People you can count on
Commentary
Some years ago, a major research firm conducted a survey to determine what people would be willing to do for $10 million. The results were astounding. Three percent would put their children up for adoption. Seven percent would kill a stranger. Ten percent would lie in court to set a murderer free. Sixteen percent would divorce their spouses. Twenty-three percent said they would become prostitutes for a week or longer. Most astonishing was the category at the top of the list. One-fourth of all surveyed said that they would leave their families for $10 million.
Everyone has a selling price at which he or she will step over a line of conduct and allow someone else to dictate the terms of behavior. It might be $10 million or it might only be one more bottle of wine. It might be a night in the spotlight or a night in bed. In Shusaku Endo's powerful novel, Silence, the missionary priest Rodriguez steps over the line when torture exceeds what his soul can bear, and he desecrates an image of Jesus. We all have our selling price.
Our selling price is linked to our identity: the stronger our sense of who we are, the higher our selling price and the deeper our character. There are, however, several identities that each of us wears. The first is the identity we receive from others. We get our looks and temperament from our parents. We garner our tastes and styles from our culture. There is even something mystical about us that we receive as a gift from God, unique to our personalities. Paul talks at length about these spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
A second identity we have in life is the one we make. In the drama, The Rainmaker, the main character is a con artist who calls himself Starbuck. He travels from town to town during the "dirty '30s" scheming to get people to pay him to bring the rains for their parched fields. Young Lizzie Curry catches his eye and they spar with building passion. But Lizzie is no fool and she challenges him to come clean with her about his true name. It can't really be Starbuck, she knows. Starbuck admits that he was born a "Smith," but asks, "What kind of name is that for a fellow like me? I needed a name that had the whole sky in it! And the power of a man! Starbuck! Now there's a name -- and it's mine!"
Lizzie tries to contradict him, telling him he has no right choosing his own name and giving up his family heritage. Yet, he will not capitulate quickly. "You're wrong, Lizzie," he says. "The name you choose for yourself is more your own name than the name you were born with!" Starbuck is on to something. Much of what we see in people around us has to do with what they have made of themselves. When an English nobleman named Roberts was having his portrait painted, the artist asked him if he would like the lines and creases in his face smoothed over. "Certainly not!" he objected. "Make sure you put them all in. I earned every single wrinkle on my face!" He was a man who knew the identity he had made.
There is also a third and deeper human identity. It is the identity that transforms us from what we were to what we are becoming. The poet saw a friend clearly when he wrote:
And there were three men went down the road
As down the road went he:
The man they saw, the man he was,
And the man he wanted to be.
The person we each want to be when we find our truest selves in God is larger than either the identity we have received from others or the one we try to create. This is the thought that lies at the heart of each text today. Anything that sullies us by trying to define us on terms less than God's grace limits our best self. But those things that bring out God's character in us help us to be people that others can count on.
Exodus 1:8--2:10
The first half of the book of Exodus narrates what will become a pitched battle between Yahweh and Pharaoh. Both lay claim to Israel. Both seek obedience from the nation. Both demand recognition as deity. Both wield enormous powers. A drama is set in motion to determine who will be able to topple the other and take control of the territory and nation.
The animosity that drives this combat tale begins in today's lectionary passage. The opening verses declare the heart and perspective of Pharaoh: Israel is a chattel to be used and spent in building the wealth of Pharaoh's own house. There are several things to note as this message is unpacked.
First, there is a comparison of the character of each of these leaders. Pharaoh is forgetful (1:8), ungrateful (1:8), fearful (1:9), conniving (1:10), mean-spirited (1:11), harsh (1:12-14), ruthless (1:14), and murderous (1:15-16). Yahweh (whose name is not yet known -- see ch. 3), meanwhile, is life-giving (1:17), kind (1:20), and encouraging and supportive (1:21). While this is all caricature, it is a deliberate introductory description designed to build antagonism toward Pharaoh and sympathy with the cause of Israel and Israel's God.
