This was given yesterday at Ecumenical lenten program and I am still thinking of using it for this coming Sunday but  I am not sure this may be too much history where people may miss the point. Working on something else today.

A Reflection for III Lent                                                                                 Outer Banks Presbyterian Church February 27, 2013                                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Preacher

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

The founders of the three great Abrahamic religions - Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad – are each led into the desert to have an encounter with the Divine. Deserts are the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning.

A couple of weeks ago we heard the story of Jesus going into the desert to fight the enemy within himself. The enemy’s temptation is to have the relationship with the Divine be all about him. Jesus resists because he did not want to found a new religion; rather, he wanted to get back to the core of faith with which and with whom Moses struggled and bring that relationship back to the people of his generation and community.

Moses went into the desert in order to find himself, and he also found the God of his people. Moses was a Hebrew who descended from one of a group of Semitic tribes that had come down from Asia Minor into Egypt and gained power as the old Egyptian governmental systems fell into confusion at the end of the 18^th century BC. The new rulers brought in new ideas of God and ruled for several centuries. However there came a time in the mid-16^th century when the Egyptians rose up and subjugated the old foreign overlords. The Hebrews, who had had a place of privilege, were now the targets of discrimination and were reduced to slavery, and as the Book of Exodus begins, “And there arose in Egypt a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” 

The old Egyptian religious systems were reinstituted by the New Kingdom where Gods, who were forces of nature itself, operated in a cyclical system.  In the balance of different forces of nature, as you would see in an agricultural system based on the flooding of the Nile, they were committed to the maintenance of the status quo and had to be appeased by ritual, bribery, flattery, or magic or else disorder would break out. Out of the fear of disorder, these Gods were locked into doing things the way they have always done - even the Gods were not free. “Holy Space” meant space that belonged to the Gods. Gods had temples where they were housed and could interact with other Gods and Priests but from which the regular people were excluded. Gods were not all that interested in individuals but in the prevention of disorder in society and in the heavens, and for that, they needed ritual rather than relationship. Individual life was cheap and people disposable for the good of “order”.

However, some of the Hebrew ideas about the divine as monotheistic were kept in memory as we see in the mid-14^th century when the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and tried to institute a semi-monotheistic religion based on Aten, the God of the Disk of the Sun.  The attempt failed, and the Ramses line of the 19^th Dynasty came to power, treating the memory of Akhenaten as heresy while it brutally reinstituted the old religions.

We think that, during the rule of Seti I, the Hebrew slaves were more despised because of their monotheism and of their ties to the enemies of centuries before. In an attempt to shelter him from a life of slavery, the story goes, Moses was raised as a Hebrew foundling in a house of Egyptian privilege. He did not really belong to either group, distrusted by the Hebrew slaves and patronized by the Egyptian masters. As an outsider, he was able to see clearly the inequalities of the system, and his passion for justice caused him to lash out and kill an abusive overseer. He had to flee for his life and escaped into the desert away from all the luxury and privilege he had known. Here the story could have ended as Moses lives as a refugee hiding from the Egyptian authorities, except he meets a monotheistic Priest named Jethro, whose daughters Moses had saved from harassment. Jethro takes Moses in and allows him to marry his oldest daughter, Zipporah, and they have a son who they named Gershom, a name meaning, “I have been an alien in a foreign land.”

As the story progresses, the Egyptian King, Pharaoh Seti, dies and the Hebrews hope that his son, Ramses II, will be a more lenient leader. It was not to be, and the oppression gets even worse, so bad that the news filters up to where Moses is in hiding and disturbs his refuge. He goes into the desert to find himself and his God. The story goes on that he realizes that he cannot understand the world which he inhabits until he rediscovers the heart of his faith. Here he encounters the force who discloses that link with the Semitic tribe that had come down to Egypt centuries before - “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph” - not just some God of some tribe or part of a pantheon of some nation, but the Divine force that undergirds all being, the “I am who I am”, the one who is free from the bounds of all support of the human status quo and whose compassion makes the arc of the universe bend toward justice.

This God, the ground of being, declares that God-forsaken piece of desert as Holy Ground. There are no Temples, no Priests, no reminders of Glory, only the claiming of intimate space between the individual and God. This God is free from the needs of an institution and will live and move and have the Divine Being with the people. This is the God who is free from the shackles of the past, free from the fate of the future, free to be in the moment where each individual life is precious and loved. This God claims the space between us and says that the Holy Space is in the space between two people and how we treat our neighbor. To follow this God is to treat each breath as a gift and to walk so lightly on the earth since all is Holy Ground.

Moses enters into the heart of God, and because of that, also enters into the heart of the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the Hebrew people will decide that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Temples where God needs ritual rather than relationship.

Then Jesus goes out into the desert to rediscover himself and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God in which each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the followers of Christ will move to the position that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Churches where Christ needs ritual rather than relationship. 

And so it goes until each of us enters the desert, the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning. If we are lucky we can call that a Holy Lent, when we allow ourselves to take off our shoes and walk on Holy Ground and rediscover ourselves and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. Shoeless in the desert, we can walk with God who walks with us and together set people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved.