Proper 16, Yr A
The Rev. G.
waiting, watching, hoping
I bet you recognize some of the people mentioned in the lessons this morning. I mean, even if you’ve never really paid all that much attention to the Bible stories you’ve been taught in Sunday School over the years, even if you didn’t really pay all that much attention to the lessons as they were read just now, I bet you caught at least a couple of names that you recognized in the Old Testament lesson, the lesson from Romans, and the Gospel.
Listen to the list, it reads like a who’s who of Bible heroes: Joseph, Moses, Pharaoh, the Egyptians, the Israelites, Levi, Jesus Christ, Peter, Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and God.
All of these famous folks are mentioned by name across the space of the scripture lessons chosen for this morning’s service. Likely, there’s a name in that list that’s makes you think of some spectacular Bible scene or another.
When you hear Joseph’s name in the Old Testament context maybe you remember the coat of many colors. When Moses is mentioned, you remember the baby in the basket floating out over the water, or maybe mention of Moses makes you think of the parting of the Red Sea. The names of Jesus, John the Baptist and Simon Peter bring Gospel scenes to mind.
God moves and acts in the lives of all of these famous men, so mention of God might take you on a memory trip to just about anywhere.
But you know, as I read through the lessons for this week, I couldn’t get too jazzed up about any of the marquee quality names. Instead, the character that caught my eye was an unnamed little girl in the Exodus river scene.
It’s a very familiar scene- Pharaoh wants all the baby boys born to the Israelites killed. He gives the command that they all be thrown into the river Nile. At first, the mother of Moses thinks she can get away with hiding her infant son, but after a while she realizes that Pharaoh is hell bent on death and power and sooner or later his henchmen will find her baby.
It must have been bad. It must have been really bad, so bad that the best option was to put the baby, Moses, in a basket and set him floating on the water of the Nile River, the very water in which Pharaoh wanted him drowned. His sister could only watch.
There is not much a little girl can do about the horrors that surround her. Not much a big sister can do as her mother puts her little brother in a basket and then hides the basket, baby and all, at the water’s edge down in the reeds.
She can only watch. So, she does just that. She stands at a distance, but she can still see him. Maybe she’s close enough to hear him laugh or whimper.
I know about big sisters because I have a couple of them myself. I bet this big sister wanted to rescue her baby brother, but she was smart enough (big sisters are often smart) to know that she couldn’t, so she did all that she could do – she stood waiting on the bank, and she hoped.
The Bible doesn’t say that she hoped, but I know she was hopeful that something good would come of all the bad things that were happening to her baby brother, because big sisters often look out after baby brothers, even if they fight and carry on later when they both grow up to be teenagers and old people.
So, she waited, she watched, and she hoped.
I am struck by this little girl standing all alone in the midst of the grown-up chaos going on around her. I can identify with her situation. I mean, sometimes life comes hurtling at us with all kinds of bad news and all we can do is wait, watch, and hope.
Sometimes the best thing we can do is just stand there.
What’s really sharp about this clever big sister is that she is actually not just standing there. She is waiting and hoping too, and when a hopeful hole opens in the fabric of that very dark day, she darts through it.
Someone has found the baby, big sister winces, holds her breath and waits.
The woman who found her brother is a royal princess, and she is holding the baby close to her chest, not tossing him into the river.
The big sister races from her hiding place and in a flash she is standing beside the princess, daughter of Pharaoh. She is bold, like the big sisters of baby brothers are, and she is smart. She knows that while a princess might rescue a baby condemned to die, a princess is not going to go so far as to nurse and raise the child.
Affecting her most innocent little girl voice the big sister says, “Shall I go find a woman to nurse this baby for you?”
The daughter of Pharaoh says, “Yes.”
And the big sister takes off like the wind to tell her mom to come quick. And to think she was just waiting, watching, and hoping just a few minutes before.
The little girl does have a name, but I am not going to tell you what it is because I think we have something to learn about God from the unnamed little girl standing on the river bank –something that we might not be able to learn from the girl once she gets older. If you must know her name you can read on further in Exodus. She shows up, all grown up, in chapter 15.
So, what is there to learn about God from Moses’ big sister? Well, quite simply, in our confused and chaotic scene I think she is a sign of God’s presence.
Picture it – all the adults are hustling around trying to kill or not be killed; life is rocking and rolling whirring and spinning all around; things move so fast that it’s possible that no one even notices the little girl standing like a solitary sentinel near the water’s edge, waiting as the story goes, “to see what would happen to [her brother].”
I imagine that she is neither standing close enough that we could make out her features, nor standing so far away that she is out of sight. She can be seen – if, that is, we look her way.
Put another way, she is the nearest kind of distant.
The nearest kind of distant…
You think we ever MISS God for all the commotion going on in our lives?
Sure we do. Nonetheless, we Christian folk believe, God is present, maybe not right up in your face, but not too far away either.
The nearest kind of distant.
*
In the gospel reading Jesus asks a simple question.
He says, “Who do you think that I am?”
Peter answers for everybody. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Put another way, Peter could have said Emmanuel.
Do you know that name?
It is my favorite nickname for Jesus - Emmanuel. It means “God is with us.”
I think the little girl, the big sister if you like, is an Emmanuel presence, a Christ presence - God among us.
She’s waiting, watching, hoping, and when she sees an opening, she races in from a distance and suddenly she’s standing very near, right here.
It might hurt your feelings for me to compare God to a little girl. So, I’ll say this, Good Friends- God is among us, God is among us like the big sister of Moses waiting, watching, and hoping. Waiting, watching, and hoping that we’ll punch an opening in the fabric of our frantic busy lives, so that we might come to feel God’s presence rushing in to very close, as if from a distance.
Put another way -
God is among us – like a little girl standing on the bank of the river… waiting, watching hoping.