“Sowing Abundance”

Mark 4:1-9

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

October 29, 2023

Upon hearing the parable, the disciples nodded gravely, internalized the wisdom given, and promised to share the Good News far and wide.

Just kidding. What they really did was go up to Jesus and say, “Seriously, Jesus. Why do you keep preaching in riddles? No one understands what you’re talking about. It’s unreasonable. It doesn’t make any sense. And, honestly, dude? It’s really tiring to listen to these sermons. It’s too much work. Didn’t you pay any attention in speech class? You know…tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you just told them. Maybe try that next time and you’ll have better luck.”

Ah, but Jesus. He rarely listened to criticism, dontchaknow. I feel like he would have been incredibly difficult to supervise. Probably never would have listened to anything you said during a performance evaluation. He goes on speaking in riddles – parables. 

Of all the parables Jesus gave us, something like 40, he only explained 2 of them. And lots of Biblical scholars doubt that he even did that because It’s not his style to explain parables in an easy, one-two-three pattern. After all, the thing that makes a parable an excellent tool for teaching is that it can’t be easily explained. If you think you’ve got it figured out, chances are you don’t. Parables just don’t work that way. Instead, they invite us into their world. We are lured into the story and encouraged to imagine ourselves as various characters….perhaps today we find ourselves identifying with the seeds, but tomorrow we’ll notice we could also be the soil, and next year when we heard the story we’ll be the sower. We get invited in, again and again, to make new meaning in these old, old stories. 

One way to enter into a parable is to rewrite it in a contemporary setting. After all, most of us aren’t farmers anymore. Jesus’s parables often used agricultural imagery because that was the world he lived in but that doesn’t mean it’s the only world that matters. Try these on for size:

“Listen! A bank executive pulled into her reserved parking space, checked her e-mail on her phone, and briskly walked into the office to begin another day’s work….” 

“Listen! A ten-year-old child carefully took their piggy bank down off the shelf and counted out all the coins they could find from saving up their weekly allowance. They got on their bike and headed downtown to spend the money….”

“Listen! A graduate student cashed in his financial aid check at the beginning of the semester, opened up an Excel spreadsheet, and carefully began budgeting how he’d make the money last until Christmas...”

There are a million ways you could re-tell this story. If you go home and work on some of your own, I’d love to hear them. 

Traditionally, many interpretations of this passage have focused intently on the different kinds of soil in the parable. People have spent centuries wondering, “What exactly does it look like to be rocky soil? How do I know if I am just a hard path and the birds might come along and take the seeds?” And, of course, “How do I become the GOOD soil? How do I make sure I am the most hospitable place possible for the Spirit’s Love so I can make it multiply and grow?”

These are lovely questions. But let’s try a different angle, too. Instead of focusing on the soil, what if we shine a light on the sower. 

What a weirdo. I mean, has anyone ever taught this guy anything about farming? I know very little about growing food to eat but I do know is that in Jesus’s time, if we were farmers we would typically have a limited amount of seed saved up from last year. So if we wanted to get the highest yield possible - enough to feed our family, our livestock, maybe even sell a bit at market - we need to use that seed carefully. We’d check the soil. Make sure it’s good soil - ready to use. And then we’d plan our seeds at the right time and tend them carefully so they can flourish. 

Here’s what we wouldn’t do. We wouldn’t take the seed and just throw it all over the place willy nilly. We wouldn’t drop a bunch of it on the path where we’re walking. We wouldn’t throw it down in rocky soil or scatter it where there are thorns. 

That’s just wasteful. Ignorant. Misguided. It makes no sense at all. 

And yet – this sower. This unskilled sower manages to get some seeds into the good soil through this scattershot method of planting. And the seeds that got into the good soil did great. Unbelievably amazing, actually. They yielded huge amounts – 30, 60, even 100 times what was originally planted.

So maybe this sower has skills after all. Their method is unconventional, that’s for sure, but they’re getting good results. 

Reminds me a little of Jesus. Unconventional methods. Good results. 

Although Jesus’s followers complained that he was hard to understand, people kept flocking to him. So many people came to hear him that he had to make the sea itself into an amphitheater. Backed up to the sea by the throngs that came hear him speak, he hopped into a boat so he could talk to the people who followed him everywhere. They may not have fully understood everything he was saying, but they sure did love to hear him say it.

Jesus told stories that made no sense. The world turned upside down. And he did things that made no sense. Water into wine. Feeding thousands with just a few loaves. The dead rising and breathing again. And so the people kept coming. Kept following. Kept watching and listening. 

