Love & Graffiti: How do we let God tell us who we are?

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul

and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Newberry Award-winning children’s author Katherine Paterson, who wrote Bridge to Terabithia, tells of growing up in China as the daughter of missionaries. She once remarked that her parents read and re-read the stories of the Bible to her and her siblings “not to make us good,” she says; “but to tell us who we were.” Paterson’s remarks expose a problem in much of what passes for spiritual formation. That we read the Bible or go to church in order to be good citizens or good people and that somehow being a Christian is about doing the right thing in order to earn God’s favor. This view has been dubbed by Christian sociologists as “moralistic therapeutic deism” – that God is a distant, moral policeman who aims to make us a success if only we obey. But is that what God wants? Today’s text from Deuteronomy 6, referred to as the Shema and prayed twice daily by observant Jews, however, reorients the entire project of spiritual formation. It seeks to remind us a loving story of a gracious God. It seeks to tell us “who we are.” It tells us . . .

          1.    We are ones that God wants.

“What does God want?,” many people wonder. And our text begins with an important command: “Listen!” – God demands – “and I will tell you for I am the only God. I am the only one who can tell you who you are, what you were made to be. You were made to love me and love others. You were made as part of a story of love that engages all of you, everything, every part of you.” And the amazing thing is that God wants us in a loving relationship. Love is the center out of which everything emerges. God doesn’t necessarily want our labor, our sacrifices, our unquestioned obedience. God wants our love which means that we are desirable and worth something before we do anything. But many of us want to substitute other good things, like obedience or faithfulness. So the great creed of Judaism should give us pause coming as it does from the book of Deuteronomy which literally means “second law.”  This is what God says, “the great desire of my heart is not law, it’s love; not obedience but relationship.” More than anything, we need to tell the younger generation, our neighbors, our enemies, that God wants to be loved by them, which means that they are wanted by God.

Do you know what word appears more times than the word “obey” in the book of Deuteronomy? The word “remember.”  And that remembering has less to do with the commandments and is more connected with the story of God and God’s people. The Pentateuch more than a list of dos and don’ts is a story of God pursuing a messed up, abused, and broken people. The story of God’s ever-faithful and pursuing love is what grounds the whole project.  “Remember that you were once slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you! That is why I am giving you this command.” (Deuteronomy 15:15)

Make no mistake, a story of love has rules – rules that protect and provide. We create rules for our children BECAUSE we love them. A story of laws, however, has no real need for love. You will obey someone you love and someone who loves you. You will not necessarily love someone that you must simply obey. Time and time again, we are told that the very reason behind what God does is to love and care for us. ⁸ But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” ~ Deuteronomy 7:7-8

A number of years ago my oldest daughter and I were arguing over a particular issue and she chose not to listen to me. This pained me and I tried repeatedly to talk to her about it but the more I brought it up the more it seemed to push her away, to drive a wedge between us. I spoke to my lead pastor at the time who listened patiently as I argued my view and the pain of my daughter’s refusal to listen. He then wisely responded with a statement that has fundamentally altered the way I parent and the way I view God. He asked, “Jon, do want to be right or do you want to have a relationship? That, my friends, is the very grounding of this passage. Never imagine that the rules are the essence of the relationship. If relationship is the very core of our story, the very essence of who God made us to be, then it’s love and not law that should define our lives with God. It means simply that God wants us.

          2.    Impress upon the younger generation your failures and God’s faithfulness.

The word “impress” that the NIV uses in vs. 7 is a repeated action, “Impress them upon your children” means to “imprint” or “stamp.” We must remember that our job is not to stamp them with the phrase “be good” but the possessive “God’s. How do we do that? How do we stamp them without falling into stern moralism, on the one hand, or an anything goes mentality, on the other hand?

