Good morning, Friends! Thank you all again for coming to worship this morning. I know it’s been a sad and heavy week for our meeting in many ways, but I really appreciate you all being here.
Last Sunday I said that we’re going to be spending a few weeks reading some of the stories of the Old Testament. We have so much to learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters.
The story we’re going to read this morning is a very old one. It takes us more than 3,500 years into the past.
The people of Israel were out in the desert. There weren’t any street signs telling them which way to go. They weren’t even sure what their destination was.
They’re survivors. They’re survivors of slavery. They’ve lost everything they’ve ever known. The desert was a big, scary place, and they don’t know if they’re even going to have anything to eat and drink tomorrow or the next day.
God gave them the 10 Commandments, which were a short, simple, easy-to-remember road map for how to get along. And right away, they broke the very first commandment, which had to do with not worshiping any other gods.
God was invisible, and that was scary to them. So they decided to make up their own god, a pretend god, and they took all their jewelry and melted it down and made a statue out of it – a golden calf, a symbol of prosperity, sort of like the big statue of the bull down on Wall Street.
And they worshiped the gold calf, and they danced around it, and toasted it, and partied way into the night. They tried to pretend that it was the gold calf which had saved them from slavery, and brought them out of Egypt.
It was pretty pathetic. It’s always pathetic, when people worship fake gods.
Moses came down the mountain and saw what they’d done, and he smashed the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments, because they’d broken the very first one. Why bother with the rest of them?
Then Moses smashed the golden calf, and ground it down to dust, and he mixed it into their drinking water, and made them drink it.
Then Moses laid down in despair and he prayed and fasted for forty days. He was afraid that God would do something terrible to his people for being so unfaithful.
But God didn’t. God had Moses make another copy of the Ten Commandments, and told Moses to forget it and start over,
That’s where this morning’s reading starts. They’re starting over. They’re picking up the pieces. They’re getting ready to put one foot in front of the other again. This is what God said.
Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the stars in the sky, the earth and everything in it.
Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.
Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
“What does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep God’s commandments, for your own well-being. . .”
Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the stars in the sky, the earth and everything in it.
Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.
Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.
He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
“What does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep God’s commandments, for your own well-being. . .”
Deuteronomy 10:12-19
Does that sound familiar? It should! And it’s so simple. It’s like the place where the prophet Micah says, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
And it’s like where Jesus said, “There are only two commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and shall love your neighbor as yourself. . .” (Matthew 22:37-40)
A child could memorize this stuff. An old person could remember these words, all their life.
Then Moses said, “Heaven and earth belong to God, and everything in them, but God chose your ancestors, and you, their descendants. . .”
That’s a family tie that we still feel. We all belong to this story. All the promises to the people of Israel, and all the promises of Jesus, and all the promises in between, are part of our story. Those promises are part of who we are.
If God promises to free people, to lead them, to love them, to heal them, to build them up, to make them strong, to multiply them, then God is promising all those things to us, as well.
God promises to give us the Holy Spirit, not just to people a long time ago. God promises to make us the salt of the earth and the light of the world. God promises to give us all the gifts that we need. We are connected. We are a living part of this story.
Then Moses says, “Circumcise your hearts. . .” Circumcision was a big thing back then. It was the symbol, the painful, costly ritual, that people belonged to God’s chosen family. But, of course, only men could be circumcised. And God’s intention is so much bigger than just that small group of people out in the desert.
They didn’t really understand it then, but God’s dream was for a great people, from every corner of the earth. God didn’t have in mind just a handful of people who were born into a single family.
God had in mind that people would want to join that family, who would be adopted into it, who would be fully accepted just as the original, birthright members were.
God saw us all as fellow citizens, as sisters and brothers, sharing the same inheritance as that small, lost, confused group of former slaves. God saw us all as a single body, as one people, not as enemies of each other. It was a great vision God had then, and it still is.
It’s not just something physical and outward. It’s spiritual and inward. Even though we all may look different, we are all brothers and sisters on the inside.
It’s not our skin. It’s not our clothing. It’s not even our language or our culture. It’s who we are. We are all people who God Almighty loves and cherishes. We’re different, and that’s OK, but we are also one.
Moses said, “God is not partial and takes no bribes. God executes justice for the orphan and the widow, God loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. . .”
One of the deepest sources of wrong in our world today is that we Ignore those words. We act as though people who are poor and left out are different from us. We act as if they don’t belong to the same humanity as the rest of us.
If you’re poor, you don’t deserve the same health care, the same education, or the same opportunities as those of what we see as the better part of society.
Whether it’s the 99%, or the 47%, or the bottom 20%, or whatever, you don’t count, and God probably doesn’t love you very much, and the rest of us don’t need to care about you, either.
That understanding is false. It is wrong. It is evil. And Moses, Jesus, the prophets, the apostles, the saints, and all of the people who have listened to God’s voice across the ages have denounced that understanding for the evil that it is.
In this morning’s reading, Moses says, “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. . .”
I feel the weight of those words in my blood and in my bones. Members of my own family died of starvation and injustice, not in Egypt, but in Europe. More of them died of starvation and illness on the journey to America. Of those who made it to this country, some died in the first few years, of overwork and malaria and yellow fever that they had no resistance to.
My family were despised. They were rejected as foreigners, by people who had only been in this country for a couple of generations before them. They were discriminated against. People refused to hire them. They said, “People like you shouldn’t even bother to apply for work here.”
And you know what? The people who did that to my ancestors, to my family, called themselves Christians. It’s amazing that people in my family wound up with any religion at all. It says something about what we can forgive, about what we can overcome, if we listen to God.
“You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. . .”
I hear the stories of people who have made it, who have survived through hardship and poverty and injustice, and I identify with them. These are my people, even if they don’t look like me. My heart goes out to them. They are my sisters and my brothers. Because God says so.
It doesn’t matter to me who people are, or where they’re coming from. I try find who people are their background is deeply interesting. But I don’t let that stop me from welcoming anyone.
Some people bring special needs with them. Some people have deep wounds. Some people carry a lot of heavy baggage. Some people are just hard for me to understand.
That doesn’t let us off the hook. It’s our job, it’s our calling, to welcome people. God doesn’t know any strangers. God doesn’t set up any barriers. And neither should we.
There are a lot of implications for the message in this morning’s reading. There are a lot of details we need to work out, and I’m not going to try to do that here.
I just want you to remember what Moses said, all those years ago. God still says the same thing to us today.
God loves the poor and needy, those who are unfortunate or outcast, every bit as much as God loves you and me.
Love the stranger – because you were strangers yourselves once. Do justice for them, and care for them, and welcome them. Open the door, and open our hearts. They’re not strangers. They’re our sisters and our brothers.