A Believer's Journal

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain — that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees — as far as Zoar. The Lord said to him, “This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants’; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Bethpeor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died; his sight was unimpaired and his vigor had not abated. The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

Joshua son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, because Moses had laid his hands on him; and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded Moses. Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.

It must have been quite a view, the view from the top of the mountain, from the summit of Mt. Nebo rising some 2300 feet above the plains of Moab at the eastern edge of the Jordan Valley.

You could see for yourself, of course, because Mt. Nebo is still there, in Jordan, about twenty miles south of Amman and thirty miles east of Jerusalem. From there, you could see what Moses saw, the whole Jordan Valley spreading out before you, flanked by mountain ranges north and west and by the desert and the Dead Sea to the south. You could look north as Moses did, toward Gilead and Galilee; and west toward Jerusalem and the heart of modern Israel, lands named by the ancient Israelites after their tribes, Judah and Ephraim and Manasseh, lands backed by the Western Sea, the Mediterranean; and you could look south toward the Negeb, the desert, and Zoar at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. You could see all of it, all the Canaan Moses saw, an expanse of land the size of New Jersey.

Moses was an old man when he stood atop that mountain, near death, but Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Torah, says he was still full of vigor and that he could see just fine. He could see that land, the land that he and the Hebrew refugees with him had waited forty years to see, the land of the promise. He could see it! At last, he could see it.

It had been more than a struggle to get there, half a lifetime of ordeal and peril and hunger and strife for Moses and the Israelites: hurriedly fleeing Egypt with Pharaoh’s armies at their heels, wandering endlessly in a barren wilderness with little to eat or drink, suffering attack by the people of the lands through which they traveled. For Moses in particular, it had been a struggle, a long and fraught journey, the last long chapter of what must have seemed to him like three lifetimes.

Saved from a kill order at his birth, there was his first life, growing into manhood as a member of the Egyptian court, living a life of privilege and possibility and ease, but unease, too, torn between two conflicting identities, unsettled by the sufferings of his birth-people, sufferings he saw, but did not share.

After personally taking vengeance upon a murderous Egyptian slave-master, Moses fled Egypt and settled in Midian, living his second and what may well have been his best life, quietly tending sheep, taking a wife, raising a family, living a life happy and peaceful and blessedly uneventful.

And then, God. And then, God … God confronting him, God commissioning him, God cajoling him, until finally Moses reluctantly agreed to return to Egypt to ask the king to let God’s people go. Then came his third life, the most difficult and dangerous and thankless of all.

Confronting the hard-hearted ruler of the mighty Egyptian empire was one thing, but that must have seemed a walk in the park compared to dealing with the relentless grousing and complaining and cowardice and ingratitude and bitterness and faithlessness of Moses’ own people. Oh, how they longed to be slaves again, more than happy to trade in the demands and risks of freedom for the easy and predictable misery of vassal servitude in Egypt!

And so it must have been a sweet view for Moses atop that mountain, knowing he had persisted, that he had endured, that he had succeeded in fulfilling his mission, God’s mission, bringing the people of the covenant to the brink of the land of promise.
But it was a bittersweet view, too, because he himself would not enter it. He could see it, but he would never set foot in that land, never make his bed there, never settle his family there, not die there.

Moses never reaped the rewards of his monumental effort. His only reward was to be remembered, to be remembered as God’s faithful prophet, one who performed signs and wonders like no other — not least of which was somehow managing to manage an unmanageable people!

And to be remembered as one whom God knew, one whom God knew, face to face. Is this what it means to be loved by God? Is this what it means to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind? To listen to God and to speak, to know God and to be known, face to face? With that kind of intimacy?

Moses stood atop that mountain and saw the land. He saw the land of promise, and then he died.

We are like Moses. My friends, we are like Moses, entirely, completely. There is nothing that Moses saw that we cannot see, nothing that Moses did that we cannot do, no relationship with God that Moses had that we cannot have.

There is nothing that Moses saw that we cannot see, nothing that Moses did that we cannot do, no relationship with God that Moses had that we cannot have.

We are like Moses. We too have our Midian times: times of honest work and a pleasant home life, times of blessing and contentment and peace. And we have our Egypt times: times of struggle and doubt and concern, seeing suffering and oppression and injustice all around us, feeling powerless and overwhelmed and beyond discouraged. And sometimes, like for me right now and maybe for you, we have both at the same time.

