Exodus 2:1-10; Romans 12:3-8; August 27, 2023, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think… so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” – Romans 12:3,5
See, when I have said over and again that I am no different than you just because I wear the robe and the stole, I wasn’t simply parroting my own human, Brian-driven philosophy, but rather, quoting to you from our scripture, which we believe is inspired divinely. So, call me a broken record if you want, but let’s be clear, that would also mean that God’s a broken record player. For not always, but over and again we are told in God’s word, in God’s philosophy, that we are all called by the same Author, sanctified by the same Spirit, loved and embodied by the same Christ; and we who are many are members of one another.
Some of us members have been called to preach, some of us have been called to teach, some of us have been named to oversee our money and our property, some of us have been blessed to sing with our voices and play instruments with our hands…(not me)… others have been called to witness, others have been called to build, others called to pray, and even some others called to simply show up and maybe throw a coin or two in the plate on a Sunday here or there.
We all have a role! No matter how big or small. For we all make up the same body, even despite these differences, or rather, in celebration of these differences. And individually, we are members of one another.
Strike that, we are members one of another. See, my tongue, perhaps like yours wants to say, we are members “of one another” because that sounds perhaps more familiar in our vernacular. But Paul writes here in Romans that: we are members “one of another.” Now, maybe to you, that might seem like the same thing. A small thing even. Semantics. But to me, when I read it in this other, stranger way, it really hammers home his point: that we are One. Of. Another. Of something greater. And nothing can separate us from or elevate us over that which is greater. For we, you and me, and everyone else, are but single cells in and of a larger body, single dots in and of a massive, and diverse, and larger constellation of divine creation.
And you know who our neighbors are in this constellation? Individuals, who are not just members here, but also of another. Individuals who individually talk, look, and identify individualistically differently than us; individuals whom we have often turned a blind eye to, whom we have shunned, whom we have forgotten and ignored, even when they’re floating precariously in a basket down a river or more immediately turned over in a migrant boat when trying to cross the sea. Friends, we must remember and repeat over and again that God in and through Christ names and claims all individuals, from whatever walk of life they come from, for all individually have been breathed on by the same Spirit who first hovered over the first waters.
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think.” This, from Paul, my friends, is one of the most important, and yet one of the hardest lessons to learn for a lot of us Christians. Especially if we’ve grown up in more fundamentalist backgrounds and traditions where other children of God are disparaged for their lack of adherence to our faith, thinking that we alone have been given the gifts of the Spirit, while they, coming from another, have corrupted it.
Sadly, the Church, which should be the very foundation of humility, following in the footsteps of our humble messiah who rides into the Holy City on but a lowly donkey… it is this Church Universal that is too often the breeding ground of pious condemnation and the opposite of humility. Forgetting, somehow ignorantly or conveniently, that we are not any better than anyone else. That we are not any closer to God than anyone else. That we are not any more of the body than anyone else.
“Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think,” writes Paul, who in all of the Acts and his genuine letters, had a heart for the pagan and the gentile on the outside looking in. See, Paul, more than any other early apostle, understood that this faith, this gospel was bigger than just an in-house experience. That all were to be welcomed and included, not just the keepers and the originators of the Law. But yet, today, just like back then, we deceive ourselves and think of ourselves more highly than we ought, and yet in the same breath wonder aloud why the Church is in decline… well, you see, that happens when we spew judgment more than we sew love; when we claim authority even when we just have a piece of it, and it was never ours to claim anyway, but God’s, and God’s alone.
We are members, my friends, one of another, of God’s and God’s whole creation; all blessed with different gifts, all blessed with different traditions and functions; and lest we ever forget as Christians who claim to follow Jesus, He himself defended and championed those who had no idea who he was, or what the law said, but could sense all the same that in him the Spirit was manifesting something powerful about God’s new and creative work at hand. And to these people, who were on the outside looking in, who were often from other traditions, and designations, if not other religions of another, he said, today, you can be with me in Paradise.
This, my friends, is the scandal of the gospel. Of the good news. That all will be named. That all can be called. That all can be loved and therefore will be saved, because equally, individually, all have been remembered by the same divine heart of grace. Whether you like the way these others look, or the way these others behave, or the way these others believe, the gospel was made incarnate so that we who are many could be brought into the one divine body, one of another.
Our Old Testament text from Exodus this morning witnesses to this gospel, to this message of good and inclusive news, in an incredible story about Moses’ birth and upbringing. For here was a baby left in a basket, sent down a river, by a desperate mother just trying to protect him, to give him a better chance at life. Completely vulnerable, little baby Moses faced certain death, either by the forces of nature and an inevitable drowning, or by the hands of Pharoah’s soldiers who were ordered to kill all male Hebrew babies in an edict written back in Exodus 1:22.
So, there little Moses is, floating down the river, but instead of being judged and condemned to death for being a refugee from a different family, region, and religious tradition, he is yet shown grace and given life by another. And by a surprising other at that. By someone on the outside looking in from a powerful position, in Pharaoh’s daughter. Even though she had all the earthly power to destroy him, to do what her father had commanded, and to think of herself more highly than she ought to think… in a sweeping display of compassion and other-worldly tenderness, she offers him back to his mother to nurse him with her protection, before eventually adopting him and raising him as her own.
The Jewish midrash teaches its adherents that Pharoah’s daughter did this because she saw a Divine presence – the Shechinah– in and upon Moses. She, an Egyptian eret or princess, under the watchful eye of Ra, saw the Spirit at work in a Hebrew infant who was under the watchful eye of Yahweh. Members of one body, one of another.
This, my friends, forms the foundation of our surprising, scandalous, gospel. Which isn’t some cookie-cutter, lukewarm news, but life-changing, life-altering, life-affirming great news.
Which says there is no border, barrier, or wall that can ever separate any of us from the love and divine imprint of Almighty God; so, no matter from where you’ve come, or the roads or streams by which you’ve arrived; no matter if you are wearing the robe or the stole, or can only adorn some old jeans and loafers with holes, no matter if you are the Pharoah’s daughter, or a child in a huddled mass escaping in a boat overseas or downstream, no matter your station, no matter it all, you like the rest of us, like the rest of all of creation, have been invited and welcomed into the membership of God’s people, this body.
And that, my friends, is indeed good news!
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
