19 October 2008

19 October 2008
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost
Year A

“My presence will go with you.”

In nomine...

To see God's face. Moses asks some pretty lofty things in today's reading from Exodus. He asks to know God's ways and to see God's face. To see God's face? Instead, God's declares that the people Moses is responsible for, the chosen people of Israel will be in God's presence. God said that his presence would be with them. Moses was thought this was so important that he asked “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.” The children of Israel were God's chosen, and they knew this because they were in his presence.

Like the children of Israel, Moses was also chosen. Moses was God's prophet who led Israel out of Egypt. The verses from the narrative, just before those read from Exodus today, talk about a tent that was pitched in the desert where God and Moses would chat. Moses had the opportunity to be alone with God and to be in God's holy presence. They were so close that Moses thought it appropriate to ask God if he could see God face. And while this request was denied, God let his goodness pass over Moses. Moses, like many who went before him, had an intimate relationship with God, in a way that few of us could really expect.

But what of the church? The church is also chosen. In this salutation and introduction to Paul's letter to the Thessalonians Paul writes that we, as the church are God's chosen people too. “For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God” he writes “that he has chosen you.” Paul writes of the communities in Macedonia and Achaia that seem to be thriving. But clearly by then Christ has died and risen, and the relationships like that between Moses and God don't seem to happen much anymore.

Now, when writing a sermon, I believe that sermons should fit in with the rest of any service. That the music, the time of year, parish happenings, et cetera are all important things to consider. When I started to write this sermon I was bit unsure how to begin. Karin, being organized and responsible as she is, emailed me copies of today's bulletins on Wednesday. When I looked at the service music I had an audible groan. There is one hymn that we are singing today that I really really wish we weren't. Its one of those old favorites, but theologically, it just drives me batty. And that is “I come to the garden alone.” [LEVAS 69, read v 1, chorus 3 at 8am and 11:15am].

I come to the garden alone. I don't believe you are ever alone. To say that you are going to the garden alone says that God is hanging out there waiting for you, and I always thought God's presence is always with us – that God is bit like Santa – he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, and so on.

And then there is the last line of the chorus “And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” “Like none other has known?” Like you're so special. If this was sung as the Easter hymn that C. Austin Miles wrote it as – about Mary Magdalene seeing the stone rolled away and confusing Jesus as a gardener, I might deal with it better, but most people don't know that context.

I also feel that this hymn makes God a solitary activity. When Paul writes of Christians in his day, he almost always writes of them and to them in communities. Like this letter: From Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to The Church of the Thessalonians. Doing church and doing God's work is a community activity. While in many of his letters he does refer to personal beliefs and behaviors, there is also a degree of holding each other accountable. Indeed, in our society in which many people say they are “spiritual but not religious” and that their “spirituality is private,” we have to remember that Moses' personal relationship with God was for a purpose. It was to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt.

I sometimes fear that this idea of coming to the garden alone where God walks and talks with me makes us forget that God in Jesus said that “when two or three are gathered in my name I am in the midst of them.” And that we can also work in a soup kitchen with others or take part in the CROP walk this afternoon, living out our relationship with God in or out of the garden. And really, why the garden anyway? Why, if God is everywhere, with all of us together, bringing all of us, like the Hebrew people to a new life. Working together to restore God's created world. Who needs to go to a garden?

While Moses' call was to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt, clearly he didn't nor could he have done this on his own. This could not have been imagined if he and the Hebrew people were not in God's presence. But knowing that he was in God's presence wasn't enough, he needed that personal relationship he had with God – he needed that time with God not only to know what to do and what to tell the Hebrew people, but also for his own strength – so he could feel God's goodness pass over him. If he hadn't had that he wouldn't have been able to serve God in the community.

Its a balancing act of sorts and reminds us that we can all fall victim to focusing too much on our personal relationship with God or focusing too much on our communal relationship with God. At such a bright and vibrant church as St. David's, as with many other parishes, including my own, I can imagine it can be easy to get very involved with the communal activities of the parish but to lack the personal time with God. I recall hearing a Sr. Warden of a parish who was also a youth group leader and chorister say that she wished that she had a relationship with God or that she wished she had time for that.

Perhaps that's the wrong way to look at it. Perhaps that's backwards. Perhaps taking that time with God can help strengthen our ministry. In stewardship sermons we are always asked to give - the three T's usually.. time, talent, and treasures. I know I sometimes feel like I need to give so much and have the opportunity so much to so many places – work, school, church, committees, and other groups, that I don't feel like I can have time for myself, that putting aside personal time for me, or for me and God is somehow selfish.



Every Sunday we are asked to “lift up our hearts” and we “lift them up to the Lord.” But are we? Are we taking time to be stewards to ourselves? Are we lifting up our spiritual hearts to God? Are we lifting our physical hearts to God? Keeping our bodies, made in God's image, in the best shape we can? Or do we just not have time?

I agree. I don't really have time for much of anything. But a few months ago I decided to try to make time. I was stressed, didn't have time to get done what I needed to get done, didn't know how I could make everything fit, so I started going to the gym. Just an hour, two or three times a week. I also started put aside time to talk to God. Just ten minutes. And always alone. And somehow, everything fell into place.

Mind you, I'm still drowning in schoolwork, work work, and committees and such, but by being a steward to myself, I have been able to better be a steward to the world – and better take part in a communal relationship with God.

The last time I was here I was about to leave for England to staff Lambeth – the decennial conference of Anglican Bishops. If any one wants to hear about my experience I will be more than happy to chat about it after the service, but I will tell you though, wonderful, it was near, if not the most stressful and trying experience of my life. And truly, it was only when I could get away from the conference – when I would leave campus for a ten minute walk and sit behind a stone garden wall, and just sit with God that I could pull myself back to a useful place.



As many parishes do, a parish I used to attend keeps a prayer vigil between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday morning every year. They move some of the pews and set up a garden in the back of the church. And I will admit that it is the time each year that I felt closest to God. At 2:30 in the morning, with the warmth from the many candles on my skin and the smell of the flowers around me, alone in the garden, with God and God's presence.

So I suppose maybe there is something to be said for that hymn. Something to be said for going out of your way to go somewhere to intentionally be alone with God. To be rejuvenated and healed. To see the dew on the roses, and listen to birds hush their singing, to listen to the sweet, low, voice of God, until he bids us go, knowing that we are chosen to serve God in the world and are always in his presence.