YOU!  RIGHT NOW!
A sermon by Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

August 24, 2008

Exodus 1:8-2:10; Matthew 16:13-20; Romans 12:1-8

Little things make all the difference in the world.

I was a child of the dawning space age. During the years of the Mercury Seven, the first seven USA manned space flights, we elementary aged children were all brought into the cafeteria to sit before the school's one television to watch each launch, to celebrate our nation's space race against the Russians.

I have vivid memories of the fuzzy pictures first beamed back from the moon as Neil Armstrong stepped down into the powdery moon soil. I know exactly where I was sitting in the family living room. And then there was the Space Shuttle program that has included so much success and two horrible tragedies. Both explosions of the shuttles have left indelible marks on my soul and psyche.

One of the strangely comforting realities to come out of those two losses was a NASA scientist explaining that a functioning space shuttle has 1 billion separate parts that must all be working together. Each part plays a crucial role in the functioning of the whole. But, he said, what we have learned is that each big explosion was more often than not predicated by a long and significant series of mistakes in human judgment, in varying levels of management that were just as significant misjudgments as were the mechanical breakdowns on the shuttles.

Little things make all the difference in the world.

We are approaching the anniversary of the multiple tragedies that our generation remembers as 9/11. It is to be compared to an earlier generation remembering December 7 th . Both 9/11 and the massive invasion of Pearl Harbor were incredibly complex maneuvers that relied on many small things happening and not happening. Both events could have been averted if even a few small things had been different.

Little things make all the difference in the world.

A couple weeks ago we were reflecting in worship and Sunday school on the feeding of the five to twenty thousand people. I shared with you an interpretation by Rosemary Radford Ruether, a Roman Catholic Theologian, who suggested that it wasn't a miracle at all, but the reality that an equal number of unnamed women were present who brought enough food to share and then were motivated by the loving presence of God in Jesus. She said, “It was not a miracle except to men who pay so little attention to the reality that women have always brought enough and it just always comes as a surprise to men.”

Rosemary was fired two weeks ago from the Chair of Theology she had been offered at the Catholic University in San Diego . The Vatican and Pope Benedict have declared this rather quiet, unassuming woman to be a major problem and are attempting to silence her. One small person having a very significant impact in the midst of the largest Christian organization on the planet, claiming, like the space shuttle, to have one billion parts, I sincerely doubt that Rosemary has any desire to do anything but ask that Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, and others treat women fairly and equally like Jesus did.

Our story this morning from the Book of Exodus describes the reality of Israel 's slavery under the Egyptian Pharaoh and their refusal to passively acquiesce to that slavery. The story traces how the people fought back against the empire when direct confrontation was not possible.

Many of us know this story by heart. We remember Moses telling Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Pharaoh was stubborn and what followed were many plagues of bugs, frogs and snakes, and death culminating in the escape across the Red Sea with the Israelites following a great pillar of light.

The big miracle remembered as one event is the Exodus. What most fail to remember is how long it took for this miracle to unfold -- hundreds of years; they left that part out of the movie version with Charlton Heston.

This clan of Israelites, twelve brothers of Jacob's lineage, came to Egypt because of a famine in Canaan, Palestine , eventually the land we call Israel. The eleven brothers and their clan, under the guidance of the one brother Joseph, who had risen up within the high ranks of Egyptian society, lived not only their whole lives there, but many generations after them did too. Four hundred years' worth of generations later, after all of Joseph's closest relatives had obviously died, the story picks back up in a few short verses, each verse a hundred years long, saying that no one in the Egyptian government remembered the prominence of Joseph anymore. His star power had faded after 400 years.

The Pharaoh and his government said to each other and the people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us…. (1:9-10).” They were a bunch of terrorists threatening Egyptian cultural purity.

Acting to oppress or exploit people or groups different than us rarely happens without a perceived threat. It is the exploitation of that threat by those either in power or seeking to gain dominance that enables them to gain the ascendancy in that society. Do you remember a presidential cycle two times ago when George Bush was very pro-immigration reform, meeting with Mexico's president and happy to have a wide open border between us and our southern neighbors.

Suddenly after 9/11 it became politically expedient to mistrust all immigrants and to forget, like Pharaoh, that we are all immigrants to this land that displaced Native Americans who taught many of our relatives how to survive in this country, of which we now say, “This land is our land.”

Last week's newspaper and internet story that will not go away was the government announcement that by the year 2041 the population of the United States will no longer be majority Caucasian. What an interesting time to drop that reality. I suspect we will find renewed efforts to build an even larger wall across our southern boundary with Mexico and the demonization of immigrants will probably grow only stronger as racial fears escalate for many who need to blame someone for the world's problems. Corporations and politicians have too many lawyers and ad agencies doing spin, it is much easier to blame people who cannot afford to protect their public image because they are working two or three jobs just to survive. My guess is that immigrants will do what they have always done, the dirty little jobs, and send their kids to school like the Irish, the Scots, Germans, Italians and others have done and those new immigrant kids will help lead our country to a new strength in new and miraculous ways -- one small step at a time.

Back in the land of Moses it was an ugly government program against the Jews that the Pharaoh adopted. The government ordered the death of all male babies born to Hebrew women. In the long run, what this would amount to was Jewish women having no Jewish males to mate with and eventually they would pair with Egyptian males and the Jewish culture would be brought slowly into a more Egyptian one.

Interestingly, while history often suggests that the Jews simply acquiesced during this period; we know from the Book of Exodus that two examples are given of rather significant resistance. The first example was on the part of the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. And the second is the birth family of Moses, specifically his sister and mother.

The Egyptian midwives quietly refused to kill the male babies born to Hebrew women. When called before Pharaoh, where they were being accused of treason, they lied and said, “The Hebrew women are so strong that they give birth before we get there.” Exodus says that these women did this act of civil disobedience because they “respected God.” Pharaoh's plan failed and the Israelites continued to grow in numbers.

