Luke 1:5-20
David A. Davis
December 1, 2019
Jump to audio

---

Zechariah. Zechariah. Zechariah. Poor old Zechariah. The angel Gabriel was pretty hard on Zechariah. “How will I know that this is so?” That’s all he asked. Just a little later in Luke, pretty much right after this Mary asks a similar question. “How will I know that this is so?”, Mary responded to Gabriel “How can this be? “How will I know that this is so?” Doesn’t sound all that different. Zechariah asks, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” And Gabriel takes his voice away because Zechariah did not believe the angel’s words. “I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words….” Because of that one question, Zechariah is speechless. Zechariah. Zechariah. Zechariah.

The people had been waiting outside in prayer for Zechariah to finish his priestly duties in the sanctuary. When he finally came out, he couldn’t speak to them. They figured out he has seen a vision but he couldn’t speak. He could only talk with his hands. “When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.”  He went home speechless. He couldn’t say a word to Elizabeth. Elizabeth conceives. Elizabeth gives birth to a child. Elizabeth called him John. Zechariah agrees with Elizabeth in writing. “His name is John”. Zechariah immediately can speak and begins to praise God. Speechless for only months but it seems a bit harsh coming from the angel who starts with “Do not be afraid Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.”

Luke makes it a point to tell the reader that both Elizabeth and Zechariah were “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.” The lack of children was not some kind of divine punishment. Luke makes it a point to describe the details of Zechariah’s priestly service. His section was on duty. He was chosen by not as was the custom of the priesthood. He Entered the sanctuary of the Lord to offer incense. The whole assembly prayed outside during the time of the incense. Luke makes it a point to describe the scene there at the altar. The angel Gabriel is “Standing at the right side of the altar of incense.” This isn’t Moses out watching his father in law’s flock in the wilderness with the voice of God coming out of the blue from a burning bush. This isn’t the shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over the flock by night and encountering the glory of the Lord pretty much in the middle of nowhere. This is a righteous, blameless, life-worn priest doing everything he is called to do, in the place where he is called to do it, for the people he is called serve. If there was ever a place an angel was supposed to appear in scripture, this would be it. For Zechariah, this is like a home game, this is the routine of life, this is the daily grind.

Do you remember when the prophet Elijah was up on Mt Horeb hiding in a cave? God did not come to Elijah in one of the ways a Hebrew prophet would have expected. God was not in the earthquake, in the wind, in the fire. God came in a still, small voice. Well, if there was ever a time, a place, a person, and means of an expected holy encounter, this is it, Zechariah! Yes, it’s an angel. It’s the angel Gabriel. And yes, of course, Zechariah “was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.” That’s what angels do to people. That’s why angels always say “Do not be afraid.”  But for goodness sakes, Zechariah, when it comes to experiencing the holiness of God, in biblical terms, this is like your own hand right in front of your face. This is missing God in the most expected place, the most expected time, the most expected way.

“How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years?” Zechariah seems to be asking about pregnancy and birth. But what the angel tells Zechariah about the child, what the angel says about John is a whole lot more than just “Elizabeth will bear you a son.” Great rejoicing among the people. He will be great in the sight of the Lord. Filled with the Holy Spirit. A holy, devout life. The spirit and power of Elijah. Turning many of the people of Israel to the Lord. To make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Gabriel is talking about preparing the way of the Lord. A message in content that Zechariah should be all over. Familiar place. Familiar means. Familiar content. Zechariah. Zechariah. Zechariah. You of all people should be getting it. And you’re not getting it. So the priest whose calling is to communicate the Word of the Lord to the people of the Lord, the one whose life is to be a conduit between God and God’s people, the one who is to embody the expectation of the presence of God, is rendered speechless. It’s more than a response to Zechariah’s disbelief. His voicelessness? It’s a sign, a reminder, a plea for every child of God who yearns for a holy encounter and then misses it when God shows up smack in the middle of the routines of life, the daily grind, and the most ordinary of relationships. Some are blessed to find God in the least expected time and place. Most of us, however, crave to know God is with us amid the spirit numbing routines of life.

Over the holiday I have been reading a book entitled The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall. The novel tells of two Presbyterian ministers beginning with their family of origin. It moves through their college days, meeting their spouses, their sense of call to ministry, the development of their own theological priorities, and their ministry in the church. The two pastors come together in the story as they are both called to share one position at a Presbyterian Church in New York City. The church declined quickly during the previous five-year ministry of a pastor who was not well-liked. As that pastor is described in the book, he cared more about decorating the sanctuary than working on sermons, wouldn’t visit the people and perhaps most concerning, he changed the hymns at the Christmas Eve service.

The two new pastors plan to alternate weeks in the pulpit. One Ivy-league educated pastor’s faith and theology is rooted in his strong belief in a God of wisdom who provides a way to understand the world. The other pastor from the mid-west has a passion for social justice and serving the needs of those in the city. But the best theologian in the book is the 72-year-old church secretary who had been there for 40 years. As the author tells it, it was clear to the new pastors that she felt no need to earn their respect, she simply expected it. Their first morning at the church she marched them into the sanctuary and had each one take a turn at climbing the steps of the pulpit and looking out. “Intimidating, isn’t it?” she asks them. After taking in the view of the empty sanctuary from the pulpit she sits them down in a pew for a talking to.

“I’ve seen a lot of young preachers,” she said, “and none of them are very good. They’re inexperienced, insecure, and they underestimate their audience’. She gestured to the empty pews around her. Then, abruptly, she raised her hand and pointed at the two of them. “Your members are desperate for dignity. They used to have it—the minister before this last, silly one – was here for twenty years. They respected him. He had a steady hand on the rudder, and he had seen God. Not over the washing line in a white robe—but in his wrestling with why we live and what is waiting for us in the end. He had conviction.; he believed that God is watching, God is interested, God is kind’. She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “But then he left, and they hired what’s his name. And now their angry and embarrassed and ashamed.”

That old church theologian, she described a congregation longing for a holy encounter with God. And a preacher who believed those encounters wouldn’t come from some angel appearance over the washing line in a white robe. But in wrestling with the spirit numbing routines of life and of death.

We have been reading and sharing our vision and mission statement a lot through the month of November.

The people of Nassau Presbyterian Church celebrate and demonstrate God’s love

through worship and service in Princeton

and through our lives and work in the world.

Committed to Jesus Christ, our community welcomes the breadth of humanity

and the challenge of the Gospel.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, people of all ages can find a place here

to seek abundant life

and nurture faith.

By God’s grace in our lives, we engage with the world,

yearn to do what is just and fair,

encourage what is kind and helpful,

and seek to walk humbly before God and alongside our neighbors.

