If
By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch
September 28, 2014
Exodus 19: 1-7
“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can… watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools…”
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), “If”
The children of Israel wander in the desert, led by a crotchety, opinionated, and often glorious man. He tells them about a new god, named Yahweh, who is actually the true God, and who has been their savior and protector, leading them out of slavery in Egypt, defeating the Egyptians, feeding them and finding water for them in the wilderness. And now they come to Sinai, and now they will meet this god. It sounds promising: a personal relationship with God.
A personal relationship with God. It’s something we long for, and certainly hear a lot of talk about these days. We often hear people say they have a personal relationship with God. And when God is revealed to them at Sinai, that is what Israel will have, corporately, as a people: A personal relationship with God.
But here in our scripture from Exodus, God is warning them: Be careful what you wish for. This is not just any divine being you are about to meet. You are about to meet God, the Living God, Yahweh, Sovereign of the Universe. One rabbinical scholar warns, “When meeting God, one is no longer in the realm of unlimited choice; the encounter leaves a person with demands that can only be rejected at her peril” (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Plaut, W. Gunther, et al., eds. New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981. P. 526).
God wants them to understand what they’re asking for. So he says to them, first, ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.’ This is God telling the Israelites how God expects them to remember what has happened to them. Things were bad, and God saved you. But the Israelites could easily remember it differently: “God led us into slavery to the Egyptians in the first place! God gave us a crazy man for a leader! God stuck us in the desert exposed to the elements! God gave us weird stuff to eat and drink!”
This is the first level of preparing oneself for God: If you can look at your life and see the possibilities instead of the obstacles—if you can see hope instead of despair—if you can see that God loves you instead of fearing that God hates you or judges you—then you’re ready for the next stage. But if you can’t see that, then you aren’t ready—because the next “if” is infinitely harder.
And then God continues: ‘Now IF you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’
“If’ you can see God’s love.” “If’ you obey me fully and keep God’s covenant.” ‘If.’
Every “if” we face is a doorway to God. Rudyard Kipling encapsulates “if” so well in his poem: If is the point where “you can dream—and not make dreams your master;” where “you can think—and not make thoughts your aim.” If is the point where you meet triumph and disaster with the same awareness—that they are “impostors;” If is the point where everything that you have built lies broken on the floor, and you pick it up and start over again. If is the point where you make a choice—a choice to face life instead of running from it; a choice to live life well whether it hands you good or bad, success or failure, triumph or disaster. If is the point where you accept that there are choices to be made, and those choices have consequences.
“If” has a polar opposite, which is “If only.” “If only my dreams had come true.” “If only I had triumphed instead of failed.” “If only fate had worked for me instead of against me.” “If only so-and-so hadn’t let me down.” “If only” is about wish fulfillment, and believing that our fate is out of our own control, and that we are passive actors in our lives. But “If” is the recognition that despite all the things that are completely out of our control, I still have a choice. And if I make a choice, then I have to accept responsibility for everything that comes with it.
Every “if” we face is a doorway to God. And every “if” we face is a doorway to our own identity. When we make a choice, a decision, and follow it through, we are taking a stand. “This is who I am,” we are saying.
Think of the children participating in our Children’s worship today. These are kids who’ve seen adults play these leadership roles their whole lives, including this guy in the black robe way up in the Big Pulpit. Beth, our Christian educator, came to them and said, “I want you to play this role you’ve seen adults play your whole life.” And here they are, today, daring to stand in front of this gigantic church full of scary adults and speak these complex liturgical words.
They have made a choice. They are taking a stand. They are telling us who they are. They are showing us their identity. Be amazed.
Likewise, if we refuse to make a choice, if we choose to believe that we can’t choose, if we believe that our life is in the hands of capricious fate and there’s nothing to be done about it, then we have chosen not only to have no God, but really to have no identity, other than as a hapless victim, a toy boat tossed about on the ocean, a plastic bag in the wind.
God tells the Israelites that they should interpret God’s actions as a sign of love. “You have seen how I bore you on eagle’s wings,” God says. They’ve seen it with their own eyes, God says; but God knows full well that people will choose for themselves how they interpret their own history. In reality, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing. This is what Shakespeare’s Othello calls “ocular proof,” what we see with our eyes. But as Othello himself proves, “ocular proof” is as subject to our assumptions as anything else. Othello observes his wife’s encounter with another man, and is tricked by an enemy into believing that it’s a love encounter, when it’s nothing of the sort. But Othello was already prepared to believe the worst—so even the evidence of his eyes is twisted into what it’s not. If we wish to believe the worst, there’s not much even God can do about it, and believing becomes seeing.
But if we have the vision to see God’s love at work in our lives, and in the world, then we’re ready to move from “seeing” into “hearing.” That’s what is going to happen to the children of Israel at Sinai: they will hear the Ten Commandments, God’s statement of what God’s people are supposed to do. And hearing what God says is far more demanding than seeing what God does. But if you haven’t seen what God does, then you can’t do what God says.
Because hearing will become a heavy responsibility—the responsibility of prophecy, of speaking for God in a fallen world, the responsibility of moral behavior, the responsibility of compassionate action, which will be difficult indeed. Hearing God’s word necessarily challenges an over-simplistic understanding of God’s love and goodness. Sometimes we think God is all fluffy and unicorns and rainbows, our buddy and friend, who wants to make our life easy and prosperous, and means good for everybody. But hearing means that we have to be responsible and see the world as it is. We hear what God says about how we’re to live—selflessly, boldly, humbly, compassionately, seeking to embody holiness. That’s not an easy path because the odds are stacked against us. But God’s people also hear the cries of the poor, the suffering, the marginalized, the downtrodden. It’s a wake-up call—to say that God is loving and just is not even close to saying that we live in a world of love and justice. God’s people have to feel and do something about the suffering of others. We have to take risks. We have to get out of our comfort zones—even put ourselves in peril sometimes.
The moral and ethical responsibility of what we hear would be too hard to bear if we didn’t already have the eyes to see God’s love at work in the world. It is too hard to be obedient—if we are not also grateful.
The founder of the tradition we Presbyterians are part of, John Calvin, taught that we are to live lives of “grateful obedience.” Only when we live lives of gratitude and trust can we also be truly obedient. If we don’t trust God’s love, then we’re obedient out of fear. And that’s not what God wants, because God wants us to choose to serve God, to make that our identity, and not feel trapped into it. Only if we feel grateful for the life God has given us, only if we’re secure that God loves the whole world, are we willing to dare to love, dare to challenge injustice, dare to take compassionate risks. We dare it because we believe, ultimately, that God bears us up on eagle’s wings.
If we are truly grateful—for life, for love, for grace, for each other, for God—then we will be obedient. And if we are obedient, then the world will be a better place.
If.