The New Creation of Re-membering
At the beginning of August I started a new position as a Director of Discipleship at a “Shmedium” (that’s an official technical term) Progressive church in Houston. This is a Sermon turned Blog for the Lectionary texts for September 17, 2023.
Click the links to read the scripture texts: Exodus 14:19–31 (Parting of the Red Sea) and Matthew 18:21–35 (Parable of the Unforgiving Servant)
I’ve done some exploring around Houston, but honestly it’s been quite hot outside and I’ve found myself on the couch with my pups and watching a lot of TV. Every time I turned on Netflix the same thing kept popping up and playing an ad for this show called “Suits”. If you haven’t seen or heard of it- essentially it’s like NCIS or Criminal Minds but with Lawyers. There’s always a problem and they always fix it in an episode or two. With that, I am convinced that the writer of the show must have been a Calvinist or Presbyterian who believed in total depravity, because what I learned in this show is that there is always someone who has done something worse than you have.
That’s it. That’s what I’ve learned. There’s always turmoil and conflict and learning how to work together in community. A cycle of broken commitments, trust, forgiveness with a little justice sprinkled in- over and over again. This cycle isn’t just built for tv shows, but it’s a cycle we participate within in our own lives- but maybe with a tad bit less drama? Or maybe not, I don’t know, but I do know that learning how to live in community is something we encounter in scripture, and something we’re encountering in today’s readings.
In our scripture lessons for today we have two different communities learning how to trust their new leader. We have the Israelites following Moses and the disciples following Jesus. With their stories, we learn more about what it means to trust God and be within an authentic community together.
When we drop into Exodus we find the Spirit of God leading the Israelites through the desert via a Pillar that is cloud by day and fire by night. Seems strange, but hey this story started with a not burning on fire shrub, so sure. This Pillar went ahead to lead God’s people to the edge of the desert right up to the sea, and then turned around to be between them and Pharaoh’s army. As you can imagine, this does not thrill or comfort the Israelites. Starting in Chapter 14 verse 11 we read that they say to Moses:
“Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt that you took us away to die in the desert? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt like this? 12 Didn’t we tell you the same thing in Egypt? ‘Leave us alone! Let us work for the Egyptians!’ It would have been better for us to work for the Egyptians than to die in the desert.”13 But Moses said to the people, “Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never ever see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you. You just keep still.”
Of course, in the midst of Moses trying to chill everyone out God tells them to, and I quote: “Get moving!” God has been at work, is at work and is ready. God is in the business of resurrection, and God is ready to create a new thing in the midst of the fearful and faithless. Though Pharaoh let them go, they are not yet free, and God is ready to make good on God’s promise of liberation.
The scripture tells us in verse 21, “The Lord pushed the sea back by a strong east wind all night” This wind, this “Roo-akh” is the same spirit that we meet in Genesis chapter 1 verse 2 — this same wind that hovered over the face of the deep, now splits the sea. This is a hint to the reader that it’s not just a strange thing that God is doing, but a new thing. We can anticipate a new creation about to spring forth. Liberation is a resurrection story — and resurrection can only be accomplished through the death of oppression and enslavement. There is no freedom without the breaking of chains. Through the breaking of the waters, liberation and freedom are born.
In this narrative, Pharaoh’s army represents the enslavement of fellow humanity, systems of oppression, and feeling powerful over God. They are in the midst of the chaos of their own creation. Professor Dr. Anathea Portier -Young explains the falling of the wave walls this way :
It shows the end result of an economy built on forced labor, exploitation, and domination. In refusing to let God’s people go, Pharaoh leads his own people to their grave. The gaze of God undoes his vision of mastery; the waters of new creation dismantle his chariots and drown the machinery of war and abduction.
“Justice” some would call this. We teach a binary of “right” and “wrong” from an early age. Anyone with littles, or has been a youngster (or maybe as an adult) can probably recall a time in which the phrase, “but that’s not fair!” has been stated. This is unjust! Justice is a difficult word to nail down, because who gets the last word on what exactly justice is? I go back and forth and who’s it is to bring justice. Is it ours or is it God’s? I can’t help but to think of Micah 6:8 which says, “ He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.”
