Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 24, 2008

by The Rev. Constance Jones

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Matthew 16:13-20

I've been thinking this week about narratives.
Partly I was inspired by Carleton's sermon last week
(or maybe it was his after-sermon sermon)
when he asked, What story is it that you tell yourself that limits your vista,
that says, "I can't do that"?

But........I have been wondering,
what if you tell yourself a different sort of story --
one that empowers you, and shines with significance,
one that enlarges rather than limits you?

For the past month, people have been asking about my daughter Cary's wedding.
They ask because they weren't there.
They know how much it meant to me.
No doubt they remember their children's weddings, or their own.
They know how much planning and effort goes into a wedding
(although I have to confess in this case that Cary did all the work).
But people know that a wedding is a milestone worth marking.
So I put some pictures on my office door, and I've told stories.
What was a rich and beautiful and fluid, unfolding experience a month ago,
is gelling into a narrative, a set of pictures, a story.
Interpretation is setting in.
From all that happened, my memory has made some selections,
and I have begun to make a narrative.
It is a very big story for me!
But one odd and unplanned detail I notice has crept in.

Just as the guests were settling down
and the music announcing the procession of the attendants began,
I caught some motion out of the corner of my eye.
We were in an courtyard enclosed on all four sides.
One side was a tall apartment house.
And just at the appointed time,
onto the fire-escape stepped six people, beers in hand.
They too settled down, like the invited guests, to watch the wedding.

Now, a videotape of the wedding probably won't show these uninvited guests.
Somebody else at the wedding might tell me definitively
that there were four people on the fire-escape,
or that they were holding gin-and-tonics instead of beers.
That may well be true.

But in my own narrative mind,
these smaller details mean less than my interpretation.
Which is that something beautiful and holy was taking place.
Cary and Brian were the queen and king of the whole universe for about thirty minutes.
And onlookers, even total strangers,
could not resist blessing this excellent and holy event – as witnesses.

Argue with me if you like about this, but you probably should save your breath,
because I was there, and I know what I know.

So this was the background as I approached the two stories
you have heard in the Bible readings for today.
The first is the extravagant birth-narrative of Moses.
A new Pharaoh arose who "did not know Joseph,"
which is to say that he did not appreciate
how the hardworking immigrant Israelites in Egypt were benefitting his realm.
He worried about their increasing numbers,
and the effect on national security.
So he decreed that the Israelites be worked harder still,
and that Egyptian midwives should kill every Hebrew boy baby.

The Moses-story is so important that not only is there this elaborate introduction,
but that special details are mentioned.
We are given the names of two Egyptian midwives,
and we are treated to an intriguing twist in the story.
Shiphrah and Puah are "God-fearers,"
which is what the Bible calls someone outside the covenant
who nevertheless does God's will.
Oh! Shiphrah and Puah baldly lie to Pharaoh,
these Hebrew women are so strong
that they deliver their boy babies before we arrive. What can we do?

So the Hebrew population continues to thrive.
Pharaoh ups the ante. He orders all the people of Egypt to kill Hebrew boy babies.

God ups the ante as well.
God's story is advanced not by lowly midwives, but by Pharaoh's own daughter.
She draws baby Moses out of the water and the reeds,
out of a basket in which he'd been set adrift,
then gives the baby to be nursed, unknowingly, by his very own mother.
As the boy grows up, Pharaoh's daughter adopts the child as her own,
and gives him a special name.

Words and names with special significance,
adopted royal lineage,
holy coincidences and hidden identities that the reader is privy to –
these are marks of a narrative that is intended to be remembered, retold,
and revered in sacred literature.
Moses, we are made to know, is the chosen of God.

Think of the early chapters of Luke and Matthew and the birth narratives of Jesus.
The announcement by an angel,
the unwed mother on a long journey,
the threat of annihilation by Herod,
and the angel hosts singing to heaven, Glory to God in the highest!
We remember the story, and we sing,
"It came upon a midnight clear....that glorious song of old.....
from angels bending near the earth, to touch their harps of gold."

Saint Peter, who is also called Simon and Cephas, is a key figure in the early Church.
He was just a fisherman, you know, the way you and I are just this or just that.
Like us, he was quite fallible.
He'd walk out on water in his enthusiasm, and then sink.
He'd promise to stay awake, then fall asleep.
He'd vow to be faithful to Jesus, then deny him.

But in today's Gospel Peter gets it right!
He names Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one of God,
and in turn is given a new identity. Peter, the Rock.
He is commissioned as an agent of God.

New names, special details about a birth,
hymns of praise, the giving of tokens –
these are signs in the Bible of holy milestones.
These signs resonate with us,
because they are just the way we ourselves mark significance in our lives,
so as never to forget.

And, as I bet you will remember my saying more than once,
these stories in the Bible are not about interesting and colorful aliens,
holy and remote figures.
They are about us.
We are invited Sunday after Sunday,
in page after page in the Bible as you read it every day –
because you do, don't you? –
we are invited to see ourselves alive in the pages of the Bible.

I am quite convinced that the point isn't to worship Moses,
but to see that the law he receives from God,
and the deliverance whereby he leads his people out of Egypt
are actions of God, and key to God's story.
I think the point is not so much to revere Peter as the anointed of Christ,
as to see ourselves as the anointed,
who by our Baptism are called to our own life of sanctification.
It was your birth that was a miracle,
Cary and Brian's wedding that fulfills God's will
that we should know joy and not be alone.
It is your life and mine that we hold in our hands,
ready to discover what God calls us to do and be in this world.

I think the Bible invites us again and again to notice something else.
Think of these details.
Jesus' mother isn't married.
Peter betrays Christ.
Moses, spokesman for God as he becomes, is a stutterer.
The prophet Jeremiah elevates complaining to an art form,
so much that the word jeremiad is named for him.
Jesus gives living water at the well not to a Jew or a man,
but to a non-Jewish woman living with a man who wasn't her husband.
Look in the lineage of Jesus at the beginning of Matthew, and you will find,
among other strange inclusions, a prostitute.

Why does the Bible admit to all of this, emphasize it even?

It is because the anointed of God are – shall I say it again? –
not like a family of blue-bloods, but like us.
A rag-tag, sinful, but surprisingly sturdy and interesting
bunch of real people.
We are the anointed ones.

And so, how shall we take our place in the story?

We are invited by God to bring our whole selves –
broken and limping sometimes,
crabby or overcaffeinated or dragging with grief –
over-the-hill or behind-the-curve,
all that we are –

to place our honest selves
before the God who made the universe and made us,
to offer our selves, our souls and bodies to God.

Suppose that you believe this,
and that you have come here this morning to receive strength and sustenance,
so that you may go out and do your own unique part --
the part no one but you can fulfill –
in God's continuing story,
which is nothing less than the redemption of the whole world.

The invitation is to you.
It is not from me or Carleton, not from the Vestry of Grace Church
or even from the community of saints, past and present.
It is an invitation from God in Christ.
All you have to do is say yes,
then gather your strength in this community,
for a journey that will weave your own life, in all its detail and specificity,
into God's holy narrative,
whose sweep of redemption reaches to all eternity. Amen.