Clyde Fant - "When Faith Lives in Egypt" (September 24, 2000)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | The second reading, the gospel lesson, | 0:09 |
is from the Gospel According to St. Mark, 9:30-37. | 0:11 | |
"They went on from there and passed through Galilee. | 0:19 | |
"He did not want anyone to know it, | 0:23 | |
"for he was teaching his disciples, | 0:26 | |
"saying to them, | 0:28 | |
"'The son of man is to be betrayed into human hands, | 0:31 | |
"'and they will kill him, | 0:35 | |
"'and three days after being killed, | 0:37 | |
"'he will rise again.' | 0:40 | |
"But they did not understand what he was saying, | 0:43 | |
"and were afraid to ask. | 0:46 | |
"Then they came to Capernaum. | 0:49 | |
"And when he was in the house, he asked them, | 0:51 | |
"'What were you arguing about on the way?' | 0:55 | |
"But they were silent. | 0:58 | |
"For on the way, they had argued with one another | 1:01 | |
"about who was the greatest. | 1:04 | |
"Jesus sat down, called the 12, and said to them, | 1:08 | |
"'Whoever wants to be first | 1:13 | |
"'must be last of all, and servant of all.' | 1:14 | |
"Then he took a little child and put it among them. | 1:20 | |
"And taking it in his arms, he said to them, | 1:24 | |
"'Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, | 1:29 | |
"'welcomes me, | 1:34 | |
"'and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, | 1:37 | |
"'but the one who sent me.'" | 1:43 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 1:46 | |
- | A few words from the 47th chapter of Genesis. | 2:07 |
"So Joseph went in and told Pharaoh, | 2:12 | |
"'My father and my brother, | 2:16 | |
"'with their flocks and herds and all that they possess, | 2:19 | |
"'have come from the land of Canaan. | 2:22 | |
"'They are now in the land of Goshen.' | 2:25 | |
"Then Joseph brought in Jacob, his father, | 2:28 | |
"and set him before Pharaoh. | 2:32 | |
"And Jacob blessed Pharaoh. | 2:35 | |
"And Pharaoh said to Jacob, 'How old are you, old man?' | 2:39 | |
"And Jacob said to Pharaoh, | 2:45 | |
"'The days of the years of my sojourning | 2:49 | |
"'are 130 years. | 2:52 | |
"'Few and evil have been the days of my life, | 2:55 | |
"'and they have not attained to the days | 2:57 | |
"'of the years of the life of my father's | 3:00 | |
"'in the days of their sojourning.' | 3:03 | |
"And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, | 3:06 | |
"and went out from the presence of Pharaoh. | 3:09 | |
"And when the time drew near that Israel must die, | 3:15 | |
"he called his son Joseph and said to him, | 3:20 | |
"'If now I have found favor in your sight, | 3:24 | |
"'put your hand under my thigh, | 3:27 | |
"'and promise to deal loyally and truly with me. | 3:30 | |
"'Do not bury me in Egypt, | 3:33 | |
"'but let me lie with my fathers. | 3:39 | |
"'Carry me out of Egypt, | 3:41 | |
"'and bury me in their burying place.' | 3:45 | |
"He answered, 'I will do as you have said.' | 3:48 | |
"And he said, 'Swear to me.' | 3:53 | |
"And he swore to him. | 3:56 | |
"And Israel bowed himself upon the head of his bed, | 3:59 | |
"and he died." | 4:05 | |
Now Jacob has come to the end of his life. | 4:12 | |
He wrestled against his family and lost, | 4:18 | |
but he wrestled against God and he won. | 4:23 | |
He began his life as a shrewd manipulator. | 4:29 | |
He was the Gordon Gecko of the Old Testament. | 4:33 | |
He stole his birthright, | 4:39 | |
but ultimately he loses. | 4:42 | |
He is afraid of Esau, | 4:45 | |
he is cheated by Laban, | 4:48 | |
he is tricked by his sons. | 4:50 | |
But all the way, | 4:54 | |
somehow, he was led | 4:57 | |
by the promises of God. | 4:59 | |
Now he is in Egypt. | 5:02 | |
His son is a powerful official. | 5:04 | |
