Exod. 3:1-12; Heb. 11:23-31; John 14:6-14

Today’s passage from Exodus is one of my favorites.  Moses is at the Burning Bush.

The passage begins with Moses keeping the flock of his father-in-law.  It is easy to forget that Moses, too, was a shepherd.  It is code word for “nobody special”.  David comes from similarly meek beginnings.  In other words, we are invited to see ourselves in these characters.

And so here stands this ordinary guy, and God speaks to him.

Moses removes his sandals.  He hides his face.  God tells Moses about how he has observed the misery of his people in Egypt.  “So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

Moses smartly replies with shock.  “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  I have heard some preachers make fun of Moses for this: he is a whiner; he is weak; he is not committed.  To all that I say WHATEVER!  Imagine this: a shepherd being asked to accomplish the greatest military feat imaginable.  Taking people by force.  I don’t know about you, but my reaction would have been the same as Moses’.

God responds: “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”  It is quite a promise.  And it is one that it fulfilled, despite Moses being very, very old.

This is something we all need to hear.  I WILL BE WITH YOU, God says.  In our world of isolation, walls, a government that is shutdown, neighbors doors that are increasingly shut, borders that are increasingly shutdown, God breaks down walls of class and experience, opens doors, comes to meet with us, and says I WILL BE WITH YOU.

This is a message our lonely world needs to hear.  Perhaps it is a message you need to hear.

Connect with a church and discover the community of Christ in your midst.

-Matt

Gen. 28:10-22; Heb. 11:13-22; John 10:7-17

As with every day of the Christmas readings, today’s are filled with new beginnings, fresh starts, and new births.

Today the city of Bethel is born.  Jacob, in his vivid dream, awakes and declares “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!”  He rose and took the stone he had used as a pillow and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on it.  He was honoring this place, and named it Bethel, or Beth-El, which means the city of God.

What was cause for such an act?  It turns out Jacob’s first vision was a similar promise that had been made to his grandfather – a double promise of land and progeny.  “The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring.”  God also declares that “I am with you.”  This promise of presence is what makes it a Christmas reading as well, a time when God-with-us declares this same promise, but in the form of a tiny babe in a manger.

We follow a God who breaks all the rules.  This didn’t start with Jesus.  Back up to Jacob.  Remember the rules?  Land and blessing passes from eldest son to eldest son.  Jacob was not the eldest, and yet God chose to use him in profound ways.

God has never followed human constructs, but breaks down barriers.   God chooses differently, preferring to side with the outsider, the outcast, the lowly.

This extends to our Christmas narrative.  Did Mary and Joseph deserve to be the parents of the Messiah?  Were they royalty?  Shining moral examples?  No.  And Jesus’ twelve disciples…did they deserve being chosen?  No.  Do we?  No.  And yet Jesus the Messiah came to that time and place, and even to this time and place, and chooses us.  Are we worthy?  No.

But God did it anyway.

God comes in unexpected ways, and breaks down our rules and standards along the way, instead preferring the way of grace and goodwill to those in whom God’s glory may shine best.  Today it is Jacob.  Tomorrow it might be you.

-Matt

Gen. 12:1-7; Heb. 11:1-12; John 6:35-42, 48-51

We are now over half way through our Christmas celebration.  The mystery of the incarnation continues to unfold.  Today: “I am the bread of life!” Jesus explains in the context of a discussion with his followers about food, work, the ancestors.

When Jesus says, “I am the bread that has come down from heaven,” it is already in the context of manna in the wilderness.  He has invoked the name of Moses and spoken of manna.  He cryptically explains about himself that “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”

To those theologians who demand that we take ever word of the Bible literally, I always want to point out this passage.  Jesus spoke in metaphors and in parables.  No one actually believes that he was a walking loaf of bread.  He was a man who died on a cross.  And these words, spoken in the 6^th chapter of John, to the reader, evoke images of the Lord’s Supper.

These metaphors are meant to dance in our head and evoke ways in which he fed the world and how we can now as the Body of Christ.

