Tumbling Theology

The church in Luther’s time had built barriers, created obstacles that prevented people from experiencing the liberating power of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Obstacles like worship in Latin, a language that no one spoke. The people would go to church and not understand what was being said. Likewise, scripture, the holy books on which we base our faith, were not available to people in their own language. How could you know the good news, the comfort and wisdom of scripture, if you couldn’t read it? There were other obstacles. Few people were literate, few people were educated at all. One of the most enduring legacies of the Reformation is its emphasis on education for all people, even the poor. But the problem ran deeper than that. In Luther’s time, even priests were often illiterate. The very people who were supposed to teach the faith were woefully ignorant. Luther saw these and other obstacles to the gospel. He wanted liturgy and scripture to be available in the common language of the people, and so he translated the whole Bible into German. He wanted priests and laypeople alike to be educated about their faith, so he wrote catechisms and advocated for education. Luther also perceived a deep well of fear and anxiety that kept people from the good news. Luther himself experienced it—never knowing if he was good enough, always worrying that his faith was not sufficient, desperately trying to do more to earn God’s favor. You could go to confession, you could buy indulgences, you could say prayers... but was it enough? How could you know? In reading the Bible, and especially in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Luther discovered something amazing: the concept of grace. We heard it today: “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus... For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” It became one of the central articles of the Augsburg Confession, the foundation for Lutheran teachings and theology. Specifically, it’s known as Article Four: “We cannot be justified before God by our own powers, merits or works. But we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace for Christ’s sake through faith.”

The Reformation was about breaking down the obstacles that stood between people and the gospel, this amazing message of grace. Whether it was translating the Bible, or educating clergy and laypeople, or proclaiming justification by grace, Luther and the other reformers broke down those barriers and changed the church in drastic ways.

But the Reformation isn’t just a historical event from five centuries ago. It’s ongoing. Whenever obstacles arise that keep people from the gospel, reformers arise, too, to break down those obstacles once again. It happened five hundred years ago. And the reforming work of the church has continued, down to the present day. It happens when churches proclaim the gospel in the language of the people—whether that language is German, or English, or Spanish, or Swahili. It happens when the church opens the door for leaders of all kinds: women as well as men, people of color, people whose first language isn’t English, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. People who have a calling to bring the gospel into their communities and into all the places that most need to hear the good news. It happens when the church tears down its own idols, the sacred cows that have gotten in the way of our faith in the living God. Sometimes those idols look like using a certain hymnal or a certain style of music, or being fixated on the location of the baptismal font, or the color of the carpet in the sanctuary, or the kind of wine that’s used for communion. Sometimes those idols look like the expectations we place on one another to act a certain way, dress a certain way, behave a certain way, in order to be “respectable” enough for church.

In the church today, there are obstacles to the gospel, and the job of reformers is to break down those obstacles. It’s not a comfortable process. What Martin Luther started led to cataclysmic change in European Christianity. People thought the world was ending. Reformation is hard, painful work. But it’s essential. It’s essential because those obstacles must be broken down. Those barriers must be destroyed, so that people can access the gospel. So that people can hear the good news. So that the truth can make us free. I spoke before about a movement in the church today known as Decolonize Lutheranism. It’s a reforming movement, a movement that is protest-ant in the fundamental sense. It’s a group of people within the church looking around and saying, “Hey, there are barriers being put in the way of people hearing the good news, and it’s time for those barriers to come down.”

Just a few weeks ago, this movement, which started online, had its first in-person gathering. I want to share a reflection from a Lutheran pastor who was there. Her name is Lura Groen, and this is what she wrote: “Lutherans—the church of our childhood is dead. For better and for worse. We will never again feel those feelings, have those experiences. Lutheranism as we know it today is dying, and will die. “The dominance of Germanic [and] Scandinavian culture is our churches is over. The church of white, middle class assumptions about communication, leadership, and institutional success is failing. Full time professional [pastors]... and slightly updated hymnals aren’t saving us. Our congregations, and our denomination, have dying numbers. “But God is doing a new thing. God is creating a Lutheranism we can’t even dream of. God is creating communities of grace, and will always call us into unconditional love. I have seen only glimpses of what the new Church will look like. We need to discover it together. But it is beautiful. It will give you, me, us, new life. And we have a choice: mourn the old, and continue to live in death, or jump into the new thing God is doing. “Our choice won’t change God’s love. If we choose to stay in the old, God will climb down in the grave with us, and hold us as we grieve. But our choices together will determine the survival of our congregations, our denomination. And if we choose new life, God will dance with us, will be the breath in our song and the rhythm in our bones. In the end, we will be saved either way. But a new salvation, a glimpse of infinite life, is here for us now. Do you want in to the new Church God is creating? I do. And you’re invited too.”

