Our reading today comes from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter one.

A few weeks ago, we read from the book of Acts about when Paul and Silas visited Philippi in northern Greece, where they ran into some trouble, but ultimately ended up kind of winning some folks over. It is believed that the church in Philippi is among the first that Paul founded in Europe, and it was thought that that’s around the year 50.

Then scholars debate over whether it was a couple years later or a full decade later that Paul writes — as is his practice once he’s founded a church — he writes a letter, or multiple letters, to a particular church.

So this is the beginning of his letter to the church in Philippi:

Philippians 1: 1-18

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

For the Word of God in scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

You’d think that Paul wouldn’t remember Philippi so fondly. Last time he was there, a possessed woman would not leave him alone, and he was arrested and flogged in the public square, jailed overnight, and experienced an earthquake.

Paul could have spent his time complaining about his treatment during his stay there. But instead, he writes, “I thank God every time I remember you.”

Timothy Atkins Jones writes, “The exuberance of Paul’s gratitude flows from their history. He prays with joy because their relationship has endured many years of struggle.” Strangers have become friends. Even former opponents, such as his jailer, have become friends — and not just friends, but partners in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Atkins points out “the community has demonstrated their commitment to Paul by providing the resources necessary for his work. They’ve invested materially in Paul’s ministry. Beyond merely encouraging him in the good work, they underwrote it.”

And here, even as he writes, Paul is once again imprisoned. But as we have witnessed before, this does not slow him down or deter him.

When he was in Philippi and in prison with Silas, they prayed and sang hymns. They preached to their fellow prisoners. Now again in prison, Paul uses the time to write to the Christian community in Philippi, even as he preaches to his current captors.

Paul is singularly focused. Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard famously wrote that purity of heart is to will one thing.

Buddhist practitioner and teacher Bodhi Pascua writes, “To will one thing means to have a mind that is unifying around an organizing principle that gives our lives meaning.”

He writes, “I believe that we all attempt to find such an organizing principle. We choose one thing that is for us the most important thing in our lives.”

For Paul, it is preaching and spreading of the gospel. But he could not have done all of it on his own. Even the letter itself is not just from Paul, but from Paul and Timothy. Partnership in the gospel, as Paul calls it, is critical to his success.

Brené Brown writes, “To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees — these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain.”

She says, “But I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy and gratitude and grace.”

This vulnerability, rooted in relationship, is how the Christian faith spread early on. Mennonite historian Alan Kreider wrote in his book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church that “the early Christians didn’t grow in number because they won arguments. Instead, they grew because their habitual behavior, rooted in patience, was distinctive and intriguing. Their “habitus,” as he calls it, enabled them to address intractable problems that ordinary people face in ways that offered hope.”

Here at RPPC, our affection for one another is not based on our like-mindedness or our similar socioeconomic standing. It is rooted in the gospel.

Recently, I was reflecting with a church member about our practice of passing the peace during service, and they confessed to me that they were unsure about this practice when it was first introduced. “That’s what fellowship time is for after service,” was a common objection.

And now, my goodness, I think if we allowed it, you all would go on for the rest of the service. Seeing that makes this pastor’s heart glad.

It has become, as Alan Kreider would say, part of our habit.

However, there is a danger to our mutual affection as well. We need always to stay mindful of guests and visitors, as well as the more introverted among us, who may not be as keen on the practice as the rest of us, because that’s part of what it means to be open and welcoming as well.

Marcus Borg points out that when we read Paul in Christian scripture, we are reading somebody else’s mail. We are eavesdropping on someone’s conversation.

Paul writes to the people in Philippi, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, and how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best.”

These words of Paul expose his deep love and caring for the people of Philippi.

Today is Mother’s Day, a day to celebrate and acknowledge maternal love and sacrifice.

Now, you may have noticed that today’s service is much like that of any other Sunday, and some may be disappointed in this fact. I will admit this is something that I wrestle with. How much do we acknowledge secular holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and the Fourth of July, Memorial Day?

To completely ignore them seems kind of tone deaf. But on the other hand, to center our worship around them is extremely problematic.

I know people who purposely choose not to come to church on Mother’s Day because it’s complicated. Or the Fourth, because the mixing of faith and patriotism makes their stomach turn.

And I get that.

But let me tell you, this sensitivity is not what some might call political correctness run amok. It is also a part of our love for one another. It is also part of our mutual affection. We make room for those whose experiences and thinking are different than our own.

And here’s the key point: this does not impoverish us. It enriches us.

Frederick Collins writes, “There are two types of people: those who come in a room and say, ‘Here I am,’ and those who come in the room and say, ‘Ah, there you are.’”

Making room for the other is not a membership strategy. It is the call of the gospel.

