Message from the Moderator: February 2016

Our Story, Our Song: Shaping a Community and Its Mission

Rhonda Pittman-Gingrich, Moderator

Throughout the Biblical Story, God repeatedly reminds the people to remember the Story. As God’s people, it is important for us to remember and tell God’s Story and to sing the songs of our faith—in good times and in bad times—so we don’t forget who we are and whose we are. When we forget who we are and whose we are, when we fail to remember and tell God’s Story and to sing the songs of our faith, we run the risk of allowing our identity and lives to be shaped by the prevailing stories of society. God’s Story must not simply be remembered (recited and heard), it must be re-membered (pieced together and retold ways that connect intimately with our lives), understood, and embodied.

So as we continue to move through this year, I invite you to join me in an ongoing exploration of the overarching Story of God and God’s people—a story that continues to unfold through us today. To provide structure for this journey of remembrance and reflection, I am drawing on God’s Story, Our Story: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible by Sean Gladding. So grab your hymnal and your Bible and join me in exploring the Story that reminds us who we are, whose we are, and who we are called to be and become.

Sing: The God of Abraham Praise (Hymnal: A Worship Book, 162)

Read: Exodus 1-24; 32-34; 40; Numbers 9-14; Deuteronomy 26-34.

This month we pick up our story with the Israelites on the eve of the Exodus from Egypt. These are Abraham’s descendants. They made their way to Egypt under the leadership of Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, to escape a famine. The Pharaoh at the time had deep respect for Joseph and welcomed the people with open arms. They lived and prospered in Egypt and just as God had promised, became a great nation. Unfortunately, four centuries later, a new Pharaoh viewed them not as a blessing, but as a threat and enslaved them. Still they multiplied and so Pharaoh ordered the death of all Hebrew infant males. One young mother rebelled and by her courageous actions the infant Moses was saved.

Many years later, God hears the cries of the Israelites, seeking freedom from their suffering and bondage. Remembering the promise made to Abraham—to continue the work of restoration, reconciliation, and re-creation—God calls Moses, who had fled Egypt and is now an old man, to return to Egypt and lead God’s people to freedom. The account of Moses’ dramatic and powerful encounter with God (Exodus 3:1-4:17) reminds us that “we do not worship a God who is distant and far off but a God who draws near, a God who hears our cries, a God who cares about us” (Gladding, 70).

But all is not smooth sailing. In a perplexing twist, God hardens the heart of Pharaoh so that he doesn’t immediately grant freedom to the Israelites. Why? Perhaps so that through the plagues, the Egyptians would see that the gods they served were powerless. Or perhaps, so the Israelites would experience the powerlessness of the Egyptian gods and place their trust in God alone.

A Sidebar: In Exodus 4:22-23 God refers to the Israelites as “my firstborn son.” God’s covenant with Abraham revolved around this one particular people. But perhaps in this reference to the Israelites as the “firstborn,” there is an implicit reminder that God’s vision for the world encompasses a much larger family that extends beyond this or any particular people.

But back to our story. God eventually delivers the Israelites from slavery. Their “salvation is not just from something, it is also to something: to service to the Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of the covenant” (Gladding, 72). The Israelites—and indeed, all of God’s people throughout the arc of time, including us—are called to be faithful to the covenant with God by embodying God’s promises of restoration, reconciliation, and re-creation in ways that invite others into relationship with God.

So while God has delivered them from the bondage of slavery, their journey is not yet over. The Israelites are not as quick to recognize and embrace the call to serve their God. And so God does not immediately lead them to the promised land. Instead, God guides them on a long journey through the wilderness, faithfully meeting their needs and shaping them for faithful service as mediators of God’s covenant, partners in God’s mission to heal a broken and hurting world.

It is in the wilderness that God gives the people the Torah, the Law. The Law is not just a set of rules, rather it is a set of “practices to shape their new life of freedom together—practices that would protect them from themselves, from the fear and anxiety that pervades humanity and from the darkest impulses that had been shaped in them from being enslaved…(transforming) them from a group of slaves into a holy nation—people made in the image of God who would reveal the character of God to the peoples around them” (Gladding, 89-90). To truly liberate them, God needs not only to bring them out of Egypt, but to draw Egypt out of them.

With the gift of the Torah, God renews the covenant with the people: observe my commandments—embody the knowledge that I am your God with heart, soul, and might—and you will be blessed, fail to observe my commandments and you will be cursed (these blessings and curses are outlined in Deuteronomy 28). But it is important to note, that the Israelites are not called to live by God’s commandments to earn God’s favor, but in response to God’s unconditional love and care for them.

Of course, it doesn’t take them long to forget God’s hessed love for them and subsequently to forget the covenant they made with God. Just days later, in an act of radical disobedience, they make the golden calf and Moses has to plead with God to remember the covenant and extend mercy to the people. This is not the first or last time the people doubt and Moses intervenes. Throughout their long sojourn in the wilderness, this becomes a pattern. And there are consequences. Those who God freed from bondage in Egypt, never set foot in the Promised Land. Only after they die does the new generation stand poised on the banks of the Jordan River, ready to enter the Promised Land. And in those moments, Moses once again addresses the people, encouraging them to renew their covenant with God, to embrace life as God’s people, holy and beloved (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

Through the Exodus and during the wilderness years that followed, God came near to the Israelites, revealing both God’s name and God’s character, dwelling among them in the Tabernacle, and shaping the people into a holy and beloved community ready to worship their God and embrace their mission as God’s partners with faithfulness.

God’s Story is a story of liberation. Like the Israelites, we are often held captive by events, circumstances, and attitudes that prevent us from naming, claiming, and living into our true identity as God’s people, holy and beloved. We continually need to experience a new Exodus, an exodus from all that enslaves, all that distances us from God and one another: greed, envy, complacency, violence, selfishness, self-sufficiency, pride, and the list goes on. We need God to come near and liberate us from our bondage to sin and into our call to serve our God in a way that genuinely reflects God’s character marked by hessed love (defined as lovingkindness, mercy, and compassion) so that all of creation might come to know God.

This month we enter the season of Lent. Lent is a time for reflection, repentance, and renewed commitment. As you move through this season, I invite you into a time of reflection. From what do you need to be liberated? To what is God calling you that you might more fully reflect God’s character?

As a district, we are also embarking on a new round of the Sending of the Seventy. The theme for this round is how we are being called to serve our neighbors. The Torah was and is not intended to exclude, but to give form and shape to the identity of all God’s people. In fact, embedded in the Torah is a deep reverence for life, a commitment to care for and protect the vulnerable and marginalized. As persons created in the image of God—individually and corporately—our identity is shaped by God’s hessed love for us and for the world. Our faithfulness to the vision of extending God’s lovingkindness, mercy, and compassion to the most vulnerable reflects our faithfulness to our covenant with God. Who are your neighbors? What are their needs? What are some practical ways you can meet those needs and bear witness to God’s lovingkindness, mercy, and compassion?

Sing: Obey My Voice (Hymnal: A Worship Book, 163)