Ex.1: 8 – 2:10; Mt 16: 13-20
In the first chapter of the American classic, young castabout and
half-wild pre-teen scallywag Huckleberry Finn tells us about how the good Widow
Douglas has thought that she might rescue him from his life on the run from his
alcoholic and abusive father and take him into her home to “sivilize” him, as he
says, and on the first evening after a ritual of cleaning and dressing and
eating at the table, all so strained and even painful for Huck (though he knows
she means well and tries his best to receive her attention) , the good Widow
opens the Bible. Huck says:
“After supper she got out her
book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to
find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a
considerable long time, so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I
don’t take no stock in dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke,
and asked the Widow to let me. But she
wouldn’t. She said it was a mean
practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try not to do it anymore. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know
nothing about it. Here she was,
a’bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being
gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had
some good in it. And she took snuff,
too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.”
It’s a resonant allusion here in Huck Finn. The story of an endangered child cast out
upon the waters of the mighty river in a fragile vessel. A raft.
A basket of woven grass. Yet one
destined first to become a savior.
To think about the escaped slave Jim.
(I don’t think we need a Huckleberry Finn spoiler alert here.) We know about him, an adult man, married,
with a daughter, risking everything, his life literally on the line, in his
journey from a Land of Bondage to a Promised Land. His dear hope to make it to the Free States,
to work and save, and then to buy his wife and daughter out of their
slavery. His only hope, the only thing
in the world that matters to him. Worth
everything. Risking his life. And putting it all into the hands of this boy. What is Huck?
Eleven? Twelve? A boy he doesn’t really even know. But the reality is, without Huck, Jim doesn’t stand a chance.
I guess to think about Moses. As
we hear a little ways on at the Burning Bush, he’s also not a likely candidate
for the big job. An inarticulate, wanted
criminal on the lam, married to a foreign woman. Yet he was the one who was called. And without him—somehow it has come to this,
without him the Children of Israel don’t stand a chance.
A funny memory I have of a moment in my childhood. In September, 1959, --and I had to look the
date up in Wikipedia—Nikita Krushchev came to the U.S. for a summit meeting
with President Eisenhower. It must have
been a Sunday evening that I remember, because we were at my grandparents’
house in West Los Angeles, where we often went for dinner on Sundays. The adults were all watching the news while I
was sitting on the floor looking at the Sunday funny-papers. There was this moment when Eisenhower and
Kruschchev were standing on an airport tarmac, and my grandfather said,
pointing at the screen, “there are the
two most powerful men in the world.” I
remember looking at the t.v. set--.
(Kind of a tiny screen in this great big mahogany console) at those
black and white figures. Two bald and
portly old men in dull gray suits. I
mean, that’s just astonishing. Most
powerful in the world?? What about
Superman? What about Batman? These old guys didn’t look like they could go
even 30 seconds with any self-respecting superhero!
Not sure I did any deep theological reflection at the time. But something in the scene caught my
attention, and the moment has kind of lingered in my memory, as you can
tell. A little bit of a funny story, but
maybe also a deeper meaning, a reminder, what we might have before us this morning--that
real power, real strength, sometimes is to be found in unexpected places. Unexpected people.
Another literary reference, and then I’ll stop, but perhaps what
catches our attention in the film “Slumdog Millionaire.” If you saw that—really an excellent
film. But just to reference the
consternation and disbelief. How is it
possible that this boy from the streets can know the answers?
Real power, real strength, the one who can carry us from slavery to
freedom, from the land of bondage to the land of promise. Certainly the long narrative of scripture
tells us that this is how God keeps working in our lives and in our world. Old Abraham and old Sarah, to be the parents
of a new nation. Moses. The Boy David. Elijah and Jeremiah, pretty much all the
prophets. A peasant girl in a backwater
village of a backwater country. And then,
the child Mary sang to sleep in the straw of the manger—perhaps an echo of that
wicker basket of a raft that Moses’ mother pushed out into the Nile. The radiant glory of the Father, all Power
and Might. But hard to recognize. Not what we expected.
So bringing us this morning to Matthew 16. The question at Caesarea Philippi. Confession of St. Peter. The question echoing around us and certainly before
us as we come to this place. As we
participate in the Memorial of his Passion.
Look straight on into that ancient phrase, “the mystery of faith.”
Jesus asking. “But you. Who do you say that I am?” What do you see, when you look at me?
From the First Chapter of St. John’s Gospel. “The true light that enlightens every man was
coming into the world. He was in the
world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people
received him not. But to all who received
him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who
were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but
of God.”
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in
heaven.”
It is a gift, eyes that can see him, a mind that can know him, a heart
that can love him. Even when he comes to
us in such an unexpected way. Even when
he reveals a way of life and faith for us that doesn’t make sense at all in the
world as we had thought we understood the world to be.
The unexpected savior saves us in an unexpected way, so that we might
be changed and made new, in ways that we never expected.
As St. Paul says in the First Chapter of First Corinthians, “we preach
Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to Gentiles, but to
those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God.
And so on this summer morning, as he is made present for us in Word and
Sacrament, the prayer: “open, we beseech the, the eyes of our faith, that we
may see him, Jesus, recognize him, know
him, who will be for us Lord and Savior.”
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering
and a sacrifice to God.
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