God of all things and all times, we are so
distracted and forgetful, help us to always remember that we abide in your love.
Amen.
Remember. If there’s a refrain that runs throughout Scripture that may well be it – remember. Remember that God is God and we are not. Remember the poor and orphaned. Remember the sabbath day. Remember the promises of God. Remember that I am with you always. Our problem is that we already have too many things to remember. I have lists, I have calendar notifications, and I usually have a few things in my head that I try to keep there until I can get to a piece of paper and add them to the list. And, as you know, there’s a whole sphere of our economy that exists because we know that we’re not going to remember it all – it’s called automation, where computers do the remembering for us when it comes to paying utility bills or renewing subscriptions.
Faith
though is not something that we can automate. We can have apps that remind us
to meditate and pray, we can have our bank automatically send a check to the
church each month, which we do greatly appreciate, or we can subscribe to email
lists that send us a passage of Scripture each morning. But none of these
things are what it means to be a person of faith. Faith cannot be automated. It
has to be engaged and lived.
And
that’s the other problem. In addition to already having too much to remember,
we are too busy and distracted. In previous generations, what companies wanted
from us was a purchase. Ford wanted us to buy a Ford instead of a Chevy or McDonald’s
wanted us to eat there instead of at Burger King. But that’s not the world we
live in anymore. Instead, what companies want is our attention. Economists call
it the “attention economy” in which influencers and advertisers are after our
focus. And they’ve gotten scarily good at it with the result being that we all
feel inundated with the news, obligations, and interests of modern life.
When
it comes to Christianity, the issue is that faith is not one component of life –
like sprinkling in a little prayer here, a service project there, a Sunday morning
when we have time. No, faith is about the entirety of our lives. It is the
canvas on which our lives are painted, the journal pages that hold the words,
the story in which we exist. And this is why the Church and people of faith are
struggling so mightily these days – the modern world and faith are no longer complimentary,
they are in competition with one another in terms of our focus and attention.
It’s why, for us who have chosen to show up on a Sunday morning, the word “remember”
matters so much.
Because
when we forget, a lot of bad things start to happen. Consider the story we
heard in Exodus. In that first verse that was read, we see this whole dynamic playing
out – “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” You’ll
remember that Joseph, a Hebrew, became the previous Pharoah’s Secretary of State
and with godly foresight, saved Egypt from a famine. And, you’ll remember, that
this new Pharaoh will eventually meet his demise by these same Hebrew people.
But this Pharaoh’s problem is that he did not remember.
And
what happens when we forget how God has been leading us and blessing us? We get
distracted by the world. An ever-changing and scary world. Forgetting his past,
Pharaoh has no other lens through which to view his present situation and he
becomes afraid. None of us are at our best when we act out of a place of fear.
Pharoah becomes xenophobic and begins to mistrust people who look different and
speak differently than him. And this becomes his downfall.
I
want to be super clear about this, I’m not offering political commentary here.
This is Biblical wisdom and admonition. We forget, ignore, and dismiss our history
at our own peril and when we do so, we miss out on God’s mercy and guidance. The
fight that we are having in our country and community right now about how to
teach history in schools is to willingly choose the sort of ignorance that
Pharoah lived by. The mistrust of others who are different from us is rooted in
this ignorance and it is tearing our communities apart. Pharaoh knew not Joseph
and it destroyed his nation and future. If the Church makes the same mistake, we
will, likewise, fade away. If our nation cannot tell the truth, we will crumble
under the weight of lies and division.
This
is why I remain so committed to the work being done by Racial Equity Rowan. Jim
Greene, Ed Norvell, and I all serve on the Steering Committee for this group,
and I’m so pleased that St. Luke’s is well represented there. Our next workshop
will be held at Hood Seminary on September 21-22 and I cannot encourage you to
attend strongly enough. Yes, I know it’s 2 days, but remembering takes time. We’ll
have information about how to register in the email that comes out this week, feel
free to ask me about it, or just look up Racial Equity Rowan online.
Pharaoh
was blinded by his ignorance and stumbled from one mistake to the next. Because
he refused to remember, he was overcome with fear and prejudice and his rule
started to come undone with two bold and amazing women, Shiphrah and Puah. Remember
their names – Shiphrah and Puah. We don’t often get the names of women in
Scripture, so we would do well to cherish and remember these – Shiphrah and
Puah. Shiphrah is related to the word “beautiful” and Puah is, perhaps, derived
from the sort of cooing sound that we make to comfort a newborn child. These courageous
women show us the beautiful strength and comforting action of the God who summoned
them to boldness.
