First Congregational Church of Leverett

Expect God to Help

September 18, 2011

Leverett Congregational Church, Leverett, MA

Lee Barstow

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 Lectionary Readings (Good News translation)

 Exodus 16:2-15

² There in the desert they all complained to Moses and Aaron³ and said to them, We wish that the Lord had killed us in Egypt. There we could at least sit down and eat meat and as much other food as we wanted. But you have brought us out into this desert to starve us all to death.

 ⁴ The Lord said to Moses, Now I am going to cause food to rain down from the sky for all of you. The people must go out every day and gather enough for that day. In this way I can test them to find out if they will follow my instructions.⁵ On the sixth day they are to bring in twice as much as usual and prepare it.

 ⁶ So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, This evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt.⁷ In the morning you will see the dazzling light of the Lord's presence. He has heard your complaints against him--yes, against him, because we are only carrying out his instructions.

⁸ Then Moses said, It is the Lord who will give you meat to eat in the evening and as much bread as you want in the morning, because he has heard how much you have complained against him. When you complain against us, you are really complaining against the Lord.

 ⁹ Moses said to Aaron, Tell the whole community to come and stand before the Lord, because he has heard their complaints.

¹⁰ As Aaron spoke to the whole community, they turned toward the desert, and suddenly the dazzling light of the Lord appeared in a cloud.¹¹ The Lord said to Moses,¹² I have heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them that at twilight they will have meat to eat, and in the morning they will have all the bread they want. Then they will know that I, the Lord, am their God.

 ¹³ In the evening a large flock of quails flew in, enough to cover the camp, and in the morning there was dew all around the camp.¹⁴ When the dew evaporated, there was something thin and flaky on the surface of the desert. It was as delicate as frost.^15 (B)When the Israelites saw it, they didn't know what it was and asked each other, What is it?

Moses said to them, This is the food that the Lord has given you to eat.

Matthew 20:1-16

 ¹ The Kingdom of heaven is like this. Once there was a man who went out early in the morning to hire some men to work in his vineyard.² He agreed to pay them the regular wage, a silver coin a day, and sent them to work in his vineyard.³ He went out again to the marketplace at nine o'clock and saw some men standing there doing nothing,⁴ so he told them, You also go and work in the vineyard, and I will pay you a fair wage.⁵ So they went. Then at twelve o'clock and again at three o'clock he did the same thing.⁶ It was nearly five o'clock when he went to the marketplace and saw some other men still standing there. Why are you wasting the whole day here doing nothing? he asked them.⁷ No one hired us, they answered. Well, then, you go and work in the vineyard, he told them.

 ⁸ When evening came, the owner told his foreman, Call the workers and pay them their wages, starting with those who were hired last and ending with those who were hired first.⁹ The men who had begun to work at five o'clock were paid a silver coin each.¹⁰ So when the men who were the first to be hired came to be paid, they thought they would get more; but they too were given a silver coin each.¹¹ They took their money and started grumbling against the employer.¹² These men who were hired last worked only one hour, they said, while we put up with a whole day's work in the hot sun--yet you paid them the same as you paid us!¹³ Listen, friend, the owner answered one of them, I have not cheated you. After all, you agreed to do a day's work for one silver coin.¹⁴ Now take your pay and go home. I want to give this man who was hired last as much as I gave you.¹⁵ Don't I have the right to do as I wish with my own money? Or are you jealous because I am generous?

 ¹⁶ And Jesus concluded, So those who are last will be first, and those who are first will be last.

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Listen to a story from the ancient tradition of Taoism which speaks to our lessons today. It tells of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many, many years, with the help of his faithful horse. One day his horse ran away. His neighbors came to console him upon hearing the news. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"Maybe," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. The neighbors exclaimed, "How wonderful!"

"Maybe," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

"Maybe," answered the farmer. The day after that, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

"Maybe," said the farmer.

The lesson here, of course, is that like the neighbors, we are always tempted to take our current circumstances as "the way things are," but that in reality, life never stands still.  Life is a process.

Furthermore, the story reminds us that it is our own minds which create the illusion of being stuck in our experience as it is. For the farmer, it is awful that his horse has run away and prevented him from farming. And yet he knows enough to say, "Maybe," because he knows that this experience will pass, and something else will happen. And maybe it will be good.

Our Christian tradition inherited a wonderful story from our Jewish origins. "Good" is where we start in the conclusion of our creation myth: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31)

 "Good" in our tradition is a gift from God. "Good" is where we begin, and "good" is never far from us. It is the light which always overcomes the darkness. It is the grace of God, the gift we get whether or not we think we deserve it.

In Jesus' parable today about the nature of God's Kingdom, the laborers in the vineyard received God's grace in the form of a day's work for a day's pay. What a blessing a day's work was in the context of Jesus' time, one much like our own, when poor Jews were being forced off the land because they were bankrupt. In a culture where people fed themselves through subsistence agriculture and other jobs were even scarcer than they are today, being forced off the land meant homelessness and the fear of starvation for one's family.

And so a day's work for a day's pay was an apt metaphor for the grace of God.

And yet the early workers, who were so happy in the morning to have the work and anticipate being paid for it, later came to think of that pay as insufficient. Instead of paying attention to the gift of honest pay for honest work, they allowed their minds to make themselves envious of the later workers for being paid the same wage after less work. And as we all know, envy makes us miserable.