He is in charge of the grain, | 5:07 | |
and there is no more important job in Egypt, | 5:11 | |
not even war, than raising grain. | 5:15 | |
But Jacob's eyes still | 5:21 | |
on the promise | 5:23 | |
of the mysterious God with whom he wrestled. | 5:25 | |
Therefore, though Jacob is in Egypt, | 5:31 | |
Egypt is never in Jacob. | 5:37 | |
The two scenes that I read to you | 5:42 | |
this morning, very briefly, | 5:44 | |
show us Jacob as an old man, | 5:47 | |
shortly before his death, | 5:51 | |
in the court of Pharaoh, | 5:53 | |
the most powerful man on earth. | 5:57 | |
But does Jacob ask a favor of the Pharaoh? | 6:03 | |
In fact, this old Bedouin blesses the Pharaoh. | 6:09 | |
Can you imagine a more amazing scene? | 6:17 | |
Recently, I have traveled to Egypt on several occasions. | 6:22 | |
We'll be going back again in January. | 6:27 | |
And you have only to glimpse | 6:32 | |
the ruins of the temples of Egypt, | 6:35 | |
and the marvelous paintings of the tombs, | 6:38 | |
and the amazing artifacts in the Cairo Museum | 6:43 | |
to understand what I mean when I say it is amazing indeed | 6:48 | |
to think of an old Bedouin | 6:54 | |
blessing a Pharaoh. | 6:57 | |
Then the scene on his deathbed. | 7:02 | |
He calls Joseph and his sons and their sons about him, | 7:05 | |
and the old man blesses all of them, | 7:12 | |
and commits them also to the promises of God. | 7:17 | |
And he makes Joseph promise | 7:22 | |
that he will not bury him in Egypt, | 7:26 | |
but he will take him | 7:29 | |
to the land of his fathers, | 7:32 | |
in fulfillment of God's promise. | 7:35 | |
From a historical standpoint, | 7:41 | |
there are many, many fascinating things about this story. | 7:43 | |
But what do these scenes | 7:48 | |
say to Israel? | 7:52 | |
Why did Israel retain these | 7:55 | |
relatively insignificant scenes | 7:58 | |
within the Scripture? | 8:02 | |
Why do these scenes remain a beacon | 8:05 | |
for Israel to follow the promises of God? | 8:10 | |
All the way from Egypt | 8:14 | |
to the Holocaust, | 8:18 | |
and the persecutions in numerous countries, | 8:22 | |
and the discriminations in many countries, | 8:25 | |
as they followed the promise of God. | 8:30 | |
More than that, what can these scenes, | 8:36 | |
so ancient, though interesting, | 8:38 | |
say to a university chapel audience | 8:42 | |
in the year of our Lord, 2000? | 8:46 | |
What they say to me is, | 8:53 | |
sooner or later, | 8:56 | |
faith will live in Egypt. | 8:59 | |
Some of us grew up in Canaan, | 9:04 | |
with the blessings of Canaan, | 9:09 | |
and the faith of our fathers. | 9:12 | |
Some of us grew up in Egypt, | 9:17 | |
surrounded by the gods of Egypt. | 9:21 | |
But all of us, | 9:28 | |
whether we grew up in a land sacred or secular, | 9:30 | |
all of us grew up surrounded by household gods. | 9:36 | |
Gods worshiped by our families. | 9:43 | |
There are no families in this country | 9:46 | |
that do not worship. | 9:50 | |
There are no families in this country | 9:51 | |
that do not have gods. | 9:54 | |
There are not families in this country | 9:59 | |
that do not have sacred scriptures, | 10:02 | |
sacred or secular, burned upon their hearts, | 10:06 | |
and we all grew up in such temples, | 10:10 | |
surrounded not only by our parents but by our peers. | 10:15 | |
And so we worship. | 10:21 | |
We do it all day long. | 10:25 | |
Not simply on Sunday in a marvelous cathedral such as this. | 10:28 | |
All day long, we are followers of a promise. | 10:33 | |
But what promise? | 10:38 | |
If we have grown up in Canaan, | 10:41 | |
eventually our simple faiths | 10:43 | |
find us in Egypt, | 10:46 | |
surrounded by splendors | 10:50 | |
and superstitions | 10:53 | |
never heard, or seen. | 10:56 | |
