Re-imagining

Sermon Originally Preached at Mira Vista UCC on 10/16/2011. The scripture was Exodus 33:12-23

Moses is worried. He used not to be this way. There was a time when it felt like he had all the answers. Back at the Red Sea it felt like there was nothing he and the people of Israel couldn’t handle. But now the Red Sea is but a distant memory. Moses had only been away for a short time and the people had built the Golden Calf. The people had traded a God who is in the process of journeying with them, into a product. A product they could touch, feel, and possess. Their imagination about who God was and who God could be had failed. The tablets lay smashed on the ground. Now Moses is not even sure that God would go with them on the rest of their journey.

So Moses speaks to God. Speaking to God by name Moses reminds God that God has brought the people this far and implores the divine to bring them the rest of the way. God responds by saying of course I will take you the rest of the way. Moses responds from his deep anxiety again and tells God that if God’s presence is not going to go with them why carry them this far, is God sure God’s presence will be with them. God once again tries to comfort Moses saying that God will do everything Moses has asked. This is when an anxious Moses gets very bold, see his peoples’ imagination, having failed Moses asks to see God’s glory with his own eyes. God agrees but reminds Moses that he cannot possibly see the wholeness of God. So God places Moses in the broken place in a rock, comes by shielding Moses’ eyes until God passes only exposing God’s backside to Moses. In this Moses understands that he can only see part of the wholeness of God and knowing that God is with him Moses is ready to take action and move forward leading his people in the rest of their journey with the divine.

The writer of Exodus beautiful weaves for us this narrative about people of Israel and it is one that we can deeply relate to as the people of America? It wasn’t too long ago that it seemed as a nation that we had all the answers. Our economy was the strongest in the world, terrorism a word that referred to something that happened somewhere else. But those times, as the Red Sea, are now a distant memory. As a nation it is easy to feel like Moses there preparing to talk to God. As a nation just like the Israelites of the scripture trust had been put in our products, the things we could touch, feel and possess. Creativity was traded for certainty and forward motion seemed stopped. But just as on the mountain Moses gets to reimagine who God can be, one way to look at the groundswell for change expressed in movements like Occupy Wall Street is as the beginning of the reimaging process. Maybe in movements like these and others around the world we are just being to see the back side of God.

What the story in Exodus is showing us and what we can see in our economic crisis is how certainty can make it difficult to move forward. Difficult to truly experience the presence of God. The language and symbols we use when we talk about God are very important. Over the centuries people have come up with a number of rich symbols to talk about God, these rich symbols have for the most part been helpful in talking about something that ultimately is inexpressible and that is the nature of God.

Symbols are wonderful things they help us to understand God by pointing to God. But ultimately all they can do is point. You see when I point at the alter my finger is not the alter but it does lead you to see at least part of the alter. But over time even the best of these symbols can become problematic. Over time certainty sets in and the symbol becomes mistaken for God, God’s self. And the more certain we get about our symbol the harder it is to access the presence of God even though God is still right with us. The symbol, like the Golden Calf becomes a product something we can feel, touch and possess. Theologian and Poet Dorothee Solle puts it this way “If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.”

This is what happened to the Israelites with Golden Calf. They became certain of their symbol and mistook it for God and ignored to presence of God that was so excitingly and specially in their midst. While they were busy holding on to the Golden Calf they no longer had space to receive God’s presence. It was this lesson that God teaches Moses. When Moses is concerned about God being with them God does not show Moses the wholeness of who God is, or even the most amazing part of who God is. God instead shows Moses his backside. There is humor in this moment, I use backside intentionally because in the Hebrew it does literally refer to God’s behind. This is surely not the part of God Moses expected to see. But Moses is open to this new image of God, he makes space to receive it and is it enough to get Moses and the people to move forward on their journey with God.

