23 March 2010
Psalm 121, 122, 123; Exod. 5:1-6:1; 1 Cor. 14:20-40; Mark 9:42-50

Things don’t go according to Moses’ expectations. He makes the appeal to Pharaoh and it seems likely that he would have expected Pharaoh to refuse to let the people go, but not that he would become even more hard-hearted towards them and make their slavery more bitter than before. Unsurprisingly, Moses gets the blame for this situation and Moses does the right thing, takes the problem to God in prayer. Moses’ prayer is honest and blunt in calling on the Lord to do as He promised. Moses spoke to God in prayer as one speaks to a close friend, pouring out his heart in honesty and we are indeed fortunate to have these prayers to show us that God doesn’t want simple platitudes, He wants our hearts. Moses is calling on God to be faithful to the promise He has made. He isn’t asking for anything that wasn’t promised. The Lord responds that now is the time for action on His part.

Pharaoh has put a stumbling block before the people to believe in the Lord. Pharaoh has said with his words that he doesn’t know the Lord and with his actions that he doesn’t believe in a Lord who will deliver these people out of his hand. We can put stumbling blocks in front of people in all manner of ways, through legalism, lack of love, false teaching, and other hindrances to coming to Jesus. The job of a priest in the Old Testament was to receive the sacrifices of the people to show the way to the Lord. Our work as priests of the New Covenant, is to make plain the way to Jesus, putting no obstacles in anyone’s path to reconciliation and restoration. The stumbling blocks between us and the cross are our sin and our pride and as ministers we, the priesthood of all believers, are to make certain that the Gospel we preach is simple and plain, not laying additional burdens on anyone. We must, however, recognize that sin and human pride are indeed stumbling blocks on the way to Jesus and seek to eradicate them in our own lives.

(The lectionary leaves out the verses pertaining to women speaking in the church. There is no dispute whether these verses belong to this chapter, but what we are to do with them is the problem. There are many ways of interpreting Paul’s meaning here and I am frankly not sure what to do with them because I choose to depart from them in my own church. They are difficult words for us to deal with and we have to ask whether they are culturally conditioned yet Paul appeals to the Law as well as to his custom. Some commentators say that the prohibition applies to a particular kind of speech, particularly either tongues or the interpretation of prophecy. It seems Paul has a strong sense of the male leadership or headship that cannot be violated in worship of the full congregation and it seems that his appeal is to the Law rather than the culture. Culturally, we live in a time and place where it is not problematic for women to lead companies and some churches have chosen to have female leadership at both the congregational and denominational levels. Paul, in my opinion, would not agree to those things based on a plain reading of this passage.)

This passage always makes me smile. Often people will quote verse 40, “all things should be done decently and in order.” What is humorous about that quotation is that in almost all cases it takes no notice of all that comes before it. We can’t truly use that as our organizing principle unless we make room for all of which Paul speaks: each one should bring a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Paul also allows for multiple people giving words, speaking in tongues and interpreting, etc. None of the churches I am aware of who use verse 40 have a worship service that looks like what Paul has suggested. Should we have room in our worship lives for such a service? It may not be a Sunday morning but could this not be a place where we open ourselves to a movement of the Spirit whereby God speaks to His people through His people in a new way?

To you I lift up my eyes,
O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of servants
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maidservant
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he has mercy upon us.