I love the Book of Deuteronomy. Have I
told you this before? In fact, it’s one of my favorite books in the Bible. The
narrative premise in Deuteronomy is fairly straightforward: we
are meant to imagine Moses and the Israelites on the brink of the Promised
Land. They have just spent forty years wandering around the Sinai
Peninsula (actually, to be more precise, thirty-nine years and eleven
months and three weeks!) Their journey began way back in the fourteenth chapter
of Exodus, with Pharaoh’s army in hot pursuit as they miraculously crossed
the Sea of Reeds. That journey from slavery toward freedom has
continued to unfold through the remaining chapters of Exodus and then into
Leviticus and Numbers, and then ultimately into Deuteronomy. Now they find
themselves at the end of that long journey, dreaming about owning their own
little plot of land flowing with milk and honey, and tending to their own
vineyards and fig trees and owning their own little homes and having their own
retirement accounts.
Before they leave Sinai behind them,
however, Moses gathers the people one last time to preach one last (and very
long) sermon. He reminds them that people who have nothing but the shirts on
their backs know they are utterly reliant on God and on each other. In the
desert, they learned to trust God for daily bread and water. The past four
decades have not been easy, but they learned that faith can only be lived
one day at a time. In the desert the most basic things (like bread and
water) are received as gifts. The most primal faith response to receiving such
gifts is gratitude.
There isn’t really any narrative
action in Deuteronomy; they don’t go anywhere. Unlike Exodus and Leviticus and
Numbers, they now finally stand on the brink of this Promised Land. It's in
sight! And the whole premise of Moses’ sermon (which is basically what the Book
of Deuteronomy is) hinges on this concern that Moses has about what affluence
will do to this people: if they are not careful, affluence will lead to
amnesia. They will forget to worship the Lord their God.
Moses is worried that
faithfulness to God’s covenant will actually be harder in a
land flowing with milk and honey than it was in the desert. He is
worried that an attitude of gratitude will give way to greed and fear, as
people become more focused on protecting what they perceive to be their
own rather than on sharing with those in need. They will start to
think more about “me” and less about “us” and when that happens the
neighborhood will be in serious jeopardy.
You can pick up the Book of
Deuteronomy and pretty much pick any random chapter and that is basically the
message you will find there: love of God and love of neighbor are at
home in the wilderness. Difficult times make community not only possible, but
necessary. And conversely, living on easy street can make you cold hearted.
So there is a paradox here: they stand
on the verge of an answered prayer, about to enter a land of hopes and dreams.
They will never have to eat manna again, because there will be bakeries on
every corner with warm crusty breads and soft pitas. That is a very appealing
thought to people sick and tired of manna. But Moses sees that there is a
shadow side to prosperity. His understanding of human nature is that it won’t
take very long before the bread will be in the hands of a few and the strong
will have more than their fair share of the good bread—more than they can even
eat before it goes stale and goes to the birds. Meanwhile the more vulnerable
members of the community ("the widows and the orphans") will be
hungry. Moses is worried that words like self-reliant, self-made, self-centered
will start to dominate the conversation and when that happens, the neighborhood
will be in trouble.
Moses is not saying that faith
is impossible in the Promised Land. He’s simply saying that
one shouldn’t be deceived into thinking it will be easy or automatic. I see
Moses as a pragmatist, not a pessimist, who simply wants to be as clear and
honest as possible about the challenges that lie ahead. The temptation is to
think that the hard days are behind them because survival in the wilderness was
so difficult. But what Moses is saying is that all of our stuff can actually
get in the way of loving God and neighbor. It can make one forgetful about the
fact that we need God and we need our neighbors. The key to being
faithful in the Promised Land will be memory. It is a word that
comes up again and again throughout Moses’ sermon: remember that you
are only ever one generation removed from being slaves in a foreign land.
Freedom, as it is understood in the
Book of Deuteronomy, is therefore about something much greater than gaining
one’s own liberty or independence. If you
flee Egypt and “make it” in the Promised Land, but then promptly turn
around and enslave the weakest members of this new society, then all you’ve
done is swapped roles from oppressed to oppressor. So that is what
Deuteronomy is all about, wrestling with these rather large questions about
faith and the economy and politics and the human psyche. And that is
what today’s reading from the tenth chapter of Deuteronomy is about as well.
