Exodus 1:8-2:10

Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

Sermon Text

The story from our scripture is arguably one of the most brutal that is recorded in scripture. It is a story of genocide executed against the Hebrews in Egypt long ago. Generations after Joseph had saved Egypt, his people had become part of the community. The people lived in Goshen and had their own customs and culture, but this was not a cause for conflict. That is, until it was. The people in Goshen lived under the good graces of whoever was in power, and for many years the dynasty in question was sympathetic to them and their part in Egyptian life. Then, with the turn of a page, everything changes. A new dynasty takes power, a new Pharaoh that “knows not Joseph.” A new world begins, and it begins with fear and with danger.

A program to eliminate the Hebrews is launched. “Kill every male child, leave the daughters.” In a patrilineal world, and at the time both Egyptian and Hebrew cultures both followed descent on the father’s side, the destruction of a son was the destruction of a people. Daughters were married off, sent to live with their husbands, subsumed into their new culture. Pharoah wanted to destroy an entire people bit by bit, not all at once. Afterall, they still needed bodies to do the hard work. Overtime the hope was that the Hebrew people would be erased into a generic lower caste of Egyptians, the perceived threat they posed erased through murder and eugenics.

This story is from a specific moment in history. It is not, however, a story that only happened once. It has been repeated time and time again.. When there is a group of people in power, they often become concerned at the idea of losing their power. It is difficult to maintain peace and prosperity in a society, and when things get hard people question the people who are in charge. A good leader might own up to shortcomings and redirect their actions, but few leaders are good enough to do that. Many defer to pointing fingers, and when power points a finger, danger naturally follows.

There is a lie that we often tell ourselves in life, that the conflicts we see are somehow inevitable. We tell ourselves that, given that there is only ever a limited amount of resources, people will come to a place where they fight for control of them.

Certainly, people have fought over limited resources plenty of times, but that situation can only happen if the people in question are on comparable footing. If we are in the middle of the desert, and we find a single bottle of water, it is very likely there might be some fighting over who would get to drink it. We might imagine ourselves being noble and giving it to the other person, we can hope we would do that, but it would not be unreasonable to think that there might be a fight. However, life often gives us a completely different version of this conflict, where one person has a great deal of means and another person very little.

The Pharoah had nothing to fear from the Hebrew people. They were a minority in Egypt, living with them for centuries. In centuries past, it was a Hebrew that saved Egypt – not only Egypt, but all of the Ancient Near East. Egypt had proven that even in the worst of times – a famine – it was possible for everyone to get food and shelter, to be taken care of. It was only years after that disaster, as opulence and success poisoned the minds of power, that it was decided something had to be done about their neighbors. The solution they conjured up? Long knives and brutal murder in the rivers of Egypt.

We can mention countless examples of people taking this tact throughout history. The worst recorded events came during the past five hundred or so years of human history. The wars of religion in Europe, Christian killing Christians over who has the right way of taking Holy Communion. The Crusades, Christians and Muslims killing over who has the right to own a few hundred miles of land. The imperial programs launched across the world by many nations, declaring that the land of native peoples no longer belonged to them, but to kings and emperors far away. In every case, the conflict was to relieve some perceived problem in society. Sometimes that problem may have been, “I need more money,” on the part of a monarch or industry, but that would not sell the conflict to the average person. No, instead it is disguised. “You would have a better life, if not for those people over there!”

“Those people,” can take on any characteristics we like, as long as we look just enough unlike them for it to be ok to hurt them. Sometimes the separation is racial – up until 1968 it was legal to discriminate in this country based on race, and even after it wasn’t people still found ways.

North View used to be the only place Italians could buy property here, and that wasn’t very long ago. Other times the separation was more classist – “Those people who don’t talk or act right, they’re too low class for us, they shouldn’t be in this part of town.” It is the easiest thing in the world to hate a group of people, as long as we are told they are the real cause of all our problems. Think of your media diet – songs, social media, shows, and news broadcasts – oftentimes the quest they embark upon is to name society’s problems and its villains.

I grew up listening to country, and I tell you that I hate how much of it is just about how evil city people are. “Those people don’t know what America really is.,” sings the rhinestone cowboys of our day. Most recently, another song surges in popularity (because of aggressive funding from political marketing,) and cries out that the working man would be fine, if not for all the welfare queens. A tired old narrative, but one playing on radios all over. There are people really causing harm in this world, believe me, but they are not poor or urban, or any other class of person we ever deal with regularly. No, the rich and the powerful are often the source of our troubles, but we are not willing to admit that very often. Instead, we pick our favorite powerful people and say that it is all the other ones that are the problem.

