Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2023

Sermon

Matt Helms
Associate Pastor

Numbers 20:1–13
Revelation 7:9–10, 15–17

So if you experienced a little bit of scriptural whiplash between our first and second readings this morning, you can take heart in knowing you’re in good company. When I shared the texts I’d be preaching on this Sunday, one of my colleagues gave me a puzzled look and said, “Really? You’re preaching on Numbers?”

To be fair, I completely understand the skepticism. The book of Numbers, if you’re not familiar, is squarely in the middle of the Israelites’ forty-year time in the wilderness — caught between the triumph of leaving oppression and slavery in Egypt in the early chapters of Exodus but still before the hope and final instructions the people receive in Deuteronomy, standing on the cusp of entering into the Promised Land. In the book, we witness Moses having increasingly fraught interactions with the people as frustration, uncertainty, and fear abound. As the book of Proverbs wisely notes, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18), and it certainly feels as though the vision of the Promised Land that once led the people out of Egypt is beginning to fade.

For every step or two forward in Numbers, there seems to be a step or two back, and in our first lesson we begin to see the toll the journey is taking on them. Moses’ sister, Miriam — a stalwart presence throughout the journey — passes away, and Moses’ brother, Aaron, will soon follow at the end of the chapter. Even Moses himself is seemingly beginning to have doubts creep in, as God accuses him in this passage of losing trust and faith that God will provide for them, even in the midst of these dire circumstances, and Moses is told that he will not be the one to bring the people into the Promised Land.

There’s a reason we don’t cover the book of Numbers very often in worship. It is frustrating, challenging, and even disheartening to be in a wilderness place — stuck in a liminal, in-between time of uncertainty before you get to the place you actually want to go. It’s not a perfect measure, but I do think it’s telling that while the Lectionary — the three-year cycle of scripture passages the church follows — uses eighteen passages from Exodus and thirteen from Deuteronomy, there are only two passages used from the entire book of Numbers. It’s frustrating to be in a liminal space, and I think there is a temptation all of us have to want to skip ahead in the journey, to arrive at the Promised Land and not look back. But doing so can obscure the truth that almost every journey and every triumph involves hard-fought struggle, delays, and disappointments along the way.

As I’m sure most of you know, tomorrow is Juneteenth, a day that was recently designated as a national holiday but has been celebrated long before that — a day that remembers the two-and-a-half year delay before the freedom promised in the Emancipation Proclamation finally came to those who had been enslaved in Galveston, Texas. As Opal Lee, one of the key figures in making Juneteenth a federal holiday put it, “No one is ever free until we’re all free.” And so this date both celebrates a milestone on the journey to true freedom, while also serving as a reminder that freedom did not and does not come easily.

I truly believe that all of us want to arrive at a Promised Land where all people are given equal opportunity and treatment, no matter what their racial identity be, or what their gender identity or sexual orientation might be, but when we look at the disparities that still exist, I think most of us can agree we have not yet arrived at that place. We still find ourselves, for lack of a better metaphor, in the same place the Israelites are in — in the wilderness, on the journey, hopeful that one day we will truly arrive at a time when people are “not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” and yet we are frustrated by how far off that time can feel. Yes, we as country may have left behind a particular type of oppression in chattel slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation and left behind Jim Crow laws that made segregation legal, but we still see the effects and legacy of those laws and policies creep in, intentionally or unintentionally, structurally or interpersonally, in far more subtle ways.

One historical illustration of this is a famous account from the life of Booker T. Washington. Washington, who began life enslaved, was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation at the age of eight along with his family, and he would go on to become the first president of Tuskegee University, along with serving as an advisor to multiple U.S. presidents. But during his time at Tuskegee, he was walking home through an affluent neighborhood one afternoon when he was stopped by a white woman outside her home. The woman, unaware of who Washington was, told him she’d pay him a few dollars to chop some wood in her backyard. I’m sure many of us, if we were in Washington’s position, would have responded with some words not fit for this pulpit, but amazingly he agreed and spent the next couple of hours chopping wood out in the blazing sun. The entire situation would have gone by unnoticed, but when he went to go stack the wood, someone else working in the woman’s home recognized who he was. And the next day, while Washington was working in his office at Tuskegee, he received a surprise visit from the woman — thoroughly embarrassed to say the least. She apologized profusely and stated that she had no idea who he was, or else she never would have asked him to do that kind of work. Washington told her no apology was necessary — and added that it was always a delight to do something for a friend. From that moment on, the woman became an active supporter of Tuskegee and encouraged many of her friends to do so as well.