Because just like the sower who scattered that seed with abandon, Jesus poured himself out time and time again for anyone who had ears to hear and eyes to see. “Listen!” he said. He sowed the seeds of righteousness and justice every which way. He paid little attention to whether or not the seeds were landing on rocky ground or fertile soil. He just kept telling stories -  traveling, listening, giving, healing, feeding, turning the world upside-down. 

Both Jesus and the sower lived and breathed and worked and taught from a position of ENOUGH. Chances are good that they, like us, lived in a world where they were constantly told “conserve, save, be cautious, make plans, be careful, keep track, don’t waste, watch the bottom line, increase your efficiency.” But, Jesus and the sower resisted these messages. They lived in a world of ENOUGH. 

They weren’t weren’t operating from a scarcity mindset. Instead, they were living in a world of abundance: Enough seed. Enough resources. Enough loaves. Enough fishes. Enough manna. Enough water. Enough wine. Enough. 

We, too, live in a world where the gods of scarcity are loud. From birth, we are inundated with messages that there is not enough to go around. We are told that we cannot possibly have enough or be enough to be worth much of anything in this world. 

And into this myth of scarcity, Jesus whispers words of abundance. 

Quiet now. There’s a big crowd and he’s all the way out there on the sea in that boat. Can you hear him?

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

“The Sheep and the Goats”

Matthew 25:31-46

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

October 22, 2023

Earlier this week I saw a tweet that said something like, “I’m just out here doing the Lord’s work (judging).” [1]  I snorted because I recognized myself immediately. Just earlier that same day one of the other participants at the dream work retreat I was attending asked me, kindly, “Would you say you like to compare things often?”

Boy, do I ever. I feel comfortable admitting this here because I know I’m not alone in these tendencies. I crave information. I want to analyze, dissect, put back together again. I DO want to compare. And, in fact, I am often judging. We all make judgments all day long - it’s absolutely, 100% only human. We sniff the milk to see if it’s still safe to drink. We check our rearview mirror to judge how much space we have to back up. 

These are helpful ways of judging. 

And probably not what the person meant when they referred to “the Lord’s work.” 

I’m going to guess that when they referred to “the Lord’s work” they were referring to Jesus in today’s chapter from Matthew. Big, boss Christ, enthroned in all his glory, come to judge the quick and the dead and all that jazz. And he makes judging look so very EASY in this passage, doesn’t he? “Sheep to this side, please. Goats, you go over here. Eh, eh, eh! I see you little goat, trying to sneak in with the sheep. Nope! I told you, you’re on THIS side.”

This is one of those passages that I always think of when people try to blithely assert that the “Old Testament God” is filled with wrath and Jesus is only ever meek and mild. This Jesus does not seem particularly meek nor mild. He seems very clear about what he’s doing - which is comparing, judging. He’s sorting the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. And the text tells us he’s doing it in order to determine who will be cast into eternal punishment. 

I, for one, have a lot of feelings about this passage. Starting with: I don’t personally believe in hell. It’s not consistent with my understanding of God’s essence of love. I tend to think that we humans have obsessively worried about hell and eternal punishment because we worry about a lot of things. And we’ve told stories like this one to encourage other people to behave right and make good choices. 

Making good choices is something I support. I’d just prefer to encourage it in ways that don’t involve the threat of eternal punishment and weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Regardless of how we may feel about hell, here’s this story of Jesus doing the Lord’s work (judging). And it feels particularly relevant right now because these past two weeks have been filled with judgment as we all try to grapple with the terror in Israel and Gaza. 

We want to separate sheep from goats - these are the good guys and these are the bad guys. We want it to be clear cut. And, dare I say, we even want a righteous God to do some active judging. We want those who slaughter innocents to pause and see the humanity in the other. We want them to wake up and remember that violence isn’t the way, that children deserve to live free of fear, and that the work of peace-making is almost always harder than waging war. 

If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’d probably love for the Human One to come in his majesty and bring all his angels with him. We’d love for him to sit on his majestic throne and press pause on this terror. We want all the nations to be gathered in front of him. And we want him to do the separating. We want him to put everyone in their corners and talk some sense into them. We want him to come and remind people of right and wrong. 

We want someone - anyone - to FIX this heartbreaking, terrifying, seemingly intractable situation. And we want it done immediately, before any other precious lives are taken in Israel or Gaza. And we want peace and a sense of security for our Jewish and Muslim neighbors here, too. We don’t want them to live in fear of being harmed simply because so many are unable to separate people from their leaders and governments. And so many forget that great diversity exists within all religions - and that the government of Israel doesn’t speak for all Jews just as the leaders of Hamas don’t represent all Muslims. 

