“Moses was shamefully late!”
“What is taking so long? Moses should have been back weeks ago. It’s absolutely shameful for us to abandon us like he has!”
That’s what the children of Israel said to Aaron as they waited at the foot of Sinai. God had given them the beginning of the Law—the Ten Commandments—directly, then Moses went back up to the top of the mountain to receive further instructions, because the Israelites were so frightened by God talking to them directly that they begged Moses to stand between them and God from then on, to receive God’s instructions himself and pass them on to the people.
“Why is this night different from other nights?”
We have once again skipped over a whole lot between last Sunday’s reading and today’s. Last week we were with Abraham, back when his name was still Abram and he hadn’t had any kids yet. Now we step back in centuries later, to see what happened to his family, the descendants of his grandson Jacob, also known as Israel.
“I meant what I said.”
Preaching every Sunday reminds me of how most of us used to watch television.
Nowadays if you watch something on a streaming service, like Netflix, you can get every episode of a series and watch them one after another, for hours. And I admit that I do it from time to time, on my day off when I’ve got nothing else pressing to do. Even shows on regular channels can be recorded and then you can watch a bunch of them when you’ve got time. We don’t have to do it the old-fashioned way, one episode at a time with a week’s break in between.
“The Buck Stops Here”
I was in college before anybody told me that there are actually two creation stories in the book of Genesis. Obviously I knew the stories, since I had been in church and Sunday school from the time my mom could carry me to church, but I hadn’t learned about where the two stories came from, or how they came to be where they are in the Bible.
Special Presentation of “Our Amazing Journey to Israel May 2019”, by members of the First Christian Church of Mount Vernon.
“The joy of the LORD is our strength.”
It was eight years of drought—the worst we’ve seen, before or since.
Not that we didn’t get any rain—every now and then one of those big thunderheads would build up on the horizon of an evening, and we’d stand outside and watch it as it moved closer to us, watch the top of it flatten out, and it’d rain for a few minutes, then it’d move on by. And the sun’d come out, and the bricks and things would steam for a little bit, then it was all over.
“Show Me the Way”
Our country’s cultural mythology tells us that “rugged individualism” was the way White people settled the American west. We are at least 90% wrong about that: sure, there was the occasional person who lived alone in the mountains, hunting for their own food and rarely even seeing another person; but the vast majority of people who migrated, for instance, along the Oregon Trail went in groups.
“Yay, God!”
We memorized today’s reading in my worship class in seminary. The professor seemed to be implying that this is the correct Biblical way to worship—it’s the model for what we might call a “contemporary” or “praise” service: It begins on a high note with songs of praise, keeps our focus on God, and then moves us toward a quieter time, when we will hear the Word read, proclaimed, and taught.
“Admit it”
Today’s passage from James is the scriptural backing for two of the traditional sacraments of the Catholic church: the anointing of the sick (formerly called Extreme Unction) and confession (now generally referred to, at least formally, as the sacrament of Reconciliation).
“I’m not here to do dishes.”
My first boss at the Council of Churches in Portland was an old-school kind of boss. He sat in the corner office and summoned me when he wanted something. He’d call me to come and go through paperwork with him at his convenience, without regard to what I was doing at the time. He would even call from time to time to have me make him a cup of tea and bring it to him.
“Hierarchy”
When we translate from one language to another, things get lost in translation. There are words that have so many different meanings that you have to choose one as you translate. Or, as in the case of the three terms in New Testament Greek that are all rendered with one English word, love, there are simply no equivalent words in the new language that can fully communicate the meaning.