 

To put it another way, the people of Nassau Presbyterian Church crave a holy encounter with God amid the spirit-numbing routines of life and of death. One of the reasons we crave God’s presence is because we’ve experienced it here together in the body of Christ. God’s presence in the expected place. And we promise to help each other not to miss the real presence of Christ when he is a close as a hand right in front of your face. The presence of God in and through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit in the expected places. So that we can bear God’s presence as the body of Christ to another and to the world.

---

Luke 1:67-79
Len Scales
November 24, 2019
Jump to audio

---

Zechariah, a priest, did not even believe God’s promise that his wife Elizabeth would bear a child in her old age. After a terrifying encounter with the angel Gabriel, Zechariah goes home unable to speak because of his disbelief. While Elizabeth’s belly grew, so did Zechariah’s trust in God.

The Priest came to see that even God’s promises that seem beyond reach are true.

When Zechariah’s son was born, Elizabeth declared his name to be John. Zechariah regains his speech and one of his first vocal acts is to break out in prophetic song. Like Mary, Jesus’ mother-to-be, Zechariah sings of God’s faithfulness that turns the world upside down, of righting wrongs. Zechariah too sings of peace.

What a tender mercy to be able to grow from disbelief into belief. Even the priest Zechariah knew what it was to distrust God’s amazing promises, to find it hard to see a way forward, to instead fall prey to believing the status quo will forever remain the same.

From disbelief to belief. Making a way where there seems to be no way. This is a pattern of God working amongst God’s people. From generation to generation. From Moses, Aaron, and Miriam to Elizabeth, Zechariah, and John.

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet in the way of peace.”

These are words Zechariah sings, naming the prophetic ministry the baby John will have as he grows and learns to point to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

As we follow in the way of John, bearing witness to Jesus’ love, we do so by the tender mercy of our God.

We join singing with Mary, Zechariah, and John. This song continues from the generation of God’s people led to freedom in Exodus to the generation singing of the birth of Jesus to our generation today.

At times we may not find our voice, and instead resonate more with the silence of Zechariah that precedes his song. The implications of God’s love can be too big to imagine in the face of powers and principalities that are more clearly in view. Perhaps, like Zechariah, we need some time to learn from those around us who already believe and are leading us into the truth of God’s promises.

One seemingly insurmountable challenge of our time and place is the legacy of the colonialization of American land to push peoples into unequal camps. From the Doctrine of Discovery that co-opted Christianity to support the destruction of native communities and symbioses with the land to the legacy of slavery that continues to impact our institutions to the regular pattern of discrimination of immigrant communities.

The summer read with Nassau and Witherspoon Street Churches was on Radical Reconciliation. The book by Boesak and DeYoung gives a Christian perspective and Scriptural storytelling on the truth and reconciliation movement in South Africa following apartheid. The authors challenge that the “radical” in radical reconciliation calls for a change in power. The baton must be handed from the powerful to those with less power.

DeYoung writes in the first chapter of Radical Reconciliation, “Reconciliation for the powerful and privileged means trusting those who have lived under oppression and even following their lead in becoming one new humanity.”^[1]

Many of us in the United States have been struck silent for a long time, like Zechariah, in the face of the truth that God loves all people and Jesus invites all to this table. It is hard to believe the implications of such love will actually bear out. That the kingdom of God will come as it is in heaven.

So it is indeed a tender mercy of God that or cynicism does not win the day. God remains faithful to bearing new life into this world and we get another chance to open our mouths and tell the truth. Current examples of this truth-telling, steps toward the promise of reconciliation, include the University and Seminary’s respective slavery audits and the NYTimes 1619 project.

It is a tender mercy of God that we can go from disbelief, paralysis, and fear to words of truth, prophetic song, and eyes looking toward Jesus.

This turn does not produce immediate, complete results. More conversations are required, further action is called for. Zechariah’s willingness to sing of God’s peace was followed by the life of John the Baptist, his son, who prepared the way for Jesus at every step. Then Jesus came, who conquers sin and death, and invites us, the Body of Christ, to continue to live in response to God’s love.

For Zechariah, God worked in his spirit for about nine/ten months to bring him from silence to prophetic song. For us, God is working still, and, as my friends at Witherspoon Street have reminded me, the work ahead will outlive all of us. The generational impact of racism in this country and community requires generational effort in radical reconciliation.

Nassau and Witherspoons’ shared summer reading of Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism points out the need for a multitude of ongoing relationships.^[2] That is why I’m so grateful as I remember the session’s energy last year when forming the new mission statement, the same statement elder Kim Kleason had us read together in worship last week. I recall the session’s conversations included a lot of energy around Nassau’s ongoing partnerships, particularly with Westminster and Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Churches.

The churches partnerships cultivate avenues for a multitude of ongoing relationships, those formed between joint committees, shared small groups, a March evening to celebrate the gifts of women in our communities, an open door to attend worship with our siblings.

These are not brand new relationships. Look at these banners made to celebrate the 250 anniversary of the Presbyterian Church in Princeton, crafted by hands of Witherspoon Street and Nassau Presbyterian years ago. Two panels hang here in this sanctuary and two panels hang in the Witherspoon sanctuary. Each window of the banners tells an aspect of our shared lives together.

The relationships are many and ongoing. I am grateful for all we have to learn from these partnerships so that we may listen and amplify the prophetic song of our neighbors. That we may sing together of God’s love and reconciliation.

In the broader life of our country, the 1619 project, launched this August, was created 400 years after the institution of slavery was brought to American shores. This work of journalism in word, photo, and voice is a work that strives to tell the truth. “It aims to reframe the country’s history, …, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”^[3]

One 1619 article, a photo essay, is entitled “Their ancestors were enslaved by law. Today, they are graduates of the nations preeminent historically black law school.” It profiles four recent Howard Law graduates and their ancestors who were enslaved. Septembra LeSane’s profile concludes with this quote from her, “As a sixth-generation descendant of slavery, I am essentially a part of the first generation of descendants to carry the torch that was lit by my ancestors into true freedom.”^[4]

The work we embark on together is for the next 400 years. This may seem daunting, but it is a tender mercy that God continues to call to us to join in the kingdom of God that brings healing to the nations, freedom for the oppressed, sight to those who have been blind too long, a lightness where heaviness has reigned.

This is the way from generation to generation we are called to walk, and I am grateful to join with Nassau along this journey. For we have with us many gifts brought by many experiences, the exuberance of children, the studied questions of students, the resilience of working families, the wisdom that comes with age. From generation to generation God’s blessings flow by the tender mercy of God, and so we give thanks and respond in gratitude. We join Zechariah in song.

^[1] Allan Aubry Boesak & Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism (Orbis, 2012) p20.

