Snowballs and Electric Trains

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Will you pray with me? God of mercy, you promise never to break your covenant with us. Amid all the changing words of our generation, may we hear your eternal word that does not change. Then may we respond to your gracious promises with faithful and obedient lives through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:32] Speaker A: This is a reading from the Book of Exodus, chapter 15, verses 19 through 21. You'll find it on page 54 and 55 of your Pew Bibles. [00:00:47] Speaker A: When the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his chariot drivers went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them. But the Israelites walked through the sea on dry ground. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine in her hand and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them. Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously. Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea. This is the word of the Lord. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Amen. [00:01:44] Speaker B: Good morning, church, and great to be with you this morning. And it's a real gift to begin our Advent series together, looking at women prophetesses throughout scripture as we lead into this exciting season of expectation. Christmas is a season where stories are told. It has been often said that that which is most true has to become a story, so. So it can be told again and again and again. So I wanted to start with a Christmas story of sorts this morning. It's from the American writer Annie Dillard. Many people may be familiar with Annie Dillard, and she has a memoir called An American Childhood, where she recounts growing up in Pittsburgh. And in this section of the story, she writes about her memory of waking up on a December morning when she was seven years old in Pittsburgh and finding that the world had been covered by with 6 inches of new snow that had fallen at night. Just this magical kind of moment. And she reflects on this morning. She remembers one compelling urge that she wanted to dedicate her life to at that very moment. She wanted to pack the perfect snowball and she wanted to hit a car with it. [00:02:54] Speaker B: So she gets up and she gets dressed and she goes out with friends, and she begins looking at cars going up and down Reynolds street in Pittsburgh. And this is where the story picks up. I had just begun my ice ball project. We heard the tire chains clanking down the street from afar, and a black Buick was moving towards us down the street. We were all spread out banging together. Our regular snowballs took aim. And when the Buick drew nigh, we fired. A soft snowball hit the driver's Windshield right in front of the driver's face. It made a smash star with a hump in the middle. And of course, when we hit our target. But at this time, the only time in my entire life, the car pulled over and stopped. It's wide black door opened. A man got out and he started running towards us. He didn't even close the door. He ran after us and we ran away from him. Up the Reynolds sidewalk, around the corner. I look back. Incredibly, he was still after us. He was in city clothes, a suit and tie, street shoes. Any normal adult would have quit, but he sprung into flight and made his point. This man was gaining on us. He was a thin man, all action, and all of a sudden we're running for our lives. Worldless. We split up. We were on our turf. We could lose ourselves in the neighborhood, backyards, everyone for themselves. And I paused and considered. Everyone seemed to vanish now all of a sudden, except for Mikey Fehay, who had just rounded a corner around the yellow house. Poor Mikey. He was stuck with him. Me, the driver of the black Buick, sensibly picked the two of us to follow. The man apparently had all day. He chased Mikey and me around a yellow house, up a backward path that I knew by heart, under a low tree, up a bank, through a hedge, down some snowy steps, around a grocery store's delivery driveway. We smashed through a gap of another hedge, entered a scruffy backyard, ran up a back porch, tight between two houses on Edgerton Avenue. We ran across Edgerton, up the alley, up down some wood piles, down the hall's front yard. The man kept coming. We ran up Lloyd street, wound through mazy backyards, towards a steep hill between Willard and Lang. He chased silently, block after block. He chased us silently over picket fences, through thorny hedges, between houses, around garbage cans, around streets. Every time I glanced back, choking for breath, I expected he would quit. And he just kept coming, breathless as we were, he'll his jacket straining across his body. It was an immense discovery, pounding in my hot head with every sliding, joyous step that an ordinary adult evidently knew what only children who were trained at football knew. You had to fling yourself at what you were doing. You have to make a point of yourself. Forget yourself. Aim and dive. Mikey had nowhere to go in our neighborhood or out of it, but away from this man who was chasing us. He impelled us forward. We