Sermon: Is the LORD Among Us or Not?
This sermon was originally preached at St. John’s Congaree in Hopkins, SC. The lectionary texts for the day were from Proper 21A (Track 1) - Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32. The driving engine for the sermon is taken from Israel’s quarreling, grumbling question in Exodus 17.
Is the LORD Among Us or Not?
Late one night in Hawaii, pastor Tony Campolo found himself in “one of those sleazy places that deserves the name, ‘greasy spoon.’”
Campolo ordered coffee and a donut. Around 3:30am, a group of 8 or 9 boisterous prostitutes walked in for their regular off-the-clock meal. He overheard their conversation:
Agnes: "Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm going to be 39."
Her "Friend": "So what do you want from me? A birthday party? What do you want? Ya want me to get you a cake and sing 'Happy Birthday'?"
Agnes: "Come on. Why d’ya have to be so mean? I was just telling you, that's all…I was just telling you it was my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?"
Campolo had an idea.
He waited for the women to leave and then engaged Harry, the diner’s owner. He learned that Agnes and her group came in every night. Campolo arranged to throw an impromptu birthday party for Agnes the next morning at 3:30 with Harry and his wife.
What seemed like “every prostitute in Honolulu” joined the party. The scene was one of raucous celebration and an overwhelming sense of being known.
Harry was shocked when he later learned that Campolo was a pastor. He asked, What kind of church do you belong to?
Tony: I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for [prostitutes] at 3:30 in the morning.
Harry: No you don't. There's no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. I'd join a church like that!
Tony and Harry became co-conspirators. This unlikely pairing, this odd couple, “was filled with the grace of God, running to obtain his promises, as partakers and purveyors of his heavenly treasures.” Their Mission:Impossible was to celebrate the least likely recipient of a birthday party to the glory of God.
I am going to ask you the same question multiple times this morning. The question in question comes from our Exodus passage: Is the LORD among us or not? The first instance of its utterance is a grumbling complaint against God, but as we ask that question throughout the sermon we will transform it into a praise of his presence rather than an accusation of his absence.
When I ask it, you have to answer! So let’s try once:
Is the LORD among us or not?
Let’s jump into Exodus and see how Moses fares with Israel’s question.
We encounter the people of God as they continue to grumble their way through the wilderness. The Israelites have consistently complained-and-grumbled since they left Egypt:
They have twice accused Moses of intending to kill them.
They have complained about the drinking water.
They longed for their Egyptian “meat pots and bread.”
In Numbers 11, their complaint is recorded as this: “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, 6 but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”
It’s only been 30 days since the Red Sea was parted and Pharaoh’s army destroyed! Only a little while longer since watching YHWH unleash 10 plagues on Egypt. Just 30 days and they are ready to trade liberation for enslavement because at least the food was tastier and the water thirst-quenchier.
The assembly left the wilderness of Sin and camped at Rephidim. We need to linger a moment. The wilderness of Sin is a beautifully ironic name.
Sin here doesn’t mean sin in the ordinary sense. This is a geographic name not a moral value statement. The Hebrew words aren’t related at all. But there is an irony our English Bibles hand us that is too good to ignore…
Israel was in the habit of living sinfully in the wilderness of Sin. I wish our psalm went one verse more, because despite the water gushing forth from the rock, the psalmist says they kept on sinning. Later, after manna and quail, they kept on sinning.
They had left the slavery of Egypt behind, and yet a spiritual slavery remained in their hearts. The wilderness of Sin is where Israel discovers they are still carrying Egypt with them.
This was not a pleasing camping site for the people because there was no drinking water. I’ll give you three guesses as to how they responded! That’s right: they grumbled even more, but now their grumbling is escalating.
As we find ourselves growing weary from their constant belly-aching, we must avoid the temptation to turn this into an us versus them situation, as though only they are guilty of grumbling. Passages like this force us to examine our hearts to see if those behaviors and patterns are present inside of us.