Despite all the complexities, we sometimes find it easy to be armchair members of the UN security council from the safety of our own homes on this side of the globe. Pointing fingers and assigning blame can feel easy. It’s more difficult to take Jesus’s advice in Matthew 7:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your neighbor’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 

It seems to me that we need to spend some time grappling seriously with the log in our own eye over here in the U.S. How can we invite others to accountability for the atrocities they’ve committed when we’ve not yet taken accountability for our own actions? The ways we, too, have inflicted terror on innocents. The ways we, too, are caught up in legacies of colonialism and genocide. 

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann explores some of the similarities between the ethos of the nation of Israel and the United States in his book Chosen? Reading the Bible Among the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He notes that both nations have claimed an identity as God’s elect. Our faith ancestors, too, made theological claims about their divine right to inhabit a particular place. Our faith ancestors also committed acts of violence against the people who were already living here when they arrived. They did so while proclaiming they had a divine mandate. 

We Christians have particular logs to deal with, too. We know that, historically, the Christian Church has committed great violence against Jewish and Muslim people. And that, even today, these attitudes persist in some parts of Christianity. 

But looking at the log in our own eye isn’t as fun as assigning blame to others. Seeing the legacies of colonialism and terror at home and abroad is heartbreaking. Watching the horrors of hatred and violence based on ethnicity - again and again - can make us feel powerless and hopeless. 

It would be so much simpler if Jesus would show up and unequivocally sort us all out. Tell us exactly who’s right and who’s wrong. Exert some authority and make people be kind to one other. Judge and judge us relentlessly in a refiner’s fire until we are free of the evils that plague us. Until we are, finally, kind, just, right, GOOD. 

While we don’t have a living, breathing, Christ-in-all-his glory with us right now we do have these ancient texts that can illuminate truth. How is Christ dividing the sheep from the goats in this story? Christ says the sheep’s righteous behavior was quite simple, “I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.” 

The sheep are surprised because they can’t remember doing any of these things. So Christ clarifies, “‘when you did these things for least among you, you did them to me.”

This part is quite simple, really. Every single person is imbued with the divine. The way we treat our neighbors is the way we treat Christ. And this story takes it one step further - Christ says that her spirit is ESPECIALLY within those who are the least among us. Once again, God makes it clear that: whoever is oppressed? That’s where her heart lies. And that’s where we should focus our energy, attention, advocacy, and care, too. 

Treat others as if they are holy, sacred, divine, good. Especially those that the world dehumanizes and disparages. That’s what we’re supposed to do. 

And since we don’t have Christ here with a megaphone, it is our job as followers of Jesus to bear witness to his teachings. It is our job to keep loving loudly and insisting others do the same - no matter how inconvenient it may be. It is our job to keep shining a light on injustice - even when all we have is a little pen light and the atrocities are so very overwhelming. It is our job to keep reminding everyone that we are ALL human. Full stop. Every single one of us. And that, as human beings we have a right to be free. We have a right to safety, love, food, water, self-determination, peace. 

And we must do all of these things ever mindful of the giant log in our own eye. It is only when we deal with our own failures and recommit ourselves to seeking a more just peace that we’ll ever be able to call others to account. 

We do all these things in the spirit of the one who is Love. The one who taught in parables and deeds. The one who answered questions with more questions. The one who committed himself so fully to seeking the ways of peace that he followed that path all the way to the executioner’s block. The one who is with us still, calling us into more abundant life, more justice and peace, and more love for one another. Every. Single. Other. May it be so. 

NOTES:

[1] https://x.com/waxmittert/status/1579503758970859523?s=20 

“Somebody’s Knocking”

Jonah 3:1-4:4

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

October 8, 2023

This one isn’t in our hymnal, but let’s see if anyone knows it and can sing along with me:

Somebody’s knocking at your door. 

Somebody’s knocking at your door. 

Oh, sinner, why don’t you answer? 

Somebody’s knocking at your door.

Well, if the “somebody” knocking is God, I think we might all know why you might not want to answer. 

Have you ever had that experience of hearing a still small voice….telling you something you don’t want to hear? When we hear that little knock at the door of our hearts telling us to reach out and do something difficult, mend a relationship, give our time or money ... .well, sometimes we cover our ears because we don’t want to answer the door, right? 