Want for power and money is what more often than not feeds into evil. Why are so many people working three or four jobs just to pay for rent? Because industry demands that they be paid as little as possible or else the executives might lose a few million dollars of their raise that year. Why are we told that the problems in our town are the poor who seek shelter and food? Because if it’s their fault, then we do not have to ask what kind of world we live in where someone can miss one month’s rent and end up on the street. You and I do not benefit from a world like that, but the people who turn us against each other sure do. The people who wish to divide people, to keep them fighting, are not revolutionaries- instead, they are defenders of the status quo, of a world where might makes right and money talks.

Most powerful of all, when someone points out the world is broken, it’s easy to shift blame onto them. “The system works fine for me,” says the ones in power, “So, you talking about racism, or sexism, or bigotry, must really be the problem. I mean, just think of the children!” Worse than that, we will often go along with this shift, blaming people fighting to be heard as though they are the villains.  The biggest ally to those who support the status quo is the well-meaning moderate who defends them because it seems like the nice thing to do. Martin Luther King Jr. said he was afraid of White Moderate Christians more than he was the Klan, because while everyone knew the Klan wanted black people dead, the moderate would do nothing to stop them till the next election cycle, and only then if the platform of the opposition was better for their 401k.[1]

It is the easiest thing in the world to hate other people, because hate is easily disguised as us just being reasonable. When Pharoah told the Egyptians to kill the Hebrew, I’m sure every Egyptian that participated in the program told themselves it was just the sensible thing to do. Just like every pioneer said of the Indian, every Nazi of every Jew, every protestor of integration of children on their way to school, and every other bigot of every other generation. God’s people are not immune to the lure of hate. Hate breeds so easily in our hearts. It is the easiest place for evil to leak into our souls – why else would Jesus tell us that hate, and murder might as well be the same thing?

Today, I offer a warning, much more than I offer a benediction. We must be careful, especially entering an election year, to legitimately pursue love, and consciously reject hate. If we cannot do that, then there is no point in us gathering here. We, the children of God, must be better than the world around us. We can only do that, if we embrace a love like Christ’s, taking that long and narrow road that leads to salvation, and not the wide road of hate that leads to damnation. – Amen.

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[1] This is my elaboration of King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. King asks that true allies act in the face of oppression., “We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

Genesis 45: 1-15

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors.

So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me; do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there, since there are five more years of famine to come, so that you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and after that his brothers talked with him.

Sermon Text

Fresh off of a week of COVID, I hope that the words I have for you make sense. It has been a week of cold medicine, of sleeping more than I thought was possible, and of having plenty of time with my thoughts. Perhaps a sort of brilliance matriculated in the midst of all that, or a delirium. We are going to find our through our discussion today, a discussion of one of the most essential pieces of our faith and also the hardest we could ever attempt to embark upon. This is the work of forgiveness, the most difficult thing we ever are asked to do as Christians.

Forgiveness is the essence of faith. Even before Jesus walked the Earth, God was giving instructions on the importance of justice, mercy, and forgiveness. It was so engrained into the people of God that there were procedures and rituals for every aspect of life. Whether the offense was moral, legal, or financial – there was always a way for people to be shown mercy through the lessons God had given to God’s people. We see how deeply rooted this was in the lives of God’s people by going back to the origin story of the Israelites, to the gathering of Joseph and his brothers. A reunion that was full of emotion, rooted in forgiveness, and tinged with the an underlying tension we are all familiar with in our own lives.

Joseph’s story begins with a classic case of parental favoritism. Joseph’s father loved Jospeh more than any of his other sons, being the firstborn of his favorite wife, Rachel. There’s a little ambiguity in the timeline of Joseph’s birth, so at the time he may have been her only son. Joseph spoiled his son, dressing him in the best clothing, making him unfit to be out in the fields with his brothers. The favoritism eventually led to a feud between the brothers, and that feud ended with them planning to kill Joseph. One brother thought to spare him his life, and through a few chance meetings, Joseph was sold into slavery. He would grow to prominence, then be cast into prison. Finally, becoming powerful through his working with Pharoah on rationing.

The famine that had decimated the Levant was avoided in Egypt through wat Joseph did. However, there was a different work going on within Joseph across his time in Egypt. That work was the work of forgiveness. See, the way this story is told makes us jump from one reality to the other – at first they are planning to kill one another and then all of a sudden they are at peace. However, years have passed between one moment and the other, an entire lifetime of growth was allowed for each person to come to terms with their part in this disaster. Joseph had time to think about his brother’s sin, and each brother their own guilt in the situation.

