WE ARE ON A JOURNEY WITH JESUS

A Sermon on Katrina Remembrance Sunday

Mother Mary, full of grace, awaken!
All our homes are gone, our loved ones taken.
Taken by the sea.

Mother Mary, calm our fears, have mercy!
Drowning in a sea of tears, have mercy.
Hear our mournful plea.

Our world has been shaken, we wander, our homelands forsaken.

In the dark night of the soul
bring some comfort to us all.
Oh, Mother Mary, come and carry us in your embrace
that our sorrows may be faced.

Mary, fill our glass to overflowing!
Illuminate the path where we are going.
Have mercy on us all.

In funeral fires burning, each flame to your mystery returning. In the dark night of the soul
your shattered dreamers, make them whole.
Oh, Mother Mary, find us where we’ve fallen out of grace,
lead us to a higher place.

In the dark night of the soul
our broken hearts you can make whole.
Oh, Mother Mary, come and carry us in your embrace,
let us see your gentle face.

Mary!

(Eliza Gilkyson, REQUIEM, from Paradise Hotel)

On the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, on the very day of another mandatory Gulf Coast evacuation due to Hurricane Gustav, our lessons from scripture and those lyrics of a recent song tell us again that God is God, Moses is Moses, Mary is Mary and Jesus is Jesus. But…who in heaven’s name are we?

Last week Tommy Rogers reminded us that we have now moved from Genesis to Exodus, from the stories of one Hebrew family to another. Do you remember the tales told this summer, stories about Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah and Rachel, Joseph and his brothers? Now, as fall approaches, we hear another tale, the one about Moses and his family. It’s a story of hope and freedom. Last week we began our Exodus journey with five women and a baby. We heard how Moses’ birth and beginnings were due to the bravery of socially powerless women who “just said no” to powerful Pharaoh’s attempt to kill all baby Hebrew boys.

Today we hear the story of an adult Moses, needing to gather up every bit of the courage he received from those women years before. Today Moses has to face the God of his ancestors. But before that, between last week’s story and this week’s, before Moses truly became God’s man, he did something terrible. In the midst of oppression and slavery, as the Egyptians forced the Hebrews to make more bricks with less straw, Moses saw an Egyptian beating a fellow Hebrew. Despite being raised by Pharaoh’s family, Moses knows who he is. Beating his brother Hebrew was the last straw. His outrage overtook him. He killed the offender and fled to Midian, where he met Jethro, who befriended Moses and introduced him to his daughter Zipporah, who later became Moses’ wife.

Moses’ story as an adult began with violence. But that was not the end of his story. Yes, in killing, he failed his people. Yet even though he was a murderer, God did not fail Moses. The verses before today’s Exodus story are these: “After a long time, (Pharoah) died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered (God’s) covenant with Abraham (and Sarah), Isaac (and Rebekah) and Jacob, (Leah and Rachel). God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them” (2:23-25).

And so today we hear that the God of Genesis, now the God of Exodus, is ready to do something about all this Hebrew suffering. These Hebrews, from a word that means “those who crossed over,” these nomads, these – dare we say these “evacuees” – they saw God, not just in one place but wherever they went. Yet until now, the Hebrews, like so many marginalized people throughout history, have had no real identity. Now, however, they become a people – a people called Israel, God’s people. Now the Israelites are a beloved community whom God sees and knows, a beloved community for whom God will take saving action in unprecedented ways. It is no wonder that others, even in our own day, oppressed and in bondage, their dreams shattered, plunged into the dark night of the soul – it is no wonder people still clutch the Exodus story to their bosom, seeking comfort for their broken hearts. It is no wonder people need to do this, because we are not God. We, the people of God, need God.

“Then the LORD said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people…I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them…and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come,” says God to Moses. “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

Moses, probably scared to death, says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" And God says, "I will be with you.” Moses asks, Who am I? And God replies by telling Moses just who GOD is. God tells Moses something he already knows but needs, just like us, to hear, over and over again: I AM WHO I AM. In other words: I am the God who is always with you. I am the God who will lead you out of bondage. I am God, and you are not.

God is God. And Moses is not. Moses is…well, Moses. But who IS Moses? There is an old Jewish tale, retold by a modern-day rabbi and Quaker teacher named Parker Palmer. In this brief tale we hear of “both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self.” It seems that another Rabbi, called Zusya, “when he was an old man, said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me, Why were you not Moses? They will ask me, Why were you not Zusya? (from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, in Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, p. 11).

God is God. Moses is Moses, the man God chose to liberate God’s people. Like the story of Moses, the story of Jesus is a story of identity. “Who do you say that I am?” we heard Jesus ask his disciples last week. Peter knew who Jesus was. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Peter got it right. Then, almost immediately, Peter got it wrong. Again. Because today, we hear him try to tell Jesus what a true Messiah is really like. Peter falls from saintly to satan-like, from the church’s rock to a stumbling block. Sound familiar? Feel familiar?

Jesus is not Pharoah. Jesus is not Herod. Jesus is Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, divine and human. That’s why Jesus “gets it” about Peter not getting it. Jesus knows what it is like to be human, although his divine streak is so strong, Jesus never does the stupid things Peter and all the other saints do.

Yes, God is God. Moses is Moses. Jesus is Jesus. And who are we? Well, among other things, we are All Saints’ Episcopal Church. We are saints just like Peter. We are sinners, just like Peter. We are stewards of God’s mysteries, just like Peter. And like Peter and all the other saints of God, we are sojourners, fellow followers of Jesus. Of all the ways to think about who we are, the image of journey may be the clearest and best image of who God calls us to be in Christ.

At All Saints’ Episcopal Church, we are Christians, we are 21 st-century disciples, we are those who wish to follow Jesus. We are a fellowship of fellow pilgrims, companions on the Way, who share bread and wine and other food for our journey. We are sojourners, on a journey with Jesus, following him and coming alongside him and walking with him – to Bethlehem, to Jerusalem, to Emmaus. And as we journey with Jesus, we keep learning how to practice our faith in Jesus, going forward, day by day, on this spiritual journey with him.

What does that journey with Jesus look like? It looks, we might say, like a cross. Our journey is what the church for millennia has called the “paschal mystery” – the way of dying and rising, the way of death and resurrection, the way of the old, rugged cross and the new, empty tomb. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” says Jesus. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

Is there anything worth dying for? Is there anything for which you would deny yourself? Is there anything worthy enough to you that you will pick up your cross and follow Jesus? Some people who have been to or live on the Gulf Coast have answers to those questions. Some who have journeyed with Jesus to Panama or Honduras or to Habitat houses or Hartley House or anywhere where we build and feed and care in the name of Christ – some have answers to those questions. Regardless of answers, we are still, like Moses, like Mother Mary, like Peter, like women and men, younger and older, red and yellow, black and white – we are all on a journey. As Jesus and his mother Mary remind us, we will all need help with our fears and tears along the way. We will need God, for we are called to deny ourselves and to walk the way of the cross with Jesus. And we are called to love each other, as Jesus loves. Episcopal Bishop Charles Jenkins of Louisiana says that, since Katrina, he has learned the deeper meaning of this wisdom: “You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving.”

God is God. Moses is Moses. Jesus is Jesus. Mary is Mary. And we are All Saints’ Episcopal Church. We are saints, we are sinners, we are stewards on a sojourn. The Good News is this: we are on that journey with Jesus, who walks with us and talks with us – who loves us, every step of the Way. Amen.

The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, Rector
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Frederick, Maryland
August 31, 2008