Second, the use of the Nile in determining the fate of the people is instructive. There is very little rain in Egypt. Yet life-sustaining water abounds because of the amazing flows of the Nile. The Nile and Egypt are symbiotically connected, and the life of the people depends upon the seasonal flooding and constant faithfulness of the great river. Because of this, the Nile gained a role of divinity for the Egyptians. It was a living thing, and was honored by religious rituals spanning all ages and dynasties. Thus, when the Pharaoh declares that the male Israelite babies be thrown into the Nile, it is more than merely a death sentence; in effect the Pharaoh is making a sacrifice to the Nile, honoring it as provider for the Egyptians. At the same time, when the Levite family of chapter 2 floats a basket bassinet on the Nile currents, there is an incipient recognition that Yahweh rules over the waters of the Nile, and that they cannot have a destructive power against Yahweh's people.
Third, when the Pharaoh's own daughter becomes part of the plot to defy the will of the Pharaoh, there is a premonition of the victory of Yahweh. Even the Pharaoh's own family recognizes both the wrongness of the Pharaoh's outlook and ruling plan, while paying allegiance to the designs of Yahweh.
Romans 12:1-8
Romans 12 begins the third section of Paul's letter. In large outline the message of Paul in Romans can be summarized as sin (chs. 1-3), salvation (chs. 4-11), and service (chs. 12-16). The plight of humanity (chs. 1-3) calls out the redemptive care of God (chs. 4-11) that creates a new consciousness of what it means to be in God's family (chs. 12-16). Paul employs a ritual motif to explain ongoing and living devotion to God. The chapter itself flows in three literary sections: heart and mind transformation (chs. 1-2), realistic personal assessment (chs. 3-8), and divine flow-through (chs. 9-21). In the first two paragraphs of the chapter, morality is tied to an understanding both of God and of ourselves.
The hardest thing for any of us to do in life is to maintain integrity. Even though we are not, by and large, evil people, sin has a way of playing around with our hearts. On the outside we appear rather nice and respectable. In fact, much of what we do is good, noble, kind, and wise. No one can deny that. The problem is that sin has a way of slicing our hearts with perforated lines. Before we are aware of it we have torn off a piece here and a section there, until we find ourselves fragmented.
It is not that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. Nor do we generally turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty, dissolving the kind Dr. Jekylls of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hydes. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact while making small allowances in certain little areas. We shave our taxable income as we fill out our 1040s, maybe. Or we lose our peripheral vision when someone in need approaches. Or we compromise our communication so that we speak from only our mouths but not our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should or could be. We strut on tiny legs, ants marching across the busy highway of life imagining that tires of destruction will skid around us. It is this diminishing of our hearts and characters that Paul seeks to address when he calls for whole-person transformation.
In Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More stands at a moral crossroads. More has been a loyal subject of the English crown, supporting his king in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. Now, however, King Henry VIII is engaged in a devious plan that pits his own desires against that of the church. In order to pull off his scheme, Henry requires that all his nobles swear to him a personal oath of allegiance. Because the terms of the oath violate More's conscience before his God, he refused and is arrested and jailed.
More's daughter, Margaret, comes to visit him. She is his pride and joy, often thinking his thoughts after him. In their playful terms of endearment she is her father's "Meg," and Henry knows that More will do anything for her. That is why he sent Meg to plead with her father in prison. "Take the oath, Father!" she urges him. "Take it with your mouth, if you can't take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can't do us any good in here!"
In so many ways she is right, of course -- how can More bless and protect his family if he rots in jail or dances with the executioner? And who will know if More coughs a testimony he doesn't fully believe?
Sir Thomas, however, has felt the creases in his heart and knows what will happen to him if he finds himself, rather than King Henry, the betrayer in the mirror. So he says, "Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water. And if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?"
When our lives begin to fragment, as Thomas More knew, we are left as though holding our lives like water in our hands. As the cracks between our fingers shift, even slightly, the water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
This is why Paul reminds us that we do not belong to ourselves, nor do we have the power of right living within us until we are fully sacrificed to God in the transforming power of grace. Then we begin to find our truest selves and can find a way to live that matters for both time and eternity.
Matthew 16:13-20
John Calvin said that there were two aspects to faith: assentia and fiducia. The first we often translate as "assent." It is in this dimension of faith that we acknowledge that something exists. Assentia is knowing something factually, or knowing about someone only from a distance. Calvin's second aspect of faith might well be termed "trust." It is a heart engagement, involving us personally in an emotional attachment with whatever we might have previously acknowledged only intellectually.