While Joseph was in Egypt, most every one of his brothers were humbled in some way. Jacob, their father, had his own failings that led to some of their falling out. Some of his brothers sought revenge for an attack on their family, Judah failed several times in several way. Each sibling was shown through their own life that living for themselves was not going to be enough to survive in this world. Each was humbled, disaster after disaster, and learned to be a better person because of it. It was after all this growth that they came to Egypt seeking relief from the famine, and after all this that they were able to reclaim their relationship with their brother.

When they first came to Egypt, they were met by Joseph in all his glory. Dressed as an Egyptian and decked out in all manner of finery, they had no idea who Joseph was. Joseph spoke through an interpreter to continue the illusion that he was a stranger – allowing him to listen to his brothers as they worried about what this official would think of them. Joseph was overly kind to his brothers, but also played up their anxieties. He hid the money they had paid for the food in the bags of grain he sent with them, so that on arrival they had to worry if they’d be accused of theft upon return. Joseph also kept one of the brothers, Simeon, as collateral until they returned with his younger brother, another child of Rachel, Benjamin.

The crew would be accused of theft once more after they came into Egypt, another game of Joseph. He had hidden a silver cup in Bemjamin’s bag. When the brothers returned, sure they were to be killed or enslaved, Judah offered himself up in the place of his brothers. His sacrifice was made with his father in mind – an old man who had lost so much, two of his children and his beloved wife, could not lose anything else. So, Judah offered himself so that at least Jacbo could have his youngest child to be a part of his life still. It is this offer that causes Joseph to drop his act, confess his identity, and declare his forgiveness toward his brothers.

The saga of their lives was long, complicated, and messy as can be. For those of us reading it, we trace their life across a few dozen pages and call it a day. However, for each person in this story there were years and years of life to be lived. It was not a flip of the switch for forgiveness to given, or for enough growth to have happened to allow for a genuine reconciliation between these brothers. Joseph, the miracle worker who saved Egypt, and his brothers, the cheats who had sold him into slavery – they did not get to where they were in this moment overnight.

In the Church, we often fail to talk about forgiveness because we either make it sound like an automatic reflex or like an impossibility. We move on a pendulum between embracing a harmful ethic that never asks people to be accountable for the wrong they do to others and embracing a scalpel we willing excise people from our lives with because they have done something wrong. These two extremes are not conducive to a Christian ethic of forgiveness, and are certainly not what we ought to be pursuing as the Church.

Forgiveness is hard because it can take many forms and have many outcomes. Sometimes we are able to forgive someone, and in giving that forgiveness we find ourselves able to reconcile with them. Usually that is because the offender has realized they were wrong and done something to fix the harm they caused and the habits they had that led to the problem. Other times we forgive and still must disconnect from the person who wronged us. Still more, there are those who we have not mustered the strength to forgive, and who show no signs of helping the process through changing.

I think it is best for us, rather than dealing with abstractions, to try and picture our own lives. Think on the people who you know you have wronged in your life. If we are honest, there’s probably a few people we have hurt and not tried to make amends with. We should seek forgiveness, we should become better people so that we will not hurt them like we had before. We should ask to be forgiven, and provide fruits worthy of repentance. For those who have wronged us, we have to decide which kind of forgiveness we will pursue with them. The kind that seeks to restore a relationship? The kind that forgives and then parts on equal terms? Or the kind that is begrudging, limited, but ultimately freeing?

The ideal would of course be a radical forgiveness that restores all bonds that have been broken… The reality is that we cannot always achieve this kind of restoration of what was. The duty of any Christian is to do what they can to contribute to a good end. Maybe that means acknowledging that contact cannot be resumed, maybe that means forgiving when we would rather not, or maybe it means owning up to the mistakes we’ve made – apologizing out of legitimate sense of contrition rather than a desire to be free of consequences. Whatever the decision, whatever the tact, it is our duty to do what is right, and to discern what that means for the places we find ourselves in.

Let us pray then that the outcome can be like what our scripture shows us – love, peace, and abundant rejoicing with those we love. – Amen.

Revelation 20: 11-15

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and all were judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire, and anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Sermon Text

After a week of illness, it is good to be back here with you all. Especially to participate in something our question series. Sadly last week’s theme could not be tackled, but I can speak to what it would have been briefly. Hospitality is much more than just saying hello when people come in, but preparing a place they can feel safe and at home as well. For this purpose we’re working to upgrade some of the fixtures of the Church. Redoing our parking lot, putting signs and maps up in the Church, as well as working hard to make our church accessible to all people. Hospitality is much more than coffee in a coffee pot or a greeter at the door.