The prophet Jonah is the poster boy for not answering the door. God’s voice comes to Jonah, telling him to go to Nineveh and bring a message of warning. And Jonah just turns right around and runs the other way. So keen is Jonah on running away from God’s invitation that he jumps onto the next boat he can find. And this is where things get a little weird. 

Before we dive in, though (see what I did there?), a couple of words about what this story is...and what it isn’t. As a child, I was scared of this story. After all, the idea of God sending a giant fish to swallow up a man wasn’t particularly soothing. I remember puzzling over how this could possibly BE. And when I became old enough to understand that it couldn’t BE, that giant fish don’t just swallow people and then spit them back up again, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a TRUE story and I should just set it aside.

 

That, of course, was a big mistake.

 

When we set aside stories because we think only “true” stories matter, we miss out on something very important, which is that truths often come to us in stories that are not factually accurate. Just because something didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Stories, allegories, metaphors, myths…they all contain great truth. Theologian Marcus Borg used to talk about the way a good story can convey MORE truth than just a factual, accurate accounting of “what really happened.”

 

Those who heard the story of Jonah long ago would have immediately known it wasn’t based in fact. For one thing, it’s too darn funny to be a historical recollection of a prophet’s life. The themes are larger than life. It’s a parody of prophetic literature. Once you’ve read a lot of the prophets in the Bible, you read Jonah and you laugh out loud because the author mimics that style of literature so well.

Jonah is meant to remind us of other prophets who weren’t thrilled with God came a-knocking on their doors: Moses and the burning bush, Elijah running away, Jeremiah wondering, “who, me?”

So when our anti-hero Jonah runs away from God he’s reminding us of a lot of other people. He’s just doing it on a much grander and more hilarious scale.

Eventually, all’s well that ends well in this particular story. After the spectacle of near-drowning and near-digestion by a fish, Jonah is vomited up onto dry land. And he decides that if this God of his is going to be SO VERY ANNOYINGLY RELENTLESS he might as well just go to Nineveh and get it over with. He does what he’s supposed to do in a sort of halfhearted way, strolling through the city casually yelling, “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown!” and….it works. The people listen. They repent. The city is saved. 

Jonah’s reluctance to say yes reminds me of phone call I received from our then-Conference Minister Edith Guffey back in 2019. She was preparing to retire and asked me if I would enter the six-year presidential cycle for the conference. My immediate reaction was to run the other direction. It’s not that I didn’t care about the conference or that I wasn’t honored to be asked. It’s just that I was busy. And felt like board leadership wasn’t really my thing. And then, you know, it was a SIX YEAR COMMITMENT. That felt like an lot. 

I didn’t say no immediately.. I told Edith I needed time to discern. After talking with family, colleagues, friends, and lots of prayer, I decided I would accept because I felt my skills could be useful in this time of transition. Little did I know that a pandemic was just around the corner and my life was about to get a whole lot harder. Little did I know….much of anything. In fact, I feel like I’m only now - our years into this gig and just finishing up my role as president - kind of getting the hang of things.

Real talk: there have been times in the past four years when I’ve felt like running away from this commitment I made. I’m sure no one else here can relate. But I stayed the course and have learned so much. Last weekend,I joyfully passed the gavel to the next president and I moved into my two-year term as past-president. 

When I looked around the room at the KO annual meeting, I felt such a deep, abiding love for the people there. People who were there because we care about the church. All of us there because we heard a knock at the door and decided to answer. The people who serve in conference leadership are folks with full-time jobs and other volunteer obligations and family commitments. People like our own Janet George who took a vacation day to attend Annual Meeting (on top of all the other things she already does for our church and community here in Manhattan!). The clergy there work as local church pastors or chaplains or have retired after many years of service. Some of them are bivocational pastors - working another full-time job during the week and then stepping into a pulpit every weekend. 

The conference is not unlike our own congregation. Every year we make a budget and every year we wonder how we’ll find the funds we need to do the ministry we feel called to do. Every year we prayerfully discern how to best steward our time, energy, money. This year we had a particularly robust and faithful conversation about the conference budget which resulted in a nomination from the floor to increase the amount budgeted for our part-time Associate Conference Minister. While we aren’t quite sure where we would find the money to do that, the delegates felt strongly that we need to invest in that role so we can expand our ministry. It wasn’t an easy conversation but it was rich and respectful. At one point there was even a call from the floor for people to make pledges - “who can commit to $100 a month? $50 a month? $25 a month?” When the meeting was over, I went to the KO website and decided to make a regular pledge for 2024, whereas in the past I’ve always given sporadically. As I’ve served in leadership roles with the conference I’ve come to understand how important it is for those who make the budgets to have a clearer sense of people’s plans so they can steward our resources faithfully. 