By prosperities and pressures never imagined. | 10:59 | |
By slogans never heard. | 11:07 | |
And many and many kneel down before them. | 11:12 | |
And then those of us | 11:18 | |
whose homeland is truly Canaan, | 11:21 | |
learn whether or not our faith | 11:25 | |
can survive Egypt. | 11:28 | |
True, sometimes Egypt means persecutions and pressures. | 11:33 | |
Like the slavery of the slime pits of Egypt, | 11:39 | |
or the smokestacks of the Holocaust. | 11:45 | |
But you and I are not in much danger | 11:53 | |
from foreign gods these days, | 11:55 | |
nor religious persecution, thank God. | 11:58 | |
But we may be seduced | 12:03 | |
by the treasures of Egypt. | 12:07 | |
Sometimes, a time of hardship | 12:12 | |
may strengthen faith. | 12:16 | |
Israel always remembered the wilderness | 12:18 | |
as a time of their childhood, | 12:22 | |
holding the hand of God like a little child, | 12:26 | |
wandering in the wilderness. | 12:29 | |
And so the prophets looked back to it, as did Jesus, | 12:31 | |
as a time of faith. | 12:35 | |
So our Lord Jesus went out into the wilderness | 12:38 | |
shortly after his baptism and the descent of the dove. | 12:40 | |
And in the wilderness, again, like Israel, | 12:44 | |
he is tempted. | 12:46 | |
And in the wilderness, again, he must decide | 12:48 | |
if he will be | 12:53 | |
a son of Canaan, | 12:55 | |
or a son of Egypt. | 12:58 | |
Though now, the name of Egypt may be wrong. | 13:00 | |
We go through times of hardship: | 13:06 | |
physical, psychological, spiritual. | 13:09 | |
Times of illness, loss, and death. | 13:12 | |
But I think none of those test Christians, | 13:16 | |
not these days, | 13:20 | |
in the way that our prosperity tempts us | 13:22 | |
to selfishness, | 13:27 | |
to self-centered life. | 13:29 | |
The life truly of isolation. | 13:32 | |
We live in fear with our possessions. | 13:37 | |
We have gated communities. | 13:41 | |
We have insurance. | 13:45 | |
We take every means possible to protect our wealth | 13:49 | |
for our children. | 13:53 | |
And yet ultimately, | 13:57 | |
it all is dust, even as we are. | 14:00 | |
But old Jacob, somehow, | 14:06 | |
kept his eye fastened | 14:09 | |
on the eternal promise of God. | 14:12 | |
When we are in Egypt, sometimes we want | 14:18 | |
to wear the garb of Egypt. | 14:20 | |
We want to make monuments to ourselves, | 14:23 | |
like the Pharaohs did, | 14:25 | |
and engrave our names on the monuments, | 14:27 | |
even parts of it we didn't build, | 14:30 | |
because we want to be remembered. | 14:35 | |
We want to leave a name. | 14:37 | |
We forget | 14:42 | |
that we are not here to be blessed, | 14:44 | |
but to bless. | 14:48 | |
The old Bedouin blessed the Pharaoh. | 14:51 | |
But our problem sometimes is, | 14:57 | |
even as people of Christ, people of faith, | 15:01 | |
that we so envy the world | 15:06 | |
that we cannot bless it. | 15:12 | |
Do you realize that you can't bless | 15:15 | |
someone you envy? | 15:21 | |
The second scene is gathered about the deathbed. | 15:28 | |
There, Jacob speaks matter-of-factly, | 15:33 | |
as well as poetically, with his sons and grandsons. | 15:35 | |
He tells them where they're to go. | 15:39 | |
He gives them a blessing, again, before he dies. | 15:41 | |
And something about this scene | 15:47 | |
is particularly appealing to me. | 15:48 | |
You know, sometimes when you first read | 15:51 | |
through a passage of Scripture, | 15:52 | |
you find all the little nitty-gritty details | 15:55 | |
of Joseph and his son arguing | 15:58 | |
about which boy should be blessed. | 16:01 | |
I didn't read you that part; that's not inspirational. | 16:02 | |
They're haggling even on the deathbed. | 16:07 | |