We are like Moses. We struggle with obstinance, with disbelief, with failure of courage, with bitterness and apathy, both in those we watch, but also in ourselves. Like Moses, we hesitate, we protest, we too would much prefer to stay home tending sheep and sitting down at the supper table with loved ones, and forget all about Egypt, forget all about the suffering, all the suffering we see, but do not share.

But we are like Moses. Like Moses, we are commissioned by God, called by God, called to go to the promised land and to take with us as many people as we can. Because our true home is there, that’s where we belong, that’s where all of us belong, in the land of promise, the peaceable kingdom, the realm of shalom, not somewhere else, but right here, this place, this world, as it will be when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
But we are like Moses. We will not get there. We will not enter it. You and I will not enter that promised land. But we can see it!

We can see it! We must see it! We must let the Lord lead us up the mountain and show us the view! The view is everything, the view is the reality that what God has promised will be. The way of shalom, the path of peace, is not the stuff of vain wishes and hopeless dreams. It is God’s promise. It is what will be. It is where God is leading us. And we can see it! From the top of the mountain, we can see it.

I like to climb Blue Hill. I like climbing out onto the open granite ledges on the southeast flank of the summit and taking in the view, the extraordinary view from the mountains of Acadia in the east to the Camden Hills in the west: Newbury Neck, Bartlett Island, Long Island, Naskeag Point, Isle au Haut, Blue Hill Bay, the inner and outer Blue Hill harbors, Eggemoggin Reach. It is almost — no, not almost — it is, for me, a spiritual experience, because it is there, seeing that view, gaining that perspective, that I remember who I am and what I am, that I am reminded of my place, my so small but important place, on this vast and beautiful earth. And it is there I feel most home.

The view is everything. So climb the mountain, take in the view, remember what God has called you to be and to do, and know that even though you and I may not set foot in the land of promise, it is there and it is our true home. It is our home, yours and mine, and all of us.

The psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 90, a psalm, a song, attributed to Moses. Stand now on top of the mountain with Moses and sing with him …

O Lord, you have always been our home.
Before you created the hills
or brought the world into being,
you were eternally God,
and will be God forever.

You tell us to return to what we were;
               you change us back to dust.
A thousand years to you are like one day;
               they are like yesterday, already gone,
               like a short hour in the night.
You carry us away like a flood;
               we last no longer than a dream.
We are like weeds that sprout in the morning,
               that grow and burst into bloom,
               then dry up and die in the evening.

Teach us how short our life is,
               so that we may become wise.

Fill us each morning with your constant love,
               so that we may sing and be glad all our life.
Let us, your servants, see your mighty deeds;
               let our descendants see your glorious might.
Lord our God, may your blessings be with us.

“Make America Great Again.”

Are you familiar with the phrase? Not “Make America Great,” but “Make America Great Again.” The campaign slogan taps into feelings of loss, feelings of grief for a past glory that is gone. It taps into a longing to go back, to recapture the former days that were better than today.

Is that what you believe? Regardless of the politics that accompany the slogan, is that how you feel? That your best days are behind you? That our best days are behind us? Are you confused, distressed, frightened by what this nation, this world, your life are becoming? Do you worry about the world your children and your grandchildren will inherit?

I do. I understand the distress, the confusion, the fear, the melancholy, the wistfulness for days that were less troubled, for a nation that was less divided, for a morality that was clear and universally acknowledged. I understand that sense of loss and longing that makes us want to go back.

But we can’t. We can’t go back. But even if we could, I don’t believe the premise. I don’t believe that the past was better.

Yes, our planet is certainly in worse shape and more threatened than at any time before, but for much of humanity life is better than it has ever been. We live longer and healthier and wealthier and freer. Long entrenched inequalities and injustices are being challenged and, in some cases, even overturned. We have access to a richness and diversity of culture as never before.

Now I know that this is true only for some and not for all, and I know that our globe is still racked by hunger and disease and poverty, by hatred and discrimination and war, but no more and no less than it has ever been. We face the same challenges, the same temptations, the same threats that our ancestors have always faced.

Were days past really less troubled? With world wars, the Great Depression, public lynchings, riots in our cities’ streets?

Was our nation less divided? With hundreds of thousands of Americans killed by fellow Americans in a civil war, with the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society, the ACLU and the Communist Party USA, with rampant anti-semitism and anti-Catholicism?

Was there before a more faithful adherence to a widely accepted moral code? Do you think so? Or is it merely that in our day immorality is on public display instead of hidden?

