What is YOUR work?
Link to Video: https://www.facebook.com/138797592802860/videos/228163841951918/
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
August 30, 2020—Proper 17A
Exodus 3:1-15; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28
“Get thee behind me, Satan!” Jesus cries (Mt 16:23). Because he recognizes that voice; knows the temptation that is being put in front of him once again. In Peter’s outburst, he hears the same tempter who came to him in the wilderness, offering him an easier way, a way without human pain or weakness. “God forbid it, my Lord!” Peter cries. You cannot possibly need to suffer and die!
But he does have to suffer and die. And those who wish to follow Jesus to resurrection and redemption must be willing to take a similar path. No wonder Peter cried God forbid it! And no wonder Moses, even as he stood before a burning bush, did everything he could to try to wriggle out of the task God called him to.
It’s perfectly understandable. In the face of powerful opposition and great loss, we all blanch a little. We wonder if we have what it takes. And we might well look around and wonder whether someone else could be the one to get the world out of whatever trouble it finds itself in.
I know a lot of people hit that kind of wall this last week, as hurricanes were laid on top of wildfires on top of the pandemic; as the shooting of protesters was laid on top of the shooting of Jacob Blake laid on top of months (and years and decades) of protest against racial violence and injustice. I pretty much went under, hit by this latest wave of helplessness and hopelessness.
I obviously can’t do anything about this. Why would anyone listen to me on all of this? Please, God, send someone else.
That’s me, doing my Moses impression! Moses too questions his abilities for the task. In response, God doesn’t argue the point. God simply promises: I will be with you. I, the God who was and is and always will be. Moses then goes on to ask why anyone would listen to him. God asks what he has in his hands. Since Moses is a shepherd, he’s carrying a staff. And God promises to use that staff to demonstrate God’s power: turning it into a snake that cures a disease, letting it strike the Nile to turn it to blood, the Red Sea to part it, and the rock to make water spring forth (Exod 4-9). God, as my friend John Ohmer points out in his sermon, will use whatever is in our hands: our passions, our talents, our very person will be what God uses for God’s purposes.[i]
I will be with you, I will help you, and I will be able to use whatever you bring with you. These are God’s answers to Moses’ first objections. But Moses still wavers, and begs God to send someone else, ANYONE else.
That’s when God gets angry. Clearly, He understands our doubts and insecurities, and will lend all the assistance we might need. We can be afraid. Heck, that just means we are paying attention to all the resistance we might face! What we can’t do is pass the buck onto someone else.
Moses has to go. Though God does sends Aaron to go alongside him. Moses still has his role to play, with his brother, and the God of his ancestors at his side.
A bush burned in the wilderness, calling Moses to participate in God’s action to rescue his people from their bondage and suffering. Many of us feel called to join a similar kind of work today for racial, social and economic liberation. But it’s scary, and huge, and more than a little confusing.
There is a price to be paid, and fears to be faced. But there is also a promise: that God will be with us in the work. And God will be able to use whatever gifts we already possess. So your part of healing this world from all the natural and unnatural disasters we face doesn’t have to be the same as that person’s over there.
Which turns me to the challenge from Romans today. Paul’s words might at first glance seem easier than confronting Pharaoh over his cruel oppression, or literally facing martyrdom. After all, Paul’s just talking about love. “Let love be genuine,” he writes. “Hate what is evil and hold fast to that which is good” (Rom 12:9).
But as he describes HOW we go about such a thing, it becomes clear that this love will ask a great deal of us. Right off the bat, it asks us to bless those who persecute us. Um, what? Yes, he thought we might not like that. So he then turns us outwards from our own feelings, encouraging us to meet people wherever they are: rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep.
Above all, he implores: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (12:21.) To do this, do not seek to strike back, or punish your enemies. Rather, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink” (12:20). This is what will undo the useless and destructive cycle of the us-them game.
I am reminded of a conversation I heard between Nadia Bolz-Weber and Megan Phelps-Roper,[ii] in which the former member of Westboro Baptist Church talked about what finally turned her away from what she and her family had been doing when they protested churches, schools, and even funerals with their message of God’s hatred and judgment on the country.
Her journey to redemption began, perhaps surprisingly, on Twitter. She had been there, tweeting their classic messages that “God hates fags” and “pray for more dead soldiers.” But somehow, not all the responses were “You’re a terrible person who will clearly burn in this hell you talk about so much!” Some of them were more … curious. Engaging her as a person, expressing empathy about how hard it must be to face such pained and bitter opposition. And that was what started to break through. People extended compassion to her, and she started returning compassion to them. And then she saw them expressing sorrow about terrible things happening in the world, and that started to cause disjunction with her family’s belief that such catastrophes were to be celebrated as a punishment from God.
Love extended to her. Love expressed for the world. These are what changed her. She and her family were doing such hurtful things, and it would seem that striking back at them would be the right thing to do, the protective thing to do. But Paul reminds us of the way of Jesus, and asks us to try a different tack. A potentially redemptive tack: to engage their humanity, to treat them as more than just their hateful actions or words. And perhaps, through that, to bring about healing and change.
This is the call I hear from the burning bush. Because those are the tools in my hand, when God asks me what I already have: I can listen to both sides, asking questions to get deeper into what underlies any issue. Sometimes, I admit, that’s incredibly challenging, and even painful. And there are those who misunderstand this work, and say it isn’t part of redemption, or justice, or salvation.
But we were warned that this might hurt. And when it gets bad, I remind myself to trust that God is indeed using what we each have. To trust that we all have a part in the healing of the world.
So … What’s your part? What’s in your hands? Listen for that call, and know that THIS is your work to do, and no one else can do it. But you will not have to work alone; the God of our ancestors, the God of all creation will go with you. May you know it to be so. Amen.
[i] John Ohmer, unpublished sermon for Proper 17A, August 30 2020.
[ii] “The Confessional” podcast, Season 1: Episode 1. “Megan Phelps-Roper, Former Member of Westboro Baptist Church” April 21, 2020.