Being Last and Being First
A Sermon by Rev. Kit Wilke Eighteenth Sunday of Pentecost September 22, 2002 For Crossroads & Woodruff Churches At Del Valle Park in Lakewood, California. Scripture: Matthew 20:1-16 Exodus 16:2-15
Introduction
It starts as a Picnic. Well, first a Freedom Train and then a Picnic. O, there are laws soon enough. Every culture needs laws and commandments. We can?t survive without them. Especially us men ? males ? who absolutely must work together to survive, but who were designed, primarily to fight and compete with each other. We have to have laws. But laws come later. First there is the freedom train. Then there is the Picnic. A lot goes on in the book of Genesis. Lots of promises and some truly strange stories, but they really involve only one little family. Almost all of Genesis, once you get past Adam and Even and Noah and his wife, is really about Abraham and Sarah, their children, grandchildren, and twelve great grandchildren. Then the book ends. The real story. And the mass movement begins with Moses, and it begins with a Nameless God who sets free the lowest of the low. The slaves of Egypt. And when they are set free and get out into the desert, instead of dying of hunger and thirst, God gives them cool clear water and a picnic. Our faith doesn?t begin with talk of heaven? And it doesn?t begin with ?thou shalt nots,? ?It begins with slaves being set free and abundance where you least expect it. More than anything else, that is who we are. Our God is nameless because God is the truth no one can see or understand, and yet, God is just behind everything we see and just the other side of everything we come to understand. And when we have the courage to trust God instead of what we see and what we understand? when we have the courage to trust God instead of our wealth or our power to frighten others into slavery, then we will discover freedom and we will find abundance where we thought there were only desert sands. That is who we are. Children of a God that sets us free and feeds us, even in the middle of the desert.
I. And What a Desert!
Everywhere in every time, there are empires. The rulers and the ruled. The Alpha male, the Harem, and the followers. The slave master and the slave. ?The old gods have the power to rule everything,? the slave masters say. Their priests are the kings who rule in the name of the gods: as did the Aztecs and the Egyptians and a thousand other empires. Their rules bring order but the rulers give the orders and it all makes us slaves. The empires and emperors have the answers and give the orders and those who disagree had better not. Always and again the rulers and their rules are forging chains. Night and day, the furnaces glow. Where once the ore of truth was smelted ? where the sparks of discovery lighted the darkness ? where the rules of new understanding were hammered out on the anvil of life, now chains are forged. Where once the heart soared with new visions, now iron flames mold shackles for the heart and fetters for the mind. Always the power of rulers and rules. But here and there, and in each new generation, a cry goes up for liberty. A song goes up for Grace and the whispers of love melt old rules into fluid possibilities. A song, here and there ? for that precious moment before fear and its empires again insist they have the only answers, they are the only power, they alone speak the truth. Truth, they insist, that comes from God, even though its very words are the auction blocks parsing God into chattel and chaining heaven?s dream, to the earthbound anchor of death?s own consuming terror. For a moment, in the face of the desert of slavery, we are that song. Grace is our food, and love: love stronger than death, is the desert banquet we share. The nameless God, whose laws we do not yet know, guides us with flame and feeds us with manna. And we become that song.
II. And We Also Have Rules.
But they are not the rules of enforced answers. They are not the rules which may not be questioned. They are not truth that fear and power over fear have made true. They are, first, the rules that simply are true. The rules nature herself enforces and that need no assistance from human compulsion. And second, is the rule to open our eyes. To open our hearts. To see the world as larger than our own needs and our own desires. To move from the love of the parent who offers her life for the child, to the love of the patriot who offers his life for the cause of the nation, to the love of the earth, who offers her future, her life, and her dreams for the whole of the world. For her sisters and her brothers of every race. For all of life and for the fragile balance of the earth itself. It is to trust the nameless God so completely, that every name can be abandoned, and every cause become the cause of everyone. The rule is love. Not power, giving away its excess and calling it love, but love that opens its heart to the stranger. Love that listens, listens carefully, to the enemy and the outcast. Love that is ready to learn. Love that can share where it, too, is broken. Love that can mine the desert for truth?s precious ore and discover new springs of water in the heart of a terrified, runaway, slave. The Truth is our final rule, but it is a pilgrim rule. A rule in progress. A rule for the road. A rule we can never fully know. So every rule we make is as temporary as footprints in the desert sand, waiting to be blown away as each step moves closer to the unknown Truth. But, in the meantime, one step at a time, Love rules the process. Love, vulnerable love, brokenhearted love, guides the process for finding the Truth. Love, listening love, rules the journey. Love is not just a good thing. Love is not just nice. Love is not just something God wants us to do ? though it is that, of course. Love is the liturgy by which we approach God. Love is the road map we need to discover the Truth about God. However much we may claim to already know the truth and understand all the rules, we only know them as well as a footprint we have left behind. For the next step to be closer to the Truth, not further away, we have to live in love. We have to be able to be open, honest and vulnerable or we will wander, lost in the desert, forever. Only love ? love and courage ? moves our footprints away from slavery and toward God?s freedom. As terrified as we may be of the powers and demons that frighten, addict or control us,
III. We Stand In Awe of the God Who Sets Us Free.
We stand in awe of the God who is Truth. We stand in awe of the God who is love. We stand in awe of the God who fills our hearts with hope. We stand in awe of the God who is stronger than our fears and whose love is stronger than the shadow of death. We stand in awe of the God who gives us the courage to sing. And in awe of the God who makes our lives a freedom song sung in the desert of empire and imperial power, the desert of terror and of the insecurity of pretending power can be our security. God, the Truth, our faithful courage, our freedom and our love are our only real security. And they are enough, because they are stronger than death itself. We are a pilgrim people. Gathered here because God feeds us in the most unusual places and the most unexpected ways. Can we love one another enough to walk together in love and freedom toward God?s truth? Can we share our hearts and our picnic lunches and the truth of our lives until we truly know freedom and are completely known by love? You are the freedom march. Your are the freedom train. You are vital to human history. You are God?s song.
Cross Roads Community Church/Woodruff Community Church