Regardless, God does not call us to rue the present and pine for the past. God does not call us to long for what was, but in the midst of trouble and confusion and distress to hold fast to hope, to live fully today and to wait eagerly for tomorrow with hope.

The splendor of Jerusalem is a thing of the past.

The author of the collection of poems that make up the book of Lamentations knows about distress. He knows about trouble: empty houses and empty streets and an empty Temple. He knows about the loss of family and community and culture and national pride. He knows about the loss of a way of life that once was and is now gone.

The Lamentations poet writes in the aftermath of the invasion of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. Their holy Temple was ransacked and their city walls razed and much of the city’s population forcibly relocated to Babylon to live for three generations far from home, exiles in a foreign land. It was like Russia invading Ukraine, only Jerusalem lost. The people of Jerusalem lost everything, everything that was dear to them. They were left homeless, powerless, destitute, depressed.

The poet is depressed, too. He says so, but he does not succumb to despair. He does not shout “Make Jerusalem Great Again!” He does not dwell on the past, but points to the future, a future that is not tenuous and uncertain, but a future that is sure, because the Lord is here, because the Lord’s love and mercy continue.

The Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue. Not resuming after a pause, but continuing. Not again, but still. Because God has never left us. God’s love has never faltered. God has not been absent in the midst of our distress, but God has been present, always and ever present.

So the poet urges the people of Jerusalem to wait. Not despair, but wait. Not long to go back, but wait. Not denigrate this present day, but wait. Wait patiently. Wait patiently for the sunrise. Wait patiently for the Lord who will surely save.

Wait.

Will you wait? It takes courage to wait. It takes strength to wait. It takes faith to wait. But this is our calling as people of God. This is our calling as Christians. To wait.

Waiting does not mean giving up or giving in. Waiting does not mean ceasing to care. Waiting is not merely passive.

We lament our distress, but we wait.

We lament the divisiveness, the envy and greed, the selfishness and licentiousness, yes, the sins of this generation and our own sins, that keep our world from being what God wills it to be, but we wait.
We pray “Thy will be done” and we do all we can to do God’s will. We do justice, we make peace, we love our neighbors and our enemies, but we do not put our hope in what we can do. We put our hope in the Lord and we wait.

As much as anything, I am distressed in these days about that state of the Christian church in America, about the failure of our Christian witness, about Christians who seem bent on seizing power for themselves and bending the world to their own will, instead of humbly seeking God’s will and putting hope and trust where it belongs, in the Lord. Every day I read stories in the national media that make me cringe, supposed Christians saying and doing horrible things in the name of Christ.

A Facebook group calls itself “Christians against the Little Mermaid.” Against the Little Mermaid! Against the actress portraying her, because she is black and certainly Christians cannot tolerate a black mermaid!

A former Senate candidate, also a self-professed Christian, praises Vladimir Putin, saying she “support[s] Putin’s right to protect his people and always put his people first, but also protect their Christian values.” Putin’s war in Ukraine is Christian? Can any war be Christian?

A Christian Senate candidate in Georgia isn’t sure that Jesus will recognize transgender children.

And any number of serving legislators openly espouse Christian nationalism: Christian nationalism, which is, in fact, an oxymoron, and more than that, is blasphemy and idolatry because it puts loyalty to nation on a par with loyalty to God. Shame!

Christians, especially Evangelicals, (which in the public mind are usually one and the same) have earned a bad name in our day, sadly all too often well-deserved. We have lost our way. I say we because Evangelicals are our Christian brothers and sisters, too. I was raised an Evangelical. I am still an Evangelical. Evangelical comes from the word evangel, which means good news, and being evangelical means being marked by “ardent or zealous enthusiasm.” Or would we rather be lukewarm and “meh” about our faith?

We have been seduced by power, thinking we can establish God’s kingdom by imposing our values on others, instead of doing what Jesus told us to do — bring God’s kingdom by serving others. We have become preoccupied with defending our own supposed religious freedoms (which no human being can take from us anyway!) instead of defending the freedom of those who are denied it.

As Evangelicals and progressives alike, we trumpet our Christian faith as a pretext for pursuing our own political agendas. We have looked into the darkness and decided morning will never come unless we bring it. We act as if we do not really believe God that will act … and maybe we don’t. And that’s the problem: not too much faith, but too little.

That’s what our critics get wrong about us. They think that faith itself is the problem, that devotion to God puts us out of touch with the real world and blinds us to the needs of our neighbors. We just need to back off, tone it down, not fill our minds with too much God stuff.

