Getting Out of Egypt

Exodus 14:19-31
24^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 11, 2011
William G. Carter

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued, and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. At the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and cloud looked down upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic. He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the LORD is fighting for them against Egypt.”

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the LORD tossed the Egyptians into the sea. The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the Egyptians; and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses.

Of all the texts of scripture! On September 11, a day when we remember three thousand innocent deaths, we hear about an entire army wiped out by God. They were doing what they were commanded, chasing after run-away slaves. Moses did what God commanded, and a number of Egyptian soldiers known only to God were killed. I’m not sure this text fits for today.

Two days after the flood waters returned to northeastern Pennsylvania, I’m not sure the text fits for us. We hear of deep waters parted by the power of God; but God didn’t part the waters of the Susquehanna. I spent some time yesterday surveying the flood damage. Moses was not there. There was no dry land for anybody to walk upon.

So what will we do with this famous Bible story? I think we need to decide up front it has nothing to do with September 11. It has no relation whatsoever to the deep waters of Pennsylvania’s floods. And if we can decide it has nothing to do with those two events, we can listen for what it might say to those two events.

I mean, this is one of the big moments of scripture. The young nation of Israel was getting out of hell. For generations, they were enslaved in a foreign land. Great-grandfather Joseph had done well in Egypt, fending off a life-threatening famine. He had earned the trust of the Pharoah of his day and settled things with his brothers. When Joseph died, his family placed him in an Egyptian coffin and laid him to rest, with the proviso that, should they ever get to the Promised Land, they would take his bones with them.

But then you remember what happened: there came a new Pharoah who did know Joseph. Joseph’s family had multiplied, never quite assimilated. Pharoah raised suspicions of them, inciting fear, claiming they were a threat, and ultimately enslaving them. The Israelite family became a major provider of discount labor. Even then, Pharoah was threatened. “Throw their newborn boys into the river,” he decreed.

One Jewish mother refused and hid her baby in a basket. The princess found him, claimed him, and raised him as a royal child. He was named “Mosheh,” or Moses, meaning, “We took him out of the water.” You know this story – of how as a royal adult, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a slave. Then, on the run, he settled among shepherds. All the while, God was listening to the Israelite slaves, taking note of their affliction.

One day, he stumbled upon a bush burning but not consumed. It was a strange sight. From the bush came a Voice. The Voice called him by name, “Moses, Moses!” And God said, “I am weary of how my people suffer. I’m going to bring them out of their oppression. I’m going to set them free. And here’s how I am going to do it, Moses: I am sending you. Tell old Pharoah to let my people go.”

You know this story. So fast-forward eleven chapters, ten plagues, and a handful of Moses’ excuses. There is this moment, this event, after the tenth and final plague, when Pharoah said, “Moses, take your flock and your herd, and be gone.” The people of Israel packed up and left, pausing only long enough to write down the Passover liturgy in chapters twelve and thirteen.

That brings us to chapter fourteen, the text for today. It’s a big moment. The storyteller says God was sneaky. God didn’t take the people in a straight line, up the coast. No, God made the people travel in a “roundabout way” (13:18). God thought, “If these people face a war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt,” and indeed, they were ready for war. But God wanted nothing of a war.

What God wanted – and this is very important to the story – God wanted people to know who he is. God wanted everybody to know. Wanted the Egyptians to know! Oh, God’s people would be released; but there would also be a revelation.

Did you notice that in the hearing of the text? God is giving all the orders. God is doing all the action. God is protecting his own people from an even worse fate. God is refusing to let the people return to Egypt, and fall back into what was both comfortable and oppressive. God is the One who sends the wind. God is the One who parts the waters. God is the One who refuses to let his people be destroyed, and thus destroys the destroyers.

With that, here’s the three-fold punch line at the end of the story: (1) the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, (2) Israel saw the great work that the Lord did, (3) the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord. That is, it changed them.

