a soaring, complex theological metaphor of the new covenant, there’s so much of the narrative still to ponder. There are details here in Exodus that ought not to be missed. There is something to taking the story of Moses and his covering at face value.

The people noticed Moses’ face that was shining (according to the text) because he had been talking with God. You will remember that this was far from the first time Moses talked with God. The talking started way back at the burning bush. The talking continued all through those plagues. The talking happened out in the wilderness; the manna from heaven and the water from the rock and the people complaining, complaining, complaining. God and Moses were talking then. There was a whole lot of talking the first time up Mount Sinai. And when the whole unfortunate golden calf scene unfolded, the talking with God had an urgency to it: “Go down, Moses.” But this time after the talking, this time after God told Moses to cut another couple of tablets and head up to Mount Sinai, this time after the talking, there was a shine.

The biblical account is a bit ambiguous as to what Moses actually saw in terms of God’s glory. Back when God first called out to him from that burning bush, when God told Moses to come no closer and to take off his sandals because of the holy ground, back when God first introduced himself to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” Moses hid his face and was afraid to look at God. Later when Moses would go into the tent of meeting, a pillar of cloud would descend and hang there are the entrance to the tent as a sign that God was speaking to Moses. All of the people would rise and bow down right then because they knew God was speaking to Moses. “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (33:11). Face to face. But soon after, when Moses asked to see God’s glory, God gives a “talk to the hand” kind of response. “You cannot see my face; for no one will see my face and live” (33:20) From the cleft of the rock as the Lord passed by, after the Lord takes the hand away, Moses could only see the backside of God’s glory. So while tradition holds that it was God’s glory that caused Moses’ face to shine, what Moses saw, how much of God’s glory Moses actually saw, it’s all a bit fuzzy. They spoke face to face. You can’t see my face.

There’s something about this second trip up to Mount Sinai with the fresh tablets. Something happened then related to the shine. There’s something about God and Moses talking this time, talking after Aaron made that calf and all the people were running wild. That’s what it actually says, “they were running wild”. Running wild so much that Joshua described what he heard as the noise of war. But Moses said no, it’s the sound of revelers. And his anger burned hot and he threw the tablets and broke them at the foot of Mount Sinai.

So with two new tablets, Moses goes back up to talk with God. God sort of introduces Godself to Moses like they were starting over. The Lord. A God merciful, gracious, abounding in steadfast love. A God who takes sin seriously in every generation but a God who forgives. Moses quickly bows his head and prays. “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance.” Moses and his request for forgiveness. Not just for them but for us. “We’re a stiff-necked people, Lord. We always have been, we always will be. It’s who we are. Will you still take us, Lord? Take us with you.” The Lord said, “I will create a covenant with you, before all your people. It’s an awesome thing that I will do with you.” God’s faithfulness, God’s forgiveness. God’s once and future promise of steadfast love. It’s an awesome thing. So incredible, so powerful, so life-changing, so transforming, so glorious that it made Moses’ face shine. And the people noticed. You know they will notice.

Cathy and I were at a memorial service yesterday morning for the mother of a friend of ours. The church was packed. The family shared memories. The preacher proclaimed the gospel of resurrection hope. There were some great hymns. A soloist sang “Amazing Grace.” Early in the service I noticed a young couple in front of us and a bit to the left. I noticed her because she never took off her coat and she had one of those scarves that looked like it wrapped around 35 times. The heat in the church was fine. But it was like she didn’t want to get too comfortable, or she wanted to make sure she wasn’t staying, or she didn’t want to get “coodies” or something. She had such dour look on her face. When we stood to sing she never opened her mouth, never reached for a hymnbook. When we said Psalm 23 together, there was nothing. The last hymn was “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” The congregation was rocking, the organ was shaking the place, and I looked over — nothing. I just wanted to lean up to this young person and say, “What are you afraid of?” This, this, this… can be so life-giving, life-sustaining, life-changing!” There was a shine in that sanctuary yesterday morning.

“Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.” That’s how John Calvin begins his Institutes of the Christian Religion. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. There is a compelling lesson to learn about our humanity here in the Exodus account of Moses, the veil, and his shining face. Oh, there’s something to know about God here. God and God’s steadfast love. For sure. But the people, the people, they were afraid of that shine. Afraid of the shine of God’s forgiveness. Moses’ veil. It’s a symbol of humankind’s lust for reveling and the sounds of war. A relic that ought to remind us of humanity’s innate preference for judgment, and grudges, and keeping score, and winning, and being right. A lasting sign of the fear of God’s faithfulness, forgiveness and grace. That’s sounds so counter-intuitive, the fear of God’s promise. It is so counter-intuitive and yet so true. Look around. Look within.

Calvin goes on to argue that people can never really understand themselves without first looking upon God’s face. So, may the Lord bless you and keep you, may the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you, may the Lord lift His countenance (His face) upon you and give you peace.

Shine. Shine. Shine.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
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I Corinthians 3:4-9
Rev. Lukata Mjumbe
January 17, 2016

© 2016 Lukata Mjumbe

Psalm 71
David A. Davis
January 31, 2016

I put my trust in you, God. I’m going to put my trust in you. I trust you, God. Help me to never forget your presence or to confuse my sense of being far away from you with your absence in my life. With the very core of your being, your righteousness and your steadfast love, keep hold of me, pick me up, never let me go. Part of who you are is to always hold me close. Turn your ear this way, Creator of heaven and earth. I’m down here. I’m over here. I’m right here. Don’t you just leave me here. Wrap your arms around me and hold me forever, Lord. Be for me a rock-solid shelter of strength. Be the one I can lean on, stand on, depend on. Always. That’s who you are, Lord. Not just my safe place. Not just my port in the storm. Not just my home base. You are my strength. My comfort. My shield. My protection. All day long, God. All day long. All day long.