Today our question series takes us into territory much broader and perhaps more difficult to parse as a result The question deals with a specific item described throughout the scriptures, “The Book of Life,” and whether or not its contents were written by God before we ever drew breath or is the book of life an ongoing writing project of God’s? Put more simply – do we choose to follow God or did God choose us so that we really had no choice in the matter?

Firstly, we can look directly at the object itself – the book of life. The book of life only named once in Hebrew Bible – in Psalm 69. When it appears, it seems to refer to a book of who is alive. Sometimes it is mentioned in the context of punishment. In this case someone is described as being, “Blotted out,” from the book of life. In other words, a name that used to be there is no longer there. Elsewhere, scripture presents the book that God keeps records in as being for the purposes of keeping all the good deeds a person works, and conversely, recording every sin that that person commits. Later Mishnaic commentary described three separate books being kept – one for the righteous, one for the wicked, and one for the moderates.[1] One book would ensure your placement in the World to Come. One would ensure your place in perdition. The final would put you in a place where repentance was possible.

When Christians began to picture what Heaven was like, they adapted this imagery for their own purposes. Throughout the New Testament, oblique or explicit references to “The Book of Life,” are made and always for the same purpose. The Book of Life is a roster of the saved in Heaven. This is the usage that we see used in our scripture for today. A book of all those who Christ has saved, and who are therefore permitted to live in the glory of Heaven for eternity. This is probably not a literal book, but a way of speaking of God’s knowledge and oversight of the saved. Even if it is a literal book, the pages are more numerous than we could ever imagine. The question becomes, and the essence of our topic for the day, whether or not the names within the book preexist our life or are written during our life.

Some may look at this question and find it strange, after all there is no mention of names being written down in most of the texts we have – only that they already exist in the book of life to be preserved or erased. It is possible that every name is in the book until it isn’t, in other words. However, for some people the overall context of scripture leads them to conclude that God has decided long ago who will be saved and that is the end of the question. Some supporting evidence for this are the several mentions of God working on behalf of believers long into the past. Matthew 25 gives us a mention of a Kingdom “prepared… from the foundations of the Earth.” Paul is even more explicit in Romans 8, saying that those who God “foreknew,” God also “predestined.”

These definitely speak to God working for our good before we are even born, but does it mean that God has already picked who is in and out of eternity? I don’t think so. Normally I might take some time to talk about the ways that you could defend predestination from the text and then explain why I think that is not the right way to read the text. For my part today, however, I think it is sufficient to explain a bit of why I think free-will is the more compelling argument from scripture. To do this, we simply have to look at any part of scripture.

We can begin in the Torah. In Genesis, Abraham is told by God that many people are going to die for their sins – Abraham pleads with God and convinces God to spare everyone if he can find even a handful of righteous people. Later in Exodus, Moses pleads with God to spare the people despite their many failings, God relents and listens to Moses. The Prophets all preached a message of doom, but for most every group preached to there was a hope – a hope that if they changed course they would be allowed to live. Jesus preached for people to be baptized and repent so that they might take part in the Kingdom. Scripture is full of many people being given choices and making decisions that change what happens next. So much so, that even God seems to be willing to redirect Divine Will for the good of God’s people.

This overwhelming message of scripture is that we have choices to make and that those choices matter. It would be strange to me if there were choices offered for every aspect of our life except the most important part – namely matters of salvation. Why would God give us all these small choices to make, allow us the illusion of choice, only to deprive us the most impactful decision of our life?  From the very basis of the idea, it seems impossible for me to see God as deciding something so significant.

I also cannot imagine God willed who will be saved from before time began because that means God would also have decided who will be damned before time began. John Wesley beautifully described the matter, saying that, “unconditional election cannot appear without the cloven foot of reprobation..”[2] In other words, you cannot imagine God pre-ordaining the saved without dooming others to Hell at the same time. No matter how beautiful the idea of predestination feels, that God cared for the saved before they were ever born, it also necessarily leads us to believing God has eternally rejected others.

I cannot accept that version of salvation history. God does not set up targets just to be knocked down. It is a firm belief of my heart, stronger than most anything, that while Divine Freedom means God would be able to choose to preordain salvation, Divine Mercy necessitates God would not. God gives chance after chance for us to make things right – not only with God, but with all those in our life. We are people given a multitude of choices, a million opportunities to grow and to change. We are able to do this because God allows us to change, and that choice is a blessed thing.

The Book of Life sits open in Heaven, and it is being written in every minute. Whether God holds the pen or the angels, whether they’ve gone digital or they still keep paper copies – it does not matter. Our life is being written down, our deeds kept track of. If we wis to see our names kept on the page, then we need faith. If we want to see our ledger full of good deeds to be celebrated rather than evil ones to be erased, then we need to make changes to do those good deeds in the here and now. We are always given a choice, and we must always be willing, with God’s help, to make the right ones. – Amen.