Of all the things we can take away from that story, it’s a story all about God. No matter what else is going on down here on the ground, God is really the One who is working in the midst of it all. This is one of those moments when Israel remembers what kind of God it is that they actually have. They have a God who saves them. A God who rescues them. A God who changes people in the midst of horrible, terrifying moments; and when the rough waters settle down, they are different than they used to be.

Here’s one of the proofs that I have that God exists: a lot of bad things could have gone a lot worse that they actually did. The levee might have broken in Kingston. The fourth plane might have hit the Capitol. There are these unruly moments in our lives, these enormous events, when nature surges out of control or people do their absolute worst to one another. We know that.

I still remember how immobilized I was on 9-11. The kids had gone on off the school bus, so I called the senior center to check on some details for a program I was scheduled to do on that sunny Tuesday. The lady on the other end of the phone was hysterical. “Don’t come,” she said, “because that plane hit the building,” and she hung up. I turned on CNN to see what she was talking about. It was 9:02 a.m. and the commentators were yammering on. A minute later, I watched as Flight 175 hit the second tower of the World Trade Center. In that instant, we knew that something really terrible was going on.

You have your memories of that day, as I have mine. I remember how this church was full on the Sunday following, all of us praying the Psalms and hoping in God. A week after that, attendance was back to normal. I don’t know where they went. Maybe they were disappointed that God refused to serve as their good luck charm. Maybe they were too shattered, too shocked, to continue on. I don’t know.

But I saw how we changed. I remember how we decided as a church that we would pray for everybody, and not merely whoever we knew. I remember with pride how church people here decided that they would not be swept up into xenophobic hatred. “Let’s help to sponsor a refugee family,” we said. When we discovered it would be an innocent family from a suspicious country, we did what we could to make them welcome.

I’m proud of how we changed in response to that horrible moment. We welcomed the love of God and we prayed for its increase. We asked for the justice of God, and we began to understand that human justice is not always the same thing as God’s justice. You see, God’s justice always wants to make things right. Israel was enslaved and beaten down in Egypt, and God said, “That will not stand.” So with a mighty hand and outstretched hand, God brought his own people out of their affliction.

That’s what Israel remembers about getting out of Egypt. It was all God’s doing. What they had to do was whatever God wanted them to do. God said, “Pack up,” and they did. God said, “Eat your bread in a hurry,” and they did. God said, “Follow me,” and that’s what the people of God still do. Liberation must be lived out day by day.

I walked in a mud-sodden church sanctuary yesterday. The First United Presbyterian Church of West Pittston is pumping out ten feet of water from the basement. They had four feet or so of mud in the sanctuary. My friend Jim Thyren is the pastor there. If all I had said to him was, “I will pray for you,” I wouldn’t be much of a friend. He pointed me to the dumpster pile, and I started picking up waterlogged pew cushions, some muddy Bibles, a few hymnals that have lost their voice.

It is a deeply horrible moment for that congregation, and it could have been a lot worse. These floods, these 9-11 moments, these passages out of Egypt have the power to disrupt our lives for a very long time. But they also reveal who we are and what we really do believe. If they lead us to believe the world is going down the sewer, then let’s confess we have given up on God and be done with it.

What I believe is that God is right here, in the midst of every terrifying event, calling on us to follow his ways, to love one another, to build trust with one another, to work for one another’s benefit, and thus to glorify God’s holy name.

One of the preachers that I most respect is a Methodist bishop in Alabama. He was quoted in last week’s issue of Christianity Today, when the editors asked how September 11 has affected us. He said,

September 11 has changed me. I'm going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what's wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God's own Son.[1]

He’s right about that. God sent his own Son to the human race, and we killed him. Yet once again, that supremely horrible moment could have gone much, much worse. When we killed his son, God did not wipe us out once and for all. Rather, God turned that moment on its head to forgive us, to set us free. That, friends, is our saving. That is our hope. It pushes us to go back to Jesus, to give him a second look, to let his life infuse our lives.

