watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEzkpXq6vOM&feature=youtu.be
February 16, 2020
Let’s play guess the quote. I’ll read it and you guess who said it and
the source.
“Mos Eisley spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of
scum and villainy. We must be
cautious.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star
Wars: A New Hope.
“I confess, it is my intention to
commandeer one of these ships, pick up a crew in Tortuga, and, raid, pillage,
plunder, and otherwise pilfer my weasley black guys out.” - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Both quotes precede a story of a ragtag
band of heroes descending into chaos space to throw together a team of rogues
who will help them fight a corrupt empire.
The agents commissioned to maintain law and order, the Empire in Star
Wars, and the British navy in Pirates of the Caribbean have turned
out to be cruel and untrustworthy. So,
the heroes, Will Turner and Luke Skywalker, turn to a pirate, Jack Sparrow, and
a smuggler, Han Solo, for help. When the
established order turns out to be evil, our movies heroes seek salvation in
those who survive and even thrive in disordered madness.
It’s Darwinian. Who survives?
The fittest. Survival is the goal
and there’s no overarching power or ultimate goodness to turn to for help.
I don’t know if life ever feels like
that to you. Bills stack up faster than
your income. Mistakes and bad decisions
cut you off at the knees. The people you
hope will help you turn out to be unreliable.
And sometimes the friend you counted on becomes part of the problem
that’s vexing you. Where do you
turn? Your job? The university? The government? The challenges before you
seem utterly insurmountable. And then
your health fails. A period of recovery
and a massive hospital bill are added to your rising stack of burdens.
Does it ever feel like the universe
is out to get you? A Darwinian would say
no it is not. The universe just hums
along and natural selection determines who will survive and possibly
thrive. There’s no purpose. Whether you are suffering or flying high,
whether your life is an ever-worsening agony or a sun-sparkling joy, there is
no greater purpose.
To this bleak fatalism, Star Wars
or The Pirates of the Caribbean propose that hope and abundant life must
be won through deadly, authority-defying quests. These movies are fun, but miss something we
see in Exodus, something important.
Exodus is a story of God and His
people. In the face of struggles that
make it feel like all the universe is out to get us, we keep in mind that there
is an ultimate good overseeing all. This
ultimate good is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom we know through the
crucified and resurrected one. He is
over the story and in the story – both the Exodus, and the story of your life.
Remember the 10 Commandments come in
the midst of the story of God and God’s people.
Instead of just listing them, one-by-one, to feel the force of the
commands, enter the story.
Exodus 2:23-24 - “The Israelites
groaned under their slavery [in Egypt], and cried out. … Their cry rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered
His covenant with Abraham.” This story’s
hero won’t, like Luke, turn to a ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy;’ Moses
doesn’t even know he is the hero until God calls him. Once he is called, then his only source for
help is the God who called him. Even
then, after embarking upon the journey, several times, Moses tries to get out
of it.
Exodus 5:22-23 – “O Lord, why have
you mistreated this people? Why did you
ever send me? Since I first came to
Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated this people and you have done
nothing.” How does God respond to his
exasperated prophet’s accusations?
“You shall see what I will do to
Pharaoh. I am the Lord … God
Almighty. I have heard the groaning of
[my people]. I have remembered my
covenant with their father Abraham. Tell
the Israelites I will free them and bring them into the land I promised them.”
I don’t recommend barking at God, “Hey,
you up there! You’ve done nothing to
help me.” I won’t give pastoral sanction
to such an approach to prayer. But I
also don’t recommend against it. God’s
best interactions with us come when we are honest with Him. Moses was at his wit’s end when he said those
things and God knew it. God welcomed his
outburst. God responded to it with
promise.
So,
whatever approach you take to prayer, be fully honest before God. Don’t endeavor to pray well. Pray transparently. Pray from all your anger, frustration, pain,
hurt, loss, and disappointment. If those
real emotions bubbling up in you lead to unholy words, then direct those profane
words to God. And then be ready to
receive God’s response.
God did what He promised. He led Moses and the people to the shore of
the Red Sea, and then through it on foot, walking the dry ground in the middle
of the Sea God had parted in his limitless power. That impossible trek behind them, God led the
people to the foot of Mount Sinai.
Exodus 19:17-19 – “Moses brought the
people out of the camp to meet God. They
took their stand at the foot of the mountain.
Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon it
in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain
shook violently. … Moses spoke and God
answered him in thunder.”