So I want to encourage you to try the other way of understanding the parable, the hard way. And in order to do this, I want to set the parable in a context that will be a little more familiar to us. Imagine that you are in Washington, D.C. in the present—October 23rd, 2016. You are standing outside the National Cathedral, a grand neo-Gothic building there on Wisconsin Avenue. And there at the National Cathedral, you see two people: the candidates for president. This year’s presidential election has been brutal. The candidates are unpopular and divisive. I’m sure just bringing this up is making the average blood pressure in the room rise. Bear with me.

Think first about the candidate you prefer. The one that you will vote for or have already voted for, if you voted early. Your candidate stands at the entry to the National Cathedral and prays: “God, I thank you for bringing me to this point, where I might be elected president of the United States in just a few weeks. I thank you for the people who have supported me. I thank you that I am not like my opponent. I am honest, trustworthy, reliable. I will do good for this country.” Now think about the other candidate, the one you aren’t voting for, the one you don’t want to be president, the one who infuriates you. That candidate stands a little ways away, looking down at their feet, and prays: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” There’s no confession of their particular sins, no promise to change, no real proof of remorse. Human nature being what it is, this person is probably going to go right back to what they were doing before the prayer.

If you’ve got that image in your head, imagine Jesus saying to you, “That person—the one you can’t stand, the one you think is horrible—that person went home justified, rather than the other.” Now you know how Jesus’ original audience would have felt. “Are you kidding me, Jesus? That jerk was justified by God?! They didn’t deserve it! It was all just an act! How could God be stupid enough to fall for that false humility?” You see, for us, Pharisees and tax collectors don’t really get our blood boiling. But for Jesus’ disciples, they would have. Tax collectors, in particular, were hated by the Jewish community. Even though tax collectors were Jewish themselves, they worked for the Empire—for Rome. They collected taxes for Rome, took money from fellow Jewish people and gave it to the occupiers. And as if that weren’t bad enough, tax collectors were notorious for lining their own pockets, too, taking a little extra from their neighbors, their own community, so they could live comfortably. Tax collectors were hated. And the hatred, the divisiveness, the vitriol of this presidential campaign gives us a clue into just how the parable would have gone over among Jesus’ original audience. The idea that a tax collector, who worked for the empire, who lined his own pockets with poor people’s money, could be justified just because he asked for mercy—it would have been infuriating. It’s as infuriating as thinking about God justifying the politician you can’t stand, the one you can’t believe anyone would support. I tell you, this one went home justified rather than the other.

This parable isn’t really about presidential politics. In Jesus’ parable, the Pharisee looks down on others, regards them with contempt. The Pharisee is so much better than those thieves, rogues, adulterers, and tax collectors. We do the same thing. We, too, regard others with contempt. Whether it’s people who hold different values than we do, or those who have made different choices, or those who simply don’t look or act the way we want them to—we look down, we sneer, we regard them with contempt. We draw lines, making barriers between “insiders” and “outsiders.” We, of course, are insiders. We’re the ones who are good people, who follow God faithfully, who vote the right way, who are upstanding citizens. Those “other people” are outsiders. We can’t stand them, and we can’t imagine God can stand them, either. We love to draw lines. We love to separate the insiders from the outsiders, the worthy from the unworthy, the humble from the self-righteous. We draw lines, pat ourselves on the back, and expect God to be on our side, on the inside.

Only—every time we draw lines between insiders and outsiders, we discover that God is on the side of the outsiders. When there’s a righteous Pharisee and a hated tax collector, we find God on the side of the tax collector. And that’s not the only time God crossed the lines we drew to keep out the bad sort of people. God sides with the unclean, with the outsiders, with Samaritans, with tax collectors. God is found eating and drinking with sinners. God is found among rabble-rousers and malcontents. Whenever we get comfortable and self-congratulatory for how righteous we are compared to “those people,” we can be sure that God is on the side of “those people.”

I said this parable wasn’t about presidential politics. But it kind of is. Especially right now, especially as we count down the days until the election, the lines are drawn clearer than ever. The anger and contempt is palpable. Everyone believes they are on the right side, the righteous side, and views anyone who disagrees with utter contempt. Whenever we draw lines, God is found on the outside. Whenever we try to build barriers that say, “In here, this is holy, this is good, this is righteous, this is where God is,” God always shows up elsewhere. God chooses the outsiders. God chooses the marginalized, the despised, the unrighteous.

