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Pent 13 Proper 17A RCL August 30, 2020

Posted on August 30, 2020 by Beth Crane

Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26. 45c
Exodus 3:1-15
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Last week, we read the inspiring story of the birth of Moses. The new Pharaoh was a cruel tyrant, but Moses’ parents, his sister, the midwives, and the princess all showed profound courage, and Moses’ life was saved. When he grew older, he was adopted by the princess and went to the palace to live.

Much has happened between last Sunday’s reading and our lesson for today. To summarize, the young man Moses leaves the palace and sees the sufferings of the Hebrew people. Though he is a prince, he still identifies with his own people. He sees an Egyptian trying to kill a Hebrew man, and he kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. His sense of justice calls him to defend his fellow Israelite.

A short time later, he goes out again, but this time he sees two Hebrew men fighting each other. He confronts the man who is at fault and tells them not to fight. He is trying to teach his people to work together, not against each other. But the man who is at fault confronts Moses and asks him whether Moses is going to kill him the way he killed the Egyptian. Soon, Moses realizes the king is looking for him. He escapes and goes to Midian.

He stops by a well and meets the seven daughters of Reuel, the priest of Midian. Some shepherds harass the young women. Moses defends Reuel’s daughters and waters their flock. Once again, he is defending and protecting those who are vulnerable. Moses fights for justice everywhere he goes. The young women see him as an Egyptian, but he sees himself as an Israelite.

The young women arrive home early and their father asks them how they watered the flock so quickly. They tell him about the Egyptian young man who protected them from the shepherds and watered the flock in record time. Reuel realizes that this is an extraordinary young man and welcomes Moses to visit the family. Eventually, Moses marries Reuel’s daughter Zippporah and becomes a shepherd.

These events have a deep connection with Grace Church because Keith’s ancestor, Reuel Keith, founder of Virginia Theological Seminary, was named after Reuel, the priest of Midian, who welcomed Moses into his family and thus became a mentor and protector to the man who would lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt.

This brings us to today’s reading. God has heard the cries of God’s captive people in Egypt. Moses is faithfully going about his daily work as a shepherd. He is alert.  He pays attention to the world around him. And he notices a most unusual thing— a bush that is on fire but is not consumed. He goes to investigate. And God calls to him. Moses realizes he is on holy ground. He is in the presence of God, and God is calling him to lead God’s people out of slavery.

Like so many people called by God over the ages, Moses does not feel up to the task.  And God tells Moses something very important.  God assures Moses that God will be with Moses every step of the way. God does not call us to do difficult things and them leave us alone. God walks with us, God leads us and guides us.

God helps Moses understand who God is—“I am who I am.” And the wonderful thing about Hebrew verbs is that they are all tenses at once—I am who I am; I was who I was; I will be who I will be. God is dynamic and eternal. God will guide Moses as he leads the people out of slavery into freedom. God has chosen a leader who sees the suffering of God’s people, defends his own people, protects those who are vulnerable, and tries to bring justice in every situation. As we know from reading the Scriptures, leading God’s people to the promised land was not easy, but God was with Moses on the journey.

In our gospel, Peter cannot bear to think of Jesus suffering. In his effort to banish this thought, he gets in the way of our Lord’s accepting his own cross, and Jesus admonishes him and tells him to get out of the way. He even calls him Satan because he is so upset that Peter, in showing compassion for our Lord’s suffering, is actually deflecting our Lord from his vocation. Each of us has our own cross to bear. Each of us will suffer in one way or another as we try to follow our Lord and be faithful. We may have rifts with family members. We may lose friends. We may not achieve success in the world’s terms. But in the end these crosses also lead us into life in a new dimension.

Our epistle for today is addressed to a community which is suffering persecution. “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor….Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer….Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly…Live peaceably with all….If your enemies are hungry, feed them.” This is the vision of God’s shalom which Jesus expresses in the beatitudes and which his mother, Mary, sings about in the Magnificat.

What are these readings saying to us in this time of Covid 19? Moses was the person God chose to lead God’s people out of slavery. He did not feel that he was up to the job. When God calls us, most of us do not feel adequate to the task. We are part of a long line of people, a “great cloud of witnesses,” who say Yes in spite of all our misgivings and, with the grace of God, do our ministries to the best of our ability, depending solely on the grace of God.

Jesus came to show us what a life centered in God’s love looks like. Paul, born a Pharisee, a persecutor of the Church, met our Lord on the road to Damascus and was blinded for three days by the light of that love. In our epistle for today Paul offers us a poetic blueprint of living the life in Christ and being ministers of reconciliation.

Jesus has called us to live the Way of Love, and I’m pretty sure that not one of us feels that we are up to the task. But we are in very good company. Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah. and so many heroes and heroines of the faith felt inadequate, too. Nowadays, sharing God’s love with others involves being careful not to spread Covid 19. It has been difficult to do all the things the medical experts are telling us to do. but here in Vermont we have the lowest statistics in the country, and, as our Presiding Bishop reminds us, keeping people safe and saving lives is our first priority. 

This means that we will not be able to hug each other, or share Communion, or sing together, or have a coffee hour with actual food—for a while. We don’t know for how long. In the meanwhile, “Let love be genuine, love one another with mutual affection, rejoice in hope.” Live the Way of Love. Amen.

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Lent 3C    March 24, 2019

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Beth Crane

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63: 1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

In our first reading today, we are looking on as Moses goes about his daily work as a shepherd for his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. Moses is already a walking miracle. When the Pharaoh decided to kill all the Hebrew boy babies, his mother and sister made a little boat out of rushes and pitch and put it out into the bulrushes along the banks of the Nile; the Pharaoh’s daughter came walking along, heard the baby crying, took him to the royal palace, hired his mother as nurse, adopted him and raised him as a prince.

One day, Moses went out into the world to see how his people, the Hebrews, were doing. Though he appreciated the compassion, courage, and generosity of the Pharaoh’s daughter, he knew who his people were. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man, and he killed the Egyptian. When Pharaoh put out the word to have him killed, he fled. He settled down in the land of Midian under the protection of the priest, married the priest’s daughter, Zipporah, and now has a family.

He is going about his daily work, taking care of the flock. And he sees something—a desert shrub that is on fire but is not consumed by the flames. And Moses turns aside. And that is a big part of this story. How many of us will turn aside? How many of us will delay the next meeting or phone call or letter or load of laundry and just take a minute to turn aside?

Moses quickly discovers that he is standing on holy ground and he is in the presence of God. And God turns out to be much more observant and much more compassionate than Moses had realized. Moses hides his face because he knows God is mighty and powerful, but Moses hadn’t quite realized how much God cared.

When God tells Moses that God has seen the suffering of God’s people and God is going to free the people from oppression, Moses is quite impressed. He had noticed that oppression before he left Egypt.

But now God is asking him, Moses, a guy who killed an Egyptian and had to run for his life, a guy who is number one on Pharaoh’s list of the Ten Most Wanted, to go back to Egypt and lead the people to freedom. Like all the prophets before and after him and most of the people ever called to serve God, Moses feels inadequate. There is good reason for this. We  humans are inadequate. But God gives the answer God always gives to us when we realize that we can’t do something alone: God says, “I will be with you.”

And then Moses wants to know how he is supposed to tell the Israelites that God has sent him, little ordinary Moses, to lead them out of Egypt, God says, “I am who I am,” “I was who I was,” “I will be who I will be.” God is powerful and dynamic. But God also tells Moses that God is the God of their ancestors, the Holy One who has brought them to this point and will lead them into the future.

As we all know, Moses says Yes, but this wonderful passage from Exodus is a reminder that we are on a journey from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ, and God is with us every step of the way.

Our epistle for today reminds us that our freedom in Christ is not a license to do anything we want to. There is a huge difference between freedom and license. Some of the Corinthians are saying that now that they are baptized and receiving the sacraments, they can do whatever they please. They can commit immorality, they can go to pagan festivals and eat meat sacrificed to idols and still be faithful followers of Jesus. Paul does a recap of the Exodus journey to make it clear that we have to put God first. If we are worshiping idols, we are not following Jesus. Paul also reminds us that Our Lord gives us the grace to stay on the path and follow him.

In today’s gospel, the people have questions about two events. In the first, some people from Galilee came to the temple in Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices. Pilate had them killed and mixed their blood with the blood of the animals they had sacrificed. Although this is something that Pilate might well have done, scholars tell us that there is no mention of it in any other historical document. The people seem to be thinking that, because this awful thing happened to these people, they must have been sinners.

In another event, the tower of Siloam fell and eighteen people were killed. Siloam was a reservoir. Once again, scholars tell us that this event is not mentioned in any other documents. Jesus’ response remains constant: just because this disaster happened to these people does not mean that they were worse than other people.

In Jesus’ time and now, there are still folks who believe that if something terrible happens to someone or a group, they must be bad people. That is why Rabbi Kushner wrote his excellent book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Because even now, in the twenty-first century, this belief persists. In our quest to try to find explanations for things, we revert to that ancient belief that bad things happen only to bad people.

The thing is that none of us is perfect. We are all frail and fallible humans, and, if God operated on the basis of demanding total perfection at all times, we would all be in deep trouble. God calls us to be compassionate toward one another.

This may be why Jesus tells the parable of this poor fig tree. In those days, you gave a fig tree three years to grow to maturity. During that time you did not pick any of its fruit. In the fourth year you could pick the fruit but you had to offer it to God. This tree is three years old. The owner wants to cut it down.

But the gardener says, “Just give it one more year. I’ll dig round it and put on some manure, and then, if it still bears no fruit, you can cut it down.” Our collect points out that we “have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.” Thanks be to our loving God, who is always there to help us bear good fruit.  “Inch by inch, row by row, gotta make this garden grow.” Amen.

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