This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.
Story
Today I thought I’d tell you part of the old, old story of how the Jewish people lived in slavery under the wicked Pharaoh, and how Moses led the Jewish people to freedom….
The God of Israel came down to speak to Moses, and told Moses to go to the Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, let them go free.” Moses didn’t want to do this, but God said he had to, and he did.
Moses said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” But Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man, and wouldn’t let the Israelites, the Jews, go free. So with God’s help, Moses took his staff while Pharaoh was watching, lifted it up, and struck the water of the Nile River. Immediately all the water in the river turned to blood, and that made all the fish in the river die. It did not smell good. And because the Egyptians got their water from the Nile, they had a hard time getting enough water to drink, or to wash with.
Well, you think that would have been enough to convince Pharaoh not to fool around with Moses — and to not fool around with the God of the Israelites. But the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses came to Pharaoh, and said, “Now will you let my people go?” But Pharaoh said no.
This time Moses stretched out his staff over the river, the ponds and lakes and all the water, and with God’s help he let loose a plague of frogs. There were frogs everywhere! There were frogs in Pharaoh’s palace, frogs in everyone’s houses, frogs in people’s beds, so many frogs that the bakers put them into bread by mistake. Yuck! Bread with frogs in it. It tasted horrible.
Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but the Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.
This time Moses stretched out his staff and struck the dust of the earth, and with God’s help released a horde of gnats. Do you know what gnats are? They are little insects that bite you just like mosquitoes and when they bite you it’s just like a mosquito bite which swells up and itches, but gnats are so small you can’t see them. There were gnats everywhere, a plague of gnats, biting everyone all the time. It was most unpleasant.
Well, you think Pharaoh would have learned his lesson, but that Pharaoh was a hard-hearted man. Moses said, “Let my people go!” and Pharaoh just said, no.
So with God’s help, Moses sent a swarm of flies to plague the land (if you’re keeping count, that’s the fourth plague Moses lets loose on Egypt). Flies everywhere! — on your food, in your eyes, everywhere.
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made all the cows and chickens and other livestock get sick — no milk to drink! — no eggs to eat! (That’s number five.) Everyone got very hungry.
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses made everyone in Egypt get pimples and boils that hurt like the dickens and looked nasty (that’s number six).
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses let loose thunder and hail — big hailstones that damaged all the crops (that’s number seven).
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought locusts into the country of Egypt. The locusts covered every inch of the land, and if there was anything left in the fields that the hail had not damaged, the locusts ate it up. (That’s number eight.) Now there was basically no food left to eat in all of Egypt.
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. So with God’s help Moses brought a dense darkness over the entire land of Egypt, except for little bits of light that were in the houses of the Israelites (that’s number nine).
But when Moses said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh just said, no. This time, God said, “Moses, go tell Pharaoh that I, God, will make every first-born child die throughout the land of Egypt.” But God also told Moses that all the Jews should make a mark over their doors with the blood of a lamb, and that way God would know that God should pass over those houses, and not make the firstborn child die. (And that was the tenth, and the very worst, of the ten plagues.)
This time, when Moses went to Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh said, “Go! Go! You bring nothing but disaster to me and my kingdom.” And Moses and his people left as quickly as they could, before Pharoah could change his mind again.
That’s the first part of the story of how the Jews, who were kept in slavery by Pharaoh, at last gained their freedom. Some people don’t like this story because it is kind of disgusting in places. Even so, this story reminds me how important religious freedom is. It would have been very easy for Moses and the Jews to just try to fit in to life in Egypt — but they didn’t; they stayed true to who they were as a religious community.
Readings
The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew Bible.
Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Hold out your arm over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat up all the grasses in the land, whatever the hail has left.’ So Moses held out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD drove an east wind over the land of Egypt; and whn morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt.
Pharaoh hurriedly summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I stand guilty before the LORD your God and before you. Forgive my offense just this once, and plead with the LORD your God that He but remove this death from me.’ So he left Pharaoh’s presence and pleaded with the LORD. The LORD caused a shift to a very strong west wind, which lifted the locusts and hurled them into the Sea of Reeds; not a single locust remained in all the territory of Egypt. But the LORD stiffened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.