It’s not easy. It’s never easy. Trying to live in the world, trying to live like you want me to live, like you expect me live. There’s so much hatred, so much cruelty, so much meanness and selfishness. I worry about it all rubbing off on me. I worry about wickedness getting its hands on me. Spare me from it, Holy One! Sin is so creepy, so creeping, it so easily works its way into my life, takes over my life, runs my life. I don’t want it like that. I don’t like that. I want you to come first. I want you to capture my attention. I want to think about you. Like when I was a child and I couldn’t get to sleep. I didn’t want to have a bad dream. I didn’t like the dark. It was you that helped me get to sleep. Thinking about you made me feel better. I knew it was you who kept me safe. You’ve been the center of my life longer than I can remember. My hope. My trust. It’s always been you. From before I was born. I can’t stop. I can’t help praising you. I can’t stop saying thank you. It’s not just part of who I am. It is who I am. Grateful. Grateful to you. Grateful for you. All day long. All day long, Lord.

There are times in life when people look to others as an example. They look for leaders, role models, faith examples. They yearn to see in someone a sign of strength or to see in someone some glimpse of you, God, or a glimpse of how to live for you. But even that, seeing someone as a witness, a sign, it all comes from you. Not us. Not me. It is you at work in us. If people come to know about you through me, if they see you at work in me, I will shout for joy. I will be full of your praise. Your glory will shine in me from head to toe. But I need you for more than the glory days, God. Don’t just save yourself for the glory days. Don’t just meet me on the mountaintop when things are sweet. How about on the days when I have nothing left, when I’m worn out, when the days are getting the best of me. How about then? Don’t leave me then! You’ve never failed me… yet. Don’t start now. And don’t you dare leave me when my years start to add up. When the season of my life turns to fall and then to winter. I’m going need you then, especially then.

You know how it works, right. Lord, how people talk about you, taunt you, threaten you? It’s even worse when things aren’t going well or you’re feeling down or vulnerable. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is a junior high cafeteria. Make a few mistakes and everybody’s ready to pounce. Show a little weakness and they circle the wagons. Let your body slow or memory fade and they all start talking to you like you’re a child. Let the bad stuff happen in life or in the world and someone is bound to shout, “So where’s your God now!’

On those days, don’t go far from me, Lord. Those days. More like every day. Don’t leave me, Lord. Truth is, you better be quick to help me. Days like that, I don’t want to wait for you. That’s when I’m going need you. And I’m not going lie, I wouldn’t mind a bit if those who talk trash to me were embarrassed a bit. All those naysayers and evil doers nipping at my feet — is just a bit of scorn or disgrace or shame for them in this world too much to ask? I know, I know! I’m just saying. The bad guys don’t always have to win, do they? Some days, some years, some decades it feels like that.

That’s how it feels. That’s how it seems. But I know not to give up. I know to press on. My hope will always be in you. I’m going praise you all the more. And when things are going so well, I’m going praise you even more. I’m going to tell of your wondrous deeds and your righteous acts and your steadfast love and your overflowing mercy and your refreshing grace and your living giving salvation. I know I can never know all that you have done. I can’t keep up. I can’t remember the whole list. But I know you love me and I’m going to keep praising all the mighty things you have done. The mighty deeds of the Lord God. I’m going to lift your name, yours alone. Your righteousness, yours alone. Your power, yours along. I’m going sing. I’m going shout. I’m going live for you alone. All day long, baby. All day long!

It’s what you taught me. It’s how you raised me, Loving, Living God. I learned it all when I was so young. “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me” and “Rejoice in the Lord Always.” I learned it all so long ago and I am not stopping now. I’m still praising the Lord. So even when the hair turns gray, or the hair falls out, and the hips are artificial and the eyes don’t work as well, and the hearing is done for, and the memory is gone, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Because I will be telling the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren about you and how your power and your righteousness creates the very kingdom of heaven. And I’m going to singing “Jesus Loves Me” as long as I have breath.

You have done such great things, O God. The earth, the stars, the planets. Life. Beauty. Love. Covenant. Promise. Commandments. Forgiveness. Resurrection. Eternity. You have done such great things, who else is like you? And you have done such great things for me. I have seen more than my share of trouble, even really big trouble, and yet you pick me up and dust me off. You have brought me out of the very depths of hell and set me back on the way. You led me through the valley of the shadow of death. You have given me laughter after a season of tears. Morning light after a long night of darkness. Over and over again you honor me with the sure and certain knowledge that I am yours. I am your child. I am yours and you love me. You know me by name. Over and over again you comfort me. You heal my heart. You soothe my soul. When nothing else, no one else, can bring me through or lift my burden or lighten my despair, you do. Again and again, You do it all day long. All day long.

As for those who try to get the best of me, those who try to do me in, instead of asking you to heap burning coal on their heads, instead of wishing shame or disgrace on them, I’m just going to tell them about you. I’m going talk about you. I’m going to let the world see me sing.

Because I want my life to be one long song of praise to you for your faithfulness. I can use any instrument around to make a song of praise for you. I want to take all the devices in my life, all the resources you entrust to me, and turn them into a symphony of praise: the work of my hands, my life with family, what I do for a living, my checkbook, how I use my mind, the things I enjoy most, the parts of life I worry about most, I lay it before you and my lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you. The deepest part of my being, that innermost part of me that you saved, that part sings too. My soul sings for you, Mighty God. My soul sings all day long. All day long.

All day long.

© 2016, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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