All that leads us to the reading we heard this morning. “That same night,” the story goes, “he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone.” Alone. His group divided, his gifts sent, his prayers made, Jacob waits alone for the day that will bring him face-to-face with his brother Esau. And in that vigil, God shows up. At first, Genesis just says that “a man” wrestled with Jacob until daybreak. But we learn, as the story unfolds, that in fact Jacob has wrestled with God. God gives him a new name: “Your shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Jacob’s new name, his new identity, is based on the fact that he wrestled with God. And this wasn’t just a little boxing match—the word for “wrestling” literally means “getting dusty.” God and Jacob were rolling around in the dirt together. This was full-contact wrestling.

Jacob wrestled with God, that night, alone by the river, awaiting a reunion with his brother that might very well mean his death. Jacob wrestled with God all night long, until the sun was coming up, and even then, Jacob refused to let go. Why do I love this story so much? There are a lot of reasons. Today, I want to bring up two: the story of Jacob wrestling with God teaches us something about ourselves, and it teaches us something about God.

The story of Jacob wrestling with God teaches us something about ourselves. It teaches us something about our lives of faith. It teaches us something about the way we relate to God. You see, more often than not, faith is messy. Most of the time, it’s not perfect trust and simple, elegant prayers that always get answered in just the way we expect. No, our faith is much messier and much more complicated than that. Sometimes, our faith is us hedging our bets, just like Jacob did, hoping that we can solve problems with our own cleverness and asking God to help us out—just in case. Sometimes, faith is asking God to clean up messes of our own making, just like Jacob, who really had no one to blame for Esau’s anger but himself. Faith is difficult. You know that poem about footprints in the sand? Beautiful image, right? There you are, walking down a beach, and God is walking right by your side the whole way. It’s a beautiful image, but maybe it’s a little too simple. In my experience, faith is less like footprints in the sand, and more like getting down in the dirt and wrestling with God. And sure, I think we all wish faith could be easier, simpler, more elegant. But there’s something powerful in this image, a lonely human wrestling with God. A whole people—the people of Israel—defined as those who wrestle with God. Our faith is a lot like Jacob’s faith. Our relationship with God is like Jacob’s relationship with God. It’s not always easy and neat. Often, it’s messy. It’s difficult. But it’s oh-so-real. We get down in the dirt and we wrestle with God, because life is hard and faith is worth the effort.

I said this story teaches two lessons. It teaches us about ourselves, and it teaches us about God. Jacob is the man whose name is changed to mean “Wrestles with God.” But this story is as much about God as it is about Jacob. The God we find in this story is not a distant, remote God, far away in heaven, far away from the messiness of humanity. No, the God of Jacob—who is also the God of Abraham and Isaac, the God of Moses, the God who became flesh and blood as Jesus Christ—this is a God who is willing to get dirty. Jacob is the man who wrestled with God. And God—the God we worship—is the God who wrestled with Jacob. This is a God who shows up. Right in the midst of Jacob’s mess, God shows up. Jacob has an angry uncle he cheated behind him, and an angry bother he cheated ahead of him, he’s trying to buy his way out of his problems, he’s praying to God to cover for him, and God shows up. God shows up, not as a dream or a flash of lightning or a disembodied, heavenly voice. God shows up as a real, concrete, physical being who is willing to get down in the dirt and wrestle with Jacob.

This story shows us something incredibly important about the nature of God. God shows up, right in the midst of the messiest, most difficult parts of our lives. God is willing to get down in the muck and get dirty with us. God is willing to wrestle with us, because sometimes, we don’t know what else to do. God shows up. God is willing to get dirty. And I don’t think God does this with an impatient sigh, like, “Ugh, this again?” No, I think God loves this. I think God loves wrestling with us. Because God loves us—loves our messiness, loves our stubbornness, loves our imperfections.

God shows up because God loves us. God loved Jacob enough to wrestle with him, loved him enough to bless him, loved him enough to give him a new name and a new identity; a new life. God loves each and every one of you. Not just the good parts, not just the put-on-your-Sunday-clothes parts, not just the parts you think are maybe good enough for God. God loves all of you, the mess and the dirt and the mistakes, all of it. When we are in the most difficult times and places, God shows up there and wrestles with us, because God loves us. God loves our humanity. And just like with Jacob, God blesses us. God gives us a new name, a new identity: child of God. God gives us a new life.

