From Exodus ….
The Lord said to Moses, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
(From the Daily Office Readings – Exodus 3:10-11 – March 24, 2012)
So here we are, the fugitive murderer is getting his commission to return to Egypt and speak truth to power, and he responds with a question probably every human being ever born has asked at least once, “Who am I that I should do this?” ~ A sense of inadequacy seems to inform Moses’ the question, “Who am I?” He’s been hiding out in Midian for forty years; he’s taken on a whole new identity as shepherd and husband and father. Now he is challenged by God’s commission to engage the deepening complexity of understanding himself. ~ It makes perfect sense for Moses to seek a deeper sense of himself in this situation. Whenever we are called to a new role in life it seems eminently prudent to become more aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears, to take an inventory of one’s abilities, talents, skills, and knowledge. But just as the Moses who stands before the Burning Bush is not the same Moses who came to Midian as a fugitive from Egyptian justice, so the Moses who will confront Pharaoh and lead the Hebrews across the desert will not be the same Moses who is just now being commissioned by God. Human identity is an on-going process. The self constantly changes; it is perpetually being reframed, reorganized, rethought. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer once confronted this question in a poetic essay:
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!
(From Christianity and Crisis, March 4, 1946)
And therein lies the answer to Moses’ question and to ours. The important question is not who we are, for that changes from day to day, from task to task. The important question is whose we are, for we are God’s and that never changes.
One candidate has been married three times and divorced twice (cheating on the first two spouses before each of those divorces). Another strapped his dog to the top of his car and drove several hundred miles while on vacation, and seems to change his position on everything depending on his audience. The incumbent was fathered by a Muslim foreigner, attended a church pastored by a fire-brand preacher, and worked as a (sinister stage whisper) community organizer. These incidents in and facts from their pasts are seen by many as disqualifiers, reasons they should not serve as the leader of their people. None of them, to my knowledge, killed a man and then hid the body like the guy in today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures. ~ I find it amusing the mental and exegetical gymnastics some commentators go through to excuse Moses this breach of the Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”) which, of course, was yet to be given (probably the best defense Moses has, retroactive application of a law being frowned on in most civilized cultures). I believe the text saying that “he looked this way and that” describes a furtive looking about to make sure he wouldn’t be seen, but I’ve read commentaries suggesting that Moses was simply looking for a supervisor to come discipline the wayward Egyptian. There’s even a venerable midrash to that effect (see Midrash Exodus Rabbah 1:29). I’ve also heard a preacher suggest that Moses simply spoke to the Egyptian with a “voice of command” and the poor man died of fright! Seriously! My unspoken response to that homiletic assertion: “Yeah, right!” ~ Let’s read the text honestly. He made sure no one was watching; he killed a man; he hid the body. And then he ran away, holed up with the yokels in Midian, worked as a shepherd, married the boss’s daughter, and stayed there for 40 years! (As a fugitive, he puts Dr. Richard Kimble’s run to shame!) It’s then that he encounters the Burning Bush and is commissioned by God to liberate the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. A murdering fugitive who’s been on the run and in hiding for four decades is chosen by God to lead God’s People. ~ So what does this tell us about God, God’s choices in leadership, and our own processes for selecting of leaders? Does it not suggest that God forgives past foibles, even pretty serious ones, and sees potential in even the least likely of candidates? Does it not suggest that God is not simply forgiving but incredibly forgiving? ~ As I recall, many of us have memorized a prayer which, in its most modern interpretation, includes this petition: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I’m not entirely convinced that a politician’s sexual pecadilloes and divorces, or another’s insensitivity to animals, or another’s aggressive social activism are sins against me (or all of us), but assuming they are, if we are honest in saying that prayer, shouldn’t we forgive them and move on? Now, I have to admit that I’m not good at this. I’m politically partisan and when some past sin of the other party’s candidate comes to light, I take inordinate delight; schadenfreude should by my middle name! But I am also aware that I need to work on getting rid of and passed this. I truly do believe that we should focus on our current leadership needs and not on potential candidates’ past mistakes, even as I find that personally difficult to do. I believe that because that’s what God, speaking from the Burning Bush, seems to have done with the fugitive murderer named Moses.