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[1] Mishnah Avot. 3:17

[2] John Wesley. “Predestination Calmly Considered.”

Romans 10:5-15

Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will live by them.” But the righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say?

“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation. The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Sermon Text

Scripture impacts us differently depending on when we read it. We can hear the same verse dozens of times and not find anything exceptional about it. Suddenly though, with no seeming trigger, that same verse can become an overwhelming source of life and assurance. Sometimes the difference is a matter of life experience – a verse describing the love between a parent and child will not hit someone without children the same way it will someone with children. Other times the difference is something completely beyond ourselves. John Welsey famously felt assured of his salvation after hearing a public reading of an introduction to Romans. He had read Romans throughout his life, but something about its introduction that day hit him in a way it never had before.

Paul, in writing to the church in Rome, was primarily addressing the question of how Jews and Gentiles could live together. There are different perspectives on whether the primary audience were the Jewish or Gentile Christians in Rome, but either way there was a problem between the two groups. The issue at hand was not as simple as saying one group or the other was mistreating the other – instead long running societal tensions had caused a divide between the two groups. Romans, as a rule, looked down on Jews. Jews, likewise, had reason to distrust Romans – especially in the capital city. Claudius, the Emperor at the time, had expelled all Jews from the city, and the underlying antisemitic feelings in Rome probably bled into the Church.

Paul, a Greek Jew himself, had been born in the Turkish town of Tarsus. His family had sent him to Judea to be trained under rabbis in Jerusalem. There Paul suppressed his Greek identity – beginning to call himself the far more Jewish sounding, “Saul,” rather than the far too Greek “Paul.” It was only after Jesus appeared to him on the roadside that Paul embraced his status as a Roman and a Jew. After spending time in the Damascus Church he returned home to Tarsus, and then began his ministry that would last for his entire life.

Paul would not go to minister to the Roman Church until the final months of his life. We see his mindset then in the book of Philippians. Paul abandons much of his theological complexity to simply declare the power of Christ’s incarnation, and the necessity for the Church to stand together in love. This probably shocked the Roman Church who had only known him through letters before that. Letters like what we call “Romans,” a complex argument for the equality all people experience under Jesus Christ, but also for the importance of the unique gifts we all bring to the Church.

In the midst of his explanation of God’s grace, Paul comes to a verse I’ve already named as a favorite of mine. We are given an interpretation of Deuteronomy 30 that transforms its message in a way that could only happen in Paul’s mindset as a minister to God’s people from all walks of life. The passage Paul quotes, in full, goes like this:
            “Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” – Deut. 30:11-14

The message of this passage is pretty different in its original context than what Paul gives it as in Romans. In Deuteronomy the message is about how we can keep God’s commandments, that God is not asking us to do anything impossible by asking us to do the right thing. This is something we often forget, we decide its ok to do what’s wrong because, “Nobody’s perfect!”

For Paul the message of Deuteronomy 30 takes on a different shade. Rather than being about how God’s commands are within our power to keep, the message becomes on about faith itself. Paul, elsewhere in Romans, wants to make very clear that goodness and salvation are two separate conditions of the faithful life. A person is saved regardless of how good they are at that moment, they become more perfect in their goodness as a result of their faith. Put in the language of this passage, the confession of their faith saves while the reality of their salvation makes them good. Christ in our heart and Christ upon our lips, two parts of the same whole we call faith.

Paul takes this duality and applies it to the need for us to testify to our goodness. To proclaim Christ’s salvation wherever we go, so that we might embrace the entire world. Through this embrace, we bring people into the community of the Church. As part of the Church, we learn to love Christ and one another more perfectly, and then are ready to be sent out into the world to testify about the same salvation that brought us into the family of God in the first place. A circle of action that constantly revivifies and preserves the work of the Church.

I think we all understand this on a basic level, it is the foundation of our mission in the United Methodist Church. We make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and that comes through our proclamation of Christ and our living our of the life Christ has freed us to be a part of. However, I think another lesson comes from the scripture we just read, one that is expressed predominately in the fact Paul makes the argument he does at all.

Scripture has definite meaning – it cannot be made to mean whatever we want it to. However, the way that God reveals the meaning of scripture is often tied to the place we are in life. People, Churches, movements, all are shaped by scripture and by the world around them. God often uses one to inform the other. Just like how Paul found new meaning and life in Deuteronomy that he would not have known before, we can find new meaning and life in the scriptures we hold in our hands, each and every day. – Amen.