In the messy, difficult parts of our lives, God shows up to wrestle with us, bless us, and transform us. And that goes not only for our lives as individuals, but also our lives together, our communities, our nation, our world. Jesus told a parable about a widow who was persistent in her search for justice. If even an unjust judge could be moved eventually, how much more so will God answer our cries for justice? There are parts of our shared life that are very broken. Racism, sexism, poverty, violence. Those are the parts of our world that most need God to show up, and those are the very places where God promises to show up. God will hear our prayers. God will meet us there, in the messy stuff, in the bad stuff. And God will transform us, transform our lives, transform our communities, transform our world, into something better, something more life-giving. Because that is who God is. That is what God does.

With Habakkuk, I pray... O Lord, why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Why do you make me see acts of terrorism: bombs set off in city streets, churches burned, mosques attacked? Why do you make me look at the anger and hatred and lack of compassion we unleash on one another? Destruction and violence are before me, Lord. It seems every time I turn on the news, I hear about more tragedies around the world. Children dying in Syria. Train crashes and natural disasters. Unarmed people shot and killed by police, sometimes even the very people who had called the police for help. It feels difficult to even keep track of these deaths. Two weeks ago, Terrence Crutcher was shot in Oklahoma while trying to deal with his broken-down vehicle. Just last week, outside of San Diego, Alfred Olange was shot after his sister called 911 seeking help for her brother, who was suffering from a mental breakdown. Another incident took place in Pasadena on Friday night, leaving Reginald Thomas dead. And at 9 o’clock last night, as I was reading over my sermon in preparation for this morning, I learned of yet yet another name: CJ Snell, shot by police in Los Angeles. Police officers have a difficult job, and most of them perform their work admirably, but there is a brokenness in our shared life that is becoming harder and harder to ignore. God, in this world of ours, the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. Those with money and privilege can take advantage of others, seemingly without consequence. Whether you look at the star athlete who is given no more than a slap on the wrist for sexual assault, or a millionaire executive who is never held responsible for the dishonest practices of his or her company, we see that judgment comes forth perverted.

The world is bloody and broken, O Lord. Injustice and inhumanity are all around. How long shall I cry to you for help? How long will you let this go on? Are you even listening, God? With Habakkuk, we cry out to God. Like Habakkuk, our lament is also an accusation: “Are you listening, God? You said you loved us, you said you would care for us, you said you were a God of justice and mercy, you said you were on the side of the victimized! So where are you?”

No wonder the disciples demanded of Jesus: “Increase our faith!” I feel like I need an increase of faith myself if things are going to keep on like this. God, if I have to keep looking at violence and injustice, wrong-doing and trouble, then you had better increase my faith, because I don’t know how much more of this I can stand. In the face of the world’s immense problems, the suffering and violence and cruelty, it feels like our faith is very small indeed. The scale of the injustice all around us seems to dwarf whatever faith we might be able to muster. Our faith is too small—too small to change this world, too small to save it, too small even to wait and endure. Lord, increase our faith.

Jesus tells his disciples, it’s not about the size of your faith. Even a tiny seed of faith is enough to command a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea. The quantity of faith isn’t the part that matters. It’s not how much faith you have, it’s in whom you have faith. It’s not how much faith you have, it’s in whom you have faith, in whom you place your trust. Faith isn’t a currency you can spend. Faith is a relationship, and it’s a relationship with God.

In whom do we have faith? Who is our God? We have faith in the God of creation, the God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Habakkuk, the One who became flesh and blood as Jesus Christ, the Savior the disciples followed. And so what? Why does it matter whether we have faith in the God of the Bible or in Santa Claus or in the Los Angeles Dodgers? It matters. Of course it matters. Our faith is not in just anyone. Our faith is in God. God who has abided with God’s people for generations. God who heard Habakkuk’s complaint, who answered when Habakkuk demanded answers. Habakkuk is resolute. “I will stand at my watchpost,” he says, “and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what God will say to me, and what God will answer concerning my complaint.” And God does, indeed, answer. Our reading continues, “Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

Habakkuk gets an answer. God responds. God doesn’t reply with a quick fix, God doesn’t give Habakkuk the easy 5-step solution to all the world’s ills. But God makes a promise: there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. There is still a vision. God still has a vision for the world, for all of creation. God’s vision speaks of the end—the end of violence, the end of injustice, the end of suffering, the end of warfare, the end of pain. And this is no lie. It is truth, it is reliable. God’s vision will come to pass. God has a better end in store for all of us. There is an appointed time still to come. The brokenness of the world as we know it will not last forever. “If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” God’s future, God’s vision for the appointed time, will surely come. Wait for it. Don’t give up.

We didn’t get to hear today how the book of Habakkuk ends. Habakkuk begins with lament, with accusation, with pain. But I want you to hear the final verses of the book, which take the form of a psalm: “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; God makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”

What a beautiful statement of faith. Even if the crops fail, even if the flocks are lost, Habakkuk still gives praise to God. Habakkuk has faith. He trusts that God is his strength and his salvation. He believes what God says: that salvation will surely come, it will not delay.

Our first reading, the one from Amos, is one of those lessons from the prophets that the rich man and his brothers should have listened to. It could have been written just for them: “Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria! Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the stall; who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils!” Alas for those who dress in purple and fine linen. Alas for those who feast sumptuously every day. Alas for those who think only of themselves, alas for those who have no concern for the hungry and sick lying right outside their door. Amos says, “Alas for those who are at ease, those who are comfortable, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”—Joseph here symbolizing the kingdom of Israel. Amos is challenging those who are enjoying their wealth and comfort, but are not grieved over the ruin all around them.

Alas for those who are comfortable, and are not grieved. Alas for those who are comfortable in their wealth, and are not grieved over poverty right outside their door. Alas for those who are healthy, and are not grieved over those who are sick. Alas for those who are free, and are not grieved over the imprisoned. Alas for those who enjoy privilege, and are not grieved over the marginalized.

I’ve heard it said that the purpose of the gospel—the purpose of the message Jesus proclaimed, the message on which our faith is founded—the purpose of the gospel is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. The gospel is meant to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, to speak in two different voices for two different audiences. So the remainder of my sermon is going to do the same thing. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure sermon. Take home the lesson that is the right one for you.

The first lesson is for the comfortable. It’s the lesson of Amos: Alas for those who are at ease, but are not grieved. If you are comfortable, then the gospel is here to disturb you. If you are comfortable with your wealth and your possessions, your house and your car, your salary or your retirement, and are not grieved over the poverty of your neighbors—be grieved. If you are comfortable with your health and not grieved over those who are sick—be grieved. If you are comfortable with your safety and your liberty and your standing in society, and are not grieved over those who do not have those privileges—be grieved. If you are comfortable, comfortable with the world as it is, then Amos and I both say “Alas.” If you are comfortable with the world, with the poverty and hunger and sickness and violence, because those things don’t happen to touch you... then frankly, I think you need to learn empathy. You should be grieved. You should be heartbroken over the broken hearts and minds and bodies of your neighbors, the people right outside your door. If you are comfortable, the gospel should disturb you. If you are not grieved, then you need to become grieved. And what if you already are grieved? What if you are so grieved, so appalled and disturbed over the state of the world that you find the breath catching in your throat, you find yourself overwhelmed and discouraged? Then the second lesson is for you, the disturbed. The gospel is here to comfort you.

Sometimes, the brokenness of the world can seem to be too much. The cracks in creation are so deep and so wide, we can’t see a way to fix them. Our hearts are broken for the hungry and sick and poor and imprisoned, but we just don’t know what we can do about it. The rich man thinks his brothers will learn compassion if someone comes back from the dead to deliver a warning, like Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley. Abraham tells him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Even if someone rises from the dead. Even if the dead come back to life, the problems of this world are too stubborn to change.

The gospel brings us good news. Because we know, of course, that someone did rise from the dead—but not just anyone. The One who rose from the dead was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior. And in the resurrection, a new possibility has opened up. Christ didn’t rise from the dead just to tell us to change our ways—like the rich man in the parable, we have Moses and the prophets. We already ought to know how we should act. We know God expects us to care for the poor and to love our neighbor.

So the people turn to Aaron, Moses’ brother. They go to Aaron with a request: “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Moses is missing in action, and the people no longer trust in the promises of the living God. So they want Aaron to make them gods, in the form of idols—physical objects they can touch and see. They want these idols to go before them, to lead them through the wilderness. The people should have known better. Aaron, especially, should have known better. God had already told them, “No idols.” It’s right there in the Ten Commandments: “You shall not make for yourself an idol... You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” It’s pretty unambiguous. Don’t make idols, don’t worship idols. But the people ask Aaron to make gods for them, and Aaron says, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” Aaron melts down all the gold and forms it into the image of a calf: the Golden Calf. And the people say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” As if all of this weren’t bad enough, Aaron builds an altar for the Golden Calf and declares a festival. Just before our reading for today, the book of Exodus says, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.” This was a wild, drunken party, and “reveling” might mean more than just dancing, if you catch my meaning.