Theologically, the God of Deuteronomy is mighty and awesome. But because God is
also good, God isn’t the least bit interested in accumulating more power. God
isn’t interested in bribes. God isn’t interested in helping the rich get
richer. Rather, God considers it a good day when slaves are liberated and the
hungry are fed and the poor are treated with dignity and respect. God “executes
justice for the widow and orphan.”
And God loves the stranger. God
loves the stranger because God isn’t afraid of what is other—of what is
different—of hearing different languages or trying different foods. Since you
were yourselves strangers in Egypt not that long ago, Moses argues
(on God’s behalf), it would make a mockery of the Exodus if you now turn around
and treat the strangers in your midst the way you were treated in
Pharaoh’s Egypt. That may be the way the world works. But it’s not the way
God’s plan works. It's not how God's people are to behave.
I realize this is all pretty serious
stuff for the lead in to the Fourth of July here in a town where the Fourth of
July is a pretty big deal. But the readings
the lectionary gives us for Independence Day invite us to reflect on this
ancient Torah text in the context of our own Fourth of July celebrations. So
let me ask you this: what kind of nation are we becoming? I’ll
leave that as a rhetorical question right now. But I don’t think it’s a
partisan question, nor is it out of bounds for a preacher. I think it’s fair to
say that we are in trouble and right now we are a long way from great. God is
not a Democrat or a Republican nor even an Independent. But can we Democrats
and Republicans and Independents all agree that we are living in precarious
times, difficult days that test the premise of e pluribus unum – out of
the many, one. And if that’s the case then what is the message we, St.
Michael’s, have for this community of Bristol and the surrounding towns about
what faith looks like in such dangerous times?
We have work to do. As Christians, do
we dare to ask whether it is possible for such times to shape and form a more
compassionate people by reminding us who our neighbors are? We might step back
and reflect on what an immigration policy might look like in a nation that
loves the stranger as God does, rather than fearing them. We might step back
and wonder what our tax code would look like if it reflected a genuine concern
for widows and orphans? We can argue about the details, to be sure. We will
have political differences. But the core values come to us from Jesus, not our
political parties and not even from the founding fathers.
There is grace in simply asking such
questions and maybe it is what we as Christians are intended to contribute to
the marketplace of ideas right now. We do well to remember together that true
freedom does not come easily and is never finished. Perhaps we can even
help to re-frame economic precariousness and see it not as something that
instills more fear and selfishness, but as a gift that opens us up to one
another in new ways. If we are a people who are at least asking such questions,
we stand a far better chance of discovering a healthier form of patriotism
rather than falling into the trap of xenophobic nationalism. After all, there
is no place in the Bible that says “God bless America!” What it does say is
that God so loved the world.
I am fully aware of my own privilege
and the knowledge that most days I live in the Promised Land rather than in the
Sinai Desert. I am far more familiar with feeling secure and self-reliant and
independent. Although I have had my own share of precariousness over the years,
I’m deeply aware that it’s not nearly as much as many experience. And let me be
clear: I don’t wake up in the morning asking God for more precariousness in my
life. I enjoy stability and predictability and living in a nice home.
Yet it does seem to me that those
times of precariousness (which even the most privileged among us do face from
time to time) are a gift when it comes to our faith. Those times when we find
ourselves in the wilderness are also the times when we stand the best chance of
experiencing God’s healing presence and the Spirit’s transformative
power. Amazing grace that saved a wretch like me…
It is in the wilderness times that we discover (and re-discover) that God is
present. It is there that we learn to live life one day at a time and to see
all of life as sheer gift. It is in our need that we are able both to give and
to receive, and that changes our worldview. It opens us up to become a people
with more grateful and generous hearts. When that happens to us, our
spirituality can no longer be disconnected from the decisions and choices we
make with our lives. How can we learn and re-learn to share this wisdom in the
neighborhood not so much by what we say but as to how we live? How do we
remember, daily, that it’s all gift and gift and gift and to those to whom much
is given, much is expected?
Summertime gives us a chance to slow
down and step back. Whether we are out sailing or camping or walking along the
beach or hiking up a mountain, it can put us in a place somewhere between the
wilderness and the Promised Land, in a place where we can remember that a
well-lived life is one that is lived simply, so that others may simply live. We
remember what matters (and what doesn’t) and by God's grace we give thanks to
the One who is with us through it all. The One who keeps calling on us to
remember the whole of Torah in four words: Love God. Love Neighbor.
May we find ourselves, this weekend and always, ready to help this nation to “mend every flaw” until there is justice for all.
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