Our Faith Journeys
September 18, 2016Compassion In Remembrance of Him
October 2, 201625
Sep.
2016
Lessons from P D & Y
“Lessons from P, D & Y”
We continue in our sermon series on good news from the Old Testament. This month we have looked at Moses from early in his life, from the middle in the Exodus, and this morning as he neared the end of his life. We read from the Book of Deuteronomy of Moses’ challenging words for the Israelites as they prepared to enter the Promised land. Reading now from God’s holy word.
This morning we glean our wisdom from three sources. One is called P. The Book of Genesis, as part of the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament generally, is historically attributed to Moses. However, from the 19th century on, historians looking closely at the material, context, writing etc. and determined that Genesis was most likely written by three different unnamed individuals. The different creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2, for example, indicate different authors. You may have seen the news reports this week about the discovery of an ancient copy of the Torah. The Genesis authors were named J, P and E. P, the Priestly source, is said to be the author of our first lesson.
Deuteronomy is also historically attributed to Moses. The bulk of the book contains Moses’ instructions to the Israelites. However, recent historians argue that after generations of oral tradition passed down from the time of Moses, someone during of the Babylonian exile decided Israel needed its history written down to stay connected to its past, and wrote down the words of Moses plus narratives of Israel’s movement towards the promised land in what is called Deuteronomy. Which means 2nd law, building on the law given at Sinai. God’s speaking through Moses to a 2nd generation. The source who wrote down such wisdom is called the Deuteronomist source. Or D.
And the source called Y? Well, that’s the wisdom I’ve gleaned from hanging out at the YMCA up here on Old Georgetown Road. Let us pray. Gracious God, open to us the meaning of your word and the promise of your relationship with us. Amen.
I have had good conversations with many of you as we exercise at the YMCA on Old Georgetown. There are many interesting individuals to talk with at the Y. One is Tom Schelling. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005 for his game theory ideas related to arms control. Tom would lift weights in the weight room. Usually the Y weight room is full of Walter Johnson high school seniors and I learn a lot about modern culture from listening. But Tom was unique there as he was born in 1921 and up until last year would be seen doing light curls in the weight room.
Our former congresswomen Connie Morella is there as gracious as ever, and, particularly in this year’s political environment, shares interesting perspectives.
Last year I found myself on a recumbent bike next to a gentlemen reading Christianity Today. The Y magazine rack has periodicals like Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver, so it’s unusual to find someone reading Christianity Today. I introduced myself to him. Turned out to be an Episcopal priest named Tilden Edwards, I have several of his books on my shelf there, who founded the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Reflection in 1973, to help people go deeper in their relationship with God through spiritual practices, silence and community. Edwards is mostly retired from running Shalem now, and shared with me the challenge and opportunity he has of letting go of the organization which defined him and mentoring those coming after him. He shared that the key to life, especially in transition, is for him to remember the reason he founded Shalem to begin with – that it’s all about our relationship with God.
This is the challenge for Moses in our second lesson. Forty years after leaving Egypt, Moses had taken the Israelites to the edge of the Promised Land. As we discussed, it was a tough road through the desert wilderness. Deuteronomy starts and ends with narratives about the Israelites’ journey, and in its middle are a series of speeches, sermons from Moses really, about how to act in relationship with God. He tells them to remember what they have learned about God’s faithfulness in their future across the river in the Promised Land. Then Moses challenges the Israelites with a choice: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, holding fast to him.” Moses was 120 years old and he had seen a lot. He knew that the happiness, success, indeed survival of his people was dependent on their relationship with God.
You might recall that when Pharaoh pursued the Israelites they asked Moses to send them back to Egypt. Moses told them to say no to their fears. When they were later standing at the edge of the holy land in the book of Numbers and the people didn’t want to enter because they were afraid of giants, Moses let them and so they wandered for years in the desert. In Deuteronomy, Moses preached to the next generation and told them to reject their fears, obey God’s law, enter the land and stay in close relationship with God.
Moses had taken the people as far as he could go with them and had to be comfortable that his successor, Joshua, would lead them the rest of the way. The way Moses was able to trust that the next generation would be alright without him was that he trusted God. He knew from his own experience that God would be there for them if they stayed in relationship with God.
