"Intimate Conversation" September 16, 2007 Proper 19, Pentecost 16

(First read the text for this sermon: Exodus 32:7-14)

If you don’t laugh when you’re reading this morning’s story from Exodus, then you’re much too serious about the Bible! The Bible is full of great comedy stories. This is one of my favorites!

Here’s where we are in the story. The exodus event has happened. Moses has led the chosen people of God out of Egyptian slavery. Now, he is away from the people for 40 days and 40 nights. He is up on the sacred mountain, receiving from God the 10 Commandments, written on two tablets! Wouldn’t you think this would be fairly significant period of time for the people, even a holy time of waiting for Moses’ return; a time of special anticipation and devotion and attention towards God?
Instead, here’s what we read in the first verse of chapter 32: When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." (Do you see the comedy in this?? Good!)

Aaron is Moses’ brother. Aaron serves as his brother’s right hand man. Aaron has been right there with Moses, leading the people, faithfully following God’s wishes and desires. But now, here, what does Aaron do? (Do you remember the story?) Aaron gathers the peoples’ gold jewelry and what does he make? A golden calf, that the people then begin to worship! (Could there be anything more ridiculous?! A golden calf becomes the peoples’ god?! A golden calf brought them out of the land of Egypt?! God’s people are so dim-witted that it’s comical!)

God (who, of course, is God in distinction to the golden calf) is not amused. God is angry and wrathful and, in fact, about to lose it – and that leads to more comedy! Watch.

Who created this nation of people, by making promises to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? God did, right? Whose people are these? They are God’s people, right?

Listen again to the first verse of this morning’s passage. The Lord said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; … Did you hear that? God says to Moses, “your people!” It’s like an angry father who says to his wife about the boy they both procreated: “Do you know what your son has done now??”

The Lord said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation." Now, that's interesting: God is not rejecting Moses. God is willing to make a new covenant, with Moses, to supersede the everlasting covenant God has already made with Abraham and Sarah!

Here’s more comedy: in the story, Moses shows more emotional maturity than God does! But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, "O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?” Whose people are these? They belong to God! God chose them. God is stuck with them (just as God is stuck with people like you and me!). Moses works hard to persuade God not to act out of knee jerk anger. “What would the Egyptians think,” Moses asks, “if they found out that you rescued these people from slavery, only to kill them all in the wilderness before they even get to the promised land?” Moses is saying to God, in other words: “Think of your reputation!”

There is much comedy here – which contains serious truth. Moses reminds God of who God is: God is the one who is faithful, even when the people are unfaithful. Moses says to God, “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, 'I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'" Then we read this: And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. What do you think about that? Some people think that God is far off in the clouds, uninvolved, never changing, always the same. But that’s the not the God who is described in the Bible. The Bible witnesses to a God who is intimately present to, and desiring closeness with the people God has created. God cares about their needs. God is influenced by their cries. The Bible witnesses to a God who desires the peoples’ love! And the stories, particularly in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) describe the life of faith as God and God’s people persuading each other, cajoling and threatening and inviting each other, desiring each other’s love and faithfulness. The stories describe a stormy love relationship! So a story like this one in Exodus is helpful and even revelatory – as it widens how we think of God, and opens us to how we experience God: as a dynamic, moving presence in our lives and in the world, a God who is listening to us, and wanting what is good for us.

But, with all that said: there is danger here. This story could also lead us into inaccurate misconceptions about God. Here’s the thing: In the story, God plans bad things for the people who have sinned – but (thank God!) Moses talks God out of it.

How often do people think of prayer in those terms today: that there are bad things about to happen, and so the reason to pray is to try to persuade God from causing that bad stuff to happen? And then, if God doesn’t bring that cure that we pray for, say; or save us from war; then those who are hostile towards God will say, “See? There is no God.” In fact, in a sense, they are right when they say that! That God does not exist.

In this morning’s readings, the witness to who God truly is, is provided succinctly in one verse from this morning’s gospel passage: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:2). That’s the Pharisees’ complaint about Jesus (God in human flesh), who is eating with those most despised in the society: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Yes! That is what God does! God is not looking for a chance to fry people, as we might be led to believe from the story in Exodus! Instead, God is all the time launching rescue missions.

“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Doesn’t that describe what happens each Sunday morning, when we gather for our Holy Communion meal? What intimacy! What love!

Our prayer, then, becomes intimate conversation with this God who desires us so greatly.

Obviously, there are times when we pray to be delivered from something we think is bad: illness, for instance, of ourselves or a loved one. Let me suggest that we come to understand this kind of “asking” prayer when we “begin by listening for God’s desire, rather than by speaking our requests.” (Lois Lindbloom, "Praying Beyond Safety")

Let me read you some notes I took, while listening to a presenter from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation talking about this kind of prayer, which is called “intercessory prayer.” (Ann Kline, January 14, 2006) When this session with the Shalem Institute took place, my father was in the hospital. Seven months later, he would die. Here is some of what I wrote:

This prayer is going to God and asking, “God, what’s your prayer for my Dad? What would you have me do?”

It’s putting aside my agenda.

What does God want me to do?

That larger stream of prayer: God’s prayer is ongoing. God is always there, always working, always good. I don’t have to call God’s attention to my Dad. God knows.
I offer myself. I stop and listen. I pay attention.

I let go of my control, my assumptions, my expectations. It’s risky! Intercessory prayer asks something of us. I want my Dad to be healed. But maybe that won’t happen. What is God asking of me? What must I let go of, to enter into God’s prayer for my father?

Intercessory prayer softens me. It opens me to be touched by the compassion of God. This prayer softens me to the possibility of God’s love in the situation.

I invite you into prayer that is intimate conversation with God, listening more than speaking to God who is a dynamic, moving presence in our lives and in the world; a God who is listening to us, too; and wanting what is good for us; and knowing what is best for us.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia