Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
February 20, 2007
Shrove Tuesday, Year C

Gretchen Roeck

 

The Israelites had begun to think that this was all a very bad idea. The once brilliant plan had gone amok. Their time in the wilderness was wearing on them. Water and food were scarce, and this god they were following was overly demanding. This is to say nothing of their leader Moses, who, with all his rules and commands from God had become less than inspiring. The Israelites, like other rational people, were considering other options.

          Perhaps being in the wilderness for so long had clouded their judgment. Perhaps they had had a bad night’s sleep, or stress of communal living had gotten to be too much. But whatever it was, their alternative plan – involving the golden calf – derailed quickly. Chaos, death and a plague sent by God soon followed. The people were left sacred and demoralized … and they were still lost in the wilderness.

          It is here that our story today begins. It begins with an unbelievable picture of Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai shining. Moses had just left a productive meeting with God. They had secured a new covenant and worked out a detailed set of instructions for community life. To top it all off, Moses had glimpsed God on the mountaintop, and experience no one had ever had before.

          Filled with God’s glory, Moses returns to the Israelites not just with the expected new commands and guidelines. Moses returns from the mountaintop glowing, utterly transformed. This is not reassuring to his fellow Israelites. A cartoon appeared in last month’s New Yorker magazine in which one man said to another, “I’m not religious, just scared.” This seems to apply to the Israelites situation. They were scared before, but now they were completely terrified.   

Moses reassures first the leaders and then the people that they have nothing to worry about. He has been with God. The God who led them out of Egypt remains with them. Despite the wilderness, despite the fear, despite unfortunate golden calf incident, despite their questions and doubts. Moses is no longer just God’s messenger, the conduit between God and the masses. Moses has become a living symbol. A shining, unexplainable – perhaps even unimaginable – sign of God’s presence and life among the people.

Now, nothing about Moses’ appearance was or is normal, in fact some might even qualify it as disturbing. Perhaps that is why Moses covers his face after he has delivered God’s messages to the people. Moses’ transformed body didn’t and doesn’t fit into the world we know.

And yet the Israelites experienced Moses’ transformation. After their experience, the only option was to believe. To believe in this strange power. To believe in this God who cannot be captured or controlled or explained or rationalized.

Like the Israelites, I wonder sometimes if God will find and guide us to safety when we get lost in the wilderness. And what does your wilderness look like? Some of us know, like the Israelites, what it’s like to be homeless. But the experience of living in a world turned upside-down isn’t limited to physical homelessness. We might find ourselves in the wilderness when the ground we stand on jerks away. When jobs and plans we thought were nailed down are flung away in the storm. When we loose a loved one. When relationships crumble. When communities we relied on turn away because of who we are or who we love.

In the midst of our own wildernesses, when fear and doubt set in. When brilliant plans go terribly wrong. When everything that we thought we knew slips from our fingers. When the world around us is foreign and unforgiving – the grace and glory of God slips in.

          I believe we are surrounded by wilderness today. I felt sick this morning when I read the front page headline of the New York Times. “Anglicans Rebuke U.S. Branch on Same-Sex Unions”. The Anglican gathering in Tanzania handed the Episcopal Church an ultimatum: in less than eight months we must ban blessings of same-sex unions or risk a reduced role in the worldwide communion.  

The main document of the meeting, the Primates Meeting Communique, was published yesterday on the Anglican Communion Official Website. I’d like to read you the concluding paragraph:

 “Throughout this meeting, the primates have worked and prayed for the healing and unity of the Anglican Communion. We also pray that the Anglican Communion may be renewed in its discipleship and mission in proclaiming the Gospel. We recognize that we have been wrestling with demanding and difficult issues and we commend the results of our deliberations to the prayers of the people. We do not underestimate the difficulties and heart-searching that our proposals will cause, but we believe that commitment to the ways forward which we propose can bring healing and reconciliation across the Communion.”

This document does not speak to me of healing or unity or reconciliation. It is not a proclamation of my Gospel and it is not a discipleship I wish to embody. This does not feel like a way forward.

These issues are particularly pointed for me as I consider ordination in the Episcopal Church. Just last month I was given the full support of my lay discernment committee back home in Chicago to move forward in the process. But I’m not sure I want to move forward. I’m not sure if I want to represent an institution where I am bound and muzzled as a woman of faith. I’m not sure if I want to represent an institution that denies the genuine love and commitment of people I care about and love. Truly I am in the wilderness, and I’m not sure of the way out.

While I do not know where to go or what to do, the glory of God has not left us to flounder in these rough waters. I see God’s glory in the people gathered here tonight to support and rest in community with one another. I see God’s glory in the Eucharistic meal we are about to share. I see God’s glory in the trust and faith that led us back to this church, when it might have been easier, on a day like today, to say I’ve had enough.

Entering the wilderness does not mean leaving God’s grace and glory behind. Just as God stayed with the Israelites through their troubled time in the wilderness, God will not leave us behind in ours. After the Israelites saw Moses’ glowing, shimmering body, they knew that this God who could transform bodies, could also overcome any wilderness they might find themselves stuck in.

And so may we walk in the wilderness with resolute faith, never loosing our commitment to justice and love. May we walk with our eyes open. And may we allow the strange beauty of God’s world to enter into our lives and transform us. It is a glory we, like Moses and the Israelites, will never experience fully. But it is also a glory we are assured of tasting in small bites. It is a glory that will never go away.