^[2] Ibid, p 21

^[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

^[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/howard-university-law-school.html

---

II Timothy 1:1-14
David A. Davis
November 17, 2019
Jump to audio

---

When a seminary graduate lands in parish ministry in a particular congregation somewhere, someplace, sometime, it can be like being dropped into a whole other world. A part of the country you’ve never lived. A congregation very different from the one that nurtured you. And theological landscape light years away from the context of a seminary campus. I grew up in a church of 2,500 members in Pittsburgh. I went to serve as a solo pastor for a congregation of 110 members in South Jersey. Down where they think Trenton is North Jersey. I was there before we were married. The whole congregation threw Cathy and me a surprise wedding shower after worship on Sunday. The women gifted Cathy with kitchen stuff. The men brought me tools; not all of them new. It was lovely. I started on July 1st. We were invited to a picnic on a rainy 4th of July. It didn’t stop the picnic. We just all circled up in the two-car garage separate from the house. I’ve never seen a garage as clean; before or since. You could have eaten off the concrete floor. On days of communion, worshippers would drop a communion registration card in the offering plate indicating they had been there to receive communion. I had no idea what a communion registration card was or what do with it. It took me a few weeks to realize that the financial secretary responsible for the offering collected it each Sunday in a paper bag, took it home to count all by himself, and kept it in his freezer until he had a chance to make a deposit at the bank later in the week. This was 1986, not 1926. And the bank with the dropbox was right next to the church. He guarded the church’s weekly deposit with his freezer.

“Guard the good treasure entrusted to you”, Paul writes to Timothy. The good treasure. This week I have been trying to figure out what it means to “guard the good treasure.” I have been thinking about “the good treasure.” Good treasured entrusted to you. Other translations refer to the good treasure as good thing, or good deposit, or precious treasure. “Guard the precious thing placed in your custody.”

At the end of I Timothy, Paul exhorts Timothy to “guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.” (I Timothy 6:20). That seems to lean toward a connotation of the treasure as teaching, as truth, as content. Guard the content of the teaching, the truth, the gospel that has been entrusted to you. But the Greek word leans more toward that sense of a deposit. Something placed within you; more than something taught to you.

I asked for help on the “good treasure” inquiry from my early morning Wednesday small group. Last Wednesday, we studied this text from I Timothy. At one point in our conversation, I just asked. “What do you think the good treasure is here. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you.” Folks shared the language from the various translations around the room. One person was reading from his Portuguese bible. The thoughts around the circle kept coming. The good treasure is the gift of faith that God gives us through the Holy Spirit. The good treasure is the gospel account of the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The good treasure is the earthly riches God has given us along with God’s call for us to take good care of all that we have been given. The good treasure is what Paul mentions earlier here in chapter 1; “a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” God’s gift to us of the good treasure is a spirit of power and of love and of self-control. Eight to ten of us in the room between 6:30 and 7:30 am Wednesday morning and in good Presbyterian fashion, eight to ten takes on what Paul is referring to by the good treasure!

Is it faith? Is it the gospel? Is it a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline? Is it the content of teaching and its truth? Is it the earthly treasures entrusted to our care by God? I strongly suspect that the answer is “yes”. “Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.” Guarding good treasure. Maybe it’s less about figuring it all out and more about having the eyes to see it. Lois and Eunice for instance. “I am reminded of your sincere faith,” Timothy writes, “a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Timothy’s mother is mentioned in the 16th chapter of Acts. It is the description of Paul’s first meeting Timothy. Timothy, a disciple, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer and his father was Greek. Lois, Eunice, and a sincere faith passed on. Authentic faith lived. That sounds to me like guarding good treasure; Lois and Eunice.

Maybe I can’t figure it out exactly, define it precisely; guarding good treasure. But I’ve seen it. Oh, I have seen it. Like the long-time church member who once told me she responded to the wedding proposal from the man she would then marry and be with for the next 65 years or so, she told time she would say yes on the condition that they would always tithe to the church. She also told him her mother would always live with them. That’s the same saint of the church who, when the congregation would host about 25 homeless men in the fellowship hall two weeks of the year, she would arrive at 5:30 am each day to cook breakfast. She said, “every child of God deserves a hot breakfast.” A life-long witness to faith and vast love for all of God’s children. Guarding good treasure.

Like the couple who held down the choir of twelve people week after week. I was the bass section. She was a soprano. He was a tenor. He was an electrician. She drove a school bus and I never heard her say a negative or cross word. Once a year they would sing a duet; “Out of the Ivory Palaces into a World of Woe.” I would melt like butter. Not because it was a musical masterpiece, but because no one in that congregation showed me and my family more love and faith and commitment to us and to that community of faith. A contagious devotion to the body of Christ. Guarding good treasure. Like the gruff, old Presbyterian pastor who took me under his wings. He served a congregation in the heart of Camden, New Jersey for decades. He could curse with the best of them but his commitment and work for justice and serving the poor and speaking for the voiceless never-wavered in his lifetime of ministry. He worked for the full inclusion of the LGBT community in the Presbyterian church starting more than 40 years ago. Guarding the good treasure by never giving it up in the work of God’s kingdom.

Like the saint of the church here at Nassau who was our best evangelist for worship. She treated each Sunday’s worship like a delicacy. She was to worship as a “foody” is to fancy food. She was very clear about how her life and faith and joy were nurtured by worship. And she would tell anyone and everyone that every Sunday was an Easter Sunday to her. Like all those adult advisors who take vacation days and give of there time, summer after summer, to lead our youth from Nassau in the week of a mission at the Appalachian Service Project. Like the church school teachers who year after year, week after week, teach your children and grandchildren about Jesus, just the way they taught mine. Like the World War II veteran here at Nassau never met a long sentence or a fancy word or a bad joke he wouldn’t like or wouldn’t use. But near the end of his life, he told me that when it came to things of God and complexities of faith and the yearnings to figure it all out, he had come to the conclusion that it all came down to love; God’s love for him. And that was enough, more than enough. Basking unashamed less in the life of the mind and more in the love of God. Passing on the stories of Jesus from generation to generation. Leading a group of young people for a week that they will never forget and will shape how they view the world. Living into and being a role model for others in what it means to glorify God and enjoy God forever. Oh yes, guarding the good treasure entrusted to you? I have seen it again and again.

Guarding the good treasure. It’s not something to define precisely. It’s something to look around and see. Fred Craddock taught preaching, wrote about preaching, and preached in a way that influenced several generations of preachers including me. There is a well-known Craddock sermon preserved in audio form entitled “When the Roll is Called Down Here.” It is a sermon on the last chapter of Romans where Paul asks to bring greetings to a whole bunch of people and he does it by name: Priscilla and Aguila, Epaenetus, Mary, Andronicus, Junia, and a few others. The refrain in the sermon is “don’t just call it a list”. It is Paul remembering and giving thanks for the saints in his life. For those who guarded the good treasure entrusted to them. Or as Paul describes it there in Romans, those “who risked their necks” for the sake of Jesus Christ.