In my sermons and my writings I like to wander a bit in my wonder. I wonder if part of this liberation is the start of the Israelites beginning to be able to trust their own stories and memories. I have heard many a sermon that talks about the fickle nature of the Israelite people and their grumbling, but I wonder if their forgetfulness was actually something like a trauma response to not being able to trust their own story. I wonder how many of the enslavers told the enslaved, “it’s not that bad,” “you’re lucky actually, because the older generations had it worse,” different sayings over and over again until they started to believe it. I have a pastor friend who says that the opposite of remembering isn’t to forget but rather to dis-member, and I believe this dis-membering of story and community that leads to forgetting to be a sinful act.
I was listening to an episode of an NPR podcast called “Code Switch” that tackles conversations around race, and this week the episode was called “Remembering and Unremembering,” where they discuss the experience being Black in America and the gaslighting of their stories of trauma. Dr. Learotha Willams Jr. was one of the people they interviewed, and though his formal title is, Associate Professor of African American, Civil War and Reconstruction, and Public History at Tennessee State University, when asked what he does he said this : “I’m a professor that looks at memory, but at the same time amnesia, and looking at who determines what we remember and what we forget.” Dr. Williams Jr is the coordinator for the North Nashville Heritage Project which works to re-member the history of Back Enslaved Americans in Nashville. To add historical markers for the massacres, and shine light on the pioneers. To tell stories that re-member community.
Speaking of stories, this week news came out from The International Organization for Migration (IOM) — where there’s a reported 686 deaths and disappearances of migrants on the US-Mexico border in 2022 alone. This makes it the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide on record. In a state that has laws around how we teach and tell stories around race and history in America, I can’t help but wonder what stories we make space for listening to. What stories we make space for telling, and how we will tell this story. Who might we be in the story of if the Rio Rande split as people exodus toward a land that denies them?
I was struggling with my writing as I found myself weary of injustice, and I know and you know — because we’ve listened to this morning’s gospel reading — what comes at the end of the story for the ungrateful servant and well, it’s not great. It’s at this moment when I began to wonder again about justice and whose it is. I’m going to wonder aloud — I wonder if Justice belongs to the Lord because we, as wrong doers, can’t make things perfect — even though as good Methodists we strive for it. I wonder if the story of the Israelites and the “be still” is a promise in waiting that all will be made perfect and right in Christ.
I began doing word studies (like the well trained seminary-graduate that I am) on the words “just” and “justice” and to be frank got frustrated. Everything I could find tied into court talk and we’re back at the Suits TV show where humans are flawed and how could we possibly see true justice on this side of heaven?! Then I decided to search the word “mercy” because that’s what was shown by the king to the servant at the beginning of today’s parable. Wouldn’t you know that the Hebrew word used for mercy can also be translated as “womb.” Mercy breaks ground for a new thing to be born. Mercy breaks the wheel of the cycle of retribution. Mercy is an incubator for restorative justice, putting to death what “should be” and giving life to what “could be”. Through the breaking of the waters, liberation and freedom are born. Re-membering community is God at work doing a new thing.
The ultimate question : How can we learn to be better neighbors and community members, and how can we help to re-member through mercy? The good news in today’s readings is that justice will prevail. God has created and is creating and will create. Like we’re reminded in the lament in Amos, the Spirit, “will let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream”. In Matthew we and the disciples learn about Jesus’s grace. We learn that being in community means forgiving 7 times 77 times. We learn that our responsibility to our fellow community members is to make sure they know grace. That they know forgiveness. That they know that we will stand up when wrong doings happen. That we aren’t fearful in the re-membering, and we take part in the storytelling and the story listening. We are called into uncomfortable places that won’t always be spaces that profit us. Being in right community is trusting who leads us, and knowing that with God’s love we are in good hands.
Forgiveness is a tricky thing, especially when we’re the ones who need the forgiving. In seminary they teach us that we often read ourselves into the stories of scripture, and we usually read ourselves into the place of the lost or of the hero. It’s uncomfortable to read ourselves into place of the oppressor, and yet each week we repeat our prayers of confession, of our trespasses without even giving it a second thought.
We say familiar words to each other every week.
You are forgiven.
Peace be with you.
You are loved.
To bring this writing to an end, I leave you with a question:
How might our communities be different if we opened new conversations with the same words we open our service with? “I’m sorry for not loving you neighbor. I have not heard the cry of the needy. Won’t you forgive me, and tell me your story?”