It is a rich image.  To feed the world is one thing.  To be manna from heaven….

This is the gift that keeps on giving, even when it doesn’t feel like it.  It rains from heaven.  Abundantly.

So those disgusting communion wafers at communion that I grew up have actually come in handy!  They have evoked for me the manna in the wilderness.  The memory of them has connected me to our past, of wandering in the wilderness.  The people did not think they had plenty then, and maybe they didn’t.  But our meager loaves at communion are only foretastes of the true feast, a feast in heaven, and a feast for all ages.

When Jesus says he is “living bread” and that those who partake of him will never be hungry, and here I stand with this little wafer, again I am reminded that God is speaking to me in metaphor.  Certainly he doesn’t mean I won’t get physically hungry again.

No, it means something a heck of a lot deeper.  Often I say in my Eucharistic prayers that Jesus is the one “in whom ancient hungers are satisfied.”  To eat of the living bread means that spiritual hungers are satisfied.  It means that the darkness of hunger and want are but a shadow.  God is talking about the spiritual hungers that go well beyond that of “daily bread.”

The power of the Lord’s Supper is that of one that transcends even time.  The power of the cross and of the table bind us together in a way unseen and unheard before.  To those who feel unloved, there is love surrounding you at the table.  To those who feel they have no family, they find family at the table.  To those who harbor emotional pain, there is relief at the table.

This is the true power of the Incarnation!  This is the true power of the Christmas message.

This bread of heaven came down in this Christmas time to be one of us, and share in this life.  He came down only to be rejected, condemned, crucified, and on the third day resurrected.  He doesn’t just bind us to “feel-good” ideas, but to his death and resurrection, so that we can be free of this world and its anxiety.

May our ancient hungers be satisfied as we find a place at his table, this day, and always.

Lord let it be!

-Matt

Gen. 17:1-12a,15-16; Col. 2:6-12; John 16:23b-30

Did you know there was a time in the Presbyterian Church when New Year’s was a bigger celebration than Christmas?  Turning the page…putting the past behind us…confession…re-forming.  Starting to sound familiar?  Actually it took the form of New Year Watch Night Services.

Christmas, and the liturgical cycle as a whole, was seen as a “Roman Catholic thing” and Presbyterians, particularly our African-American congregations, who couldn’t imagine celebrating New Year’s Eve without their church family, and who brought a history of plenty of uplifting joyful music and long prayers, helped us blaze a tradition of Watch Night services.

The tradition goes back quite a ways, but the fuel for Presbyterian congregations in America probably got its start all the way back on December 31, 1862, when blacks were holding vigil for the Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect on Jan 1, 1863.  It was “Freedom’s Eve”.

As the tradition developed there were often candlelight Watch services, with candelabras with 12 candles, one for each month of the year, and Presbyterians would recount the major events in the life of the congregation for that month.  Baptisms, marriages, deaths, mission trips, confirmations – these were all fair game.

As the New Year came, with the bells tolling at midnight, the congregation would be gathered around the Lord’s Table, celebrating freedom and new life.  It was a time to renew their covenant with God.

Not surprisingly, our New Year readings also tie into covenant and the beginning of Hebraic identity.  Abram is given the instructions, details, and signs of the covenant: “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.”

I am struck by the PROMISE we see in scripture today.  Into our world full of broken promises, God speaks words that never erode.

Today promises are thrown around as more of a convenience to the one making them.  “This person will leave me alone if I just promise to do….”  Politicians come to mind.

God does not run away from the promises he has made.  No matter what we do, nothing can undo what was done at the cross on our behalf.

What I love about baptism is that you can’t undo it.  God has claimed us as his own, and that is final.  We live with a promise that will never be ripped away from us.

What a way to start the year off!  We not only look back to our roots in Abraham and Sarah, but to our roots in baptism, and to the beginning of God’s love affair with us, a love that will never die.

May your New Year be bright!   And may the Light of Christmas continue to surround and fill you.

-Matt