Wellesley Congregational Church October 9, 2011 Daniel Cooperrider Exodus 32:1-14 THE GIFT OF THE FUTURE Here s my attempt at a paraphrase of the Exodus story of the Israelites and the golden calf that we read before the hymn ( Judge Eternal, Throned in Splendor ) maybe a more anonymous, less culturally specific, version. It goes like this: I. There s a group of people, a society huddled close together, they keep the wilderness at bay. Like every society in every age, there s something like a glue that holds these people together A mixture of memory & desire memory of a powerful past event like liberation, like independence, like revolution memory of a people becoming set free to be a people together, to share in a common calling and desire, yes that irrepressible longing for the future, for something more, for something better yet to come desire for a more perfect union desire to lean forward together as a group to move faithfully and in a Godward direction toward the Promised Land Yet like every group, this group experiences certain trials and travails along the way certain doubts and temptations And midway through their journey in history, the group reaches a critical impasse For 40 days & 40 nights nothing happens No movement forward or backward No divine inspiration no reminder of the foundational freedom event no hint that the land of milk and honey they so dream of is near
2 That night, while sitting around the fire, they start to question their memory of the past, did it really happen like that? They start to wonder about their desire might they discover a different dream? What s clear is that the group knows that something must be done they know what God knows, that without a vision, the people will perish And so lacking a Word from beyond the people take matters into their own hands they fashion new gods out of foreign gold they begin a slow process of revision, rewriting cultural memory they begin to entertain other types of desire, begin worshiping new gods. Meanwhile the One who gave them life and breath and all things The One who engineered for them their own unique mixture of memory and desire The One who gifted them with a story to tell With a framework of meaning; with a way of articulating ultimate concern This One is infuriated. This One, frankly, has had it with these people, and decides that these people no longer deserve to be a people, that these people no longer deserve a future, That they ve reached the end of their line, That only judgment and devastation await them now. Later that night, at the twilight hour when the loud opinions of society give way to the quiet stirrings of the single individual, each alone and naked before their God, There remains among them one who senses God s impending anger and is disturbed She fears for her people, for their future, she fears for the future that awaits her, or rather she fears for the lack of a future that awaits her & that awaits her people And so from out of the depths of her being she voices an assertive human cry Praying to God a protest prayer She says, God, don t you know that the life that you have made is good life, that the glue you have given us as a people is good glue,
3 It s a good recipe, a good mixture memory and desire, Good enough to hold us together, Good enough to keep us moving forward out of remembrance and love for You Remember the good things about us, God, remember Your promise to be with us forever, Forgive us, God, Grant us a future. Amen And so with this protest prayer we arrive at the last words of our Scripture this morning, and indeed they are amazing words, full of light and hope: And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. II. Consider with me the mystery or the problem of time one of the great and often unspoken enigmas of lived human experience. It s something that you re free to explore as I speak, for indeed we are always and already enmeshed within time s persistent flow. Consider, if you will, a specific aspect of time, not the past as its vivid images and partial fragments are stitched back together in memory; not the present moment as it appears, as it disappears, as it flickers as in the blink of an eye; but consider that aspect that we call the future. The future is not as simple as we might think. The future is multivalent, admitting of many senses. There s the future that we can plan for, that we can anticipate and calculate. This is the future we can inscribe in our calendars; this is the future that we can plan our day around for example, there s a Patriot s game today at 4:30, that s a future that we can manage; there s a church group going apple picking today after worship, that s a future we can successfully anticipate, and in a sense, that we can predict. And yet when we let our minds wander freely beyond this everyday sense of future, we can sense the presence, or perhaps better we can sense the
4 absence, of another future, a future wholly other and utterly strange in comparison with the one we can anticipate. This is the unpredictable future, the future that always surprises, the future that remains open, that transcends our ability to imagine it or to visualize it; this is the future that will steal upon us like a thief in the night 1 to use the image of it that Jesus used. It is this second sense of the future that is at stake in our reading this morning from Exodus, and it is this sense of the future that is at stake in our world today. Some people might say that setting out to think about time and the future is a hopelessly impractical exercise, pedantic and abstract, too divorced from the concrete concerns of everyday life. To that I would point to the Arab Spring and to the Occupy Wall St. movements, what some are calling the American Autumn, for at root are these not protests about time, about the future? Are not young people, older people, people throughout the world sensing that perhaps the future no longer has a future; that the future as we ve inherited it is in the process of being eclipsed? Are we not worried that perhaps all we re left with now as a people and as a society is the eternal recurrence of the same: the same economic inequality, the same grinding poverty, the same political quagmire, the same disregard for ecology and the delicate balance of life on earth; the same perpetual involvement in war and the same meaninglessness of violence? III. Tomorrow, Monday October 10th in our calendar, is marked off as a holiday, an Old English word which translates the Hebrew word Sabbath, and which means in its etymology, Holy Day. According to the official calendar of the United States Government, tomorrow is that Federal Holiday called Columbus Day. This isn t the name of the day in all calendars though, and if you open up the calendar published by our denomination, the UCC, you might be surprised to find 1 Matthew 24
5 that tomorrow is not Columbus Day, but rather is marked off as Indigenous Peoples Day. If, like I did, you made it to church today in a car driving along Rt. 16 or Rt. 27 or Rt. 135, then you have the Indigenous Peoples of the Wellesley area to thank for first blazing and clearing these trails that have since become our paved roads. Celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day reminds us that we are not the first peoples to inhabit this land, that there were first the Massachusett and the Wampanoag the diverse Algonquin speaking peoples who inhabited this land sustainably for about 10,000 years, dwelling upon the same living earth that still today pulses and sighs beneath the pavement. At a time in which we can recognize that people are protesting around the world out of a sense that the future might no longer have a future, it s critical, though admittedly difficult, that we remember what happened here 400 years ago that there existed here another way of life, that 500 years ago this way had an open future, but that 400 years ago that future closed down, and may now be lost to us forever, an inestimable loss that the Great Spirit must still be mourning. Here s what Plenty Coups, the last chief of the Crow Nation in the American West, said about the closure of the future for his people here he s speaking near the end of his life, reaching across the cultural divide and telling his life-story to a white man named Frank Linderman Linderman here asks Plenty Coups about a curious, glaring omission in his life-story, for Plenty Coups talks at length about his younger years, when the Crow were still a vibrant tribe of nomadic hunter-gatherers, he tells stories about hunting and horses and other Indian adventures, but he says nothing, not a single word, about his life after the Crow were confined to the reservation. Linderman asks him about this omission and here s what Plenty Coups says,
6 When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened. 2 After this, nothing happened. Of course time crept on at its same, steady pace from day to day. 3 Of course Crow peoples were born and grew up and died on the reservation. Normal things continued happening on a daily basis children playing and laughing, men smoking the pipe, meals shared and stories told and yet, in another sense, without the buffalo, nothing happened. Without the buffalo, the way of being in the world that the Crow knew had ended. Their future no longer had a future. After this, nothing happened. IV. Remember in our Scripture this morning the direction that God changes God s mind in. God changes in the direction of forgiveness. God let s go of the grudges and the judgment that we humans might deserve. With God the last word is never a word of judgment, but a word of forgiveness, a word of grace, a word of hope for the future. This is the hope that our world so desperately needs today, for in our time we re becoming more and more aware that the future is radically vulnerable that it s not guaranteed to us, but rather that it s a fragile gift granted to us from beyond. Without this gift of the future, life perishes; without this gift, nothing happens. We know that, in our own lives, when the future feels uncertain or when it feels like the future is closing down, it can be hard to know what to do, or where to turn for guidance. Alone, we cannot forge a future. Alone, we re consigned to the 2 Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope (Harvard University Press: 2008) 3 Shakespeare, Macbeth
7 eternal recurrence of the same. We must, then, come what may, appeal to a Higher Power, and following the example of Moses we can negotiate, we can protest with God if need be, saying, God, give us time let the future come, let the future have a future, let time blossom, let the gifts of the future rain down like manna in the desert let the impossible, the unimaginable, the unpredictable, let unexpected grace come, let Christ come Please God, we pray, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to defend the future. Amen.