In the desert wilderness, dependent
on God for their very existence, seeing this fiery display of raw power, the
people understand how horribly awesome God is.
They also understand they are his possession. They’ve been rescued from slavery to serve,
love, and worship God – this God; the only God.
They will be different than all
other peoples. Other tribes created
carved statues, and then worship the things they made. Other nations were ruled by kings, however
good or evil the king might be. These
people, in this Sinai moment, clearly see that they are called to be
different. Later, they will forget and
build a golden calf for themselves and worship it. Later, it won’t be enough
for them that they are God’s and they will demand a king even when God tells
them the king will ruin them. For now,
though, they see who they truly are – God’s.
It is enough.
After the miraculous deliverance,
after the promise of covenant, after the display of might in the fire
descending on the mountain, then God gives the 10 commands. The first four deal with the relationship we
have with God. The final six govern how
we relate to one another in society. Taken
together, they serve as bullet points for the two great commands of Jesus: love
the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and, love your neighbor
as yourself. How do we live out these
commandments of Jesus within our daily lives and our social lives? Stay within the boundaries drawn by the 10
commandments.
We see how to live. But it only makes sense in relation to what
God is doing. In Israel, God, working
through the exodus and then the prophets and priests is constituting a
people. God creates a nation unlike any
other. This will be a nation of priests
that shows the world how to live in relationship with God. This vision comes to fruition in the final
chapters of Isaiah, where God welcomes the world into His embrace as the kings
of the world come in drove to Israel seeking God.
The world is chaotic and governments
and strongmen and systems of control, supposedly providing order, are as
oppressive and untrustworthy as Star Wars or The Pirates of the
Caribbean present them to be. Within
a world in which Egyptians enslave Hebrews and force them to build pyramids,
God calls out a people to be his own.
God constitutes a people to live in the world, fallen as it
is. His people are to be beacons,
pointing the way out of chaos and into order and Shalom for all humanity. The commandments give humans the ground rules
for the Hillside way of life.
What conditions do you experience in
the hardest parts of your daily life that show the world is still fallen? In Jesus Christ, God shows you the path to
peace, order, and love, and God is a trustworthy, merciful overseer. Know his commandments, live by them, and see
how different things look and feel.
Walter Brueggemann calls the
hillside way of life delineated in the commandments a “viable alternative to
Egyptian slavery” (p.184). Imagine
leaning into the Kingdom of God as Jesus describes it – Jesus the one whose
life and teachings brought the commandments to fulfillment. How is the Kingdom of God a viable
alternative to the life you’re living now?
From our current situation, how do we lean in to that Kingdom?
We approach God with hands open and
hearts ready to receive. Michael Fishbane
describes a “divine pulse of giving and care” that is the “eternal truth” of
the hillside, Sinai (p.129). When we try
to live on our terms, by our own rules, cut-off from God’s rule, then we are
cut off from God’s love. We have consciously turned away from the divine
pulse.
We
begin sensing that the way of life to which God calls us, regulated by the
commandments, can truly come about when we receive. From God we receive rebuke, forgiveness, joy,
love, hope, strength, words and wisdom, warning, redirection, and so many other
gifts. Receiving is a humble posture, so
it is the perfect one to adopt before God.
Resisting our need for self-reliance, we come before God receptive and
willing to be formed and molded. God
constitutes us as a people – His people called to tell His story.
Our town is as fallen and chaotic as
anywhere. I love our town. I love my neighbors, both the committed
followers of Jesus and the disregarders of Jesus. Our town needs the story of salvation. God has placed us here to tell it. Every time someone believes and turns to
Christ, he or she joins this covenant community, and enters God’s way,
the Hillside life.
So, we close seeing that like Luke
Skywalker or Will Turner we face dangers and we have struggles. For us, help does not come from Han Solo or
Jack Sparrow, whom we find in some rogue-filled saloon. Our help comes from the Lord. This world is his and so are we; we are his
possessions. We come before him with the
offer of humble worship and the readiness to receive whatever He gives.
AMEN
Sources
Brueggemann,
Walter (1997. Theology of the Old
Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy.
Fortress Press (Minneapolis).
Fishbane,
Michael (2008). Sacred Attunement: A
Jewish Theology. University of Chicago
Press (Chicago).
Martens,
Elmer (1981). God’s Design: A Focus
on Old Testament Theology. Baker
House Books (Grand Rapids).
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