Like us, our conference is a faithful, scrappy group. Despite being one of the smallest conferences in the UCC, we continue to make immense contributions to the wider church.. Our part-time staff members are regularly tapped to serve in part-time roles in other conferences because they do what they do so well. Our Conference Minister Lorraine Ceniceros serves on so many national boards I’ve lost count. Lorraine is one of THREE people from KO serving on the National Board of the UCC. THE national board of our denomination, which is chaired by Julia Gaughan, who serves as the part-time pastor of Peace Church in Alma. 

The conference is full of congregations like ours, who are Loving Loudly and working for justice. There are congregations that march in Pride parades and clergy who show up relentlessly at the state houses to advocate for LGBTQ+ folks. There are clothing drives, and period product drives, and food drives, and community meals, and fundraisers for disaster relief. When Tulsa had that terrible storm earlier this year people spontaneously sent money so Fellowship UCC to help their community. There are after school programs, and ministries to queer folks who are in jail, and pub theology gatherings, and anti-racism work, and relieving medical debt, and groups that care for people who have been through religious trauma. There are youth service trips like the ones our youth took to Albuquerque and children’s Christmas pageants and support groups for parents. Some of our smallest churches have done incredible things - Partridge Community Church started a community garden this year, open to anyone in their small town; Carbondale UCC built a labyrinth on their grounds and invited everyone to come use it; and our friends just up the road in Marysville have been lay-led this year since their pastor retired. While doing the hard work of searching for a new pastor they’ve also revitalized their children’s and youth ministries, and hosted a sacred arts series.

During the month of October as we  consider our gifts to our congregation, I found it so uplifting to be with people from the wider church. To know that we’re not alone in our desire to use the resources we have to make the world a more loving and just place. We aren’t alone in trying creative ways to Be the Church in this time of rapid change. At one point during the meeting, I was placed in a small group of local church pastors for a “holy conversation.” All of them are dear friends, people I call on regularly when I need support. We spoke openly about the challenges and joys of ministry. Hearing the ways my colleagues continue to feel called to ministry despite the challenges was life-giving. I hope my gushing about the beautiful things the Spirit is doing here at First Congregational also helped sustain their spirits. 

At one point in the conversation we were asked to share ways that we were giving and receiving through our own congregations. One of the other pastors talked about how she has been increasing her own financial giving to her congregation over the years, trying to increase a percentage or so of her income each year. She said she’s now up to 8% and wants to keep going because she feels joy when she gives to her congregation. 

I know that feeling, too. Every year when I turn in our family’s pledge card, I do so joyfully because I am so honored to minister alongside all of you. I give thanks for the one who keeps knocking on our doors, drawing us outside of our comfort zones, and knitting us together in love. 

“Drawn Out”

Exodus 1:8 – 2:10

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

October 1, 2023

I can remember Sunday School coloring pages from my childhood with pictures of Baby Moses blissfully floating down the river in a little woven basket. This always seemed like such a tranquil scene to me….happy baby, floating along, safe and snug in a sweet little cocoon. 

I don’t remember noticing in my coloring book the tears of his mother, streaming into the river, as she placed her child in a leaky, makeshift boat and prayed for his survival.

I don’t remember noticing his sister creeping in the reeds, just out of sight, and running alongside the basket – trying to keep up so she didn’t lose him. 

I don’t remember noticing the trembling hands of the princess as she carefully and clumsily pulled the baby out of the water – knowing she risked the wrath of her father because this child was one of the hated ones.

I don’t remember hearing the voice of Moses’s sister, breathless from running but strong and clear – faking confidence, perhaps – asking the princess if she should find someone to nurse the baby.

I don’t remember seeing any pictures in my coloring book of Moses’ mother breathing in his sweet baby smells as she settled him at her breast, heart racing as she glanced out of the corner of her eye at the princess, wondering if her identity would be discovered.

We don’t know what Moses’ name was before the princess renamed him. We don’t know what his mother thought about the future for the three months she worshiped his soft skin and fuzzy hair in silence. 

There are a lot of things we don’t know about this story. One thing we can say with authority is this: it isn’t fully told in Sunday School coloring pages. 

