The old stories are still our stories, and as the Psalm says, we must tell the mysteries, the dark stories, as well as the brave and glorious stories. Not all the stories in the Old Testament are stories of triumph. Many of them are stories of deep mistakes and corporate sin. In fact what we have in our Psalm today recounting the deeds of the Exodus is how it is God who acts to deliver Israel.
Sure, Moses is instructed to strike the rock, but it is God who makes the water flow, God who brings provision and Providence to a thirsty and hungry and grieving people. It is God who again and again calls back the grieving, grievously mistaken people of Israel from their wrong path onto the path of truth, which, however painful the memories are, and how hard the work is, is the path that leads ultimately to peace and a resolution of justice.
This season, in which we encounter these lessons, is in some churches the season of creation. It began, in most churches, on September 1 with the feast of creation, and ends on October 4 with the feast of Saint Francis, which is a day really to celebrate creation.
So in the midst of a very long green season, as we may call the season after Pentecost, as we come to the end of summer, the end of summer on the calendar anyway, you have something new to think about as days shorten, temperatures drop a little bit, and we begin a new year for school in college students and teachers, and in programs in congregations.
We are in the middle of the creation season and anticipating its end. Last week I was in the middle of a forest overlooking a lake in the Sierra at a cabin long owned by family members, cousins. It was my first visit there, but in many ways, it was familiar territory, as it was in those mountains as a Boy Scout, summer camp lifeguard, and earlier with family camping.
In the season of creation it is good to get outside and remember and be a part of something older and larger. Big trees, old trees, ancient mountains, and glacial rocks serve as a lesson, as much as the parable of the Psalm. We are called to remember and pass on something older and larger for us as a church, older and larger than ourselves.
Our host in the mountains gave us a challenge: to explain to someone who lives in a cottage in England built in 1335 that the oldest Protestant church building in Arizona still in use for its original purpose dates to 1882. However the Tucson city of gastronomy celebrates 4000 years of local food culture. That brings home how old these new traditions of the new world are.
Exodus and the Psalm remind us not to forget or to set aside the old stories, however embarrassing, that are part of our heritage.
We have in the story of Exodus a heritage we have been invited into. We are new to it, new people, comprised of churches, congregations, and individuals. We can tell the story, the story that becomes ours as we pass it on to others to make it their own in turn. We now tell it as our own.
We remember the dark days of God‘s glory when shining before us he let us out of slavery in Egypt, how he found us food and water in the desert, led us to a new home; and how we rebelled and drew far from him along the way at the sea, or hungry and thirsty and complaining in the desert. And yet we are ever receiving Grace and Providence at the hand of a faithful God.
Recently I have been studying another origin story, another history of the founding of a people. It is the Aeneid of Virgil, the Roman epic poem, in an adult class at the university in Tucson. This poem was a secondary epic. Unlike the Iliad or the Odyssey which seem to have grown out of the ground, it was invented by a poet in Rome at just around the time of Jesus.
It was composed to give the people of the empire a story of origin, how they came to be where they were and how they were.
It’s about not the greatest warrior in the Trojan war, but a survivor who then took his household gods, that is the images of his ancestors, with him on a long journey, to fulfill what he believed was his destiny to found a new city, as if it were a second Troy.
He fetches up in Carthage and then in Italy, where he founds Rome.
Not the greatest warrior: he was a leader, he made mistakes, and he got into a lot of trouble, but somehow he survived and so did the people that he led.
And it was all made up out of old stories creatively reused to build a new epic, a sense of foundation, of the history behind their present situation.
The emperor was Caesar Augustus. He was called the Prince of peace because there was a cessation of violence, but that was because he had vanquished his rivals, after two civil wars, in his peace through victory.
And yet another kingdom was emerging.
Another kind of victory, another kind of peace, another Prince of peace were at work at the same time, bringing our story to a new apex, a new summit, and that that summit was on Calvary, where the true Prince of peace had his victory not by vanquishing rivals, force of arms, but by force of soul.
Were you there? The psalm for today begins by the psalmist announcing that he will sing of the mysteries of God, the mysteries that are the parables, which means stories that apply to us. The stories he tells are of the exodus, of the journey through the Desert, of hunger and thirst and of the people’s rebellion and complaint against God and of God’s inexorable, unrelenting grace.
Were you there?
A comment on this passage was that any good history book is a list of mistakes, including names and dates. Certainly this ancient people in the desert made a good list of them. They’re full of them. But of course, their history is also one of God’s love and sometimes of their faithfulness.
Were you there? Two of my ancestors were at the battle of Shiloh. I could brag about that, but they were there to fight each other. Our history is not entirely one of our triumphs, but of our mistakes and defeats.
Were you there with the people of Israel?
You may not be able to trace your DNA to Abraham and Sarah or even Isaac or Jacob. But the story we have told today, the story of the people God loves, is a heritage we can embrace if we choose to become and make it our own
We don’t earn our history, but we can embrace it.
And we are met the other way from God, the true hero of that epic who embraces us.
The story of God’s love for humankind is not restricted to anyone, nation or people or time.
Ultimately, in its crucial moment, Christ draws all people to himself.
Were you there? Were you there when they crucified our Lord?
No, and maybe yes.
Because you can be part of God’s people just as much as Abraham or Moses, or the complaining people in the desert, or the people who jeered at Jesus on the cross, or we can be part of those who wept as they watched him die and who were with him when he said:
This is my body broken for you, this cup is the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin. When we drink that cup and eat that bread, we proclaim his death until he comes again.
And we embrace that awful history, that glorious history, that gracious history, that can be ours, as we are and become evermore God‘s people.
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Eighteenth Sunday after PentecostProper 21