Matthew 14: 13-21

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Sermon Text

The needs of the world are always just outside our doors. When we enjoy the relative security of our homes – heated and cooled, full of all the comforts we’ve gathered over the years, we do so with the sight of people who do not have as many comforts always nearby. Outside our doors, there are people who need food, housing, security, and more than any physical good – they need to know that they are part of a community that cares about them. Life is often a pursuit of peace, something that is hard to make for oneself when nothing else is available. Peace can be given, but unless it is cultivated with a community that understands one another, then it will fade over time.

Although far from complete in its explanation of how people find comfort, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives a general understanding of the world we live in. A pyramid of needs builds toward “self-actualization,” the point at which a person is able to be fully realized. Though imperfect, the flow of this chart shows us how some people are able to flourish and others struggle again, and again, and again, in life. It is often not an internal failing of a person, but a failure of resources and of community. To be all that we can be, we need food and water, a cool place when it is hot and a warm one when it is cold. We need a house we can sleep in without worrying about if we’ll be harmed. We need people to love us, people to encourage us, and only once we have all this, can we really become all that we are capable of being.

There are always confounding factors, but it should be obvious to us that the people who really succeed in life, have support from other people to get them where they are. Many of us grew up with families that lifted us up, whether families of blood, adoption, or that we found along the way. Sometimes that help was in the form of money, food, or opportunities, but often it was just in a willingness to listen, to help, to push us forward into something new.

The crowds that followed Jesus did so were people looking for support. When we hear the accusations laid at Jesus’s feet, we get an idea for what kinds of people joined his movement. Jesus describes the accusations of his opponents in Matthew 11, where he says that they call him a drunk, a glutton, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners.[1] Interestingly, Jesus seldom calls the people who he associates with “sinners,” unless he is quoting his critics, but that is a topic for another time. The general theme is clear though, Jesus is associating with social rejects of various stripes. Tax collectors were on the payroll of Rome, and so were often seen as traitors and thieves. “Sinners,” is non-descript, but we can insert our own definitions to that category. Just think of the people we’re likely to complain about as we drive through town or as we scroll through Facebook. “Sinner,” is just an insult here, so whoever you choose to insult will be a good stand-in for who Jesus’s critics meant.

Jesus attracted these people because he had something no one else had. As his disciples describe in John, Jesus has “The Words of Life.”[2] The teachings he give are life-giving to those who hear them, not just because they offer Spiritual Rebirth, but because they tangibly effect life in the here and now. Jesus taught that Rome had no power of the Kingdom of God, a very political message, but one rooted in non-violence and passive resistance. He taught that the family made by people coming together as the Church was more important than whether you were born into a good family or a bad one. Jesus advocated for a world that is different than the one we live in, and the apostles and his followers made that world come to pass wherever they settled.

Jesus was dedicated to this goal, because he knew that God would supply anything that was needed when he created these communities. The crowds that gathered around him were a noisy bunch, a rabble that others would turn their nose up to.[3] Jesus refused to do what the world did, and instead offered the poor, the broken, the rejects, a place of honor among his people. Even when he had withdrawn to an empty field, and this group followed him, he would not turn them away without food. They came to hear him speak, and the words of life are powerful, but as we have already seen it is hard to focus on them when you can hear your stomach grumbling. Jesus reaches down into the depths of God’s mercy and makes a provocative claim – God will provide, no matter what we start with.

Oftentimes a ministry dies before it has even begun. When the people gather together and start counting up the costs, something Jesus recommends as good thinking, we see that the number of zeroes at the end of our estimate are a little more than we might be willing to jump into. The possibility of failure locks us into place and we begin to think of everyway that this money might go to waste if our plan does not work. So the money sits, is spent on something else more safe than that ambitious idea, and before we know it the money is shrinking despite the fact we did not use it to chase our dream ministry. That is the wonder of resources, they will be spent, the question is whether we spend them on something Godly or mundane. Do we just keep fussing with whether we will keep the lights on, or do we go out on a limb?

In my own life, I will admit that a pastor’s salary keeps things pretty tight for me. Grace and I both are taken care of by our Churches, but still with the price of things, with her medical bills, our student loan payments, and the debt we have to pay off because we needed credit to make up for what other bills took from what we needed to live for the month. With life in general, it is a struggle to make it to the end of the month sometimes. With rare exception I would say that most of us in this room know that feeling, prices go up but income does not. Prices go up and down, but they never go down quite as far as they once were. Life is expensive, and we are prone to worry about what is in our pockets.