They're making decisions of the future. | 16:10 | |
And yet, | 16:16 | |
it also teaches us something we need to know. | 16:18 | |
There are many outside these doors | 16:22 | |
who consider themselves men and women of the world. | 16:24 | |
Wise and shrewd, Jesus even told us | 16:28 | |
that the children of this | 16:32 | |
Kingdom of Light sometimes are not | 16:34 | |
as shrewd as the others outside, | 16:36 | |
and so we are to be as wise as serpents, | 16:39 | |
but as gentle as doves. | 16:44 | |
Some of us are as gentle as serpents and as wise as doves. | 16:46 | |
That doesn't work. | 16:50 | |
We must, as children of faith, also be children of fact. | 16:55 | |
We must, as well as | 17:02 | |
gazing upon the things of faith, | 17:06 | |
we must also be realistic | 17:11 | |
about the world around us. | 17:15 | |
It is no good | 17:21 | |
to live in some never-never world of an imagined faith | 17:23 | |
where we live in a kind of bubble like the child | 17:29 | |
whose immune system is so weak | 17:34 | |
it cannot encounter the world. | 17:36 | |
Christians cannot live like that. | 17:38 | |
And over and over again, we find this | 17:42 | |
fro and to going with Christianity from | 17:45 | |
wild engagement with the world to | 17:50 | |
ridiculous abstraction away from the world. | 17:54 | |
Jacob and Joseph | 18:00 | |
were realists, | 18:02 | |
as well as people of faith. | 18:04 | |
We must trust in the promise, | 18:08 | |
but also, we must face reality. | 18:10 | |
Pain is real. | 18:14 | |
Death is God's enemy. | 18:16 | |
The life of faith is the life of self-giving. | 18:21 | |
Of inclusion, | 18:27 | |
not exclusion. | 18:29 | |
Of constant seeking | 18:32 | |
to know the face of God, | 18:34 | |
and not ever thinking | 18:37 | |
we have seen God, | 18:40 | |
and there is nothing more to be done or said. | 18:43 | |
This requires from us both | 18:47 | |
an engagement and a disengagement from the world. | 18:50 | |
We must disengage from that part of the world | 18:54 | |
that keeps us from living the Christ life. | 19:00 | |
But we must engage with the world. | 19:04 | |
We must be active in our businesses, | 19:06 | |
in our careers, in our friendships, | 19:10 | |
in our marriages, in our relations with our families. | 19:12 | |
We cannot blink at truth. | 19:19 | |
But we cannot go back | 19:27 | |
into the past. | 19:30 | |
There's a great deal of nostalgia these days. | 19:32 | |
I guess there always has been. | 19:36 | |
I think as you get older, you tend to | 19:39 | |
think more about the past, and remember things. | 19:42 | |
Sometimes, we want to live in the past. | 19:45 | |
One of my favorite poets is Billy Collins. | 19:49 | |
In the first place, I would love any poet | 19:52 | |
who is named Billy. | 19:54 | |
Billy Collins wrote, among other things, | 19:57 | |
questions about angels. | 20:00 | |
Or in his book, Questions About Angels, | 20:02 | |
he wrote a poem entitled, "Nostalgia." | 20:04 | |
Here's a bit of it. | 20:09 | |
"Remember the 1340s? | 20:11 | |
"We were doing a dance called the catapult. | 20:14 | |
"You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade, | 20:18 | |
"And I was draped in one of those capes that were popular, | 20:21 | |
"the ones with unicorns and pomegranates and needlework. | 20:23 | |
"Everyone would pause for a beer | 20:28 | |
"and onions in the afternoon, | 20:31 | |
"and at night, we would play a game called Find the Cow. | 20:33 | |
"Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today. | 20:38 | |
"I would love to return to 1901, if only for a moment. | 20:43 | |
"The time enough to wind up a music box, | 20:48 | |
"and do a few dance steps. | 20:51 | |
"Or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, | 20:54 | |
