Good News (sermon)
There is Good News today. Being as I’m not your rector, I’ll not preach it at you, but I’ll share some of it, and if you are patient with me we may both enjoy and learn something. You may be seated.
Romans 1: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God according to the Holy Spirit by his resurrection from the dead - - To God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
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From Exodus 14: “The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel.”
So in retrospect, Pharaoh was right, wasn’t he, to fear that Hebrew boy babies would grow up into an army overthrowing their Egyptian masters, and now it has happened.
As for angels, it may surprise or even disappoint you, but I pray will not destroy your faith to hear again, this angel of God is God Himself. Same a couple weeks ago, the angel of God spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush and in the next verse it turns out the angel is God himself. We thought angels were flying, hovering beings with six wings as Isaiah saw in the year that King Uzziah died; but angel is messenger, and message, and Word, even God Himself where, as we hear in the Gospel according to John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So, Messenger, Message, Word. The angel of God is Shekinah, the shining, burning, radiant presence of God Himself. And here in Exodus, Hebrew repetition, the Angel of God is also pillar of cloud of rumbling, endless, continual, violent, churning, flashing lightning. Terrifying to behold.
It’s fun and enriching to discover these Bible nuances of ancient Hebrew.
Another: in Psalm 114 for today, synonymous parallelism in classical Hebrew poetry, where the second half of each verse paraphrases, echoes, the first half; like today, sometimes chortling, deriding:
"When Israel came out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech,"
Psalms like this are truest read (or better, chanted), as in ancient Hebrew worship where a cantor sings the first half of each verse and worshipers affirm and magnify the cantor’s words by the second half. Psalm 114 is a classic.
There are wonderful things like this that members of a congregation are apt to miss unless you learn to watch for it in Bible study or Sunday school or, especially, in EfM, Education for Ministry, a lay program that our bishops require of seminarians before ordination; and where, beginning here at Trinity Church 30 years ago, I learned far more about the Bible in EfM than I ever learned in seminary. EfM, enriching beyond measure.
The OT is my favorite, so I want to stay on the Exodus lesson a bit more. These old Sunday school Bible stories can seem appalling, shocking, horrifying when God visits horrendous, bloody massacre. Do not let this destroy your faith in our God of Love. And avoid the rationalizing absurdity of, “Well, the vengeful God of the OT is different from the loving God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that’s rubbish. GOD is not different, we are different. As the NT is our Christian experience of God in Jesus, the OT is Israel’s experience of YHWH the Lord keeping covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give Israel the Promised Land, to make Israel a blessing to all people, and to make Israel as numerous as grains of sand on the beach or stars in the sky, “count them if you can,” says the Lord. In these old stories, God whose Word cannot be broken is keeping His promises, and Good News for you today is not the same as Good News for Israel then. Good News for you is “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Good News for Israel is a pursuing Egyptian charioteer drowning to stop him from killing us. And it’s not “history,” it’s Heilsgeschichte, Holy History where God is for us and all who hate Israel are God’s enemies, it don’t git no better’n ‘nat, “If God be for us, who can be against us!!” So, rejoice in the victory God gives us as heirs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. Today the army of Egypt chases us to capture, kill and enslave us, but YHWH God gives us the victory, and we respond joyfully in The Song of Moses and Miriam:
(Canticle 8 The Song of Moses BCP page 85 Exodus 15:1-6, 11-13, 17-18)
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and rider thrown into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
The Lord is a man of war; Yahweh is his name.
Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he cast into the sea;
his officers are sunk in the Red Sea.
his officers are sunk in the Red Sea.
The floods cover them;
they went down into the depths like a stone.
they went down into the depths like a stone.
Thy right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,
thy right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.
Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like thee, majestic in holiness,
terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?
The Lord will reign for ever and ever.”
Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
the horse and rider thrown into the sea.”
Song of Moses, Exodus 15, Jewish poetry, Anglican Canticle 8, BCP 85, that we make our own by Trinitarian doxology: "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever."
Holy History: YHWH God triumphs for Israel. “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore,” and no matter what you think in your Christian piety, that’s Good News for Israel.
I turn to other things.
Paul to Romans again. Starting the beginning of this summer of Lectionary Year A, we’ve read week by week, snippet by snippet, through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. A key, important book in the NT, it’s Paul’s most comprehensive letter, an encouraging theological tome, great reading, preaching, teaching material to discover where the Fathers of the Church got our Christian doctrine. Paul can be tedious, and Romans is Paul at his most wearisome, tiresome. Reading to yourself, Romans is hard to focus on because the mind wanders. Hard to listen as it’s read aloud on Sunday morning. And you have not changed (this is not the first time I’ve told you this!!): I watched you fourteen years, and I’ve watched folks at the four other churches I’ve served, it’s ever the same: as the lector begins to read Paul, every eye glazes over, and those who do not doze - - daydream about their Sunday afternoon plans. Which is too bad; but it’s the church’s fault, cutting and pasting snippets to read Sunday morning. Why? Because we are impatient, checking our watches, church is to be a sixty-minute hour, no more.
Not so in Paul’s day. In 60 AD, Paul wrote to the Romans and then sent his epistle by angel, messenger, to the church in Rome. When Paul’s letter arrived, it was announced to members of the Roman church, who gathered excitedly to hear it read aloud, (likely read aloud by the angel, the messenger, who’d heard Paul dictate it to Tertius, so knew how to read it with Paul’s passion), read aloud from start to finish as the congregation listened in rapt attention. It was not meant to be read in snippets as we do in church, but start to finish. Romans is chock full of brilliance, and you cannot “get it” the way we serve it. So read it yourself, all the way through (aloud is best, or at least lips moving, else the mind wanders), then discuss it in Bible Study with eager Christians and a competent leader. It’s a long, intensive, beautiful letter, full of things to argue about, including doctrinal things you assume-for-granted that Paul, a monotheistic Jew, never meant! Starting Romans right after Pentecost, we finished this morning, by tradition tucked in the middle during liturgical nap-time, it was lost to our attention, and I’ll bet you never heard or held onto one word of Romans all summer long, and what a shame!
I’m almost done.
Finally, today’s gospel: the slave’s lord “summoned him and said, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.” Jesus intends this as a forgiveness parable, but then Matthew adds threatening, finger-wagging commentary: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brethren from your heart.” No!
No! No torture. No threats. No intimidation. Matthew misunderstands and misleads; and so do the red-letter markers, because there are no quotation marks in the Greek text. Matthew misrepresents Jesus parable, as allegory, coded theology in which angry God demands justice, punishment, torture; whereas Jesus’ point is that the lovingkindness of forgiveness cannot be compromised without consequence, but Jesus leaves you to choose the right behavior. The parable itself is from Jesus, but Matthew’s moralizing interpretive commentary not from Jesus. Like Mary Poppins to the father of Jane and Michael Banks, Jesus “never explains anything.” Jesus tells a parable and leaves us hanging to figure out how it applies to us (as in “whoever has ears to hear, listen”). What must you do, what must you do?
“What would Jesus do?” is always the answer.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Closing, Paul to Romans again:
16:25f Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.
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Sermon in Trinity, Apalachicola, Sunday, September 17, 2017. The Rev. Tom Weller. Proper 19A. Exodus 14:19-31. Psalm 114. Romans 14:1-12. Matthew 18:21-35.