At the end of the sermon, the preacher tells the congregation to take their bulletin and write this: “I thank my God for all my remembrance of you”. And he tells them to write down a name, and then another name, and another. And he tells them to keep it. It’s not just a list but keep the list. Add to it when you can and always take it with you. Take it with you all the way to the gates of heaven. “I know, I know” he says, “the bible teaches us that we came into the world with nothing and we can take nothing out of it. But take it anyway. And when you get there, St. Peter is going to say to you, what is that? And you’re going to say, it’s just a list of names. And Peter’s going to say, show me the list. No, don’t worry about it, it’s just my list. St. Peter says, come on now, show me the list. You give it to him. He looks at it. And he says, “Oh I know all these people. I just passed them all on the way here to the gate. They were hanging up a big sign that says “Welcome home”.

Guarding the good treasure. You really can’t define it. But if you look around, believe me, you can see it.

---

Haggai 2:1-9
Andrew Scales
November 10, 2019
Jump to audio

---

Seven years ago, I traveled to El Salvador as the Presbyterian campus minister with a group of students from Davidson College during spring break. We spent part of the week at a rural community near the Lempa River called Nueva Esperanza, “New Hope.” On our first day there, we gathered in the open-air pavilion at the center of town, near the local parish church. Sharing a meal of pupusas and slaw, we listened to a Catholic nun named Sister Noémi and some of the townspeople tell their story.

When the civil war broke out in 1980, many rural villages were terrorized by paramilitary groups that roamed the countryside. Sister Noémi gathered the people who belonged to their rural parish, and they fled into exile in Honduras. They lived together for years as a small, tight-knit community, learning skills and trades with the intention that they would one day return to the homeland where they had farmed for generations. They worked and trained, married and had children, watched and waited for a day when the violence would stop.

Shortly after the war ended in 1992, Sister Noémi and her people applied for the right to return at their embassy. As part of the peace accords, they were entitled to return to their land and claim it again as their own. And so, the whole community boarded a plane, flew to San Salvador, and rode by bus to their remote village that had been destroyed in the war. After more than a decade in exile, they were finally returning home to rebuild.

Sister Noémi explained that the roads to their home were impassable, and so they got off the bus and began to walk to their land. As they made their way toward the village, a roadblock stood between them and the church at the center of town. Armed men, former soldiers from the war, had claimed the land in someone else’s name, probably a land speculator. They had come this far, into the wilderness that was their former home, only to be turned back at gunpoint.

Standing there in the hot sun, this small flock that had been through war and exile was at the point of losing their dream. Sister Noémi took the hands of the old women, some of the mothers and the children, and she stepped forward in front of the lowered rifles. Together they chanted “Ni un paso atrás! Ni un paso atrás!” “Not a step backwards! Not a step backwards!” The women began moving the barricades while the soldiers moved to the side. It was a miracle, an impossible barrier gave way to the nonviolent determination of ordinary farmers, people who had the courage to begin something new after years of warfare.

Perhaps what came next, however, was just as miraculous. The community stayed together, and they lived in that small church building as one family until they could restore one another’s homes and farms. With help from Catholic groups, foreign aid, nonprofits in the US, Europe, and Latin America, they began to rebuild their village house by house, barn by barn, schoolroom by schoolroom. When we visited in 2013, the village had come alive as Nueva Esperanza, “New Hope”: a clinic, a library, a school, a community center, homes for everyone.

The front of the church had been plain stucco, but now it was covered in a bright mural that told their story. Off to the side, as if falling off the edge of the wall, troops of soldiers shrouded in crimson and black clouds look over a barricade to a depiction of the town. On the other side, women weave blankets, while farmers carry bulging sacks of corn into a barn. Children learn their lessons outside a schoolroom under shade trees. A woman rejoices with hands outstretched in front of her home while a vision of St. Oscar Romero smiles down from heaven. A cross stands above the mural of blue skies and green valleys, the village known as New Hope.

For me, the story of Nueva Esperanza resonates with the words of the prophet Haggai from our reading this morning. The struggle, the fear, the determination, the long waiting, the grief and hope, the trust in God’s faithfulness, the courage for something new—these are all part of the story of Haggai’s people and their return from captivity.

Haggai preaches to the Jewish community living in Palestine after two generations of exile in Babylon. The new Persian king, Darius, had defeated the Babylonians and declared that the Jews may return home to rebuild the ruined city Jerusalem. And some of the exiles do return with a new governor and a new high priest. They have permission to construct a new Temple, the “house” Haggai talks about. The book of Haggai is a series of exhortations, sermons really, delivered between late August and mid-December in 520 BC, barely the length of a fall semester of college. Haggai exhorts the people not to lose hope, not to give up in their mission to restore the Temple and revive their homes.

We know from the different collected sermons that many returning exiles complained or despaired. The new Temple could never compare to the old Temple that the Babylonians destroyed two generations ago. Haggai admits that, no, it’s true, they cannot simply reconstruct the past. The past is gone, and they have to reconsider and reinterpret how God is at work in their own time.

But the experience of exile, of wilderness, has deepened and matured their relationship with God. They cannot simply go back to who they were before.

But for Haggai, whose name means “Pilgrim,” this is not a reason to despair, but rather an opportunity to take courage for something new. God calls them to rebuild, to trust that the God who had sustained them in the wilderness would also make good on this promise that our English translation says is “prosperity,” but in Hebrew is shalom. God promises to be with them, that God’s presence will inspire and strengthen them, that shalom, peace, flourishing, will be the end of their story.

Listen again to these excerpts from Haggai, unfamiliar names and all, as God speaks to a people living in the space between despair and hope:

“Now take courage, Zerubabbel, governor of Judah; take courage, High Priest Joshua; take courage, all you people of the land, says the LORD. Work, for I am with you, says the LORD of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides among you; do not fear (vv. 4-5)…. The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts; and in this place I will give shalom (v. 9).”

I hear those words from 2,500 years ago, and I cannot help but also hear the rallying cry of Sister Noémi and her friends: “Ni un paso atrás! Ni un paso atrás!” “Not one step backwards! Not one step backwards!” The God who brings wandering peoples home and makes strangers into a beloved community says to us also, “Not a step backwards!” in the work of the Gospel. God wants us to work toward shalom, to be peacemakers, workers in the arduous task of mending broken and hurting places in our world.

As we heard in the New Testament reading from 1 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul takes up language resonant with Haggai’s words to say that we, too, are like a temple, that God dwells in our midst. Like a master builder, Paul laid the foundation, Jesus Christ, and we work to build a community that develops God’s promises of joy, and peace, and flourishing.

Gathering together a loving Christian community can happen even in the simple rhythms of the life of a campus ministry. Last Friday evening, a dozen undergrads or so from Princeton Presbyterians bunched together on couches in the Assembly Room down the hall to eat pizza and watch a movie. Our student leaders Thomas Hontz and Grace Matthews picked Morgan Neville’s award-winning documentary about Mister Rogers called Won’t You Be My Neighbor? It’s a fascinating look at the life of Fred Rogers, the decades-long host of the PBS show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

For me and many members of my generation, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is a familiar memory of my earliest days watching television. It’s so familiar that all the episodes sort of blur together into one vague memory of a nice man singing, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor…” while he calmly put on a cardigan, switched from dress shoes to sneakers, and sprinkled fish food into his aquarium.

Neville’s film, however, captures the astonishing, even revolutionary, kindness that Fred Rogers communicated through his lifelong dedication to championing the dignity of children. The theme of the neighborhood, a place where people live together and rely on one another, becomes a question, an invitation to how we should treat one another. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” For example, Mister Rogers’ neighborhood is a place where, in 1969, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the white host Fred Rogers could sit with his feet in the same kiddie pool as Officer Clemmons, a black cast member, on a hot summer day.

The two men subtly demonstrated to small children the absolute moral poverty of segregation and racism. In a kiddie pool, viewers saw the joy and happiness that could come from simply enjoying one another’s company as fellow human beings. In its context, simple kindness on a children’s show took on meaning as an act of profound moral vision.

It’s easy to dismiss that kindness and gentleness—the almost otherworldly goodness—of someone like Fred Rogers as alien, unfamiliar, impractical. I wonder, however, if Mister Rogers and his neighborhood demonstrated something else: tremendous courage. Courage to imagine that a vision of the world grounded in respect, dignity, and love could transform and even overcome the ways that, in every generation, we succumb to temptations of violence, division, and hatred. The show on PBS was for children, but it had something to say to everyone.

One of the last public appearances Fred Rogers made in his life was when he delivered the Commencement address at Dartmouth College in the summer of 2002. It had only been months after the September 11^th attacks. It was a time full of grief, bewilderment, paralyzing fear, and, yes, sometimes even violent aggression toward Muslim and Middle Eastern citizens in the United States, neighbors who had nothing to do with terrorism. In his simple, patient way, Fred Rogers spoke to college graduates about a simple song he often sang on his television program called “It’s You I Like.” As his speech drew to a close, he said,

“It’s you I like. And what that ultimately means, of course, is you don’t ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. When I say ‘It’s you I like,’ I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for things without which humankind cannot survive: love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.

So, in all that you do, in all of your life, I wish you the strength and the grace to make those choices which will allow you and your neighbor to become the best of whoever you are.” [Pause]

“You don’t ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you.” If you walk around the back of Nassau Presbyterian Church, the side that faces Richardson Auditorium, you’ll find that those words hang on a banner for Princeton Presbyterians, the campus ministry Len and I serve as Chaplains. It’s something we often say to one another, and I believe it reflects its own kind of courage in a world often obsessed with ambition, achievement, even domination over others.

It’s easy to despair, to resign oneself to our common troubles and say, “that’s just the way the world is, it never changes.” No. In a world wounded by violence and cruelty, God invites us to become restorers of community. God calls us to find the strength to go forward—not one step backwards—to live our lives with courage for something new that is grounded in radical love and generosity. Like the people of Nueva Esperanza and the returned exiles from Babylon, God calls us now to simple acts that work toward shalom: “love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, justice that proves more powerful than greed.” As we walk in that way, God promises us in every age: “Take courage! My spirit abides among you, do not fear.” Amen.

 

Exodus 40 : 34–38
David A. Davis
November 3, 2019
Jump to audio

---

“For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and the fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.” Each stage of their journey. As we conclude our reading, study, and preaching on the Book of Exodus this morning, I would like to invite you to ponder with me the promise and presence of God at each stage of the journey. Each and every stage.

After that low point in the Book of Exodus in terms of the relationship between God and the whole congregation of the people of Israel, the low point being the golden calf, Moses convinced God to go with God’s people on the journey to the Promised Land. Moses pleaded with God, pointing out that what made them God’s people was God’s presence. “Don’t send us out there if you’re not going to go!’” God agreed to go with them. God shows Moses a bit of God’s glory. And then God and Moses together come up with stone tablets 2.0. Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai tablets in hand with a face so shiny that people were afraid to come near. Moses started to wear a veil because of that radiance of being in the presence of God’s glory. What comes next in Exodus is the building of the tabernacle. Six chapters that tell of detail after detail after detail. If you thought the part I just read about Moses putting the finishing touches on the tabernacle had a lot of detail, you should take a look at the preceding chapters. Detail. Fine detail. It is quite the level of detail and a huge chunk of what makes up the Book of Exodus. That level of detail also comes in the God-given instructions to Moses on how to build the tabernacle in chapters 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29. The instruction and the construction, all of it summarized, concluded with the narrator’s comment that started the reading for today: “Moses did everything just as the Lord had commanded him”.

You will remember that Exodus begins with the enslaved people of Israel being mercilessly worked to death at the hands of Pharaoh making bricks. Now all the congregation of the Israelites brought the best of what they had to contribute to the making of tabernacle. It wasn’t just Moses who obeyed, it was all the people of God. And as if to emphasize that contrast to slavery, Exodus tells of how everyone whose heart was stirred and everyone whose spirit was willing brought their offerings to be used for the tabernacle, for the tent of meeting. They were no longer being tortured in the presence of Pharaoh. Their heart was moved as they toiled in the presence of God. They were no longer shackled with the demand to obey and follow Pharaoh. They were longing to obey and follow God. These significant chunks of Exodus, so easy to skim past, all intended to testify to the formation of the people of God and their worship of God in the presence of God.

This is how God starts the instructions to Moses: “Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering, from all whose hearts prompt them to give…..and have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.” Tabernacle: a moveable sanctuary. Tabernacle: A place for God to dwell. Tabernacle: A place for God to dwell with a people on the move. Tabernacle: God’s dwelling place along the journey. Tabernacle: More than a sign, more than a symbol. God’s promised dwelling place. “Have the people make me a sanctuary so that I may tabernacle with them”. A forty-year journey for the people and the tabernacling of God along the way.

After Moses and the people did everything just as the Lord had commanded, “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. .. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and the fire was in the cloud by night, before the eyes of all the house of Israel at each stage of their journey.”  Each stage of their journey. Each and every stage. The tabernacling of God at each and every stage of the journey.