Take a chair, for instance. Assentia is our willingness to say that it could hold the person daring to sit on it. Fiducia, on the other hand, is the act of sitting on that chair ourselves, trusting its sturdiness to hold our bulk. Both are elements of faith. Both are important. But until the latter is added to the former, faith remains inert, distant, intellectual, and impersonal.
The interaction between Jesus and his disciples in Matthew 16 expresses both kinds of faith. There is a need to rightly understand who Jesus is (assentia). But there is also a need to trust that Jesus has authority to change life and eternity (fiducia). In the clarifications Jesus asks from his followers, we have the first. In Peter's declaration that Jesus is "the Christ" (that is, the anointed Messiah who brings deliverance to God's people), we have the second. For this reason Jesus can turn around the confidence that the disciples have in him to a corollary of confidence in them. Because of their assentia and fiducia, the disciples become people upon whom the earthly territory of God's kingdom can be built.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones told of an incident from his missionary days that illustrates the power of Jesus' declaration. A young girl got tired of things at home, said Jones. She longed for the freedom of the streets, and the excitement of the nightlife. She ran away to a large city. It wasn't long before she fell under the spell of a pimp and was degraded into a prostitute.
The girl's mother was beside herself with anxiety. It was true that things had not been going right between them, but a mother's love is restless and protective, and she had to find her daughter again. She remembered the child who sat on her lap, and the daughter who whispered in her ear, and needed somehow to renew their bond of trust.
Yet, how should she begin the search? All she had heard were rumors about her daughter, third-hand reports that she was now wasting her body in the red-light district. The mother went to the city and simply began to walk, hoping to stumble across someone who might know her daughter. Up one street and down the next she trudged, talking to anyone who would listen, hoping for a clue to follow, but it was to no avail. Her daughter didn't want to be found: shame, rebellion, spite ... Who can say what reasons mingle in our deceptive minds?
Eventually, the quest tired even the mother. Before she returned home, however, she did one more thing. She carried a photograph that had been taken several years before, a picture of the two of them, mother and daughter, at a happier moment in both their lives. She got the photograph enlarged and made dozens of copies. Then she scattered those pictures around the area, hoping that one would catch her daughter's eye. On each photo she penned these five words: "Come home! I love you!"
One day, the girl did see the picture. She began to remember what love was all about. A holy restlessness gripped her soul, battering her resentment until she had to call her mother. The next day she was home. Never once did the daughter stop assenting to the fact that she had a mother. But it wasn't until her mother's love called out the trust of her heart that she believed in all that "home" and "mother" and "love" could mean to her personally.
Application
Someone has suggested a powerfully illuminating analogy. When a ship is built, he said, each part has a little voice of its own. As seamen walk the passageways on her maiden voyage they can hear the creaking whispers of separate identities: "I'm a rivet!" "I'm a sheet of steel!" "I'm a propeller!" "I'm a beam!" For a while, these little voices sing their individual songs, proudly independent and fiercely self-protective.
Then a storm blows in on the high seas and the waves toss, the gales hurl, and the rains beat. If the parts of the ship try to withstand the pummeling independent from one another each would be lost. On the bridge, however, stands the captain. He issues orders that take all of the little voices and bring them together for a larger purpose. By the time the vessel has weathered the storm, sailors hear a new and deeper song echoing from stem to stern: "I am a ship!"
It is the captain's call that creates the deeper identity. So it is in our lives as well. Minor stars in a world of glamour try to sing siren songs pulling bits and pieces of us from the voyage of our lives. Those who hear the captain's call are able to sail true and straight.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 16:13-20. The gospel passage is rich with meaning, and may well be developed with the Exodus passage as a battle of the powers. Note that there is an important geographical understanding that informs Jesus' words to his disciples. In the region of Caesarea Philippi, on the rocky slopes of Mount Hermon, springs emerge from caves. These have been recognized as spiritually significant places from time immemorial. During Jesus' day there were many niches carved into the stone walls of the mountain fitted with images of gods and providing places for sacrificial gifts to be made. Furthermore, the caves that spewed fresh water were considered to be the gateways to the world of the gods. Jesus' words declare that no physical reality such as the rocks of Mount Hermon or its secret caverns can put one in touch with God; only the living testimony of Jesus can bring one into relationship with the divine.