The way of God is not afflict one another. The way of God is not to allow one person to go hungry. The way of God is not to remain isolated on our high mountain when there are people in the valleys without clean water. The way of God is not to chase away those whose diseases separate them from us. The way of God is to welcome the changes that God would effect to make us more like Jesus his Son.

The way of God is to follow God out of Egypt, to welcome God’s freedom from a world run on our own terms. What we need is a world full of mercy, a kingdom where forgiveness is proclaimed from the throne. This is the one mandatory condition for us to treat one another with justice: God’s justice is always drenched and saturated with God’s mercy.

That is the power that saves us, the power that sets us free to live as God’s children. It is power that is available to us for transforming the world . . . unless we are still stuck in Egypt.

(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved

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[1] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/september/howleaderschanged.html?start=5

As Mountains Break into Song

Isaiah 49:8-13

Jazz Communion
September 4, 2011

Here are words from an ancient poem, from the prophet Isaiah:


Thus says the LORD: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.

This past Friday night, I took a carload of teenagers to hear Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. If you think our jazz is adventurous, you should hear the Flecktones. They are unbelievable, perhaps one of the greatest groups who improvise and make living music. It’s like jazz and bluegrass and rock and folk, all bubbling in the same sauce.

The bass player plays multiple chords up and down his instrument with surreal velocity. The drummer comes dressed like a pirate and creates weird percussive sounds from an electronic devices of his own making. Howard Levy is now part of the group, a fleet-fingered pianist who is also a virtuoso on five different harmonicas. Then there’s the leader, Dr. Bela Fleck. He was named after Bela Bartok, and like Bartok, he creates folk melodies with angular rhythms and odd harmonies, crossing all kinds of musical boundaries. Bela Fleck does that on the banjo.

I think it was the fourth or fifth time that I’ve heard the band. It’s interesting to look around a packed auditorium to see the effect that a 2 ½ hour concert has on the people present. It was a mixed house, young and old, a few in business suits and ties, others in tie-dyed t-shirts. The music cut across all boundaries. As they began to play, some tunes lasting seventeen or eighteen minutes, the hall became more and more animated. The air was energized.

It wasn’t what everybody wanted. At halftime, about ten people in the row in front of us trickled out and did not return. They looked exhausted. Perhaps they preferred their music slower, and they had already heard an evening’s worth of notes. But for the vast majority of us who endured the marathon, we were enriched, empowered, by music.

Now, that’s the kind of experience that I hope a jazz worship service can provide for you. Not merely a curiosity or even a special event, but a moment that makes our lives a little bit better. We can revisit an old hymn, but bring to it the highest level of creativity that the band can muster. Sure, the way the music first came to us is fine as it is. But perhaps, this time, we can bring it alive in some fresh way. Jazz people are like kids with a chemistry set, cooking up a bubbling stew of harmony and melody in a cauldron of rhythm. We can do something to make this worship service special. That’s our hope, at least.

It’s the kind of hope that animates the prophet Isaiah. In his ancient poem, he dreams of life-brought-alive. Prisoners in dark corners are carried into the light. Those held captive by the ways of the world are released into freedom. God comes in some unexpected way. Life is opened up somehow. It’s something of a homecoming. These people who were prisoners are brought together and fed to satisfaction. Their thirst is quenched. Their travel is protected. And everybody is caught up in a song.

This is Isaiah’s dream. Life is brought to life. Nobody expected it, and it happened.

Last Friday night, I looked around the auditorium at Binghamton University. At that moment, the rhythm was contagious and every foot tapped as one. Everybody there arrived with some kind of burden, but in the rush of that syncopated symphony, those burdens were laid down. To the right, the estranged husband was suddenly smiling. Over there, the woman whose hair was singed by chemotherapy was shaking her shoulders. Next to me were two Abington Heights saxophonists, their eyes dazzled, their mouths agape, overwhelmed by a fountain of jazzy notes that they did not think possible.

The effect of music, that kind of music, this kind of music, is the closest experience that I have had to the power of the Holy Spirit. No one can see the notes, but the wind is what changes you. And you feel alive, totally alive. God is wherever people are totally alive.