So, this is the context leading up to the passage we heard this morning. God has brought the people out of slavery in Egypt. God has led them safely through the Red Sea, God has protected them from the Egyptians, God has provided for them in the wilderness. God has promised to always be with them. And God has laid out some rules, one of the most important of which is: don’t make any idols. In response, the people make an idol, worship it, and throw a party. This brings us to our reading for today, and to the first shocking verse we heard. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely.’” Did you catch what was so shocking about that verse? It’s not that the people are misbehaving. Human nature being what it is, it’s not a surprise that the people have screwed up. No, the shocking part is that God says to Moses, “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt...”

Your people, Moses. Your people, who you brought up out of Egypt. For God to say that these are Moses’ people is shocking. God’s whole identity is defined in relation to God’s people. If God had a business card, it would say, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” That’s how God begins the Ten Commandments. That’s how God is identified: “The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” This whole thing, the whole story of Exodus, was God’s idea. God heard the people suffering in slavery. God chose Moses to lead them. God brought down the plagues on Pharaoh and the Egyptians. God parted the Red Sea. God adopted the Hebrews as God’s people, loved them like a parent loves a child. These people are God’s people, and God is their God. And then God says, “Moses, these are your people.” God is disowning them. God is saying to Moses, “They’re your problem now.” In short, God is fed up. God chose these people, saved them, protected them, and they immediately turn around and break the rules in a spectacular way. So God is done. In fact, God says he’s going to wipe the slate clean and start over with Moses: “Of you I will make a great nation.” As shocking as it is to hear God disown God’s people, there’s another, even more shocking verse at the end of today’s reading. Verse 14: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring upon his people.” The Lord changed his mind. God changed God’s mind. I don’t know if you find that verse as amazing as I do, but I really think it’s one of the most important verses in the Bible. Let me explain why. We tend to think of God as unchanging. We imagine that God has always existed, exactly the same, never changing, never having regrets. But Exodus 32:14 says it clearly: God changed God’s mind. If God can change God’s mind here in Exodus, what does that tell us about God? How else might God change? If God can change God’s mind, then we might find ourselves asking: is God reliable? Is God trustworthy? What are we to make of a God that can change God’s mind?

Let me ask you another question. What kind of God do we believe in? We see clearly that the God of the Bible is a God of both justice and mercy, and both of those qualities are very important. Justice is the the fair application of consequences, the establishing and maintaining of fairness for the good of all. Justice says, “Do not steal, do not murder, do not cheat others.” Justice says, “If you harm someone else, there will be consequences.” Justice says, “Share, and make sure everyone has enough.” Whenever humanity acts with selfishness and violence, God’s justice speaks, reminding us that we are called to be just. God is a God of justice. When people hurt one another, cheat one another, neglect one another, it’s a crime not only against human beings, but against God’s justice. God’s justice wants to ensure that we live according to God’s will.

God is also a God of mercy. Mercy is the boundless forgiveness and grace of God. Mercy gives us another chance, and another chance, and another chance. Mercy forgives us, renews us, restores us to loving community with God and one another. Every Sunday, we begin worship by confessing our sins and asking for God’s forgiveness. And thanks to God’s mercy, every Sunday I get to proclaim to you that God has forgiven you and accepted you.

God is a God of both justice and mercy. And in our reading from Exodus, God’s justice and God’s mercy are at odds with one another. The people have screwed up, have broken the commandments, have broken the covenant. Justice says, “If you break the rules, there are consequences.” Mercy says, “You are forgiven, you get another chance.” At the start of the passage we heard today, God’s justice is on display. God made a covenant, a contract with the people, and the people broke it. Why should God keep God’s side of the deal if the people haven’t kept theirs? But something amazing happens. Moses talks back to God. Can you imagine the courage that must have taken? To argue with God? To try to convince God not to execute justice?

Moses says, “Change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants.” Change your mind. Remember the promises you made to Abraham, his son Isaac, his grandson Israel. Remember mercy. And God changes God’s mind. God turns away from justice and lets mercy have the final word. God gives the people another chance—and another, and another, and another. Again and again, God forgives us. Even when we deserve God’s justice, God chooses mercy.