SERMON TEXT WORKING WITH EXODUS 17:1-7 AND ROMANS 5:1-11
I just finished reading a wonderful book written by Barbara Kingsolver. She is one of those enviable writers who researches to endth degree what she is talking about, so while I listen, I truly learn and am enlightened about things I wouldn’t have thought to explore on my own. I have read three of her books and this one is my favorite so far. It’s one of those books that you done't want to end. The book is called Prodigal Summer. The author connects us with, and moves in and out of, the lives and stories of three people in their particular habitat, intertwining their lives with some coyotes, chestnut trees and goats. One of the characters whose life intertwines with chestnut trees, she refers to as a frustrating “old chestnut” named Garnett Walker. Garnett doesn’t relate to humanity too well and complains a lot about his neighbor.
As I read, tasted and savored this book Ms. Kingsolver made clear to me that the human spirit is much like tofu – that is, it takes on the flavors of the life experiences poured into it and mixed up with it. Tofu mixed with beef tastes beefy, tofu mixed with chicken tastes chickeny and so on. Our spirits, like tofu when mixed with nothing but sour experiences, can have a sour flavor unless we can partake of experiences of a different flavor.
When you eat extra hot chili’s you may be one of those people who sweats from the crown of your head, or you may be someone who -- surprised by the burn -- find yourself fanning the flames inside your mouth, breathing fire -- so to speak -- until you can drink enough, water, tequila or beer to put out the fire. When 90% of humans – there are some exceptions to the rule -- bite into a fresh lemon their face curls up into an involuntary grimace often accompanied by a shoulder shudder. We log and catalogue these taste experiences into our memory banks and are then forewarned, forearmed and ready the next time we are confronted by chili peppers or lemon slices.
I think the human spirit is similarly flavored by its life experiences. What and who we experience in this life can sweeten or sour the spirit, burn or soothe the spirit, chill or melt the spirit; embitter poison and kill the spirit or enlighten, quicken and excite the spirit. If a human being has known only sadness in life with no mixture of joy, then the flavor of their spirit may well be predominantly sad. It may have come to pass that their spirit is incapable of recognizing anything but sadness.
I also think it is true that sometimes we human beings make a decision to wallow in a kind of toxic brine flavored by self-determinism. In Ms. Kingsolver’s book the character of Garnet Walker, although he is unaware of it, is just such a man. He claims to be a God fearing Christian, but at the age of 80 he is wallowing in bitterness. Garnett has decided to devote the days of his retirement to re-creating the chestnut trees that were destroyed by a blight when he was just a boy. His family farmland had chestnut trees everywhere and when it was evident that the blight was going to destroy them all, they chopped them down -- every last chestnut that had not yet succumbed to the disease in order to save them from it. They used the wood to build their barns and houses. Garnett, a retired teacher, was remembered for terrorizing his students. After his beloved wife died, he became estranged from his only son and spent his days working on his trees, grousing about and finding fault with his next door neighbor, Nanny who is a “Unitarian earth mother type." Kingsolver moves her reader through the intricacies of these character’s lives. I love a writer who stimulates my mind’s eye to actually see the person she is writing about. I am a participant, not just an observer accompanying the characters as they experience days, moments and people, the flavor of whose spirits will be modified, by the overpowering flavor of the experience of LOVE that will mix with their spirits during this Prodigal Summer.
The passage we read today from Exodus is a story of spirits whose life experience has been one of oppression and trauma. They were offered the flavor of hope to mix with their spirits in the person of Moses who told them that God would rescue them from their slavery in Egypt and set them free, bringing them to a land of milk and honey. Now that’s a promise that would sweeten the spirit of anyone. But in the story we read today we find the Israelites at their frustrated, embittered and regretful worst. They are barking at Moses and shaking their fists at God regretting the day they listened to Moses; regretting the very moment they thought their lives could be any different or better. They are hitting their heads with their fists, saying “What was I thinking?” As I read this story I have to ask if the experience of receiving the gift of the miraculous water from the rock changed the flavor of their spirits for just a moment or for the long haul? Were they newly grateful to God the giver of life and relief or did they say in their hearts: “Well, it’s about time.”
In his letter to the Romans, Paul makes a very profound statement about God and I believe he speaks from personal experience precisely because he was a man whose spirit was flavored with hatred for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His hatred, his rage, his anger, was so well known that he was described as a man who breathed threats of fire against the followers of Jesus. For the Christians his spirit was flavored with diablo sauce! But Paul saw himself, in those early days, as a defender of God, as being on the right side of God, taking God’s part to insure the stability of God’s plan for humankind. In short, much like Garnett Walker, Paul wallowed in a kind of toxic brine flavored by his own self-determinism.
It was God, however who intervened in Paul’s life and flavored his spirit with a LOVE he had never known or imagined before. The love that flows from the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ was poured into the fire breathing angry spirit of Paul and he became a whole new being. The old toxic brine of hate that he wallowed in was neutralized, shocked into purification by conversion then flavored by the touch of healing hands, words of compassion, patience and mercy. The flavor of his whole spirit was changed and kept on changing. He taught us, then, from his experience, that God, even when we were weak, ungrateful, and ungodly – even when we have had no remarkable relationship with God, calling upon the name of the holy one only when we had a need, or resented not getting what we thought we deserved or needed –even then, Paul tells us, at the right time, Christ died for us the ungodly and the ungrateful. While we were wallowing in the brine of our own self-determinism, Christ died for us. The flavor of his sacrifice poured into our spirits mixing with the flavors of our life experiences is God’s way of helping us become new beings.
Because God is a God of LOVE, God is always at work pouring grace, love, mercy, compassion, and assurance, like chocolate syrup all over us seeking every day and in every way to help neutralize flavors left by the experiences of pain, defeat, disappointment and fear. The flavor of LOVE is more powerful than bitterness, more powerful that anger, more powerful than hatred. LOVE IS THE FLAVOR OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD. Let us remember that when we get caught up in our self-determinism, deciding, as God chuckles, that we are the masters of our own destinies. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Amanda Burr
March 23, 2014
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