Shiphrah
and Puah use Pharaoh’s bias against him. He’s scared of the Hebrews – how many
of them there are. And so his first plan is to work them to death in the fields,
to grind them to the pulp with labor and harsh living conditions. But the Hebrew
people did not forget Joseph. They remembered that God was in charge, not
Pharaoh. They remembered that they had been in tough situations before and God had
delivered them. And so the labor did not crush them, it only crushed the morality
of the Egyptians, making them callous taskmasters.
So
Pharoah turns an even more wicked and violent plan – genocide. Forget working
them to death, let’s just go right to death. He orders the midwives to kill any
boys born to the Hebrews. Drown them in the Nile. The very river that gave life
to Egypt is to become the grave of the Hebrew people. And, again, I’m not
stretching to make a point about the news, I’m simply pointing out the dangers
of what happens when we don’t remember. What is going on at our southern border
is just history repeating itself as circular saws have been installed in buoys along
the Rio Grande. I’m not claiming to have the answer to immigration policy, but
I know that circular saws aren’t it, just as the solution to Pharoah’s worry wasn’t
throwing babies into a river. When we do not remember, we end up making such horrific
mistakes that are rooted in fear.
But
Shiphrah and Puah turn that fear into an opportunity. When they commit an act
of civil disobedience, they are enacting the truth that Martin Luther King
wrote about in his letter from a Birmingham jail. King wrote, “An unjust law is
no law at all… Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All
segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and
damages the personality.” King continues, “I must confess that over the last
few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate… Shallow understanding from people of goodwill
is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection… In the
end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our
friends.” Well, no one can accuse Shiphrah and Puah of being lukewarm. They
tell Pharoah, “You know how these Hebrew people are. They’re so vigorous, they
just pop those babies out before we have the chance to get there.” Based on his
prejudice and ignorance, Pharaoh’s plan is undone. The book of Exodus is a book
about deliverance, and Shiphrah and Puah become God’s first agents of deliverance
in this ongoing story of God’s salvation of which you and I are a part.
Do
we remember this story of God constantly calling us out of ignorance and hatred
and into abundant grace beloved community? That’s the question Jesus puts before
his disciples. “Who do you say that I am?” And if we forget our answer to that
question then we quickly become like Pharoah or Pilate who think they are doing
the right thing but are very much not.
The
geographical context for this question matters a lot. Matthew tells us that
Jesus asked this question in the district of Caesarea Philippi. Scholars tell
us that this was a region full of pagan shrines. Archeologists have discovered the
ruins of a temple there and it is the likely backdrop for this story. This
temple would have had niches with statues of various deities and idols. So when
Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am” and Peter confesses that “You are
Messiah,” it is in this context where so many others are vying for that same
title.
What
is the god of your life? Who sets your standards? Who tells you whether you
measure up or not? What ideals have you given your life to? Where do you spend
most of your energy, time, and money? What do you worry about? Where do you put
your hope and trust? We have so many things that are vying to be at the
gravitational center of our lives, so many things to distract us. Back then it
might have been things like Zeus, Apollo, Athena, or Poseidon. But today they
have different names – politics, net worth, consumerism, individualism,
capitalism, reputation. When we remember not Jesus, we work ourselves into a
lot of mess because, as St. Augustine famously put it 1600 years ago, “Our
hearts are restless until they rest in God.”
So
how do we remember and not get so distracted in such a distracting world? Well,
this is where the Church is more than an institution, it is a gift, intended to
help us remember who we are and who God is. Jesus says that the Church that binds
and loosens. At our best, we are to bind people in relationships of love. We
bind ourselves to the promises of God. We bind ourselves to truths bigger than
ourselves. And we are to loose people from oppression, to loose people from the
grasp of false idols, to loose ourselves from temporal things that seem really important
in the moment but distract us the grace and love that is right in front of us.
The
Church is something like a practice club. We gather here to remember and
practice. We are guided by Scripture, by architecture, by community, by song, by
Sacraments, and by mission that God is up to something in this world, something
beautiful, something bold, something audacious. We remember that we are loved not
for what we have done, but because God is love. We come to rehearse and practice
forgiveness, justice, generosity, and being united across difference. The
Church, both as a physical building and a gathered people, exists to remind and
bolster us in trust, confidence, and commitment to the very God who created all
things, who gave boldness to Shiphrah and Puah, who delivered the people out of
slavery in Egypt, who was born of Mary, who heals the sick, restores the guilty,
and feeds the hungry, who for us and for our salvation shows us the depths and
power of love on the cross, who rose from the grave and gives new life to all, whose
Spirit is poured out on us all, and who is making all things well. That’s
something worth remembering.