Paul began as an outsider. He reminds us often that he used to persecute Christians until he had an experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus that transformed him. But he never lost that perspective of what it means to be an outsider, and neither should we.

Last Sunday we began celebrating our 125th anniversary as a congregation. At times like this, it’s customary to look back on our history and give thanks to the saints of the past, and we will certainly do that. But along with that, we need to be mindful of the saints of the present, as well as those of the future.

We also need not gloss over the parts of our history which we would rather leave in the past. Our faith calls us to be honest with ourselves and with God. That’s why we practice confession, because without confession, forgiveness and repair cannot occur.

Friends, to love one another as Christ loves us is not easy. It was not easy in Paul’s time, and it’s not easy in ours. There are many forces that want to divide us. It takes time, energy, and commitment to create the beloved community.

But as Brené Brown points out, recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy and gratitude and grace.

So friends, my prayer is that we too may grow in love and mutual affection together, but also that we may never lose the perspective of what it means to be an outsider or newcomer to the community.

In other words, may we be the type of community that doesn’t say, “Here I am,” but proclaims, “Aw, there you are.”

Amen.

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In many ways, we can think of the book of Genesis—the creation stories, the story of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph—as kind of prequels to this story in Exodus. Because, in many ways, this is the foundational story—the foundational text of our faith tradition—as well as that of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and that of our Muslim brothers and sisters as well.

The story of Moses meeting God in the burning bush and being called to confront Pharaoh… to let the people of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt.

Exodus 2:23-25; 3:1-15; 4:10-17

After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.” But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, “What of your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can speak well; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you what you shall do. He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him. Take in your hand this staff, with which you shall perform the signs.”

For the Word of God in Scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

When Dave Muir was born in 1961, the doctors predicted that he would be some kind of athlete—maybe a football player—because even as a newborn, he had these strongly defined muscles. He was like a jacked little baby.

But as his mother observed him as he grew, she started to notice some things. When he started to walk as a toddler, he would do this weird thing where his foot would halt before he fully put it down. Then one day he was playing, but he couldn’t get himself up off the floor. And these instances kept occurring, to the point where Dave’s parents began to worry. So they took him to see the doctor.

And the doctor ran some tests and then broke the news to them: their young boy, Dave, had muscular dystrophy.

So the doctor explained the prognosis. Eventually, he would not be able to walk or breathe on his own. Even his heart—that all-important muscle—would cease to work on its own one day.

The doctor said that he probably wouldn’t live past the age of 12.

Dave’s parents took the news hard, of course. But Dave—Dave was not deterred.

When he was in elementary school, he was in a wheelchair, and at playtime he got his friends to push him as fast as they could to clear that ditch in the playground—then again toward the berm so that he could catch some air in his wheelchair. Even in the hallway between classes, he would have his friends race him down the hallway, calling out to everybody, “Watch out! Watch out!”

The principal seemingly had his parents on speed dial.

In addition to being a little bit rambunctious and a bit of a troublemaker, Dave was also an unstoppable communicator. That’s a nice way to put it. His dad called him a “motor-mouth.” He loved to talk, to debate, to laugh.

In fact, when he was in high school—yes, high school, well beyond his original prognosis—he threatened to sue the school’s administration because they had not provided a ramp, even though the law required it of them. And so, at his behest, they put one in.

But in his twenties, the muscular dystrophy began to affect his breathing. He needed a tracheostomy to breathe. But it took away his ability to communicate.

Still, he would not be deterred.

He got an idea: if you put a valve in the tube that would act kind of like a door—releasing air or keeping it trapped—you could recreate the pressure that is necessary for your vocal cords to make sound. And so, with the help of an ENT specialist, this ended up being the Passy-Muir Valve, which is still in use today, giving hundreds—even thousands—of people their voice back.

Dave writes:

“I learned many things from this experience. I learned that anger, if turned toward a problem rather than toward oneself or circumstances, can be overcome. And God can work wonders. Indeed, just as I thought God had turned his back on me, He, in reality, gave me an incredible opportunity to help myself and others.”

Our passage today—God hears the pleas of His people and God speaks to Moses from a burning bush.

It starts with the Israelites suffering under slavery, writes Justin Michael Reed. The severe oppression goes beyond slavery when Pharaoh commands genocide against the newborn boys. At the start of our passage, the tyrannical king has died, but the oppression continues. It’s now become systematic. And therefore Exodus says:

“The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out to God.”

And God tells Moses that He has heard this cry and is sending him to the new Pharaoh to demand to free the people.

But Moses, you’ll notice, has questions.

First, he asks, “Who am I that I should go?” The implication being that Moses is nobody. It’s not really important. He’s not a prince of Egypt or a hero of Israel. He’s just some guy who was caught in between.

But God tells Moses not to worry. He promises:

“I will be with you.”