Paired with the build up to the battle of the divine superpowers in Exodus, this theme of eschatological conflict takes on powerful significance and may well be illustrated with scenes from the Matrix trilogy or the Star Wars epics.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 124
"Kids," as Art Linkletter used to say, "say the darndest things." That's what one mom found out, when her son turned to her one morning at the breakfast table and asked, "Mom, is it true that God's not only up in heaven, but also here with us on earth?"
"Why, yes," replied his mom.
"Then is it also true that God is right here in this town?"
"It certainly is," replied Mom (beginning to get his drift).
"Then is God even right here in our house -- I mean -- right here in this very room?"
"Why, of course; God is right here in this room!"
"Mom, is God even here at this table, while we're having breakfast -- is God in this food?"
"Of course," said Mom, beginning to get a little nervous about where this was leading.
"Mom, is God right here in this empty glass in front of me?"
"Yes," said Mom, cautiously, "God is right there in that glass!"
Quick as a flash, the boy placed his hand over the top of the glass. "Gotcha!" he exclaimed.
There are times in life when we wish we could capture God like that: to be sure God is at our beck and call, under our command, like a genie in a bottle. There are times we wish we could be sure God is on our side.
The times when most of us wish most intently we could be certain of God's favor is the hour of greatest need: when we are suffering, when tragedy intrudes, when life tumbles in. In such an hour of need, we may find ourselves asking, "Whose side is God on?"
The author of Psalm 124 is asking that very same question. The heading of the psalm says David wrote it -- and that would certainly make sense, since it clearly belongs to a time of war. Yet, the attempt to place God on the side of any human enterprise is always a risky business.
This psalm displays a three-part logical structure: first there is remembrance of historical deliverance (vv. 1-5), then praise for deliverance in the recent past (vv. 6-7), and finally a liturgical declaration of trust (v. 8). This logical movement is one that can be replicated in our own experiences of trouble or difficulty. Truly it helps, in such times, to remember that God has been faithful in the past: both in the collective memory of our people, and in our own personal experiences of deliverance. The Lord, whom we recall in such a way, surely can be trusted to be faithful again, even though the signs of that faithful response may be invisible at the moment.
God is on our side -- not because we are worthy, but because God is worthy.
Everyone has a selling price at which he or she will step over a line of conduct and allow someone else to dictate the terms of behavior. It might be $10 million or it might only be one more bottle of wine. It might be a night in the spotlight or a night in bed. In Shusaku Endo's powerful novel, Silence, the missionary priest Rodriguez steps over the line when torture exceeds what his soul can bear, and he desecrates an image of Jesus. We all have our selling price.
Our selling price is linked to our identity: the stronger our sense of who we are, the higher our selling price and the deeper our character. There are, however, several identities that each of us wears. The first is the identity we receive from others. We get our looks and temperament from our parents. We garner our tastes and styles from our culture. There is even something mystical about us that we receive as a gift from God, unique to our personalities. Paul talks at length about these spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
A second identity we have in life is the one we make. In the drama, The Rainmaker, the main character is a con artist who calls himself Starbuck. He travels from town to town during the "dirty '30s" scheming to get people to pay him to bring the rains for their parched fields. Young Lizzie Curry catches his eye and they spar with building passion. But Lizzie is no fool and she challenges him to come clean with her about his true name. It can't really be Starbuck, she knows. Starbuck admits that he was born a "Smith," but asks, "What kind of name is that for a fellow like me? I needed a name that had the whole sky in it! And the power of a man! Starbuck! Now there's a name -- and it's mine!"
Lizzie tries to contradict him, telling him he has no right choosing his own name and giving up his family heritage. Yet, he will not capitulate quickly. "You're wrong, Lizzie," he says. "The name you choose for yourself is more your own name than the name you were born with!" Starbuck is on to something. Much of what we see in people around us has to do with what they have made of themselves. When an English nobleman named Roberts was having his portrait painted, the artist asked him if he would like the lines and creases in his face smoothed over. "Certainly not!" he objected. "Make sure you put them all in. I earned every single wrinkle on my face!" He was a man who knew the identity he had made.
There is also a third and deeper human identity. It is the identity that transforms us from what we were to what we are becoming. The poet saw a friend clearly when he wrote:
And there were three men went down the road
As down the road went he:
The man they saw, the man he was,
And the man he wanted to be.
