Come Hell or Highwater
(Free Version)- Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Exodus 1:8-2:10; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20
Find this week’s readings here.
At age sixteen, I got my first cell phone. The age for such an acquisition seems to be earlier and earlier these days, but my parents wanted me to have a phone when I started driving. At that time (the early 2000s), most of my friends had a Nokia 3310. I never had this particular model, but it was everywhere. And it was apparently indestructible. As years have gone by, this phone has gotten the reputation of being the world’s most indestructible phone. You can throw it and drop it and run over it with a car and it won’t break.
Some Youtubers have proven that it’s not quite indestructible. With stress tests done by dropping the phone 900 feet, smothering and chopping it with a hot axe, slicing it with a sword, taking hot coals to it, running over it with a train, shooting it with a rifle, and crushing it with a hydraulic press, the Nokia 3310 proved to be no match for these elements. Still, it’s pretty strong.
The reality is that nothing that comes from this world is quite indestructible. There are very few things that will truly last.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away...And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13:8-13).”
Paul does not mean that the vague concept of love will remain. It is easy to romanticize such language to believe that it is “warm feelings” towards each other or a generally philanthropic disposition that will last. But, Paul is writing about love as expressed in a very specific way: the specific way in which Christ gave Himself fully and completely for his good world. Whatever we do in this life that is connected to that: faith, clinging on to God even when we can’t see; hope, living now as if God is making all things new; and love, that self-giving commitment that God first showed us. Paul says, that stuff will last.
Often, in difficult times, it can be easy to lose sight of God’s faithfulness. This is why we are so lured by the other things in our world that make promises, why we cling onto other things that we think will last.
William Stringfellow commented
Idolatry is pervasive in every time and culture, no less now than yesterday, no less in Washington than Gomorrah...Indeed, it might be argued that contemporary Western man is more enslaved to idols than his supposedly less civilized counterpart precisely because he is, less ignorant about the world in which he lives, and because his favorite idols are the family realities of daily life—religion, work, money, status, sex, patriotism.
Today, our readings proclaim that, no matter what we face, God does not give up on his Church, come hell or highwater.
Our Old Testament reading (Exodus 1:8-2:10) is familiar, which often creates challenges for preachers. Is our goal to remind people of their perceptions of the reading? Or to point out something they may have missed? We certainly are able to do a bit of both. Resist the urge to try to creatively “re-imagine” the story. But it is necessary to point out the story’s revolutionary character.
It is important to point out the “upendings” in this story. Pharaoh can shape the will of an entire nation in his first speech, but he has no influence on the two women who are the audience of his second speech. Pharaoh’s plans to eradicate Israel just make them more numerous. Pharaoh used the Nile River as a tool of destruction; God made it a tool of salvation. God’s plan for the “son” Moses is preserved by three faithful “daughters,” one of whom is non-Jewish. In the midst of terrible evil, God continually works for the good of his people, and ultimately for the whole world.
In our epistle reading (Romans 12:1-8), we are reminded that there are many things “of this world” which will not last. When we are conformed by them, we are conformed by nothing more than emptiness and distortion. Christians live by a different kind of worship: oriented to the one true God, holistic—including every part of us, our bodies and our minds. We each are gifted in unique ways, but those ought not be cause for boasting (lest we trust in the gifts themselves). These gifts, when employed as a benefit to others, bind us together as a body.
Our gospel reading (Matthew 16:13-20) includes the declaration that the gates of hell will not stand against the Church. Throughout much of history, Christians have believed that the Church is a thing. We are a family, a living, breathing reality on which Peter was the beginning. What does that mean? Well, we see throughout scripture that this family is built to last. Neither the Gates of Hell nor the high waters of the Nile River can stop God’s faithfulness.
It is important for our congregants to hear that, no matter what they are facing, God’s faithfulness to his people will not change. To be part of “the Church” will increasingly be a weird thing. For many generations, Christianity has been cultural, something that a lot of people did and didn’t have to commit very much. We cultivated a kind of faith that could say of Jesus: “People say that you are a prophet,” keeping Jesus and his words at a safe distance while still wearing the “church” jersey. The Church has taken some big hits since the turn of the century, and COVID accelerated some of that. BUT...Jesus has not stopped forming a people.
Our calling is to fix our eyes on him and declare what we know: that Jesus—and his very body—is the hope of the world. We are at our best when we are transformed by him, worshipping him. He is always our orienting reality. He is the true prophet: the one who speaks truth to power, who calls out injustice, who listens to the cry of the oppressed. He is the Messiah, the one who puts the world right, the true king and ruler of the world. He is God with us. And we are his people.