The Park Road Pulpit

Moses the great leader of God’s people is without compare in the Old Testament. We read of him:

When there are prophets among you, I the LORD make myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams. Not so with my servant Moses. . . With him I speak face to face – clearly, not in riddles; and he beholds the form of the LORD.[1]

Yet Moses, Prophet and leader of God’s people, named, explicitly, as the only biblical figure to speak with God, “face to face” -- Moses was like any preacher – he had his days.

At our dinner table each night, we play the “What-was-the-best-thing-about-your-day” game.” “What was the best thing about your day, Jackson?” we ask. And Jackson will think just a minute, scratch his head, and then tell us something about his day. After we have circled the table, we then ask, “What was the worst thing about your day?” For months Bennett’s answer to both questions was always the same. He didn’t quite get it – best, worst, whatever -- he always answered, “I got to play with Kendall.” (Pronounced “canyundol” his proper, southern drawl.)

So I imagine God asking Moses, on one particular night around the dinner table, “What was the best thing about your day, Moses?” It was all the invitation Moses needed:

Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive them… give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse. . .’ to the land that you promised. . . ? Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I am not able to carry them alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.[2]

Brief pause at the table. . .“So, Moses, what was the worst thing about your day?”

As I read this story of the great Moses, I, Russ Dean -- the Preacher, leader of this people of God could relate – for in this past month I have felt burdened. Burdened with the needs, the cravings, even the grumblings of a journeying people. What Moses knew, and what Bennett is yet to find out, is that some days are just like that! In ministry. In medicine. In mothering. In the madness and mystery of this wonderful life we live. Regardless of our vocation -- some days are just filled with burden, we cry out, “I am not able to carry [it] alone, for [it is] too heavy for me.”

Pentecost offers a remedy for the burdened soul. The word Pentecost means “fifty,” and refers to a day at the end of a seven-week period of harvest on which the Jews celebrated, giving thanks for the abundance of their crop. (They called it the “Festival of Weeks”). In Christian tradition Pentecost refers to the day, fifty days after Easter, on which the followers of Jesus celebrated a harvest of a different kind. On that day the first disciples finally came to recognize the living presence of God, still among them. We have talked for the seven Sundays of Easter about “Living with the Resurrection,” and the experience of the disciples, gathered in Jerusalem that day, was a powerful experience of transformation, of allowing God’s presence to work in them, even as God had been present in Jesus. It was an experience of making Easter alive and real – a verb to guide their lives, not just a noun to celebrate.[3]^,[4]

In one of Jesus’ final conversations with his disciples he challenged them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”[5] The Greek word used there is – paraclete[6] and is translated “advocate,” “helper,” “comforter.” If I’m right about my Greek, the word comes from two roots: para, which means “along side,” and the root, caleo, which means to call, speak, or talk. This “Advocate,” then, is another voice to walk alongside us, to speak to us, to speak with us. It is a voice that speaks for in some of those difficult moments in life when we have no words of our own. It is a voice of assurance, affirmation, support. It is also a voice of discomfort and annoyance, a voice of conscience that will not let us rest with the status quo.

At Pentecost, the disciples first felt the powerful presence of this “advocate” -- it was another preacher -- that witnessed through them in the many languages of a needy world.

The disciples knew that day of Jesus’ continued presence with them (as he had promised), but the coming of God’s Spirit into this world was not a new thing. The Spirit of God is, in fact, as old as this world. The Spirit of God is that wind, that divine source, that living breath that brooded over primordial waters of chaos and spoke an enticing, a beckoning, a wooing word, “Let there be…” And with that word, there was. Light. Life. Love. “And it was very good.”

And that Spirit has been moving ever since. Enticing. Beckoning. Wooing. But never coercing. Never forcing. It was that age-old Spirit that blew that day through Moses’ camp. He was burdened by the grumbling of his people. They were tired of the desert. Tired of manna. They were tired of being led. Tired of being lost. They were tired of being tired. And Moses had had his fill.

So at God’s instruction, he called together seventy leaders, and God breathed on them, too. And while they were all gathered in the tent, their portable sanctuary in the desert, an amazing thing happened. It was not unlike the Pentecost experience of Jesus’ disciples – these seventy who had been given a special commission suddenly began to speak in ecstatic utterances, to dance and sing. As my black friends from college used to say, they got “slain in the Spirit. Toe Up (torn up).”

About that time a man runs into the tent and announces indignantly that there are two men in the camp prophecying. (In this context the word “prophecy” meant to participate in some form of “charismatic experience.”) Eldad and Medad were in the company of the people, not in the safety of the tent – and they were prophecying. While Moses and his new assistants were feasting in the presence of God, together, Eldad and Medad were among the people, daring to expose their experience with God publicly.

Moses exhibits his great wisdom in his response to Joshua, who wants Moses to demand that they stop. Far from silencing these who were prophecying among the people, Moses encourages them and he longs for the day when all of his people would have the depth of relationship with God that makes such prophecy possible, and the courage to stand among the people and let that relationship be known.

The greatest preachers will always be found sitting in the pews on Sunday, and not standing behind lofty pulpits. My job, cloistered in this “tent of meeting,” is easy. But you walk among the people. You go into all the world. You become the Light to all nations. You are the preachers to the world. You are my advocate. My comforter. My voice when I have nothing to say, or when and where my words are not welcome. You are my preacher.

Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading for today make it clear how important it is that you understand that role. Without unpacking all of what “sin” and the “forgiveness of sin” means in the Gospel of John, let me tell you that Jesus’ words mean simply this: You who are in the world have both the right and the responsibility to represent God among the people. In your deeds. But also in your words. I love Paul’s admonition that when you speak, you should do so as if you are speaking the very words of God.”

Forgiving sins. Announcing peace. Pronouncing judgment. Conferring blessings. Offering correction. Speaking encouragement. Giving comfort. Sharing the good news.

Amy and I had not been asleep long when the phone rang. But after midnight I always answer anxiously – seldom is any good news delivered after midnight. On the phone the Chair of Deacons spoke quickly and told me that a Super Bowl party that night had ended tragically. One of our youth had in an automobile accident. Lucia was killed instantly. I knew that our pastor was out of town, and knew what was coming next. I will not quickly forget Joe’s words: “You need to go tell the family.”

It was a long, cold ride to a strange, unexplored neighborhood. I knew Roger and Linda, but mostly by name only. I rehearsed my line over and over in my head as I followed a Sheriff’s Deputy, whom I had met on the way. All of the houses were dark but one. I knew that we had arrived.

Roger was pacing the garage when I walked nervously up the driveway. I introduced myself because I was not sure he would even recognize me. I delivered my message, and will never forget his only words: “Her mother is not going to take this well.”

I don’t remember much about the next hour. The Deputy gave the details. She asked a few questions. She disappeared into the night. And then it was just me. We sat in the den, Linda rocking back and forth like an impatient child. Her eyes told me that she was in another world. I offered a prayer, struggling to hold back my own emotions, struggling more for words. What words at this hour? And I felt that burden, and like Moses I cried out in my heart, “I am not able to carry [this] alone, for [this is] too heavy for me.”

And then I remembered Debbie. She was a close friend of their family. Her daughter and Lucia had grown up together. So I called her. I knew Debbie fairly well. Her son, who was in junior high school, suffered from a rare, debilitating muscular disorder called Friederick’s Attacksia. After seven normal years, he woke up one day to find that he simply could no longer walk.

Debbie was an interesting individual. Maybe dealing with her son’s disease, and facing his inevitable demise had made her so. I call her a “real” person. She was brutally honest. Frank. Transparent. Matter-of-fact. What you saw was what you got with Debbie – all the time. She could be a little rough around the edges, and she didn’t polish up her language – even if you were one of her ministers. There was something refreshing about that for me. I had come to know Debbie as deeply spiritual, but not very properly religious. She will always be, for me, an “irreverent saint.” Maybe that’s the best kind.

Within ten minutes I heard noise at the back door, and as soon as she entered that house, there was no question in my mind – the real preacher had arrived. I stayed for about half that night, and watched in amazement. I fumbled my way around, feeling like a fifth wheel. Lucia’s closest friends came, one by one, and they cried and they told stories and they laughed. And through it all, Debbie was there. She had no eloquent words. But her presence was sure and confident.

Were there too many preachers there that night? Not at all. When this grieving family needed her the most, and when one of her ministers needed her the most – she was there. She was our advocate -- a voice with us, a voice for us. No “brilliant, expert interpreter of the faith, but simply a prayerful, present servant.”[8]

And as you go into this community, on mission today[9]… As you go into your work place, on mission tomorrow… As you continue to go into this world… remember your calling. The calling which was given to you by God. The calling for which you were commissioned in your own baptism. You are an advocate. A “paraclete” – a word to go alongside another.

[1] Numbers 12.6-8

[2] Numbers 11:11-15

[3] “Let Him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, / be a crimson-cresseted East, / as his reign rolls, / Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest, / Our heart's charity's hearth's fire, / our thoughts' chivalry's throng's Lord.” (Gerard Manley Hopkins.) For the seven weeks of Easter, we made use of Hopkins’ insight and ended our corporate, confessional prayer, “…and Easter in us, O God of Resurrection.” Someone commented to Amy Jacks Dean last week, “If I have to use Easter as a verb one more time, I’m going to throw up!”

[4] This reminds me of an insight that I tried to convey in my sermon, “Can You Live With The Resurrection,” the first in our Easter series this year. In a footnote to that sermon, I remarked: “In this sermon I am continuing an ongoing argument which distinguishes a life of faith from a life of intellectual ascent to various doctrines of belief. The religion of my childhood placed ultimate importance in believing – if you believe the right things, then you can be saved. This seems a rather sterile argument to me now. Faith must be experiential, practical, active. The resurrection, then, like all important items of our faith, is not of ultimate importance simply as something to “believe in,” but as something to be experienced, changed by, even as the first disciples were.” The sermon can be found on the church website.

[5] John 14.15-16

[6] This is the literal transliteration. The Greek word is, paraclaton.

[7] St. Francis

[8] From Stan Wilson, a friend and fellow minister, in an e-mail to Russ Dean (emphasis added): Thanks for reading my sermon and commenting. . . As for people “getting it?” Naah. I have a handful who notice some of the distinctions, and it’s gratifying to have a conversation with those few, but the masses just don’t get it. Discouraging? Sometimes, but usually it’s only frustrating because I think I’m being all brilliant and wise and that all my brilliance is lost. So in that respect, it’s good for me. Reminds me that my job is not to be some kind of brilliant, expert interpreter of the faith, but simply a prayerful, present servant.

[9] Today is “Mission Sunday” in which about 90 of our members will work in our local neighborhood providing various kinds of assistance to the elderly and needy, visiting our homebound members, etc…