With that being said, I have adopted an ethic in life. If a cause comes up for me to fund, and I have the means to fund it in that moment. I give to it. I have friends who have medical bills, surgeries to pay, and all other manner of costs that come up. When those GoFundMe pages come up on my page, or I have an opportunity to alleviate those costs – I do. I do that because we are all struggling these days, and so any help we can give is a blessed thing. I live that way with people I meet on the street, if I have cash and someone asks for some, I give it to them. When I was in DC, this was a very expensive practice – I carried a few fives, a few tens, and a twenty or two for this purpose. If I walked in Georgetown, that would empty out quickly.

One person might say that is irresponsible, that panhandlers are better off going to a soup kitchen or something than begging. Oftentimes that is true, you’re better off going to First Church in Clarksburg than to the GoMart because they might have other resources for you, and a food pantry can feed you for more than a day at a time if you can make it there. Yet, Jesus never turned away someone calling for help on the street. Jesus, who had nothing but God’s grace and whatever was in the common purse for that day. Jesus gave money to the poor when they asked, because he knew God would fill in the gaps.

Abusive ministers would here demand that everyone take out a check and write it out to the Church this instant! I am not that, though. I always trust my congregations that they will give as they are able. Instead, I invite us all to adopt a broader willingness to plan and serve our community as individuals and as a Church. When we gather for meetings, we should not be thinking “How will ever pay for this?” But instead, “We can do this, and we will fund this, how do we do that as best we can?” A slight shift, but an important one. When we see an opportunity to help people in our community, we should not come up with excuses why that would not be possible or why they might abuse that kindness, but instead say, “God will do what God will with my action, how do I give in a way that helps the most?”

God will not make you rich if you are generous. Jesus was homeless, that is the model we all follow. God will not make all your troubles melt away if you devote yourself to helping others. Oftentimes that sort of work will make things harder than just living our life for ourselves would be. No, instead Jesus offers something completely different for us. The life we pursue is not one based in worldly riches or superficial peace. It is the pursuit of genuine goodness, genuine kindness, genuine community. If we want to really help people, we have to give them what they need, and trust God will fill in the places we are not sure of yet. If we give from abundance, we will see God is always prepared to equip us for more and more goodness. Let us resolve to serve the world, and only count the cost with the generosity of God as the balance we rate our expenses against. – Amen.

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[1] Matthew 11: 18-19

[2] John 6:68

[3] The Greek term Οχλους (ochlous,) is used to describe the crowds that follow Jesus. In other contemporary texts, this word is almost always used with a negative connotation.

Genesis 1: 26-31

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 2: 18-25

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Sermon Text

Today we have three different questions before us, all from the story of Adam and Eve. I am going to do my best to tackle them all, bit by bit, but know in advance that each one could be books unto themselves, so today we are going to fully answer one and throw out some short explanations of the others. This is one of those Sundays where we might need to take some time outside of service to go over some more specific details of our topic – but that’s what I’m here for. Today we look at three questions, “Were Adam and Eve truly the first two people on Earth?” “How were they married?” and “How are they not related if one was born from the other?”

If those seem obvious to you, then let us break down each one a little bit at a time. Firstly, are Adam and Eve the first human beings? Biblically, that is the narrative we are given so it’s a good starting point. However, in the first two chapters of Genesis there is a complication. Adam and Eve are not named in Genesis 1 at all, instead humanity is created in a single moment by God. Just like the rest of Creation, God speaks and humanity forms as an offshoot of God’s divine image. The creation of humanity in Genesis 1 is ex nihilo, out of nothing, and consists of man and woman emerging from God’s word without any additional action on God’s part.

Genesis 2 tells the story differently. Rather than creation being spread across seven days, God has created the earth, has not yet placed plant life on it, and puts the divine fingers into the mud. The muddy soil that God collects is shaped into a new creature – Ha’Adam – the human being. The creature is not given a name yet, but is instead given the general name for people. This human being is then shown all of God’s creatures, and when no suitable partner is found God puts the creatures to sleep and splits it in two. Typically, we read the text as the NRSV puts it, womankind being made from a rib of the first human, but a closer translation is, “From the side.” This has led some to imagine that Adam and Eve were one creature joined at the hip until they were split into two – a little too fanciful for my taste, but better at getting to the basis of this story.

These two origins for humanity – one time being made in an instant and the other being made gradually alongside the rest of creation – are what scripture gives us as material for understanding human origins. The fact that there are two versions of this story tells me that there is room for flexibility in how we understand our genesis, and so as time has gone on the exact nature of Adam and Eve’s status as progenitors of humanity has changed. Today there are a variety of views held by a variety of Christians, all with their own merits and problems. Many take the second story as written – humanity is descended from two people, and they are those people named “Adam and Eve,” upon their expulsion from Eden.