Stories about babies aren’t necessarily feel-good stories for children. A story like this one has to be told carefully because it is a story about some of the deepest evils that plague humanity: greed, slavery, racism, xenophobia, genocide, infanticide. But it is also a story about some of the greatest strengths of humanity: courage, sacrifice, openness to risk, creativity, and community. 

**********

We live in a world inundated with stories. From big blockbusters like Barbenheimer to 45-second TikToks to TED talks, we are awash in storytelling day in and day out. And then there’s the written word. Some of us read story after story to try and make sense of the world in our day job. Others of us escape into juicy novels or intriguing nonfiction books in our free time. Others of us prefer to take our stories in journalistic form, scrolling through the news on our phone or listening to the drone of cable news networks in the background as we go about our days. 

I worry, sometimes, about all of these stories that we take in. Stories can be life-giving, but when they can also overwhelm. When we don’t have the time to sit with them and truly digest them we can start to feel off-kilter. And when so many of the stories clamoring for our attention are full of bad news - well, I don’t have to tell you where that can lead. You know. 

There’s a fine line between being informed and being paralyzed. And for those of us living through overlapping pandemics - COVID, white supremacy, climate change, gun violence, misogyny - it can be challenging to seek stories that strengthen rather than overwhelm.

This is one of the reasons we come to church, right? To tune into the stories of a force that brings life and hope in the midst of all the broken systems in our world. Sweet baby Moses’s story has long-sustained people who are oppressed. It is the story of individuals coming together with the power of the Divine to dismantle death-dealing systems. And I believe it offers both hope and instruction to those of us who wish to do the same in our day. 

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In today’s passage we see five women who make individual choices that affect the entire destiny of a people. First, the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. And let’s not forget their names because it’s quite unusual that our narrator even gives them to us. Not even the Pharaoh has a name in this story. Shiphrah and Puah.

It’s unclear if these two women are Egyptian women who serve as midwives to the Hebrews, or Hebrews practicing midwifery among their own people. Regardless, what they do is exceedingly brave. Given a direct order from Pharaoh – who is, in this culture, literally revered as a god – they just outright refuse to comply and then lie to his face about it. What’s more, they somehow get away with it. Countless lives are saved because they put their own lives on the line and refuse to comply with evil.

Next we have Moses’ mother, Jochebed. Her act of insurrection is one we can all understand: she chose to save her child. With the authorities breathing down her neck looking for Hebrew baby boys to drown, she carefully hid her son away for three whole months. Anyone who has spent three months falling in love with a baby knows this is an absolute eternity. And when she could no longer hide him, she prepared a little boat for him and sent him off down the river to an uncertain future. I don’t know how she found the strength to do this. Desperation can make us strong, can’t it?

The fourth woman of courage in this story is the princess, the Pharaoh’s daughter. She found this baby boy in the river and, when she heard his cries, felt compassion for him. Her decision to take him in and care for him is an act of outright rebellion against her father. 

Finally, the fifth hero in this story is Moses’ sister, Miriam. In a culture where she wasn’t even supposed to speak to the princess, she waltzed right up and cleverly found a way to reunite her family. The woman who, earlier that day, floated her son down the river, never to see him again, is suddenly reunited and paid wages to mother her own child. Imagine that! Not a bad end to the day, all things considered.

Each of these women and girls acted without knowing what the others would do. And yet each of them, by their own choices, wove together with their sisters a story where this one Hebrew child would not be killed.

Instead, he would become Moses – drawn out of the waters of danger, drawn out to one day return and draw his own people out and across a river to freedom.

This story of holy coincidence – of various lives intersecting – is not the only place in our Scriptures where we learn of God’s great power to draw us out in surprising ways for the good of all. 

Remember a story about another little baby? He was born into a time when bad news was everywhere, hidden away for his own safety, nurtured and protected by everyday people weaving together a cocoon of safety at his birth. In time, this baby also grew into an adult who would offer hope and healing to his people. 

God is not intimidated by all the bad news that pummels us day in and day out. The world may continue to deal in the ways of death, but God is always working in the ways of life. Quietly whispering into the lives of all kinds of people – those with names and those without, children and adults, weeping mothers and strong midwives, those who look like Disney princesses and those who have nothing. 

God sends everyday people who whisper words of grace into our ears as we float down the choppy waters of life. Through the love of others, God draws us out from waters that threaten to overwhelm.

Through us and with us God is working tirelessly to bring about a Realm of true peace and justice – where each and every child of God is drawn out into abundance and fullness of life. 

Thanks be to God.