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Foundry United Rev. |
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On the Edge of Promise: Giants and Grasshoppers Sunday, March 4, 2007 |
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Numbers 13: 21-33 |
What
keeps us stuck on the edge of promise? What keeps us going round in circles
in the wilderness instead of crossing the I am fascinated
by the story of the journey of the Israelites from slavery in I am
fascinated by this story because I think it is more than the story of the
Israelites in the Bible. I think it is the story of every freedom movement,
the story of every society being born, the story of every congregation in
mission, and – most of all – it is my story and it is your story. I would
like us to spend this Lent thinking about what kept the Israelites stuck at
the edge of promise, and what they finally had to do to make it across the Last
Sunday and this Sunday we are looking at Numbers 13. Numbers 13 takes place
about two years after the Israelites have escaped slavery in But the
Israelites were not ready and because they weren’t ready, they stayed stuck
in the wilderness another 38 years. Here’s
what happens in Numbers 13. God
wants to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land but they have no vision
of the Promised Land. No idea of what it might be like. They don’t know if
the land is rich or poor, whether the people who live there are weak or
strong, they don’t even know whether there are trees there. The
Israelites are driven only by the bitter memory of the negative past which
they are trying to escape and have no vision of the promise they are to
become. If we
are fixated on a negative past that we are running away from, with no vision
of a positive promise which draws us, the pain of the past will continue to
shape us and hold us in its grip. We will be merely reactionary and we will
not be able to enter our promised land. This is
why movements, and societies, and congregations, and you and I need healing
from the pain of our pasts in order to claim our promise. We need analysis
and therapy and healing and perspective, so that we can stop being shaped by
pain and begin to live into the positive vision of our Promise. So, in
Numbers 13, God has the Israelites send spies into the Promised Land to see
how good and rich the land of freedom is. We need
to be spies in our own Promised Lands. Let me say for our Pre-Cana class that
this is what dating is – being a spy in the Promised Land of love…testing out
your promise for intimacy and caring and partnership. You’ve been spies in
the Promised Land of love and now you are getting ready to settle down there.
Sometimes
job interviews we go on or even jobs we take are spy trips into possible vocational
Promised Lands. Freedom
movements experiment with new ways of being in the political and social
world. The
church’s job is to be spies in the Promised Land of God’s kingdom. We are to
be the community who try to live together in the world as though God’s
kingdom were already fully here. In
Numbers 13 God has the Israelites send spies into the Promised Land. The
spies are amazed. The Promised Land of freedom is wonderful … grapes so large
that it takes two people just to carry one cluster … pomegranates the size of
a man’s head and figs the size of fists … milk and honey flowing in the
streets. The
Promised Land of freedom is a paradise…except for one problem. The people who
live there seem to the Israelite spies to be giants. In comparison to the
giants occupying the land, the Israelite spies feel like grasshoppers next to
them. It is
this perception that keeps the Israelites out of the Promised Land and roaming
in the wilderness on the edge of promise for 38 more years. Here’s
what happened to the Israelite spies: They got a vision of the Promised Land,
they got a sense of the Promised Land, but they couldn’t see themselves in
it. They couldn’t imagine that they belonged in their own Promised Land. They
thought it was a Promised Land for somebody else…for giants who really
deserved it. It can
happen to us too. Our Promised Land is a wonderful place but it doesn’t seem
to belong to us…it belongs to giants…and we aren’t giants, we are grasshoppers.
We really aren’t up to a Promised Land of love or freedom or peace. So the
Israelite spies, except for Caleb, bring back a negative report, saying that
there are giants in the land and that there is no place for us Israelites
there. We aren’t big enough. We aren’t smart enough. We aren’t good enough. It is
all perception, of course. The Israelites were as big and as smart and as
good as anybody. They just couldn’t perceive it. They were scared. So instead
of claiming their Promised Land, they gave away their power. This is
what happens when we are scared to enter our Promised Lands. We give away our
power to become our promise. Think
how dependent we become on the approval of others. Needing the approval of others
is a way of giving away our power and never claiming our promise. If we
let ourselves feel like grasshoppers in the midst of giants, we come to need
the approval of others. We need their praise and we are destroyed by their
criticism. We turn others into giants and give them power over our lives. Who do
we give power to? Why? Do we still need our parent’s approval? Are we
dependent upon our partner’s approval? Our supervisor’s approval? Our
teacher’s approval? Who do we give our power to? It commonly
happens, I think, with freedom movements that those seeking their freedom
begin the movement still needing the approval of the people whom they are
trying to become free from. I think
a pivotal turning point in the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King was the Eight
liberal clergymen, including two Methodist bishops, had issued a public
statement criticizing Dr. King’s Dr.
King’s response was 12 pages long. He usually did not respond to criticism,
but this criticism got to him and made him articulate and powerful. Dr.
King had gotten his theology degrees at Crozer, a white liberal Baptist
Seminary and I think
until He wrote in his letter:
“I must make [an] honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish
brothers.…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate [he means liberal]. I have almost reached
the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his
stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux
Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to
justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I
agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct
action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another [person’s]
freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises
the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from
people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from
people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than
outright rejection.” It was King’s
declaration of independence from white liberals – his giants. It did not mean he
would not work with white liberals, it did not mean he wouldn’t accept their
affirmation or consider their criticisms. It did mean that he would no longer
need their approval. The reason this is
important is because a grasshopper and a giant can’t really have an authentic
relationship. We cannot really be in community with the people we turn into
giants. Or the people we turn into grasshoppers. The only real giant in
our lives is God. God is the only one whose approval we really need. And the
biblical story says that God stopped being a giant and took on the form of humanity
who dwelt among us so that, instead of being a giant, God might become our
friend. This is what we
experience in this Holy Communion. God sits at table with us and eats with us
and drinks with us. And we eat and drink with one another. No giants. No grasshoppers.
But a Promised Land in which we are all valued, all included, all loved. We invite you to this
table today…this Promised Land. Step
over your River www.foundryumc.org |
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