Tell Your Story Exodus 4:10-17, Philippians 2:1-11, Genesis 11:1-9 Rev. Trey Davis First Baptist Church, Raleigh October 19, 2014

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Godwin Newman
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1 Tell Your Story Exodus 4:10-17, Philippians 2:1-11, Genesis 11:1-9 Rev. Trey Davis First Baptist Church, Raleigh October 19, 2014 When I was in middle school, there was a young rap duo named Kris Kross (both words spelled with K s) that kind of came out of nowhere and shot to incredible success. They had a hit with this song called Jump, which I can t remember very well except that it repeated the word jump a lot and we used to bounce up and down at dances when it got played. Right when the song was breaking, before I d heard it, one of my good friends mentioned how much he liked Kris Kross. I genuinely agreed--not the agreement of someone who didn t know what was going on, but a sincere affirmation. He, knowing that I had never heard of Kris Kross, and apparently knowing me extremely well, clarified that he was talking about Kris Kross, the rappers whereas I was talking about Christopher Cross, the yacht rock guy who sang Sailing. They re very different. The truth of the matter is, I still like Christopher Cross, even if Sailing is pretty mellow. And, if I m being honest, I also like Kris Kross, even though the lyrics to Jump don t really make much sense. Somehow, both the mellow crooner and the preteen rappers have become part of my musical history, part of my story, and they re parts that--for totally different reasons--still make me smile a little whenever I hear those songs. They re just not parts that I m likely to share...in fact, even standing here today and telling you that I like this music requires me to step out on a limb a little. We have a label for music like this--we call these songs guilty pleasures. Guilty pleasures are part of who we are, even parts of what we like about who we are...but not parts that we broadcast. When it comes to 1980s light rock and 1990s light rap, it s perfectly fine for those to remain guilty pleasures--parts of ourselves that we adore but choose to keep to ourselves. What amazes me is that we so often treat our faiths the same way. One of the first sermons I ever preached, when I was in divinity school, was about being willing to lose yourself to let go of one s identity for the benefit of others (and, simultaneously, for the benefit of Christ). The idea behind that sermon was that we had to be willing to sacrifice, and that sometimes that sacrifice included 1

2 setting aside even ourselves. I still think it was a valid point on a challenging topic. Could it even be possible, then, that we struggle not only with letting go of our identity but also with claiming it? To try to answer that question, I found myself considering the stories of several different characters from the scripture. I specifically found myself looking at two characters that we ve encountered in the lectionary readings these past several weeks, two characters that seem to illustrate two very different reasons as to why we might not want to Tell Our Story. The first of these is Moses. The scripture reading from this morning relates Moses initial call. The passage read today comes from the section where Moses is at the burning bush, and it is the conclusion of a long conversation between Moses and God where Moses keeps coming up with explanations and excuses as to why he can t do what God tells him to do. He asks God Who am I that I should go to the Pharaoh? God reminds Moses that God will be with him. Then Moses says something to the effect of What do I say when the Israelites ask who sent me? God, again, answers him. Then Moses says What if no one believes me? And God, yet again, provides Moses with the means to be believed. Finally, almost grasping at straws, Moses says But I don t speak well please, send someone else. And it is at this point that God gets angry. The cumulative effect of Moses resistance is that he effectively says I don t want to tell my story. I don t want to speak confidently, or authoritatively, or directly. I don t want anyone to know that I ve been talking with burning shrubbery. I d prefer just to remain anonymous. This is Moses, the man who will eventually lead the Israelites out of Egypt, through the desert, and to the Promised Land. Moses, recipient of the Ten Commandments. Moses, who spends so much time talking to God that his face literally shines. Moses, arguably the most important pre-jesus character in the Christian scriptures. If he, of all people, is reluctant to tell his story, surely it makes sense that we might also be reluctant. We are frequently ashamed of our story. We are afraid that others will laugh at us, ridicule us, or attack us. We are afraid that people will ask questions and we won t know the answers to those questions. We are afraid that we will stutter. We are, essentially, Moses. 2

3 This is true for all of us. Some of us may be more likely to be afraid of these things than others of us are, and some of us are better at masking that fear than others are, but the truth is that we all have experiences where we don t want to be front and center because we lack the confidence. We don t want to claim the label of Christian or Baptist because we are afraid of how others will view us. In some setting, at some point in our lives, around some people we are Moses. Moses provides one example of why we are hesitant to Tell Our Story. The other character who has repeatedly shown up in our scripture this fall is Paul, and he sheds light on another reason why we are hesitant. Paul, particularly in recent times, has become a common example of what happens when religious zealotry leads to arrogance. If you Google the words Paul and arrogant, page after page comes up of bloggers criticizing the first century author for being so adamant that he knows what is right. Paul has a view on just about everything religion, marriage, diet, you name it and he s not afraid to share his view on just about everything and at this point, there are many times when readers would prefer that he keep some of these views to himself. We ve all known a Paul. We ve all known someone who was dead certain that he had the right answer, and who insisted on telling us all about that right answer. And typically, when you encounter someone like this, the predominant thought is something along the lines of I hope I m not like that. And so, in an effort to avoid being like that, we refuse to tell our story. We don t want to be known as someone who bludgeons others over the head with our stories. We don t want to be known as arrogant. Sometimes, we are Moses: we don t Tell Our Story because we don t believe that the story is worth telling. Sometimes, we avoid being this conception of Paul: we don t Tell Our Story because we don t want to burden others with hearing it. Of course, the irony of Moses is that despite his limitations and protestations, he absolutely has a story worth telling. His story is captivating and powerful, with action and subterfuge and gripping plot twists. Even at this point, in the fourth chapter of Exodus, Moses has already experienced plenty in his life that is worth telling. 3

4 Moreover, as God makes it clear, Moses doesn t even have to worry about his story being worth telling because God is the one who will provide all of the substance worth talking about. God keeps trying to tell Moses, This isn t really about you it s about me. Moses, in this chapter, can t quite grasp that. Once he does, later in Exodus, then it becomes much easier for him to speak, for him to talk to others, for him to Tell His Story because he recognizes that it isn t actually his story after all. The same is true for the Apostle Paul: as much as certain verses lead us to believe that Paul is arrogant, in the end his writing is focused on Jesus, on trying to elucidate the aspects of Jesus life that are harder to understand. In today s reading from the book of Philippians (which, I apologize, is a repeat from just a few weeks ago), Paul is unabashed in what he believes. He writes with strong, sure language but what he writes about is not himself, but rather Jesus. The passage ends with an exhortation to be like Jesus, to be selfless like Jesus. As tempting as it is to cast Paul in an arrogant light, passages like this make it clear that he wasn t as focused on himself as his critics like to believe. He simply wasn t worried about burdening others with his message because he had so much faith in the message itself. If hearing these words was a burden for someone, then Paul figured it was a burden worth carrying. Our story is worth telling, and (perhaps even more importantly) it is a story that is worth hearing. It is worth telling even if doing so puts a burden on us, and it is worth hearing even if doing so puts a burden on the listener. Even after determining that our anxiety over telling our stories has more to do with our own insecurities than it does with the value of our stories, we re left with a significant and legitimate question: Why? Why does God want us to bother with telling our stories in the first place? Part of that answer, I think, lies in the fact that each of us is different. Moses and Paul almost couldn t be any more different Moses was known as the leader of the Israelites, and Paul made a name as the first person to preach specifically to Gentiles. Moses claims that he cannot speak well, and Paul speaks bombastically whenever he gets an opportunity. Moses shrank from the spotlight, and Paul craved it. 4