(Exodus 10.12-29; the new Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanakh)
The second reading this morning comes from the book More Than Numbers: The Way Churches Grow, by Loren Mead:
“The civic congregation… is tempted to rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day. Each has its own realm of power, but there is such an interpenetration of values and concerns that a basic consensus among power brokers emerges. In this coalition statesmen [sic] consult with bishops and moderators at prayer breakfasts before undertaking great enterprises of war or peace. Civic religion reigns.
“The enticement of this view is that most of us can thank back to a time when such an establishment seemed to work. There’s the rub. ‘Most’ of us. In fact, such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering. Yet ‘most’ did see and today remember that more orderly, simpler life. Even those victimized and excluded by the establishment sometimes are tempted to return to a simple — but at least predictable — victimization!
“Denominational executives get tempted in this direction by flattering invitations to lunch and a conference at the mayor’s office or the governor’s mansion.
“Much of what is called ‘outreach’ in local congregations tries to make a difference to those who suffer and it is profoundly right in this motivation. The temptation I am describing creeps in to turn it into a religious public welfare program. The temptation leads congregations to make outreach to the oppressed the primary task rather than an expression of a community whose primary task has to do with relationship to God. Yes, the two are related. But congregations must be grounded in relationship to God and yet have very limited capacity or expertise to accomplish the other. Most such efforts carve out a small arena in which a congregation is tempted to assume is it about the task of rebuilding Christendom. Congregations are not very good at that, and they run into problems of burning out staff and volunteers.” [pp. 97-98]
Sermon
When I began here at First Unitarian, members of the Search Committee and other lay leaders told me that this congregation has a serious commitment to the principles of freedom of the pulpit. If you haven’t heard that term before, the phrase “freedom of the pulpit” sums up the theory that a minister in our tradition should be able to speak the truth from the pulpit, without fear of reprisals or other repercussions from within the congregation. That is the theory of “freedom of the pulpit,” and it is a good theory.
In practice, freedom of the pulpit was abused by many Unitarian Universalist ministers in the 1960’s. There is the famous story of the Unitarian Universalist minister who preached a couple of sermons against the Vietnam War. Members of the congregation told him that they would appreciate it if he would hold off on preaching another sermon on the Vietnam War. But, as he later proudly recounted the story, he invoked the principle of freedom of the pulpit and gave the congregation another sermon of Vietnam, and another one after that. Whereupon many in the congregation invoked the principle of “freedom of the pew,” and stopped coming to church on Sunday morning — or at least, that’s how I heard the story told.
When I say that many Unitarian Universalist ministers abused the freedom of the pulpit, what I really mean is that these ministers succumbed to the temptation of believing that they could construct a just society. Of course we all want to construct a just society. But there’s a difference between constructing a just society on the one hand, and on the other hand trying to force your interpretation of justice on everyone else. Episcopal priest Loren Mead puts it this way: “I am not saying that religious people should not be seeking to work for justice in society. I am simply saying that 2,000 years [of Western Christian tradition] have left us with a legacy of wanting to legislate the whole thing in our own image. We leave no room for pluriformity.”
Considered thus, I believe that “freedom of the pulpit” has limits. It is not my job to tell you what to believe or do in the realm of politics. But it is my job to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; it is my job to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and it is my job to hold us all accountable when we are failing to grow in faith together, when we are failing in our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.
And so I come to the story of Moses and the plagues. What a strange story!– Moses goes to Pharaoh and requests that the Israelites be freed from bondage so that they might follow Moses into the desert in order to better worship their God. When Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, Moses calls down plagues upon the Egyptian people: a river filled with blood, a plague of lice and vermin, a plague of frogs for Pete’s sake. What on earth was Moses thinking?
If Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would not have wasted his time calling down plagues on Pharaoh’s people. No indeed, if Moses were a Unitarian Universalist minister, he would have done things quite differently. He might have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing in the halls of power, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of Egypt so that the Israelites would gain their freedom without having to actually pack up and leave. Or he might have organized protests in front of the Pyramids to bring down the corrupt regime of Pharaoh and usher in a democratically-elected government sympathetic to the Israelite presence in Egypt. In either case, if Moses had been a Unitarian Universalist minister, there wouldn’t have been any of this nonsense of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, everyone trekking through the desert for forty years eating mana and grasshoppers, and finally arriving at the Promised Land — which is what Moses did, according to the book of Exodus.
If Moses had been minister here in First Unitarian in New Bedford, we can be pretty sure that he would have worked within the system, lobbying and schmoozing with City Hal– I mean with Pharaoh, organizing the Inter-Church Council so as to have more political clout, working to get Pharaoh to change the laws of New Bedford so that the Israelites would have the maximum freedom with the minimum amount of displacement. Of course, at the same time Moses and the middle-class people from First Unitarian would also be working at relieving the suffering of the many people who did not flourish under Pharaoh’s rule.
There are at least two problems with this hypothetical course of action for this mythical First Unitarian as lead by Moses. First, by concentrating much of their energy on politics and relief work, it would be very easy for Moses and the people of First Unitarian to neglect their religious purpose. Second, by building a coalition with the New Bedford Pharaoh and the New Bedford political system, Moses and the people of First Unitarian undergo a risk that we heard described in the second reading this morning: “such coalitions are always blind to the large segments of society that are left out in the cold, excluded from participation, unnoticed in suffering.”
Instead of making up stories about some mythical First Unitarian as it might have been led by Moses, the Unitarian Universalist minister — what, in fact, has happened here at our non-mythical First Unitarian in New Bedford?
Here’s my take on what has happened here in the real First Unitarian:
We pride ourselves as being a serious player in the political arena. We pride ourselves in having had ministers who have been active participants in the civic and political life of the city of New Bedford. (Some of us may even worry a little about the current minister, who is not particularly active in the political and civic life of New Bedford, who doesn’t even subscribe the local daily newspaper; why, even the minister isn’t quite sure what to make of himself in this context.) We pride ourselves as having political influence in the city and the region, and we take real and justified pride every time a member of this congregation has a letter to the editor published in the local daily newspaper.
We take pride in past accomplishments. We are justifiably proud of having founded Unity Home, a settlement house that we founded in the North End of New Bedford a hundred years ago. We are justifiably proud of having been a co-founder of the Inter-Church Council, which has done so much good work and has had so much political influence — even though we now feel forced out of the Council because we aren’t Christian enough any more. And we take pride in our reputation as “the social action congregation.”
We are indeed the “social action congregation.” While it is true that our political influence has declined, primarily because our numbers declined precipitously during the urban violence of the 1960’s and have remained low ever since. But mayors and politicians still pay some attention to us, and we do have influence beyond our tiny numbers.
As a social action congregation, however, we face two big temptations. The first temptation we face is the temptation to “rebuild an ‘establishment’ of the right people and institutions and groups, closely in touch with one another, quietly consulting about the critical issues of the day” — to quote our second reading this morning. Indeed, if your minister — me! — if I weren’t so doggone pig-headed, I could be out in the community more, and we could in fact rebuild that establishment of the right people and the right institutions taking care of the critical issues right now.
The second temptation is perhaps more tempting: we could build a version of a truly just society, right here in New Bedford. We could build a society that cares for the poor, helps the weak, honors those who are suffering. This temptation is the one that tempts me personally. This temptation is so tempting, it’s hard to believe that there could be anything wrong with it. But tempting as they are, something’s wrong with both these temptations. Let me quote Loren Mead again:
“An activist congregation is often tempted to build a… version of the Just Society. It assumes that a political order can be constructed that incarnates fully the principles of justice…. A clue to the empire-building nature of this temptation is the role of clergy in it. Generally clergy are the leading figures, the prophets and movement heads…. This is a temptation of Church to take authority over Empire. The laudable aims of the activists become the pressure for empire building in a new way.”
Well, so what? So what if we engage in a little empire-building? At least our empire would be based on sound principles of justice and equity, right?