The person we each want to be when we find our truest selves in God is larger than either the identity we have received from others or the one we try to create. This is the thought that lies at the heart of each text today. Anything that sullies us by trying to define us on terms less than God's grace limits our best self. But those things that bring out God's character in us help us to be people that others can count on.
Exodus 1:8--2:10
The first half of the book of Exodus narrates what will become a pitched battle between Yahweh and Pharaoh. Both lay claim to Israel. Both seek obedience from the nation. Both demand recognition as deity. Both wield enormous powers. A drama is set in motion to determine who will be able to topple the other and take control of the territory and nation.
The animosity that drives this combat tale begins in today's lectionary passage. The opening verses declare the heart and perspective of Pharaoh: Israel is a chattel to be used and spent in building the wealth of Pharaoh's own house. There are several things to note as this message is unpacked.
First, there is a comparison of the character of each of these leaders. Pharaoh is forgetful (1:8), ungrateful (1:8), fearful (1:9), conniving (1:10), mean-spirited (1:11), harsh (1:12-14), ruthless (1:14), and murderous (1:15-16). Yahweh (whose name is not yet known -- see ch. 3), meanwhile, is life-giving (1:17), kind (1:20), and encouraging and supportive (1:21). While this is all caricature, it is a deliberate introductory description designed to build antagonism toward Pharaoh and sympathy with the cause of Israel and Israel's God.
Second, the use of the Nile in determining the fate of the people is instructive. There is very little rain in Egypt. Yet life-sustaining water abounds because of the amazing flows of the Nile. The Nile and Egypt are symbiotically connected, and the life of the people depends upon the seasonal flooding and constant faithfulness of the great river. Because of this, the Nile gained a role of divinity for the Egyptians. It was a living thing, and was honored by religious rituals spanning all ages and dynasties. Thus, when the Pharaoh declares that the male Israelite babies be thrown into the Nile, it is more than merely a death sentence; in effect the Pharaoh is making a sacrifice to the Nile, honoring it as provider for the Egyptians. At the same time, when the Levite family of chapter 2 floats a basket bassinet on the Nile currents, there is an incipient recognition that Yahweh rules over the waters of the Nile, and that they cannot have a destructive power against Yahweh's people.
Third, when the Pharaoh's own daughter becomes part of the plot to defy the will of the Pharaoh, there is a premonition of the victory of Yahweh. Even the Pharaoh's own family recognizes both the wrongness of the Pharaoh's outlook and ruling plan, while paying allegiance to the designs of Yahweh.
Romans 12:1-8
Romans 12 begins the third section of Paul's letter. In large outline the message of Paul in Romans can be summarized as sin (chs. 1-3), salvation (chs. 4-11), and service (chs. 12-16). The plight of humanity (chs. 1-3) calls out the redemptive care of God (chs. 4-11) that creates a new consciousness of what it means to be in God's family (chs. 12-16). Paul employs a ritual motif to explain ongoing and living devotion to God. The chapter itself flows in three literary sections: heart and mind transformation (chs. 1-2), realistic personal assessment (chs. 3-8), and divine flow-through (chs. 9-21). In the first two paragraphs of the chapter, morality is tied to an understanding both of God and of ourselves.
The hardest thing for any of us to do in life is to maintain integrity. Even though we are not, by and large, evil people, sin has a way of playing around with our hearts. On the outside we appear rather nice and respectable. In fact, much of what we do is good, noble, kind, and wise. No one can deny that. The problem is that sin has a way of slicing our hearts with perforated lines. Before we are aware of it we have torn off a piece here and a section there, until we find ourselves fragmented.
It is not that we become blackened by sin in large strokes. Nor do we generally turn into some hideous monsters of greed and cruelty, dissolving the kind Dr. Jekylls of our personalities into dastardly Mr. Hydes. Instead, we keep most of our goodness intact while making small allowances in certain little areas. We shave our taxable income as we fill out our 1040s, maybe. Or we lose our peripheral vision when someone in need approaches. Or we compromise our communication so that we speak from only our mouths but not our souls.
The fragmentation of our lives makes us less than we should or could be. We strut on tiny legs, ants marching across the busy highway of life imagining that tires of destruction will skid around us. It is this diminishing of our hearts and characters that Paul seeks to address when he calls for whole-person transformation.
In Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More stands at a moral crossroads. More has been a loyal subject of the English crown, supporting his king in both civil and ecclesiastical matters. Now, however, King Henry VIII is engaged in a devious plan that pits his own desires against that of the church. In order to pull off his scheme, Henry requires that all his nobles swear to him a personal oath of allegiance. Because the terms of the oath violate More's conscience before his God, he refused and is arrested and jailed.
More's daughter, Margaret, comes to visit him. She is his pride and joy, often thinking his thoughts after him. In their playful terms of endearment she is her father's "Meg," and Henry knows that More will do anything for her. That is why he sent Meg to plead with her father in prison. "Take the oath, Father!" she urges him. "Take it with your mouth, if you can't take it with your heart! Take it and return to us! You can't do us any good in here!"
In so many ways she is right, of course -- how can More bless and protect his family if he rots in jail or dances with the executioner? And who will know if More coughs a testimony he doesn't fully believe?
Sir Thomas, however, has felt the creases in his heart and knows what will happen to him if he finds himself, rather than King Henry, the betrayer in the mirror. So he says, "Meg, when a man swears an oath, he holds himself in his hands like water. And if he opens his fingers, how can he hope to find himself again?"
When our lives begin to fragment, as Thomas More knew, we are left as though holding our lives like water in our hands. As the cracks between our fingers shift, even slightly, the water of our very selves dribbles away. We may look like the same people, but who we are inside has begun to change.
This is why Paul reminds us that we do not belong to ourselves, nor do we have the power of right living within us until we are fully sacrificed to God in the transforming power of grace. Then we begin to find our truest selves and can find a way to live that matters for both time and eternity.
Matthew 16:13-20
John Calvin said that there were two aspects to faith: assentia and fiducia. The first we often translate as "assent." It is in this dimension of faith that we acknowledge that something exists. Assentia is knowing something factually, or knowing about someone only from a distance. Calvin's second aspect of faith might well be termed "trust." It is a heart engagement, involving us personally in an emotional attachment with whatever we might have previously acknowledged only intellectually.
Take a chair, for instance. Assentia is our willingness to say that it could hold the person daring to sit on it. Fiducia, on the other hand, is the act of sitting on that chair ourselves, trusting its sturdiness to hold our bulk. Both are elements of faith. Both are important. But until the latter is added to the former, faith remains inert, distant, intellectual, and impersonal.
The interaction between Jesus and his disciples in Matthew 16 expresses both kinds of faith. There is a need to rightly understand who Jesus is (assentia). But there is also a need to trust that Jesus has authority to change life and eternity (fiducia). In the clarifications Jesus asks from his followers, we have the first. In Peter's declaration that Jesus is "the Christ" (that is, the anointed Messiah who brings deliverance to God's people), we have the second. For this reason Jesus can turn around the confidence that the disciples have in him to a corollary of confidence in them. Because of their assentia and fiducia, the disciples become people upon whom the earthly territory of God's kingdom can be built.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones told of an incident from his missionary days that illustrates the power of Jesus' declaration. A young girl got tired of things at home, said Jones. She longed for the freedom of the streets, and the excitement of the nightlife. She ran away to a large city. It wasn't long before she fell under the spell of a pimp and was degraded into a prostitute.
The girl's mother was beside herself with anxiety. It was true that things had not been going right between them, but a mother's love is restless and protective, and she had to find her daughter again. She remembered the child who sat on her lap, and the daughter who whispered in her ear, and needed somehow to renew their bond of trust.
Yet, how should she begin the search? All she had heard were rumors about her daughter, third-hand reports that she was now wasting her body in the red-light district. The mother went to the city and simply began to walk, hoping to stumble across someone who might know her daughter. Up one street and down the next she trudged, talking to anyone who would listen, hoping for a clue to follow, but it was to no avail. Her daughter didn't want to be found: shame, rebellion, spite ... Who can say what reasons mingle in our deceptive minds?
Eventually, the quest tired even the mother. Before she returned home, however, she did one more thing. She carried a photograph that had been taken several years before, a picture of the two of them, mother and daughter, at a happier moment in both their lives. She got the photograph enlarged and made dozens of copies. Then she scattered those pictures around the area, hoping that one would catch her daughter's eye. On each photo she penned these five words: "Come home! I love you!"