compelled him to follow us through our route. The air was cold. Every breath tore at my throat. He kept running, block after block, kept improvising, backyard after backyard, running frantically the course and choosing it simultaneously, failing always to find small paces or hard places to slow down, and discovering, always exhilarated, dismayed, that only bare speed could save us. For this man was never going to give up. This man and we were starting to lose speed. He chased us through the backyard labyrinth for 10 blocks before he caught us by our jackets. He caught us and we all stopped. So let me pause for a second. Let's leave Annie Dillard and Mikey standing there, breathless in the cold, in the wet, with this persistent adult in a suit heaving for breath next to them. So where do you think this story is going to go? [00:06:51] Speaker B: What turn is going to happen next? What's going to happen to them? This is a sermon, after all, so I'm just taking you out of it for a minute. It's Advent season, so it's a season of expectation. This is a season of risk. This is a season where we're going to wait and see what happens next. So I want you to imagine what's going to happen. Let me pause on that. Our spiritual lives are like a good snowball fight. We huddle in our forts of our own design. We put together twigs or dirt or snow in different seasons of our life. We pack them together, these snowballs of words and relationships, occupations, position, power, and we lob them, sometimes with passion, oftentimes half heartedly, at some moving person or moving car in hopes that maybe, just maybe, our aim and our strength and our desire is going to weave together to hit that something or probably someone. If we're honest with ourselves, we hope we make contact somehow. And if we do connect, maybe, just maybe, whatever, whoever will know that we are indeed here, that the effort we made to reach out was heard and connected and the car will stop. Maybe someone will come for us. Maybe today. Maybe today. Now, in Allie Dillard's case, it didn't go so great. This angry adult in a suit, as the story goes on, storms off, never to be seen again, and saying under his breath, stupid kids. But he pauses in the story with a glint of admiration in his eyes, almost of wonder that this even happened, a kind of respect. [00:08:33] Speaker B: But this is pretty typical, isn't it? You may have wanted the story to turn out a different way. Maybe it's a story there were gifts given or something else happening. But this is a story of, you know, some admiration, but not really a great story in some ways about how we kind of wish our snowballs hit sometimes. How often have we risked reaching out emotionally or spiritually, allowing ourselves to be put ourselves out there that moment of hope, small as it might be, just hangs there like a trapeze artist in the air, hoping to catch the next bar coming at them, that maybe this time, maybe this time what we hope for is going to happen. We speak at our prayers sometimes, and times we hear nothing. We risk asking the hard question of a loved one, hoping that a friend or someone else is going to connect with us. We try to get into a committee, we try to make a new home somewhere, hoping that it's going to come together. Yet we still feel alone, feel lost. So it's understandable why people just stop trying, stop risking, stop praying. After too many snowballs have been thrown, it's hard to keep risking, keep hoping, keep praying. But in the cold and the wet of all these snowballs we pack and we throw in hopes of connecting with others, there's something in the air that should encourage us. We are not the only ones trying to make connection. It has interested me that in every Christmas that I've been through that one of the parts that always seems to be missing is that we skip oftentimes in churches the stories that come before the Christmas story. We don't go back far enough in Advent. Sometimes the songs that came before we're going to be hearing, of course, Mary's magnificent. At some point during the month of December, we are going to be hearing about Zachariah's prophecy about the birth that is going to come. But the ancient songs of deliverance that echo through Scripture, preparing the way for the ultimate story of salvation, songs like the one we just heard Claire read of Miriam today as we begin this journey together as a church to these women prophetesses are the stories that we need to hear to understand the magnitude of what is coming. There are people who have been reaching out, throwing snowballs at us to get our attention for generations, hoping that we would open our car door, that we would chase down and that we would celebrate as they are celebrating for us. As Claire read in the passage, Miriam offers this amazing song of celebration. And the text from Exodus operates in a very similar vein to what Annie Dillard is experiencing on that cold winter's day. Israel had just crossed the Red Sea. Behind them, Pharaoh's army, horses, chariots, all of the battalion of empire coming for them and literally being swallowed up by the returning waters. As it closes, the people who