I have a friend named Janna. She’s a United Methodist preacher, and a graduate of the school of sacred music at Yale University. She was researching the music of Duke Ellington, particularly the religious music that he wrote and performed in the last ten years of his life. Janna set up an interview with Loren Schoenberg, noted saxophonist and music critic. He also has a reputation for being outspoken. As she mentioned Ellington’s sacred music, she mentioned the name of God.

Schoenberg responded, “God? Well, I don’t know about God. But I believe in Louis Armstrong.”

Then he said, “All I can say is that Louis Armstrong’s music offers me the most immediate and fulfilling spiritual nourishment that I have ever found. There is something in the sound of his trumpet, something in the sound of his voice, that reflects an optimism in the essence of life. It is tragic, it is comic, and it swings despite all the odds. It helps you to put your own problems in perspective.”[1]

Surely this is the power to which Isaiah testifies. It’s the power that I saw unleashed on Friday night by the Flecktones. And it’s the power that I have discovered in the making of jazz for the church.

I remember the first time we did this. Our saintly organist could not find a substitute for Labor Day weekend. Maud Thomas had non-refundable tickets to a national Welsh hymn festival in Kansas City. She looked at me and said, “Would you play the hymns?” No problem, I replied. It’s a holiday weekend and nobody’s going to be here. Then she said, “Are you going to jazz them up?” Truthfully, that had never occurred to me. But that was part of Maud’s persona. If you had some ability, she would not let you hide it under a basket. Would I jazz it up? Oh, why not? Last hurrah of the summer, a quiet Sunday on the schedule, no big deal – and then all of you showed up! How many of you were at that first service twenty years ago? And you’re still here. Who knew?

Who knew that, within a few weeks of doing this for the first time, I would encounter again my college music professor, Al Hamme? Who knew he would introduce me to a stable of amazing musicians who have become like my brothers? Who knew it would lead to the formation of a band, a long list of concerts, and a stack of recordings that nobody buys but everybody enjoys? Who knew we would receive a grant to create jazz hymnal, that Dave Brubeck would become a good friend, or that drummer Marko Marcinko would show up to play here every Christmas Eve?

It continues to be an amazing journey. I may be the only Presbyterian minister who takes vacation time to go on tour with a jazz band. Who knew this band would travel all the way to Corvallis, Oregon to play for six people? Or that we would play the main stage at the Chautauqua Institution to four thousand? Or that Warren Cooper would blow out the speakers at a church in Richmond, Virginia – and afterwards the people of the congregation would come up to thank us? We have a lot of stories, many of them still in the making. Of all the many things that give me joy, I never enjoy life more as when people like these musicians make creative music for people like you – and the whole swinging mess is offered up to God.

We call it a joyful noise. That’s what all of us are created to create – a joyful noise. The jazz here is merely one expression of God’s great symphony. We can believe in God, and we can believe in Louis Armstrong, because we are alive. Thoroughly, completely, energetically alive. And God is wherever people are totally alive.

Tony Campolo is a great preacher from Philadelphia, one of the most alive people that a lot of us have ever known. He tells about going to speak every year at the Creation Festival, something of a Christian Woodstock with pure air. The Creation Festival convenes each summer in central Pennsylvania. Tony preached on the last night of the festival, a Saturday, and then was scheduled to preach the very next morning at a nearby Lutheran church.

It was a safe bet that the people at the festival didn’t go to that church, or that the people in that church would never dream of going to the festival. He even thought about preaching the same sermon. What never occurred to him is that the word spread at the festival that he was preaching the next day right down the road. The normal crowd of two hundred or so people swelled to about twelve hundred. They were crammed into every nook of that church, and due to the limited showering facilities at the festival, they were noticed by the regulars.

The Lutheran pastor apologized to Tony. “I don’t know where these people came from,” he said. Tony didn’t tell him. He especially didn’t tell him that most were of a charismatic bent, many from Assembly of God churches.