God reminds Moses that if we are so set in what we think the Divine can be, we might miss where God is present to us. This reminds me of a story. There once was a man who reached the end of his rope. He prayed to God telling God he was going to God sit in his Garden until God appeared to him. So he sat in his garden for several days. Finally tired of waiting he yelled at God, “I’ve waited and waited and you did not show up.” And God spoke to him saying. “Did you not see the butterfly that landed near you, did you not feel the wind and hear it in the trees, did you not see the sunset? I was there in all of these. “

Unless we can understand that our symbols for God are just that, symbols. Unless we can accepted that God is mystery we easily can end up like that man missing God’s presence right in front of us. Even more dangerously if we begin to be too wrapped up in our own images of God, our own Golden Calves we begin to see God as a product, something we can own, buy, sell and control. But our God, the God that speaks with Moses, is not product, but rather presence. In the scripture God reminds Moses that no, you can not experience the wholeness of the divine, but you can be assured that my presence is with you. It is by reimagining God, being open to the mystery, that we are able to avoid the pitfall of making God into a product.

But how do we continue to reimagine God, after all we are just human and it is easy to become certain of things? It is this very reason that community is so important. If we as a community can share together our symbols for God, not putting them all together to make our own Golden Calf, but giving them each space to live we might find richer understand of God than we once had. If we create space so as new people come into the community we can learn of their symbols, God might be present to us in new and exciting ways. Moving us forward in our journey just as the new view of the Divine did for Moses in the opening of that rock. After all just as God promised to be with Moses and the people, so God is always present with us on our Journey.
So I pray God forgive us when we mistake our symbols for the divine.

I pray God help us to reimage how to talk about the mystery that is God. I pray God connect us with one another so that we might widen our vision of who God is and can be. So that we may hear God say as God Moses did “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.” Amen.

Thirteen Years Later

I begin with a confession; this is a very difficult blog to write. Thirteen years ago yesterday my home town of Laramie, WY was thrust into the spotlight when Mathew Shepard was beaten and left to die because of his sexual orientation. I want to share with you my perspective of what it was like to be in Laramie at that time and what it has been like to be from Laramie since. In doing this, however, I want to make it clear that I am speaking only from my experience and do not presume to speak for the people of Laramie.

Until recently the events of thirteen years ago would have been something I would have been very reluctant to talk about. I think this is true of a lot of Laramie residents. When you introduce yourself and say you are from Laramie, Matthew Shepard’s brutal death is often the first thing people think about. The natural inclination is to take a defensive posture and defend Laramie or speak about nuances that have gotten lost in the media covering what happened. The truth is that these reactions truly are not helpful and are out of truth not about the event itself but rather feeling like I have to defend myself for being from Laramie. Understand too my memory is also clouded by the media’s decent onto the town. The reporters hounded us as High School students as we left school to give them a sound bite about local reaction. Memories of TV cameras pointing into classroom windows while we were simply trying to do our work. These also have not been helpful to me as I have tried to really think about that time over the years. My goal has been to move beyond such things and what follows is my attempt to do so.

What has really stuck with me all these years more than even the brutal event itself has been the community reaction to it. Almost immediately the University and High School students mobilized to create a way of saying that what had happened was not acceptable and had nothing to do with the Laramie we knew. Almost everyone’s backpack or bag had a yellow ribbon on it supporting Mathew’s family.

When Fred Phelps and his hate group from Westboro Baptist Church decided to protest there was a group who bravely surrounded them wearing white robes with large angel’s wings to block the hate from sight. This simple moment of love and resistance is one that has stuck with me and to this day acts as an example when I plan acts of resistance.

I remember Mathew’s mother’s courage and compassion when she decided to ask the DA not to seek the death penalty in the case of Mathew’s killers. In this act she stopped the cycle of violence right there. It must have taken a great deal of courage and overcoming a great deal of pain for her to act in this way.

But what of Laramie? I’m sad to report that though there are positive things like the Matthew Shepard Symposium at the University of Wyoming each year dealing with issues of homophobia, the environment that allowed this kind of act to happen still exists. The issue of homophobia is still one that has yet to be dealt with in significant ways. But this is not true only of Laramie. You see it would be easy if we only had to irradiate homophobia in Laramie, but the conditions that allowed Mathew Shepard to be killed exist far too pervasively in our society. For every Mathew Shepard we hear about there are hundreds who are victims physically and emotionally of homophobia that we do not here about.

So I turn to my faith and ask for forgiveness for my silence. Thank God for the ability now to reflect on this and continue said reflection. And the strength for this native son of Laramie to continue the fight against homophobia and to fight for my LGBTQ sisters’ and brothers’ equality where ever that might lead me.