We Journey by Stages

September 28, 2014

Exodus 17:1-7; Philippians 2:1-8

“Isn’t this exactly where we were last week?”

Now that could be the commentator’s question about the text this morning, after all, we read a passage from Exodus last Sunday in which the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness and complaining to Moses and Aaron about their lot in life.

“Isn’t this exactly where we were last week?”

On the other hand, that could be the complaint of the people of Israel.

“Hey! I think we’ve been here before! I recognize these rocks. We’re going in circles!”

Sometimes a journey feels like that. I reckon that’s why the Romans invented mileposts to mark progress along the road.

Out in the wilderness, the sojourning people had little to tell them where they were, and only a vague and poetic vision of a land flowing with milk and honey to tell them where they were going. Out on the edge like that, what seems firm is usually the past. “We were better off then, in the golden age of our enslavement, than we are out here where we don’t know what’s coming next!”

Funny thing about the past, though. At one point it was someone else’s future, and it was just as scary to them as it is comforting to us.

I’ve been thinking about stages of journeys a lot this fall, and as I was preparing this morning’s worship, I was particularly mindful of transitions along the way. We’ve used some old and traditional selections for the so-called “service music” this morning. I can’t tell you the last time the traditional “Gloria Patri” was sung in this sanctuary, and we haven’t used the doxology for several years, either.

Those pieces of service music take me back to the church of my childhood, where both were used every single Sunday without fail – world without end, as it were. Amen, amen. It just wouldn’t have been church without them.

But the church of Jesus Christ survived for many centuries without them. In fact, that traditional “Gloria” was only written in 1851. I have this image of the stately Calvary Episcopal Church in Manhattan, where Henry W. Greatorex led the music, wondering what in the world was this new-fangled piece of music they were being asked to sing the first time the choir sprung the “Gloria” on them.

The music for the doxology is much older – almost 500 years old. Which means that the church of Jesus Christ had only been around for 1,500 years before Louis Bourgeois composed what we now know as The Old Hundredth. He wrote the tune as a setting for Psalm 100. Interesting note about Bourgeois: he was imprisoned in Geneva in 1551 for the crime of changing psalm tunes without a license. He was released upon the personal intervention of John Calvin, but the town council ordered the burning of his choral instructions on the grounds that they were confusing to the singers.

The text we used in the doxology this morning is a mash-up that I put together drawing on some words from the late 1600s and others from the late 1980s. You can send me greetings in jail when the musical authorities come to take me away for messing with those lyrics.

I can’t help but think that Jesus would have been somewhere between laughter and rage at all the ways that people calling themselves his followers have found to fight over the manner they choose to express their commitment to following him. I’m pretty sure he would look at so-called “worship wars” in the same way he looked at the Pharisees – a mix of sadness, anger, ironic amusement.

I am absolutely certain that, in such a time as this, he would say that ending real wars is a way more urgent concern than fighting worship wars. I am certain that he would want to remind us, as we navigate our own changes, of what is most important.

Recall how he answered when asked to name the greatest commandment: Love God and love your neighbor.

As the Protestant revolution played out its final act in the British Isles some 1,600 years after Jesus, the Westminster Divines were asking themselves the same question: what matters most? Or, as they put it, “what is the chief end of man?” Their answer: worship God and enjoy God forever.

Put a slightly different way, with emphasis on the community of the church, the wisdom of our heritage insists that the core mission of the church in all times and places is the same: worship God.

What is left for us to decide is how best to worship in our own time and our own cultural context.

The Exodus story is the story of a people struggling through the stages of a long journey toward a self-understanding centered on that core identity: they are the people of God, called out to love and worship God. Moreover, they are called to do so from a radically different cultural context than the one they had grown accustomed to. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

More than the situation, though, the people themselves sound mighty familiar.

Think about them for a moment. God calls forth this people – this “stiff-necked,” ungrateful, lost, broken people to be a light in the darkness. God calls forth this people – a motley crew that includes murderers, adulterers, thieves, liars and drunks (and that’s just among the leaders, mind you, the heroes of the story) – God calls forth this people to be a city on the hill, a light to the nations, a community that will proclaim God and worship God forever.

So do not think for an instant that just because your own life includes a great deal of brokenness that God is not calling you. Do not think for an instant that just because you are all too familiar with your own darkness that God is not calling you to share light with the world.

Do not think for an instant, that just because we are a small band struggling with our own questions and decisions, that God is not calling us, as a congregation, to let our light so shine that others will see it and praise God for it.

Like the Exodus children, we are pilgrims on a journey. We journey by stages. Sometimes, for sure, it feels like we’re going in circles. “Hey! Haven’t we been here before! Didn’t we already argue over the words to the doxology 25 years ago!”

Sometimes, for sure, it feels like we’re taking a step backward, or in the wrong direction. I can assure that sometimes it feels like that because we are and we did! We’ll stumble sometimes. We’ll make some wrong turns sometimes. We’ll sing a new song, and we’ll sing it off key sometimes.

But we know why we are here. God has called us together to be a light in the darkness, to be doers of justice in an unjust world, to be makers of peace in a world rent asunder by war, to worship God and to invite others into the community of light.

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete,” Paul wrote another small congregation with its own struggles. “Be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”

Will we do this perfectly and well all of the time? Not a chance. But that is OK, for the heart of our proclamation is this: God so loves the world.

Who are we? We are children of God. What does that mean? God loves us.

We journey by stages into the fullness of that reality. Let us journey together. Step by step. Amen.