One day this summer I was standing all by myself on a putting green doing some practicing. All of a sudden I heard my name. It wasn’t somebody calling my name. It was someone invoking my name; as in Rev. Dave Davis, pastor of Nassau Presbyterian Church. It actually took me a minute to figure out where it was coming from. Two men were walking by the putting green talking about me, not looking for me. In fairness, I was in shorts, wearing a hat, holding a putter. It is far from what I look like around here. But the two passed me as close as I am to the folks just a few pews away.  And they kept talking about me. And you know what, I didn’t say a word. I just listened hoping they weren’t going to say something bad about me! Turns out, they were talking about maybe inviting me to play golf someday. But it was one of those occasions that I bet you have had before, like when you’re driving your kids around in the car with some of their friends and your learn all kinds of new stuff because they forgot you were there, or when one of your in-laws is talking about you to your spouse in what they thought was a whisper and you are nearby in the kitchen doing dishes, or when the co-worker mentions you in an email and makes the dreaded mistake of hitting reply to all. “You know I’m standing right here, right? You know I can hear you, right? You know you hit reply to all, right? You know, I’m here, right?” I wonder how often God has that experience? God wanting to say to you or to me  “You know I am here, right?”

“If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall hold me fast” The psalmist on the tabernacling God.

A packed sanctuary on a Sunday morning. A gaggle of young people ringing the chancel steps. A crowd of elders, mentors, family surrounding them. In the sanctuary, you can hear a pin drop as one by one each kneels and the room prays. “Defend, O Lord, your servant with your heavenly grace, that she may continue yours for ever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until she comes to your everlasting kingdom.” A confirmation prayer. A prayer for the tabernacling of God.

A young man from the congregation was living and working overseas for a year. It was a long year. He told me once on a  visit back home and here to church that while he enjoyed what he was doing and where he was, there were plenty of times that he battled loneliness and struggled to get to sleep and just felt very, very far from home. He thanked me because he would go to the church website and listen to our sermon podcast. He described how as he listened, he found comfort, was reminded of church, reminded of home, reminded of God. And he said, “And another thing, your voice helps me to fall asleep.” Maybe not the best thing for a preacher to hear! But that conversation with him sharing of how he found comfort thousands of miles away was a testimony to the tabernacling God.

Some will remember hearing before about a memory shared by Flannery O’Conner in one of her letters. She tells of an evening dinner party in New York City, one of those gatherings of gifted and accomplished writers who found each other and formed their own kind of literary society in the early to mid-twentieth century. The dinner party lasted quite a while and the wine flowed and O’Conner describes her own unsophisticated, southern self-feeling so out of place among the intellectual elites. At a point late in the evening, another author, Mary McCarthy droned on about how the Catholic faith of her upbringing had faded but she still appreciated the eucharist as a religious symbol. O’Conner writes in the letter of her brief outburst of a response. “Well, if it is only a symbol, then the hell with it.” And then she writes, “That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about [the eucharist, the presence of Christ], outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me.” Flannery O’Conner on the presence of Christ at the table. What John Calvin in the Reformed tradition called “the real presence of Christ.” More than a sign. More than a symbol. Flannery O’Conner on the tabernacling God.

Christmas Eve, the late service of Lessons and Carols. The sanctuary fades to black. Members of the congregation hold their candles, anxiously awaiting the light and the singing of “Silent Night”. There is one final lesson to be read. A lesson read every Christmas Eve. A lesson best read when surrounded by darkness when the only light to see is the light of Christ. Most in the sanctuary could say it out loud as it is being read. Not just because it is familiar and read every Christmas Eve. More than that, it’s a promise for the soul when the darkness around can be so very, very dark. A promise to cling to in each and every season. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it….The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the word….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” A promise for the soul from the tabernacling God.

Today, on this Sunday closest to All Saints Day, we remember those in our Nassau Church family who have died and joined the church triumphant in the last year. In many of those services, most of those services, part of the prayer of thanksgiving and intercession. “We give you thanks, O God, that you carried him all the days of his life, and that you carried him up to and through his death and now he shall dwell forever in the very heart of God.” A prayer of thanksgiving for the tabernacling of God in each and every stage of the journey.

Have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Remember, I will be with you always, to the end of the age.

Take, eat, this is my body broken for you.

Every stage.

Each and every stage.

 

---

Exodus 33:12-23
David A. Davis
October 27, 2019
(text only)

---

Last week we left Moses and the whole congregation of the people if Israel at Mt Sinai. God had spoken the Ten Commandments. The people stood at a distance as they had been told. Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. Moses went further up the mountain. What follows in Exodus is more laws, more instruction about the Covenant. God sends Moses down to tell the people and to bring Aaron and few others back up to ratify, to ritually seal the covenant. Then Moses goes up again by himself. The bible says Moses went up for forty days and forty nights. This time God gave Moses all the instructions related to the tabernacle and the priesthood. Forty days and forty nights might just be a biblical way of saying this trip was the perfect amount of time for God to tell Moses all that God had to tell, or a biblical way of saying this trip took a good long while. However long it was, for the people down the hill, it felt way too long. Based on what was going on down at the foot of Mt. Sinai, it was way too long.

It was long enough for the whole congregation of Israel to go from “yes, we are all in, we are on God’s team, we will do everything you say to a raucous, wild partying, idolatrous golden calf making people. Moses was ticked. Aaron gave a silly excuse: “The people were bent on evil. So I told them to take off all their gold. I tossed it in the fire and out came this calf!” Moses asks “Who is on the Lord’s side” There is a command to the Sons of Levi to kill one another which I can neither explain nor explain away. Then Moses tells the people he will go back up to God to see if he and God can work something out, can salvage this mess.

Moses asks God to forgive the people. God threatens to blot them out of the book but then tells Moses to go and lead the people to the place God promised. Just for good measure God sends a plague on the people because of the golden calf. Then the Lord says to Moses “Go leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt and go to the land I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob….Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go among you or I would consume you on the way, for you are stiff-necked people.” 

Stiff-necked. That’s a great bible word. Like homage and sore afraid and cubit. Stiff-necked. Stubborn. Hard-headed. Strong-willed. Stiff-necked. It’s a great bible word but not a common one. In the Book of Acts, Stephen invoking the tradition of Moses called the people stiff-necked for opposing the Holy Spirit and for betraying and killing the Righteous One foretold by the prophets. He called them stiff-necked and they stoned him to death. Other than that, stiff-necked is pretty much reserved for the people of Israel and the golden calf debacle. God sends them on their way to the promised land and plans to stay behind, knowing that their stubborn, hard-headedness would eventually cause them to be consumed by God’s either by God’s holiness or by God’s wrath; probably depending on what day it was.

But God and Moses at an extraordinary conversation. The setting of the conversation was the tent of meeting. A cloud would settle on the tent and Moses would know to go in. The Lord would speak with Moses as it says in Exodus “face to face as one speaks to a friend.”