One day, the girl did see the picture. She began to remember what love was all about. A holy restlessness gripped her soul, battering her resentment until she had to call her mother. The next day she was home. Never once did the daughter stop assenting to the fact that she had a mother. But it wasn't until her mother's love called out the trust of her heart that she believed in all that "home" and "mother" and "love" could mean to her personally.
Application
Someone has suggested a powerfully illuminating analogy. When a ship is built, he said, each part has a little voice of its own. As seamen walk the passageways on her maiden voyage they can hear the creaking whispers of separate identities: "I'm a rivet!" "I'm a sheet of steel!" "I'm a propeller!" "I'm a beam!" For a while, these little voices sing their individual songs, proudly independent and fiercely self-protective.
Then a storm blows in on the high seas and the waves toss, the gales hurl, and the rains beat. If the parts of the ship try to withstand the pummeling independent from one another each would be lost. On the bridge, however, stands the captain. He issues orders that take all of the little voices and bring them together for a larger purpose. By the time the vessel has weathered the storm, sailors hear a new and deeper song echoing from stem to stern: "I am a ship!"
It is the captain's call that creates the deeper identity. So it is in our lives as well. Minor stars in a world of glamour try to sing siren songs pulling bits and pieces of us from the voyage of our lives. Those who hear the captain's call are able to sail true and straight.
An Alternative Application
Matthew 16:13-20. The gospel passage is rich with meaning, and may well be developed with the Exodus passage as a battle of the powers. Note that there is an important geographical understanding that informs Jesus' words to his disciples. In the region of Caesarea Philippi, on the rocky slopes of Mount Hermon, springs emerge from caves. These have been recognized as spiritually significant places from time immemorial. During Jesus' day there were many niches carved into the stone walls of the mountain fitted with images of gods and providing places for sacrificial gifts to be made. Furthermore, the caves that spewed fresh water were considered to be the gateways to the world of the gods. Jesus' words declare that no physical reality such as the rocks of Mount Hermon or its secret caverns can put one in touch with God; only the living testimony of Jesus can bring one into relationship with the divine.
Paired with the build up to the battle of the divine superpowers in Exodus, this theme of eschatological conflict takes on powerful significance and may well be illustrated with scenes from the Matrix trilogy or the Star Wars epics.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 124
"Kids," as Art Linkletter used to say, "say the darndest things." That's what one mom found out, when her son turned to her one morning at the breakfast table and asked, "Mom, is it true that God's not only up in heaven, but also here with us on earth?"
"Why, yes," replied his mom.
"Then is it also true that God is right here in this town?"
"It certainly is," replied Mom (beginning to get his drift).
"Then is God even right here in our house -- I mean -- right here in this very room?"
"Why, of course; God is right here in this room!"
"Mom, is God even here at this table, while we're having breakfast -- is God in this food?"
"Of course," said Mom, beginning to get a little nervous about where this was leading.
"Mom, is God right here in this empty glass in front of me?"
"Yes," said Mom, cautiously, "God is right there in that glass!"
Quick as a flash, the boy placed his hand over the top of the glass. "Gotcha!" he exclaimed.
There are times in life when we wish we could capture God like that: to be sure God is at our beck and call, under our command, like a genie in a bottle. There are times we wish we could be sure God is on our side.
The times when most of us wish most intently we could be certain of God's favor is the hour of greatest need: when we are suffering, when tragedy intrudes, when life tumbles in. In such an hour of need, we may find ourselves asking, "Whose side is God on?"
The author of Psalm 124 is asking that very same question. The heading of the psalm says David wrote it -- and that would certainly make sense, since it clearly belongs to a time of war. Yet, the attempt to place God on the side of any human enterprise is always a risky business.
This psalm displays a three-part logical structure: first there is remembrance of historical deliverance (vv. 1-5), then praise for deliverance in the recent past (vv. 6-7), and finally a liturgical declaration of trust (v. 8). This logical movement is one that can be replicated in our own experiences of trouble or difficulty. Truly it helps, in such times, to remember that God has been faithful in the past: both in the collective memory of our people, and in our own personal experiences of deliverance. The Lord, whom we recall in such a way, surely can be trusted to be faithful again, even though the signs of that faithful response may be invisible at the moment.
God is on our side -- not because we are worthy, but because God is worthy.