"or at least let me recapture | 20:57 | |
"the serenity of last month when we picked berries, | 21:00 | |
"and glided through afternoons in a canoe. | 21:04 | |
"Even this morning would be an improvement over the present. | 21:08 | |
"I was in a garden then, | 21:12 | |
"surrounded by the hum of bees | 21:14 | |
"and the Latin names of flowers, | 21:16 | |
"watching the early light flash | 21:19 | |
"off the slanted windows of the greenhouse, | 21:21 | |
"and silver the limbs on the rose of dark hemlocks. | 21:24 | |
"As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past, | 21:29 | |
"letting my memory rush over them like water, | 21:34 | |
"rushing over the stones on the bottom of the stream. | 21:38 | |
"I was even thinking a little about the future. | 21:42 | |
"That place where people are doing a dance | 21:47 | |
"we cannot imagine. | 21:51 | |
"A dance whose name we can only guess." | 21:55 | |
John W. Gardner | 22:05 | |
has written, | 22:08 | |
"People of every age need commitments beyond the self. | 22:10 | |
"Need the meaning that commitments provide. | 22:17 | |
"Self-preoccupation is a prison, | 22:21 | |
"as every self-preoccupied person finally knows. | 22:23 | |
"Commitments to larger purposes | 22:28 | |
"can get you out of prison." | 22:31 | |
And that's what freed Jacob from his fears, | 22:36 | |
from his family, | 22:41 | |
to the future. | 22:44 | |
Jacob said, | 22:46 | |
"Do not take me to the Mesopotamia of my fathers, | 22:47 | |
"do not even bury me in the splendid Egypt of my son, | 22:52 | |
"but take me to the future of the promise to Canaan. | 22:59 | |
"That is my home." | 23:05 | |
The prisons that you and I face are not the same as Egypt, | 23:10 | |
nor the prisons of Israel in Germany. | 23:15 | |
But our prisons, sometimes, | 23:18 | |
are as painful. | 23:23 | |
They cause a lingering death. | 23:27 | |
The insecurities of self-centeredness. | 23:32 | |
The treadmill of earn, acquire, amass, and then worry. | 23:37 | |
The boredom of the daily routine. | 23:43 | |
Gardner again said, | 23:47 | |
"Logan Pearsall Smith said once | 23:49 | |
"that boredom can rise to the level | 23:53 | |
"of a mystical experience. | 23:57 | |
"If that is true, I know some very busy mid-level executives | 24:00 | |
"who are among the great mystics of all time." | 24:06 | |
But Jacob, and then Israel, | 24:12 | |
and truly those in Christ, | 24:15 | |
find a future | 24:19 | |
that deliver from these prison houses, | 24:21 | |
and deliver to the promises of God. | 24:24 | |
So, the old wanderer had just one more trip to make. | 24:29 | |
He had trusted his life in a promise | 24:38 | |
he would never see. | 24:42 | |
And for some of us, | 24:46 | |
it may be true also, | 24:48 | |
that we must pass it on to children and grandchildren, | 24:50 | |
and children of their children yet unseen, | 24:53 | |
to be the blessing God intends. | 24:58 | |
So the old wanderer died, | 25:05 | |
and was taken into the promise. | 25:08 | |
And so did the young wanderer, | 25:11 | |
whose name was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. | 25:15 | |
A broken body. | 25:23 | |
A lonely life. | 25:25 | |
A wanderer's home. | 25:28 | |
A poor man's possessions. | 25:31 | |
A rebel's death. | 25:34 | |
And a borrowed tomb. | 25:38 | |
And like the modest family of Jacob in Egypt, | 25:40 | |
this crucified Christ, | 25:45 | |
with his family of the poor, of lepers, | 25:50 | |
of powerless peasants and disenfranchised women, | 25:56 | |
become the family of God, | 26:03 | |
to which our Lord invites all | 26:07 | |
to find meaning, | 26:12 | |
and risk, | 26:15 | |
and the future of God. | 26:18 | |
May God make it so for all of us. | 26:22 | |
Amen. | 26:25 |