But the truth is just the opposite. It is too little faith, too little filling our minds and hearts with God stuff, that leads to a religiosity that is self-serving and judgmental, unsympathetic and bigoted. Real faith, real Christianity, faithfully following Jesus, shows itself in humility, in kindness, in empathy, in compassion, in love … in love of our neighbors, all our neighbors, and in love of God, with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength! It is a passionate love for God, above all else, that empowers our love for each other, and frees us to live, not to protect ourselves, but to live for the sake of the future God has promised. Real faith trusts God … and waits.

Wait.

Waiting makes room. Room for God and room for each other. Room enough to pay attention to the wonders, as well as the distresses, of this one day. Room enough to remember …

the Lord’s unfailing love and mercy still continue,
fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise.

Dawn is surely coming! Morning is breaking! The Lord will bring it.

Will you wait?

Sermon preached on Sunday, December 26, at Deer Isle Sunset Congregational Church …

How quickly they grow up. It seems like he was born — well, just yesterday! — and now he is already twelve years old and giving his mother fits. It was a holiday trip, mom and dad and the kids, and on the way back home, a sudden moment of parental panic. Where is he? Has anybody seen Jesus? So it’s turn around, make the day long trek back to Jerusalem, and search for their lost son. They find him still at the Temple, hobnobbing with the Jewish teachers, and Jesus is like: “What’s the problem? Everything’s cool. Didn’t you know this is where I need to be?

It’s a rare glimpse into Jesus’ domestic life. Most of us parents will recognize the storyline. Your child is growing up. He is asserting his right to make his own decisions. She is beginning to stake out her own independence. It is a rare glimpse because the four gospels have very little to say about Jesus’ birth and even less about his childhood. This story about the Passover trip Jesus’ family made when he was twelve is the one and only story in all the gospels from Jesus’ boyhood. So why do you suppose Luke includes it?

We have to remember that the gospels are not biographies, but evangelical tracts, written, as John puts it at the end of his gospel, so “you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you my have life.” The compiler of each gospel chooses to include certain stories and sayings, not for the sake of getting the record straight, but for the sake of conveying the power and meaning of Jesus’ message and the power and meaning of Jesus’ life for their hearers, and for us.

You may know that only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, include any stories about Jesus’ birth and childhood. Matthew’s gospel includes Joseph’s dream about the child soon to be born to his fiancée, the story about visitors from the east paying homage to the infant Jesus, and the story of the family’s flight to Egypt to escape Herod’s violent intentions.

Matthew chooses these stories carefully, highlighting the central themes of his gospel. He focuses on Joseph because Joseph comes from King David’s family and Matthew wants to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promise of a descendant of David who would one day come to save God’s people, one who would be called Immanuel, God with us.

The worship of the visitors from the east, who were likely astrologers from what is now Iraq, underlines Matthew’s affirmation of Jesus as savior not only for the Jews, but for the whole world. From the beginning, Matthew wants us to know, foreigners, Gentiles, outsiders are showing interest in Jesus.

And the flight to Egypt? Well, who else came out of Egypt? Matthew wants to paint Jesus as a new Moses, a new savior of his people, one whom God calls out of Egypt to lead them to a land of promise.
Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth is entirely different on every point except place. Luke includes the angelic visit to Mary telling her the meaning of her imminent pregnancy. He includes the announcement of Jesus’ birth to a band of shepherds out in the fields tending their sheep. He includes the visit of Jesus’ parents to the Temple to dedicate week-old Jesus where two old worshippers recognize him as the promised Messiah, and he includes today’s story about twelve year-old Jesus.

Luke highlights the shepherds because they are poor, because they lurk near the bottom of the Jewish social ladder. Luke wants his hearers to know that Jesus brings good news to all who are poor and oppressed and outcast. Mary’s song of praise, the focus of Vicki’s sermon last week, spotlights the same theme: a world set right by turning it upside down.

By focusing on Mary, rather than Joseph, Luke also takes special notice of another marginalized group — women. Throughout his gospel, Luke draws attention to women who play important roles in Jesus’ life and story. Luke wants us to know that Jesus comes to lift them up, too.

Mary’s song and Zechariah’s song earlier in the gospel and the exclamations of old Simeon and Anna in the Temple all elaborate Luke’s portrayal of Jesus as the herald of a new age, the long-awaited age when God comes at last to save and to bring peace.