Others believe that humanity existed separately from Eden and Adam and Eve were just two special people that God placed into the Garden. That option makes no sense to me, because then you have to account for a bunch of random people the story does not explain at all. However, it is an attempt to deal with a later development in Genesis. Once the first couple leave Eden their children are married off to other people. Usually this is explained as them marrying their siblings and going on to have children with them. That should have some clear and present issues that come from it, but the main point I would make is that Genesis never says that siblings married siblings in those days, and so we are just making an assumption that is not helpful to our question.

For my part, I take another perspective generally. I lean on my scientific background and say that humanity is a part of the natural world as much as anything else. We, like all life, developed through modifications by descent as an evolutionary process. Like all life on Earth, we trace our lineage through vast webs of species that we cannot even begin to name, but a few of which we have found. Our distant relatives the Homo Habilis and Erectus walked on two legs long before we did. Our cousins the Neanderthals died out, but their blood still runs in the veins of some people on Earth (myself included!) All of us are the product of time, environment, and genetic mutation.

Some might look at that and say that such a belief is antithetical to scripture, certainly Ken Ham and others have made that argument (and quite a bit of money.). I, however, disagree. The two stories told to us in scripture are not lessened by the narrative I just went through. We are human beings, made in the Image of God, and uniquely blessed with a relationship with God. Dogs and cats do not pray, but we do. Christ came to live with us as human beings, not as any other animal. We are God’s image in this world. Sin entered the world through our unwillingness to obey God, to do what we want rather than what is right, and that is the same story as Eden. My version sees the snake and the fruit as a means to tell this spiritual truth through more physical means, but either version holds these truths in common.

It has always been my policy to tell everyone to read anything before Abraham enters the story of Genesis as an attempt to reconstruct a history of humanity. The Garden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, all contain several stories smooshed together to reveal a deeper truth, but that taken on their face cause some trouble to hold as completely literal. For example, just in the text itself, how many of each animal is to be on the ark? If you read Genesis 6 your answer would be two, but if you read Genesis 7 the answer becomes fourteen if they are ritually clean animal and two if they are unclean. Another interesting pair of stories is how languages came about. In Genesis 11 we’re told that language came from when God confused the tongues of the people at Babel so they could no longer work together on projects like the Tower of Babel. Genesis 10, however, implies that languages developed just by people spreading out away from one another.

Not until Abraham enters the picture do things become solidified in terms of how time progresses and people interact with each other. Abraham begins Biblical history, while the preceding narratives capture a Biblical pre-history. Again, this can sound controversial and to some this thinking definitely is not something they would go along with. However, for me in all my studying and all my devotions, it is something I can cling to as true and as conducive to my faith. If Genesis 1-11 provide a stumbling block when I try to twist what we know about our fourteen billion year old cosmos to fit their words, then I consider it better to relent of literalism in exchange for truth.

The other questions about Eden, I think follow from that. For Adam and Eve we cannot say how their relationship was considered a marriage, but by looking at Isaac’s wedding in Genesis 24, we can see all it took was saying you were married and consummating that union This was what was necessary for a “wedding,” at one point in the history of God’s people. So, Adam and Eve meet that criteria of a legal marriage. Finally, as for their blood relative status, I think that if God made Eve from Adam, if we take the text more literally, God could inject some genetic diversity in the process to make the matter less consanguineous.

Now, a lot in one sermon, as these question series often produce. However, I hope that what is clear here is something we know to be the case, though we seldom acknowledge. Faith is a house we all live in, and it is a big house that can fit some diverse opinions. Some people look at a message like I just gave, and they would say it is heresy of the highest order, that I should dare suggest a timescale and human origin that is foreign to the writ of scripture. However, I would argue that those who criticize my own views are imposing limits on God that are equally lacking. We all have to work off of gaps in the text, I just built my perspective from the evidence God left us in creation rather than the magisterium of the Church.

The miracle of faith, however, is that God is with both of perspectives. The body of Christ is united in its diversity, and opinions can differ on all manner of things. We are able to thrive in this diversity, among these differences, because we unite around one reality. Christ our Lord, lived, died, and was raised by the power of God’s Spirit for the revivification of all creation. That truth, that centrality of the Gospel, underpins all other theological difference. We are one in the Lord, and that oneness, it covers all difference with grace, with love, with mercy in abundance. If after hearing me expound on this question you disagree with my answer, God bless you for it, because we are still one in the body of Christ despite this. That, I think, is a miracle that speaks to what Eden is about. A place where people, and God, live at peace with one another. What a fellowship, what a joy divine, for we who gather with such a goal as this. – Amen.