Here I Am

A burning bush? Parting the sea? Plagues? Moses’ story is made for Hollywood, isn’t it? (The only thing it is missing is zombies. Zombies would have made it perfect). 

Back when we got TV signals on huge antennae and only had 3 channels, a yearly, 2-night showing of “The Ten Commandments” was a big event. When Moses (played by the late Charlton Heston) took his staff and it turned into a snake and ate all the other snakes it freaked me out. I was terrified when the angel of death drifted through ancient Egypt in the form of a fog. My favorite part, though, was the talking, burning bush. Even at age 8, I thought it was kind of funny and littlegoofy that God almighty came to visit Moses as a piece of shrubbery that was on fire. 

Rabbis  say that what was most remarkable about the burning bush was not that God spoke through it but  that Moses stopped at all. A bush on fire would not have been an unusual thing the desert. Something made Moses go and look. Even more remarkable is that fact that when a voice says to him, “Moses!” he doesn’t run away in terror (like I probably would). He responds with “Here I am!” 

 “Here I am” (in Hebrew it is pronounced “hey-na-knee”) shows up over and over in some of the big stories and scenes of the Torah. People like David, Solomon, Jessie, and others are called out to by God and every time they answer, “Here I am!” God calls out, and they respond. Our story with God, then, is that God has constantly been calling out to humanity. The “heroes” of scripture also did stuff like part seas, kill giants and build temples, but what was most heroic about them was that they stopped answered God’s call with a “hey-na-knee.”  

Like Moses and our Fathers and Mothers who came before us, we too are invited to answer God’s call in our lives with a “Here I am”  and a life of spent pursuing and working for what is of ultimate worth.  In Jesus, though, we also see God’s desire to be a part of us by becoming one of us and continuing to live among us and within us. Our story with God continues, and even in stories of burning bushes and parting seas we can see that God finds us of ultimate worth and is saying to us at all times and all places, “Here I am.”  

An End to Scapegoating

Jesus dealt with a lot of people who were pretty sure they were right about most everything. They had lots of rules that they followed that functioned to help a small tribe of folks keep separate from the Romans or whatever culture was oppressing them in the moment. The rules helped them have an identity and they made them feel very safe (and sometimes) very superior.

While they were perhaps "right" about the rules, Jesus insisted that  the fruits of their rule following were pure hatred in the form of scapegoating. 

The rulers of Jesus’ culture even thought that people who were unclean or violated rules angered God. What followed for them is that they thought that game them the authority to  blame someone for their problems. 

Scapegoating addresses a problem, tension, issue, misfortune, etc. by investing energy in violence and retribution. Many of the people who marched in favor of white supremacism in Charlottesville were more than likely energized by their belief in the scapegoating mechanism. When human beings employ scapegoating, all we do is suppress violence, hate and other evils even while the root cause of them remains. We do nothing to address the fear, sorrow, anxiety or despair infecting our own hearts and driving us to live in a state of anxiety. 

Even those of us who arise to march against hatred have to guard our hearts against the tendency to scapegoat others. St. Martin Luther King, Jr. of Atlanta and his friends worked intentionally to deal with their own hatred and anger (and believe me, they were right to have plenty!) before marching or counter-protesting. King believed that “self purification” was always a precondition for any kind of action against hatred or injustice. Before we can resist evil, we have to do the hard work of looking what of it exists in our own hearts and lives, he reasoned, lest we fall in to the same patterns of evil we are fighting against. Otherwise, we are participating in the same mechanism of scapegoating that perpetuates violence and division and continues to keep our world broken.

Please, do not hear me aligning myself with the "there was hatred and bigotry on all sides" argument here. I observed that the origins of must of the publicly visible hatred in Charlottesville came from the individuals marching in favor of racist ideas. When the public symbols you carry, the dress  you choose to wear, and the things you chant are, from the start, in support of a return to a world in which things like "racial purity" were ever acceptable, you are automatically aligned with hatred and worthy of protest. While some people from the counter-protest side did resort to violence (some in self-defense, others out of their own anger), I am not of the opinion that those people were, in any way, "equal to" the racist marchers in their hatred or bigotry. What I am speaking of here is just a way forward for those of us who want, passionately, to push back against this kind of evil. We have to love those who hate us.  

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection communicates that scapegoating is not God’s way. Jesus was the last scapegoat because he demonstrated that it just does not work.

The White Nationalist marchers in Charlottesville, rather than working to solve problems through dialogue and peaceful means, elected to project all of the problems in the world upon the other. Swastika flags stand for an age when a charismatic leader once mobilized an entire nation by blaming all the problems it suffered on people who were Jewish. As Americans, we honor their exercise of free speech, but we have to reject not only the content of their message, but the greater spiritual ill that lies beneath it. Sometimes that will mean showing up, chanting our own slogans, and being prepared to resist the urge to strike out.

Even in the face of the violence and hatred of other people, what comes out of our mouths will be indicative of the work we are doing in our hearts, minds and souls to repent of hatred. Pray that God gives us the strength and courage to gather together as a church, undergo our own “self-purification” and begin to address scapegoating for what it is- evil’s oldest trick for keeping the world broken, in darkness, and full of pain.  Shalom- Tim

           

Through thick and thin

I have found, in my life, that most places in this world can be split into two categories: thin or thick. If these terms don’t mean anything more to you than physical attributes just hold tight. I’ll explain. I’ve heard the term “thin place” thrown around quite a lot among my church and camp friends; most often when talking about Camp Mikell. A thin place is a place where God’s presence is most apparent. And if we have thin places then it would stand to reason that we also have thick places. A place where God’s presence seems to be lacking or perhaps even nonexistent. Perhaps a place like the DMV or a filthy gas station bathroom in some podunk town in the middle of south Georgia. I can honestly say I’ve never felt the powerful and moving force of the Holy Ghost in either of those places.

A thin place is something wonderful, though. A place to find peace. A place to pray. A place to learn and love and grow. A place to fill and be filled. The thinnest I place I’ve found in my life has been Camp Mikell, which is the camp for the Diocese of Atlanta. I’ve been a regular attendee at Mikell since the summer of 2006. I have been a camper, a counselor, and now a summer staffer. At Camp Mikell, the Holy Spirit doesn’t just move. It creates and transforms.

There’s one activity we do at Camp that I find particularly moving: the Creek Hike. The creek hike is a strenuous and physically demanding trek through the Little Toccoa Creek. You start by walking about a half mile out from main camp to the spot where you get in the water. Once you get in the creek, you don’t get out for about a mile and half. You have to tread carefully over the creek bed, navigate obstacles such as fallen trees and boulders, and finish by climbing up a 15 or so foot waterfall. As difficult and exhausting and dangerous as it is, I find it to be both cleansing and relaxing. I leave from the creek hike feeling refreshed. It’s the one of the few places I’ve ever been where there is no evidence of human activity. There’s no trash anywhere, no signs or trail markers. It’s a perfect example of the raw, natural beauty of God’s creation, unmolested by human hands. Being out in nature always helps me to recenter myself, but something about that specific chunk of land in the northeast Georgia mountains has a profound effect on me that I haven’t yet found any where else. I feel God’s presence as the water rushes past me. I see his power portrayed in the enormous boulders laid in the creek. I can hear him speaking in the water trickling down the cliffs, in the birds and the frogs, and in the wind blowing through the valley. I hope you have found a place like this, and if you don’t, I encourage you to go seek it out.

Peace!

Joel Smith