Next, Moses objects because he’s afraid that people are going to ask God’s name. And Moses doesn’t know it. You kind of get the impression that Moses just wanted to know it anyway—he’s kind of using this as a bit of an excuse. He’s like, “So… you know… tell me your name.”

So God reveals the divine name to Moses:

“I Am who I Am.”

God tells Moses, “Tell them I Am sent me to you.”

That should keep them occupied for a while—parse that sentence.

Finally, Moses brings out his big objection. He says, “God, I think you’ve overlooked something in this plan. I’m really not good at talking to people.”

The text is a bit vague, but the Hebrew literally means:

“I am of heavy mouth and heavy tongue.”

You can see why scholars and rabbis have theorized through the years that Moses maybe had some sort of speech impediment. And that’s the way they expressed it—”I am of heavy mouth and heavy tongue.”

So God responds that Moses doesn’t have to go it alone. Aaron will be there to help him—to speak this truth to power.

So there’s this interdependence that’s part of God’s plan.

Sarah Wolf explains that this interdependence is not beside the point—it is the point. God is thus simply explaining to Moses that just like God can’t and doesn’t speak directly to most people, so too Moses does not have to do all the speaking himself. God not only reassures Moses that he will have support, but also admits to Moses that God’s own role requires assistance, too.

I think Robert Williamson summarizes our passage for today this way. He says:

“The way God works in the world, it seems, is through people like Moses, who pay attention when things are on fire in the world and don’t ignore them or run away. But even Moses—one of the heroes of scripture—is at first afraid to do what God asks of him, begging God to send someone else, anyone else. Yet it turns out that this God of ours is an equipping God who gives Moses what is needed for the task ahead of him: a staff, a partner, even the divine name.”

During a major renovation of our sanctuary in the late 1950s, a wooden sculpture was added—it’s just out of my sight over here—that is a depiction of the burning bush and the divine name.

So this passage has special meaning for us as a congregation who, for over 60 years, has worshipped with that sculpture in our space. It reminds us of those who have gone before us. It reminds us of our grounding in God’s story. It reminds us that God’s revelation is not “once upon a time,” but is ongoing. God is still speaking—sometimes in ways that are just as strange as that.

And so it also reminds us to keep asking: Who is God calling us toward today? And how is God equipping us for the task at hand?

I would say it reminds us of a theological reality too—and that is that the eternal work of God is the work of liberation.

Famed liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez writes:

“The God of Exodus is the God of history and of political liberation.”

So that God calls Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go”—it’s not a surprise, right?

But what might catch us off guard, what we might not always notice in the story, is that in order to do that, God must first free Moses. Free him from self-doubt and pity. Free him from what others have labeled as a disability. And God also frees Moses of this notion that he has to go it alone—to show him that he is, in fact, dependent on others.

And this interdependence is a good thing. It’s a really good thing.

Desmond Tutu, the renowned South African Anglican bishop and social rights activist, once stated:

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

This powerful quote encapsulates the interconnectedness of individuals and emphasizes the significance of our shared humanity. It calls upon us to recognize that our well-being and our fulfillment are deeply intertwined with the well-being and fulfillment of others.

Friends, today is the last Sunday that we are going to worship in this sanctuary as it is. For the next several weeks or so, we will worship downstairs in our assembly hall while work is done to make this space more accessible, more open, and more friendly for all of God’s children.

A big part of our renovations over the past several years has been about making our building ADA accessible and making sure that people who have abilities that are labeled as different from the norm are made to feel welcome and valued just as they are.

This place where I am standing now is the last place in our building—literally—that is not ADA accessible. And so I cannot overstate the importance of the ramp that we are putting up here.

It’s not just a structure. It is the physical embodiment of who we want to be—who we believe God is calling us to be.

But like Moses, we’ve had our reservations and our objections along the way. There’s been self-doubt, other priorities, and that ever-present temptation of the status quo.

Yet God’s call has persisted.

And in seeking to invite and welcome others, in responding to God’s call—maybe, I hope—we have found our own sense of God’s grace deepening as well.

We have experienced God equipping us.

We have experienced our vision expanding.

We’ve grown our ministries.

And through it all, we’ve learned what Moses and Dave Muir and Desmond Tutu know:

We are all connected.
Our freedom and our well-being are inseparable.

You know what?

In a world that seems to increasingly believe the lie that we’re different because of where we come from, or where we’re born, or the color of our skin, or our socioeconomic status—in a world that believes that lie and wants us to live in that lie—it seems to me that as people of faith, we have a story to tell and a truth to proclaim.

Yes, with our voices—but also with our actions.
And yes, even our building.

That we are connected.
That we are all God’s children.
That each and every one of us are recipients at a table of grace.

May we find the courage to speak and to live this truth.
And let our hymn now be our prayer and our call.

Amen.

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