The service began. The organist played quietly. The pastor came out in his robes. The candles were lit with a hush. Then the pastor said, in a droning voice, “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Let us come into his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.”

A young man in the balcony raised his arms and shouted at the top of his lungs, “All right!” And all the young people present began to clap and cheer.

The minister was amazed, Tony said. He was stunned. The last thing in the world he expected when he called upon the congregation to make a joyful noise to the Lord was that anybody would.[2]

But that’s what we do. That’s what we are expected to do. With whatever joyful noise we can muster, we announce to the world that we do not belong to the powers of destruction and death. We belong to the God of life, to the God who gives new life.

God is wherever people are completely alive.

You can tell it by the music they make.

(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved

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[1] Thanks to Janna Steed for the story.

[2] Tony Campolo, Stories That Feed Your Soul (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2010) 66-67

Poor Folk Won’t Always Be Forgotten

Isaiah 10:1-4 / James 5:1-6 / Psalm 10

August 28, 2011

Series: Can You Believe That’s in the Bible?

William G. Carter

The sermon series this summer has asked, “Can You Believe That’s in the Bible?” I have enjoyed working on it and conclude today. We have traveled through a lot of foreign territory and it is good to have companions such as you.

The final text is the conclusion of a poem from the prophet Isaiah. In four stanzas, Isaiah denounces the people who make God angry. These include people who are arrogant, politicians and preachers who lie, and those who devour their neighbors. And then this part of the poem is spoken:

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes,

to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right,

that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!

What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away?

To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth,

so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain?

For all this (God’s) anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still.

Like a lot of people younger than me, I get a share of my evening news from Jon Stewart. For those who don’t stay up so late, Stewart puts together a summary of hard-to-believe headlines each weeknight. Then he proceeds to make fun of them. It helps me gain some perspective on the strangeness of the days.

Just over a week ago, the billionaire investor Warren Buffett made the news. He wrote a New York Times article to suggest that wealthy people like him ought to pay more taxes. Why, he declared, his secretary pays a higher tax rate than him!

So I tuned in to see what Jon Stewart would do with that. It turns out he didn’t do much at all. What he did, however, was to report all the negative responses to Mr. Buffett’s suggestion. He showed news clip after news clip from one particular television channel. One pundit after another carried on a harangue – not against Mr. Buffett, but against the poor.

To hear them speak, the real problem in America was not that five percent of the population has 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The real problem is all those poor people with all their “entitlements,” paying little or no tax, and getting a free ride. One man came on camera, absolutely scandalized. He bellowed, “Did you know that 99.6 percent of the poor in America have refrigerators?!?” He was absolutely outraged – those people have refrigerators!

That was his question. Well, here’s the question that Isaiah would ask: why would anybody hate the poor.

I remember Fred Craddock, the great preacher, speak about serving his first congregation in rural Tennessee. He grew up on an Appalachian farm in the Depression and his family lost the farm. His mother went to work for the Brown Shoe Company, and her job was to put the Buster Brown sticker on the soles of a pair of shoes. God called him into the ministry. He studied and struggled, then got ordained to preach.

He was serving out in the hills somewhere, and the congregation was really poor. Maybe some of them had small pension from the railroad. They would go into town and buy trinkets and flower seeds. He would stand up in the pulpit and fuss at them, and say, “Why are you buying trinkets and flower seed? You should be spending your money beans, potatoes, and pork.” They would glower at him, then look down.

Finally one of the older ladies pulled him aside, tired of his tirades. She said, “Craddock, even the poor have a right to their pretties.”[1] They aren’t animals. They are children of God. That is why they are worthy of respect, why they are worthy of self-respect.

Biblically speaking, who are the poor? They are the people in need. That’s the definition. Those who are most vulnerable. Those who do not have the means to make a lot of life choices. Those who are considered most disposable. Jesus says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”[2] He turned the whole economic system on its head. Read the sixth chapter of Luke sometime. He says, “Woe to you who are rich . . . blessed are you who are poor.”