Which leaves our story, the visit of twelve-year old Jesus and his family to the Temple. Why does Luke include this story? You remember that Matthew wants to paint Jesus as a new Moses. Well, Luke wants to paint Jesus as a new Samuel! The lectionary makes no mistakes in pairing these two stories, the stories we heard read from 1 Samuel and from Luke. There are some remarkable echoes of the one in the other.

Both stories feature mothers, mothers who bear sons under extraordinary circumstances — Hannah, who has been long childless, and young Mary, who has never known a man — and the song of gratitude and praise that Mary sings is very much patterned on Hannah’s own similar song of praise.

Both stories tell of sons chosen and destined to fulfill a special purpose willed by God, and both stories describe the boys, Samuel and Jesus, as growing and gaining favor with God and with people.

So who was Samuel and why would Luke want to cast Jesus as a new Samuel?

Samuel was a key figure in the history of the people of Israel. If Moses made them a people and gave them a homeland and if David made them a nation state of consequence, Samuel was their conscience, the leader and prophet who reminded them what it meant to be a people loved and called and purposed by God.

Samuel was born into a chaotic moment in Israel’s history, a time of great violence and rampant corruption. It was the waning of the era of the judges, men and women of unusual charisma or strength or faith, men and women like Samson and Gideon and Deborah who would momentarily rescue God’s people from their enemies only to see them slide back into lives of treachery and idolatry and cruelty and deceit. It was said of that day that “everyone did whatever they pleased.” Even the religious leaders, even the sons of the priest into whose care Samuel was given, exploited their position for financial gain and carnal pleasures.

Into this time of chaos and desperation and darkness, Samuel brought light, God’s light. Samuel listened when God spoke and Samuel spoke God’s will to the people with an authority and authenticity they recognized. It was said that when Samuel spoke, all Israel listened. Samuel called the people to repent, to give up their idols and their false and cruel ways, and to faithfully love and serve the Lord their God.

And when the people of Israel clamored for a king, to be “just like all the other nations,” it was Samuel who gave them first Saul and then David, but only after Samuel sternly scolded them for their request because they are not like all the other nations, because they already have a king, because their king, their one and only king, is the Lord!

Samuel was an uncompromising servant of the Lord’s way, a faithful prophet who spoke God’s word with authority, and a kingmaker, shepherding the people through a period of unprecedented change.

And that, Luke wants you to know, is who Jesus is. Jesus listens to God and speaks God’s will with an authority that comes straight from God. Jesus is a faithful prophet who calls out the corruption and hypocrisy of the religious establishment and invites people to love God sincerely and completely and to show it by their love and care for each other.

And Jesus is a kingmaker, too, proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand, that God is coming to rule, to set things right, to bring peace to the earth. But there is one difference between Jesus and Samuel. Like Samuel, Jesus is a kingmaker, but unlike Samuel, Jesus is himself the king. He too reminds the people of who their true king is, but he is himself that true king. Jesus is our savior and our Lord.

There is one more parallel between the stories of Samuel and Jesus, something both Hannah and Mary must do. As our children grow up, what is one thing that all parents must do?. They must let go.

Hannah literally let go. When God answered her prayers and gave her a son, she kept her promise and dedicated that son, Samuel, to the Lord, placing him in the priest Eli’s care to live and serve in God’s sanctuary.

Can you imagine? Praying and waiting and waiting and praying for years to be able to bear a child and when at last you do, you give him up? I find it so poignant how every year at festival time, maybe it was Passover, when Hannah and her family traveled to the sanctuary to make their annual sacrifices, Hannah would bring with her a little robe she had sewn for Samuel, the boy who was her son and yet now was God’s son.
Mary had to let go, too. Maybe that’s what she was thinking about when Luke says, “she treasured all these things in her heart.” Maybe she was thinking about what Jesus had said to her, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Maybe she was thinking that he was right, that she had to learn to let him go.

Later, after Jesus had begun his public ministry, she had to let him go again. Once she came with his brothers to see him only to hear him say to those around him: “My mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

And later still, Mary had to let Jesus go as she stood at the foot of a cross and watched him die.

If Samuel was to fulfill God’s purpose for his life, Hannah had to let him go. If Jesus was to fulfill God’s purpose for his life, Mary had to let him go. And if Jesus is to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives, we have to let him go. The baby born in Bethlehem is a sign of God’s promise to us, a promise of joy and of peace on earth, but if that promise is to be fulfilled, we must let Jesus go. We must let the baby grow up.

