11/05/23 - Dependent - Rev. Chip Roland - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 11/05/23 – Dependent

11/05/23 – Dependent – Rev. Chip Roland

DEPENDENT

11/05/23
Joshua 3:7-17, Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37, 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, Matthew 23:1-12
Rev. Chip Roland

I’ve really been enjoying a new PBS Nova documentary series called Ancient Earth. It’s a five-part series that goes through several major eras of earth’s history. Our planet went from a rocky, dead irradiated ball in space to, by God’s grace, a place where life is flourishing. I find the overall effect is humbling. So, we humans often find ourselves very enamored by our specialness, our uniqueness. We pride ourselves on the way we are distinct from all other of God’s creatures dwelling with us. It’s good to be reminded from time to time that we are beneficiaries. We owe our existence to two things at least. First and foremost, the will of God that sets all things in motion and the multi-billion-year history of life’s flourishing. We are today because countless living things over vast gulfs of time clung tenaciously to existence. We are today because life utterly refused to be extinguished even in the midst of catastrophes that would end our civilization in a day.

We are one chapter is a vast history, one thread in a tapestry woven by God and we are dependent on all the other parts. It’s humbling and comforting in a way too. We point our radio telescopes to the stars, listen to the unconscious natural rhythms of pulsars and black holes and wonder if we are alone. Truly, we are not. God has created us on and for this planet. We are kin to all living things we see.

The word dependent has a bit of a stink on it, doesn’t it. Someone who struggles with substance abuse is often said to be dependent alcohol or other drugs. And did you hear about Murial and Josh’s son? He’s 37 and still lives with them. He’s still “dependent” on them. In a culture that prizes individualism and self-sufficiency, dependency is seen as a failing.

But dependence is part of the human condition. We need the natural world, we need each other and more than anything else, we need God. Joshua was exalted in the sight of all Israel. But all that greatness wasn’t his own. It was God’s doing. His position was one of dependence of God for validity. He gave commands speaking for God, but it was ultimately the priests who performed the same deed as Moses parting the red sea, standing in the Jordan with the Ark. Joshua could and should never say he was a “self-made” man. He needed the people around him, he needed his God.

As Paul characterized his work with the Thessalonians he acknowledged that the words he spoke were ultimately God’s and he gave thanks for God for something that only God and the Thessalonians could do, the one thing that would make Paul’s work successful. They accepted his proclamation as the word of God.

And, my, my the pharisees and scribes. It should first be noted that they represent very specific groups in Judaism that changed over time and Jesus’s criticism of them cannot be generalized to all of Judaism. It should also be noted that as a group of lay people not associated with the temple hierarchy but deeply concerned for the right practice of Judaism and the law, Jesus would often look to the outside observer much more like a pharisee than he would look like anything else.

At any rate, when Matthew wrote Christ’s words down, he wasn’t talking to the Pharisees but to his early Christian community. And the irony is you can just as easily wrap yourself in the smug claim that you are a better servant to all than anybody else is. You can wear that with just as much an air of superiority as a Pharisee does a prayer shawl with obnoxiously long fringes. What is being talked about here is a mindset that doesn’t acknowledged the absurdity of claiming superiority over others when we get all that we have from God, be it a passion for the law or a passion for washing the feet of others. We ultimately have one Rabbi, one Father, one Instructor that we need, just as we need one another.

Jesus points out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in how they burden others with their pronouncements on what the best way to “do Judaism” is without living up to their own expectations. I see anxiety too. It’s hard, anxious work to constantly portray yourself as better than everyone else. It exhausts you and you’re always worried about being found out. Wouldn’t it be so much better, so much more peaceful to acknowledge that everything we have we owe to God. That maybe our gifts aren’t an opportunity to lord over others but hints at how to serve them. We could all just share our vulnerabilities, our needs and dependence, to go from being a hierarchy to the family God calls us to.

It’s fitting that we speak about dependence on a day we celebrate all who come before us. We honor people who have gone to the church triumphant who have profoundly shaped our lives. We are because they were. If our candle burns it is because they lit it. And God, who is the source of all flames.

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