5 What they had in common is that both of them grew from people who were unable to see the grandeur, power, and glory of God to people who could focus on nothing else. Because their stories are so different, this similarity jumps out. Because they tell their stories, we have the chance to recognize it and to grow. Those of us who identify more with stuttering Moses, those of us who identify more with selfassured Paul, and those of us who fall somewhere in between we all may find a narrative that offers hope for a deeper understanding of God. Telling our stories offers others that same hope, and allows them to find God when they otherwise might not. That s part of why God wants us to tell our story. The other part of that answer, I think, is best illustrated by a completely different bit of scripture, and by part of My Story relating to that scripture. I don t remember this, but I m assured that this story is 100% true. When I was a little younger than Caroline is now, my parents had delighted in teaching me a lot of Bible trivia. They had turned it into a game they d ask me questions like who was the man who Jesus raised from the dead, and I d respond Lazarus. Clearly this game was more fun for them when there was an audience, because it allowed them to show off how smart their 3 year-old was, which then clearly reflected on their good parenting. One day they took me to church and decided that they d play this game with an audience of a good friend of theirs who also happened to be an associate minister there. He began to quiz me, and I responded with right answers through several rounds. As the story goes, the question that really seemed to impress him was who were the three men who were thrown into the fiery furnace, to which I correctly answered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. His follow-up to that was Who were the people who tried to build something amazing, but then couldn t understand each other, ended up fighting, and went their separate ways? And I, after hesitating just a second and trying my best to think of the word Babel, replied with The Baptists. 5

6 The Babel story was always presented to me as a story about people who had two problems. The first problem is that these people are trying to reach God in a way that is arrogant or prideful. They want to build this tower as high as possible, and I was taught that they wanted to do this because they were trying to become like God. Not to reach God, but to replace God. Obviously, that s something that God doesn t stand for, and so God causes them to misunderstand each other, which then leads to numerous disagreements, which is in essence the second problem. This version of the story makes sense. Often, when we are prideful, we become unable to see where others are coming from, unable to understand them. Often, when we are arrogant, this leads to conflict. This version of the story meshes with our understanding of the world. Likewise, it teaches a small child two very important things: 1) make sure that in trying to reach God, you re not trying to replace God, and 2) make sure that in trying to reach God, you don t trample all over the community around you, because they re important too. Good lessons. Lessons that echo my understanding of what God intends for us. They re just not the lessons that I saw when I looked at the scripture with the youth this summer. This summer, the word that jumped out at me at us, really was scattered. First, the people of Babel say that they re building this tower because otherwise they will be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. They re not building a tower because it reaches high; they re building one because it allows them to remain safe and locked in and unexposed to the rest of the world. Their problem isn t that they re attempting to reach God; it s that they re trying to shut themselves away. Their problem is that they are so insular. God, expectedly, responds by scattering them same word. God drives them apart and spreads them across the earth. It might be tempting to read that God scatters them because it s the very thing that they don t want sort of an apt punishment but it seems more likely that God does this because the scattering is something that God wants from us. God doesn t want us to be insular. God doesn t want us to shut ourselves off from the world. God wants us to take our message, our story, and to share it. Babel happens in the 11th chapter of Genesis, right at the beginning of the story of God and humanity. The 12th chapter begins with God telling Abram to leave his homeland and go to a new place. Throughout the rest of the Christian scriptures, God is asking us to do this: go, scatter, and tell your story. It is what God says to 6

7 Moses in Exodus, and it is what Paul does in God s name after his Damascan Road experience. We are called to scatter to go out and tell our story because if we don t, we are likely to grow prideful, and closed off, and insular. And, once we have become those things, we are likely to start fighting with each other. God wants us to Tell Our Story partly because it is a means of allowing for a deeper, healthier relationship between God and humanity but God also wants us to Tell Our Story because it is a means of allowing for deeper, healthier relationships among ourselves. Moses is timid at the beginning of Exodus, but it doesn t take long before he has grown beyond that timidity. Paul may seem arrogant in some of his letters, but most scholars agree that Philippians came near the end of his life, and his focus here is humility. Throughout their lives, they grow closer to God one growing confident, one growing in humility, both growing toward God because they are willing to Tell Their Stories. We do struggle with claiming our identity and with letting go of it...but when we tell our stories--tell them humbly but unapologetically--we are doing both. We are blessed with tremendous stories. God moves within us, among us, and beyond us every day. God makes our stories rich and beautiful. God did this for Moses, God did this for Paul, God does this for us. Our stories are not guilty pleasures. Our stories are not burdens. Told correctly, our stories are not even entirely our stories. They are a means of connecting with others--others far and wide, others scattered over the earth--as well as deepening our individual relationships with God. These are the stories we have. These are the stories we tell. 7

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. Genesis 28:15a

Day 1 Theme: Away from Home I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. Genesis 28:15a Jacob was on the run. He had cheated and tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright. He was running