And that will not always be easy, because Jesus is going to say things we are not ready to hear, and Jesus is going to go to places to which we are not ready to go, and Jesus is going to ask things of us we are not ready to do. But if the promise is to be fulfilled, we must listen to him, and we must follow him, and we must remember that Jesus is not merely our savior, not merely our teacher, but our Lord. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Hallelujah!

Sermon preached on Sunday, July 11, at Deer Isle Sunset Congregational Church …

Father, we adore you,
lay our lives before you,
how we love you.

Why do you come to church? Or, maybe a better way to put it is this: When you do come to church, what do you hope to find here? What to you hope to do here?

There are many reasons for coming to church, many different expectations that each of us bring with us. I cannot speak for you, but I can speak for myself and share with you some of the reasons I have for coming to church, and I expect that some of my reasons may be yours, too.

I come to church to be connected. In other words, I come to church to be with you! I come to church to be part of a community, part of a community of believers, a people joined by faith, by our common experience of being loved, of being loved by God and of being loved by each other.

I come to be connected to a community of mutual help and encouragement, where I will be welcomed and befriended and supported, and to be connected to a community of mutual dedication, where we look for ways together to support and encourage people outside these walls, to bless them as we have been blessed.

I come to church to be connected and to make connections.

Second, I come to church to hear a word, a word that is different from the many and noisy words that fill most of my days. A word that carries authority. A word that addresses me, challenges me, enlightens me. A word that puts things, everything, into perspective. A word that helps me make sense of a world that is often so confusing and bewildering, to know what I can know and to acknowledge what I cannot know.

A word that makes me look at myself and my place in this world with a critical eye, not to be critical, but to look past appearances and pretenses, to see things as they are, to know what I am and who I am, and to know what I am for and who I am for.

I come to church to hear a word, a word that puts everything into perspective, like the view from the top of a mountain.

And, third, but most importantly, I come to church to experience the numinous. Do you know that word, “numinous?” I know exactly what I mean by it, but it is hard to explain!

Numinous is what is beyond me, above me, something very real, overwhelmingly real, but at the same time mysterious and elusive and unreachable. Numinous is wonder-ful, full of wonder, awe-ful, awesome, full of awe, holy, not holy is the sense we often use it, as something surpassingly good, though the numinous can be and certainly is surpassingly good, but holy in the sense of uncommon, set apart from the everyday, something heavy, deep, glorious, overwhelming, awe-ful.

Numinous is what Moses encountered in the fire and cloud and thunder atop Mount Sinai. Numinous is what Isaiah saw in his vision of the Lord Almighty filling the Temple. Numinous is what Job heard in the voice that spoke to him out of the whirlwind.

The numinous is the One who cannot, must not, be seen, the One whose name cannot, must not, be spoken. The numinous is God, the God who is. When I come to church, I come to encounter God, to experience, be touched by, come close to, the presence of the living God.

If God is, then God is, and God is who God is, not whatever we might wish or want God to be. God is something, someone, standing over against us, apart from us, awesome, awe-ful, wonder-ful, holy, beautiful, overwhelmingly real, more real, more substantial, simply more there than any of us, more real, more substantial, simply more there than the universe itself. God is something, someone to find and to be found by, someone to acknowledge, to worship, to love.

The Covenant Box is numinous. The Covenant Box, also called the ark, was built by Moses according to God’s instructions. The stone tablets on which the laws binding the people of Israel to God and God to the people of Israel were placed inside the box and two winged creatures adorned each end of the lid of the box. That place atop the lid between the two winged creatures was thought to be God’s throne, the place where God met the people of Israel, the place from which God spoke to them.

Sometimes both fable and parts of the Bible itself seem to attach “magical” properties to the Covenant Box — think “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — but it has nothing to do with magic. It is not that the box contained God or that God lived there or that the box itself is God. The box is simply the emblem, the reminder, of God’s presence among them, and the place where God, by God’s own choice, chose to meet them, just as God may choose to meet us here.

When the people of Israel tried to use the box as tool of magic, when they tried to control and manipulate its supposed power, they failed miserably. They carried the box into battle with them and were utterly defeated and the box was captured by the Philistines. The Covenant Box is no talisman, no good luck charm, no magic wand. God is no tool, no idol, to answer to our beck and call.

The ark was absent from Jerusalem for some twenty years, and now, as we heard read in the scripture, David is ready to bring the Covenant Box home, to “put” God back at the center of their lives. David leads the procession, all of them singing and dancing and playing musical instruments to honor the Lord, and then …

And then, suddenly the oxen pulling the cart on which the box was laid stumble and Uzzah reaches out to steady the box and … he is struck dead.