There is certainly a feel-good aspect to this story of transformation, and we can admire Washington’s humility and graciousness. But we also can’t forget that the entire scenario started because of a quiet moment of snap judgment and bias, and that even if there was no malice or ill intent, it still underscored that while he had been successful by any measure, the color of Washington’s skin continued to affect how he was seen and treated. Slavery had been outlawed for decades when this incident occurred, yet when that woman looked at him, he was anything but free. In her mind, he was just another person to be hired, still “less than,” no matter what the Emancipation Proclamation might say — and it’s fair to wonder if she would have even apologized at all were it not for his status.

If freedom truly existed for all, Washington would never have been put in that position in the first place, and there are countless stories and examples of those types of moments still happening today. After all, the stories of our history are not only about the past. They are stories that inform and inspire our future, and they are stories that inform and inspire the here and now as we strive for a greater vision of who we are called to be: as a country, yes, but ultimately as beloved children of God.

One of those aspirational and beautiful visions comes from our second reading today, from the seventh chapter of Revelation. The book of Revelation is best known for its vivid and striking imagery and the myriad of interpretations that have been made about John of Patmos’s apocalyptic vision, but at the core, the book is undergirded by a hopeful vision of a future that God will one day bring to pass. In today’s verses, we hear promises that contain echoes from the Israelites’ time in the wilderness — that they will hunger and thirst no more, the sun will no longer strike them, God will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eye — and we hope and pray that one day a world like that will exist.

But several verses earlier, John shares a vision of who it is that God has called — an expansion of God’s chosen people from Exodus. There is a “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne.” And as the biblical scholar William Pender notes about this scene in Revelation 7, “This heavenly vision is not put in terms of the future. . . . For John the Seer, this vision is the present and what is now. The good news is that the future determines and creates the present.”

John is witnessing what will be: a time when all people are united — not united as one and the same, but united together in love as beloved children of God, and that vision must help us determine and create our present, even as we acknowledge we have not yet arrived. And because of that, we continue to pray for wisdom, strength, and guidance as we journey toward a day when all that divides us would be torn down, and toward a day when abundance, opportunity, and freedom would truly be known by all. The way forward will not always be clear — and one of the challenges is that we are all at different places on the journey — but no matter where we are, John’s vision can inspire us to keep pressing onward.

It can be tempting, whenever you find yourself in the wilderness, to give up and, perhaps, to believe you will never see the journey through. That’s exactly what Moses and the people were experiencing out in the wilderness around Kadesh in that passage we read from Numbers. They were tired. They were hungry and thirsty. It felt as though they had been traveling the same ground, never getting closer to the Promised Land. And yet in the midst of that quarreling, uncertainty, and doubt, God provided. God provided by helping Moses bring water out from a rock — refreshing and restoring them on their journey. Even if we are not yet where we want to be, whether personally or in our wider society or as a church, we trust that God still provides moments of triumph, moments of joy, moments of celebration, moments when water can be drawn from the rock to those who thirst for it. Those springs of life give us the strength to keep moving towards the future that God has promised — and they remind us that there are times when it is important to pause and give thanks to God, even when the road to that Promised Land — to that aspirational vision — remains unclear or uncertain.

On this Juneteenth weekend, we hold to the promise and vision God has for all people, and we remember that every step on the road to true freedom is worth celebrating. We give thanks for all the men and women who came before us, searching and working and struggling and advocating for true freedom, while we also recognize each one of us has a role to play in the here and now, as the journey to God’s promised future continues.

And we give thanks to God for the gift of that greater vision and the promise of a future when hunger and thirst will be no more, when God wipes away every tear from our eyes, when we truly gather as a great multitude from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages — gathered as beloved children of God. So may that promised future both determine and create our present as we continue this journey together. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church