One of my climbing partners is a former youth pastor. He told me about a time when he was dealing with some high schoolers to help them own their faith by helping them construct a rule of life. He started by asking them four questions: 1. What does the world say? 2. What does scripture say? 3. How will you behave? So far all these questions made sense to me and I saw where he was going as he tried to help the students chart a path for themselves and make critical decisions before they were faced with challenging choices. But it was the fourth question that, in my opinion, turned this project away from merely being good to one which had students engage the living God. The fourth question was: “What will you do when you break your rule? What will you do when you fail?”

If we only focus on telling our kids how to follow God and fail to tell them, to impress upon them, what happens when they fail – then we will create an environment where sin truly abounds because sin isn’t simply about a broken rule but a broken story which wants people to hide from God, to believe that God doesn’t love them, doesn’t long to heal them. If we are to understand these stories as defining who God is and who we are then we need to name what the stories of the Pentateuch declare loudly and often: that we fail God time and time again, these failures are painful and destructive, but that God is faithful, forgiving and merciful.

Moses will announce to all of Israel: “After the Lord your God has done this for you [subdue Israel’s enemies], don’t say in your hearts, ‘The Lord has given us this land because we are such good people . . . You must recognize that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land because you are good, for you are not – you are a stubborn people” (Deuteronomy 9:4, 6). If we are going to impress the younger generation, if we want to have something to talk about at home or on the road, when we lie down or when we get up, then we are going to have to share about our failures and God’s love amidst failures, God’s faithfulness when we are faithless. We must imagine that we are allowing God’s love and word to shape them. We “impress” upon our children when we tell God’s story of love, love that exists even when we fail to follow the law

          3.    Graffiti your house with God’s love.

Our text today offers a number of commands for how to “impress” the younger generation: impress/recite, talk, tie, bind, and write. Rather than simply intellectualizing the message, however, the passage offers physical, even bodily, means of reminding the younger generation and ourselves of God’s love and God’s desire for us. In many Jewish homes they do this by physically marking their homes with mezuzahs. The Hebrew word mezuzah means “doorpost.” Following Deut. 6:9, the mezuzah was fixed to the doorpost at the entrance of a home as well as at the entrance to each of the interior rooms. The mezuzah itself is a decorative case with small scroll of parchment on which are written two biblical passages: Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and Deuteronomy 11:13-21.  The mezuzah distinguishes a Jewish home and is a visible sign and symbol to all those who enter that a sense of Jewish identity and commitment exists in that household.   The mezuzah reminds us everyday – as we enter and as we leave that God loves us and wants our love.

We need to add such rituals and objects which make faith a matter of bodily practice rather than mere intellectual assent. We need ways of shaping our bodies so that we habitualize God’s great mercy and God’s story of who we are. I’ve talked before about how I created a bathing ritual for my daughter to remind her that God made her and that her body was a source of delight and wonder. The fact of the matter is that the story of God’s love is too important to be left to mere words but must be something that we also bind our bodies with and graffiti our houses over. So we are going to make mezuzahs today after worship.

I would like to highlight the power of binding and tying by telling a different story. It comes from one of my favorite books, Honoring the Body, by the theologian Stephanie Paulsell. In that book, she names a number of daily things that we do with our bodies that can be expressions of Christian faith. She asks, for example, Can our clothing bear witness to our commitment to follow God? She goes on to tell a story that dramatically captures why God would want us to “tie” and “bind” this story and these commands to ourselves. She speaks of the terribly painful experience of having a miscarriage the day after Christmas leaving her, she says, “screwed to my bed with depression, unable to work, read, or pray.” She was, however, able to talk to friends and she poured out her heart and her pain. She cried to her friend, “I am so depressed that I can’t even pray. I try to pray, but I can’t.” A few days later, a package arrived from her that contained a simple beige jumper and a note that read, “I have prayed in this dress every day for a year. You don’t have to pray. Just wear it. It is full of prayers.” “I was naked in my grief,” Paulsell writes, “and my friend clothed me.” Friends, we need to bring that sort of imagination to this project of spiritual formation and following God. We need to not simply imagine that we are brains without bodies but embodied beings whom God loves and calls.

What if we were reminded every day when we leave the house or when we return that God wants our love? What if every time we entered our home the story of God’s love amidst failure greeted us at the door? What if our very doorways became entrances to a story of grace?

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Haggling with God: What happens when Moses prays in church?

¹⁰ But the whole assembly talked about stoning them. Then the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the Israelites. ¹¹ The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? ¹² I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.” ¹³ Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them. ¹⁴ And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard that you, Lord, are with these people and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face, that your cloud stays over them, and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. ¹⁵ If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, ¹⁶ ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath, so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’¹⁷ “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ¹⁸ ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ ¹⁹ In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” ~ Numbers 14:10-19

The writer Philip Yancey, once wrote about his church at prayer. Every week they offered a brief time when people could voice their prayers aloud. Often these intercessions were quite polite and gentle with little emotion – except for one Sunday. In a clear but quivering voice a young woman prayed, “God, I hated you after the assault! How could you let this happen to me? And I hated the people in this church who tried to comfort me. I didn’t want comfort. I wanted revenge. I wanted to hurt back. I thank you, God, that you didn’t give up on me, and neither did some of these people. You kept after me, and I come back to you now and ask that you heal the scars in my soul.”

As I read this story this week my door flung open to find me staring back at Moses himself. And he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Amen. Now that’s a prayer!”

Throughout our series on the Pentateuch, I have repeatedly said that we should not construct a biblical theology from one book and have talked about progressive revelation and how God reveals more of himself as the story goes on and that later revelation takes precedence over earlier ones. And even now I would argue that we certainly shouldn’t confine our theology of prayer solely to the book of Numbers (things develop, for sure). But, even though that is true, neither should we have a theology of prayer that doesn’t take the book of Numbers into account. So last week we heard from Jesus how to read Leviticus. This week the tables have turned. Moses will come and read us – and teach us how to pray. And Moses wants to say to us . . .

          1.    Your prayers are too polite and not honest enough.

Moses would probably say, “Stop praying and start crying.” Throughout the Pentateuch, it rarely tells us that “Moses prayed . . .” More often, it says, “Moses cried . . .”

After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the Lord about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. ~ Exodus 8:12

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. ~ Exodus 15:25

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” ~ Exodus 17:4

When the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down. ~ Numbers 11:2

So Moses cried out to the Lord, “Please, God, heal her!” ~ Numbers 12:13

But Moses and Aaron fell face down and cried out, “O God, the God who gives breath to all living things, will you be angry with the entire assembly when only one man sins?” ~ Numbers 16:22

Crying is raw and honest. You can’t cry politely and there’s a lot to cry about in Moses’ world and in ours. Moses cried publicly and often sobbed these complaints to God in front of God’s own people. It was not merely a private experience. Crying is what we do with those we trust, with those we love. Crying to God is one of the most appropriate responses we can make in a broken world. There is a tradition in the Talmud, the Jewish commentary on the Torah, that Moses wrote a portion of the Torah in his own tears.

Sojourner Truth, the African-American abolitionists, like Moses had no problem praying what was on her mind. “Oh, God, you know I have no money, but you can make the people do for me, and you must make the people do for me. I will never give you peace till you do, God.”

Crying out to God will help us address a deadly disease of respectable Christ followers: “holy lying.” Holy lying is falsely telling God what we imagine God wants to hear rather than expressing our true thoughts and feelings. Now, if you’re only crying, that’s not good. It’s a sign of deep pain and need that probably deserves special attention – counseling, medication, etc. But, if you’re never crying to God, never frustrated at God, that’s also not good. It’s the number one symptom of “holy lying.” It’s as unhealthy as a marriage where there are never fights. Crying and complaining are a part of any healthy relationship.