Exodus 33:12-23

One has to think the conversation was a whole lot longer than twelve or so verses; That there was a whole lot more to the conversation than is portrayed on the sacred page. At some point, Moses says to God, “look, you have told me to bring this people up but you haven’t told me who you are going to send with me. Remember when you said to me‘I know you by name and you have found favor in my sight?’ If that’s true, if I have found favor, show me your ways so I can know, so I can still find favor. And don’t forget this nation, the people, the people are your people.

God responds to Moses, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest along the way”. But Moses isn’t ready to go. Moses isn’t convinced. Moses isn’t finished. “if you are not going to go, don’t send us away from here. How will anyone know that I have found favor in your sight, your people have found favor insight, how will anyone know if you’re not there? If you’re not with us, what makes us distinct, what sets apart? If you don’t go, I am not going. We are not going. What makes us who we are, what shapes us, what identifies us, is you. You and your presence. We are your people when you are with us.”  And the Lord said, “I will do just what you ask of me. For you have found favor. I do know your name. Yes, I will go with you.” In other words, God says to Moses, “Okay, Okay, I’ll go”

A stiff-necked people and the relenting presence of God. A stiff-necked, stubborn, hard-headed, strong-willed, idolatrous, running wild people and the identity-forming presence of God. Uniquely stiff-necked at least when it comes to the use of the old lovable bible word and yet, so utterly common and ingrained and passed on and recognizable in you, me, the people of God, and all of humanity. Stiff-necked. Never changes, really. What is not stiff-necked here in Exodus is God’s relationship with Moses. The one who is not stiff-necked here is God. And God is the one who is supposed to be omnipotent and the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. A stiff-necked people and the “un” stiff-necked God.

Stiff-necked. The word is not used all that often in scripture but it’s easy to remember. When you remember it, then you ought to remember the contrast, the difference, how the people’s hard-headedness contrasts the character of God revealed. Yes, Moses goes to God to try to work something out. Yes, Moses intercedes for the people of Israel way over their heads in their own sinfulness. Yes, Moses pushes back on God, tries to hold God to God’s own word, and pretty much demands that God goes with them. But Moses is also yearning to know God more. Moses wants more not just from God, Moses wants more of God. Moses wants to go deeper. Moses wants to learn more about God’s character. Moses even asks to see God’s glory. “I can’t get enough of you. I haven’t had enough of you, God, show me your glory”. And God showed him a bit of it. Moses had a glimpse there on that rock when God’s glory passed by. And the God who started with Moses way back at the bush saying “I am who I am”, God tells Moses, “My name is the Lord, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Moses longs for depth in his relationship with the Lord. And God, God hears his cry, his plea. Moses did not see God and God’s face fully. Moses came face to face with God’s mercy and grace.

Many parents have come to that realization that with an empty nest comes a new relationship one with another. Every young adult who lives at home the summer after freshman year of college knows the discomfort of parents who want the relationship unchanged after a yearlong whirlwind of change. And a whole lot of folks have realized that when the whole extended family of origin gathers for a holiday, the hardest part isn’t staying in the room you grew up in that hasn’t changed since high school. The hardest part is that when you’re all together, you realize again and again the relationships and the dynamics haven’t changed 30 years later. Your sibling still relates to you like you are thirteen, or your mother still treats you like the favored eldest or the youngest who got away with everything, or just as the one who could never do anything to please. And those old friendships that “pick up right where they left off”, those are the ones that actually have the love, care, devotion, and listening to adapt and grow amid decades of change.

We all know healthy relationships, over the long haul, change and deepen and grow. We all know change is necessary, even healthy. Exodus tells of Moses and God and their deepening, growing, changing relationship. But experience tells me that rather be intrigued or inspired,  readers are more prone to be puzzled, to be troubled, to be wary of any notion of a changing God, an “un” stiff-necked God.” God never wavers from the promise. God’s movement is always toward salvation. It’s the relationship that deepens, grows, morphs, changes. Jesus said unless you have faith like a child you cannot enter the kingdom. I don’t take that as a warning not to yearn for a deeper understanding of God and a mature relationship to guide you in the complexities of life. The Apostle Paul wrote, “when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face.” Then we shall see, then on that Great Getting Up Morning. But I for one, have longed for God to wipe some of the dimness off that mirror before THEN. To learn, grow, deepen, see something of the glory of God in the hear and now.

Everyone knows change and congregational church life don’t always go together like a fine pairing of wine and cheese. “We never did it that way before!” As I have learned from studies of leadership in the corporate world, leading change is hard but organizations that don’t change die. But it occurs to me that the bigger challenge for congregational life, for the church in general, for the life of discipleship, for the whole congregation of the people of God, the bigger challenge is a relationship with God that never changes, grows, deepens. A collective lack of a desire, a longing to scratch at the character of God, to know more. An understanding, a relationship, a theology that just sits there getting stale like an unchanged high school bedroom. The greater risk when it comes to relationship with the living God of mercy and grace is a stiff-necked people.

 

           

           

---

Exodus 20:1-21
David A. Davis
October 20, 2019
Jump to audio

---

“Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of God upon you so that you do not sin.’” Do not be afraid: God has come to test you so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning. Do not be afraid; God has come to test you so that the fear of God, always in your mind may keep you from sinning. Do not be afraid God just wants to put the fear of God into you. Do not be afraid just fear God. Do not fear but fear. “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” It was more than the thunder and the lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking that scared the people of Israel.

Last week we read and heard about their hunger and thirst and complaint in the wilderness and how God heard their cry. Just after that in the story of Exodus, Moses’ father law Jethro, comes into the wilderness where Moses and the people were encamped. Jethro brings sacrifices to God saying “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods.” Aaron and the elders of Israel all break bread together with Moses and Jethro. In his role as leader of this whole traveling congregation of the people of Israel, Moses sits as judge when people have a dispute and need his wisdom and his take on the Word of the Lord. Moses would make known to the people the instructions of God. Jethro sees people standing around Moses from morning until evening. Jethro tells Moses he’s going to wear himself out. The task is too heavy. It’s too much. He tells Moses to appoint representatives that he can teach so they can serve as judges then Moses would only have to listen to the hardest cases.

After Jethro leaves, the wilderness wandering brings Moses and the people to the wilderness of Sinai. There, from the camp at the front of Mt. Sinai, the Lord calls to Moses from the mountain. God tells Moses to go and say to the people of Israel, “you have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed the whole earth is mind. But you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” God tells Moses to go down and tell the whole wandering congregation of Israel that I brought you to myself. You and me. Us. Out of our relationship, in our relationship, because of our relationship, in this covenant, you shall be a treasured possession of mine and you shall represent me in a priestly, holy way to the whole earth. You will bear my word, you will be my witness, you will carry my kingdom to the world. My treasured nation will be a people that brings my justice and righteousness to all nations.