On Thursday night we had an excellent family ministry presentation here about talking with our kids and grandkids about scary things in the news. We learned that when supporting children, we have to be present but allow them space. There are times for each of us who have taken our children, families, companies, classrooms, projects as far as we can take them and, like Moses, need to turn their future over to God, and get ready for our next adventure. Like Moses, we trust the future to God.
Our boys have been taking swimming at the Y from the same instructor for the past several years. I have dropped off or picked the boys up many times but the swimming instructor at the Y never refers to me by name. His greeting each time is the same, “Hello Andrew and Brendan’s Dad.” At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I realize like Edwards or Moses, my role will shift more and more to supporting their futures. To placing them in God’s hands.
Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has helped shape my thinking on this subject from the Torah. He looks to the first creation story in Genesis, for example, not as an eyewitness account of creation, nor a scientific discussion of how the world was made, but as a story which tells us of the relationship between God and God’s creation.
Rohr suggests Genesis is not a philosophic argument for the existence of God, but a statement of faith. God created all. We did not. The past did not depend on us but on God. As a statement of faith, Genesis helps us see God is not only the God of the past, but the God of the present and future. The future also depends on trusting God and teaching the future generations to rely on their relationship with God.
Each day, each moment is a grace, a gift. If we live each day with gratitude for our creator’s gift of the new day, our relationship with God will give us confidence to face a future where our role may change.
Think of the way creation in Genesis begins. Ex nilio – from nothing. Before creation, there was nothing, just a dark void. All that lives comes from God.
If God is not sustaining the present and holding the future, there is nothing. If we try and make our own projects or other people, or our lives, legacies or our spiritual legalism the focus, we find we too are empty. Without the source, without God, we have nothing. Our role is not to emphasize our own involvement over God’s relationship with us or what comes next. All belongs to God. And thank God it does. Paul wrote that all have a role in the body of Christ. You have an important part to play. That part may be different from someone’s else’s. Yet all are empowered by the same source, a relationship with God in the Holy Spirit.
In his book on spiritual practices, Living in the Presence, Tilden Edwards writes that the goal of spiritual formation is what he calls “direct attention” to God. “Ways to directly notice and yield to God’s loving presence as it is offered.”[i] And then yield to “the mysterious ways God seeks for us to be in God’s likeness.” Remember you were created in God’s image and your journey is to reconnect with that relationship. In that way, the journey is the destination!
That is another way of saying what Moses was trying to get across to the Israelites. The Israelites were so worried about what the land was going to be like and who they would meet when then entered the Promise Land that they were susceptible to following false idols. Moses called on them to reject their fears and trust in their relationship with God. If we yield to our fears, we fall victim to whatever false idols promise to solve our problems too. From the media to the internet to political demagogues to voices in our past, there are no shortages of false idols out there. Moses said be faithful to God and you will be in the promised land.
Michael Lindvall puts it this way, for the key to the promised land is relationship with God. “To permit God through the door of your life will reorient your spiritual and moral universe. Not I, but the One who transcends me becomes the point of orientation. Not I, but the One whom faith names God comes to be the nexus of meaning. Not I, but God is who gives shape and purpose to all things. God becomes the One from whom we come, the One unto whom we return, and the One in whom we live and move and have our being.”
Notice Moses never actually set foot in the Promised Land. That doesn’t mean he didn’t meet God. Perhaps Moses did not need to set foot in the promised land because was there already. His journey was one of such relationship with God that he had already arrived. His faith journey saw the burning bush, met God at Sinai, walked with God along the path. His journey was a promised land trip because of his relationship with God. Our journey is holy with God along the path too.
As some of you may recall, last August I lost my original wedding ring preparing to swim at the outdoor pool at the Y. I spent a ton of time trying to find the darn thing, but to no avail. I had been worried about the ring. Bridget just cared about the relationship.
Last month, about a year to the day from when I lost the original one, Bridget presented me with a ring which she made at the same craft shop where I had made her engagement ring 15 years before. The future we look to in love is based on the relationship with our loving creator. What we create in love mirrors the love of our creator. The one who desires relationship with us.
As Moses tells the Israelites, our actions matter, so make the right choice and choose life. But in order to have any idea of how to do that in your context or mine, we have to first choose relationship with the author of all life.
Let us pray. Loving God, you have chosen to love us. Help us choose a closer walk, a closer trust, a closer relationship with you. Amen.
[i] Tilden Edwards. Living in the Presence. P. 2