Oh, my!

You should know, my friends, that this text from 2 Samuel is the designated Old Testament reading for this Sunday, that is, most of it. The lectionary lists 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19 as the Old Testament reading, omitting verses 6-11, conveniently leaving out — timidly leaving out! — the whole part about Uzzah and the stumbling oxen. That’s not right! That’s not fair! We should have to deal with the hard parts of scripture, too, shouldn’t we? I saw that this was the text for the Sunday I was preaching and said to myself, “Oh, no!” But I knew we had to read the whole story!

So what’s going on? What sense do we make of this? Perhaps we can’t. Perhaps we cannot make sense of this. And that is okay. We do not have to have everything figured out to our own satisfaction to be able to put our trust in the God who is.

In my mind, this is not about some moral transgression on Uzzah’s part or some capricious, vengeful act on God’s part. It’s about a God who cannot, must not, be seen or touched, who cannot, must not, be trifled with, a God who cannot, must not, be treated as we might treat anyone or anything else, a God utterly holy, wholly numinous, a God who is not “safe,” a God who is … God.

Would you want a God who was “safe,” harmless, innocuous, impotent, toothless, entirely understandable, entirely predictable, entirely controllable? We do often want such gods! And I call them gods (lowercase “g”) because the gods of our own choosing are not God.

There are parts of the church that treat God almost as a cosmic “buddy,” a friend who gives me whatever it is I want, whose sole purpose is to make my life better, happier, more fulfilled.

And there are parts of the church that use “God” as an emblem, a symbol, a name to lend credence to our own political and social ideologies, whether conservative or liberal. This “god” becomes a means, to motivator, to use in the pursuit of our own political ambitions.

There are parts of the church that see God as a guarantor and defender of the lines they have already drawn, between friends and enemies, insiders and outsiders, good guys and bad guys, a god who is always conveniently on their side.

And there are parts of the church that see God everywhere, God in everything, indiscriminately endorsing and approving of whatever it is we want to endorse and approve, asking nothing of us, not asking us to change anything about ourselves.
There are many, many, many more such “gods,” but what all these gods have in common is that they are a means to an end — money, power, health, wealth, happiness, fulfillment, control, peace of mind — ends of my own choosing. What all these gods have in common is that they are not God, but idols.

God is … and we can only come into the presence of the living God as David did, with fear and with joy. Fear and joy? Can these, do these, belong together?

They do! Fear, because God is fearful, awe-ful, glorious, powerful, mighty, all-mighty, and joy because God is — because God is! — because God is the source of all that is, because God is the source of all that is good, because God is good.

What happens when people come into God’s presence? What happened to Moses, to Isaiah, to Job? They are humbled … and healed. They are overwhelmed with their own insignificance … and they are made to understand their true identity, their true calling, their true value as children of God. In getting a glimpse of who God is, they better know who they are, finally leaving behind that endless compulsion to have to be the ones in control, pulling the levers, manipulating the strings, fashioning the future, ensuring the outcome.

My friends, we are not God … thanks be to God! And we are doomed to misery and to failure whenever we try to be God or to worship a god of our own making. We are not God, but God chooses to come among us, to be among us, to grant us access to God’s own life-giving presence, to invite us into relationship, into covenant, into communion, into life.

Fear and joy. May we come to church expecting to meet God here and may we come to worship in that spirit, the spirit of fear and joy. May we tremble like David trembled and sing like David sang and dance like David danced. With all his might! With all our might. That’s how Jesus said we were to love God … with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might.

Father, we adore you,
lay our lives before you,
how we love you.

A sermon for the Sunday after Easter, based on John 20:19-23 and Acts 4:32-35

It was late that Sunday evening and they were gathered together behind locked doors because they were afraid. They were afraid and they were distressed. They were distressed because in just a few days — just days! — the world as they knew it had ceased to exist.

Because he had become their world. It was their life to follow him, to listen to him, to learn from him, yes, maybe even to try to emulate him. Just days ago, they had still been with him in the lake country, moving from town to town, house to house, synagogue to synagogue, he astonishing the people with his air of authority and his healing touch and his urgent message — “The time is now! God is on the move among you now!”

They had warned him, urged him, begged him not to go to Jerusalem, not this time, not this year. They knew who and what was waiting for him there. They did not doubt that he knew too, but he went anyway and they went with him. The people saw him as he neared the city. The people saw him and recognized him and hailed his arrival with shouts and enthusiastic praise.

