Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ Sunday Worship

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 September 28, 2008

IS GOD AMONG US OR NOT?

Exodus 17:1-7; Matthew 21:23-27

Our scriptures this morning are all about a challenge to authority. In the Gospel lesson this morning Jesus is asked, “Who gives you the authority to do these things?” This kind of challenge could be made to any of us who stand in the pulpit pretending to speak for God. “Who gives you the authority to tell me what to believe, and what to do? Where do you get the right to speak to me of ultimate things?”

If we are not too intimidated we may rise up on our haunches and list, in escalating order, the categories of authority recognized in our culture.

“Because I have an education.” This is the argument ad verecundium (truthiness).

“I went to college.” – “So?”

“I have a Master’s Degree…” -“So what?”

“I have a doctorate.” Better yet, “I have a bunch of doctorates, piled high and deep.” This is moving toward the argumentum ad absurdum.

“No, you don’t,” is the reply, “and you can’t balance your checkbook, either.” This is the argumentum ad hominem - the personal attack.

“Listen you, I have twenty, no forty years experience and that counts for something.” –“And you’re out of date.”

“Look, I am older, smarter, richer, and more successful than you.” – “Oh yea?” “And I am bigger and stronger than you” –now comes the argument ad deus - and what’s more I am your father and that’s it, by God.”

In all our various ways we seek to have power over other people. T.S. Eliot writes” “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

We believe power is control over our destiny and our relationships, even over nature and human institutions. We see it in families, in school, at work, even in church committee meetings. In group dynamics one is taught how to handle the inevitable challenges to leadership. Maybe that is why no one wants to be the chair of a committee.

Moses didn’t want to be the leader of the Hebrews, God had to do a lot of persuading, including recruiting his brother, Aaron, to be his second in command. In today’s text the murmuring of last week has escalated into open quarreling with Moses. “Give us water to drink.”

“Why are you quarreling with me?” says Moses. Then he pulls out the God card, “why do you test the Lord?” This may have been a little early to make the ad deus argument. He could of asked them to remember what happened just two chapters before (Ex. 15:22-27) when earlier in their journey they had water troubles the bitter water of Marah was made sweet, and then they traveled on to Elim “where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water.”

So soon we forget our history. I suppose this is the argument “ad short-term memorium.”

“Where is God?” they cried. “Have you brought us out here in the desert to die of thirst?” And Moses, though he was probably standing tall and acting presidential, was inwardly cringing before God, and he cried out, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Which is the argument ad sticks and stonium will hurt my bonium.”

It is not really Moses the people are questioning. It is the authority of God that is in question. And it is the authority of God that is in question today. For all our talk about the influence of religion in our culture, whether the Religious Right or traditional, Mainline churches, it is the non-religious, secular part of our society that is growing rapidly, and asking, “Where is God?” Is God among us? Where is God at work in the world? Was God there at the miscarriage? Or the miscarriage of justice? Or when my child was sick, or dying? I didn’t see God at my divorce hearing, or when my son came home, wounded, from war?”

We look here and there, listening, hoping to tell the success stories and giving God the credit while they take home the cash. But is there any “there – there?” Is all of this, just, some story, a fantasy, a spectacle, an illusion?

We hunger and thirst for something of substance. Like Hebrews in the wilderness, we wander from one era to the next, moving in stages, sometimes flush, other times busted. And we ask, “Is God among us or not?” and all we get is silence. The world is raging - the markets are falling – storms batter our shores and bury our cities in devastation – but what do we hear? All we hear is the noise of politics, chairs shuffling back and forth. But what is the Word – the definitive word – the true word – the word we want most to hear - the word that will finally quench our thirst?

Moses is standing off from the crowd that is chanting for his head, picking up stones, threatening his life, which is very much like Jesus being escorted out of the temple by the chief priests and their cohort. noise all around him. “We need a hearing. We need to set up a commission. We need to do something now. We demand something is done. We can’t wait for God.”

What is your position? Honestly, where do you stand? Is God among us? Or has God abandoned us? Don’t answer too quickly, but ask yourself “Where is the Spirit of God in all this tumult and noise?”

Maybe we need to ask, “What is the Spirit?” The Spirit of God the very presence of God – the empathic divine. It speaks no words, but is the source of all thought. It makes no sound but “Stands on the rock at Horeb,” a witness, and entreats Moses to act, to strike the rock so that the water trapped behind will spring forth.

The Spirit is the Spirit of life. It does not defend itself. “By what authority do you speak?” They ask Jesus, who then replies, “If you do not know, neither will I tell you.” Spirit is! And for those who are listening it is the very sound of life itself - breathing.

I love words. They are full of power. My job is to use words and I confess that sometimes I use so many words that I am afraid you cannot hear the spiritual truth I am trying to communicate. This is because God’s word is subtle, hidden in texts, textures, and meanings. Sometimes it is clear as a bell, and other times it is revealed in what is not said. I often forget that the secret of a well trained tongue is not in sounding the words, but in allowing silence between the words.

One of the great mystics of the past century was a young woman who died in 1943 at the age of 34. Her name was Simone Weil, a French Jew, who escaped to England and encountered Christ as an all inclusive presence. She wrote, When the soul in travail is able to go on loving God, not because life is good but simply because God is, if it does not renounce loving, it happens one day to hear, not a reply to the question which it cries, for there is none, but the very silence as something more infinitely full of significance than any response, like God himself speaking. It knows then that God’s absence here below is the same thing as the secret presence upon earth of the God who is in heaven.

I have said frequently that one knows God through presence and absence. We remember the presence of God when we recollect the blessings of finding a hidden stream and being refreshed, of reading the book that illuminates with insight, or receiving the birth of a child, or a blessing of an elder. We remember the events that mark the stages of our lives – birth, baptism, graduation, weddings, retirement, death of our elders - as we have journeyed through our own wilderness to our promised land.

But, we when we confront the absence of God in those moments of high stress and deep grief, we experience the yearning for fulfillment, the thirst for wisdom, and the ache in our belly for comfort and care. We know what is missing because we know what it feels like when it is there.

How did Moses resolve his authority challenge? By sucking up his courage and confronting the God who was there all the time. And they called the place Massah (test) and Meribah (quarrel) because this was the place where they questioned the authority of God.

By what authority did Jesus speak? Paul writes in Philippians 2:6-8, “though he was in the form of God…(he) emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient even unto the point of death – even death on a cross.” By emptying himself of the presumptions of power-over-others, and then allowing himself to be saturated with the Holy Spirit, he became the vessel for God’s spirit to be poured out for all of us.

By what authority do we speak? I can only speak for myself, I speak from a great thirst for spirit which is only satisfied when I have the courage to empty myself of my pridefulness and ask for water to fill my cup. I believe it was Simone Weil who said, When I cried out to the silence, “Where are you, God?” The Silence whispered in my inner ear, “Turn around. You are facing in the wrong direction.”