By the Staff of a
Shepherd
Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 9/28/2014
Based on Exodus
17:1, 3-7 and Matthew 21:23-32
Earlier
this week as I was preparing for today’s reflection, I was once again
captivated by the Moses story. So much
so that I got out the epic movie The Ten Commandments, as interpreted by Cecil
B DeMilles and watched it. This movie
has it all, the hero, the villain, love, rejection, murder, conflict. It even has special effects: the burning bush,
a pillar of fire, water turning red, staffs turning into snakes, invasion of
frogs, the parting of a sea, fiery hand of God writing commandments on stone
tablets, it has everything a great story teller needs.
In the final scene
of the first act (and you will not find this in any scripture), Moses comes
back from the mountain top experience of meeting God in the burning bush and
announces to Joshua that he must go back to Egypt to free the Hebrews. Joshua says that he will go and gather up
enough swords to give to the slaves, so they might have weapons to fight for
their freedom. Moses says, “No!
The staff of a shepherd shall lead the Hebrews to their freedom.” What a powerful statement the writers of the
Ten Commandments made when they had Moses say, “The staff of a shepherd shall lead them to their freedom!”
Over
the past 10 to 15 years, I have become fascinated with what we call the Old
Testament; which in reality should be called the Hebrew Scriptures. I have come to realize there is a great
richness that helps me in understanding a more holistic nature of God and my
relationship to God that does not come from just reading the Christian
scriptures alone.
Over the past
couple of weeks we have been reading about the events in the life of Moses and
how God used him to lead the Hebrews out of slavery and help form a new
nation. I grew up listening to these
stories in Sunday school and through sermons.
I was taught how Moses was put into a basket and set afloat in the Nile,
where the sister to the Egyptian Pharaoh discovered him and adopted him as her
own son. As a young man Moses finds out
the truth that he wasn’t Egyptian by birth, but a son of a slave. Then Moses commits murder of an Egyptian
while defending a Hebrew slave and flees to a far of land where he living in
exile. It is there that Moses encounters
God, accepts Gods invitation to go back to Egypt and lead the Hebrews out of
Egypt to a land that is promised to them by God.
It is in the Exodus
stories that we base our Eucharistic rituals upon. It is in the Passover meal, that Jesus gives
a new meaning to the original Passover; the night that the angel of God came
and took the life of the first born in the land of Egypt, passed over the
houses that had the blood of a scarified lamb painted over the mantel of the
door. Even as Christians, we celebrate
this event in what we call Maundy Thursday.
This morning’s
scriptures focus on the topic of “authority” and of “trust.” As we read about the Exodus story we can easy
become weary with the Hebrew peoples constant complaining to Moses about God
leading them from bondage where even as slaves there was a certain security of
having food and water, into a wilderness where there was no sense of security.
One of the pieces
to this story that I think we need to be aware of is the relationship factors
between Moses and the Hebrews, the Hebrews and their God, and of Moses’
relationship with the Hebrew God. First
off, Moses even though he was Hebrew by birth was Egyptian in essence. He was raised as a royal, the Hebrew were
slaves. The Hebrews understood
themselves as children of God because of a birth right. They were the descendents of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, who had a direct relationship with their God. Moses on the other hand, had no prior teaching
about the Hebrew God. It would take a
direct experience with God in a burning bush, before he truly believed in the
God of his ancestors. It was through
this experience that Moses received his authority to challenge Pharaoh’s claim
to the Hebrew people.
Yet throughout the
many years that Moses was leading this band of nomads, he was constantly having
his authority challenged by those he was leading. With each challenge Moses would go and complain
to God about how God’s people were challenging his authority. God would then tell Moses how to handle the
situation and then everything would calm down until the next crisis.
From the beginning
of Moses great quest to free the Hebrews from Egypt, there was a constant
challenging of where did Moses’ authority come from. Moses himself asked God, how was he to gain
the trust and cooperation of God’s people?
Moses continually had to prove to the Hebrew people that it was God who
had chosen him for the task of leading the Hebrews. So, what we are reading about in part is a
relationship building of “trust”. Trust
between the Hebrews and Moses, trust between Moses and God, and most of all,
trust in a faith that God will look after them, even when things are going
poorly
We haven’t
progressed that much from this story.
When something goes wrong in our lives, we instinctively look for
something or someone to blame our troubles on, forgetting all the blessing that
we have received from God in the past, forgetting to remember that even during
times of trial, of hurt, lose, and pain, that God was there along side of us,
walking each step of the way with us.
Our Gospel reading
also shows Jesus’ authority being challenged.
His authority was challenged against the standard of Moses. Were Jesus’ activities keeping within the
Mosaic Laws and traditions? Well let’s see: he associated with the unclean, ate
with sinners, and worked on the Sabbath; I would say he wasn’t keeping with the
laws of Moses. Jesus did not have a
physical staff that Moses used as a symbol of his authority. Rather, Jesus said he had been baptized by
the prophet John to do ministry. Jesus had
a healing ministry that showed his authority, he was able to help people leave
a life filled with pain and loss and become a whole person again. When questioned about situations, he spoke
answers that brought truth about God and the things God desires most for
us. The staff that Jesus used to teach
and lead was the staff of “love”, “mercy”, and of “relationship.”
These two stories
of Moses and Jesus lead us into the question as to “what authority does the Church have in today’s world?” For centuries the church has enjoyed its
authority over the general public without being questioned to its
validity. That is not true anymore. People are challenging the church all the
time asking us to prove where our authority comes from. And this is a right thing that is being asked
of us as a religious institution. What
right do we have in providing a voice in moral issues?
In the parable that
Jesus presented to the Pharisees in support of his actions, he asked which son
was the “good son?” The son who
challenged his father by saying he wasn’t going to do what his father
requested, but then does it, or the son who says, “yes, I’ll do it” but then
never carries through? Of course, the
one who did what his father had asked.
What Jesus was telling the Pharisees, as well as us, is lip service isn’t
what being a good child of God is about.
Rather it is in the actions of what we do, that are pleasing to
God. When we sit silently watching
injustices being done we are no better than the son who said yes and never did
anything. The churches authority, our
staff, comes by being not only the voice of God for justice, but also by our
actions. Our authority comes through
rolling up our sleeves and walking beside the down trodden, working to change a
system that wishes to enslave those who have no voice.
We can grumble like
the Hebrew people, kicking our heels all we want when we are challenged with
what God is asking. We can even say
“No”, but eventually if we want to be the people that God is asking of us to
be, then we will have to open our hearts to listening and then incorporate what
the Holy Spirit teaches us.
We are in good
company when we as a voice and hands of God are being challenged. Moses had a physical staff to show that God
gave him the authority to lead His people.
Jesus’ staff was that of working among those who most needed help, and
by standing up to Rome saying, “let my people go.” Our staff is of authority comes in reaching
out as well to those who do not have a voice, who are disenfranchised, and also
saying to those in power, “let my people go.”
Silence is not the life of Gods people.
Picking up the shepherds staff is our call from God. Amen
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