But then … it all unravelled … so fast. Judas — one of them! — Judas and Roman soldiers and Temple guards accosting him in the garden, taking him, binding him, hauling him off. Hauled before the high priest and then a Roman tribunal. Questioned and mocked and beaten … and executed.

And executed …

He was gone, he was dead, and the world as they knew it was gone. They had no one to follow now, no one to listen to now, no one to learn from, nowhere to go, nothing to do. They were afraid, they were distressed, they were at a loss, looking for answers, looking for peace.

And Jesus came among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”

It is Sunday morning and we are gathered, not together, because we can’t be together, but gathered virtually, seeing each other, hearing each other, but not touching, not being together. We are afraid and distressed. We are distressed because in just a few days it seemed — days that became weeks that became months and now a year and more — the world as we knew it ceased to exist.

An infectious and deadly virus has put all of us at risk, but even when it has not touched our bodies, it has
ravaged our souls. Some of the rhythms of our lives are seemingly the same. We sleep, eat, read, check the news, take a trip to the grocery, maybe take a walk in the woods, but so much is not, so much has been lost. No long-planned trip to Scotland, no trips to the museum or the art gallery, no concerts, no dinner parties, no going to the movies, no going to a game.

All these may seem extra, expendable, superfluous, but it is so much of our humanness that has been taken away, so much of what we do in community, so much of what we do with each other: the work we do together, the things we create together, the holidays we celebrate together, the new places or new ideas or new adventures we discover together. There is no being together. Our lives have become like our computer avatars: virtual, two-dimensional, insensate, isolated. There is no singing, no hugging, no handshakes. There is no communion.

Relaxed restrictions and accelerated vaccinations bring us a glimmer of hope, but we don’t know, we just don’t know. Infection rates are widely increasing, not decreasing, and new variants provoke new worries. So we are at a loss still, we are distressed still, and we are afraid still, looking for answers, looking for peace.

And Jesus comes among us, and says, “Peace be with you.”

Peace be with you …

Peace is Jesus’ gift to you, right here and right now. Not to some of you, but to all of you. Not because you have earned it or asked for it or even believed it, but simply because he gives it.

Peace be with you, peace that far surpasses all human understanding, peace that keeps you safe, peace that makes you well, peace that fills you up with every kind of good thing, peace that brings you every kind of blessing.

Peace be with you. It is his gift, and because it is his to give, you cannot lose it. This peace is unshakeable. No one and nothing can take it away from you. It is yours, it is ours, for always, today and tomorrow … always.

Peace be with you … in the midst of doubt, in the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of distress. This peace is not absence, not absence of conflict or absence of struggle or absence of pain. This peace is presence, the presence of Jesus and all he brings with him, the presence of endurance, the presence of strength, the presence of wisdom, the presence of joy, the presence of life that is full and meaningful and good.

Peace be with you. Peace of mind, yes, but more than that, so much more than that. Not inner peace, but human peace, peace of mind and soul and body, peace of the whole of us, and peace between us, peace as we eat and sleep and walk and work, peace as we watch and listen, peace as we think and feel and choose, peace as we vote and as we give and as we offer help, peace as we believe and as we live what we believe, peace as we speak words of peace, and peace as we make peace. For peace is also a way.

Peace is a gift and peace is a way.

There was no one among them who was in need. Do you hear? There was no one among them who was in need! All had enough, all had enough to live and to live well.

Because Jesus made them one. It wasn’t me against you anymore or me in competition with you or even me alongside you. It wasn’t me taking care of myself and mine anymore, but we, we taking care of each other, not merely caring about each other, but caring for each other, not sharing what we can spare, but sharing what we have.

There was no one among them who was in need, because Jesus made them one, and because the resurrection of Jesus set them free, free from fear, free from the need to store up in barns, free from having to make personal security priority #1, free to be generous, free to be wildly generous, free to be in love with this life, free to be in love with each other.

Resurrection is not just a spiritual reality; it is a human reality. Resurrection is not a promise for another life; resurrection is a promise for this life.

Resurrection is the promise — no, resurrection is the fact — that what is best, what is most precious, what is most beautiful, about the life we have, here and now, cannot and will not be taken from us.

Today we are not promised joy, we have joy, because Jesus lives and has made us alive with him. And today we are not promised peace, we have peace, because Jesus gives it. Because Jesus gives it.

Peace is his gift and peace is our way.

Peace be with you.