Settling for Scraps

Exodus 33: 12-23, OT page 80 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have said to me, ‘Bring up this people’; but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you and find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” The Lord said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And Moses said to the Lord, “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people, unless you go with us? In this way, we shall be distinct, I and your people, from every people on the face of the earth.” The Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you have asked; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And the Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” the Lord said, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” Sermon Every once in a while when we were kids, maybe once a month or so, my Mom had dinner with her book club, and when that happened my Father was in charge of feeding us supper. I don’t know what that meant in your family, but for my sister, brother, and me, our Father cooking supper meant that he’d drive us to the local grocery store, lead us to the sardines, and then he’d say, “Pick out whatever you want!” Nothing could have been so wonderful, that’s how we felt about it, until things changed, the chief change being that we heard about a place called Chucky Cheese – which is the kind of place that has ski-ball, video games, a ball pit, soft-drinks, and pizza – all of which cast a harsh light on the sardine section of our local Ingle’s Grocery Store. I imagine that this is the way things are supposed to progress – we go from a place of satisfaction with simple things, moving on to something better – and while I’d today compare Chucky Cheese pizza to cardboard topped with ketchup and cheese, that’s only because I’ve moved on ever farther from the sardine section. Life is a journey – and we move from one phase of the journey to the next – progressing on from one thing to the other, and we could think of the Exodus this way. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt but Moses led them by the hand like a flock out from the sardine section and towards the glory of the Promised Land. The only problem is that they made their home in Egypt, they were slaves there, and slaves can grow used to slavery. Therefore, when the Lord sent Moses to invite them to freedom, to go and experience something even better, they wanted Moses to leave them alone. Moses went to Pharaoh calling him to let the people go – to free them from oppression, and we think of Pharaoh’s hardened heart as the greatest obstacle that stands between Israel and her freedom – but in reality – there is a greater obstacle still. Back in Exodus chapter 32 which we read just last week - “The Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people.” This statement reminds me of an age old theological question – the irresistible force paradox it’s called: “Can God create a stone so heavy that not even God is strong enough to lift it?” – the reality that Scripture presents is that our God can do many things, move mountains, topple empires, create the universe in all its glory, but our God is continually defied by the stubbornness of the human heart. Can God create something that God cannot move or change? The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people,’” because even after being set free from Pharaoh’s oppression, still the people are slow to accept freedom, being so quick to fall back into idolatry and disobedience. The people are stiff-necked. They are obstinate, stubborn. Rather than give thanks for manna in the wilderness, the people complained. Rather than trust that the Lord would quench their thirst by providing fresh water to drink, the people doubted. Rather than worship the Lord, they built for themselves a Golden Calf. And rather than live by God’s Commandments, they are disobedient, so the Lord is done, for the Lord wanted nothing but to bring these people freedom, happiness, joy – wanting nothing so much as that their joy would be complete, however they are too stiff necked to do their part. The great Christian author, CS Lewis, wrote that we are all like children making mud pies in a dark back alley, only an invitation has come that we hesitate to accept – an invitation to go and experience the ocean. All that the child must do is accept the invitation, get up from the ally way and go – but so often the child stays right there, like a dog grown used to the scraps that fall from the table, too afraid to ask for anything more, and maybe we do so because that’s how the world has taught us to be. To stay in our place, accept our lot, be happy with what we have, and don’t ask for anything more. Get used to giving things up. Don’t try too hard for anything. Don’t put up a fight – just be a nice, polite, Christian who doesn’t cause a fuss and doesn’t ask for too much. The problem is that the heroes of the Bible who are lifted up as the great examples of what it means to be faithful are not demure, nor are they passive, nearly so much as the faithful are the ones who demand more out of life and more out of God. “Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”” The disciples didn’t want to reward a woman for such a request. They didn’t want to entertain the demands of a Canaanite woman who couldn’t even ask politely, but instead just came right out and started shouting. “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us,” and no one should shout, especially not in polite company. “Lord, help me,” she couldn’t stop saying, so finally Jesus said to her in a moment of human frustration, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!” And her daughter was healed instantly, because it is human to be stiff necked and stubborn, to accept the prejudices of a sin sick society without question, on the other hand, it is divine to listen and to change. The Lord’s response to you is not definitive this Scripture lesson tells us, as though just because the door that you knocked on was not answered the first time you knocked – you must keep knocking because our God is still listening. Sometimes it the case that we should give up and be thankful for what we have – but other times that longing in your heart – it’s not telling you to change your expectations or to wait until the blessing falls in your lap – that longing in your heart is telling you that there are some things worth asking for – even if you have to ask for them again and again and again. I know that it’s true, because the other thing that I’ve learned since those days of eating sardines for dinner – is that my father would have taken us to Chucky Cheese; because when fathers are left alone with their children for the night they are afraid and they are desperate, and they will go to extreme lengths to make their children happy. My father would have taken us to Chucky Cheese in a second – had we only been bold enough to ask – and the glory of God is revealed to Moses, not because he was a polite little boy who waited his turn and took whatever good things came his way – Moses saw the glory of the Lord from the cleft in the rock because he was bold enough to ask. We learned it somewhere or another. Maybe it was from the ones who would rather deal with sheep than men and women, but the Lord did not create you so that you might settle for whatever scraps fall from the table. “Know your place,” they said to that Canaanite woman, and do you know that the Israelites in Egypt knew theirs too. “Know your place,” the world says, and don’t go looking for blessings, don’t go dreaming big dreams, learn to expect little and need less and pray measly little prayers that if they ask for anything it’s apologetically and meekly – “Lord, if it is your will, if you would see this request worthy of your time, because certainly I don’t want to be one of those people who demands too much out of life – my mother trained me to be happy the scraps from the table.” “Know your place,” the world says – and settle for the scraps, but what if the place the Lord intended you to occupy isn’t the place that the world has assigned to you? “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” If you’re anything like me, you know when not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The blessings that you have now you don’t want to go taking for granted, and so you hold on as tightly as you can. But what if the Lord intends to increase your joy and to make it complete? What if the Lord intends for you more, should you only have the courage to ask? Amen.