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Renewal
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year C, Proper 19)
September 16, 2007
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
Beginning last Sunday and over the next several Sundays, our Mid-Pentecost worship LIONS – Terry Adhlock, Raiford Gaffney, and Nat White – invite us,
as Christians, to look at our Jewish roots. Verily, without Judaism, the community and culture that gave birth to Jesus, there is no Christianity.
Even more, in this month our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate two of the most high and holy days – Rosh Hashanah, which began at sundown this
past Wednesday, and Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown on this Thursday coming.
In light of the Christian Education offering, Finding Myself in the Christian Tradition, during the Sermon Seminar hour, I have been invited
to preach not a full sermon, but rather a homily. So, for those of you who favor brevity, this one’s for you!
Rosh Hashanah, literally head of the year or beginning of a new year, is signaled by the sounding of the shofar or ram’s horn, calling the
people to be alert to God’s judgment and, therefore, to awaken to their need for renewal.
Renewal is supremely an aspect of relationship. I want, I need to be renewed always, in relation to another, even if that another is myself. Yet,
pertaining to Rosh Hashanah, the relationship in mind, indeed, in question is the one between God and us. The renewal, therefore, is theological.
It’s about loving God more. Yet, as such, it is also ethical. It’s about loving others more. A love primarily expressed not through sympathetic
emotion, but rather benevolent action. A love not merely of feeling, but doing.
Even more, this renewal, this deepening love is an expression of responsibility, literally, response-ability – that mutual capacity of those in
relationship to respond benevolently to each other.
This is what I see played out in today’s Hebrew scripture passage.[1]
During the journey of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to talk to God, to receive the Law –
those commandments, the obedience to which will make for fulfilling life in community. Moses has been up there for forty days and forty nights. A long
time. The people miss Moses. Their anxiety grows. So, they appeal to Aaron, Moses’ brother, spokesperson, and PR agent, to make a visible symbol of
the divine presence to comfort them. A golden calf – an ancient symbol of fertility – is fashioned, accompanied by a great dedicatory celebration of
much feasting, drinking, and dancing. Think one of our St. Mark’s parties here in the nave!
But God didn’t like it, for God knew it’s too easy for human beings to attach our affections to the symbol, to love the thing more than the reality
to which it points. God really didn’t like it, disowning the people, referring to them as “your people, Moses.” God really,
really didn’t like it, deciding to kill them all, telling Moses, “Leave me alone and with my hot wrath, I will incinerate them!”
Granted, this passage is unabashedly anthropomorphic – a supernatural God is portrayed in very human, very natural terms – which, for some, may
prevent it from being taken very seriously. But it is precisely this stylized depiction that helps me wrap my very human, very natural head around,
that is, helps me to conceptualize the divine-human encounter.
God and Moses have a relationship. One in which they are response-able to each other. God, the almighty judge, doesn’t act to execute the
people without first telling Moses. And Moses doesn’t step down off the mountain, leaving God alone, doing what God demands, without first stepping
up in the role of an attorney for the defense.
But note how Moses does it. Neither by trying to explain what the people have done and nor by making excuses for them – “God, people are
just people. Surely, you understand. After all, you made them!” – but rather, as one in relationship with God, by reminding God of who God is.
When God first gave Moses the assignment to “go down in Egypt land an’ tell old Pharaoh to let my people go,” Moses asked God, “who shall I say
sent me?” In other words, God, what’s your name? God answered, “Tell them that I am who I am sent you”[2]
In other words, who I am is what I do.
So, here on Mt. Sinai, Moses reminds God that God is I am. God is I am the one who liberates, I am the one who saves, I am
the one who makes and keeps promises to my people. And God, being reminded, recants, changes the divine mind, revises the divine
plan of action.
God and Moses, intimately related, are response-able to each other. In their faithful exercise of their responsibility, they both are renewed. God
in remembrance of the divine identity as a liberator and Moses in a re-awareness of his vocation as God’s instrument of liberation.
I close with two applications. Two reflections. One, institutional. The other, personal.
As for the institutional reflection, sometimes I wonder how we Christians, how the church in our historical traditional theological liturgical
development, became so anxious, got so confused that we had to design, to fashion a perfect, sinless god whom we no longer needed to follow, but
rather, only worship. The church needs renewal.
Regarding the more personal reflection, sometimes I wonder how we humans become so anxious, get so confused that we make our thoughts and feelings,
our desires and needs supreme, fashioning them into our gods. Whenever that happens, note how unbenevolent we become. We need renewal.
[1] Exodus 32.7-14
[2] Exodus 3.14, paraphrased
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