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| Rev Prof Nancy Duff with Chunky and Elvina |
Exodus 20: 1-3, I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Nancy J. Duff, St. Columba’s Presbyterian Church
Johannesburg, South Africa
Sunday Morning, 8:00 and 9:30, October 18, 2015
“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Those words make up the Prologue to the
Ten Commandments: the words that go
before. Without them the commandments are meaningless, because without them
the Commandments have no discernable connection to God.
·
But with the Prologue – the words that go before - God reveals
God’s name (“I am the Lord”) and claims the people as God’s own (“I am the Lord
your God), which means: “You are my people.”
·
And with the Prologue, we are told that our relationship with God
is “rooted in the experience of delivery.”[1]
The Prologue offers the words that frame our lives in faith.
·
They are the words that “go before” all that we do.
·
And they are the words we hear when all is done.
I am the Lord your God who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Because these words framed the lives of faith for the people
of Israel, Moses could say to them right before they entered the Promised Land:
“Be strong and courageous.”[2] Because
of God’s identifying name – I am the Lord
– and identifying claim – I am the Lord your
God who brought you out of slavery - Moses knew the people of Israel could
be strong and courageous.[3] He knew they did not venture forth alone,
for God had claimed them, freed them from bondage, and would never let them go.
And so it is with us. God has claimed us for God’s own, made
us into a people – the people of God - and will not let us go. We know we can
be strong and have courage. We can join all those in the Bible who heard the
words: do not be afraid:
·
“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
(Luke 1:30)
·
“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to
take Mary as your wife. (Matthew 1:20b)
·
“Do not be afraid,
Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.
(Luke 1:12-13)
·
Do not be afraid, Jesus said; you are of more value than [the] sparrows.”
(Matthew 10:31)
We know as people of faith we have every reason to have
courage, but as we move throughout our lives, even knowing that the words of
the Prologue frame our lives of faith, and knowing that we do not venture forth
alone most of us have to admit that we aren’t always strong or courageous; sometimes we are afraid. Life
moves in directions that can make us tremble with fear:
·
Our marriages, our children, our jobs, the problems plaguing our
country, the state of the world can fill us with fear.
·
And many of us would have to admit that sometimes our courage
falters when we consider our own mortality.
Years ago,
for reasons I can no longer remember, a conversation I was having with two
older women at a church breakfast turned to the subject of funerals and death.
After a while, the women admitted that much to their surprise they were afraid.
Neither of them had felt any real fear at the
thought of their own death before, but the closer they moved to the end of
their lives, the more they found they were afraid. And to make matters worse,
they didn’t think they could talk about their fear of dying in church, because
they thought others would interpret their fear as a sign of weak faith.
And so,
too, for many of us: we are both afraid of death and afraid to talk about death. And perhaps we, too, are worried
that we will be judged as people of little faith if we share our fears in
church. We can admire and maybe even be encouraged by someone like former U.S.
president Jimmy Carter, who recently said he “didn't
go into an attitude of despair or anger” at the diagnosis of brain cancer, but
was “completely at ease,” “ready for anything and looking forward to a new
adventure.”[4]
With those words, he became a strong witness to the faith. We can be encouraged
by his witness, but we don’t have to make him the standard toward which we
strive or the standard by which we are judged. And being courageous doesn’t
mean we won’t ever experience fear.
When my
daughter was little, and we had left the doctor’s office after she received a
shot, I told her how brave she had been. But she objected: “I wasn’t brave. I
cried.” I told her that being brave doesn’t mean not being afraid. Having courage
doesn’t mean we don’t cry. It can mean that we don’t run away or try to hide from what scares us. We can stand
fast and face our fears together, which means we need to talk about them.
Every
Christian goes through seasons of doubt and fear. The Old Testament scholar,
Renita Weems, notes that in the liturgical calendar there is a long stretch of
time between January and the beginning of Lent and then again in the months between
Pentecost and Advent when we enter what’s called “ordinary time.” Ordinary time
makes up the “the longest portion of the liturgical calendar . . . [when] no
particular mystery of Christ is celebrated.”[5]
·
The period of self-examination during Lent followed by the
celebration of the empty tomb is over.
·
The expectation of Advent followed by the celebration of the
Christ child is yet to come.
For over seven months there are no high holy days to mark
the seasons of the year. For over seven months out of the year, Weems says, “life
must be lived outside the feasts and fasts of the Christian calendar, and
believers are expected to figure out for themselves how to calibrate and
celebrate mystery.”[6] For
Weems, ordinary time is symbolic of those seasons when God seems to have fallen
silent, and when, perhaps, our faith falters.
What do we do when we feel that God has fallen silent and we
have fallen into fear? What do we do if we can’t, like Jimmy Carter, look
forward to the next adventure when facing our death? What do we do when we
aren’t strong and don’t have courage in light of the threat posed by our
mortality, but are, in fact, angry and afraid?
I suggest we consider Paul’s words to the Thessalonians. The
Thessalonians were worried about death, especially about those who had died
before Christ returned. But Paul reassures them that all will be taken into Christ’s
resurrection. He tells them to keep awake and be watchful for Christ’s return. And with that reassurance, Paul tells the people to encourage
one another and build each other up. We
don’t need to encourage people who are already strong and have courage. We
encourage one another and build one another up when some of us are anxious and
afraid.
We shouldn’t, like those two women, feel afraid to share our
fears in church. What better place to bring our fears and doubts and anger
about death than in the very place where the Good News is proclaimed to us? And
when we
express our doubt and fear to one another, we
should be able to trust that we will hear people say:
·
Don’t worry if you are afraid. We are going to have courage on
your behalf.
·
Don’t worry if you can’t bring yourself to pray right now. We’re
going to pray for you.
·
Don’t worry if you are filled with doubt. We have confidence that
the One who brought you out of bondage is the One who will never let you go.
No one wants to talk about death – not even the dying. But conversations
about death – our own death and the death of people we love – can begin in
church. This should be the safest place in the world to express our concerns,
our fears, and our hope.
“I am the Lord your God who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” These are the words
that go before all we do:
· These were the words that sustained God’s
people when God brought them out of Egypt, and gave them their identity as the
people of God, and brought them back when they wandered away and were lost.
·
These are the words that
deliver us from whatever bondage holds us back, and give us courage to face the
day. They are the words that promise God’s presence with us whatever comes our
way. And with these words that delivered us from bondage, we can encourage one
another and build one another up.
“I am the Lord your God who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”: These are the words we hear when the day is
done, and we are gathered home at the last.
[1]Patrick
D. Miller, The Ten Commandments, Interpretation:
Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church, Westminster John Knox, 2009,
16.
[2] Deuteronomy 31:6.
[3] The
phrases “identifying name” and “identifying claim” are suggested by Paul L.
Lehmann, The Decalogue and a Human
Future: The Meaning of the Commandments for Making and Keeping Human Life Human,
Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995, 97-98.
[4] “Jimmy Carter
'Completely At Ease' Despite Cancer Diagnosis,” National Public Radio, August
20, 2015. http://www.npr.org/2015/08/20/433257715/jimmy-carter-completely-at-ease-despite-cancer-diagnosis
[5] Renita Weems,
“Ordinary Time,” Listening for God: A
minister’s Journey Thr0ugh Silence and Doubt, Simon and Schuster, 1999, 64.
[6] Weems, “Ordinary
Time,” 64.
