Listen now to this sermon by Pastor Brooks on the prophet Moses and his need for the support of a community. This sermon is part of a year long series that devotes the first Sunday of the month to learning in depth about a biblical prophet.
Second Scripture Reading—Exodus 24: 4-11
There is an intimate and poignant scene in the book of Exodus that often gets overlooked. Moses and the people of Israel are in the midst of the wilderness. For reasons unknown to us, Moses had earlier sent away his wife Zipporah and their two sons to live with his father-in-law Jethro. We might imagine it had to do with the unique stresses and strains of Moses’s life. He not only faced the task of surviving in the wilderness. He faced the task of leadership in the wilderness. This meant that the burden of everyone’s survival feel upon his shoulders. When food and water were in short supply, it was Moses who received the criticisms and complaints. As the father figure for a crabby and cranky group in difficult and desperate circumstances, it might have been challenging for Moses to be a father to his own family. We might further imagine that the departure of Moses’s family came in anticipation of armed attacks by enemies. Moses may well have wanted to keep his family safe.
The poignant scene that I have in mind comes right after an attack. Jethro brings Moses’s family for a visit. During this visit, Jethro witnesses first hand the enormous weight that Moses is forced to carry. From morning until evening, the Israelites come to Moses with their problems and disputes. Moses was kind of like a single parent driving a van full of kids across country. He had to keep them on the road to their final destination, while also keeping the peace in the backseats. “Remember the rules. No hitting your sister.” If you ever wanted to understand the purpose of the Ten Commandments, it’s all about keeping the peace in the backseats. As this analogy suggests, it is fairly clear what Moses needed. He needed more than the help of a babysitter. He needed a seasoned veteran. He needed a grandparent.
And, that’s exactly what he got. Fortunately, for Moses, he had a close relationship with Jethro. Like the compassionate father Moses never had, Jethro sees what’s going on in Moses’s life, and he says, “You know you’re wearing yourself out. You can’t do this alone.” There is something powerful about simply having a caring person recognize what you are going through. I know it can be extremely easy to observe someone’s hardships and quickly jump to problem solving and offering advice, but what often helps is first letting a person in pain know that you can see what they are contending with. What’s particularly powerful about Jethro’s words is that in the very act of observing Moses’s loneliness he is also ending the loneliness. We can imagine how Moses must have felt. “Wow, someone gets it. Someone knows what I am going through.”
Like a good grandparent, Jethro then gives some solid advice: Moses needs a team of elders to help shoulder the load. When you can’t do it alone, do it with others. Do it as a community. This message couldn’t be any more timely for us today. Not only do we live in a culture that practices and promotes a rugged and ragged individualism, but we live in a time when spirituality has increasingly become a do-it-yourself affair. We can weave together a life of prayer, meditation, and psychotherapy without ever being a part of a community. There is a sense in which simply walking through the doors of a church on Sunday morning has become a counter-cultural act that says, “I can’t do this alone. I need a community. I want to be on my faith journey with others.”
In the context of our larger culture, I can honestly see how some of what we do inside these walls might seem not only counter-cultural but a little strange to some outsiders. Consider communion, for example. I have had people come to me privately and confess how they have some hang ups over the whole association of blood with communion. I get that. Our scripture for today actually presents what might be considered one of the original templates for communion. Just as Moses ate with the elders in establishing the covenant, Jesus ate with the disciples in reaffirming the covenant.
As you heard earlier, in the original template, Moses didn’t go light on the blood. The original template can seem like the Texas chainsaw version of communion. Moses dashes the blood on the people. Culturally, this can be very foreign to our sensibilities, but let’s think about this for a moment. All of us have heard the expression, “Blood is thicker than water,” and it doesn’t gross us out. In ancient times, they essentially turned this expression into a ritual. When a solemn and sacred agreement was reached, you acknowledged it with the bond of blood. When the covenant was established between God and the Israelites, it was only natural that Moses would signify the most sacred of bonds with blood. Moses was essentially saying, “This isn’t some watered down relationship. We are with God through thick and thin. This relationship is as thick as blood.” In the gospels, Jesus is presented as a new Moses, so it makes sense that he is going to evoke one of the defining moments in the life of Moses and the history of Israel. Jesus wants to keep the relationship with God as thick as blood, so he references the original blood of the covenant.
With this said, some of us might still wonder why it’s important that we reenact the last supper each month. A scholar named Michael Walzer sheds some light on this. In talking about the bond of the covenant, Walzer notes that repeatedly in the Bible the covenant is renewed. One of the reasons is because the covenant is voluntary on the part of humans. Sometimes we stray away from it, we neglect it, we backslide or sideways slide. As a result, we continually need to reestablish and reaffirm our commitment, our connection to God. The beauty of communion is that in reenacting the event that represents our commitment we are also creating in our lives a regular dinner date with God. Another reason the reenactment of the last supper is important is because it defines and draws us together as a community as only a ritual can. A ritual is a community practice and habit. It’s our way of being nourished and fed on our collective journey, because we realize we can’t do it alone. We need God, and we need each other.
Moses has been called the father of all prophets, and maybe one of the central roles of prophets is to call us to the dinner table. Sometimes that call might be comforting. It might recognize that we are hurting and in need of spiritual TLC. At other times that call might be challenging and even abrasive. “Get your tush to the dinner table.” This call recognizes when our society has turned away from God through idolatry and greed, violence and injustice. Is our society in such a moment right now? What do you imagine the prophet saying to us today? However we imagine the state of our society at present, the prophet is always seeking to draw us closer to God.
The act of drawing closer to God inevitably draws us closer to others. Ultimately, the sharing that takes place at the dinner table with God is but a practice run for the sharing that we are to do with others in the larger world. The early church leader John Chrysostom referred to communion as the smaller of two acts of worship. He said that if in the process of sharing bread with someone else you should find yourself remembering the poor, then upon leaving the church you should participate in the larger act of worship that is life lived with the poor. In other words, when we actively care for others and live in solidarity with them, then we are in fact worshiping God. On this World Communion Sunday, we might challenge ourselves to think of how what we do in worship at this table is a dress rehearsal for the global justice that the poor and hungry need today. Let us listen to the call of the prophets. Let us come to the communion table. Let us renew our commitment to God, and let us renew our commitment to the poor and oppressed throughout the world. Amen.