There's a law of consciousness at work here: when we focus on the negative, the negative increases, and when we focus on the positive, the positive increases. Another way of putting this I've heard is, "If we focus on the problem, the problem gets bigger, and if we focus on the solution, the solution gets bigger."

I want to be clear that I'm not talking about us making ourselves feel better when we're in pain. This is about paying attention to the good that already is. It's about seeking the willingness to look for the good instead of looking for the bad.

This is not easy, and yet life is full of examples of the good overcoming the bad. Here's one:

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years for his opposition to the apartheid policies of South Africa. Twenty-seven years. He spent 18 of those years in the brutal maximum security prison on Robbens Island, where every day he was forced to perform hard labor in a lime quarry, chipping stones from the rock face and then crushing them into gravel for roadbeds. Conditions were harsh – limestone dust caused lung damage, the rock was blindingly bright in direct sunlight, and there was only a small cave in which to find shelter from the elements. 

Prisoners were segregated by race, with black prisoners receiving the fewest rations. Political prisoners were kept separate from ordinary criminals and received fewer privileges. Mandela describes how, as a D-group prisoner (the lowest classification) he was allowed one visitor and one letter every six months. Letters, when they did come, were often delayed for long periods and made unreadable by the prison censors.[i]

And yet, in the midst of this suffering, Mandela managed to stay connected to the living Spirit which is in all of us. He studied law, and continued his advocacy for the equality of blacks. He became known as the most significant black leader in South Africa. Finally, he was released from prison so that he could lead negotiations for his people through the transition to democracy.

And then, this man who had suffered for so long, became president and led his country through a miracle of reconciliation beyond what the world has ever seen.

I saw President Mandela speak a few years ago in New York city, in St. Bartholomew's church on Park Avenue, where he was receiving an honorary degree from Amherst College. He said that if South Africans could heal the mortal wounds of what was then a dying society, anyone can. And then he spoke the words that will live inside me forever. He said, "We are all South Africans now."

"We are all South Africans now." We all have the capacity to find the light from within the deepest darkness we can imagine. We all can find the light as individuals, and we can find the light as a society. Because no matter how dark it gets, the light still exists. Because no matter how much we believe we are unable to see the light, we will once again receive that precious gift of seeing the light. Because even though we have given up on the grace of God, God hasn't. Grace happens whether we believe in or not.

The final story I'll cite is the one we started with today, the story of the Israelites' journey from slavery to the promised land.

The Israelites were so low in Spirit that they were ready to return to slavery. They couldn't imagine there was any way out of their suffering. They were exhausted, trudging in circles through the open desert, hungry and without food. Slavery looked good to them.

And then Moses found the solution. The story tells us the solution came through his contact with God, that God sent down the manna. Historians tell a version of the story which involves less direct intervention by God at the time, but which detracts not at all from the mystical role of God and the fruit of the lesson. According to one of Christianity's leading commentaries, historians tell us that "A sweet, sticky, honeylike juice exudes in heavy drops in May or June from a shrub found in the desert near which the people were wandering. It melts in the heat of the sun, after falling on the earth in grains. It has the flavor of honey. It is the natural juice of the shrub. .. Out of this historical incident the story has developed to become a religious symbol for many ages… a test by which Yahweh is to prove [whether] the people …will walk in my law or no. "[ii]

So for our purposes today, we could say that unlike the people Moses was leading, he did not give up all hope. He maintained his conscious contact with Spirit. As a result, he had eyes to see the possibility of something that before was completely hidden from him. He found something edible, and it was enough to save them all from returning to slavery.

But the lesson for us doesn't stop there for us today, because the story also says the manna had to be gathered every morning. It was only good for one day, a detail with which the historians agree.

And so it is with the spiritual food that keeps us spiritually alive and connected to the Holy Spirit we all share: we need to feed ourselves every day. However it is that we feed our spirits, we can't store it up one day and hope it will last us for a long time. Just like physical exercise, whatever we do for spiritual exercise must be done on a regular basis or we grow weak. If we find God in nature, we need to visit often. If prayer or meditation are ways we re-member our connection with Spirit, we need to pray or meditate often.

And yet the fantastically good news of our tradition is that if we don't do this, if we don't maintain our spiritual condition, we are not lost without hope of ever finding our way. All we have to do is begin again. We may feel a little stiff at first, as our bodies feel stiff when we return to physical exercise after a long time. But just as our bodies inevitably return to strength when we begin again, so do our spirits.

Our biggest enemy – really our only enemy – is the belief that we all is lost, the lie that all is lost, the devastating slavery of a mind that imagines it has become bigger than God.

Jesus tells us that at the end of the day, God gives us all the same pay. The writers of Exodus tell us that even in the barren desert of a broken life, when our minds tell us there is no way out but death or suffering in bondage, Spirit is ready to feed us so that we can continue our journey, however difficult it might be, to the promised land.

Begin where you are;

step out in faith;

expect God to help. [iii]

May it be so for each and every one of us. Amen. 

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_mandela

[ii] The Interpreter's Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick et al, Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, New York 1952, volume 1, p. 952

[iii] Source unknown