Grumbling must be rooted out as quickly as possible because like Kudzu along I-95 it grows and mutates at an alarming rate and takes over everything. Grumbling chokes out every ounce of gratitude. There is no room for thanksgiving, joy, or praise in a heart or an institution overtaken by grumbling.
Here is what grumbling might look like in our context…
I wasn’t fed by the message this morning…
Why don’t they do what I tell them to?...
We had the same food last time for our covered dish…
This is how we used to do it…
It was so much better when…
Israel’s grumbling is only getting worse.
They begin to quarrel with Moses, making demands of him. Give us water. Essentially they’re saying, Hey Mose, you work for us buddy, why aren’t you doing what we tell you to?? Not only do they quarrel with him, they accuse him again of trying to kill them. And it’s worse than the accusation: Moses tells God the people are about ready to stone him!
Stoning is always the last stage in the rejection of a leader in Israel. Jesus, Stephen, and Paul all faced stoning by the very ones they were sent to serve and lead. If Israel is ready to stone Moses then they are done with Moses.
They want a new leader.
One who will do their will;
Bend to their whims;
Lead according to their wiles;
Who will fulfill their wishes.
Things are not right with the people of God!
Moses is understandably fed up. He cries out to YHWH. The word here means to yell out in an appeal. Moses presents his case before YHWH because with the people questioning his authority, he knows the buck actually stops on YHWH’s desk.
YHWH’s instruction is simple: take some of the elders with you, and take your staff, the one you used to strike the Nile. Go to the rock, and I’ll be there with you, and when you hit your staff against the rock the water will flow from it.
There is a temptation here to treat the staff as a talismanic magic wand or easy button. If only we had Moses’ staff, then we could do mighty and miraculous things. You can substitute another word for staff: If only we had the right rector, the right committee structure, the right number of new families, you see how it works?
But the staff was only ever a staff. It was an ordinary piece of wood through which God the Almighty and Omnipotent did extraordinary things.
We don’t need a staff, we need God!
Is the LORD among us or not?
Moses trusts the LORD and water flows from the rock. I could wax about how the Lord always quenches our thirst, how the Lord always provides for our needs, how Jesus is the living water, how the Lord gives us our daily bread, how his eye is on the sparrow, how he clothes the lilies of the field.
But the two most important details in the story have nothing to do with the water!
First, the presence of the elders.
Up to this point, Moses has been the primary recipient of God’s messages and provision. Moses is the prophet-deliverer who has been appointed and anointed by God for the task at hand, but the people question his authority.
God wants the elders present because his glory and Moses’ authority will be on display. They will see that God walks with Moses and Moses walks with God.
We can assume the elders will tell everyone what they saw! The original version of trickle down economics.
In God’s economy, grumblers become gossipers of good news.
Second, in verse 7 we’re told this place was named Meribah and Massah because the Israelites grumbled and tested the LORD. They demanded yet another sign of power and presence despite all they had seen already.
Their grumbling took the form of a challenging question: is the LORD among us or not? YHWH reveals himself as wholly-and-holy present.
While they accused God of being absent, we acclaim him for being Almighty. For us, their question becomes a shorthand version of saying: He’s here, he’s mighty to save; he’s worthy of praise, for if he isn’t here then you wouldn’t be here this morning.
Their complaint becomes our confession.
So let me ask you again: is the LORD among us or not?
The fastest and easiest way to squash grumbling and complaining is to recognize the Lord’s presence. How can we grumble when we have praise to give, thanks to offer, and mission to engage??
Let’s mosey on over to Matthew 21. Two weeks ago, Jesus responded to Peter’s question about loopholed-forgiveness with a parable about an unmerciful servant. Last week, the early laborers were unhappy with being paid the same amount as the latecomers.
Our context this morning is different, however. It’s charged.
Not because mercy takes a back seat, but because of what Jesus has done and is preparing to do.
Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph. The people hailed him as Messiah, singing, “hosanna” or “God save us!” He then performed the messianic act of cleansing the Temple and overthrowing the money changers’ tables. Afterward, he cursed the fig tree and now he has walked back into the temple precinct. He is about to begin his teaching ministry in Jerusalem which will only last a few days before his arrest and execution.
The crucifixion, thus, looms large upon the horizon because Jesus knows where he’s going. Every word he utters must be heard from the foot of the cross.
What’s interesting is that the “chief priests” have only been mentioned twice so far in Matthew’s biography of Jesus. It's interesting because between now and Jesus’ death they will be mentioned an additional 19 times. Jesus' teaching in Jerusalem represents a significant battle with the religious powers that be.
The chief priests were “the custodians of Israel’s sacred places.” They were the group mentioned in Matthew 2 when Herod inquired about the birthplace of the messiah. He called together the religious authorities, whom Matthew tells us were “the chief priests and the scribes,” and he asked them where the messiah was prophesied to be born. Herod takes their answer as valid, as holy writ.
In Matthew’s biography of Jesus, the chief priests and elders have the privileged authority to determine “who is acceptable to God, who is in, who is out, who is the true Israel.” They were the ones authorized to say whether the LORD is among them or not.
To be clear, they are not the “bad guys” in this story by virtue of their office, ethnicity, or religion. “Rather [they] are failing to embody their calling as the leaders of Israel.”
This is the second time we must avoid an us versus them dichotomy. Our hearts are constantly seeking ways to compare and contrast, to list and catalogue, to separate and organize people into neat little boxes of in and out which make us feel better.
That’s a heart condition and it’s known as sin.
The religious leaders question Jesus’ authority just as Israel questioned Moses’. The answer to the proverbial question, is the LORD among us or not? is a resounding yes!! The Lord is standing right in front of them. He put on skin and flesh and moved into the neighborhood, but they didn't recognize him.
The ancient question from Rephidim is alive in Jerusalem.
How often do we willfully look the other way, photoshop him out of the picture, or pretend as though he is absent when Jesus is really present?
Jesus uses another parable to explain.
A father has two sons and he tells them both to go into the vineyard to work. The first says no but then goes in later. The second says yes but doesn’t go at all.
Who is doing the Father’s will?, he asks.
They know it's the first son.
They don’t know that he has cast them as the second son.
The LORD is among them, inviting them to work, and they are missing it.
Jesus tells them that tax collectors and prostitutes are getting into the kingdom of God ahead of them. His cousin, John the baptizer, came with the good news and the religious elite didn’t listen but the social outcasts did. Birthday parties for prostitutes, receptions for tax collectors, banquets for lepers and sinners and ragamuffins. The mercy of God has been on full display with all of the wrong sorts of people getting in like Flynn to the kingdom of God and it has not moved the religious crowd toward conversion, confession, or conviction.
Instead, their hearts have calcified.
He says: And even after you saw it, you didn’t change your mind and believe.
Again, I ask, Is the LORD among us or not?
The ultimate answer to “Is the LORD among us or not?” is the cross. God does not abandon the grumblers, the doubters, the haters, the naysayers, the tax collectors, the prostitutes…or the chief priests. He comes among sinners and gives his life as a ransom for them.
If we believe the Lord is among us, friends, then we are called to do the Father’s will.
For the psalmist, the “Father’s will” is telling the wonderful works, miraculous deeds, and awesome acts of God to younger generations that they might find faith and believe.
For Paul, it is humbling ourselves with the mind of Christ that he might be exalted and every knee bow and tongue confess that he is Lord.
For us, it is throwing birthday parties for prostitutes. It is living and serving as the hands and feet of Jesus, his ambassadors of reconciliation, his ministers of mercy, his heralds of hope, his gossipers of the good news. If I can borrow from Harry-the-greasy-theologian: People will join a church like that.
Is the LORD among us? He is!
What are we going to do about it? Join him and his work in the vineyard!