What is God calling the Episcopal Church to be and to do in this place?

The lessons we read in church return every three years. This sermon from 2007 shows where we were as a congregation then, engaged in learning about our mission field, the people whom God has given us to serve.

Note that things have changed since then. We still hope for a revitalized St. Paul's Church, but the challenges we face are steep: turning this neighborhood into a safe, beautiful place meets resistance from the civic leaders we hoped would help us. Working these deals to completion takes time, Building a sustainable congregation of people with enough money to pay our bills requires the steady support of the diocese and neighboring congregations, yet the demands on those dollars are many, and as compelling as ours, and these sources will just not be able to provide us with the funds we need.

It's time to ask again: What is God calling the Episcopal Church to be and to do in this place?

Surely to offer comfort, hospitality and food to the people who walk through our doors.

But how can we afford to keep those doors open?

Lent 3-C March 11, 2007

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

You have to admit that the people of Israel had a hard time there in Egypt: enslaved, oppressed, starved, beaten, worked to death, building those massive pyramids, those monuments to the greatness of the ancient world’s superpower, the Pharaohs.

Now, remember how those people of Israel got to Egypt. They were migrant workers, aliens, immigrants. They had fled the famine in their own land, some generations before. Remember Joseph and the coat of many colors? Joseph, son of Jacob, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers? Joseph who became a high-powered and successful official in the Pharaoh’s court? Who became so successful that when his family crawled into Egypt, begging for food, for work, for shelter, he was able to welcome them and provide for them from the store of his adopted nation’s bounty? That’s how the poor people of Israel got to Egypt originally, as immigrants, migrant workers, welcomed by the generosity of the Nile, just wanting to be there, in Egypt, where they could make a living and feed their families.

I mentioned last week that the Bible verse that defines who the people of Israel are – the way they describe themselves when they go back to their ancient roots – has to do with this experience of being aliens, strangers, sojourners in someone else’s land – nomadic, desert people being welcomed in a place of bounty and abundance. Generations later, this is what the people of Israel remember about their experience in Egypt:

‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.” (Deuteronomy 26:5)

And later:

You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23:9)

By the time we get to Moses, in the book of Exodus, things are very bad for the people of Israel. You remember this story: little baby Moses, hidden by his mother and sister along the edge of the Nile – the vulnerable infant of the by-now the enslaved Israelites – the baby given up by a mother desperate to save her beloved child – Moses adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in Pharaoh’s household to be one of Pharaoh’s elite – Moses who began to remember his roots and his people, who found himself fighting back when one of the Hebrew people was beaten by an Egyptian – Moses who murdered an Egyptian, who ran away in fear and hid in the desert, wanting nothing to do any more with troubled people: Moses the abandoned, Moses the privileged, Moses the runaway, an alien once again, Moses alone in the desert when the bush before him bursts into flame.

Moses is famous for being a reluctant spokesman for God. Moses does not want to go back to Egypt, even though he knows his own people are oppressed and enslaved. Moses has a speech impediment, Moses is reluctant, Moses is afraid. Nevertheless, God speaks to Moses. Moses is the one to go back to confront the powers and principalities of the most powerful nation on the earth. Moses is the one to speak for God on behalf of those people crying out to God for safety, salvation and justice. “Who am I,” Moses says, “to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Who indeed?

Some remarkable things have been happening in this church this week. As part of our “Mission Strategy Brockton,” teams of people have been going out into the community to ask people: What are your hopes and dreams? What does this church mean to you? What MORE might it mean to you? Who are you, and what is going on in your life? These teams went to community centers, north and south; they went downstairs, here, to talk to the guests at St. Paul’s Table. I don’t know what was said; I don’t know what they learned – we’ll have to ask them – but I do know this: They are hearing the cries of the people – hearing what it is to come to Brockton from some place very far away and try to start a life here, to work and support a family – hearing what it is to have lived in Brockton for generations, and still not be able to put food on the table and to teeter precariously from paycheck to paycheck. You who went out there into the community this week – you are God’s ears.

But you are putting us in a very difficult situation. For now that we are beginning to listen to the cries of the people, now that we are beginning to ask them about their hopes and dreams, and about what this place might be in their lives – well, now, we’re like Moses. Those conversations are our burning bush, staring us in the face, scaring the bejesus out of us, because now, we are going to go have to confront Pharaoh. We’re going to have to speak for God, on behalf of those people. Like Moses realizing who his people were, those stories are now our stories. Like Moses, we’re going to have to take on some powerful institutions – to hold them accountable for these people, who are now us. There are a lot of Pharaohs in this complicated world, and we’re going to have to meet them head on: there’s the Diocese, of course, who needs to come through on their promises to work with us to make this church thrive, to make it a place of sanctuary, of hospitality, of prayer and hope in a broken world. A place that welcomes aliens, because we remember when we were aliens, strangers, desperate, lonely and alone – because we remember when we had hopes and dreams for a better life. There’s the city of Brockton, to work with them to clean up this corner. There are other congregations and groups, to get them to come in here and serve meals so there is no day of the week that any person in Brockton will go hungry. There are the landlords who lease substandard apartments at extraordinary rates. Once we begin to hear these stories, there is no end to the Pharaohs we’ll have to meet.

How will we ever do it?

The same way Moses did it. Stuttering, perhaps. A little hesitant. With friends at our side, who can take up the cause when we falter. But most importantly with the same promise Moses heard out of the burning bush: “I will be with you,” God said.

We know God was with Moses. The Bible is full of stories of how God fulfilled that promise. And there is no reason on God’s green earth to have any doubt – any doubt -- that God is with us today.