The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” [The Baptismal Covenant, pg. 305 Book of Common Prayer]
These are the last two questions in our Baptismal Covenant and in my young, unprofessional, yet deeply passionate opinion, the most important ones. But what does our baptismal covenant have to do with burning bushes in Exodus and Jesus dropping his death notice at the dinner table like it's the weather report in the Gospel?
Today’s readings invite us to consider what God is calling us to do. We have a beautiful opportunity as Christians to truly live into the Gospel. The ancient rite of baptism is the basis of our faith, and in it we are asked to seek, serve, love, and strive. We go through the sacrament, in all its beauty and significance… then what? Now it is our duty to gaze upon the faces of our neighbors and see the face of God. To pick up our cross and serve God by doing right by all those that society has pushed to the margins.
Today’s Hebrew Bible reading is the first biblical story I ever heard; long before I stumbled into the Episcopal Church, understood what this reading meant, or even knew what the word ‘Christian’ meant. This story first came to me in a creaky plastic VHS case containing Dreamworks’ box office hit, ‘The Prince of Egypt’. It is a film I still stand by despite it not being 100% biblically accurate and partially because of its powerhouse of a soundtrack. It is hard to not feel an inspired sense of hope when Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey are belting at you about miracles. Though I was too young and
under-exposed to really comprehend the weight of this movie, the underlying element was clear to me: Sometimes, very strange and difficult things happen that lead to unbelievable healing when we take time to look up from our metaphorical screens and really see each other.
In this chapter of Exodus, God came to Moses in the form of a burning bush and spoke of the suffering of the oppressed. Like most people would be when confronted with such a visceral encounter with God, Moses is terrified and essentially tells God that he is not the right guy for the job, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Ex. 3:11)
He is filled with fears about returning to his old stomping ground, and I imagine that being told it’s now your job to go lead an entire people out of slavery would be an unbelievable amount of pressure to take up. Not only did he have to physically go about accomplishing all of this, but he also had to first convince all of these people that he was actually sent by God... And what message did God give Moses to persuade him that his vision was valid? “I am who I am.” Not exactly the most reassuring answer, followed by an even more confusing “Tell them ‘I am’ sent you.”
We are hard-wired to at least attempt to make sense of this message. Like the ancient Hebrews, we also want proof and certainty to reassure us that we are safe, and to an extent that helps to keep us alive. However, when it comes to matters of faith, trying desperately to pick it apart at the seams isn’t actually doing us much good.
A great deal is asked of Moses when God appears to him, and a great deal is asked of us, too. Our baptismal covenant may put some new (or old) to the faith in the same “unworthy” mindset that Moses experienced. We may feel that we are not good enough, smart enough, or skilled enough to answer God’s call. But we are called nonetheless, and God walks alongside us the entire way. During the prayers for the Candidate for Baptism, we pray for God to "Give us an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works." [pg. 307 BCP] But I think largely in our day to day lives, we forget to hold onto that wonder. We want that dazzling, bright, literal burning bush moment that we can point to. We want that moment where God lightning bolts all the answers to the mysteries of life right into our skulls, so that we suddenly know exactly what to do with our lives. But like any teacher worth their salt, God isn't in the habit of just handing us the answer sheet while we sit on our hands. We must consciously choose to zoom out of our narrow focus on our own day-to-day lives. Stop scanning for huge fires and instead look for the smoke signals in our lives. What seemingly small things keep coming up that God is trying to get you to pay attention to? What holy mysteries are we missing because they aren’t literally on fire?
While we chew on today’s Exodus reading and what God is calling us to do, the Gospel emphasizes that point as Christ asks us to take up our cross. Jesus tells the disciples to look beyond all the human things in their way, so that we can look to the divine things. Despite all of the horror in front of them, they are called to look ahead. It’s natural, human, and quite frankly, imperative to feel the weight of the world’s grief. With 24/7 news stories and millions of clickbait think pieces flooding our social media, we can’t really escape it right now. It is incredibly easy to be paralyzed by it all and feel the world, yourself, and your faith start to crumble. For some, this wavering of faith can feel like a profound permanent loss, rather than a natural ebb and flow reaction to the realities of our world. I do not think God expects perfect faith out of us, God just wants us to get back up and keep trying.
As we read in the Epistle today, “Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.” [Rm. 12:12-13] This is a pretty familiar concept to most people, churched or not. How many of us are willing to do it when it is a pain? When it challenges our patterns? Perhaps we aren’t completely and detrimentally burnt out, but having that small talk conversation with your least favorite neighbor who you avoid on trash night is just not what you want to do at the end of a long day. But we desperately need each other right now. We need to be in community even when it isn’t fun, rewarding (literally or spiritually), or even mildly enjoyable. When Moses encounters the burning bush, he is in the middle of nowhere, in a desert not unlike our own Sonoran backyard, not some grand gilded palace of a church. God isn’t living in the pews and pocketbooks of the most pious parishioners on the block. God shows Godself in the messy, mixed-up, wild and unruly Tucson-style pavements cracks. You just have to be willing to look up and try to recognize God, even if God doesn’t look how you expected.
This small medal I wear has the Serenity Prayer engraved in a teeny tiny font on the back of it. It is not only a reminder of my six and a half years of sobriety, but of the importance of meeting people where they are. I am far from perfect at it, and it is a constant practice, not an inherent skill. But the old saying 'hurt people, hurt people' is accurate. Most of the time, whether we care to admit it or not, our hurts seep out of us like tar and onto others. It's real easy to love people at their best. It's real easy to love people whose biggest flaw is that they went through a reasonably timed grief process or that they chew with their mouth open. But can we learn to see, forgive, and unconditionally love people who are actively struggling in uncomfortable or embarrassing ways?
Will you pick up your own cross and walk in love? Will you do what you can for others, even if it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable? Can ‘picking up your cross’ be reframed in our modern vernacular into more than just a dreaded burden? Can it become for us more of an intentional sense of caring responsibility? Consistently listening to and being witness to one another in all of our messy brokenness- that is where God lies. That is how we break out of our own tombs and fulfill our Baptismal Covenant- even on all of the "ordinary" days. Like the bush that burns without being consumed, let the Spirit keep our hearts ablaze with Love as we seek to liberate humankind, and keep us from being consumed by the grief. Amen.