I once heard a well-meaning pastor laud a woman in my community who had died at the young age of 56 saying, “Though, she had bone cancer she never complained to God or questioned God at all.” Moses would balk at such praise. “What’s good about that?,” he would ask. “If you are free, why do you talk like slaves? Why do you lie and tell God things are okay? Why don’t you live into our name – Israel, ‘God-wrestler.’” Not communicating or questioning is worse than fighting. In a wrestling match, at least both parties stay engaged. According to Moses, “prayer in its highest form and grandest success assumes the attitude of a wrestler with God.” (E.M. Bounds)

More than simply crying to God, Moses wants us to . . .

          2.    Stop groveling and start arguing.

In our passage from Numbers 14, Moses refuses to acquiesce to God’s desire to wipe out the Israelites. He doesn’t respond with, “Your will be done” in part because God had already promised to make Israel a great nation. Moses’ response is, “Your will be changed!” Even though we love and worship God, Moses would tell us that we dare not meekly accept the state of the world, with all its injustices and unfairness. He would encourage us to call God to account for the state of our world. We’ve seen in the Old Testament how God’s sovereignty is often expressed in ways that stretch us. God claims ultimate power over everything. He is the Creator who stands alone and above all creation. And I’ve suggested that God is willing to take responsibility for things that he didn’t even do because he made the world and takes responsibility for the cause and effect relationships we find in it.

So on the one hand, we find a God powerful enough to do miraculous and amazing things – to liberate a people out of slavery. On the other hand, we find a God personable enough to argue with and who relents at the prayers of his people in surprising ways. What if our responsibility to God is to acknowledge this truth by reminding God of that? If God is sovereign, above all powers, then Moses is right, we can chide him for the injustices that we see. In an African Call for Life, prayers published by the World Council of Churches, a black South-African woman, sounding a lot like Moses, prays:  

“Yes, Jesus, I accept that you are the Life of the world, but we women are oppressed by men. They ask, “can a woman also be called to the ordained ministry of the Church?” Oh, Jesus, why do you favor men, your church is male-dominated. I have to change my name into a man’s after marriage. He believes that I am inferior. He only accepts me out of pity. Yes, Jesus, the Life of the world, make life better for us, women.” Moses would say, “amen” to that kind of prayer.

Listen to Sojourner Truth again praying for her ill son:“Oh, God, you know how much I am distressed, for I have told you again and again. Now, God, help me get my son. If you were in trouble, as I am, and I could help you, as you can me, think I wouldn’t do it? Yes, God, you know I would do it.”

Lastly, Moses would teach us . . .

          3.    Don’t hesitate to remind God of promises made – God answers and we change.

More than simply arguing, on more than one occasion, we encounter characters of faith like Abraham and Moses reminding God of God’s own promises. And when that happens, when they appeal to God’s grace and compassion the fearsome God soon disappears. When Moses prays to God, he finds himself quoting God’s own stated words about himself back to God: “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion’. . . In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just has you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”

But why would God create a relationship in which God would have to be reminded of anything? Is God two-faced? Throughout the Pentateuch, it appears that God invites arguments and struggle into prayer and often yields, especially when the point of contention is God’s own mercy. And something amazing happens in this intercession, for it’s not simply that God yields but that the intercessor also changes. In the very process of arguing with God over God’s own mercy, we become merciful. In the very process of praying to God about God’s faithfulness we become more faithful. In the very act of talking with God about who God is, we take on God’s own qualities.

When we take up God’s promises we are advocating for a love that changes us. We are advocating for goodness, healing, and peace. And when we do that in prayer, we become like what we pray for. We become an intercessor.

The best way I can think of explaining this relationship of prayer is through the analogy of a parent coaxing a child to try and swim. The child is fearful and will demand that the parent keep her safe. But after the child jumps into the water the parent slowly takes a few steps back and then a few more. When the child arrives in the parent’s arms, she looks back and discovers that she swam three times as far. Did the parent change? No. Was the child ever in danger? No. But the parent’s loving ruse helped the child grow into becoming a swimmer.

This is why, Moses would tell us, prayer is dangerous. It grows us. And God may very well hear and respond to your prayer and the prayers of others. “That’s what happened to me,” Moses said. And God responded, “I have heard the cries of my people. And so I am sending you.”