There’s a lot of talk of war these days, and I don’t mean about any on-going or planned military conflicts between sovereign states. Rather, harking back to at least the 1930s when FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover declared a “war on crime” and continuing in the 1960s when Pres. Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty”, the war metaphor has been used again and again, officially and unofficially, until now it is ubiquitous! Pres. Nixon declared a “war on cancer” and another “war on drugs” (which Pres. Reagan later re-declared). Borrowing a phrase from philosopher William James, Pres. Carter called for the “moral equivalent of war” in dealing with the energy needs of the nation during the 1977 oil crisis. Pres. G.W. Bush declared the apparently still continuing “war on terrorism” (or “war on terror”; the exact name and nature of the enemy have never been clear). The so-called Christian Right has claimed for a few years that there’s been a “war on Christmas” being waged by the Left and now the Left is claiming that the Right is waging a “war on women” (or on women’s reproductive rights). Yesterday afternoon I happened to hear a discussion on NPR about the unfortunate killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida; in that conversation, one of the participants asserted that “there is a war on young, black men in this country.” ~ After Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in January 2011, there was a hue-and-cry for the ratcheting back of the violence and violent imagery of political rhetoric; it was and remains largely ineffectual. But I believe the underlying thought of that call was valid and worthy of continued consideration; I believe we need to give up this talk of war, this reliance on a metaphor of violence. ~ And let’s be clear, that’s what any talk of a “war on something” is! War is defined as “open armed conflict between two or more parties, nations, or states.” Wars are declared by national leaders and fought by citizens, often by citizens with no personal stake in whatever the underlying dispute between their countries’ leaders might have been, citizens who will end up either dead or wounded (emotionally if not physically), citizens who may suffer the trauma of taking another’s life. So regardless of what we or our society or our political opponents may do apropos of Christmas or drugs or women’s rights or whatever, unless it involves the actual taking up of weapons and killing people in open conflict … it’s not war! ~ Today’s reading from Exodus relates Pharoah’s orders to kill the male Hebrew children. It’s a terrible story, but nowhere does scripture suggest that Pharoah was involved in a “war on the Hebrews.” The Psalmist today complains of “those who hate me without a cause” but does not complain that they are “warring” against him. In today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel, Peter opposes Jesus’ plan to go to Jerusalem, but Jesus does not accuse him of waging a “war” on that plan. This rhetoric of “war” is overused by our political leaders and pundits; those who use it do so because they think it is the only way to get the American people “fired up” about something. That “war talk” does rally the masses, but surely it is not the only way to accomplish that. Surely the thoughtful people of our country can be energized by something other than “going to war.” In that speech (and later essay) of William James from which Pres. Carter got his phrase, the philosopher asserts: “It would be simply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals of honor and standards of efficiency into English or American natures should be the fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japanese. Great indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men’s spiritual energy.” In that same essay, James also argued, “Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere. Priests and medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel some degree of its imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to the state.” ~ It’s that sense of having an “obligatory service to the state” that seems lacking in our society. It is that sense of being a “body,” such as Paul describes, in which all the parts, all the members work for the good of the whole that is missing. The church is supposed to be the model for such an understanding of community, for a society in which love and cooperation are as energizing as the politicians and pundits believe talk of fear and war to be …. but are we? When people look at the church today, do they see a body where conflict is considered counterproductive, a body which functions through the good work of all its members? Although I hope so, I sort of doubt it. Until the church fulfills that role, I’m afraid we’ll keep hearing about a “war on this” and a “war on that.”
In between these two sections from Mark’s Gospel Jesus teaches a great crowd of people and then feeds them with five loaves of bread and two fish; the crowd “numbered five thousand men” and who knows how many women and children. But what draws my attention today are the words of Jesus, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” and Mark’s words at the end, “He made his disciples get into the boat and go [away]” and “he went up on the mountain to pray.” Lots and lots of ministry activity bracketed by “down time”, time away from the demands of the crowd, time to rest, time to pray, times of sabbath. Mark doesn’t actually call these “sabbath times”, but that’s what they were. Part of the genius of the Jewish faith (and, by extension from it and by the modeling of its Founder, of the Christian faith) is that the human need for rest is made sacred. “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Gen. 2:3) “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God ; in it you shall not do any work.” (Exod. 20:8-10) Jesus famously remarked, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) Methodist writer Leonard Sweet interprets Jesus as meaning that it’s not so much that we keep the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath keeps us. It keeps us whole, keeps us sane, and keeps us spiritually alive. In today’s story from Mark’s Gospel we tend to focus on the feeding of the five thousand (the part I left out up above), but I’m beginning to believe that the really important part of the story are the “brackets”, the times of rest. Do not neglect to “come [or go] away to a desert place by yourselves and rest a while” on a regular basis!