are enslaved are now free. Pursuers have become the pursued terror has been transformed in a moment into wonder. This is. This passage that we just heard in Exodus 15 has been called the Song of the Sea. The Song of the Sea. It is likely one of the oldest poetic fragments in all of Hebrew scripture. This particular liturgy older than even the longer song attributed to Moses earlier in the chapter. What we have in verses 19 through 21 is Miriam's song. And scholars believe that it may even predate the prose narratives that we just heard from. And this suggests something really profound. I want you to pause on this moment as we prepare for the series we're about to hear is that women's liturgical leadership in celebrating deliverance is not an afterthought in Israel's worship tradition. It is absolutely foundational. Notice how Miriam is introduced in verse 20 that we heard not as Moses Sister. So unfortunately, Prince of Egypt kind of did a number on. For those who watched that movie, right? Not just Moses, Sister, but Miriam the prophet. The Hebrew here is Hanavia, a title that places her in the same prophetic tradition as Moses and Aaron. Later in Micah 6. 4, God reminds Israel, quote, I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and I redeemed you from the house of slavery. I set before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. And Miriam. Three names, three leaders. Miriam is not an auxiliary figure. She's central to the story of deliverance. And her role here in Exodus 15 bookends the earlier appearances we hear in Exodus 2, where she watched over the infant Moses hide in the Nile, facilitating his rescue with Pharaoh's daughter. From protecting one endangered child to leading an entire endangered people to worship. Miriam's arc throughout Scripture needs to be heard for us to begin to appreciate what. What's coming for Christmas, because it traces the movement that we have from vulnerability to liberation, from hiding to celebration. The song of Miriam leads us. It's brief, but it is powerful. Sing to the Lord, she says, for he has triumphed gloriously. Horse and rider have been thrown into the sea. The Hebrew verb here for pursuit, radaf, echoes throughout the Exodus narrative that she's talking about. Pharaoh pursued Israel relentlessly. The Egyptians pursued them into the sea. But now the pursuit has ended. The chasers have been swallowed. The hunted are free. And then Moses. Then Miriam takes up a tambourine. A tambourine. And for those of us who love the 70s as much as I do, we need to bring back more tambourines. Amen. Right. The tambourine is powerful, right? Toph in Hebrew is the tambourine. And all the women followed her with tambourines and. And dancing and dancing. This is not a quiet internal reflection. Now think about this. You are stunned into silence by God's action. The pursuers have been swallowed up and there can be just a level of shock and stillness of what do you do in a moment like this? And Miriam jumps into action. We don't think about it anymore. We embody liberation again. We sing the songs we were told not to sing. We dance with our bodies and move as they were meant to move. We. We pick up the instruments of long ago and we use them to proclaim that our God lives. And so do we. This is embodied worship, full bodied celebration. The kind of liturgy that makes memory physical, communal and absolutely unforgettable. The terror they felt at the sea, the panic of being trapped between water and the army has been transformed into song and to dance. And this is that physicalness that I feel with Annie Dillard as she runs this chase through the snowy streets of Pittsburgh. Feeling like a child again, losing yourself into a moment, wondering what's going to come next. And it has an echo of this narrative. The relentless pursuit, the pounding fear, the sense that there's no escape. And then the unexpected reversal. The man catches them breathlessly panting instead of fury. [00:15:59] Speaker B: There's not a calling of police. There's not a punishment. Yeah, there's some grumpy words, but there's also an exchange of can you believe that we're in this moment together right now? Can you believe it? And he walks away. No punishment, but something. This man in a suit and these kids are never going to forget. Grace, when it arrives, friends, is often not what we expect. The Israelites expected annihilation at the Red Sea and they received deliverance. Annie Dillard and Mikey expected probably they were going to be punished, probably the police were going to be called. But they received some grudging words of respect and a departure. In both cases, the pursued were spared. The terror gave way to something else. Not just relief, but wonderful gratitude, realization that they are still here, breathing, alive. And Miriam's song becomes Israel's perpetual memory. Every time they sing it, they re enter that moment at the sea. They feel again the panic, the impossible odds, the miracle of deliverance, the tambourines dancing to make it visceral. This is not an intellectual ascent to a doctrine. This is memory made flesh. [00:17:14] Speaker B: To get our attention. Over