Sunday, October 12, 2014
First
Congregational United Church of Christ – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
I finally saw the
animated film Frozen a couple of
weeks ago. For those who haven’t seen it, Frozen
the story of love between two sisters, Elsa and Anna. As young girls, they
are inseparable. But there is something magical about Elsa. She has a special
power – she can freeze things with her hands. Unfortunately, though, she
doesn’t have very good control over her power and sometimes accidents happen.
One day, while they are playing together, Anna gets hurt. Her parents are able
to find her help and she recovers, but the incident permanently damages the
family. Elsa is shut away in her room – her special power becomes a shameful
secret and her parents try to help her figure out how to control herself. Anna
is left alone – she doesn’t know why her sister refuses to come out and play.
Each woman tries to find
her way. They search for love. They go on adventures. They experiment with
power, trying to figure out how redeem their lives. There are scary moments,
exhilarating moments, comic relief. In short, it’s life.
And at the end of the
movie, things look really bad for Anna. In the mist of one of those big fight
scenes, she got hurt by Elsa’s freezing powers again. But this time, there
doesn’t seem to be any way for her to recover. She is told that the only thing
that can save her is an act of true love. So she goes in search of someone to
love her. But the twist, of course, is that it is Anna’s act of true love for
her sister that finally saves her own life. This woman, who hardly had any
models for love in her own life – who didn’t seem to understand much about love
at all – still had within her the capacity to love her sister in a way that led
to redemption.
It is a story about
faithfulness. It is a story about ties that are too deep to be broken.
In a week where marriage
equality finally came to several more states across our nation and it finally
seems inevitable that same-sex couples will soon be allowed to marry in Kansas,
I’ve been thinking a lot about faithfulness.
On Monday, I got out the
wedding liturgy I typically use and prepped it in case I needed to rush down to
the Courthouse or into the Sanctuary to marry a couple. I’m not a drive-through
wedding chapel, of course, but it seems to me that when we have people in our
community who have been living as committed partners for years or decades,
waiting for the State to get with the program and legalize their unions, some
of the formalities might go out the window. I wanted to be ready with an
appropriate liturgy that could be used on the fly.
As I looked over the
wedding liturgy, I was struck with just how much of it is about covenant –
commitments that the two individuals make to each other, of course, but other
commitments, too. In a wedding ceremony, I ask the couples to make promises to
each other and most couples exchange rings as an outward reminder of those
covenantal commitments. But I also ask the families and friends who are present
to make commitments to support the couple. And I remind the couple that God is
blessing their union and making a commitment to support their new reality as
partners for life.
It seems especially
fitting to me, in this week where we are especially aware of covenantal
commitments between spouses, that the lectionary text also speaks to us of
faithfulness. Now, before we dive into Exodus, I do just want to pause for a
moment to say a word about divorce. Faithfulness is good. Covenant is good. But
we are not perfect people and we do not live in a perfect world. No one gets
married hoping they will someday get divorced (I don’t think). But life
happens, situations change, and sometimes divorce is the best option among
several painful options. That could be an entire sermon for another day, but
for today I just want to make sure that you are not hearing this sermon as
telling you that you must be 100% faithful to every single relationship or
promise you’ve ever made. Sometimes the most faithful thing to do is to end a
relationship that is no longer healthy.
It seemed like, for a
moment, the Israelites and God were about to sever their ties, didn’t it? Out
there at the base of that mountain, the Israelites started to get nervous.
Moses had been gone a long time and they were losing sight of their connection
to God. So they turned to Aaron, #2 in command, and asked him to help them feel
safe. “Make us little gods!” they said. And Aaron quickly complied with their
demands.
Now, I love the back and
forth between Moses and God in this chapter. One of my favorite things is how
the Israelites seem to be a hot potato, tossed back and forth between Moses and
God. God speaks first, “Hey, Moses. YOUR people, whom YOU brought out of the
land of Egypt, they are behaving like a bunch of jerks. I am not happy. AT ALL.
Leave me alone. I’m going to sit over here and puff angry smoke and fire like a
cranky dragon. But, you – YOU Moses – I’m going to make a great nation of you!”
Moses, however, doesn’t
take the bait. He could have simply agreed with God. I probably would have. But
I think maybe one of the reasons God chose Moses was because he was a great
arguer. He rarely said, “Sure thing!” He almost always talked back to God. And
this situation is no different. Instead of taking God’s offer and making a
great nation of himself, he reminds God that God can’t do that.
Because God has already
made other promises to these people and to their ancestors. “God,” he says,
“Why are you so angry with YOUR people? Remember how you brought them out of
Egypt? And remember how, generations before that, you made promises to their
ancestors – to Abraham and Sarah, Issaac and Rebekah, Israel and Rachel?
Remember your covenant, God. Be faithful to who you are.”
And God remembers. And God
is faithful. God changes his mind. And God, once again, remembers that these
people do not belong to Moses – they belong to God.
I think when a lot of
people first hear this story, they get hung up on what the Israelites do. They
give up. They forget. They make idols. If they were my kids, I’d probably say
something like, “Let’s make better choices next time, okay, guys?” And so we
look at this story and we think, “Let’s not be like the Israelites.” We could
spend a lot of time pondering the myriad ways we create idols for ourselves,
right? They may not be little golden figurines, but we all have our own idols.
We all lose focus from time to time. We all give our allegiance to other things
besides God. None of us is immune from idolatry.
But to focus too much on
our own mistakes is to miss the bigger point, I think. And the bigger point in
this passage is not what the Israelites are doing…the bigger point is what God
is doing…and what Moses helps God do. This story could have easily ended in a
fit of fire and brimstone, but it doesn’t. Moses, God bless him, remembered his
covenant with these people…to bring them safely out of the land of suffering
and slavery. Moses remembered who they truly were – God’s children – and Moses
remembered who God had promised to be – their Savior. And Moses wasn’t about to
let anyone forget. And God….God actually listened. God changes her mind! That
is the power of this story – that it does not end with division, anger,
discord. Instead it ends with mercy, grace, loving-kindness, faithfulness.
This afternoon, you and I
are gathering to celebrate a new covenant together. We will stand and make
promises to each other. I always tell couples what their vows will say ahead of
time so they can know what they are promising. So I think it makes sense to do
the same here. Edith, our conference minister, will use words from the apostle
Paul. She will ask you to “pay proper respect to those who work among you, who
guide and instruct you in the Christian life. Treat them with the greatest
respect and love because of the work they do. Be at peace among yourselves.”
And Edith will also use
Paul’s words when she instructs me to “warn the idle, encourage the timid, help
the weak, be patient with all.”
And then she will remind
all of us, “See that no one pays back wrong for wrong, but at all times make it
your aim to do good to one another and to all people. Be joyful always, pray at
all times, be thankful in all circumstances.”
These are big promises, folks. I
do not take lightly my commitment to be your pastor. I feel incredibly thankful
to be in this place, serving alongside you. I give thanks for the work we have
to do together. When I was in the middle of conversations with the search
committee, I remember a phone conversation with a trusted friend and colleague.
She said to me, “Now, when you go out there to meet with them this weekend,
don’t be scared if they don’t seem perfect. There’s no such thing as a perfect
church because churches are made of people. Instead, try to figure out what
their work is and see if it is also the work you feel called to do.”
What a relief. There’s no
need to go looking for a perfect church – it doesn’t exist. I think all of us –
lay people or pastors, those of us looking for a new church to join or reaffirming
our covenantal commitments to a church that we already call home – we all can
benefit from remembering that having a sense of call isn’t about perfection.
It’s not about things begin easy or fun or smoothed over. It’s about feeling
like “Yes, this is the right place. Yes, I am called to be working in this
place and with these people. Yes, these are my people. Yes, this is home.”
Because all of us, I
think (I hope!) are about the same business. We are all trying to live in ways
that are faithful, because that is what we have seen modeled in the stories of
God and Jesus Christ and our faith ancestors. We want our stories to end in
mercy, grace, loving-kindness.
I am reminded that
another word for faithfulness is fidelity. Fidelity is also a technical term
when it comes to audio production. If a recording or amplification of sound is
“high fidelity” it very accurately represents the its source. I think that is
what I see in Moses’s actions in this story. He knew his source – YHWH – and he
acted in a way that was faithful. He took strength in remembering that he was
created in God’s image and did his best to act as God would. In doing so, he
reminded God of the importance of covenant. And the story ended with mercy,
grace, loving-kindness.
May we all remember who
we are and that we are created in the image of the Holy One. May we all seek to
live high fidelity lives. And may the God whose stories always end with grace
go before us. Amen.
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