Witness of Moses Part II
September 16, 2007
Acts 7: 30-43
Today we return to the book of Acts after a two week sojourn. We return to Stephen’s sermon. Stephen who was chosen to help lead in the wake of crisis in the community. Because of his leadership and teaching the authorities have picked him up and he is on trial for his life. We find ourselves mid sermon today. And he uses an old technique. The one Jesus did the first time he taught in the temple, Stephen is using the very Scripture that we use to point out a community that once was idolatrous and rebellious can be so again. Stephen did this through jabbing them with the story of Moses. He uses Moses because they accuse him of breaking the laws of Moses. Moses who was so called by God through the burning bush and sent to the Israelites that they might be freed at last. And, the first minute he turns away they make another god and turn their hearts back to Egypt.
Stephen was a man of faith. He respected and knew these men who called him on trial. He understood their beliefs because he believed them too. They were even perhaps the ones who told him as a young person that he held the light and hope of the future for their community. But now they looked at him with disgust, as if they never knew him. Their hearts were hard for him.
And Stephen looked at them with disgust. He was bitter they could not see that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. He was lit up and energized by this man called Jesus and the witness he was in the world. How could they refuse to see the signs? How could they not embrace this new thing God had done? Stephen was emboldened by Scripture, Scripture they had taught him since he was a child.
Hard hearts. God’s love is so enormous but we always get into yelling matches about who owns the most of God. Love doesn’t work that way. There is always more of a capacity to love. Why can’t a Creative God bless a people as chosen. Why can’t the Israelites, the Jews, why can’t they celebrate God, grow in faith, practice their tradition in the love and light of God. They can. A Creative God however, would not be content with stopping there. A Creative God would want to have relationship and impact beyond this one community, speaking, learning, praying in one way. God sends a being, in his own image a bridge between one faith and another which would be mostly for the gentiles. That they might learn to celebrate God, grow in faith, practice their tradition in the love and light of God. And they can. God’s love doesn’t make one of us right and the others wrong. We all can be pieces of understanding this loving presence, this uniting light. Because something new is born doesn’t mean that which came before dies. New siblings do not make the older siblings irrelevant.
William Willimon a great contemporary theologian describes this situation we find ourselves in today with brother hating brother by sharing this modern parable. (read it)
We don’t need to be the usurpers of power in order to be people of faith. In fact our Scriptures say time and time again that the powerful will fall the hardest. Our God is not an either or God. Our God is a both and God. If our God is still speaking our God is still finding ways to move and work in the world that have nothing to do with us. We are already loved. We are already part of the movement. We need not be threatened by the different ways people love God. We can instead be the people with open hearts, not looking back and remembering how we were, and how comfortable we were back then. But, the people celebrating that God has something at work in me, and that makes a difference.
It has been my experience that those who are angriest, those who have the most resistance to moving on and are righteous about it, they don’t want to take any responsibility for God moving in new ways in our own person selves. Calls evolve and change. Moses wasn’t just the guy God spoke to out of the bush. That wasn’t it. He wasn’t to stay in the wilderness, build an altar and commune with God there. No. He was pushed time and time again to do another thing, to try another thing, to accept a new role. The moment we decide, this is it, I think is the moment we begin to harden our hearts. That the fit in this role in this moment feels so good, I’m going to cling to it. That would require our God to be static. That would require our God to be done. I’m unwilling to participate in that thinking, in that belief system.
We are called to be the people with open hearts. Hearts open to God’s love. Hearts ready to share that love and light with all we encounter. Let us know ourselves more by naming the ways God is calling us. Not fearing the ways God is calling others. Not resenting others for the call they have over the call we have. God calls each of us, and that love is enough, unique, diverse.
We can be the people rebellious, eyes on Egypt, remembering the good old days of slavery. Or, we can do the hard work to transform ourselves from slaves to free, from marginalized to celebrated, from out cast, to in crowd. We can do the hard work to transform ourselves through this unconditional love of God. And, by doing this hard work it will free our hard hearts, it will stop us from longing for what was and it will free us to look at what could be with the Love of God. Let us pray.