the years, God has not chosen to use lofty platitudes or lofty people to proclaim who he is and what he's about. God has time and time again chosen to use snow of a sort, laden with dirt and ash and twigs of real life, packing people together. [00:17:36] Speaker B: Putting them together who don't have all the answers with Doubts from time to time, who get discouraged and bleed when wounded people like Miriam, who will later challenge Moses, who would die in the wilderness and never see the promised land. And yet her song echoes throughout centuries. Sing to the Lord. He is highly exalted. [00:17:57] Speaker B: We proclaim during Advent this truth that when God speaks most clearly, God wraps messages in flesh and blood. And the story of a life fully and completely lived is what we get to hear in Miriam's story. In short, what is most true gets wrapped in a person every time when God gets close to us. And these people, from Miriam with her tambourine to later Mary with her great yes, she says to the Spirit, they all sing the same song in different keys. That God does not give up on us and will continue to follow us into the dark alleys. Lift our heads when life is too heavy Whisper words of comfort when you feel too burned out For Miriam's song to Mary magnificant, to Hannah's prayer, to Simeon's blessing. Time and time again, God has a simple call that we are not forgotten. [00:18:51] Speaker B: One literal translation of Christmas in Latin is Christ, now is flesh no more, messengers no more. This is what God said. Or thus saith the Lord. The radical event of Christmas comes close. God gets out of the car. God chases after us day after day, pursuing us as the Israelites may have been pursued, split the sea for their escape and gave them a song to sing on the other side. And God pursues us still, as we proclaim in Advent, not because we did something wrong, not because he delights in clamping down on people in their lives with a litany of do's and don'ts. No, God gets out of the car and chases us across our territory, through our backyards, through our disappointments, and through the fences that we put up to find us over the garbage cans of our lives. [00:19:46] Speaker B: To tell us that we have been found, that we want to be caught, that we want to be embraced, that we're tired of being wet and cold and alone, that we want to be held and reminded of love. One of my fondest memories of Christmas, Christmas memory of mine is growing up in the Northwest. And my grandfather, every season would take my sister and I down to downtown Seattle to go see the Christmas lights. In Seattle there's an old store that has been closed now called Frederick and Nelson. Big department store that was big in Seattle during that time. And they were famous for having electric trains in their windows. And that was the big thing to go down and see. To go see the electric trains. Its Tracks looped around and around, tracing through manager villages of trees and little shops, all glowing. And every time, every so often, by magic, I would see the train start and stop, start and stop in a very kind of strange way. And the crowds would press against the window with their children to see it. My grandfather would try to get us closer and closer to it. And what he had done is he had taken off his leather glove and there were hand markings on it. And if you put your hand on it, it would cause the train to move. And when you took your hand off, it would stop. And I really wanted to do that. I wanted to start the train. I wanted to get there and get close enough to do it. And so my grandfather lifted me up to the level where the hand was, and I put my hand on it. And nothing would happen. Nothing would happen. He said, try it again. So I pushed harder with my hand to get it to go. Then my grandfather held my hand. He said, you have to take your mitten off, for in order for things to move, you have to touch it with your skin. So I took off my damp wool mitten and I pushed it against my cold hand against the window. And the whole world moved. Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. This Christmas, God is getting out of the car and chasing us, not with gloves on, but with gloves off. Because the flesh is going to come wrapped in a baby to tell us that the world's about ready to come alive. Snowballs and electric trains, Tambourines and red seashores. Grace is coming in flesh. This is the month, said the poet John Milton, and Christmas the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal king of wedded maid and virgin mother born our great redemption from above did bring. For the holy sages once did sing that our deadly forfeit has been released. And with his Father we work our perpetual peace this glorious form, that light insufferable, that far beaming blaze of majesty Wherewith he wouldn't of heaven's high council table to sit amidst the triune unity he laid aside and is here with us to be forsook the courts of everlasting J and chose with us a dark house of mortal clay. God is coming. God is here to be celebrated. And we are to lift our tambourines and dance. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.