Moses brings all the elders together and reminds them of all that God had done. Moses tells them what God had told him. The people answer as one in the affirmative. Everything God has said we will do. We are in. We are all in. In covenant with God. In relationship with God. In bringing God to the whole world. Moses communicates their response to God and then God lays out a plan for the people to hear God speaking to Moses. “I am going to come to you in a cloud so the people will hear when I speak with you and they will trust you forever.” But first, the Lord tells Moses that the people have to consecrate themselves for two days before the Lord comes down from the mountain on the third day. God wants them to prepare in holiness for God’s own holiness and God warns them not to touch or come near the mountain because they will be put death.

On the third day amid thunder and lightning, and with a thick cloud on the mountain, a trumpet blast came that was so loud the people trembled. “Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God.”  The people stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain shook and smoked and the trumpet blast just kept getting louder. Moses would speak and God would answer in the thunder. Many scholars think the better translation is that God would answer in voice. Moses would speak and God would answer in a voice. The Lord calls Moses to the top of the mountain and again warns Moses “Set limits around the mountain and keep it holy. Bring up Aaron with you but don’t let the priests or the people break through.” The warning is that if they break through, if they cross the line, if they come up. God would burst forth against them. Moses then went down to the people and told them everything. The plan is in place for the people to hear God speaking to Moses so that they will trust Moses forever. The warnings have been given. The boundaries have been set. The consequences are clear. Consequences of life and of death. What comes next in Exodus…is this.

“Then God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” No idols. No profaning of God’s name. Keep the sabbath. Honor your father and your mother. No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No lying about your neighbor. No wanting what someone else has. The people witnessed the thunder, the lightning, the trumpet, the smoke, and they were afraid. They kept their distance just like they were told because they were afraid. They had every reason to be afraid and not just because of creation’s unparalleled show there at the mountain. They were afraid of the very holiness of God. And that’s when Moses said to them, do not fear, but fear. Do not be afraid but allow the fear of God to empower you, inspire you, to live a holy life.  Don’t be afraid of the fear of God.

The Ten Commandments and the holiness of God. There are, of course, a myriad of ways to ponder the distinctiveness of the Ten Commandments and their place in the faith tradition handed on to us. Part of the uniqueness, a really important part of the distinctiveness, is how the Ten are framed by the earthshaking holiness of God. And if one accepts the language argument in the preceding chapter I described, the chapter that sets the stage of God’s holiness and the fear of God at Mt. Sinai, if the scholarship is correct that it is more than thunder they hear but God’s very voice, then the people were hearing something of God’s voice giving Moses the Ten Commandments. Rather than simply waiting for Moses to tell them, or to show them the tablets, they were experiencing the Ten Commandments and the holiness of God in real-time.

The holiness of God calling a people to be holy. The holy voice of God establishing for a people the very core of what it means to be holy. The holiness of God proclaiming to a people not only God’s holiness, but the holiness of the relationship between God and God’s people. The holy presence of God setting apart the whole congregation of the people of Israel and gifting them with their identity, their DNA, the core of a holy faithful life. The holiness of God empowering, inspiring, sending a people to be a priestly kingdom for the world, bearing witness to the holiness of God to all nations with their very lives. The holiness of God and the holiness of God’s people, together in covenant relationship looking to change the world and bring about the very kingdom of God.

Moses wasn’t the first nor the last in the scripture to say “Do not afraid.” He’s in pretty good company with God, the prophets, Jesus, and the angels. I for one long ago came to the belief, the affirmation in my own faith and relationship with God that there is absolutely nothing now or in the life to come to be afraid of when it comes to God and God’s love. As Paul puts it, I am convinced that nothing can separate us from that love made known to us in Jesus Christ. But God’s holiness ought to knock your socks off once in a while. The power, the beauty, the timelessness, the divinity, the otherness, the wisdom that is foolishness to this world, the endless grace, the light and love so beyond the imagination, the life that conquers even death. The holiness of God ought to bring us to our knees.

That this wondrous God of all creation would invite you into a relationship and make you a promise and gift you with salvation and tell you that with this relationship, together we can change the world, we can birth a heavenly kingdom here on earth. That the God of heaven and earth, the one Jethro said is greater than all gods, the very God of very God, that God in all of God’s holiness would call us to a holy life, everyone one of us. And that the holy life, our relationship with God, our life in God shapes the very core of our being and shapes our very lives. Have no other gods. No idols. No profaning of God’s name. Keep the sabbath. Honor your father and your mother. No murder. No adultery. No stealing. No lying about your neighbor. No wanting what someone else has. The core of life for the people of God. Relationship to God. Relationship to humanity. The core of life for the people of God framed by God’s holiness.

A while back I was talking to someone who had a whole lot going on in life and family. A whole lot. They told me they were in a doctor’s waiting room and picked up one of those magazines they would never otherwise read. One of the short features was a checklist to find out your stress level. If you are experiencing x,y, or z, check and add this number. The person blew past the cautionary number for too much stress halfway down the page. Only then, to find out there was a second page continuing the list. Off the chart didn’t begin to describe it.

Checklist. The Ten Commandments are not intended to be a checklist. Don’t fool yourself like the rich young ruler in Luke’s gospel. If it was a checklist, Jesus would have patted the guy on the back when he said “I have kept all of these since my youth.” Jesus would have stopped before “There is still one thing lacking.” No, not a checklist. Not like the blasted ID point system over at the DMV. No. It is the invitation from the very voice of God to a covenant life with God. To a holy life inspired, empowered, sustained by God’s own holiness.

Just a few weeks ago I shared in the prayer time of my weekly pastor’s bible study down at the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church that I thought I was experiencing “issue fatigue”.  Like the term “disaster fatigue” that gets tossed around after another storm or another mass shooting. It’s a term that implies people will stop giving, stop caring, and grow numb to the suffering of others. I was feeling that way about all the important challenges, concerns, real issues that warrant energy and passion. A colleague said “it’s not just issue fatigue, it’s world fatigue. Life fatigue.”

I knew then and I know now that I am not the only one who feels that way, maybe more often than not. But then there is the holiness of God. Right about then, in those moments, on those days, the holiness of God ought to bring us to our knees. The thunderous, smoking, earthshaking God. The power, the beauty, the timelessness, the divinity, the otherness, the wisdom that is foolishness to this world, the endless grace, the light and love so beyond the imagination, the life that conquers even death. The holiness of God. Don’t be afraid, don’t be tired, don’t give up. All the holiness of God to capture you, inspire you, and empower you.

To allow the holiness of God to wash over you and to knock your socks off is to hear God’s voice anew, in real-time, telling you, telling me, telling us….you remember, we’re in this together. God and God’s people formed into a priestly nation, to change the world and bring about the very kingdom of God.

God’s thunderous voice, in real-time.

Do not fear. I am with you always, even until the end of the age.

 

 

 

 

---