Maybe so. But remember that some conservative Christians have succumbed to this temptation at the national level here in the United States. These conservative Christians, some of whom implemented Bible study in the White House, decided that they knew what true justice was. True justice means no abortions, not for any reason. True justice means no same-sex marriage. True justice means exporting democracy to Iraq. True justice means supporting economic growth at the expense of environmental safety. They are quite certain they know what justice is, and they are working hard to implement true justice, as they understand it. But in my opinion, they have released plagues upon the land.
If we tried to do the same thing, don’t you think that there would be many people who felt we were wrong, that our vision of a just society was wrong? Isn’t there a very real possibility that we would be wrong in at least one important area? And what would we do when we encountered resistance to our social justice programs? –would we squash that resistance, or listen to it seriously?
I don’t think we should succumb to either of these temptations. I don’t think we should try to rebuild the old establishment of the late 19th C., where First Unitarian was part of the inner circle of decision-making, where members and ministers of First Unitarian walked the halls of power. Nor do I think we should succumb to the temptation of believing that we are the ones who have the true answers, that we are the ones who know how to build the just society here in New Bedford. That kind of narrow, dogmatic thinking releases its own kind of plague upon the land.
No, I believe the purpose of a Unitarian Universalist church is different, and pretty straightforward. The way I think about it, there’s a vertical and a horizontal dimension to our purpose here. On the vertical dimension, we’re here to ask ultimate questions of truth and meaning, and although we don’t expect final answers to our questions we’re here to get in touch with some sense of the ultimate (which some of us happen to call God). On the horizontal dimension, we’re here to build a safe and supportive community, a community where we support each other in our spiritual journeys. You have to have both dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal; a sense of the ultimate, and a sense of community. That is our purpose.
From a very practical and pragmatic point of view, we have another purpose. We build up a strong religious community, so that we may send our members and friends out into the world to tackle the problems of the world. I stole this idea from Loren Mead, but notice that here again there are two dimensions: building the church from within, and sending church members outside the confines of our community.
You will notice that this is very different from saying that our church will go out and effect change in the world; I am saying that our church nurtures and supports each of us individually, so that we can then in turn go out and do the work that needs to be done in the world. You will notice that this conception of church has a very different role for the minister; rather than paying the minister to go out into the world to do the justice work that needs to be done, the minister’s primary work is within the congregation, building the congregational community, and supporting the individuals who go out to work in the world. I’m not saying that you will agree with me, but certainly you will notice these things.
Let’s get back to Moses for a moment. If I try to read the story of Moses as historical fact that is literally true, I don’t like the story:– all those plagues! all those innocent people who had to suffer and die! a river of blood is disgusting! But if I take the story about Moses and the plagues as poetry, rather than as literal fact, I find that the story holds truth for me. Moses was concerned with building up his religious community, and when his community was faced with such oppression that their very existence was threatened, he decided to lead them out of Egypt. Yet even though he could have, he did not walk the halls of power side-by-side with Pharaoh.
We are lucky enough to live in a society that is generally tolerant of religious differences, so it is unlikely that we will have to leave the country. Yet on a poetic level, we can understand this story is telling us that sometimes religious communities have to stand up to the prevailing norms of society in order to hold on to their own sense of truth and goodness; and sometimes religious communities have to work to maintain appropriate boundaries so they are not overwhelmed or subsumed. To these ends, Moses is concerned with the vertical and horizontal dimensions of his religious community: he wants his community to remain in contact with their God; and he wants his community to remain a healthy, thriving community.
Mind you, I am not Moses. I haven’t the vaguest idea of how to unleash plagues on Egypt. As a religious leader, my purpose has not been to release a plague upon anybody. My purpose has been to try to describe how we might all grow in our religious faith together; and my purpose has been to hold up a vision for how we might create a religious community that nurtures us; and my purpose has been to hold us all accountable to realize our vision of creating a religious community that nurtures all of us.
And maybe I am actually using a little of that mythical freedom of the pulpit which I don’t really believe in. If that’s the case, I hope that you will use your freedom of the pew to continue the conversation, and that you will begin to talk with each other, and with me, about your visions for this community.