Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Would you pray with me?
God, we've come today to hear your voice to us, that we may be your people and obey you.
We ask that you open our eyes to see new things from your word today, that we may grow in our faith and in our obedience. Amen.
Exodus 19 one eight.
On the third new moon, after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai.
They had journeyed from Rephidim, entered the wilderness of Sinai, and camped in the wilderness.
Israel camped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God. The lord called to him from the mountain, saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession. Out of all the peoples, indeed, the whole earth is mine. But you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.
So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.
The people all answered as one. Everything that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: So just last night over in Malibu, I got to co officiate a wedding with Bryce little. As many of you know, Bryce Little is a longtime Presbyterian missionary to Thailand. He served as the executive presbyter of the San Gabriel Presbytery for years. And he now resides at Monte Vista Grove and has been a part of a number of committees here at Knox. He went for his 91st birthday along with our church's delegation to the Amani school in Kenya. That's what I want to be doing when I'm 91.
Man, oh, man.
At 92, he's co officiating a wedding for his granddaughter Isabel along with me. That wedding was between Isabel and Ryan. And Isabel is 29. She works as a speech pathologist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She was there right through the pandemic. And yesterday, Bryce read vows that Ryan and then Isabel would repeat afterwards, would say to one another, and here are those exact words, and I know what they were because I was there.
In the name of God, I, Ryan, take you, Isabel, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live. This is my solemn vow.
Sitting there in front of a big group and thinking, what a thing to hear those words spoken to you.
To hear that someone else in the universe is that committed to you. That they're going to pledge to be with you, to love and care for you. Not just today, not just as long as we both shall love. Which I have had a couple requests before. We try to dissuade them from using that language.
As long as we both shall live. And they even signed their names on a contract. I know because it's in my office right now. And I've got to send it in on Monday. We had witnesses. It is official. It's sent into the government. It's a contract, folks. That commitment to one another in some ways, that kind of pledge that someone will be with us, support us, before us as long as we shall live. We get that. Or at least we hope. Hope to get that. We wish for that for every child and for ourselves.
And it's the one that we particularly cherish and lift up this mother's day. That love of a parent, of a mother to a child is often that pledge of commitment that gives that child such strength, such necessary support for the journey ahead.
I had occasion recently to head to UCLA Medical center. And I don't know for sure, but they tell me that that was where I was born.
I have some evidence of that and that I have a birth certificate indicating that. But I can't remember much of it otherwise. What I do know is that that was a day I, like you, had a parent or parent figure pledge to be committed to us for life. At least that's what we hope they would pledge. Well, years later, I had occasion to go back to UCLA Medical center. This not as an infant getting born, but rather as a chaplain. I was doing my clinical pastoral education at the time, did this at UCLA Medical center. And when I would go there, I was assigned to the neonatal intensive care unit.
And I got to sit with and talk with and pray with parents.
Some of their kids were born prematurely. Some had heart or lung issues. And some would have received a prognosis that was not good. And I remember the fierce dedication of these parents to these kids in our conversations and prayers. It was absolutely clear that if they could, they would so willingly give their life so that their child might have a future. And I thought that's the kind of pledge or commitment that I got and that so many of you got at our birth, sealed in that birth certificate. We hope in a contract where our parents, or the parents that adopted us and claimed us as our own would be with us from this day on, as long as we both shall live.
Well, in the passage from Exodus today that Angela read, we see a love that's not just stated, not just words. It's pledged. It's signed. It's a contract. This care of God is compared to the love of a mother. God is said in today's passage, to have placed God's people on eagle's wings, freeing them from Egypt and bringing them to God's very self. Such imagery evokes another time. God is referred to as an eagle in the Pentateuch, this time in the book of Deuteronomy. We read there as an eagle stirs up its nest and hovers over its young. As it spreads its wings, takes them, and bears them aloft. So God is done with God's people, Jacob.
It evokes to our imagination still today, a mother eagle fiercely devoted to her chicks. On a recent trip to Montana, I got to see some of these creatures in the wild, a bald eagle. And let me tell you, you don't want to mess with a mother eagle when she is protecting her chicks.
That love that we hope a mother will pledge to her child at birth a love that will be sealed in that birth certificate to support that child through thick and thin. That love. We read in today's text, God pledged to God's people is the hebrew word for this pledge, or contract. The word is translated as covenant in today's text. It's a kind of pact that binds two parties together, like the one Isabel and Ryan made with one another, and that we sometimes call the covenant of marriage. It's a kind of agreement a ruler might make with their people. It has more weight than simply saying, I plan to support you, or I hope to support you, or really, believe me, I have your best interests in mind. It's signing, sealing, pledging to support them, to commit to them.