I think one reason why he speaks up for them is because nobody else speaks up for them. Did you ever stop and realize how many people we take for granted? The lady without a pension who works the drive-through window? The young man who mows your yard because his father had to decide between sending the kid to college or having a clot removed from his lung? Jesus blesses those whom the rest of the world overlooks. He is in a venerable tradition of Israel’s prophets.

As we heard in the poem from Isaiah, God pays attention to those otherwise ignored. The scripture often characterized them as “the widow and the orphan.” That’s because widows and orphans had no means of income in that society. They were totally dependant on the mercy of others. They were specific representatives of more generalized categories like “the poor” and “needy.” However characterized, these were people entrapped by an endless cycle of poverty, with no way up and no way out.

The scandal in Isaiah’s day was a glaring selfishness among those who were already well-to-do. Not only did they have a lot of money, they made the policies, they fixed the rules, and somehow the whole system worked to their advantage. Isaiah named this for what it was: “iniquitous decrees” and “oppressive statutes.” The rich were getting richer at the expense of the poor. The prophet said, “That’s not justice. It’s a form of robbery!” And he declared this makes God angry.

Now, to hear a lot of people in our own time talk, they don’t particularly care what God thinks. Or they assume that God agrees with them. Yet the God of the Bible is very consistent on this point. Yahweh, the God of Israel, pays special attention to those who are put down. Yahweh notices those who are deprived and downtrodden

Did you keep up with the psalm for today, Psalm 10? It describes those who live by greed: how they ignore the Lord, how they lurk in the bushes waiting to plunder others, how they fill their mouths with cursing and oppression, how they pounce to seize the poor.

I recall some of the clips and quotes that I saw reported by Jon Stewart. Rich people referred to the poor as “the mooching class.” They proclaimed a war between “the makers and the takers.” One blond beauty shouted, “Welfare will make generations of utterly irresponsible animals.” How pathetic, to spew hatred on those who have so little!

The Psalmist says, “But Lord, you do see! The helpless commit themselves to you; you have been the helper of the orphan.” Then the Psalmist prays, “Lord, break the arm of the wicked and the evildoers!” (Psalm 10:15). That’s so they won’t be able to grab and plunder anything else.

The Bible is remarkable consistent about this. There are harsh words given repeatedly to the greedy. In a country like ours, the richest in the world, the gap between the wealthy and poor is growing exponentially. The lower 50 percent of Americans make 2.5% of our nation’s wealth. In 2009 alone, the pay of America’s highest earners quintupled,[3] while more Americans found themselves on the food stamps program than ever before. And those of us on the food stamps program are earning exponentially more than the beggars of Kolkata or the prostitutes in Soweto.

What scripture warns is that this won’t stand. God won’t have it. God cares infinitely about every one of his children; and those who plunder and demean their neighbors could have their arms broken.

Can you believe this is in the Bible? I can. It’s there on the third page of our Bible, all the way back to the story of God’s first grandchildren. God made Adam and Eve, and then Adam and Eve made two sons named Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, and God said, “What did you do with your brother Abel?”

Remember how Cain responded? He asked, “How should I know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)

The question still dangles in the air. Are we to keep our brothers and our sisters? Well, if it’s keeping against discarding, I think the answer is “yes.”

Maybe you, like me, have been shaped by family stories. My grandmother tells what it was like to give birth to my mother during the Great Depression. Grandpa was on the road as a salesman, money was very tight. It has shaped a certain kind of caution. When I call her on my cell phone with the unlimited minutes plan, she still says to me, “You had better hang up soon, because this is costing you an arm and a leg.”

At the same time, she says everybody looked out for everybody else. Food was shared. Nothing was wasted. As many people as possible were cared for.

My mother tells me what it was like to be poor. She gave birth to me when my father was in engineering college on the G.I. Bill. Oh, the stories: they lived in a trailer park, they ate rice and beans. It was all they could afford. I used to hear the stories and say, “Sure, right.”