The second story is yet another example of the reality that even seemingly benign passive resistance can have enormous consequences. All that happened was a mother put her baby into a waterproof basket and let it set sail down the river just when an Egyptian princess was known to take her daily bath. The Pharaoh had ordered all male Jewish babies to be drowned in the Nile and in this case one little baby was saved, drawn up out of the water, (themes of Christian baptism rites should be noted here) and raised not only by an Egyptian royal but secretly nursed by his biological mother.

Small consistent resistance against mighty empires can so often have dramatic consequences. The witness to that was its use by Gandhi in eventually overthrowing the might of the British Empire in India . We see even more clearly its use by the civil rights movement as the means to win strategic political struggles in the South and to raise the consciousness of all the United States regarding our nationwide racism.

I did not read this from Rosemary Rather Reuther, but she would be proud of us to note that in both of these Exodus stories, three women are remembered, women who felt lured by God, and as mothers and defenders of children sowed the seeds of failure in the empire's plan to oppress that country's immigrants. Seemingly small efforts can be make such a huge difference.

In our Gospel reading this morning from Matthew, we are still dealing with Matthew's theme, “Who is Jesus of Nazareth?” Matthew is part of a professional Jewish group called the Scribes. As professional groups are prone to do, Scribes loved to pick on the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It could be compared to ministers picking on lawyers, republicans picking on democrats, or conservative Christians picking on those liberal United Church of Christ people. So much of the polemic in the gospels sounds so anti-Jewish, but was in fact just intra-family squabbles, groups from within the same synagogue or church claiming their way was the right way and all others were faithless and evil. At the time that

Matthew is writing, he was both at the same time, fully Jewish and fully a follower of Jesus. There was no contradiction in terms to even be implied, and nor should we ever imply that there is a division between today's followers of Jesus and religious Judaism today. We remain in essence brothers and sisters closely bound.

Matthew is harping on the unwillingness of the Pharisees and Sadducees to perceive that God is moving clearly in Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise, Matthew, an equal opportunity critic, says that Jesus' very own disciples are people of “little faith.” He says that the disciples of Jesus are being too literal. When Jesus talks about beware of the bread of the Pharisees, Matthew says, it's not literal bread people, it is the lack of relevant spiritual food.

Matthew, like the Apostle Paul before him, is alive to the new in breaking of God in Jesus and wants traditional Jews and Jesus' very disciples to awaken to this fresh new movement of God that Matthew is acutely aware of in Jesus of Nazareth. It's big, it's powerful and it is coming into your town, your family, your soul today. So, the turn in Matthew's story this morning is the very emphatic question to the disciples then, and us this morning, “You, right now, who do you say that Jesus is?”

This story is told as taking place in Caesarea Philippi. This is the town where Herod the Great had built a temple to Augustus Caesar. Augustus was called “God” and “Savior” and his birth was said to have signaled the beginning of good news for the world. Where have we heard this before? Check Matthew's birth stories, the first gospel writer to use them.

Caesarea Philippi is where Peter, both in Mark's gospel and in Matthew's makes the first confession that Jesus is Savior, the Christ, the anointed one of God. It should never escape our awareness that Christianity has at its core a passive and at times very active resistance to anyone or anything being more important than our faith in God. It calls into question everything from the our simplest addictions to our most grievous devotion to institutions, corporations, politics or governments that pay us huge security and economic dividends but which doom so much of the world to lives of living hell and want, including our very souls.

Peter standing in on the mall of Israel's Washington, D. C., surrounded by the impressive symbols that marked the greatest empire in the world, that made one shudder in the midst of all the greatest spectacle and power; there Peter saw the light, there Peter chose, right then, in his now, where he and we must daily choose, “WHO DO YOU SAY THAT JESUS IS?”

It is not a question of whether you are for John McCain or Barack Obama. The buzzer sounds in the negative. Wrong choice. Bad choice. Folks, we need to all turn off our televisions before the political conventions even begin. 99% of us in this room are already politically informed to the maximum. Spend the next three months choosing God, choosing to allow the Spirit of the Living Christ to anoint your soul, my soul.

Each of us is gifted by the Spirit, Paul says, to be members of one body with great individual gifts which are called upon to serve the ways of God. Spend the next three months not campaigning for any candidate, stop sending internet political tripe and stand alongside the ones that God is calling us to serve. Use your gifts to inspire, to teach, to lure others toward God's rule being brought to reality, where the mountains of indifference to those locked in poverty, no health insurance, no jobs, racism, sexism are made plain and our wealth of knowledge and power is used for us to finally be a light unto the nations, where our power is based on our love, not on our political leveraging and military shock and awe.

If folks see the church in any one way, those who don't come to church, it is as a dead institution of the past. Paul suggests this problem is solvable. He does a play on words this morning, calling on us to be a living sacrifice. In Paul's day, sacrifices were dead things. You sacrificed picked fruit, dead birds and animals. His crowd would have laughed and Paul would have frowned and said, “I'm serious!” If Jesus is your chosen savior…, don't wait until you die to be sacrificed and claim your prize. Be a living sacrifice…; live your faith, bring redemption to the world, consecrating mind, soul, heart and strength to serving not only our daily needs, but to serve the Christ and be God's servant everywhere, all the time.

That is authentic worship and the hope that the world is waiting for from us, this old dead church, which can yet come alive.

Live for the poor, the needy, and committed to the powerless ones, the oppressed ones. God has moved powerfully in Jesus and will move powerfully in us if we but choose, right now, you, me, who do you say is Jesus of Nazareth? Small decisions can make all the difference in the world.

Amen

Main Text