Our graduates received one or more contracts that you might call a modern form of berif. Some school, sometimes multiple schools, sent them in writing an offer to be one of the community. That's what schools will so often use today to describe if you're going to be a student or educator there or an alumni or a donor, you're part of the community. So they were invited to be part of the community, and they got to see that offer to attend a school in writing. Some of them even got an additional commitment that said, hey, we are going to give you this much money to attend this school. And when you've got it in writing, it's more than just saying, oh, we value you. It's saying, you're one of us, you're welcome into the community, into the family. That's the stuff of Berif. In today's passage, a beref gets extended to the people God claims as God's own. We read how God liberated this people from Egypt and led them to a place that would mark the presence of God, a mountain called Horeb or Sinai. There God gave them a law to guide their steps. And this people is given a powerful name associated with the people God had spoken to previously. A people called to know God's blessing and be a blessing to all nations. Israel. That is who this people is called now preaching today, May 12, 2024. It's incumbent on me to offer just a little context that when we read of Israel, we are reading of a people some 3000 plus years ago in the scriptures imagination. In our time, of course, there's a powerful protest movement relating to that nation state founded in 1948 called Israel. Vibrant conversation around that nation, our relationship to it, the relationship of institutions to it. There's been a great deal of what you might call firm and frank exchange of views as to the role of our country and institutions of which we are part with regard to that modern state of Israel. These are conversations the broader Presbyterian denomination has been having for some time, holding as we do both a deep commitment to interfaith dialogue and partnership with jewish neighbors and deep commitment to Christians in Palestine who have long alerted us to the suffering of people in areas like Gaza. Those dialogues are happening today and they're important. But their 20th and 21st century conversations around a modern nation state for Israel as it's referred to today, I invite you, as scripture does, to go back so much further into history, to go back some 3000 plus years, long before the notion of a modern nation state like the United States or Israel existed. Back to a time when a people who claimed Israel as their ancestor, also called Jacob, where people claimed him, were held in bondage in Egypt and then liberated by God.
This people that we read about today, this people of Israel, so many different people since that time, people of different faiths and commitments have claimed this story of liberation as their story. People of the african diaspora living in this country, especially historically black churches like the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, have long found the story of God's commitment to a people held in bondage inspirational in their story of liberation from that peculiar institution of race based chattel slavery, the legacy of which we're still confronting. And so many of us today would say the emancipation proclamation of 1963 was one example of a binding pledge of freedom. Someone not just saying, but signing into law. You matter. You are free. We are committed to you. That's the stuff of Berif.
The truth is, a host of people today, of a variety of faiths and backgrounds, including you and me, identify, strongly identify with this people we read about today. Israel, the people of God, a people who God reached out to in covenant love and bore up on eagles wings. A host of us celebrate this love, marked in covenant fierce as that of a mother eagle towards her chips, strong as a betrothed towards her beloved. And a host of us find in this text a powerful challenge, too. Not just God reaching out to us in covenant love and pledged love, but that call that often comes with the covenant to respond a particular way. Those graduates who received an offer to attend a particular college, they were then asked at a particular time, so are you ready to sign on the dotted line? And if they didn't sign, well, they wouldn't be attending that particular school. The school offered them a position, reached out to them, and then it was their turn to respond in commitment to say, I'm going to be a part of this school community.
If Isabel had pledged her love to Ryan and he hadn't pledged it in return, well, friends, no marriage, a commitment from one party so often calls for a response in Berif. And so in today's passage, God's action of reaching out in covenant love calls for a response. And that response is obedience to God's word.
Later, in the very next chapters of Exodus, we'll hear more about what that obedience looks like, and it'll be crystallized in the ten Commandments that we read earlier in the service today. Some have argued those ten commandments can in fact be summed up in two commandments that demonstrate faithful response to God's covenant love. And those are that command Jesus presented and lifted up to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and second, to love your neighbor as yourself, obedience to God's law, obedience to the twin love commands. These are the pledges God calls forth from God's people. Now, do God's people honor this covenant? They we do not. Sin has been called the one christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable.
Look around you, look inside you, and you'll see it like God's people in scripture. Even though God is faithful to God's covenant, commitment to us too often we are not faithful in return. And yet we read in scripture, God doesn't give up on this people. God makes new covenants with them. Or to be more precise, God renews an ongoing covenant. God has with this people, continues to renew that well. As christians, we believe this covenant making God reached out to God's people in a new way, in the one we call savior Jesus Christ. We recall how Jesus said to his disciples at that last supper when he gave them a cup representing his blood. This is the cup of the new covenant. The new covenant sealed in my blood for the remission of sins. As often as you drink it, do this in remembrance of me. We believe that even though human beings failed in the covenant we read about in today's passage from Exodus, even when we fail to keep commandments, God continues to reach out to us in covenant love. And God did so firmly and finally in Jesus Christ our savior. He is scripture proclaims our peace. He makes peace between us and one another, peace between us and God, peace between us and creation, all the cosmos. God has placed us in the covenant we now have with God through Christ. We mark today not with circumcision, but with baptism. And it's a covenant we live out not by our strength. We live it out in faith, in the one who loves us and sent his son to die for us. By faith, we join with our savior and his obedience becomes ours. We're given a righteousness based not on works of our obedience. It's based on Christ's obedience, which we receive by grace through faith.
God claims us in Christ as God's own. God claims us in covenant love. We respond in faith. The fruit of that faith is obedience. Love of God, love of neighbor. God claims us in covenant love. We respond in faith.
I pray for our graduates and everyone here that you will be bound by that covenant God has made with you in Christ, a covenant you receive. When you say, I believe, I believe.
I pray. You know the freedom that comes with that freedom. It's not being an isolated atom floating alone in the universe. It's not the loneliness and alienation of being left to your own devices.
Freedom is what you know when you're bound in relationship with someone, or many someone's who care about you, who pledged to be with you through thick and thin. That's what equips you to get out of bondage in Egypt and cross a red sea. Freedom is what the people of God experience when God bound God's self to them in covenant love.
As Christians, we believe being bound to God through Christ, liberates us, frees us from sin and death. It frees us to be a part of God's glorious purposes in the world. Being bound in covenant by God and with God. It's not just a bind, it's an emancipation proclamation. So go into the world, friends, bound by a love fierce as a mother eagle for her young, go out on eagles wings. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen.
