Today we will continue in - Mandate to Difference and a chapter called, "You Cannot Fool Your Nephesh." In the midst of theire stay at Sinai: ....then and only this one time, the God of the mountain spoke. This was a strange God whom they did not know. First off, this God tells his name. this name, however we are to take it, is a set of consonants with ill-fitting vowels. Christian scholars say "YHWH"; Jews refuse to say it. The name is an enigma, except that utterance fills out the inscrutable name, "....who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Surprise! The God they had already known as their great advocate and emancipator turns out to the God of the mountain. This is the God who, on their behalf, outmatched and outmuscled Pharaoh, terminated the brick quota, and ended the hot , demanding brickyards. That is the God who speaks, who now offer a charter for an alternative existence outside the categories of Pharaoh. Tomorrow we will look at what God speaks. Today it is all about the one who speaks. In our faithful storytelling we need to know who it is that we are following. This is the God who takes life so seriously that God claims people and liberates them - no matter what odds against them might be. Even though they were complaining all along the way, here they were at Sinai and God helps them make the connection between their past and their future. This life in the embrace of this God would not shaped around the expectations and rules and demands of Pharaoh's empire. This is going to be new life that is (as we so often say) to be a light to all. Brickyards and the lord of those never-ending hell holes will not be the pattern of life anymore. Now God's people are being introduced to a future that will become the reason they will for generations - and even to this day - return to Sinai to remember whose they are and who they are to be. This is so often how I see the Eucharist each Sunday. It is the story that opens up the vision of who this God is that we say we follow. It is the story that then becomes our next steps as we move out in God's name to be the body of the Christ of God in and through all things - "an alternative existence." Connection: What are the brickyards from which our God liberates you? And then, what is the life into which you are invited today? It is to be a discipline of hope. God of Liberation and Freedom, teach us how to live within your Reign and let your light shine among us throughout this day. Amen. |
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