Years ago, I was speaking at a conference about five miles from the town in northern Indiana where I was born. I had never been back there. On a free afternoon, I got in the rental car and drove over there. I saw the factory where Mom worked until my birth. I drove by the oil tanks where Dad carried a part-time job while studying. Then I found the trailer park, just three blocks from the hospital where I was born. It was stunning.

Then I went over the hospital and walked in. I went upstairs and asked where the birthing rooms were; there were two birthing rooms, currently unoccupied. Could I step into each one of them, just to be sure? It was a profound, speechless moment. I went back to where I came from. The stories were all true. I decided that I wasn’t superior to anybody else; I may have been raised in privilege, but I was born in poverty. In fact, I was so poor, I was born without any clothes on.

How dare anybody think they are better than anybody else? The truth is, we are more alike than different. None of us are superior to anybody else. All of us were born without any clothes on, and all of us will depart this world some day and leave our clothing behind. That’s the truth. You know it’s the truth.

So it matters how we treat one another. How we regard one another. How we participate in one another’s lives. This is why mission trips are so important, especially in shaping what it means to be Christian people. We go beyond these church doors to do mission, not simply because it’s a way to do nice things for people in need, but because it removes every wall of isolation. We learn again to keep one another.

I listened carefully to my sixteen-year-old daughter after she went with our church’s youth to Mahanoy City, a small town about seventy minutes south of here. I asked, “What were the most important moments, Meg?” She said, “I got to know two old men who were in World War 2. We wire-brushed their iron railing to prep it for painting. They told us about the war, which was the biggest achievement in their lives.”

What else happened, Meg? She said, “We played with some children in the park. One of them wrapped her arms around my waist and wouldn’t let go. I asked if I could take her to the dollar store, and she said she didn’t have enough money. So I asked if I could get something for her and it made her day.”

She said, “You know, I didn’t miss my cell phone. I really enjoyed the trip. I could see living there some day, in a place like that. Maybe I could help them somehow.”

I prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for helping her. Thank you for shortening her arms and opening her heart. Make it stick as long as possible.”

Isn’t that what we need? Especially in a town like this.

You know, we can squabble all we want about politics, about who gets the tax breaks and who makes the money. We can grumble about the greedy, how they hoard their billions rather than create real jobs that pay a living wage. We can complain about the poor, how they buy refrigerators and cell phones and flat screen TVs and flower seeds. But when the dust of discontent settles, life is all about loving God and loving the neighbors that God gives us. The real neighbors, not the cardboard imitations.

Say what we want, but that’s the issue. That is almost always the issue. Either we do the hard work of being the human family, working for the mutual flourishing of all the people that God has made, or we turn in upon ourselves – which is really the definition of sin.

Isaiah decrees the wrath of God on the greedy, whoever they are. As someone notes, this kind of wrath is an expression of God’s love. It’s an expression of God’s deep concern for God’s people, all God’s people.[4] What God wants from us is to take care of one another, with special concern for those most vulnerable and at greatest risk. God wills the well-faring, the well-fare, of the largest possible group of people. That would be heaven on earth.

God’s kingdom comes in the mystery of caring for those who are most in need. Let me close with some wisdom from Jean Vanier, a Canadian Christian who spent his adult life creating communities of the developmentally disabled:

Poor people have a mysterious power: in their weakness they are able to open hardened hearts and reveal the sources of living water within them. It is the tiny hand of the fearless child which can slip through the bars of the prison of egoism. That is the one who can open the lock and set free. And God hides himself in the child. The poor teach us how to live the Gospel. That is why they are the treasures of the Church.[5]

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[1] Fred B. Craddock, Craddock Stories (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001) 125.

[2] Luke 6:20

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/america-s-top-earners-saw-pay-quintuple-last-year-to-average-519-million.html

[4] Bernhard W. Anderson, The Eighth Century Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978) 82.

[5] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, Revised Edition, pg. 96