Go Where You (Don’t) Wanna Go
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Persons who know about these things say that in the “ordinary time” portion of the liturgical calendar, between Pentecost and Advent, there are no intentional theological or liturgical connections among the revised common lectionary readings. (The one exception to that is the appointed Psalm, which often serves as a commentary, a counterpart, or a counterpoint, to the Old Testament lesson.) This contrasts with the practice in other church seasons of having all readings tie together, such as the Suffering Servant portions of Isaiah read on Good Friday, or Moses’ journey up Mount Sinai from Exodus on Transfiguration Sunday.
I suppose this is true. Nevertheless, most of us look for, and often find, common ideas running through a daily or Sunday lectionary grouping. What we find is not necessarily fanciful. After all, if God’s revelation is consistent through history, and if human nature persists over time, why wouldn’t different sources make similar points?
Take this week’s texts. The first reading, from the third chapter of Exodus, recounts Moses’s encounter with God in the burning bush. Moses approaches the bush, intrigued, but is startled, even frightened, when a voice from the bush identifies himself as God and tells Moses to draw closer. Then the voice tells Moses to go back to Egypt and bring the Israelites out of slavery. We can almost imagine Moses looking around, then pointing at himself and saying “Who, me?” “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” God replies, don’t worry, I’ll be with you. Moses, still resistant, says, in effect, “But who are you?” “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” To which God replies “I am who I am.” (I detect a little divine impatience there) This week’s reading ends there, but as the story continues Moses protests that he needs some way to prove his authority, and then that he’s not much of a public speaker. God meets these objections also, and finally Moses relents.
We sympathize with Moses. He was a fugitive from Egyptian justice, wanted for murder. He’s comfortably established in Midian, married into a priestly family and working for his father-in-law. Now he’s being told to go back to Egypt, where, as far as he knows, he’s likely to be arrested, tried, and executed. (It’s only when YHWH tells him “All those who were seeking your life are dead” that he relents.) He has little reason to believe that he’ll succeed; he knows how hard-hearted Pharoah is. But go he does.
This week’s Gospel reading, from Matthew, has another face-to-face encounter between man and maker, this time Simon and Jesus. As the story starts, Simon is not merely enjoying quiet pastoral domesticity, as Moses is. Simon is riding high. He has just confessed Jesus as Messiah, and in exchange been renamed Petros, that is “rock,” and told “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Then, in a startling turn, Jesus predicts his coming passion and death. Peter, the newly-appointed leader of the church, reacts naturally. He needs to protect his master. “God forbid it, Lord. This must never happen to you.” (There’s more than a bit of irony in that “God forbid it,” since Peter has just said he believes Jesus to be the Messiah). Does Jesus do what we might expect, put his arm around Peter and tell him not to worry? Not quite. He says “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Poor Peter. In the blink of an eye, he goes from the holder of the keys of the kingdom to Satan himself, from the rock on which Jesus will build his church to a stumbling block in the way of the divine plan. But it gets worse. Jesus tells the disciples that they will share his fate: “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’” Oh my.
Moses and Peter get essentially the same message: if you’re going to follow God, you’ll have to do things you don’t want to do. For Moses, this means no comfortable life with Zipporah in Midian, and way more time in the desert than on top of a mountain. Peter won’t be camping on the top of the mountain either; obedience will take him all the way to his own cross. Lest we miss the parallel with Exodus, Matthew has Peter, along with James and John, witness Jesus’s transfiguration, and his meeting with Moses and Elijah, at the top of a mountain. Peter, still the eager second in command, offers to set up tents for the group. In return, he gets admonished by YHWH himself, speaking this time from a cloud rather than a burning bush: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” He said you’re going to Jerusalem. Get on with it.
And this is the same message that Paul, writing (we believe) from Corinth, sends to the Christians in Rome. This week’s passage from the 12th Chapter of Romans sounds rather avuncular, a collection of truisms that could as easily be given to a betrothed couple or a youth leaving for university, as to a church congregation: love your neighbor, live in hope, be humble, let go of vengeance. Certainly this is the stuff of commonplace books, of Bartleby’s Quotations, not scripture.
Time and familiarity are the enemies of understanding here. When Paul sent this advice to Rome it was far from conventional. Paul here seems to recall his experiences with the Corinthian church, where he learned to be wary of sophistication, of a social and spiritual elite proclaiming a worldly wisdom. So, he tells the church in Rome “do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.” Just as he told the Corinthians “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength,” (1 Cor 1:25), he advises Rome to act (by human standards) foolishly. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” (Rom 12:14). “Do not repay evil for evil.” Most importantly, just as YHWH tells Moses and Jesus tells Peter, Paul advises the church in Rome to trust in God. “Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer.” But also, “never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God.” And, famously, “it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.’”
We have come full circle. Paul here quotes Moses, from the 32nd Chapter of Deuteronomy, in his farewell message to the Israelites. “Choose life,” Moses says. When we let go of vengeance, and trust God, we choose life. When we step out and take risks, confident that we are not alone, we choose life. When we rejoice in times of joy, and weep in times of sadness, we choose life. Moreover, as Jesus tells his disciples, we choose life by risking it for his sake. Do what we don’t want to do, in order to have what we really want: life in the Spirit.